Sharing the Pain of Israel

A belief system that teaches young Islamic fundamentalists that “you are going to die and be proud of it because in dying you will kill” is the Israeli government’s biggest enemy in its renewed war against Hamas terrorists, Nobel Peace Prize-winning author Elie Wiesel said Wednesday.

“What worries me is these terrorists are, so to speak, obsessed with death. They serve a cult of death,” Wiesel said, speaking to reporters at the Bernard Milken Jewish Community Campus here.

“How many are there? Fifty? One hundred? Five hundred? What if they have trained 1,000?

“Hatred is a disease,” he said. “Once it’s there, it’s very difficult to cure it, especially when you take a young person who is already poisoned.”

The Boston University professor, 68, a survivor of the Nazi death camps who travels the world as a spokesman for international peace, was in the San Fernando Valley on Thursday to give the keynote address at a fund-raising dinner sponsored by the Valley Alliance of the Jewish Federation.

The alliance is the co-sponsor of a Holocaust-themed contemporary art exhibit now on display at the Milken Center. Wiesel’s niece is one of the artists whose work is featured in the show.

Wiesel’s appearance was scheduled before the recent wave of terrorist bomb attacks that has claimed at least 61 lives in Israel since Feb. 25. But those attacks, for which the Hamas political organization has claimed responsibility, dominated his remarks.

Wiesel described himself as a strong advocate of the 2 1/2-year-old peace agreement that Israel signed with the Palestine Liberation Organization. At the same time, he said he thinks one of the wisest steps Prime Minister Shimon Peres can take to reassure his country’s fearful population would be to form a national unity government with members of the opposition Likud Party, which has advocated reasserting the army’s presence in the West Bank areas that were handed over to the PLO under the peace plan.

“People are afraid to take the bus,” he said. “The fear must be dispersed. It can be from the top, with leadership.”

As a non-Israeli, Wiesel said he does not feel comfortable second-guessing the actions of Israel’s leaders. But as a Jew who knows at least one family that lost a son in one of the recent bomb attacks, he said he feels compelled to share some of the pain of Israel’s people.

“How can I not be with Israel when Israel’s people have been through such a trauma? I say what we can do is weep with you and tell you we are deeply affected by what happens to you,” he said.

Wiesel also cautioned U.S. citizens who are indifferent to the images of mourning Israelis on the nightly news not to be complacent, saying Hamas could very well turn its deadly campaign on American targets. “Those who hate, hate everybody,” he said, adding that Americans can help combat the specter of terrorism on U.S. soil by fighting racial and religious bigotry in their own communities.

Wiesel’s speech before the Valley Alliance was an invitation-only affair for about 200 big-time donors that organizers said was expected to raise about $2 million for the Jewish Federation’s activities. About one-third of the $6 million the Valley Alliance raises each year goes to support social service programs in Israel, said Jack Mayer, executive director.