Norman Finkelstein Biography

Finkelstein, Norman G. Holocaust denier and author of "The Holocaust Industry," who once famously asked, "If all these people survived the Holocaust, who actually died?"

He has also referred to Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel as the "clown in the Holocaust circus." [So, besides being a Holocaust denier, he's also a heartless bastard!] Further, he claimed that the Holocaust is being used by racist Jews to justify their presence in Palestine and to oppress Arabs. He agrees that the use of the Holocaust as "extortion" to extract money from Germans and others is a crime and, according to Finkelstein, just more proof of the fact that Jews care for nothing but money. Israel is not immune from his castigation either. In a December 200l speech in Beirut, Lebanon, Finkelstein compared Israeli behavior to "Nazi practices" during World War II. Finkelstein refers to the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis as the "Six Million" in quotation marks, and says that nearly every Holocaust survivor is a fraud, a thief and a liar. (Finkelstein's own parents are Holocaust survivors and Finkelstein has long tried to capitalize on this as a way to legitimize his own anti-Semitism.)

It’s inconceivable to me that Finkelstein might achieve tenure at De Paul University in Chicago, where he presently teaches his bizarre theories. That he is an assistant professor there is, in my view, a badge of shame for De Paul.

His true occupation is as a member of a traveling circus, a freak show of anti-Semites who promote anti-Israel propaganda from campus to campus. He openly admits to having high regard for Hezbollah on his Web site, and he promotes the false notion that "scholars widely agree that Israel ethnically cleansed the Palestinian people in 1948."

Finkelstein is almost universally regarded as a Jewish traitor and anti-Semite, and at the very least a fraud and pseudo-scholar. Commentary Magazine's Gabriel Schoenfeld has labeled Finkelstein's views as crackpot ideas, some of them mirrored almost verbatim in the propaganda put out by neo-Nazis around the world.. "Fink's" books do not sell in America, but they are best-sellers among the growing number of neo-Nazis in Germany. Finkelstein has been endorsed by anti-Semites of all stripes, including Israeli Jewish anti-Semites like Neve Gordon from Ben Gurion University.

Finkelstein's hatred of Jews runs so deep that he has actually implied that his own mother, who survived the Nazi Holocaust, may have collaborated with the Nazis. If so collaboration with evil seems to run in the family, because Finkelstein has clearly become a collaborator with Hezbollah anti-Semitism and Nazism. Finkelstein's website is filled with Hezbollah promotion, including breathless reprints of Nasrallah speeches. Following the one month 2006 summer war between Israel and Hizbollah,he wrote, "I truly honor [Hizbollah] for having inflicted an exceptional and deserving defeat on their foreign occupiers. It's another wonderful chapter in the long and painful struggle for human emancipation and even liberty and certainly one that every human being can take inspiration from." When American and Jewish soldiers die, Finkelstein rejoices!

Has this capo EVER said a kind word about the Israel or the Jewish people? Sadly, we know of none. Even if Norman Finkelstein did not really exist, we'd have to invent him as a Poster Yehudon [Jew Boy] caricature of the Self-Hating Israel-Threatening Jew.

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Masada 2000

More About Ilan Pappe

Ilan Pappé: When Ideology Trumps Scholarship
by Ricki Hollander - October 20, 2005

The inspiration and driving force behind the proposed academic boycott of Israeli institutions is a tenured professor at the University of Haifa who is anything but scholarly. Ilan Pappé is the Israeli-born political science professor and historian who has been at center stage in the attempt by Great Britain's 40,000–member Association of University Teachers' (AUT) to blacklist Israeli universities. An activist in Israel's fringe Communist party, he is among the most extreme of a group of radical Israeli historians who have sought to rewrite Israel's history to suggest the country was born in original sin.

Pappé has long acknowledged that he is not objective and cares little about factual accuracy. He readily admits that ideology drives his historical writings and statements. And his ideology can be simply summed up: Israel is illegitimate and should be the target of international sanctions until it is dismantled as a Jewish state.

Pappé freely expresses his attitude toward historical investigation and academic objectivity:

There is no historian in the world who is objective. I am not as interested in what happened as in how people see what's happened. ("An Interview of Ilan Pappé," Baudouin Loos, Le Soir [Bruxelles],Nov. 29, 1999)

I admit that my ideology influences my historical writings, but so what? (Ibid)

Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about facts. Who knows what facts are? We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truthseekers. (Ibid)

The debate between us is on one level between historians who believe they are purely objective reconstructers of the past, like [Benny] Morris, and those who claim that they are subjective human beings striving to tell their own version of the past, like myself. (“Benny Morris’s Lies About My Book,” Ilan Pappé, Response to Morris’ critique of Pappé’s book, “A History of Palestine” published in the New Republic, March 22, 2004, History News Network, April 5, 2004)

[Historical] Narratives... when written by historians involved deeply in the subject matter they write about, such as in the case of Israeli historians who write about the Palestine conflict, is motivated also... by a deep involvement and a wish to make a point. This point is called ideology or politics. (Ibid)

Yes, I use Palestinian sources for the Intifada: they seem to me to be more reliable, I admit. (Ibid)

Pappé bases his accusations against Israel not on substantiated facts, but on Palestinian narrative. He freely distorts the truth to conform with his ideology. Thus he attests to Israeli army-perpetrated massacres that never occurred. He promotes the myth of a 1948 massacre of the villagers of Tantura, claiming that the Israeli academic establishment is conspiring to repress the information, and he continues to propagate the lie that Israeli committed a massacre in Jenin in 2002 despite copious refutation (including United Nations reports) of the bogus claim. As in the Tantura case, he suggests there is a conspiracy to cover-up the Jenin "massacre":

Over a year has passed now, since the Israeli army invaded the refugee camp in Jenin, destroyed its houses, killed many of its inhabitants and committed one of the worst war crimes in this present Intifada, Intifada al-Aqsa. With a successful campaign of distortion and manipulation of evidence, the Israeli foreign ministry, with the help of the United States, succeeded in hiding from the world the horrors of Jenin, and even worse, in intimidating anyone daring to tell the truth about what had happened there . . . As comes out vividly from this book (of Palestinian testimony), Jenin was not just a massacre, it was an inhuman act of unimaginable barbarism. ("Searching Jenin: The Most Authoritative Report on the War Crimes We Will Ever Get," Book Review by Ilan Pappé, Counterpunch, May 3, 2003)

Pappé particularly seeks to spread his distorted message in the international community, producing books, articles, speeches, interviews and letters. So outrageous and unscholarly are his deceptions that even Benny Morris, himself a "new historian" who has been accused of twisting the truth to fit his own hypothesis of Israel's birth, has set himself apart from Pappé. Morris critiqued Pappé's 2004 book, "A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples" in the New Republic. Entitled "Ilan Pappé's New Book is Appalling," Morris' review spells out the problem:

Pappe is a proud postmodernist. He believes that there is no such thing as historical truth, only a collection of narratives as numerous as the participants in any given event or process; and each narrative, each perspective, is as valid and legitimate, as true, as the next...

About the book, Morris writes:

...Unfortunately, much of what Pappé tries to sell his readers is complete fabrication...

...In Pappé's account, there is no faulting the Palestinians for regularly assaulting the Zionist enterprise...The Palestinians are forever victims, the Zionists are forever "brutal colonizers"...

...The multiplicity of mistakes on each page is a product of both Pappé's historical methodology and his political proclivities...

...For those enamored with subjectivity and in thrall to historical relativism, a fact is not a fact and accuracy is unattainable. Why grope for the truth? Narrativity is all. So no reader should be surprised to discover that, according to Pappé. . .[Here Morris provides a partial list of Pappé's numerous falsehoods]

Anyone interested in the real history of Palestine/Israel and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict would do well to run vigorously in the opposite direction.

That some around the world eagerly embrace Pappé and his claims even as he himself admits that facts are irrelevant is evidence that truth will not deter the Jewish state's detractors.

More disturbing is that the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, favored by the Israeli cultural and political elite as well as the Western press corps, ran a lengthy puff-piece on Pappé, giving him a forum to present his distorted claims about the boycott. The May 6, 2005 article, entitled "Alone on the Barricades," by Meron Rapoport establishes Pappé as a victim:

On his answering machine, he found at least a dozen death threats...Pappé wasn't very popular among the Haifa University faculty before the AUT decision, and now that's all the more true. The university's president, Prof. Aharon Ben–Ze'ev, has called on him to leave the university and "to implement the boycott" that he supports himself. Members of the faculty are organizing to boycott him in the hallways and not to speak to him...Outside the university walls, some have even called Pappé a real traitor, a public enemy...

