FYI:

"Professor Finkelstein's DePaul Farewell" (Video), Labor Beat, September 5, 2007

"Embattled DePaul Prof Agrees to Resign," Don Babwin, Associated Press, September 5, 2007
"The Finkelstein Ultimatum," Editorial, Indiana Daily Student, September 5, 2007
"Professor's 'nightmare' with DePaul is over," Dave Newbart, Chicago Sun-Times, September 6, 2007
"Finkelstein deal ends DePaul tiff," Ron Grossman, Chicago Tribune, September 6, 2007
"Illinois: Resignation In Jewish Dispute," New York Times, September 6, 2007

Wolf Blitzer -- Norman Finkelstein (Video - Date?)   

 

 

"DePaul and the Vatican's Long Leash," Linda Brayer, CounterPunch, July 3, 2007

 

Given the plethora of what's not hidden, speculating about what remains hidden (of whose details, we'll never know more than 20%, if that) doesn't seem that worthwhile to me. Tony Benn put the matter well around 2:10 of this clip.

SK:

Here's one way that a "Jewish state" won't disappear from the pages of time: "Memory and National Identity," ElectricPolitics.com, June 29, 2007 -- an interview with retired U.S. Navy Captain Ward Boston, who in 1967 was "chief counsel to the Navy's Board of Inquiry which white-washed the affair."

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

SK:

You can say that again. -- And speaking of _______: Get a load of this crap:

"Angelina Jolie Joins Council on Foreign Relations," Mary Green, People, June 7, 2007
"Angelina Wants to Save the World," Sean Smith, Newsweek, June 25, 2007

The first of these requires no comment: The right woman joins the right outfit.  In the second, it's bad enough that Newsweek insults us by referring to Jolie as an "unprecedented 21st-century entity, a tabloid star with international credibility, a 'soft news' icon commanding respect in a hard-news world."  But we also find the retired U.S. General and recent Secretary of State Colin Powell -- and infamous prevaricator before the UN Security Council about Iraq's many "weapons of mass destruction" programs and the looming threat they pose to the world -- telling us that

"She's absolutely serious, absolutely informed," says former secretary of State Colin Powell. "Her work with refugees is not something to decorate herself. She studies the issues." Powell has spoken with Jolie several times over the years, and they've been honored together at benefits for refugee causes. There is, he says, no sanctimony about her. "For her, it's not about saving the world, it's about saving kids," he says. "She doesn't need this. This needed her."

Now.   As you just pointed out, there will be no mad rush among "humanitarian"  intellectual- and celebrity-types to become crusading spokespeople for a Save Gaza campaign on the order of the several "Save Darfur" campaigns (and the like).

Nor do we need to guess which refugee camps in this world the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon or UN Goodwill Ambassador Jolie or their fellow traveller George Clooney ("If celebrity is a credit card, then I'm using it.") are likely to visit any time soon -- and which they won't.

But even less will these stars in the human rights firmament shine their light upon a Save Iraq campaign.  Or a Save Afghanistan.  And so on.

Imagine a celebrity from the United States of America exploiting her star-power to raise the consciousnesses of people to human rights and wrongs around the world, imagine her writing on the op-ed page of the Washington Post that "What the worst people in the world fear most is justice.  That's what we should deliver" -- but then imagine her directing her rhetoric at the government in Khartoum, rather than the one in Washington!

"Justice for Darfur," Angelina Jolie, Washington Post, February 28, 2007

So: Norman Finkelstein is out.  But Goodwill Angelina is in.

My god.  We are surrounded with crap at every turn.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Terror can be so sacred that the 60'th anniversary of blowing up of a building can be celebrated publicly.

Something I'm willing to bet on: you won't be seeing too many humanitarians in the US getting mixed up in the 'Save Gaza' campaign, an interview of whose co-founder, Yasmine Noor can be heard here (between minutes 12-28).

Friends:

FYA ("For your archives"): I believe that these hyperlinks will provide access to this invaluable study in its entirety (3rd Ed., 1986).

