Here is an amazing forthcoming piece by David Klein, a math professor at California State, about trying to get Norman Finkelstein hired at his school over the last year to no avail. As you may recall, Finkelstein lectured at the school earlier this year. Apparently it was an audition. Klein organized a valiant and wide campaign on Finkelstein's behalf.
I'm excerpting a lot of Klein's story below. Simply amazing, and how does Klein conclude? By raising the spectre of an anti-Jewish backlash over the power of what he terms the Israel Lobby. (I believe Walt and Mearsheimer were accused of antisemitism for once using a capital L). Klein:
Following an exchange of emails, I asked Finkelstein on July 1, 2007 if
he had any job prospects. His reply was, "No job prospects.
None."
So, that same day, I sent an email letter to the president and
the provost of my university, California State University, Northridge
(CSUN), where I am a math professor. I wrote, not as a
mathematician, but as a faculty member of the university in order to
make the case for a unique opportunity. I urged them to consider
hiring Finkelstein for a university wide faculty position, explaining
that his presence would catapult CSUN to the front ranks of
universities worldwide, [emphasis Weiss's; this is a true statement] in his areas of research. Such university
wide faculty appointments at CSUN had previously been offered, and
resulted in extended visits by outside scholars.
The provost, Harry Hellenbrand, wrote back indicating that he was interested and was willing to look into it. Through the summer months of 2007, we held informal meetings and colleagues from several departments sent letters to the provost urging him to bring Finkelstein to CSUN.
Hellenbrand agreed to invite Finkelstein for a series of lectures across a five-day visit…
The provost estimated that he received some 200 letters from members of Los Angeles Jewish organizations demanding that Finkelstein's invitation to give talks on campus be withdrawn….
After the February lectures, I again asked the provost to bring Finkelstein for a longer stay. Hellenbrand's response was that this might be a possibility, but to make it happen, he "would have to be asked." So we continued to ask in writing.
Finkelstein's visit generated an outpouring of support, including from students. Scores of CSUN faculty members wrote, including the chairs of the departments of Physics, Chemistry, Journalism, Communication Studies, and Pan African Studies. The entire department of Women's Studies signed a joint letter of support. Individual faculty members from a diversity of departments, ranging from art to engineering, also wrote urging the administration to offer Finkelstein a visiting position…
The provost, Harry Hellenbrand, wrote back indicating that he was interested and was willing to look into it. Through the summer months of 2007, we held informal meetings and colleagues from several departments sent letters to the provost urging him to bring Finkelstein to CSUN.
Hellenbrand agreed to invite Finkelstein for a series of lectures across a five-day visit…
The provost estimated that he received some 200 letters from members of Los Angeles Jewish organizations demanding that Finkelstein's invitation to give talks on campus be withdrawn….
After the February lectures, I again asked the provost to bring Finkelstein for a longer stay. Hellenbrand's response was that this might be a possibility, but to make it happen, he "would have to be asked." So we continued to ask in writing.
Finkelstein's visit generated an outpouring of support, including from students. Scores of CSUN faculty members wrote, including the chairs of the departments of Physics, Chemistry, Journalism, Communication Studies, and Pan African Studies. The entire department of Women's Studies signed a joint letter of support. Individual faculty members from a diversity of departments, ranging from art to engineering, also wrote urging the administration to offer Finkelstein a visiting position…
And yes, the visit also elicited a lot of protest, covered here by Brad Greenberg. But back to Klein:
During the last week of February 2008, a retired faculty member, inspired by Finkelstein's lectures, offered $30,000 toward an endowed chair at CSUN for Finkelstein. He indicated that he might be willing to offer an even larger figure. The provost declined the email offer on the grounds that university regulations prevented the creation of an endowed chair for any specific individual. Curiously, the administration showed no interest in meeting with this erstwhile donor to discuss alternate ways in which he might contribute toward bringing Finkelstein to CSUN, or even toward more general university projects.
