
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, November 20, 1995                   TAG: 9511200069
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE                                LENGTH: Short

WIESEL URGES TOLERANCE, REJECTS KILLING

Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel said Sunday that Jews must search their souls to come to terms with the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

``I didn't realize fanaticism would enter our religion with such force,'' Wiesel told about 600 people at the University of Virginia.

The bullets of a right-wing Jewish student, bringing down Rabin as he left a peace rally in Nov. 4 in Israel, underscore the need to make tolerance ``a priority item on all our agendas,'' Wiesel said.

``This man dared to take God as an accomplice when he decided to kill,'' Wiesel said of the confessed gunman, Yigal Amir. ``Fanatics don't live in a society of tolerance.''

In the months leading to Rabin's assassination, opponents branded the prime minister a traitor for his willingness to trade West Bank land for peace with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Throughout Israel's right-wing religious community, rabbis and students debated whether Rabin's overtures to the Palestinians merited his death.

``Those fanatics who believe in what [Amir] believed cannot be a part of my community,'' Wiesel said.

- Associated Press

by CNB