Henry Siegman on Israel's Greatest Loss: Its Moral Imagination

June 13, 2010 (LPAC)—Henry Siegman, one of the elder statesmen of American Jewry, who served as national director of the American Jewish Congress from 1978-1994, and now runs the U.S./Middle East Project, penned a devastating expose of Israel's moral degeneration in the Friday, June 11 edition of Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper. Writing under the headline, "Israel's Greatest Loss: Its Moral Imagination," Siegman, who was born in Frankfurt in 1930, later coming to the United States from Antwerp, and serving as an Army chaplain in the Korean War, recounted a conversation with a close friend in Israel, days after the Israeli commando assault on the Gaza aid flotilla. The friend lamented that the international condemnation of Israel "was reminiscent of the dark period of the Hitler era."

Siegman wrote, "When I managed to get over the shock of that exchange, it struck me that the invocation of the Hitler era was actually a frighteningly apt and searing analogy, although not the one my friend intended. A million and a half civilians have been forced to live in an open-air prison in inhuman conditions for over three years now, but unlike the Hitler years, they are not Jews, but Palestinians. Their jailers, incredibly, are survivors of the Holocaust, or their descendants. Of course, the inmates of Gaza are not destined for gas chambers, as the Jews were, but they have been reduced to a debased and hopeless existence... Particularly appalling is that this policy has been the source of amusement for some Israeli leaders, who according to Israel press reports have jokingly described it as 'putting Palestinians on a diet.' That, too, is reminiscent of the Hitler years, when Jewish suffering amused the Nazis."

Siegman clarified, "Of course, even the most objectionable Israeli policies do not begin to compare with Hitler's Germany. But the essential moral issues are the same... So, yes, there is reason for Israelis, and for Jews generally, to think long and hard about the dark Hitler era at this particular time. For the significance of the Gaza Flotilla incident lies not in the questions raised about violations of international law on the high seas, or even about 'who assaulted who' first on the Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, but in the larger questions raised about our common human condition by Israel's occupation policies and its devastation of Gaza's civilian population. If a people who so recently experienced on its own flesh, such unspeakable inhumanities cannot muster the moral imagination to understand the injustice and suffering its territorial ambitions—and even its legitimate security concerns—are inflicting on another people, what hope is there for the rest of us?"