…our effort was resuscitated during the final week of April, when the Chair of Journalism asked the provost to bring Finkelstein as a visiting professor to his department. This was a good fit. Finkelstein would make an excellent resource for faculty members interested in the important area of Middle East affairs. …
The president dodges this bid to hire Finkelstein, too, saying that the school is no longer hiring any university-wide positions. The Finkelstein balloon is over. Klein ends his piece with this great insight:
It is no longer possible to hide the darker side of Israeli policy, and
mainstream voices have expressed concerns. John Mearsheimer of
the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt of Harvard's John F.
Kennedy School of Government raised doubts about the value of the
U.S.-Israel alliance in their book, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign
Policy." Former President and Nobel laureate, Jimmy Carter, pressed
forward moral questions about Israel's behavior in his book,
"Palestine: Peace not Apartheid." Predictably, all three authors
were denounced by the Israel Lobby, but it is becoming increasingly
difficult to marginalize all of Israel's critics.
As the realities of the Israel-Palestine conflict enter public discourse with increasing weight, what will be the perception toward Jews by the rest of the population? If the Israel Lobby's "Good Jews" continue to represent all Jews, and "Good Jews" defend Israel's every action, all the while working to suspend academic freedom in universities, what ultimately will be the consequences?
As the realities of the Israel-Palestine conflict enter public discourse with increasing weight, what will be the perception toward Jews by the rest of the population? If the Israel Lobby's "Good Jews" continue to represent all Jews, and "Good Jews" defend Israel's every action, all the while working to suspend academic freedom in universities, what ultimately will be the consequences?
Related posts:
- AIPAC is reported to urge Yeshiva U not to condemn prof who called Israel apartheid state
- Finkelstein, Gandhi and the 2-State Solution
- Harvard Prof Says ‘Money, Media and Establishment’ Choke Dissent Re Israel
- Historic Freud lectures at Clark are bookended, a century later, by censorship of Finkelstein
- Deck the halls: Finkelstein to speak on Goldstone at Harvard Law School
{ 29 comments }
Off topic:
The great Gareth Porter has a piece at antiwar.com on the latest war propaganda against Iran. The piece in question is by Pamela Hess. Here's another example of her work–
SAUDI ARABIA SETS ASIDE $50M FOR 'MARTYRS
April 9, 2002
http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/000545.html
Do you think she might be Jewish?
(BTW Phil, your Google ads are showing up at the very bottom of the page. Move them up to the top edge, or you'll never get rich.)
Dr. Finkelstein is a walking eyesore on the body of American democracy, a constant reminder that freedom of speech is no longer a sacred principle of American society.
I can understand fierce lobbying by some pro-Israelis. I can understand venom and spite.
But to have not a single academic institution prepared to stand up for what is right, withstand pressure and appoint him? (there must be one president of a university somewhere in 50 states who is secretly dreaming of early retirement with a bang, surely??!!)
The guy is an outstanding communicator of unadorned facts and also a superb teacher. I believe the former is an ever greater threat than latter, despite the frantic efforts of pro-isreali lobby.
He is not going to go away: He is fast becoming famous throughout the world (even in russian, his name comes up in Google), and like Israeli Apartheid in Occupied Palestinian Territories his position and his presence will seep into the american conscience……eventually..
Norm Finkelstein is a piece of shit who by accident of birth has achieved some sort of twisted fame. And he he would have made a great capo in the concentration camps. He can always go to Georgetown and hand with John Espositio. The Saudi's finance that whole deal.
come on Phil, jews had nothing to do with Finkelstein losing his job, they are nice caring humanity loving people who love diversity and inclusivity remember, youre proud of their achievements and all that stuff.
frigin crack up stuff…pass the joint and lets keep laughing at the b.s.
And he he would have made a great
Playing the stuttering Deshowitz parrot, Billy Boy?
Not he would have made a great human being, he is, SOG. He is.