David Peterson
Chicago, USA   

 

ISRAEL'S SACRED TERRORISM

by Livia Rokach, Third Edition
A study based on Moshe Sharett's Personal Diary, and other documents.
Foreword by Noam Chomsky
Index and Foreword

   To all the Palestinian victims of Israel's unholy terrorism, whose sacrifice, suffering and ongoing struggle will yet prove to be the pangs of the rebirth of Palestine...

AAUG PRESS ASSOCIATION OF ARAB-AMERICAN UNIVERSITY GRADUATES, INC., Belmont, Massachusetts
 
First published in the United States of America by AAUG Press c1980, 1982, 1986 by the Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc. All rights reserved in the U.S. Published 1980. Third Edition 1986
 
Printed in the United States of America
 
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Rokach, Livia. lsrael's sacred terrorism. (AAUG information paper series: no. 23) (ISBN 0-937694-70-3) 

CONTENTS

Foreword by Noam Chomsky
Preface To This Edition by Naseer H. Aruri 
(preface notes) 
Introduction
Ch. 1.     Moshe Sharett and His Personal Diary
Ch. 2.     Ben Gurion Goes to Sdeh Boker: Spiritual Retreat as a Tactic
Ch. 3.     Retaliation for War
Ch. 4.     "A Historical Opportunity" to Occupy Southern Syria
Ch. 5.     Let Us Create a Maronite State in Lebanon
Ch. 6.     Sacred Terrorism
Ch. 7.     The Lavon Affair: Terrorism to Coerce the West
Ch. 8.     Nasser: Coexistence with Israel is Possible. Ben Gurion's Reply: Operation Gaza
Ch. 9.     Disperse the Palestinian Refugees
Ch. 10.                        ... and Topple Nasser's Regime

---

Appendices
1.     Operation Kibya
2.     And Then There was Kafr Qasim
3.     "Soon the Singing Will Turn Into a Death Moan"
4.     The Lavon Affair
5.     Israeli Newspaper Reveals Government's Attempt to Stop Publication of Israel's Sacred Terrorism
6.     Notes  

 

This is a serious question. I have several more --

The most prominent critics of US-Israel policy re: the Occupied Territories are either Jewish or Israel. Tanja Reinhart, e.g. And the country's abuses are well documented by B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights agency. (As to the relevant facts, they aren't controversial anywhere outside US universities--Shlomo Ben-Ami, is very open for the most part, e.g. He also apologies for every crime, but doesn't dispute well established facts, to his credit. In this country you can't even speak truthfully about facts, let alone take a principled stand.)

Friends:

FYI: "Finkelstein case: Academic freedom loses to Israeli lobby," Matthew Abraham, Electronic Intifada, June 25, 2007.

As a member of the Academics For Justice group reminded everyone in circulating this commentary, "note that Abraham is an untenured teacher at DePaul, which means that he is putting his money where his mouth is with this piece.  Would that all faculty were as courageous."

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SK:

A pull-quote from Michael Shermer tells us that "Scientists' wrongness attenuates with time." I've often used a bridge-building metaphor to contrast human undertakings in the real world versus the cynically concocted but upwardly-mobile worlds of various charlatan-types. If an undertaking is reality-based, reality will test its merits; and if the engineer's bridge isn't designed well-enough, reality will prove this by its eventual collapse into the canyon below. On the other hand, if an undertaking isn't reality-based, even the most flawed and structurally unsound bridges will resist gravity, and last nearly forever. At least, that is, until the people who in the first place were stupid enough to believe in these faulty bridges decide that enough is enough and stop believing in them.

Of course, one problem is that I am not certain which set is the greater of the two (or more): The one that contains sound bridges and sound bridges only? Or the ones that contain all of the many unsound bridges that charlatan-types try to sell us?

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Hehe, always a source of amusement. Here's an interesting recent essay that discusses "philosophical bombast", "cloudiness", "belief that philosophical murkiness signals philosophical profundity", "philosophical babble", "muddy tomes", and above all what does not "merit mention, much less discussion".

Plus, some thoughts on what might constitute "wronger than wrong".