The story of the boycott, the controversy over the claims of a massacre at Tantura, and the consequences are presented primarily from Pappé's perspective. While his detractor's claims are mentioned, the article is based on a personal interview with Pappé, allowing him to articulate his position. The reporter asks softball questions, and Pappé is hardly challenged. (For example, he's asked: What is the essence [of the controversy] as you see it? Is the situation really that extreme? So you're deeply disappointed with Israeli academia?) The result is a legitimization of the man, his methods, and even his claims.

No wonder the article is reproduced on dozens of pro-Palestinian and pro-boycott Web sites, which like Pappé, advocate the end of the Jewish state.



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Ilan Pappe - Advocate of Israel's destruction

Advocate of Israel's destruction.
This Israeli traitor is the darling of the campus groups that rally against Israel

By Janet Levy and Dr. Roberta Seid
FrontPageMagazine.com - November 24, 2004

"The most hated Israeli in Israel" - an ignoble moniker to be sure - has not eroded Ilan Pappe's star power on U.S. college campuses, where he is more often than not warmly greeted. The usual contingent of Said acolytes, Chomsky groupies and a panoply of pro-Palestinian student organizations are invariably well-represented in his audiences. The prominence of resolutely anti-Israel partisans is unsurprising, given Pappe's role as one of Israel's most prominent die-hard Marxists. Pappe was invited to UCLA by history professor and fellow Edward Said disciple, Gabriel Piterberg. A call to the university revealed that history department professors may invite speakers at their own discretion using departmental funding to cover expenses for colloquia without any oversight. This practice enables faculty to freely promulgate their political agendas and control the degree to which students are presented with alternative views and critiques. Piterberg has been labeled "an avant-garde radical who harangues campus demonstrations, endorses petitions and teaches a course in post-and anti-Zionism. "

Last spring, as Operation Desert Storm began, he cancelled class to attend an anti-war demonstration. Pappe doesn't seem like someone who would be hated. He comes across as soft-spoken and personable and gives the impression of being an earnest humanist dedicated to a noble cause. Piterberg introduced Pappe with warm praise for his scholarship. But Pappe is a wolf in sheep's clothing. Once he began speaking, it was clear why he's so hated at home. Pappe credits Edward Said with disabusing him of the "addictive" Zionistic leanings of his youth, and for initiating "a painful awakening to the essence of Zionism." Absent from Pappe's discourse is the recognition of Zionism as an authentic movement of national liberation. Pappe refuses to acknowledge the meaning and purposes the modern political phenomenon of Zionism was created to address. These included support for the right of all Jews to live in their ancient homeland; and the Jewish people's national right to self-determination and freedom from oppression.

To this incorrigible anti-Zionist, Palestinian Arabs have been the helpless victims not only of Israel's atrocities but of Israel's very existence as a Jewish state. He asserts that Israel silences those who attack the Zionist mythic narrative, notwithstanding his own somewhat ironic status as a tenured professor at an Israeli university. Not only is Pappe far from silent, he exists in an academic milieu as uninhibited and protective of academic freedom as any in the world. In contrast, the Palestinian Authority imposes strict censorship and ideological conformity on its subservient intellectuals, virtually none of whom support Israel's legitimacy.

For Pappe, Zionism is indistinguishable in practice from "ethnic cleansing." This blanket assertion applies to all aspects of the movement's history, from perfectly legal, mutually agreed upon transfers of land title from Arabs to Jews, to a purportedly long-term Israeli strategy, from the moment the State was born, to expel Palestinian Arabs from Israel.

Pappe fails to note that between 1948 and 1967, no Palestinian national movement wished to establish a state in Judea, Samaria, or Gaza. This fact alone belies the notion that "occupation" is responsible for stimulating Palestinian terror. Arab refusal to accept the Jewish State's right to exist is given no significance in Pappe's selective conclusions.

Pappe re-circulates the ludicrous postulate that Israel's offer at Camp David constituted an effort to ethnically cleanse the so-called Occupied Territories by creating "two Bantustans" or "prison camps." In fact, as confirmed as recently as a few weeks ago by Ambassador Dennis Ross, the proposed Palestinian state was to include nearly the entire West Bank, all of Gaza, and portions of East Jerusalem, which was to have become the Palestinian Arab capital. The consistent testimony of all parties privy to the Camp David negotiations, is that this Palestinian Arab state would have enjoyed territorial contiguity, and would have had a viable and substantial land mass in which to achieve the _expression of its sovereignty. Yet Pappe continues to cast darkness on what is an un-shadowed field of clarity and light.

Such baseless charges are Pappe's stock in trade. Before the Coalition imposed regime change in Iraq, Pappe circulated a tendentious, inflammatory petition, warning that Israel intended to use the "fog of war" to commit further atrocities against Palestinian Arabs in the disputed territories. Following the advent of the second Intifada, Pappe refused to condemn terrorism and explained it as a legitimate response to "occupation." "Terrorism is not the essential question," Pappe said. "Israel expelled the Palestinians and colonized the area," acts "far worse than suicide bombing and armed struggle."

It bears repeating in this context that the Palestinian Liberation Movement was founded in 1964, years before the "occupation." The following year, an Egyptian, Yassir Arafat, launched al-Fatah, which soon became the leading operational and controlling faction of the PLO. The goal of this organization, as of the entire Palestinian national movement, was never the establishment of a new Arab state, but the destruction of the established Jewish state.

Pappe's scholarship is questionable and subject to much criticism by respected historians. He dismisses the legitimacy of historical facts and rewrites history to support his ideologically determined agenda. He has admitted to the predominance of the Marxist worldview in defining conclusions and outcomes, by asserting that "we do [historiography] because of ideological reasons, not because we are truth seekers."

Pappe routinely and purposefully discredits or ignores sources that contradict his anti-Zionist views, and when challenged by students who cite accepted historical narratives, criticizes them for reading "the wrong books." When confronted by the actual, benign text of an Israeli military doctrine, which contradicted Pappe's thesis that such documents called for the expulsion of Palestinian Arabs, he admitted that no such doctrinal statement actually existed, but was implied simply by the existence and concomitant predispositions of Zionism.

Notwithstanding a negative court finding, and a scholarly review debunking the veracity of a master's thesis of one of Pappe's students, claiming an IDF massacre at Tantura, Pappe continued to support the claim. Upon reviewing Pappe's latest book, historian Benny Morris warned: "Anyone interested in the real history of Palestine/Israel and the Palestinian/Israel conflict would do well to run vigorously in the opposite direction!" This book is awash with errors of quantity and quality that are not found in serious historiography." Pappe admits that most historians share Morris' views and again freely admits that his "ideology influences his historical writing."

As part of his UCLA presentation, Pappe purported to expose an ideological paradox between the external presentation of Israeli society and what he perceives to be its reality. Pappe maintains that Israel is inaccurately viewed as a country torn between "peace camp" and "settler camp" ideologies. He sternly cautions against such an interpretation of the current discourse within Israel. Pappe instead advances the view that there is no authentic or meaningful debate, crisis or strife within Israeli society today. "This is the most consensual phase in Israeli history," he states.

Pappe blames this development on the rise to power of Classical Zionists, including Prime Minister Sharon, who believe in responsibly balancing the imperatives of democracy with the survival and security requirements of a Jewish state. Pappe bemoans the decline of the post-Zionists, and the diminishing resonance within Israel of their critique of Zionism. He claims that the newly invigorated national pride of Israel is wrongly "dictating the peace agenda to the world."

Pappe concluded his UCLA lecture by calling for a "political and geographical structure to contain Israel" and the imposition of economic sanctions on Israel, in the spirit of the boycott against apartheid South Africa. He called for activists to pressure the international community to pressure Israel in turn. He also advocated the imposition of an international force in the West Bank to protect Palestinians.

Pappe emphasized the need to convince others to abandon the idea of a two-state solution which he deems not viable. He called instead for the creation of one political structure to best serve the interests of Palestinians and Israelis. This recipe for a "multinational democratic state" conforms precisely to the formula long held by the PLO, and of course would result in the immediate and complete destruction of the Jewish State of Israel.

Pappe excoriated the American media for its ostensibly pro-Israel bias, and observed, no doubt correctly, that "Palestinians get a better hearing in Europe." He memorialized Edward Said by recommending acceptance of Said's Principle of the Three "A's: Acknowledgment by Israel of the ethnic cleansing of 1948; Accountability by Israel, to include repatriation or compensation to the Palestinian Arabs; and Acceptance by the Palestinians of a "Jewish element" in their midst.

It is noteworthy that, during the question and answer period following his lecture, Pappe entertained queries mostly from students of Arab appearance. Participants with dissenting opinions were cut off and subjected to terse answers. Those who agreed with Pappe's views were afforded ample time to complete their comments, and were granted gracious, respectful, and lengthy responses.

Clearly, so long as Pappe is supported by an American professoriate that shares his views, he will continue to propagate those views on American campuses. Students should take the advice of Benny Morris, and run the other way. His lectures serve only as object-lessons of the degree to which facts can be distorted to support an ideology. Any serious examination of the true history of the Middle East, or consideration of how desperately Israelis want peace and have repeatedly offered concessions toward that elusive goal, will always be absent from Pappe's discourse. Little else but distortion and falsehoods should be expected from an advocate of Israel's destruction.



