I think of Norman Finkelstein as at his best when he's engaging an antagonist's writing: Alan Dershowitz, Benny Morris, Joan Peters. Someone whose bad conclusions he can take apart through a passionate examination of the factual record. Well, now that he's been exiled by academia and is living in Brooklyn, Finkelstein has found a new textual figure to engage, but in a generous and humble way: Mahatma Gandhi. Last month Finkelstein gave an honorary lecture in the Netherlands, called "Resolving the Israel-Palestine Conflict: What We Can Learn from Gandhi."
The lecture's not online, but Finkelstein let me read a copy. In the piece, Finkelstein notes that Gandhi's collected writings run 90 volumes, and then apologizes for having only read 23! Talk about textual devotion. Finkelstein has never wanted to leave a stone unturned. And he makes these points:
Gandhi hated passivity–and at times even supported violent resistance. Non-violence isn't passivity, it's a form of soldierly engagement full of bravery. It works as a publicity tool when you are in the right: when the world generally approves of your agenda, as the world generally agreed that the British should get out of India. Well, the two-state solution is endorsed by international consensus. Only the United States and Israel have been dragging their feet in the last few years, and even the U.S. judge at the International Court of Justice has said the settlements are illegal. So the Palestinians should undertake a program of nonviolent resistance "to rivet international public opinion on the brutality of the occupation." Such a program would pave the way for Israel to become "a pariah state" ala South Africa and lead to sanctions and capitulation.
The Palestinians must use a "vocabulary" that resonates with world conscience and "the Jewish conscience," winning over the decent many while isolating the diehard few. The questions must be framed: "Are you for or against ethnic cleansing, for or against torture, for or against house demolitions, for or against Jews-only roads…"
Finkelstein dismisses the idea of one state. There is no "legal or moral precdent for dismantling the 'Zionist entity.'" The Jews got Israel after an extended international lobbying process in which the Zionists never rested. That process included publicizing an obscure document, the Balfour Declaration, as a law of nations, pushing the U.N. for partition, then proclaiming the birth certificate of a nation. You're not going to reverse that process. Far better that Palestinians batten on to Partition and its undelivered birth-certificate promise of 61 years ago.
And what methods should the Palestinians undertake? "Is it so far-fetched to imagine an 'army' of Palestinian satyagrahis [Gandhi's word for nonviolent resistance] converging on the Wall, their sole 'weapons' a pick in one hand and a copy of the International Court of Justice opinion in the other? The ICJ stated that the Wall was illegal and must be dismantled. The Palestinians would only be doing what the world should already have done a long time ago…No one writing abroad from the comfort and safety of his study can in good conscience urge such a strategy that entails so much death." But there would be a lot more deaths with violent resistance.
I'm generally with Finkelstein on this. Though I'd say that nonviolence has been a theme of recent Palestinian resistance, and where's the international riveting? Yes Europe is riveted. Yes, Brent Scowcroft is riveted. But you have to crack the Israel lobby here. And the lobby rationalizes anything. I don't think he mentions Rachel Corrie in this paper. Well she did as dramatic and brave a nonviolent resistance as any of us can imagine–and look how she has been smeared.
The best part of Finkelstein's lecture is its spiritual backbeat. Though he says that he is, unlike Gandhi, a "resolute nonbeliever and rationalist," a warm current of grace pervades this lecture. At the end, Finkelstein imagines a very inclusive celebration in Israel/Palestine. "There's room for everyone at the rendezvous of victory," he quotes a poet whom Edward Said used to quote, which is to say that the way to win the fight for Palestinian self-determination is to include as many people as we can in the struggle. You sense that if this great march of freedom at last comes to pass, Finkelstein would even join arms with Dershowitz and Peters to bring it about.
I believe he's planning on reading more of those 90 volumes. I'll be fascinated to watch where Finkelstein's dharma takes him.
