During the recent Gaza campaign, and into its aftermath, some of the most vocal critics of Israel have been Jews, and some of these have grounded their criticism in appeals to Jewish values. There’s nothing new in that: in 1988, as the first intifada raged, the New York Review published an open letter by Arthur Hertzberg, a well-known rabbi and historian, denouncing Israel for its allegedly brutal response to Palestinian rioters and chastising its Jewish supporters—in particular, Elie Wiesel—for their blindness to what the Jewish tradition “commands”:
Morally, the Jewish tradition commands us to act justly, especially when [doing so] seem[s] imprudent and embarrassing, and never to be silent, even to protect Jewish unity. . . . Even in bad times, when Jews were under fierce attack, their moral teachers gave no exceptions. The prophets knew that Assyria and Babylonia were far more wicked than Judea, but they held Judea to account.
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