SK & JD Casten:

Be sure to check out these:

"Can Derrida Be 'Even Wrong'?" Mark Liberman, Language Log, September 29, 2003
"Postmodern Essay Generator" (Homepage)

In the first, we read about a "parlor game" that involves the writings of Jacques Derrida.  "The point [of the game] was that Derrida's admirers are generally unable to distinguish his pronouncements from their opposites at better than chance level, suggesting that the content is a sophisticated form of white noise. On this view, as Wolfgang Pauli once said of someone else, Derrida is 'not even wrong'."  (PS. The author hyperlinks to an electronic version of Giovanna Borradori's 2003 book of "dialogues" with Derrida and Jurgen Habermas: "Philosophy in a Time of Terror," another hardcore exercise in systematic distortion -- though in Habermas' case, not simply noise.) 

In the second, every time you click on the hyperlink, your computer will be directed to a never-before-existing, syntactically sound text with a fictitious title and author that parrots the post-modern style of "discourse."  (Somebody's software program generates these things on the nonce.  No matter how many times you click-on the hyperlink, a novel text -- at least I believe they're all novel -- is generated that contains passages which are more or less indistinguishable from the most enlightened "discourse" of some of the world's leading post-modern text-generators.)

David Peterson
Chicago, USA 

Uffekaels, could you perhaps use your website photo skills in sharing more uplifting images from Israel next time.

Oh and btw, we don't hate Israelis or Jews, we hate the policies of Israel. Two very different things. Naturally I can't stand Israelis or Jews (or anybody else) that carry out massive crimes of oppression, terrorism and state-terrorism. So when Jews do that, I can't stand them. Despite what you seem to believe, that does not reflect on all Jews. Just as the Arab world doesn't hate all Americans. What they do hate however, is US policy. Not a huge fan of Nazism either, to put it very mild, but that doesn't mean that I hate all Germans. It's a very simple principle, but somehow it's lost on you and your ilk. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

Good Riddance! Not much else to say really. Your comments are so far beyond reality, and so narcissistic, they don't deserve an answer. Your line is basically Jews are worthy human beings, Arabs are not. Jews can kill Arabs with impunity. If Arabs kill Jews they are terrorists. That is the essence of your arguments. Not particularly well wrapped up either, as we all can see. I suggest you have a read through international law. When you're done with that, you can start lecturing your fellow Zionists. Perhaps miracles indeed can happen, and they will stop oppressing people. Hey, dreaming is allowed... Pangaea Oslo, Norway

SK:

I have no doubt that Norway is a very decent country overall.  And the sanctions imposed on the Occupied Palestinian Territories after the wrong side won the "free and fair" elections of January 2006 was criminal. 

But in case you want to have a really good laugh, check out:

The Failed States Index Scores 2007, Fund for Peace, June 19, 2007

My goodness.  Where to begin dissecting a project such as this? 

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Well, yes, good to see you go. But you're far from correct in thinking that you're the only "interloper"; you must not be too familiar with the ZNet blogosphere. However, you do deserve congratulations for being the most sophisticated graduate of the Strom Thurmond College of Disruption. I hope your handlers give you a commendation (they won't give you money until you promise to kill somebody), citing your coy conciliatory approach and your generally good manners, which should have made you more appealing. Alas, it slowly became apparent that you're just like all the rest of your ilk; metaphorically speaking (pardon me, it's my style!), you'd spend some time stomping a homeless man to death if he managed to grab your wallet. I hope you know your handlers don't care for you any more than they do for me or for the homeless man; that's what rightwingers are like, fickle, violent, and immoral. You should put them behind you (like Christ did with Satan when Satan showed him all the kingdoms of the world) and move on.

Saudi Arabia for one. So you actually claim that a country that has freedom of religion is a religious state but that Saudi Arabia and others that have no freedom of religion and laws based on religion are not? What planet are you from? And by the way, when one starts a war and loses, the losing party DOES NOT have the right to return to the land an make believe that they never started a war. There are no "do overs" in war. The only reason the Pals don't have a state is because ARABS attacked the Jewish state and REJECTED partition. Can you ever understand this? Does this mean anything to you? Arabs attacked again in 1967 and 1973 and lost again. Land that Jordan and Egypt occupied was captured. What you want is the "no liability war." We attack you, we lose, but you give us back everything. We try again. If we lose, you give us back everything. Only in your planet does this happen.

