Norman G. FinkelsteinRecensioni

175000

هذا الكتاب يوصى قراءته في هذه الأيام
مؤلف الكتاب هو بروفيسور يهودي نجا والداه من المحرقة والكتاب شهادة حق
وهو مدعم بالمراجع المتنوعة لكل جملة وكل استشهاد
يتناول الكتاب القيم تاريخ العدوان الصهيوني على غزة وشعبها من خلال العمليات الحربية المختلفة كالرصاص المصبوب والجرف الصامد و عمود السحاب وغيرها من العمليات التي استهدفت بشكل وحشي ومتعمد المدنيين في المربعات السكنية والمستشفيات وسيارات الاسعاف والتدمير الممنهج للبنية التحتية للمدينة الصامدة
الكتاب يفند كل الدقائق التي حدثت وقت هذه العميات الغاشمة وكثير من التصريحات والمبررات المستهلكة و المتشابهة كثيرا لما يحدث هذه الأيام بيد أن ما يحدث في الساحة الآن هو إبادة جماعية و تطهير عرقي فعلا بكل ما تحمل الكلمة من معنى فمقابل أكبر عدد للضحايا المدنيين داخل الكتاب ١٧٠٠ تقريبا خلال الجرف الصامد.
بلغ تعداد الشهداء في العملية الحالية وحتى تاريخ كتابة المراجعة ل ١٥٠٠٠ معظمهم من النساء والأطفال.
فالعدوان هدفه الرئيسي عقاب أهل غزة على وجود المقاومة وتمثيلهم لها وكذلك تحقيق قوة الردع برسم صورة الجيش الوحشي الذي لا يجب مهاجمته.
كما ذكر الحصار الخانق الذي يمارسه الاحتلال على هذا القطاع
و اظهر انحياز المنظمات الأممية الكامل لاسرائيل وتشويه الحقائق وتبرءة ساحتها والذي أعتقد لن يتكرر هذه الأيام لأن ما يحدث من إبادة جماعية ووحشية للكيان على مرأي ومسمع من كل الشعوب.
هناك الكثير من التفاصيل المهمة حقا داخل الكتاب
أعان الله أهل فلسطين ونصرهم وأزاح عنهم الغمة عاجلا..

*1.5

I feel strongly about reading books you know you might not like: I want my options challenged. I decided then to read this highly rated book for some counter-perspective on Israel through the lens of the Holocaust industry, as someone who engages in pre-Holocaust history and literature as much as possible. I spent the last year in college studying this stuff, I’ve written way too many papers, and I have so, so many opinions on post-Holocaust/Holocaust memorial-ism that I could go on about it for hours.

Anyways, If it’s not apparent, I believe in a Jewish homeland. Generally speaking, I like Israel. Despite this, I am not without criticism, but at the end of the day I am an American with no skin in the game, and the country is not going anywhere anytime soon. As my Israeli coworkers (and chosen family) like to complain about, “These Americans have no idea what our country is like” (and to make it clear, they said this to both our protestors AND the overeager American Jews supporting our business).

To begin with, the political nature of American Jewry beginning in the first chapter is not dealt with well at all. The author makes very strong, very broad condemnations of their power simply because Finkelstein believes them to be in the wrong. There is no moral framework he supplies to us, and we are supposed to agree. Why? I wanted him to convince me! But he refuses to engage! While there are many valid criticisms of the identity of diasporic American Jewry I can think of (mostly surface-level critiques of its shtetl-philia), Finkelstein’s insistence that its alignment with Israel is the lynchpin of its banality is frankly a gross overstatement. I think at its core, and I’m figuring this out the more I read the various theories, is that Finkelstein views world politics through such a contrarian lens that it ultimately horseshoes into extremism. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say Finkelstein’s writing enables extremism and antisemitism on both the left and right.

I was almost not shocked then when I learned the author recently supported noted anti-Holocaust author David Irving and even writes about him in this small book. Finkelstein clearly uses his family’s Holocaust tragedy and his parent’s survivor status as a shield to any countercriticism, in the exact way that he is accusing American Jewry of doing when they do not engage with criticisms of Israel.

