Henry Siegman, Leading Voice of U.S. Jewry, on Gaza: "A Slaughter of Innocents" | Democracy Now!
Given his background, what American Jewish leader Henry Siegman
has to say about Israel’s founding in 1948 through the current assault
on Gaza may surprise you. From 1978 to 1994, Siegman served as executive
director of the American Jewish Congress, long described as one of the
nation’s "big three" Jewish organizations along with the American Jewish
Committee and the Anti-Defamation League. Born in Germany three years
before the Nazis came to power in 1933, Siegman’s family eventually
moved to the United States. His father was a leader of the European
Zionist movement that pushed for the creation of a Jewish state. In New
York, Siegman studied the religion and was ordained as an Orthodox rabbi
by Yeshiva Torah Vodaas, later becoming head of the Synagogue Council
of America. After his time at the American Jewish Congress, Siegman
became a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He now
serves as president of the U.S./Middle East Project. In the first of our
two-part interview, Siegman discusses the assault on Gaza, the myths
surrounding Israel’s founding in 1948, and his own background as a
German-Jewish refugee who fled Nazi occupation to later become a leading
American Jewish voice and now vocal critic of Israel’s policies in the
Occupied Territories.
"When one thinks that this is what is necessary for Israel to
survive, that the Zionist dream is based on the repeated slaughter of
innocents on a scale that we’re watching these days on television, that
is really a profound, profound crisis — and should be a profound crisis
in the thinking of all of us who were committed to the establishment of
the state and to its success," Siegman says. Responding to Israel’s
U.S.-backed claim that its assault on Gaza is necessary because no
country would tolerate the rocket fire from militants in Gaza, Siegman
says: "What undermines this principle is that no country and no people
would live the way that Gazans have been made to live. … The question of
the morality of Israel’s action depends, in the first instance, on the
question, couldn’t Israel be doing something [to prevent] this disaster
that is playing out now, in terms of the destruction of human life?
Couldn’t they have done something that did not require that cost? And
the answer is, sure, they could have ended the occupation."