Every country has laws on immigration and who can be a citizen. Japan allows only Japanese to be citizens. I'm sure if we dig a bit about Norwegian immigration and citizenship laws it would not be that open. Judaism is a people and a culture and a religion, just like any other group. This is where most of you here seek to delegitimize Israel's right to exist. You can read what Martin Luther King said about anti-Zionism (look up his speech in 1968).

Of course you deny also that Jews, Jews in Palestine have been in the region for 1000s of years, and are thus native indigenous inhabitants, they did not "just come from nowhere." So too are Palestinians Arabs. Earlier this century it became clear that the best solution was a separate state for each (actually 2 for the Arabs, we must include Jordan). Most people on this board don't agree that the Jewish Palestinians deserve a state. The fact that this state grants citizenship to other Jews is their business. All states have strict rules on who and who cannot be a citizenship (see example about Japan as well). The fact is, you deny to these Jewish Palestinians who have been in Palestine before Islam was born, what you would agree all other people's deserve.

If this board were representing Palestinians in negotiating with Israel there would not be really anything to negotiate. Except the terms of Israel's destruction. At least I now know what we are dealing with here. Pretty scary. Farewell, it has been interesting to post comments in the twilight zone. This will be my last post, I am sure you will gleefully comment about my good riddance. You can continue to post with each other and obsess about how much you hate Israel without every a dissenting comment (I think I am probably the only "interloper" on this board). Hopefully one day you will actually visit Israel, spend some time with the people there, both Jewish and Arab and Christian and Druze and you will understand the nation and the culture. I doubt anyone of you has actually been to Israel and the region. When the hatred ends, perhaps we will have 2 states in peace.

Any army deliberately attacking civilians = war crime/state terrorism

Civilians dying as a result of targetting legitimate military targets = legitimate (if not, then all of WWII and every war in history is state terrorism). You basically believe Israel deliberately targets, as its end goal and true aim, to kill civilians. Most people recognize that this is not the case, they may say Israel is taking unnecessary risks, but Israel is in fact targetting the people trying to kill its own civilians.

I am glad you agree that the Qassams and Katyushas are war crimes. Israel does not hide its military hardware or locations "hidden in civilian areas." Show me any evidence of this (or just spend some time in Israel). Only hezbollah and hamas do this, very well documented.

We can explore this alleyway of thinking at some other time (not that these "eternal questions" will ever go out of vogue ;). 

For now, imho, time and energy are better expended on working toward resolution of worldly matters like the one Norman Finkelstein's work spread over two decades is all about. 

SK & JDCasten:

Thanks for the links.  (See the paragraph I've excerpted below.)

David Held's book is a very fine one -- no doubt about it.  I've never seen the one by Mark Taylor.  But I do find labyrinths to be incredibly interesting. Used to draw some wicked ones myself -- 1000-times better than Robert Morris' (1974).  And completely free of any pretensions deriving from the Artworld and my place within it.  Wish that I could reproduce them here.

A final point, something I've written about elsewhere (e.g., in a discussion in Z Papers, ["Rationality/Science"] and the last chapter of Year 501 ["The Third World at Home"]). There has been a striking change in the behavior of the intellectual class in recent years. The left intellectuals who 60 years ago would have been teaching in working class schools, writing books like "mathematics for the millions" (which made mathematics intelligible to millions of people), participating in and speaking for popular organizations, etc., are now largely disengaged from such activities, and although quick to tell us that they are far more radical than thou, are not to be found, it seems, when there is such an obvious and growing need and even explicit request for the work they could do out there in the world of people with live problems and concerns. That's not a small problem. This country, right now, is in a very strange and ominous state. People are frightened, angry, disillusioned, skeptical, confused. That's an organizer's dream, as I once heard Mike say. It's also fertile ground for demagogues and fanatics, who can (and in fact already do) rally substantial popular support with messages that are not unfamiliar from their predecessors in somewhat similar circumstances. We know where it has led in the past; it could again. There's a huge gap that once was at least partially filled by left intellectuals willing to engage with the general public and their problems. It has ominous implications, in my opinion.  (Noam Chomsky, On "Theory" and "Philosophy", ZNet (no date).  Also see the document at "Rationality/Science," Z Papers, 1995.)   