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Norman Finkelstein's Lies

For those you not familiar with the activities of Norman Finkelstein, he is one of the darlings of JVP and other anti-Israel "Jewish" groups. A (non-tenured) political science professor at DePaul University, he has made a name for himself by going on the anti-Israel lecture circuit with supposed credibility added by being the child of Holocaust survivors. An extensive summary of Finkelstein, his shoddy scholarship, and his slurs not only of Jewish leaders but of respected world figures like Elie Wiesel.

This is an abridged transcript of a talk given by the anti-Zionist activist Norman Finkelstein at Stanford University on January 25, 2007, entitled “Reflections on the misuse of anti-Semitism and the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering.” Why do we present the words of this extremist?

We want to expose the misuse of history, the sloppy “research”, and the outright lies that go into talks by the likes of Finkelstein. It should come as no surprise that Finkelstein is one of the intellectual heroes of Jewish Voice for Peace and similar anti-Israel groups. His brochure for this talk stated “Finkelstein will discuss how the concept of anti-Semitism has been distorted to include any criticism of the state of Israel and silence all legitimate criticisms of Israeli policy.”

Once again he follows a theme we hear ONLY (and constantly) from anti-Israel activists: that “any” criticism of Israel is considered anti-Semitic. Of course, one can also ask whether criticism of Israel from those who don’t recognize its legitimacy and seek to destroy it can be considered “legitimate”. (We ask that one all the time, since too many people have never even thought about it!). One can also ask why someone who is so “silenced” can be given at platform at an elite university like Stanford.

My comments are underlined. Please feel free to use this information if you get the opportunity to challenge Finkelstein.

(Finkelstein) …How do you account for the fact that so much controversy swirls around this conflict when if you look at the documentary record, the factual record, it really isn’t very controversial or complicated…. And the thesis I’m going to argue this evening is that most of the controversy, the preponderance of the controversy that swirls around the Palestine Israel conflict is contrived. It’s fabricated. It’s concocted. And the purpose of this artificial controversy is to divert attention from the documentary record and to sow confusion about what that record actually shows.

…It’s (the ICJ) findings were as follows…It’s clear under international law that it’s inadmissible to acquire territory by war. That principal is anchored in Article 2 of the United Nations charter. And therefore, Israel has no title to any of the territory it conquered in the West Bank or Gaza during the June 1967 war. That is to say, to use the language of the World Court, those are occupied Palestinian territories… For our purposes that means, contrary to what you routinely read or hear in the United States – those are NOT disputed territories. Those are occupied Palestinian territories, full stop.

For your reference, here is Article 2 of the UN Charter:

Article 2
The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles.
The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.
All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.
All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

All Members shall give the United Nations every assistance in any action it takes in accordance with the present Charter, and shall refrain from giving assistance to any state against which the United Nations is taking preventive or enforcement action.

The Organization shall ensure that states which are not Members of the United Nations act in accordance with these Principles so far as may be necessary for the maintenance of international peace and security.

Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter Vll.

Nothing in there about the inadmissibility of acquisition of territory by force. Interesting that there IS a requirement to refrain “from the threat or use of force” against other countries. Not that Arab-launched wars in 1948, 1956 or 1973 have any relevance to Finkelstein.

In fact it illustrates, this is from another direction, how uncontroversial the supposedly controversial conclusions of Jimmy Carter’s recent book, “Palestine, Peace not Apartheid” how uncontroversial his conclusions are. His main conclusions are 1) Israel must withdraw to the June 1967 borders and 2) that the main obstacle to peace in the Middle East is Israel’s unwillingness to comply with international law. As you’ll see in a moment, that’s absolutely uncontroversial, even though his book is called very controversial.

….the factual controversy has always been the one of how did the Palestinians become refugees in 1948… The standard response… was that in 1948 the Arab armies poised to attack the newly born state of Israel, transmitted orders to the Arabs of Palestine to flee from their homes and after the victories of the armies they would win. It would clear the fields for the Arab armies. And most mainstream scholarship of that interpretation, it was the standard one. There was a group on the periphery who said it wasn’t true but they had relatively little influence in academic, let alone, media life. Come the late 1980’s, Israeli scholars pre-eminently, but others as well, go through the Israeli archives and they reached the conclusion to quote the most pre-eminent of those scholars, a fellow named Benny Morris, he says that all the Palestinians were ethnically cleansed in 1948… There is debate. But the debate is very narrow.

“All the Palestinians”, that is, except for the 160,000 that remained and became citizens of the state of Israel.

Was this ethnic cleansing pre-meditated or was it born of the war?
In Benny Morris’s famous phrase, the Palestinians became refugees ‘it was born of war, not of desire.’ Others say ‘not true’. It was pre-meditated.

Shlomo Ben-Ami, the former Prime Minister, he says it’s true. For sure, Palestinians were ethnically cleansed in 1948. But he says, “I disagree with Benny Morris. I think it was pre-meditated. I think it was anchored in Zionist ideology… ”

Now of course any student of the history of the area knows that Shlomo Ben-Ami was never Prime Minister of Israel. He is, however, an Israeli diplomat who was involved at the Camp David and Taba talks in 2000 and 2001 (the latter while serving as Foreign Minister in the waning days of the Barak government). Here’s a very revealing quote from Mr. Ben-Ami who appeared on a radio show with Finkelstein (italics mine):

“My view is that, but for Jesus Christ, everybody was born in sin, including nations. And the moral perspective of it is there, but at the same time it does not undermine, in my view, in my very modest view, the justification for the creation of a Jewish state, however tough the conditions and however immoral the consequences were for the Palestinians. You see, it is there that I tend to differ from the interpretation of the new historians. They have made an incredible contribution, a very, very important contribution to our understanding of the origins of the state of Israel, but at the same time, my view is that this is how — unfortunately, tragically, sadly — nations were born throughout history.

And our role, the role of this generation — this is why I came into politics and why I try to make my very modest contribution to the peace process — is that we need to bring an end to this injustice that has been done to the Palestinians. We need to draw a line between an Israeli state, a sovereign Palestinian state, and solve the best way we can the problem, by giving the necessary compensation to the refugees, by bringing back the refugees to the Palestinian state, no way to the state of Israel, not because it is immoral, but because it is not feasible, it is not possible. We need to act in a realistic way and see what are the conditions for a final peace deal. I believe that we came very, very close to that final peace deal. Unfortunately, we didn't make it. But we came very close in the year 2001.”

Of course, to make it clear that the “blame Israel” crowd is completely wrong as to why Israel couldn’t make peace with Arafat, Ben Ami also adds: “international law was the last — or the least of Arafat's concern. He didn't give a damn about international law. It was not whether or not the agreement was based on international law or not that concerned Arafat. In my view, this is my interpretation of a man I met many, many times. I might be wrong, obviously, but this is my firsthand interpretation of this man. He was morally, psychologically, physically incapable of accepting the moral legitimacy of a Jewish state, regardless of its borders or whatever. Arafat was incapable of closing or locking the door of his endless conflict between us and the Palestinians. And this is the bottom line.”

So, let’s see what those human rights organizations have to say on this question. If you look at the statistics of the numbers killed during the second intifada. I checked last night and the latest figures are 4,446 Palestinians killed, 1,017 Israelis killed. A ratio of almost exactly 4-1. In fact, more Palestinian children have been killed – then the total number of Israeli civilians killed – …Now most people won’t dispute these numbers – not very controversial – there’s a range for sure. I’m using the B’tselem figures. But the argument is usually made that there is a difference between Palestinian killings which target Israeli civilians and Israeli killings, although 4 times as many but which don’t target Palestinians. They are as it were collateral damage. What do the human rights organizations say? They all agree Israel’s use of live ammunition is excessive, indiscriminate and on many occasions deliberately targeting civilians…. According to human rights law – there is a basic legal principal that the doer of any act must be taken to have intended its natural and foreseeable consequence. So, if you indiscriminately fire into a crowd then it’s taken that you intentionally killed those who died in the course of the indiscriminate firing…

This argument resorts to the “body count” method of determining who is right and who is wrong. If you have fewer casualties, then you are (by this equation) obviously in the wrong. Of course, this ignores the fact that most of the Arab “children” are teenage boys—sometimes armed, sometimes sent to try to infiltrate across the border with Gaza, sometimes in the front lines of a crowd while gunmen shoot from the back. There’s also the issue that Israel tries to shield its civilian population from terrorism, while the Palestinians use their children as human shields.

