The Mirror of Stéphane Hessel |
There are certain critics whose voices Israeli society finds particularly difficult to confront. It is easy to dismiss harsh criticism as ignorance or as evidence of a failure to understand the complexities of the Middle East. It is equally easy to regard calls for boycotts as expressions of antisemitism or political hostility. When the critic is an antisemite, there is little need to engage seriously with his arguments; when the critic is a European intellectual, his views can be dismissed as moral naiveté detached from reality.
But some forms of criticism resist such categorization. How should we respond to criticism coming from a Jew who fought the Nazis, survived the concentration camps, helped shape the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, supported the Zionist project, and regarded the establishment of the State of Israel as one of the great achievements of Jewish history in the twentieth century – yet nevertheless became one of its most outspoken critics? How should we respond to a Holocaust survivor who argued that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians was not merely a political mistake but a distortion – and even a contradiction – of the moral lessons of the Holocaust itself?
Stéphane Hessel was precisely such a figure; The fact that Hessel’s name – and certainly his critique – remains largely unknown in Israel is no coincidence. It reflects a deeper difficulty: the challenge of confronting moral criticism that does not fit into any of the familiar and convenient categories. Hessel did not challenge the legitimacy of the State of Israel. What he challenged was the moral self-understanding through which Israel interpreted its own existence.
Hessel did not approach the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from academia, from the intellectual fashions of the........