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Postscript. For the record, in the real world, both David Held and Jurgen Habermas are New Humanitarians.  This point is worth remembering, I believe. 

This is a common line from the racist party here in Norway btw (FrP). "Ooh, the Muslims are going to take over the country, they have a plan you see. They will take over the whole of Europe. Soon we will be the minority and they'll exchange the constitution with sharia laws". Utterly silly, but disturbingly many people seem to fall for it. We can then compare with what the Israelis have of rockets and WMD, such as the Lance or Jericho systems. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

Israeli Army v Civilians = State-terrorism People resisting occupation = Legitimate Attacking people in civilian locations = war crime and state-terrorism Quassam/Katyushas randomly fired on Israel = terrorism & war crime (depends on the target. Terrorism if aimed at civilians, legitimate resistance if aimed at military location (often hidden in civilians areas btw)) Attacking locations where rockets are fired at you = not legitimate (in fact a war crime) Attacking people shooting rockets = legitimate Attacking people you suspect of shooting rockets = not legitimate Pangaea Oslo, Norway

I'm starting to wonder what planet you are from, but let's put that aside. "Israel evacuated Gaza and Lebanon". Err yes. Nazi Germany evacuated Western Europe in 1944-45. Israel OCCUPIED Lebanon, and finally ended MOST of that occupation in 2000. They OCCUPIED Gaza for almost 40 years, and ended that direct occupation. There is however no doubt that Israel de facto still occupies Gaza. Palestinians can hardly sleep without a permission from the Israelis. Fishermen are sunk outside the coast etc etc. I shouldn't have to tell you about the situation there.. And to the broader picture: we can look at the size of Israel and "Palestine" today compared with the Mandate. Would you say what Israel has done is just and fair? Do I think the Jews had a right to a Jewish state in 1947-48? No. Do I think Israel today has a right to exist? Yes. Israel is the only religious state in the world. In no other country can you claim citizenship just by being a certain religion. Most countries today have strong restrictions on who can get citizenship. But in Israel it's enough to simply be Jew. Nothing else matters. Isn't there something wrong with that? There are some very simple facts here. Israel occupies Palestinian land. They should give it back. People driven out of their homes in 47-48 have the right of return in international law. Of course they should be able to return. Israel left Gaza and a few 'settlements' on the West Bank, while severely increasing (thickening) other settlements on the WB. Do you not think Palestinians see this? They are not blind, nor stupid. They can see the 'settlements' expanding with their own eyes. There is basically one thing the Palestinians want: their land back. What's so hard to understand about that? If I was your neighbour and put up a fence across the middle of your property and called it mine - would you want it back or not? Pangaea Oslo, Norway