Let’s turn to the 3rd aspect. …As Mr. Barhoum mentioned in the introductory remarks, for the past 30 years, there has been international consensus for resolving the conflict…. It’s called the 2 state settlement. A full Israeli withdrawal from the territories it occupied in June 1967… a full Israeli withdrawal on the one side and recognition of Israel’s right to live in peace with its neighbors on the other side. Again, it’s remarkable how uncontroversial it is…. 1989, when the General Assembly voted on a 2 state settlement, the vote was 151 to 3 with 1 abstention. The negative votes – United States, Israel and the island state of Dominica.

What Finkelstein conveniently leaves out is that this resolution (General Assembly resolution 44/42) also included a call for an international conference including the PLO, which at that time had continued to publicly call for the eradication of the state of Israel. Therefore it was not acceptable to either the US or Israel.

The first condition put on Hamas that was the elected Palestinian government in January 2006…. They had to renounce terrorism. And the second condition was - they must recognize the state of Israel. To my thinking - perfectly legitimate and not very controversial. Israel is a member state of the United Nations and like every other member state would like to live in peace with its neighbors. The problem is… if you make the demand on every party in the conflict, it’s a moral, ethical principal. If you make it on one side its hypocrisy. No Israeli government, no Israeli political party, no Israeli public official has every recognized the Palestinian state within the borders affirmed by countless UN resolutions and the World Court decisions….

This is a deliberate attempt at avoiding the issue. Israel has endorsed the idea that a Palestinian state should exist. Hamas rejects the idea that a Jewish state should exist anywhere within the Middle East.

As the world demands that Hamas recognize Israel, the current Israeli government is building a wall that annexes about 10% of the West Bank, illegally and East Jerusalem, illegally; effectively tri-sects the West Bank into 3 parts. In addition, Israel is separating the West Bank from Gaza, ethnically cleansing the Jordan Valley, and has defacto annexed the Jordan Valley.

Of course, the fence can be moved once the Palestinians dismantle the terror infrastructure. Israel has not annexed any additional land to build the fence. The West Bank has always been separate from Gaza. Jericho seems to be doing just fine—no mass exodus of citizens from the heart of the Jordan Valley.

What are the Palestinians being offered? Palestinians are being asked to choose between a Swiss cheese state comprised of most of the West Bank but riddled with settlements and Israel pulling out from about 40-50% of the West Bank unilaterally while keeping most of its settlements. But no demand is put on Israel – only on Hamas.

The differences between Israel and Hamas are first although Hamas has been ambiguous on its willingness to recognize Israel on the pre-June 1967 borders, it goes hot and cold…Hamas’s stance has been ambiguous. But Israel’s stance hasn’t been ambiguous at all. It has always opposed a Palestinian state on the June 1967 borders. And secondly, the only other difference as far as I can tell, is that while Hamas sometimes speaks, about destroying the Jewish state, Israel is in practice dismembering the Palestinian state. (Audience applause).

It’s interesting how Finkelstein apparently believes that peace doesn’t require two sides who agree to live together in peace. As the Hamas charter says (unambiguously): "The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgment Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. "

"There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."

That is as far as I can tell, I’m always happy to be corrected, the documentary record. Pretty straight forward, uncomplicated and doesn’t cast Israel in the best of lights. And it’s because it doesn’t cast Israel in the best of lights, that so much controversy is fabricated in order to distract attention from and sow confusion about that uncomplicated documentary record.

He keeps repeating his mantra about how straightforward it is, hoping that will make it so.

Take the case of that historian I mentioned earlier, Benny Morris. He acknowledges that Israel made an ethnic cleansing in 1948. But he said, I think that ethnic cleansings can be good things. I don’t think they’re always bad things. He said take North America, now I’m using his words, had it not been for the annihilation of the native population, you couldn’t have had that great American republic. So, the annihilation was a good thing. In the case of the Israel Palestine conflict, he says that Ben Gurion’s main error in 1948, the Israeli Prime Minister… was that he didn’t cleanse Palestine of every last Arab….

Let’s look at what Benny Morris actually says; decontextualizing his statements can be very misleading, which of course is Finkelstein’s modus operandi. Morris takes a forthright and brave position: “yes, bad things happened to the Palestinians in 1948, but this was because the alternative was another genocide against the Jews, deal with it.”

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Morris:

Morris takes Ben-Gurion to task for not doing the job more thoroughly:
I think he made a serious historical mistake in 1948. Even though he understood the demographic issue and the need to establish a Jewish state without a large Arab minority, he got cold feet during the war. In the end, he faltered. If he was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job. [...] my feeling is that this place would be quieter and know less suffering if the matter had been resolved once and for all. If Ben-Gurion had carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country -- the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River. If he had carried out a full expulsion -- rather than a partial one -- he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations."

There is no question in his mind of the legitimacy of the Zionist project:
The desire to establish a Jewish state here is legitimate, there was no other choice. It was impossible to leave a large fifth column in the country. [...] Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history.

You have to put things in proportion. These are small war crimes. All told, if we take all the massacres and all the executions of 1948, we come to about 800 who were killed. In comparison to the massacres that were perpetrated in Bosnia, that’s peanuts. In comparison to the massacres the Russians perpetrated against the Germans at Stalingrad, that’s chicken feed. When you take into account that there was a bloody civil war here and that we lost an entire 1 percent of the population, you find that we behaved very well.

Regarding the suffering and condition of the Palestinians, he writes:
I feel sympathy for the Palestinian people, which truly underwent a hard tragedy. I feel sympathy for the refugees themselves. But if the desire to establish a Jewish state here is legitimate, there was no other choice. It was impossible to leave a large fifth column in the country. From the moment the Yishuv [pre-1948 Jewish community in Palestine] was attacked by the Palestinians and afterward by the Arab states, there was no choice but to expel the Palestinian population. To uproot it in the course of war.

Remember another thing: the Arab people gained a large slice of the planet. Not thanks to its skills or its great virtues, but because it conquered and murdered and forced those it conquered to convert during many generations. But in the end the Arabs have 22 states. The Jewish people did not have even one state. There was no reason in the world why it should not have one state. Therefore, from my point of view, the need to establish this state in this place overcame the injustice that was done to the Palestinians by uprooting them.

Let’s see those refugees again. You can agree that factually they were ethnically cleansed in 1948. You can agree that morally it’s an abomination. You can agree that legally they have the right of return. But, you can say politically as Professor Chomsky does, I don’t think its going to happen. And he says, it’s not a realistic possibility then to give people hope when there’s no ground for hope is itself immoral…And I think honest people can agree to disagree on that question… If on the other hand you think it is feasible then of course you should fight for it…There is no disagreement on the legal question, that is to say, there is simply no dispute that under international law, Palestinians have the right of return. The vote in the General Assembly in 2002 on the right of return 158-1. The vote in 2003 on the right of return 167-1. Human rights organizations, let’s take mainstream ones – not controversial ones. Human Rights Watch – 2000 it urges Israel to recognize the right of return. I’m quoting them. Amnesty International – 2001 it calls the Palestinians to be able, I’m quoting them, to exercise the right of return. It’s not controversial at all. Nonetheless, I do think, as I said, there are areas on the question of its practical implementation where honest people can disagree.

Once again, he resorts to “it’s not controversial at all”… of course it’s also not controversial that the only Palestinian refugees to which a right of return could conceivably apply are the individuals displaced in 1948, NOT their 4th and 5th generation descendants. Also the original UN resolution (GA 194) referring to return of refugees specifies a right for those refugees “wishing to live in peace with their neighbors”; was there any willingness ever expressed in the 1940’s, 1950’s, 1960’s, 1970’s or 1980’s for Palestinian Arabs to “live in peace” within a Jewish state? Is there now? Finkelstein’s reliance on the UN General Assembly as the arbiter of international law is laughable; this was, of course, the same body that declared in 1975 that Zionism was a form of racism.
Could there be some mechanism to compensate families who were displaced in 1948? Sure, why not—as long as we include the 950,000 Jews who were forcibly expelled and/or fled from Arab countries in the wake of the 1948 war.

What I want to turn to now is that much larger area on the Israel Palestine conflict where I don’t think the differences of the controversies are legitimate at all. They’re simply fabricated and concocted. They have no bearing on the real world. They’re fabricated and concocted in order to divert attention and sow confusion.

First, is this attempt to mystify the conflict. To claim that it is so complicated, so intricate, that it requires the equivalent of science to penetrate its mysteries. Its about primordial irreconcilable wars, its about the cosmic clash of religions and civilizations…The first purpose of it is to convince the observer that he or she should suspend his or her ordinary ethical, legal judgments. Because the conflict is too complicated. A typical example. There’s a fellow, Robert Malley – a very decent guy who was one of the American negotiators at Camp David, no it wasn’t at Taba, it was Camp David, in 2000, and in a public forum about a year ago he was asked, ‘Why is it that U.S. aid into Israel continues to flow despite Israel’s egregious human rights record.” And he said, ‘Well, this is a really and truly unique conflict. And the fact that it’s really and truly unique somehow means we apply a different moral standard to it.”…We’re always told, don’t compare because this conflict is so different, so much more complicated…The reason is obvious because whenever you compare the Israel Palestine conflict with other obvious cases, Israel always comes out on the wrong side. So don’t compare.