The only chapter saving this from a straight 1-star rating is chapter 3. In it, Finkelstein finally lays out the crummy underworld of the Holocaust reparations world, and it is indeed, arguably, bad. Despite this genuine critique, the author continues to couch any moral answer to this to the horrible United States government. I want to shake him because I agree, that the US government can definitely suck, but it still is not enough of a reason for Israel to not exist. Finkelstein delights in whataboutism; I felt like I was reading a Fox News teleprompter as he deflected instead onto American ignorance of Native and African American reparations, the murdered non-Jewish groups during the Holocaust, and of course (Finkelstein’s favorite punching bag) the lies of Ellie Wiesel. All of these suck Mr. Finkelstein, this is not a “gotcha!” moment. I will gladly die on the hill of the need to remember the murder of Polish peasants, not only because they are human but because I believe they offer a key to fighting Eastern European anti-semitism. But none of these negate Jewish suffering. And hey, Mr. Finkelstein, guess what? My entire Polish family was murdered by the Soviets. Eat shit.

Ultimately, this book is polemic without giving me a good reason to change any of my opinions. You should have complicated feelings about Israel—but the book does not offer the nuance the subject needs. Finkelstein is a master of laying down a claim with evidence and construing it to the most inane, dangerous conclusions. These conclusions, when extended with the most forgiving evidence, are weak. There are very valid ways to critique the state of Israel without slipping into vague Holocaust denialism. This book does not offer them.½

The books is mainly a response to Alan Dershowitz's "bestseller": The Case for Israel. The title calls to mind an earlier Dershowitz title "Chutzpah". The discussion is mainly focused on arguments brought forth in The Case for Israel, but anyone familiar with the Middle East conflict can benefit from the research.

People have short memories and the longevity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict means that there is almost no living memory of the actual events leading to 1948 and only vague memory of the events leading to 1967. It is useful to read again about the balance of power that led the establishment of the Jewish state and how the international community and the United Nations dealt with the issue since then. The arguments of The Case For Israel are the well-worn pro-Israeli propaganda which surprisingly still finds some acceptance, so it is useful to read a well-researched and documented response to it. As an Arab I also find it great to read about this subject from a western point of view because it does not favour the passionate and emotive over the factual.
That said, I must admit though that I found the Finkelstein's overall treatment of Dershowitz on the caustic side, but the tone does not harm the thrust of his arguments.

Finkelstein's discussion brings a much needed perspective to the causes and reasons of the on-going Israel conflict. We hear pro-Israeli viewpoints on a fairly regular basis, which tend to condemn and group the majority of Palestinians as terrorists. Admitedly, there are enough situations to sustain that viewpoint. Palestinian perspectives are less frequently offered in mainstream U.S. publications. If a Palestinian perspective is offered, such as ex-President Carter's book "Palestine, Peace not Apartheid", it's almost always labeled as "anti-semetic" or dismissed as naive. In this case, I see Finkelstein as trying to present an often missing and unstated perspective to bring balance and understanding of the issues which lead to the continuing conflict in the region. It's definitely worth reading.

3.5 stars. Nice little book. Very interesting information about Gandhi. Does he contradict himself, very well...

Knowing Too Much is a book by Normal Finkelstein that is mostly a series of book reviews, taking aim at Liberal Zionists in the establishment and deconstructing their work.

The exception is the first book reviewed, Mearsheimer and Walt’s The Israel Lobby, in Finkelstein’s chapter 4, which is itself an attack on Zionism. Finkelstein makes the case that Mearshmier and Walt’s thesis of tail-wagging-dog only had resonance because the Iraq war went badly. This is a poor way to make the point. Like Joseph Massad and Noam Chomsky, for Finkelstein, Israel is best understood as a tool of US foreign policy or Imperialism. Which is why it is strange that Finkelstein doesn’t get into how the invasion of Iraq went badly, for whom, or why. The destruction of the country, it’s infrastructure and the death of over a million of its citizens and regional aftershocks are not described by Finkelstein, nor does he take-up their pre-war foreseeability or the possibility that in an imperial dog-wags-tail world such an outcome might have been by design. I also believe the dog wags the tail (cf. the evidence Finkelstein produces of the US vetoing its own avowed policies at the UN) but I disagree with Finkelstein’s weak method of argumentation.

