From Esther to AIPAC "In certain contexts, memory can be
subversive; in others, memory can shield the status quo. When
individuals and communities become vested with memory as a form
of identity and specialness, then other suffering threatens to
displace the centrality of our experience. Instead of a bridge
of solidarity to others who are suffering in the present,
suffering in the past can become a badge of honour, protecting
us from the challenges that are before us. Then our witness,
originally powerful, opening questions about God and power,
becomes diluted, can be seen as fake, contrived, even wilfully
so. An industry grows up around you, honours you, and at the
same time uses your witness for other reasons. In the end a
confusion results, externally and internally, until the witness
himself can no longer differentiate between the world of
interpretation he helped articulate and the world that now
speaks in his name. Is this what happened to Wiesel, or is
Finkelstein’s more acerbic analysis accurate?" Jew