Sure, he's just a joy. right up there with Arafat.
I heard Arafat was corrupt. And that he died with millions of dollars stashed away. And that he was was a homosexual. And that he was a terrorist.
When you think of who the Jews have had to deal with, it's really a wonder they have behaved as well as they have.
You know Eva. The fact that your Polish isn't exactly shocking. For every Jan Karski there were a thousand Jedwebnes.
What a contemptible, cowardly country the US has become.
You have lost your privacy, your free press, your academic independence, your economy and the respect of the rest of the world. What's next?
The very fact that a person like Dershowitz is not only tolerated but lionised, while someone like Finkelstein is given the Two Minutes hate for the rest of his life tells you all you need to know. A country like that grows fungi like SOG all over it's underbelly, feasting on the ignorance and lies.
'As the realities of the Israel-Palestine conflict enter public discourse with increasing weight, what will be the perception toward Jews by the rest of the population?'
You would think, with the oncoming train (or posse if Richard prefers) so palpably obvious, that moves might be made to rein in the worst of the uber-Zionist behaviour. But no, it's crash or crash thru maximalism all the way, yea verily until the end.
Oh well, it's their funeral.
I am much more scared by the loss of democracy in USA than the loss of democracy in the rest of the world. This is because all the people battling for their human rights were able to see this country as a beacon of hope (what a worn out phase it is, sorry). It sustained Solidarity in Poland, it fed student discussions deep into the night, it was a model to emulate but never to equal. If this model was to crumble, the russian or chinese model of citizens place vis a vis state would become a norm instead. Like female emancipation, the free speech project is a mere couple of generations old and can be swept away very quickly indeed. Treatment of Finkelstein is a symptom of a much deeper problem. If this lobby or that lobby can do this with the acquiescence of the intellectual elites of the country, the step to the government doing it is very small indeed.
What did you find worthwhile in his work? Anything substantive, or just his chutzpah?
Eva, I think Chomsky would nod in agreement with you:
The Fate of an Honest Intellectual
Noam Chomsky
Excerpted from Understanding Power, The New Press, 2002, pp. 244-248
I'll tell you another, last case—and there are many others like this. Here's a story which is really tragic. How many of you know about Joan Peters, the book by Joan Peters? There was this best-seller a few years ago [in 1984], it went through about ten printings, by a woman named Joan Peters—or at least, signed by Joan Peters—called From Time Immemorial. It was a big scholarly-looking book with lots of footnotes, which purported to show that the Palestinians were all recent immigrants [i.e. to the Jewish-settled areas of the former Palestine, during the British mandate years of 1920 to 1948]. And it was very popular—it got literally hundreds of rave reviews, and no negative reviews: the Washington Post, the New York Times, everybody was just raving about it. Here was this book which proved that there were really no Palestinians! Of course, the implicit message was, if Israel kicks them all out there's no moral issue, because they're just recent immigrants who came in because the Jews had built up the country. And there was all kinds of demographic analysis in it, and a big professor of demography at the University of Chicago [Philip M. Hauser] authenticated it. That was the big intellectual hit for that year: Saul Bellow, Barbara Tuchman, everybody was talking about it as the greatest thing since chocolate cake.Well, one graduate student at Princeton, a guy named Norman Finkelstein, started reading through the book. He was interested in the history of Zionism, and as he read the book he was kind of surprised by some of the things it said. He's a very careful student, and he started checking the references—and it turned out that the whole thing was a hoax, it was completely faked: probably it had been put together by some intelligence agency or something like that. Well, Finkelstein wrote up a short paper of just preliminary findings, it was about twenty-five pages or so, and he sent it around to I think thirty people who were interested in the topic, scholars in the field and so on, saying: "Here's what I've found in this book, do you think it's worth pursuing?"