Chapter 5 takes up Jeffrey Goldberg’s 2006 book Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew across the Middle East divide. Finkelstein compares Goldberg to, of all people, Ari Shavit (another LIberal Zionist du jour), to demonstrate Goldberg's dismissal Palestinian suffering. Finkelstein goes into detail to hold Goldberg’s double standard up to the light: cheering “gun Zionism to Jews on one page while singing the praises of Mahatma Gandhi and MLK to Palestinians on another."

Chapter 6 reviews a series of reports, not a book, but the effort is equally important. Finkelstein shows how Human Rights Watch executed a double standard similar to Goldberg - and did so in an act of revisionism. HRW’s first report on the 2006 Lebanon war, Fatal Strikes: Israel’s indiscriminate attacks against civilians in Lebanon, is compared to the its second and third reports, Civilians Under Assault: Hezbollah’s rocket a acks on Israel in the 2006 war, and Why They Died: Civilian casualties in Lebanon during the 2006 war. Finkelstein shows how HRW updated its original findings by using one set of war crimes standards to find Hezbollah guilty of war crimes and another set of standards to let Israel off the hook - and did so in complete inversion of the evidence.

Chapter 7 is primarily a destruction of Michael Oren’s fictional and propagandistic “history,” Six Days of War: June 1967 and the making of the modern Middle East, but also includes a useful table setting Alan Dershowitz’s equally fictitious account against that of Zeev Maoz. In short, “the preponderance of evidence points to the conclusion that Israel did not fear an imminent Arab attack when it launched a first strike. It is accordingly inaccurate to denote Israel’s 1967 blitzkrieg 'preemptive.’” Finkelstein cites Ariel Sharon himself to validate that the 1967 attack was about asserting Israeli deterrence in the face of Nasser’s lack of fear. Along the way, Finkelstein also identifies the techniques Oren uses to reconcile the archival evidence with his apologetic narrative. This is rather useful since it could easily apply to so many other Zionist histories, such as those of Eugene Rogan:
“- attaching equal weight to a public statement (or memoir) and the hard evidence of an internal document contradicting it
- burying in an avalanche of dubious evidence a critical counter-finding
- minimizing, misrepresenting, or suppressing a critical piece of evidence."

Chapter 8 is devastating critique of Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez’s Foxbats over Dimona: The Soviets’ nuclear gamble in the Six-Day War. “The June 1967 war marked, according to them, the climax of a manifold Soviet conspiracy to destroy Israel’s nuclear weapons program. Additionally they allege that not only the Soviets but also the Arabs, Americans and Israelis have participated in a “cover-up” of this conspiracy for the past 40 years, until their own “laborious sleuthing” unearthed nuggets of information and connected the dots.” Finkelstein contacts the Russian Pilot whose alleged actions lie at the heart of Ginor and Remez’s conspiracy, and the pilot refutes all of their claims. The wide embrace of this absurd theory also implicates not only the authors but also the American establishment that supported them.

Chapter 9 usefully provides a history of UN resolution 242 and refutation of the Zionist claim (via Julius Stone) that International law does not forbid the acquisition territory by force when "the force is used to stop an aggressor.” The chapter also centers around a review of Dennis Ross’s account of “peace talks,” The Missing Peace: The inside story of the fight for Middle East peace, in which Palestinian violence is blamed for the collapse of the peace process, and Israeli colonial violence is glossed over. "It is a point d’honneur for Ross that he personally lobbied for the Oslo Accord to 'contain a clear renunciation of terror and violence from Arafat'; that he personally urged Albright to 'come down hard on [Palestinian] terror'; and that he personally ‘confronted' Arafat to 'take action' against terrorism. His passionate sympathy for Israeli victims of criminal violence apparently did not extend to Palestinian victims, however. Judging by his own account Ross never once entreated Israeli leaders to curb their far greater brutality."

