Bridegroom Abdel Rahman Sha’ath, Mohammed Sha’ath, and Norman Finkelstein, Gaza City, June 2009
I’ve been citing Norman Finkelstein a lot lately because he has an important book coming out on the Gaza slaughter, ‘This Time We Went Too Far.’ Well last June, I wrote a piece about hanging out with Finkelstein in Gaza that I never posted because it had a disaster-tourism feel to it. I’m doing so now just… because life is complicated.
Norman Finkelstein hopped into an unmarked car in Gaza City and said to the driver, "If you’re kidnapping me, can you do me a favor? Please bring me to Brooklyn, it’s very peaceful."
The guy brought us to a busy intersection. Finkelstein got out and took a comb from his unbelted black jeans and combed his hair. A camera was set up in the street. The guy was interviewing Finkelstein for Iran’s Press TV.
I hung out with Finkelstein for a few days in Gaza. We didn’t talk politics; I have the sense that Finkelstein is a Bolshevik at heart. Mostly we tried to distract ourselves from the rubble. I hadn’t known that Finkelstein is funny. Generally Finkelstein looks grim, his craggy face like a president on Mount Rushmore. But he’s always waiting for an opportunity to crack up. Whenever we came out of a school or orphanage, after scenes of laughing, singing children, he would turn to me and say, "Did you see all the children being indoctrinated in terrorism!"
Holding up a baby in an orphanage, he cried out, "For the first time in my life, I haven’t been rejected…"
Leaving the orphanage, Finkelstein said to Medea Benjamin: "You remember what Che Guevara said, ‘At the risk of sounding ridiculous, all revolutionaries are motivated by great feelings of love.’"
I don’t remember that quote. Finkelstein often quotes revolutionaries. When I asked how long he lectured to Code Pink, the antiwar group that he accompanied into Gaza, in Egypt before they got in, Finkelstein said: "Oh, about 2-1/2 hours. I try to go somewhere between Hugo Chavez and Castro."
And when I said that Finkelstein must have felt alone in years gone by, before all the other critics of Israel started showing up, he said, "As you know– as Mao Tse Tung told Andre Malraux before the cultural revolution, ‘I am alone, with the masses.’"
In Finkelstein’s case, he means the Palestinian masses. This may not be true. Finkelstein is against the right of return; it is very clear that the Palestinian masses are for it. He’s for the two-state-solution. But an angry critique of Israel? Finkelstein’s got it. We were driving past scores of industrial buildings near Gaza’s eastern border, the civilian infrastructure crunched to the ground by mines and missiles (just as Goldstone said it was), when Finkelstein said the scene reminded him of Lebanon ’06. Israel is "a vandal state."
I asked him to elaborate, and he said:
"In the index of Benny Morris’s Righteous Victims, he lists all Israel’s military operations, and each has a name. I’ve studied this to the point of, I won’t say lunacy because people will nail me on it, but tedium, and even I can’t keep the names straight. But each operation is just an exercise in massive death and destruction. Two years ago it was Operation Summer Rains. Succeeded a few months later by Operation Autumn Clouds. It’s just nonstop destruction and death, and these names they dream up, if they had any honesty they would call it Operation Attila the Hun, followed by Operation Genghis Kahn, followed by Operation Murder, Incorporated.
"It’s a vandal state. You know how hysterical any one of us becomes when we lose everything on our computer. Well every few months everything these people have managed to accumulate is systematically destroyed again and again. It’s not just your C-drive."
I said I winced when Palestinians expressed anger at "the Jews." Finkelstein shrugged and said it was an understandable confusion. "My parents made a similar mistake," he said, referring to his parents who had survived Nazi death camps during the Holocaust. "They talked about the Germans, not the Nazis."
I teased Finkelstein a lot to try and get the Mount Rushmore face to crack. One day I told him I was reading a great book and as I reached for my backpack, Finkelstein turned to Roane Carey of the Nation and said, "It’s a joke– here comes a joke," before I could get out Benny Morris’s One State, Two State.
That night as Finkelstein, Carey, and I came out of a falafel joint in Gaza City, I banged on one of the ubiquitous steel water tanks that contain potable water, to make a resonant sound, and putting on a Charlton Heston voice, tried to bait the scholar:
"Nor-man! Nor-man! This is God. I’m on Mount Sinai. I’m angry at you. You’ve been bad!"
Finkelstein’s lip curled, a sign that he didn’t think it was funny, and right then two Palestinian guys came along, and one said, "Wait, aren’t you Norman Finkelstein??"
The two men were brothers, Abdel Rahman Sha’ath and Mohammed Sha’ath.
"I saw you lecture, you were great," Mohammed said. "I live in Wales."
"Was I ever in Wales?" Finkelstein said.
"No. This was in Manchester. I still have the poster on my wall."
Mohammed had come home to Palestine for Abdel Rahman’s wedding. As we walked back to the hotel in the dark, Finkelstein told a Jewish joke about marriage.
"A husband and wife were having a big fight. She said, ‘You are such a schmuck. You are just a complete schmuck. I should have known it right at the start. You are a schmuck. You know what, if they had a contest to find out who was the biggest schmuck in the world–you’d come in second!’
"The husband leans over. ‘Why second?’
"’Because! You are such a schmuck!‘"
(When I got home I saw Dan Okrent, former public editor of the Times, tell the same joke online. Okrent is no Finkelstein.)
The next day we went to Islamic University and saw the Science Building that had been bombed by the Israelis. Our guide explained that it contained the only gene-sequencing facility in the territory, which local hospitals used for clinical purposes. Many times on our trip people walked away from the group so they wouldn’t fall apart in front of other people. I saw Finkelstein walking away then. Education is central to him– when Palestinian students asked him for advice, he was always asking them what they’d gotten on the big entrance exam they all take.
We went inside the school and had a meeting with the president of Islamic U, Kamalain Sha’ath. He served us cake and spoke about the agony of the siege. 44 percent of young Gazans attend higher education, "a number approaching the level of developed countries." The siege has stopped higher education in its tracks.
Afterwards Sha’ath walked over to Finkelstein with a big smile. "You met my sons last night."
"Oh, those were your sons! One of them is getting married."
"Yes. You are a survivor of the Holocaust, right?"
"No, no– close. I was denied tenure."
Update: Finkelstein explained his position re the Right of Return:
The U.N. General Assembly and major human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have ratified the Palestinians’ right to return to their homeland. Our responsibility is to support that right. Palestinians might decide not to exercise that right, or exercise it only in part, in the context of a comprehensive settlement. But that is for them to decide, not anyone else.
