The Mirror of Stéphane Hessel

There are certain critics whose voices Israeli society finds particularly difficult to confront. It is easy to dismiss harsh criticism as ignorance or as evidence of a failure to understand the complexities of the Middle East. It is equally easy to regard calls for boycotts as expressions of antisemitism or political hostility. When the critic is an antisemite, there is little need to engage seriously with his arguments; when the critic is a European intellectual, his views can be dismissed as moral naiveté detached from reality.

But some forms of criticism resist such categorization. How should we respond to criticism coming from a Jew who fought the Nazis, survived the concentration camps, helped shape the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, supported the Zionist project, and regarded the establishment of the State of Israel as one of the great achievements of Jewish history in the twentieth century – yet nevertheless became one of its most outspoken critics? How should we respond to a Holocaust survivor who argued that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians was not merely a political mistake but a distortion – and even a contradiction – of the moral lessons of the Holocaust itself?

Stéphane Hessel was precisely such a figure; The fact that Hessel’s name – and certainly his critique – remains largely unknown in Israel is no coincidence. It reflects a deeper difficulty: the challenge of confronting moral criticism that does not fit into any of the familiar and convenient categories. Hessel did not challenge the legitimacy of the State of Israel. What he challenged was the moral self-understanding through which Israel interpreted its own existence.

Hessel did not approach the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from academia, from the intellectual fashions of the European Left, or from the postcolonial theories that emerged in recent decades. His worldview was shaped not by theoretical debates but by direct encounters with the catastrophes of the twentieth century. When France fell to Nazi Germany, he joined General de Gaulle’s Free French forces. He fought in the French Resistance, was captured by the Gestapo, tortured, deported to Buchenwald and Dora-Mittelbau, and survived against overwhelming odds. For him, oppression, the denial of rights, humiliation, and arbitrary power were not abstract concepts but lived realities.

After the war, Hessel participated in the work that led to the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He believed that the Holocaust imposed a moral obligation upon humanity: to establish ethical and legal principles capable of protecting the dignity and rights of every human being, regardless of religion, nationality, or race. In his eyes, this was the most important lesson of Auschwitz.

It was precisely for this reason that Hessel struggled to accept what he regarded as a widespread – if often unspoken – Israeli interpretation of the Holocaust’s legacy: the tendency to see force as an almost automatic response to every threat, sometimes at the cost of denying the humanity of one’s adversary. For Hessel, Auschwitz did not confer special privileges upon the Jewish people; it imposed a special responsibility upon them. The lesson of the Holocaust was not a license for Jews to treat others as Jews had been treated. Rather, it was a commitment to ensure that what had been done to the Jews would never be done to others – and certainly not by Jews themselves. Not by accident, not through indifference, and not in the name of any historical necessity.

Because he regarded Israel’s independence as a profound historical rectification after centuries of persecution and powerlessness, Hessel found it difficult to reconcile that vision with Israel’s policies in the Palestinian territories. For him, the central question was not who possessed the stronger historical claim – the Israelis or the Palestinians – but how a society whose identity had been shaped by the memory of the Holocaust behaves when power is finally in its hands.

He did not ask what had been done to Jews in the past – He asked what Jews were doing to others in the present. From his perspective, the essential question was not whether Jews were entitled to a state of their own. That question had already been answered. The real question was what happens when a people who had for generations been victims of history become possessors of power. How do they use that power? What happens to the memory of the Holocaust when it encounters sovereignty, military force, and political authority? Does the suffering endured by Jews foster a deeper sensitivity to the suffering of others, or does it become a source of justification for ignoring it?

Hessel’s criticism was so sharp precisely because it arose not from hostility toward Israel but from disappointment in it. He believed that Jews, perhaps more than any other people, should understand the meaning of dispossession, humiliation, restrictions on movement, and the denial of basic human rights. Yet when he encountered the reality of life under Israeli rule in the Palestinian territories – a reality marked by checkpoints, separation barriers, land expropriations, restrictions on movement, and the prolonged denial of political rights – he did not primarily see a national conflict. He saw a moral failure.

In much of Western Europe, and particularly in France, Hessel came to symbolize a different kind of Jewish voice: one that regards historical memory not merely as a source of identity but as a source of responsibility. He represented a broad tradition shared by many Jews in Western Europe and North America, for whom the phrase ‘Never Again’ does not simply mean ensuring Jewish strength and security. It means, first and foremost, safeguarding human dignity wherever it is threatened.

Many Israelis tend to dismiss such criticism as the product of distance, naiveté, or assimilation. Yet this misses the point. For people like Hessel, criticism of Israel does not arise from estrangement from Jewish identity but from a profound commitment to it.

One may disagree with Hessel. One may challenge his conclusions or argue that he underestimated the realities of terrorism and regional insecurity. Yet it is difficult simply to dismiss the question he posed to Israel. Not because he was one of Israel’s opponents, but precisely because he was among its supporters. As a Holocaust survivor, he regarded the establishment of Israel as a defining event in modern Jewish history. For that very reason, he found it difficult to accept the gap between the promise and the reality.

The mirror that Hessel holds up to Israeli society is therefore painful to confront. Yet it is precisely because it is painful that it deserves our attention. Not because every criticism from abroad should be accepted as truth, but because it allows us to see how Israel appears in the eyes of people who are neither its enemies nor indifferent to its fate.

On the contrary: their criticism does not arise from indifference but from concern; not from estrangement but from commitment; not from hostility but from disappointment. They criticize Israel not because they reject it, but because they remain unable to abandon the hopes they once invested in it.