Chapter 10 is a review of the works and metamorphisis of Benny Morris from New Historian, challenging the Zionist narrative (Righteous Victims; Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem), to become Zionism’s “court historian” (1948: the first Arab-Israeli war; One State, Two States). TO me, one of the most comparisons of Morris with Morris concerns a core understanding. In the past, Morris agreed with Ben-Gurion that the Zionist-Arab ‘conflict,' “is in its essence a political one. And politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves,” whereas “the root cause of the conflict, according to Morris as he reinvented himself by customizing his history, was and remains to this day 'Islamic Judeophobia.’"

As useful as all these book reviews are, however, it is difficult to see how much they have to do with the way the book is positioned to the reader - not as a series of book reviews, but as an analysis of the end of the Jewish American love affair with Israel. The first three chapters discuss what most potential readers will already know: that a gap is opening up between Liberal Jewish-America and Fascist Jewish-Israel. Indeed, the Electronic Intifada’s review ( https://electronicintifada.net/content/book-review-finkelstein-airbrushes-palest... ) rightfully takes Finkelstein to task for attributing this change to Jewish actors and “airbrushing Palestinians out of their own struggle.” EI also reminds readers - at the beginning of its piece - of Finkelstein’s red-hot rage against the BDS movement. But Finkelstein and his work are not without merit just because he is, himself, a liberal zionist (albeit a critical one). It is just that one needs to dance gingerly to extract that merit.

Much of that dancing is required because, as a liberal Zionist, the one thing Finkelstein refuses to take up is also the only thing that matters: 1948 and the refugees. Finkelstein is obsessed with 1967 - with Michael Oren’s fiction of 1967, with Ginor and Remez’s conspiracy of 1967, with UN resolution 242 from 1967, and with the love affair of Jewish Americans with Israel. Finkelstein not only describes 1967 as the year the latter phenomenon began (as a means of assimilation into American society, once American and Israeli interests were aligned), but also as the year Israel began to go bad: "The ‘new' Israel that emerged after, and was largely a by-product of, the June 1967 war came to bear fainter and fainter resemblance to the Zion of the liberal Jewish imagination. The irony is, the fascination of American Jews with Israel’s socialist utopia began just on the point of its vanishing."

Narratives of transformation and change are important for liberal Zionists because they imply there was something innocent and pure about Israel's creation until things began to go bad - after 1967, after neoliberalism, after Netanyahu, etc. For them, the problem is not the establishment of an ethnonationalist settler-colonial state, but whatever came afterward. It is a way of appearing to be extremely critical, without actually engaging on the question that matters.

This is also why liberal Zionist “solutions” to “the conflict” prescribe more of the very same diseases to cure our infection: segregation & partition. Finkelstein is no different in this book, stumping for “a two-state settlement along the 4 June 1967 border and mutual recognition.” And the refugees from 1948, Norman? Where shall they go? When will you grant them, from your perch in America, the right to return home?

While I am sure that this is a very important work, particularly since I was told quite firmly to take the link to the BeTzelem website off of my own website back in 2006, I found this book far too depressing to continue reading. I do not feel at full liberty, for personal reasons, to discuss this book any further in public, but it should be read by anyone and everyone who wants to understand the current problems with this issue.

While I am sure that this is a very important work, particularly since I was told quite firmly to take the link to the BeTzelem website off of my own website back in 2006, I found this book far too depressing to continue reading. I do not feel at full liberty, for personal reasons, to discuss this book any further in public, but it should be read by anyone and everyone who wants to understand the current problems with this issue.

I only came across Norman Finkelstein's books a couple of years ago. Since then I have been astounded not only by his courage, but by his scrupulous scholarship.

The premise of this book is that there is a growing divide between American Jews who, like Jews in most other Western democracies, tend to be more liberal than their fellow citizens, and the right-wing extremism and warmongering of a succession of Israeli governments which has led to tremendous human rights abuses and lack of respect for international law. Those Israeli governments are supported by some American organisations which claim to be representative of their fellow Jews, in their "my country, right or wrong" attitude to Israel. But, as Peter Beinart has also pointed out in his book, The Crisis of Zionism, far from representing their fellow Jews, they actively misrepresent them.

