Source:  Daniel McGowan

When Elie Wiesel took Oprah Winfrey to Auschwitz the choreography was perfect. Jewish suffering was paramount; remember the six million, the gas chambers, the Zyklon B, the death marches, and "Arbeit Macht Frei."

Ignore the facts that none of Wiesel's family was gassed, that 50 million non-Jews were killed, that Wiesel chose to leave Auschwitz with the Nazis rather than be liberated by the Russians as was Anne Frank's father. And certainly ignore the ethnic cleansing and murder of perhaps two million Germans, mostly civilians, after the war.

Now Elie will take Oprah to Israel to "sympathize with the suffering of the people of Israel" meaning the suffering of Jews, of course. He won't be taking her to the ghetto known as Gaza, where 1.4 million Palestinians languish in hunger and sickness. He won't be taking her to the concentration camp at Ketziot in the Negev Desert.

Nor will this icon of the Holocaust Industry be taking Oprah to Deir Yassin, the site of a massacre of Arab civilians perpetrated by his employer, The Irgun, in April 1948. When he accompanies her at the most famous Holocaust memorial at Yad Vashem, they will be looking across the valley at Deir Yassin, but Elie will not mention it nor apologize for it.

Nor will they discuss on camera or privately that today over half the people within the borders controlled by Israel are not Jews. Such inconvenient facts fly in the face of the quest to build a Jewish state in Palestine, a quest that is patently racist.

First Auschwitz, now Israel -- what is next for the Oprah and Elie show? Perhaps they could recreate the Jewish slave ship Mazeltof and sail together from Africa to Curacao and on to America. Oprah at the prow, Elie at the wheel, the hold packed with slaves sailing into Hasbara.

Deir Yassin Remembered
4174 Scandling Center
Geneva, NY 14456
Phone: 315 781-3418

www.deiryassin.org, Yaasad@arcadia.com.jo