Historically, you can make a reasonable analogy between the fate of native Americans in North America and the fate of Palestinians in the course of the Zionist conquest of Palestine. In fact as I mentioned ago it wasn’t a coincidence that was the exact group that Benny Morris immediately led up to. There’s an obvious analogy there. Not perfect but still obvious. The problem is Israel comes out on the wrong side of the analogy. So don’t compare. The Israel Palestine conflict is unique.

Of course, Finkelstein acts as if there was no historical presence of Jews in Palestine and Arabs had been there from time immemorial; of course, Arabs came from the Arabian peninsula in the 8th century while Jews had already been there for 1800 years and continued to be there since. And the Native Americans would have probably been delighted (compared to what they ended up with!) to get an independent state on half the American West.

Or take, not historically, but currently the obvious analogy is this one. The one with Apartheid in South Africa. Now no aspect of Carter’s book… has invoked more outrage then its identification of Israeli policy in the occupied territories with Apartheid. The Washington Post called it, the Apartheid analogy ‘foolish and unfair’. The Boston Globe called it ‘irresponsibly provocative’. The New York Times said it was ‘dangerous and ant-Semitic’. (audience laughter) But in the real world it’s not even controversial. B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization – in 2002 it produces a major study on Israeli settlement practices in the occupied territories. This is how it was ? – quote “Israel has created in the occupied territories a regime of separation based on discrimination, applies two different systems of law in the same area, and bases the rights of individuals on their nationality. This regime is the only one of its kind in the world and is reminiscent of distasteful regimes from the past such as the Apartheid regime in South Africa.”

(Audience applause) 2005- B’Tselem produces another hefty report called ‘Forbidden Roads’. In Israel they call it Israel’s road regime in the occupied territories… what does it conclude? It bares striking similarities to the racist Apartheid regime and even entails a greater degree of arbitrariness then was the case with the regime that existed in South Africa. It’s worse. Ok. B’Tselem – those are lefties also. So, let’s take Ha’aretz. They had an editorial in September of 2006 and it says just in a passing comment, “the Apartheid regime in the territories remains intact. Millions of Palestinians are living without rights, freedom of movement or a livelihood under the yoke of ongoing Israeli oppression”…They didn’t have to defend the claim. It’s perfectly obvious.

Apparently, Finkelstein’s “real world” ignores the fact that the Palestinians are not citizens of Israel, nor do they want to be. They are indeed a population under occupation. Even the road system is not based, as apartheid was, on ethnicity, but on citizenship. For safety, certain roads in the West Bank are for Israeli citizens—including Israeli Arabs. Have you noticed thus far that there’s virtually no mention of Arab terrorism that made these roads necessary? Or of the genocidal Jew-hatred taught in Palestinian schools? Finkelstein’s worldview can be so simple when he simply ignores inconvenient facts.

Shulamit Aloni – she wrote a couple of weeks ago “The U.S. Jewish establishment’s onslaught on former President Jimmy Carter is based on him daring to tell the truth which everyone knows. Through its army the government of Israel practices a brutal form of Apartheid in the territory it occupies. Everyone knows it. But in the United States, it’s very controversial. It’s even dangerous and anti-Semitic, irresponsibly provocative, foolish and unfair. In the real world, it’s a cliché. In fact the list of those who hold to the Apartheid analogy apparently includes former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who reportedly said that the Bantustan model was the most appropriate solution to the conflict. So, it seems that he is also dangerously anti-Semitic. (laughter and applause)

Again, not apartheid based on ethnicity (or, as in every Arab country, religious affiliation) but Israel’s attempt to deal with a hostile population that is unwilling to accept living in peace alongside it.

When you look at the actual documentary record on the history of the Israel Palestine conflict is how uncontroversial it was seen to be at the time….

…during the British Mandate period…roughly between 1920-1948, there were many clashes, many conflicts, between the indigenous population and the Zionist settlers. And every time there was a major clash the British would send a parliamentary team…to figure out why are the natives so restless. And, they put together beautiful reports written in the most eloquent English, replete with solid factual information… They keep saying in the reports, obviously, obviously, obviously, obviously… all the other states in the region either have or are on their way to independence. The only ones that are being denied that are the Palestinians since they called them the Arabs of Palestine. And two, it said, the Arabs of Palestine are worried because they’re afraid that when the Jews become the majority and declare a state, they’re worried about what they’re fate is going to be in that state. So, the British conclude, it’s obvious… the solution is complicated…

Which is why the British proposed partition as early as the Peel Commission in the 1930’s, which would have given the Jews of Palestine about 15% of the land and created an Arab state in most of the rest of the Mandate. The Arabs rejected the plan.

Take the case of North America. Now, the Native American resistance to Euro-American encroachment was very bloody. It was not for no reason at all that the Native Americans were called savages. It was a brutal resistance. They killed men, they killed women, they killed children. Not to say the settlers didn’t do the same. They did….They were yesterday’s terrorists and suicide bombers. What would any rational person say if looking at that resistance and asked to explain it, were told, you see, the Native Americans they were resisting because of Anti-Europeanism, (Hearty audience laughter) or Anti-Christianism, or Anti-Whiteism. (laughter) Just like you’re laughing. But the same exotic explanation about the Muslim incapacity to tolerate a successful minority amidst them….It happens to be the simple explanation, is also quite a sufficient one. You don’t need to conjure up a complicated explanation.

Finkelstein ignores the long history of minorities within Muslim countries and their status as “dhimmis”: tolerated at best, but the victims of periodic pogroms at worst. If you want to use the analogy of the Native Americans, ask what happened to the native cultures and indigenous peoples of the areas that were the subject of the great Arab conquests of the Middle East.

A second kind of illegitimate controversy is the plague of the Holocaust card – the dragging in of the Nazi Holocaust in order to justify Israel’s violations of international law in the occupied territories…. The Holocaust industry emerges after the June 1967 war. Its main purpose was to immunize Israel from criticism. Its main contribution, familiar to everyone in this room, is the claim of the Holocausts’ uniqueness. No people in the history of humanity, has ever suffered like the Jews suffered. In fact, the doctrine of uniqueness is vacuous and morally, this ranking of human suffering is an abomination. But, its purpose is pretty straight forward, namely, that if you can claim that Jews uniquely suffered during the Nazi Holocaust, then you can claim that they shouldn’t be held to ordinary notions of right and justice. You shouldn’t apply to Israel the status you’d apply to any one else because the suffering of the Jews was unique.

The way this played out historically is… that Palestinians and Arabs generally have been held directly culpable, responsible for the Nazi Holocaust or seen as lineal descendants of its perpetrators. So, at the time of the 1948 war, David Ben-Gurion called the Palestinian Arabs disciples and even teachers of Hitler. During the Eichmann trial, in 1961, the Arabs were labeled… as among the biggest Nazi war criminals and it was said the Mufti even masterminded the final solution. Ben-Gurion said the Mufti was “one of Hitler’s closest associates in this genocide.” Without going into it, this was sheer fantasy.

Of course Finkelstein doesn’t want to go into it! The Mufti, al-Hajj Amin Husseini, the uncle of Yasser Arafat, organized the “Nazi Scouts” among Arab youth, was visited in Palestine by Eichmann before the outbreak of the war, received funding from Himmler (and later toured Auschwitz with him), and spent the war years in Berlin. He wrote in his memoirs “I asked Hitler for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews.”

In 1967 during Israel’s attack on Egypt, Israel said that Abdul Nasser represented the new Hitler. And more recently, as most of you know, Israel’s apologists equated Saddam Hussein with Hitler, equating all opposition with Israel’s illegal war against Iraq with appeasement of Hitler and now it’s the turn, if you look at the current journals and magazines, now it’s the turn of Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran, all of them being called newer reincarnations of Hitler and the Nazis…. It’s hard to know what’s more laughable – the extraordinary coincidence that each new Arab leader allegedly threatened Israel is Hitler incarnate or that the threat posed to Israel is routinely compared to the Holocaust. While we are told simultaneously that the Holocaust was unique and any comparison between it and other crimes is a form of Holocaust denial. (Audience applause)

Yet Nasser himself said in 1967, “The objective will be Israel’s destruction.” Hafez al-Assad of Syria said it would be “a battle of annihilation”. Unfortunately, the Jewish people have learned to take threats of annihilation seriously.

The most recent form of this playing the Holocaust card is what’s called the new Anti-Semitism. And there are two things to be said about the new Anti-Semitism – number 1 it’s not new (laughter) and number two it has nothing to do with Anti-Semitism. Every time Israel faces a public relations debacle or international pressure is put on Israel to resolve the conflict diplomatically, in accordance with international law, Israel’s apologists orchestrate this new Anti-Semitism extravaganza. This is a good school with an excellent library… go look for your self.