Well, he got back one answer, from me. I told him, yeah, I think it's an interesting topic, but I warned him, if you follow this, you're going to get in trouble—because you're going to expose the American intellectual community as a gang of frauds, and they are not going to like it, and they're going to destroy you. So I said: if you want to do it, go ahead, but be aware of what you're getting into. It's an important issue, it makes a big difference whether you eliminate the moral basis for driving out a population—it's preparing the basis for some real horrors—so a lot of people's lives could be at stake. But your life is at stake too, I told him, because if you pursue this, your career is going to be ruined.
Well, he didn't believe me. We became very close friends after this, I didn't know him before. He went ahead and wrote up an article, and he started submitting it to journals. Nothing: they didn't even bother responding. I finally managed to place a piece of it in In These Times, a tiny left-wing journal published in Illinois, where some of you may have seen it. Otherwise nothing, no response. Meanwhile his professors—this is Princeton University, supposed to be a serious place—stopped talking to him: they wouldn't make appointments with him, they wouldn't read his papers, he basically had to quit the program.
By this time, he was getting kind of desperate, and he asked me what to do. I gave him what I thought was good advice, but what turned out to be bad advice: I suggested that he shift over to a different department, where I knew some people and figured he'd at least be treated decently. That turned out to be wrong. He switched over, and when he got to the point of writing his thesis he literally could not get the faculty to read it, he couldn't get them to come to his thesis defense. Finally, out of embarrassment, they granted him a Ph.D.—he's very smart, incidentally—but they will not even write a letter for him saying that he was a student at Princeton University. I mean, sometimes you have students for whom it's hard to write good letters of recommendation, because you really didn't think they were very good—but you can write something, there are ways of doing these things. This guy was good, but he literally cannot get a letter.
He's now living in a little apartment somewhere in New York City, and he's a part-time social worker working with teenage drop-outs. Very promising scholar—if he'd done what he was told, he would have gone on and right now he'd be a professor somewhere at some big university. Instead he's working part-time with disturbed teenaged kids for a couple thousand dollars a year. That's a lot better than a death squad, it's true—it's a whole lot better than a death squad. But those are the techniques of control that are around.
But let me just go on with the Joan Peters story. Finkelstein's very persistent: he took a summer off and sat in the New York Public Library, where he went through every single reference in the book—and he found a record of fraud that you cannot believe. Well, the New York intellectual community is a pretty small place, and pretty soon everybody knew about this, everybody knew the book was a fraud and it was going to be exposed sooner or later. The one journal that was smart enough to react intelligently was the New York Review of Books—they knew that the thing was a sham, but the editor didn't want to offend his friends, so he just didn't run a review at all. That was the one journal that didn't run a review.
Meanwhile, Finkelstein was being called in by big professors in the field who were telling him, "Look, call off your crusade; you drop this and we'll take care of you, we'll make sure you get a job," all this kind of stuff. But he kept doing it—he kept on and on. Every time there was a favorable review, he'd write a letter to the editor which wouldn't get printed; he was doing whatever he could do. We approached the publishers and asked them if they were going to respond to any of this, and they said no—and they were right. Why should they respond? They had the whole system buttoned up, there was never going to be a critical word about this in the United States. But then they made a technical error: they allowed the book to appear in England, where you can't control the intellectual community quite as easily.
Well, as soon as I heard that the book was going to come out in England, I immediately sent copies of Finkelstein's work to a number of British scholars and journalists who are interested in the Middle East—and they were ready. As soon as the book appeared, it was just demolished, it was blown out of the water. Every major journal, the Times Literary Supplement, the London Review, the Observer, everybody had a review saying, this doesn't even reach the level of nonsense, of idiocy. A lot of the criticism used Finkelstein's work without any acknowledgment, I should say—but about the kindest word anybody said about the book was "ludicrous," or "preposterous."
