Henry Siegman

Henry Siegman
Born 1930
Frankfurt, Germany
Occupation Writer and journalist
Nationality American

Henry Siegman (born 1930) is a German-born American. He is a non-resident research professor at the Sir Joseph Hotung Middle East Program, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, a former Senior Fellow on the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations, and a former National Director of the American Jewish Congress.[1]

Early life and education

Siegman, a Jewish American, was born in 1930 in Frankfurt, Germany.[2] Moving to the United States, Siegman studied and was ordained as an Orthodox Rabbi by Yeshiva Torah Vodaas. He served as a chaplain in the Korean War, where he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal and the Purple Heart.[3][4]

Career

He is a former Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Prior to that, he was the Executive Director of the American Jewish Congress (1978–1994).[5]

Political views

Siegman is a critic of Israeli policies in the West Bank.

He refers to Israel as a "de-facto apartheid" state and said in 2012 that the "two-state solution is dead".[4]

Siegman supports the idea of moral equivalence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.[6] He advocates engagement with Hamas[7] and believes that Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas is able to form a unity government between Hamas and his own Fatah and make peace with Israel.[8] Siegman met with Hamas' leader Khaled Mashal in Syria.[9]

He says that Yasser Arafat made a "disastrous mistake" in rejecting the peace offer, but that "based on my 14 years of dealings with Arafat, I reject the notion that he was bent on Israel's destruction".[10] Siegman is critical of Ariel Sharon, about whom he wrote: "The war Sharon is waging is not aimed at the defeat of Palestinian terrorism but at the defeat of the Palestinian people and their aspirations for national self-determination".[11]

He strongly defended former president Jimmy Carter's book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.[12] He has also criticized the peace efforts by Ehud Olmert and George W. Bush.[13] Siegman has described the process as a "scam" because of a "consensus reached long ago by Israel's decision-making elites that Israel will never allow the emergence of a Palestinian state".[14]

Reception

Jeffrey Donovan, writing in Radio Free Europe calls him "a leading U.S. expert on the Middle East".[15]

Nathan Guttman, writing in The Forward said that Siegman helped to publicize the "Saudi plan", after it was revealed publicly for the first time in the New York Times.[16] In addition, Guttman writes that Siegman is in the "far-left corner of the Middle East worldview".[4]

Journalist David Rieff said, in 2004, that Siegman is "perhaps the most perceptive American observer-participant in the last two decades of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations".[17]

Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said that Siegman was known as holding left-of-center views that fit with the American Jewish Congress's liberal approach, and that "when he left the organization, it became clearer he was no longer a critic of Israel, that his criticism borders being anti-Israel".[4]

References

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Tuesday, August 11, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.