In showing how young American Jews have become disenchanted with Israel, Finkelstein, in this book and his previous one, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, reveals the intellectual dishonesty of people like Alan Dershowitz (a person to whom I'd never really paid a lot of attention until I came across articles of his, justifying torture, after September 11). It's no surprise that Dershowitz was the prime, intellectually dishonest, mover behind the refusal of academic tenure to Norman Finkelstein at DePaul university.

In reading Finkelstein's descriptions of American organisations and intellectuals, I was reminded of the situation in France, where, in some quarters, there is a similar level of intellectual dishonesty and disregard for Palestinian human rights. The CRIF, which justifies Israeli extremists in ways reminiscent of the U.S. Anti-Defamation League, has extreme right-wing opinions. It claims to represent French Jews, but articles by liberal Jews in Le Monde Diplomatique, Médiapart and other center-left publications virulently dispute this claim and condemn the CRIF's stance on Israel.

I am one of the people who once thought Israel could do no wrong. The turning point for me was the Sabra and Chatila massacre in 1982. Like many people who will read this book, it has taken me three painful decades to move from not knowing enough to now knowing too much.

Disgrace! Insbesondere der Umgang mit Goldstone durch die Israel-Lobby ist sehr verstörend.

Okaye Zusammfassung von Gandhis satyagraha und ahimsa.

"Mindestens 258 Palästinenser, die während der Gaza-Invasion umkamen, fanden den Tod, weil israelische Truppen sich weigerten, Rettungsteams zu ihnen durchzulassen." S. 76.
Das Israel während der Massaker humanitäre Hilfe den Palästinensern zuteil werden läßt, ist schlichtweg ein Märchen, das leider von Vielen geglaubt wird!

A classic!

According to Finkelstein, whose mother survived a Nazi labor camp, elite U.S. Zionist organizations fill their political war chests with money extorted in the name of surviving Holocaust victims. That's the most sensational of his claims, but no less remarkable is his case that these same organizations neither commemorated the Holocaust nor spoke for its victims until the U.S. government formed a strategic alliance with the State of Israel in 1967. The Holocaust, he concludes, has been exploited in the service of the U.S.-Israeli alliance.

Finkelstein has been denounced as a controversialist, but I found that in this book he deals efficiently with his critics. His well-spoken indignation is both engaging and justifiable, given the moral depth of his subject. However the book is sure to anger readers whose only moral compass is the query, "Is it good for Israel?"

Professor Finkelstein starts his book with the assertion the that while the basic facts and causes of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have been pretty conclusively established by historians, they are not well understood due to the mystification and obfuscation of these facts by a veritable industry of highly partisan authors and media personalities. This serves the purpose of shifting the debate over the conflict and its solutions away from meaningful conversations and towards ill-informed and ideologically charged conversations, thereby serving the interests of the status quo and those who benefit from it.

The bulk of the book takes on the works of high-powered defense attorney and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who Finkelstein believes to be a particularly egregious and influential purveyor of falsehoods and misdirections. This is done in an exhaustive, clinical fashion, (each chapter is also led by a quote from Dershowitz's writings on being a defense attorney which include statements about trying to hide facts that make one's client look bad and so on) so that by the end one feels he has done a pretty thorough job of demolishing many of the popular myths floating around.

This paperback edition includes an introduction dealing with Dershowitz's defense of his work and his attacks on Finkelstein's book. Dershowitz certainly did not take Finkelstein's demolition job lying down, but not really being able to answer most of the charges made in this book, he took to character assassination, using his influence and that of the Harvard name to undermine Finkelstein's reputation with a battery of accusations and ad hominen attacks which would eventually impact Finkelstein's tenure hearing at DePaul University. Despite the Political Science Department and Personnel Committee of the College of Arts and Sciences voting in favour of tenure, the University Board voted 4-3 to deny tenure. One of the appendices of the book is an article originally published in Counterpunch magazine which looks at the criticisms Dershowitz made of the book as well as his answers to its charges. It also questions the extent to which Dershowitz influenced the tenure process at DePaul.

All in all an interesting and insightful book which will be of interest to those who are interested in representations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the west (and particularly in the United States).