Let’s take the case of Europe. We’re told that Europe is rife with Anti-Semitism. Not on the fringes – but we’re told in the heart of Europe. BBC, The Independent, The Guardian, somewhere down the line – they’re all Anti-Semitic…. How true is that? I recently picked up a decent book called “Great Shakes” by Walter L’Coure (?)… who can hardly be described as Anti-Israel, he’s one of its chief apologists. Walter L’Coure puts out a book entitled “The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism”. What does he say? “The Anti-Semitism in Europe is predominantly Muslim character”. The popular attitudes towards Jews, he says, were better in 2002 than they were in 1991….there is less Anti-Semitism than ever before…. If you listen to Abraham Foxman, he says “The condition of Jews now, is worse than at any time since the late 30’s in Nazi Germany.”

What does Walter L’Coure say?..... “It goes without saying that Anti-Semitism today is in no way comparable to the persecution of Jews of the 1930’s and 1940’s.”…. It goes without saying among the rational people, but not among those who orchestrate hysterias about the new Anti-Semitism, to shield Israel from criticism…. A few years ago, if you said that the main animus towards Jews and hostility to Jews was due to Israel’s ruthless policies in the occupied territories and the best remedy was for Israel to end the occupation, it was said that you were an Anti-Semite. You were blaming the Jews for Anti-Semitism…. You are claiming it’s the policies of the Jewish State which are creating Anti-Semitism. Now if you open up Ha’aretz, they’re marking the 58th anniversary of Israel’s founding, they invite Tony Judt, the American professor at NYU, to write about Israel’s founding on its 58th anniversary. And what does Tony Judt write?

He says, “Israel’s reckless behavior and insistent identification of all criticism with Anti-Semitism is now the leading source of Anti-Jewish sentiment in Western Europe and much of Asia. One way to take the sting out of rising Anti-Semitism would be for Israel to give the Palestinians back their land.” (applause and whistles) A perfectly sensible, rational statement, in the pages of Israel’s most influential newspaper, published on Israel’s most important day, its 58th anniversary. But in the United States, that’s called Anti-Semitism. Blaming the Jews, blaming the victims for the hostility directed against them. The purpose of this capricious, promiscuous use of the label Anti-Semitism, it’s pretty straight forward to turn the perpetrator, Israel’s apologists, into the victim – focusing on the immense suffering of Jews rather than the very real suffering of Palestinians. And secondly, to discredit all criticism of Israel as being motivated by Anti-Semitism.

One might add, it’s an important point and an important topic …that, that era of hurling these filthy epithets at anybody who dares to criticize Israel. I think that that era is coming to an end (applause). In the last couple of years, Israel has now suffered from the disaffection, of no longer just marginal Jews, but Jews at the center of intellectual and political (?) life in the United States. And when that label was used against them, they have power, and it didn’t work. They used it against Tony Judt, then non-Jews – they tried to use it against Steve Walt and John Meirsheimer and then they tried to use it against Jimmy Carter. And I think it’s fair to say it fell flat….

Here’s the core mantra of Finkelstein and the other apologists for hatred such as “Jewish Voice for Peace”: anytime they are challenged on all the lies and distortions they purvey, they resort to the charge that they’re just being called “anti-Semitic” to distract from the substance of the challenge. Get it straight, Norman: not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. But criticism that is one-sided, full of lies, and has at its core the goal of the destruction of the state of Israel IS anti-Semitic.

…the last topic – namely, the last kind of contrived controversy which has sowed confusion about the Israel Palestine conflict and in many ways, the most dispiriting. When I listened to Professor Barhoum’s introduction and he quoted me as saying, I loathe lies, and it’s true that lies do energize me. I feel sometimes like I am academia’s garbage man…First I have to identify the garbage and then I have to pick it up and throw it away. And in the case of the Israel Palestine conflict it has to be said that there are large amounts of garbage, littering not the periphery and the crackpot ends of the spectrum but regrettably at the heart of academic life in the United States…. But it’s very different on the Israel Palestine conflict because the lunacy is right at the heart of our academic life and it’s validated by our mainstream media and our public?... As everyone here knows, academia has methods of quality control….

Is that why Finkelstein has been denied tenure at 4 different universities so far?

(Some Q&A did follow the speech)

How do both Fatah and Hamas carry out terrorist acts? Why favor Fatah to divide the Palestinian people at this point?

…I don’t favor any side in this particular conflict. I devoted the evening to try to convey what the documentary record says on these questions. And I said that the documentary record show that there is a broad consensus including virtually every country in the world apart from Palou, and Tuvalu…supporting the two state settlement. So, I don’t think it’s a question of favoring one of the factions of Palestine over another…It’s none of my business. They vote for who they vote for. That’s their right not mine. I’m not choosing. All I’m saying is two things. Every side to the conflict should be held to the same principals of international law. And you can’t demand of Hamas to renounce what’s properly called terrorism but not make the same demand of Israel. And you certainly can’t demand of Hamas, that it recognize Israel unless you also demand of Israel they recognize a Palestinian state within the June 1967 borders. (Applause). …. Hamas is the legally elected government of the Palestinians and that’s their right.

Finkelstein obviously thinks of himself as an expert in international law. He should know, therefore, that the June 4 1967 lines were never internationally recognized “borders”; they were armistice lines from 1949. Certainly those countries bordering Israel (Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria) never recognized their legitimacy at the time. Again he dodges the core issue—that Hamas refuses to accept the existence of Israel within ANY borders whatsoever.

What “crime” is there that protects Israel’s existence as a “Jewish State”?

I don’t think there is any right that protects any state’s existence and any particular form. Those are separate issue. I think before 1965, the United States, had, to use the current language, the right to live in peace with its neighbors. That does not mean I support the right of the United States to be a slave state. I think those are separate issues. Israel, as a member state of the United Nations, has a right to live in peace with its neighbors… but I don’t think the right exceeds that. Nobody has an obligation to recognize Israel’s right to be a Jewish state anymore than anyone has the obligation to recognize South Africa’s right to be a white state and I certainly wouldn’t want anyone to claim United States has a right to be a Christian state. But that’s separate from the question about whether it has the right to exist in peace with its neighbors. Incidentally, this whole phrase ‘right to exist’ is a bastardization of what it originally meant. If you go back and look at the record, and I’ve examined it, it was a short form for ‘right to exist in peace with its neighbors. There’s no right to exist. And nobody’s obliged to acknowledge a right to exist, let alone a right to exist as a Jewish state. I think those are separate issues.

Yet of course 57 or so countries insist on THEIR right to exist as Islamic states.

Given that Arab terrorism, against the state of Israel began as soon as the 1948 war ended, what evidence do you have that Palestinian Arab terrorism will stop if Israel ends their “occupation” and withdraws back to the pre-1967 war (border)? (slight applause from the good guys)

…. That argument can be used with equally compelling force against first, the Zionists and then against the state of Israel. Let me explain. We’re often told… that the PLO had a stages strategy for conquering Palestine. That is to say, in 1974, they were beginning to talk about a state in the occupied territories and that was going to be a stage towards the eventual conquest of all of Palestine and the elimination of Israel. And the argument was that we can’t recognize the right of the Palestinians to a state in the West Bank and Gaza because they harbor a secret aim or desire, aspiration to the whole of Palestine. Ok, for argument’s sake, let’s say that’s true. That the secret ambition delegitimizes the Palestinian right to the West Bank and Gaza. But where did this strategy of stages come from?....

You go back to 1937 -1938 at the time that was called the Peel Commission offered the Zionist movement a tiny state in about 10% of Palestine. And David Ben-Gurion and others including Chaim Weitzmann said, ‘Let’s take it. It’ll be a stage towards the conquest of all of Palestine. In 1946-47, when the partition idea was being brooded about, Mr. Ben-Gurion and others said the same thing, ‘We’ll take what they give us and it will be a stage towards the conquest of all of Palestine.’ They said it over and over again. In fact, they harbored those same desires…. through the 1956 invasion of Sinai.

In 1967, that stages approach was realized. So if we used the argument that was just told that would mean that the UN in 1947 should not have proposed the partition resolution, because the Jews were going to use it towards a staged conquest of all of Palestine. Well, that then deligitimizes Israel’s right to be a state. If that’s the argument you want to use then that deligitimizes Israel’s right because it not only too had a stages program, it acted on it. That’s why it controls all of the West Bank and Gaza - all of Palestine. So, if that’s the argument that you’re going to use, I think you’ve undermine your own case. (Applause from the idiots who failed to notice he didn’t answer the question)

(from the questioner) Well, that wasn’t my question.