Well, people here read British reviews—if you're in the American intellectual community, you read the Times Literary Supplement and the London Review, so it began to get a little embarrassing. You started getting back-tracking: people started saying, "Well, look, I didn't really say the book was good, I just said it's an interesting topic," things like that. At that point, the New York Review swung into action, and they did what they always do in these circumstances. See, there's like a routine that you go through—if a book gets blown out of the water in England in places people here will see, or if a book gets praised in England, you have to react. And if it's a book on Israel, there's a standard way of doing it: you get an Israeli scholar to review it. That's called covering your ass—because whatever an Israeli scholar says, you're pretty safe: no one can accuse the journal of anti-Semitism, none of the usual stuff works.
So after the Peters book got blown out of the water in England, the New York Review assigned it to a good person actually, in fact Israel's leading specialist on Palestinian nationalism [Yehoshua Porath], someone who knows a lot about the subject. And he wrote a review, which they then didn't publish—it went on for almost a year without the thing being published; nobody knows exactly what was going on, but you can guess that there must have been a lot of pressure not to publish it. Eventually it was even written up in the New York Times that this review wasn't getting published, so finally some version of it did appear. It was critical, it said the book is nonsense and so on, but it cut corners, the guy didn't say what he knew.
Actually, the Israeli reviews in general were extremely critical: the reaction of the Israeli press was that they hoped the book would not be widely read, because ultimately it would be harmful to the Jews—sooner or later it would get exposed, and then it would just look like a fraud and a hoax, and it would reflect badly on Israel. They underestimated the American intellectual community, I should say.
Anyhow, by that point the American intellectual community realized that the Peters book was an embarrassment, and it sort of disappeared—nobody talks about it anymore. I mean, you still find it at newsstands in the airport and so on, but the best and the brightest know that they are not supposed to talk about it anymore: because it was exposed and they were exposed.
Well, the point is, what happened to Finkelstein is the kind of thing that can happen when you're an honest critic—and we could go on and on with other cases like that. [Editors' Note: Finkelstein has since published several books with independent presses.]
Still, in the universities or in any other institution, you can often find some dissidents hanging around in the woodwork—and they can survive in one fashion or another, particularly if they get community support. But if they become too disruptive or too obstreperous—or you know, too effective—they're likely to be kicked out. The standard thing, though, is that they won't make it within the institutions in the first place, particularly if they were that way when they were young—they'll simply be weeded out somewhere along the line. So in most cases, the people who make it through the institutions and are able to remain in them have already internalized the right kinds of beliefs: it's not a problem for them to be obedient, they already are obedient, that's how they got there. And that's pretty much how the ideological control system perpetuates itself in the schools—that's the basic story of how it operates, I think.
As far as anything lacking substance, but lots of super–chutzpah, who can beat Dershowitz? Try reading
Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History. Finkelstein set out to explore key crucial aspects of the I-P conflict as presented by Dershowitz; exposing Dershowitz's shoddy scholarship claims was a natural by-product of Finkelstein's acute honesty applied.
In Part I he clearly reveals the absence of any evidence for "the new anti-Semitism." That's just a smokescreen to divert any objective criticism of Zionist Israel; it really puffs up whenever Israel might be forced to come to actual peace.
In Part II Finkelstein covers Dershowitz's painting of Israel as a saint in the face of unanimous opposite conclusions by every international body dealing with human rights violations.
Read Apps II & III to fully gander Dershowitz' gigantic misrepresentations–& he's forced to slander all human rights organization and the International Court of Justice (which concluded Israel's West Bank wall is illegal & all Israeli settlements were likewise illegal.
App 1 covers Dershowitz's plagiarism.
From where I sit, I haven't seen Finkelstein's assertion of what IS true, just critiques of others.
"Beyond Chutzpah", a critique of "The Case for Israel". "The Case FOR Israel" is worth reading. There are definitely irritating exagerations amid salient points that aren't easily dismissable as "insufficiently documented".
Thats if you read it.
"Image and Reality", a critique of Joan Peters. The critique again didn't counter some of the information (from what I've read), but did criticize her documentation of sources.