כמובן לא מאוזן, כמובן לפעמים לא פייר, כמובן חד צדדי - אבל בסופו של דבר, תחושת הבטן שלי היא שהוא צודק במרבית טענותיו. ואם כן, אוי לנו

ספר מרגיז, כתוב רע, מייגע. עם זאת אני חושד שיש אמת בטענה הבסיסית שלו - הארגונים היהודיים מנצלים את שם השואה לרעה ומשתמשים בה כמכשיר סחטנות לצרכים שלהם.

De Balfourtdeclaratie :
2 november 1917
"Zijne Majesteits Regering staat welwillend tegenover de vestiging in Palestina van een nationaal tehuis voor het Joodse volk, en zal zijn beste krachten aanwenden de verwezenlijking van dit doel te bevorderen, waarbij het duidelijk moet zijn dat niets zal worden ondernomen dat de burgerlijke en godsdienstige rechten van niet-Joodse gemeenschappen in Palestina zou kunnen aantasten, of de rechten en de politieke status die Joden genieten in enig ander land." Nu ja !
Als Israël maar lang genoeg zich niets blijft aantrekken van het internationaal recht en de publieke opinie om haar bezettingspolitiek en gebiedsuitbreiding verder blijft uitoefenen zal zij blijvend beloond worden ten nadele van het Palestijns volk. Hoe lang dit ook al gebeurt en hoe langer dit duurt, zal deze gecreërde werkelijkheid, deze verkeerde werkelijkheid niet meer kunnen teruggedraaid worden. Vrede ? Door een opzettelijke onkenning van het Palestijns recht op zelfbeschikking, vooral door de zionisten, zal een vrede nooit bestaan, vooral omdat de Palestijnen welbewust onrecht is aangedaan en van hun zeer beperkte rechten constant worden beroofd.
Als er al een vorm van antisemitisme bestaat zou dit al opgelost geraken als de verdrukking naar de Palestijnen gedaan zouden zijn en de erkenning van de grenzen van voor 1967 in het gebied van Palestina zouden gerespecteerd worden.

Sinds 7 oktober 2023 woedt er een felle strijd om uitschakeling van Hamas. Maar hoe komt het dat Hamas zulke daden heeft gesteld ? Zovele redenen kunnen aangehaald worden onder andere de feiten die Amnesty International aanhaalt dat de Gazastrook al vele jaren het meest onder de verwoestingen van het Israëlisch leger geleden heeft. Bijvoorbeeld werden van oktober 2000 tot oktober 2003 ruim 2150 huizen gesloopt en meer dan 16000 huizen beschadigd. Tevens werd ruim 10 % van de landerijen verwoest door het leger.
Human Rights Watch kwam in 2004 met een rapport dat geheel aan de Gazastrook is gewijd. Hier zijn vanaf september 2000 ruim 2500 Palestijnse huizen door het Israëlisch leger gebulldozerd en hebben 16000 mensen het dak boven hun hoofd verloren. De meeste zijn vluchtelingen en verloren voor de tweede en zelfs de derde keer alles wat ze bezaten.

De eindconclusie van B'Tselem is dat de Israëlische politiek inzake de bezette gebieden een op discriminatie gestoelde segregatie is. In een en hetzelfde gebied gelden twee rechtsstelsels en het recht van het individu hangt af van zijn nationaliteit. Dit regime is wereldwijd het enige in zijn soort en doet denken aan verwerpelijke regels van weleer, zoals het zuid-Afrikaanse apartheidsbewind.

Onder historici wint steeds meer de overtuiging terrein dat de Palestijnse Arabieren werden verdreven (1948) doordat het zionisme het grootste belang hechtte aan een staat met een grote joodse meerderheid in een land waar de meerderheid uit Palestijnen bestond.

De grote morele kwestie waar de wereld voor staat is of de poging van Israël om zich tegen het terrorisme te beschermen met zovele burgerslachtoffers, tot een toename van het wereldwijde antisemitisme zal kunnen gaan leiden.

This is the portuguese translation of the polemical book of Finkelstein about the present day abuses of the holocaust by a number of U.S. jewish organizations. Centering its attention in the connections between the holocaust in one hand, and support for Israel and the extortion of huge financial compensations that rarely reach the actual survivors, in the other hand, this very angry and uncompromizing book, written by a descendent of survivors of Maidanek and Auschwitz, offers a much more radical critique than Novick's, and, unfortunately, is probably not very far from the truth.