No surprise here. Finkelstein ignores the fact that Israel did not attack the West Bank in 1956, despite Jordan’s illegal acts in preventing Jewish access to the Western Wall and in demolishing centuries-old synagogues. Nor was the PLO “stages” plan a secret—it was openly trumpeted by Arafat in speeches to Arab audiences.

As a non-Mexican American or Native American am I morally obliged to leave Californian? After all, wasn’t this land acquired by force of arms?

That’s a fair question and I can only tell you what I said earlier – namely, international law has evolved. That’s why slavery is now illegal; that’s why women have equal rights, legally to men. Law changes. By that kind of argument you want to say it was admissible back then to conquer territory by war. Why isn’t it admissible now?

By that kind of logic, you should also be able to say it was admissible to enslave black people in 1865, why can’t I enslave my maid now? That’s the same kind of logic. The law changed. What was legally permissible no longer is….. And I put this in the same category. The Palestinian people live in Palestine. They have the same right to self determination and sovereignty as any other people born on their land. I just don’t think it’s complicated. (Applause and whistles) When my late mother was still alive, we used to occasionally lecture together.

She spoke on her experiences under the Nazi regime and I spoke on the Israel Palestine conflict. And we spoke before mostly Jewish audiences, in Brooklyn area, in New York City area – and as you can imagine, people were enraptured by my late mother and absolutely appalled by me. It was good cop, bad cop, with a vengeance. Once, a member of the audience summoned up the courage… to challenge the Jewish mother about her son. And he raised his hand and he said, ‘What do you think of what your son is saying?’ And she thought for a few moments and she said, ‘To my mind, the only crime the Palestinian people committed was to be born in Palestine. And I don’t think that’s a crime.”

So to close it out, he ignores all the history of Arab pogroms, Nazi sympathies, terrorism, and refusal to accept living in peace alongside Israel. At least he’s consistent.

You Might Also Like to Read:

Norman Finkelstein Biography

Norman Finkelstein Fraudulent Scholarship

Norman Finkelstein: Lies Beyond Chuzpah

Blue Truth.Net

Israel's S.H.I.T List

Self-Hating Israel-Threatening LIST

After five thousand years of Jewish history, there remain but 15 million Jews. Most have learned the lessons of the pogroms, the Holocaust and, most recently, Arab/Islamic terrorism. They are the vast silent majority.

Sadly, there are other Jews who have not learned a damn thing. They are the socialists, communists, anarchists and so-called "human rights" junkies and "peace and justice" activists. The well-being of Israel is the very least of their concerns. What they lack in number they more than make up in noise level.

Yes, a few of these Self-Hating Israel-Threatening Jews may be well-intentioned but grossly misinformed... call it brainwashed by wave after wave of anti-Israel propaganda. But most of them know the Truth but hate their heritage to such a degree that nothing else matters to them except bashing Israel right out of existence.

In an October 22, 2004 Jewish Press Letter to the Editor, Isadore Frank got it 100% right when he wrote, "Unfortunately, the vast majority of American Jews... utterly secular, thoroughly liberal, abysmally ignorant of their heritage... are beyond redemption. Not only are large numbers of them unaware or apathetic about the inroads made by "Palestinian" propaganda, many are actually in agreement, at least to some degree, with [those scurrilous] 'Palestinian' claims."

THEY ACT LIKE THE ENEMIES OF ISRAEL BECAUSE THEY ARE THE ENEMIES OF ISRAEL!

Israel is in a struggle for her very life. She is surrounded by nearly two dozen Arab countries, some of whom have already tried several times to wipe Israel out of existence. There are also over 2 million so-called Arab-"Palestinians" between Israel and the Jordan River on sacred Jewish territory and who demand statehood even as they continue to send suicide-homicide bombers to murder Jews. And there are nearly a million and a half Arabs within Israel herself --- one-fifth of the "Jewish" State's total population --- whose loyalty to that Jewish State is questionable. In other words, Israel has a "full plate" --- enemies outside, along side and within!

Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979. Yes, there has been no-war but there is also no peace. All economic, social and diplomatic contact has ceased. The Egyptian Army continues to arm themselves to the teeth and rehearse battle drills on the Sinai Desert --- territory Israel handed over to them as part of that very peace treaty!

In 1993 Israel signed a peace treaty with the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] leadership in the hopes that Yasir Arafat had enough of Jew-killing and might actually be ready to lead a "Palestinian" nation. He and his so-called "Palestinian Authority" were to be offered most of Judea-Samaria (the "West Bank"), Gaza Strip and part of holy Jerusalem in exchange for ending their long-standing thirst for Jewish blood. But the murder of Jews continued and with unbridled ferocity. The total number of Jews stabbed, machine-gunned, burned or detonated in buses, restaurants and shopping malls since that "peace" treaty has soared to nearly 1,400. Based upon a 60:1 Israel-America population ratio, this would be the equivalent of 84,000 dead Americas losing their lives --- or twenty-eight September 11th terror attacks!

Tourists are no longer visiting Israel in large numbers. Unemployment is everywhere. Israelis are fearful of murderous attacks that could come at any time and at any place. Frustration and despair are commonplace and Israel needs all the support she can get! This is NOT the time for true friends to pick and scratch and dig into any less-than-perfect action that Israel may need to take.

But the Jewish People have amongst them a disproportionate number of Self-Hating Israel-Threateners who, for reasons only a trained psycho-pathologist could possibly explain, have a sick need to conspire with the enemies of Israel. The notion of "circling the wagons" and protecting one's own is foreign to them and so they spew their venom toward Israel as they lick the boots of her enemies. These "anti-survivalist Jews reject, abase, disgrace and degrading themselves and their people. Call it a sickness or call it madness. It makes no difference. Israel pays the price for these traitors' actions.

"End the occupation," they collectively shout. "Stop settlement activities!" "End construction on the Apartheid Wall!" "Stop the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians!" "Zionism is Nazism." "Ariel Sharon is Hitler!" "Sharon is a war criminal!" "Stop the holocaust upon the Palestinian people!" "Don't treat the Palestinians the way Hitler treated you!" "Peace Now - give peace a chance!" "Land for peace!" "Create one bi-national state!" "Stop the human rights abuses!"

If anyone still wonders how the Holocaust against European Jewry could have ever happened, all he has to do is observe the behavior of today's "Judenrat" traitors. They run forth to an anti-Semitic world trying to prove that THEY are the good Jews --- not those arrogant Israelis! The Truth, however, is that these radical, leftist, academic, socialist, "progressive," enlightened know-nothings are not even worthy of the name "Jew."

Self-Hating Israel-Threatening List of nearly 8,860 Jews... as of 2-20-09. Despite what they may or may not admit, they are NOT friends of Israel. Unfortunately, they are but the "tip of the iceberg" and so Masada2000.org will continue adding names and photos. If YOU know of other disgraceful Judenrats, feel free to pass on to us their names and information as to why they should be included on this list. (They don't even have to be famous!) You will remain anonymous.





Masada 2000

Beware Palestinian Apartheid

Palestinian leader Abbas seeks to adopt racist policy based on ethnic cleansing of Jews

The Palestinian Authority is under heavy international pressure, mostly American, aimed at facilitating the transition from proximity talks to direct negotiations with Israel.

The written message recently sent by President Obama to Palestinian Chairman Mahmud Abbas indicated that the American administration is not content, to say the least, with the Palestinian foot-dragging in the peace process, or with what is perceived to be a lack of appreciation for American pressure on Israel (which led PM Netanyahu to accept the two-state solution and to temporarily freeze settlement activity in the West Bank and Jerusalem.)

However, there is no obvious fundamental change in the Palestinian stance. The PA hesitates and refrains from explicit commitment to direct negotiations without any pre-conditions. Instead, it tries to weather the American demands by raising a new proposal to convene a three-way meeting of Palestine, Israel, and America to discuss the agenda of the negotiations, its legitimacy, and the settlement cessation.

While briefing the Egyptian media in Cairo, Abbas divulged last week his version of the failure of the peace talks with former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert and his positions regarding the political settlement of the conflict. Abbas noted that he almost reached an agreement with Olmert, but the negotiations failed at the final stretch because of disagreement on the discussed land swap.

Olmert proposed 6.5% but Abbas accepted to no more than 1.9%. Abbas said that he demanded to divide Jerusalem, with the city’s eastern section handed over to the Palestinians and the western part remaining in Israeli hands, and insisted that the refugee problem must be settled in accordance with an Arab peace initiative from March 2002, and UN resolution 194. He also stressed that he will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

"I'm willing to agree to a third party that would supervise the agreement, such as NATO forces, but I would not agree to having Jews among the NATO forces, or that there will live among us even a single Israeli on Palestinian land,” he was quoted by Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency.

A state without Jews
The Palestinians intend to demand the implementation of the UN resolution regarding refugees, from a Palestinian perspective, which gives the 5.5 million refugees and their descendants the right of return and to settle in the State of Israel. In his briefing to the Egyptian media, Abbas presented this strategy and denied the Jewish character of Israel. He maintains that Israel should, in fact, become a bi-national state, but on the other hand that Palestine must become a state “clean” of Jews.