I don't know if the Peters book is worth reading. The documentation of large numbers of relatively recent Palestinian migration to the region is documented in reliable sources, including Morris, Kimmerling. Even Pappe refers to it.
The statement that "the land was empty" before the Zionists arrived is untrue. The statement, "the land was fully occupied" before the Zionists arrived, is also untrue.
"The Holocaust Industry", an exposure of actual individual cases of fraud, and some comment on the political uses of the holocaust as an event.
An amazingly insensitive choice of title, that most of his proponents and most of his critics have not read (I haven't).
The title implies that all or most that receive or received holocaust reparations undertook fraud to do so. My mother-in-law receives a couple thousand dollars/year from the German government, paid as compensation for the year that she was in a German slave labor camp. They only started paying reparations for that in 1995 (51 years after the fact, after the Marshall Plan, after the restoration of German economy). How many were left to pay?
She wasn't paid for the property that was taken by the Hungarian fascists. Home, her mothers' family rug factory, her father's medical practise.
I personally expect that Finkelstein is a very intelligent man, but he is also a very confrontational to the extent of fanaticism.
He presents himself as "cool-headed", but then often goes for the jugular, literally viciously.
Maybe he's naive. But, to say that he hasn't offended viciously and is merely a victim, is a misrepresentation.
He's a uniquely political man.
And, I don't mean that as a compliment.
Should he be blacklisted? Probably not. Is he in fact? I don't know.
I personally don't attribute his inability to find and keep a job to the "Israel Lobby". I attribute it to his behavior, to willingly throwing gasoline at fire, to feeling responsible TO do so, and universities see that and steer away. He gets them sued and in the paper in less than embellishing tone.
Phil does similarly at times. He dares people to confront him. At times, he speaks and writes very civilly. At other times, less so.
Phil obviously identifies with Finkelstein.
I perceive it as a great divide between me and Phil.
Finkelstein criticizes the Walt/Mearsheimer thesis. He doesn't call them plagiarists, nor frauds though.
There has got to be another way to humanize Palestinians in the eyes of Americans and Israelis and worldwide Jews, than to go for the jugular.
Yes, there's a way to humanize Palestinians in the eyes of Americans–for starters, how about a movie made in Hollywood about the Nakba? With some big stars? How about some coverage from the mainstream media that doesn't depict them
as born violent terrorists or hopeless sand monkeys? How about a bit less Goebbels and a bit more Ed R Murrow's simple telling the facts?
From where I stand, Phil has depicted well over the course of his blogging who goes for the juglar, and pretty well also, how they do it.
Want to humanize the Palestinians to Americans, Witty?
How about our mainstream TV News not ignore this (fat chance):
NEWS
Israeli Government Recognizes “Humanitarian” Mission to Break the Siege of Gaza
NICOSIA, CYPRUS (18 Aug. 2008) – In a letter today to the Free Gaza Movement, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs acknowledged that the group of international human rights activists attempting to break the siege of Gaza were “humanitarian,” and stated that the Israeli government “assume[s] that your intentions are good.”
Greta Berlin, one of the organizers of the Free Gaza Movement stated that, “Since the Foreign Minister’s office responded to our invitation to join us, and said that we have good intentions, we now fully expect to reach Gaza.”
According to recent reports in the Israeli media however, the Israeli military is preparing to use force to stop the nonviolent campaigners from reaching Gaza. It’s not clear if the letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs signals a change of policy, or is simply an attempt to open up an official dialogue between the state of Israel and the Free Gaza Movement regarding the current blockade.
The Free Gaza Movement is preparing to sail two ships into Gaza carrying 40 human rights workers from 17 different countries. They will also deliver hearing aids for children who have lost some or all of their hearing due to Israeli sound bombs and sonic booms.
The ships have been named the SS Free Gaza, and the SS Liberty – in recognition of the USS Liberty, a U.S. Navy ship, carrying 340 that was attacked by Israeli fighter planes and torpedo boats on 8 June 1967, assassinating 34 American sailors and wounding 170.
