“Get Indignant!”

“Get Indignant!” Another member of the Youth Club: Stéphane Hessel (93) Stéphane Hessel Pierre Puchot, journalist at Mediapart, asks Stéphane Hessel: Where does your involvement in favor of the Palestinian population come from? “Originally, it was some Israelis, among the most dissident, who addressed the Diaspora (my father was Jewish) considering that we were Jews who must, as they said, realize what is becoming out of the state which we have supported when it was created: “You should come and have a look at what the successive Israeli governments have brought us to.” I answered their call. I have been there for the first time in the 1990s. I have returned several times and I have indeed come to realize that the Palestinian cause was badly defended, and the Israeli side free to act in total impunity. As I am rather an International Law man, I sustained that we, members of the United Nations, have obligations towards the Palestinian people and I started to defend the idea that to leave Israeli politics unpunished was contrary to International Law. This was a rather recent path for me to tread, for twenty years ago, I occupied myself little with the Palestinian problem. But since the end of the nineties, I have gone there at least six times and I realized that it was only possible to to understand some things when one was on the spot. It’s only when being on the spot that one can understand how the Israeli policies have been nefarious to the Palestinian people, contrary to International Law,  and contrary to the well understood interest of the Israeli people themselves…” In your “brochure,” Get Indignant, you notably call for “a pacific insurrection.” What do you mean? “I refer to what the Palestinians are doing in a village close to that famous wall built by Israel on Palestinian land, of which they are therefore the victims and who, in protest, organize every Friday a march which they want to be pacific, as they forbid kids to throw stones. Generally, they are greeted by Israeli soldiers who don’t hesitate to use teargas, and even rubber bullets. This is what I call pacific insurrection. This is what the Israelis have had the nerve to call “non-violent terrorism” as if one could be in the same time non-violent and a terrorist. As all violence calls for violence in return, this is never a good way to resolve a problem.” As to M. Taguieff’s call to crush his snake’s head, Stéphane Hessel commented: “That I should be attacked, why not? But let it be done with a minimum of courtoisie, please!”

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