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http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/02/world/eli ... index.html

I heard that he could be a bit of a jerk (his arguments with Finkelstein, his lecture fees, his defense of gaza's occupation) but It's still sad to see a death, much less one who survived the holocaust

Unfortunate. It was bound to happen soon, and yet... unfortunate.

Pretty soon, all of that generation will be gone, and with them so many eyewitnesses to history.

Rest in Peace.

It's kind of incredible that he made it this long, all things considered. R.I.P.

I kinda lost respect when he palled with John Hagee (who said Hitler was a "punishment from god". Even the ADL complained about that. So Elie Weisel could be a bit of a hypocrite
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Darth Yan wrote: So Elie Weisel could be a bit of a hypocrite
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Just like the rest of us humans.

I've never really understood why people seem to take such delight in looking over a person's entire lifetime and crowing about the contradictions therein. It's something that can be done for everyone.

Not that he should be absolved of his support for some of Israel's worst actions, especially given that he should have known better with his first-hand experience of where that type of treatment of minorities can lead. But neither should the fact that in his old age he reverted a bit to a more dogmatic/hardline Zionism be an excuse to forget all of the good things he did.

(This wasn't really directed at you personally, Darth Yan, even though I quoted you, but more towards the general trend of online arguments calling him a hypocrite that I'm seeing on social media. Although, I must admit, far more disgusting than that is the right-wing response to these criticisms. Some of the vitriol I've seen, calling critics of Weisel "Judenrats" and "traitors," is highly disturbing.)

A lot of people become hardliners in old age.

For one, it is a very human thing to have experiences that cause us to form opinions we simply will not revisit, will not even seriously consider revisiting. This is especially true of trauma, or of challenging, difficult events that define a decade or so of your life with the sheer intensity of effort required to get through them. The mindset becomes one of "Don't you tell me that event ABC means we need to do XYZ, I WAS THERE!"

This can happen to anyone at all ages... but a person who is eighty years old, with sixty years of adult life behind them, is far more likely to have experienced such an event, compared to a person who is thirty, with ten years of adult life. Indeed, you might even expect that the octogenarian is six times (or four times?) more likely to have this. e To havexperienced a definitive, life-changing event whose lessons and meaning they are unwilling to revisit or reconsider just on your say-so.

It's not always because age has done anything to their brain. It's simply that the passage of each year leaves its mark, and an older person is going to be carrying more of those marks.

It was more that he hung with a guy who called the holocaust an "act of god." That's.....a serious wtf moment. It's like, dude, he said the holocaust you endured was just

I suspect that the Jews have had three thousand years to grow accustomed to the idea that the horrible things which happen to them at the hands of various foreign overlords are simultaneously great evils committed by evil rulers, and God punishing them for their sins.

Some doublethink is required, but this isn't a new idea.

Well, if you subscribe to the idea that God is all-powerful, then logically anything that happened must have been either directly caused by him, or at least allowed by him.

The Romulan Republic wrote:Well, if you subscribe to the idea that God is all-powerful, then logically anything that happened must have been either directly caused by him, or at least allowed by him.

...and this is why I kicked the idea of an all-powerful God to the curb when I was 8. Pascal's Wager? Fuck Pascal's Wager. If I'm wrong, I will proudly stride through the gates of Hell ready for an eternity of torture with my head held high and the courage of my convictions. If so, I'll look forward to seeing most of you there.