The term “Israeli” used by Abbas means “Jew,” as the PA sees Israeli Arabs, Muslims and Christians alike as an integral part of the Palestinian people. The future State of Palestine, according Abbas, must resist any Jewish presence in its territory. In other words, the PA embraces a racist policy – Palestinian apartheid – directed at Jews, based on denial of Jewish history and the cultural and religious linkage of the Jewish people to the land.

The anti-Semitism embodied in Abbas’ words refers also to his position towards the NATO observers’ force that may be deployed in the West Bank to monitor the implementation of the peace agreement with Israel. He is opposed to Jews being included in this force; meaning, he will ask Germany and all other partner countries in NATO to use their own forces in the West Bank, in an effort to the exclude any Jewish soldiers.

He didn’t explain how these countries would determine who is a Jew, whether according to orthodox Jewish laws or just if one of the parents or grandparents was a Jew. But even Saudi Arabia didn’t dare oppose the deployment of American Jewish soldiers on its land during operation Desert Storm (1990-1), and no one in Israel ever demanded to disqualify Muslim soldiers from serving in the international observers’ forces in Lebanon, the Golan Heights and Sinai.

The racist language used by Abbas is particularly despicable as it doubts the loyalty of the Jews to their country. It is for this reason that his comments call for a firm Israeli and European response.

Jonathan Dahoah Halevi is a senior researcher and fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and Director of Research at the Orient Research Group

Ynet News

Iran: Children Appeal for Help in Saving Mother from Execution

Iran: Children appeal for help in saving mother from execution
Woman convicted of having sex with two men who murdered her husband sentenced to death by stoning. Her children write letter distributed in nine languages in desperate bid to save her life

Sakine Mohammadi Ashtiani, a 40-year-old Iranian citizen, is facing death by stoning for allegedly having sex with two men who murdered her husband. In a last minute effort to save their mother, her two children issued a letter to world citizens requesting they press Tehran authorities to retract the sentence.

Ashtiani, a resident of Tabriz in Iran's northwest, has been imprisoned for five years. She was initially sentenced to 99 floggings for extra-marital sex. Her sentenced was later changed to death by stoning in accordance with Sharia laws stipulating that punishment for adultery is death by either hanging or stoning.

In their letter, which was distributed via the internet, Fasride and Sajjad Mohamamadi Ashtiani expressed their hope that waves of protest around the world, particularly by Iranian expatriates would lead authorities to retract the brutal punishment. "Help to prevent this nightmare from becoming reality. Save our mother. We are unable to explain the anguish of every moment, every second of our lives. Words are unable to articulate our fear," the letter stated. It was distributed in nine languages, including Hebrew.

'No progress made'
The mother's lawyer, Attorney Mohammad Mostafaei, said that the sentence is scheduled to be implemented soon and noted he recently met with his client and spoke to her about the punishment. "She is naturally in poor spirits. Whoever faces a death sentence goes crazy in a situation such as this."

The lawyer expressed hope that international pressure and appeals for a pardon would help rescue Ashtiani. "Unfortunately, no progress has been thus made. I hope the letters sent to the judicial authority would help and she will receive a pardon," he said.

Iran's penal law stipulates that women sentenced to stoning are buried up to their chest and then pelted with small stones until they die. The law forbids the use of stones which may cause instant death.

Letter from the Children of Sakine Mohammadi:
Protest Against our Mother’s Stoning - Do not allow our nightmare become a reality.

Today we stretch out our hands to the people of the whole world. It is now five years that we have lived in fear and in horror, deprived of motherly love. Is the world so cruel that it can watch this catastrophe and do nothing about it?

We are Sakine Mohammadi e Ashtiani’s children, Farideh and Sajjad Mohamamadi e Ashtiani. Since our childhood we have been acquainted with the pain of knowing that our mother is imprisoned and awaiting a catastrophe. To tell the truth, the term “stoning” is so horrific that we try never to use it. We instead say our mother is in danger, she might be killed, and she deserves everyone’s help.

Today, when nearly all options have reached dead-ends, and our mother’s lawyer says that she is in a dangerous situation, we resort to you. We resort to the people of the world, no matter who you are and where in the world you live. We resort to you, people of Iran, all of you who have experienced the pain and anguish of the horror of losing a loved one.

Please help our mother return home!

We especially stretch our hand out to the Iranians living abroad. Help to prevent this nightmare from becoming reality. Save our mother. We are unable to explain the anguish of every moment, every second of our lives. Words are unable to articulate our fear…

Help to save our mother. Write to and ask officials to free her. Tell them that she doesn’t have a civil complainant and has not done any wrong. Our mother should not be killed. Is there any one hearing this and rushing to our assistance?

Farideh and Sajjad Mohammadi e Ashtiani

Disseminated by the Committee Against Stoning
Mina Ahadi
+49 177 569 2413

You Might Also Like to Read:
Iranian Woman on Death Row Gets 99 Lashes for 'Immodesty'



Ynet News

Hypocrisy’s finest hour

Revelations of West’s crimes in Afghanistan highlight anti-Israel hypocrisy

In an interview with PBS earlier this year, Richard Goldstone was quite amazed by a question regarding the suspicion that he and others may, heaven forbid, adopt a double standard in respect to Israel, compared to their attitude to other states, such as the US for example.

Such claims were looked into, Goldstone said without batting an eyelid, adding that the US adopted far-reaching steps in order to protect innocent civilians in Iraq. He further noted that as opposed to Israel's war crimes and vengeful policy in Operation Cast Lead, the Americans made sure to protect innocent civilians, while apologizing in cases where they erred, for example in Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Indeed, why the hell should the “bold apartheid objector” (who, as we may recall, happened to enforce racist laws in the past and send dozens of blacks to the gallows) care about some insignificant, trivialities? For example, the fact that during Operation Just Cause in December 1989, US troops in Panama killed 300 to 1,000 civilians; or that in October 1993, a UN force (mostly comprising US units) killed more than 500 Somali civilians, while “carrying out an operation,” of course.”

Elsewhere, 460 to 2,000 civilians were killed during NATO bombings in Kosovo in 1999; in December 2004, in a campaign against Islamist forces in Iraq’s Fallujah, the Americans killed more than 6,000 civilians and obliterated about 10,000 civilian homes. Yet those who determine Israel’s guilt in advance have no use for such humdrum information.

Meanwhile, such trivialities are not at the top of David Cameron’s agenda either. And so, a day after the disclosure of 92,000 documents showing that coalition forces in Afghanistan killed hundreds of local civilians without reporting it, the new British PM found the time (of course, in Turkish PM Ergodan’s presence) to explain why Israel’s flotilla raid was “completely unacceptable,” why Netanyahu must order a “swift, transparent and rigorous inquiry” into the incident (as if Israel hasn’t done so thus far,) and why Gaza is a “prison camp” (of course, Israel’s “blockade” is at fault.)

Probes reserved for Israel
To Cameron’s credit we can say that he is merely another link in the chain of famed British hypocrisy – ranging from senior academicians, the media under the trusted BBC’s orchestration, and all the way to the cultural and artistic elite.

Nonetheless, one still needs to be more than a complete cynic and hopeless hypocrite to slam Israel a day after the Brits themselves were charged with “slightly” more serious offences than curbing the Gaza flotilla (for example, executions of Afghan civilians without a trial.)

When the spirit we see at the White House (and in Britain) is one of harsh condemnation of the disclosure of classified information, without any hint so far to an American or British need to look into the suspicions emerging from the publication, it’s a little difficult to see Cameron or Obama ordering a “swift, transparent and rigorous inquiry” into Israel’s actions.

As we all know, such probes are reserves for a very certain Mideastern state. It’s as though enlightened democratic leaders, just like “progressive” Muslim dictators (who oppress women, minorities, infidels, and in fact most of their citizenry) have trouble managing their own daily affairs without making clear to Israel how morally corrupt it is and how despicable its actions can be.

As we also know, Orwell’s animal farm was an allegory for the pre-1917 Russia and the post-revolution Soviet Union. Yet in our global farm too, “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others,” of course – for example, the US, Britain, and anything that isn’t Israel in the “unbiased” view of Goldstone, Obama, and Cameron.

In Orwell’s story, the pigs take over the farm and rule it firmly, yet in our own wonderful world - where US presidents bow to primitive kings (such as Saudi King Abdullah) yet constantly criticize the Jewish State, where Jewish judges hang blacks yet preach to Israel, and where British PMs seek to ignore findings on the killings of hundreds of civilians but feel uneasy about stopping anti-Israel flotillas – hypocrites were never doing better.

By: Shaul Rosenfeld
Dr. Shaul Rosenfeld is a philosophy lecturer



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