This book has two main themes: the "new anti-semitism" and the poor Israel human rights record. What unites both is an utterly devastating rebutal of the book The Case for Israel by the Harvard Law School professor and preeminent member of the Israel lobby, Alan Dershowitz. Finkelstein's work is, as usual, powerful, deeply informed, and, in stark contrast with his target, intelectually very honest, providing the reader with a detailed and very precise references that the reader can check if he/she feels the need. The book is divided into two parts and an equally thick set of afterwords (Postscript, Appendices, and Epilogue). Finkelstein rebuts Dershowitz's various statements about the "new anti-semitism", about Israel "purity of arms", its use of torture and human rights violations, its treatment of Palestinians (including the record of Israel's High Court decisions), as well as Dershowitz's attacks on international, israeli, an Palestinian human rights organizations. All this is done resorting to appropriate examples, citations, and sources, it is written with such a precision and and fine attention to detail that, in any society that nurtures true and intelectual honesty, Dershowitz's Israel statements would have been disqualified and forever marked as an unremitting fraud and justly shovelled away. Being things as they are, it was Dershowitz who preassured right and left until he finally got his way and Finkelstein was denied tenure by his University (as we learn in this book's Epilogue, written by Frank J. Menetrez), in what constitutes a very lively illustration of the U.S. Israel lobby at work and the power it has to stifle speech critical of Israel. As for this Finkelstein book: a must!

Everybody should read this one before, after, or (still better) instead the one of Goldhagen...

Finkelstein argues that when the Zionist project was conceived, its only “strategic options” were apartheid and expulsion. “Zionists from early on were in fact bent on expelling [Arabs],” he writes. Arabs, naturally, resisted forceful expulsion. Transfer was regarded as an acceptable policy in the post-WWI years, legitimated by the history of colonization and the progress of civilization.

Some of the best material is in the 82 pages of footnotes, some of which are mini-essays. Finkelstein is an intense, demanding writer, but his tenaciousness and devotion to truth, on account of which he has paid a great price, inspire respect.

De kelder van de Groene Waterman zat afgeladen vol voor Norman Finkelstein die avond van dinsdag 20 mei. Finkelstein is een joods-Amerikaans auteur die met zijn boeken de pro-Israël lobby in de V.S. en Israël zwaar op de korrel neemt. Hij verwijt hen dat ze de Nazi-Holocaust misbruiken om 40 jaar bezetting en talloze misdaden van Israël tegenover de Palestijnen goed te praten. Het feit dat iedereen die kritiek uitoefent op Israël onmiddellijk wordt bestempeld als antisemiet is een doelbewuste strategie om de aandacht af te leiden van de grond van de zaak, nl. dat de critici gelijk hebben, zo zegt Finkelstein.

Lees verder: http://koenstuyck.blogspot.com/2008/05/de-integriteit-van-chomski-volgens.html

Norman Finkelstein has certainly exposed a rather impressive gathering of intellectual and scholarly frauds. This text provides informed interpretations of historical data, and political and ideological mechanisms of control and domination in the form of Zionism. Finkelstein particularly excels here in his dismantlement of Joan Peter's book, From Time Immemorial, a fraud of the highest order. Finkelstein continues to offer counter-arguments to historian Benny Morris' interpretations of data in the nature of the Palestinian expulsion. The book also offers a fairly comprehensive explanation of the current "peace" processes such as the Camp David meetings and the Oslo accords, although his constant drawing of comparisons to South African Apartheid can be wearying. I noticed a reviewer of this book argued that Finkelstein's scholarship was incorrect by claiming that Peter's conclusions were accurate based on the findings of other sources (the reviewer refused to name the source). He then went on to accuse Finkelstein of being a racist, as it is very convenient to do so. I request that that individual please be serious when talking about these issues, debate the scholarship but don't tell Finkelstein to shut up, he has a legitimate argument and it is grounded in politics and history, not anti-semitism. As long as people are incapable of, or perhaps unwilling to comprehend the notion that a group of people and their history and beliefs are not the same thing as the policies of the people's state, then the Middle East conflict will continue to be unresolved.