The Free Gaza Movement hopes to draw attention to the devastating consequences of the Israeli blockade by actively demonstrating the power of non-violent direct action to change inhumane governmental policies.
________
18 August 2008
Noam Katz
Director, Public Relations Department
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Israel
Dear Mr. Katz,
The Free Gaza Movement thanks Foreign Minister Livni for your response regarding our efforts to break the siege of Gaza. We appreciate Israel’s formal recognition of our human rights mission, as well as its acknowledgement that our “intentions are good.”
However, several factual errors in your letter need to be addressed. You wrote, “Your claim that the residents of the Gaza Strip are suffering from hunger is groundless…” According to the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), “only 43.5% of basic commercial food import needs were met during the period between 3 and 30 December 2007.” Furthermore, in May 2008, several international aid organizations, including CARE International UK, CAFOD, Christian Aid, Oxfam, and Medecins du Monde UK, stated that, “the stranglehold on Gaza’s borders has made … the work of the UN and other humanitarian agencies … virtually impossible. Only a trickle of medicine, food, fuel and other goods is being allowed in. [The Israeli Blockade of Gaza] has made people highly dependent on food aid, and brought the health system and basic services such as water and sanitation near to collapse.”
Although, we appreciate your offer to deliver humanitarian supplies for us, Israel’s deplorable track record of delivering supplies is, in fact, the very reason for our mission.
Your offer also slights our human-rights mission, which is to break your siege of Gaza. We intend to raise international awareness about the open-air prison called Gaza, where Israel collectively punishes 1.5 million Palestinians. We want to pressure the international community to review its sanctions policy and end its support for Israel’s continued occupation. Finally, we want to uphold Palestine's right to welcome internationals as visitors, human rights observers, humanitarian aid workers, and journalists.
We would like to, once again, invite Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni to join us on our historic voyage to end the siege of Gaza, and to see first hand the devastating effects of Israeli policies on the men, women, and children of the Gaza Strip.
Sincerely, (Free Gaza contacts & signatures)
When you say Finkelstein's going for "the jugular", how does that metaphor work exactly? Do you mean the "vein" through which zionism's deoxygenated spoils are filtered back to the "heart" of organized zio-judaism?
Wow, Rich. You surprise me.
Pretending that your interest is "humanizing Palestinians" unfortunately doesn't surprise me. And is laughable on its face.
Some people have an internal conflict of interest; what's going on in Wittystine is full-blown civil war.
Zionism doesn't permit humanism toward Palestinians, and no humanism could accept Jewish supremecist nationalism.
We see that civil war break out wherever you don't acknowledge the war crime of the Nakba, or whenever you come out against the facts, against un-zionized scholarship and investigation.
It's probably because the truth would invalidate the concept of the goodness of a Jewish nationalist project on someone else's land, and that is what you ideologically hold most dear.
Until this civil war subsides, however, I'm going to have to conclude that there's simply no one there for non-zionists to negotiate with.
Even the reference to Finkelstein stimulates rage rather than reason.
Its possible to carry multiple truths. Try it. It more resembles reality than insult.
Did you get the degree of offense that Finkelstein leveled at traumatized holocaust survivors, by his title?
There is a point that the holocaust is evoked for political appeal, and there is a point that some idiots dismiss the reality and real significance of it.
Charles,
Why don't YOU use your creative potential to present the Palestinian experience in such a way that Americans and Jews are informed (rather than browbeaten, as is your habit)?
Dr. Finkelstein is an exceptional educator. That he is as yet unable to get a position is a disgrace to academia. I do so hope that he finds a position in my backyard (SoCal) as any college or university would be fortunate to have him.
"There is a point that the holocaust is evoked for political appeal, and there is a point that some idiots dismiss the reality and real significance of it."
I can't speak for the rest of the world, but I can say in the USofA, there is little chance our children will be able to dismiss the reality or the significance of the holocaust. Our Middle School and High School children read Anne Frank, Elie Wiesel and countless other books on WWII and the holocaust. High school kids barely touch on the Vietnam or Korean wars.
Of course, in several EU countries, it is illegal to question any aspect of the holocaust. I realize most Zionists do not consider Europe "Israel friendly." I also know this is because Europeans tend to debate Israel's policies toward the Palestinians more openly.
My running buddy says the only history our kids are taught is the holocaust, the Revolution and a very slanted version of the Civil War.
While I would never advocate eliminating the teaching of the holocaust in our schools, there is so much our kids are not taught. Do you have any idea how many people know nothing about the modern history of Israel? I have a grown friend who was totally unaware of the mandate in 1948 and the subsequent wars. She had no idea that land was taken from Palestinians and given to Zionists. She had no idea that the British had made a promise to the Palestinians in exchange for help in fighting the Ottomans – a promise they broke.
My son attends a Christian private school where two of his teachers converted to Judaism and are staunchly Zionist. They hang the American flag at the same level as the Israeli flag, which at the minimum is un-patriotic. They teach a skewed history of the Middle East. But my son's grandmother is Palestinian and her family lost their home during the partition. She knows what her reality was and she makes sure he understands as well.
I think Finklestein is right in protesting the politicization of the holocaust. In a way, it cheapens the significance of the horror. We can complain that African Americans "play the race card" but heaven forbid we accuse American Jewry of similar tactics.
I often wonder what it would be like to be raised a Jew and have this spectre having over me? On the one hand, I certainly do not want another holocaust. On the other, I can't help but feel that the mantra "We Shall Never Forget" would be an albatross. How can you live with hope and faith in mankind if you are taught that everyone who disagrees with you is out to destroy you?
Even a reference to a Holocaust Industry (like a reference to an apartheid) stimulates rage rather than reason.
Its possible to carry multiple truths. Finklestein's detractors should try it. It more resembles reality than insult.
Did you get the degree of offense that Finkelstein leveled at the abuse of traumatized holocaust survivors, by his title? Yes. I even read the book, which shows just how this is done, and for what secondary agendas.
There is a point that the holocaust is evoked for political appeal, and there is a point that some idiots dismiss the reality and real significance of it, and this point is the same.
Richard,
Why don't YOU use your creative potential and empathetic concern for truth, justice, and the humanitarian way to present the Palestinian experience in such a way that Americans and Jews are informed of what has been financed and done to the Palestinians under the American and Israeli flags (rather than browbeaten by nice-sounding abstractions, as is your habit)?
I do use my voice and knowledge to convey that the Palestinians are occupied, that their community is isolated, that they don't have access to the institutions of law within Israel, that there was an ethnic cleansing process to varying extent in 1948, that Israel is not doing all that it can to realize a just peace.
I speak my conscience to the extent of my knowledge and concern, respecting the people that I am talking to.
Let me add to that to avoid the risk that I will be labeled a rationalizing opportunist Zionist.
That is that Palestinians are still experiencing an incremental ethnic cleansing. That there are very admirable Palestinians, even among those that are vehemently anti-Zionist. That there are prisoners in Israeli jails that have not received due process of law. That the process of annexation of land that Palestinian individuals justly claim title to.
That Israel, Israelis, Jews have an obligation to pursue their efforts within the rule of law. That to consider ourselves good, kind, a light among nations, that our relationships with ourselves and others be the best that we are able, not just good enough.
I go to CSUN and met Dr. Finkelstein during his first lecture. Prof. Klein's article almost broke my heart. It's quite apparent that freedom of thought (as opposed to just "freedom of speech") is under attack, as the right-wingers constantly charge that their children are being taught leftist ideas. Well, isn't college a place to expand your horizons and learn about different ideas and worldviews? I guess not. These rightists will never be happy until all institutions bow down to their ideologies and censor all those who don't agree. What a tragedy for such an exciting time in your life!
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