SK— Does science have the ability to frame itself? Is there a science of science? Maybe one could make such a broad characterization of science, that any critical activity could be called science—any way of asking questions and thinking about answering them. Scientists have theories, do they not? And, usually they try to verify them through experiment. But what about theories about theories? How do you verify those? And in many ways Critical Theory is scientific. Rather than saying something like, “Critical Theory is exactly what doesn't lead to its conception”—that Critical Theory is a rejection of very history that has led to it (the rebellion of the “now” against the past that has shaped it)—we could point out that the absolutely complex and concrete material reality—say all the subatomic particles of the universe—all this cannot even be mentioned or talked about without abstracting and generalizing in some way. Any way of communicating will always be at least a little abstract, and therefore will miss part of the complex object communicated about. To realize this “truism”—that science is a hopeless failure to make always true generalizations about the complexity of what “is,”—and to see that to be a “theory-free” science, one would have to hold their tongue in silence—does not mean that the tools of science are not useful: when used in specific circumstances. Honestly, I'm not familiar enough with Derrida and Chomsky, despite reading a bit by and about (and from) them, to know how to relate them. Derrida might claim of older Chomsky linguistic theory, that his “grammar-trees” assume that a full thought is “present” before it is articulated… as if we don't change what we're thinking or saying in mid-sentence. The half-word “um” is very telling. But I've learned much from both of these thinkers—enough to know that trashing one from the perspective of the other is a bunch of B.S. My advice, concerning Pomo, is that if you can use it, use it; if not, use something else. It simply offers a box of tools to use, that one must be careful lest they turn you into the tool of pomo. Most of the tools are available elsewhere (as Chomsky notes)—but sometimes one doesn't fully know what one is using, until it becomes unfamiliar for awhile—like the old saying attributed to the Chinese Zen master Ch'ing yuan Wei-hsin: Thirty years ago, before I began the study of Zen, I said, 'Mountains are mountains, waters are waters.' After I got insight into the truth of Zen through the instructions of a good master, I said, 'Mountains are not mountains, waters are not waters.' But now, having attained the abode of final rest, (that is, Enlightenment) I say, 'Mountains are really mountains, waters are really waters.' (quoted from:All Things Zen)

That's how Katha Pollitt put it:

Let's say a group of Americans decide that they would like to live where they believe their ancestors lived 2,000 years ago, even though other people have been living there for centuries and don't like the idea one bit. If these people were Cajuns who wanted to park themselves in the Bois de Boulogne, everyone would think they were out of their minds. If they were American blacks taking over swatches of Ghana, people--including many black people--would laugh at their historical pretensions and militaristic grandiosity. It would certainly be a relevant point that these settlers are not displaced persons or refugees--they have perfectly good homes already. But once again, God changes everything: The former Brooklynites, Philadelphians and Baltimoreans now camping out in "Judea" and "Samaria" (the West Bank to you) wave the Bible and the Israeli government lavishes on them all sorts of privileges--cheaper mortgages, income tax breaks, business development and housing grants--with results that are disastrous for Israel and Palestinians alike and that now threaten the peace of the entire world. In a recent front-page story, the New York Times treated the longing of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to return to their homes in Israel proper as a psychological obstacle to their forging any kind of rational future, individual or collective, and maybe it is--maybe it would be better for them to forget the old homestead and demand reparations. But at least the old woman mourning a sewing machine left behind when she fled Beersheba fifty years ago really, personally owned that sewing machine; the family picnicking year after year in the ruins of its former property has living memories of farming that plot of land. It is not a notional "ancestral" possession supposedly guaranteed in perpetuity by God. In this case, the religious fanaticism is not coming from the Muslims.

This is the same philosopher Michel Foucault who was taken for a ride by Iranian theocrats and Polish Catholics
you're speaking of? (Not that I don't enjoy some of his insights, but as his intellectual grandfather Nietzsche put it, these are but a side dish to science).

No. Do the Christians have the right to an independent state? The Buddhists? The Mormons? The "state" has not been defined by religion or race for centuries, at least not respectably so. Ever since the period Europeans call the Enlightenment (if not earlier), the "state" has been understood as a community of humans of any description. Usually, countries that break this rule are ostracized. Israel's insistence on its Jewish identity is an alien concept to the majority of Jews. Very few Jews actually choose to live there, even with unchallenged citizenship.

_

Or 'discussion about "theory" and "philosophy"'.

RE: “Authentic” post-structuralist thought—there may be none that is “authoritative,” that a single “author” may claim mastery of… but some real human beings, like Michel Foucault (who got the better of Noam Chomsky in their debate IMO— do we really KNOW enough about human nature to use it as a foundation for much of anything?)—and Jacques Derrida (who was a very kind man)—these real human beings often had tremendous insight, and quite rigorous critique, if one takes the time to study them. There are parallels with non-post-structuralist thinking too: the shift from phenomenalogical-foundationalist thinking to differential-relativist thinking in pomo is also like the 20th century epistemological shift from representational-correspondence thinking to stratification-coherence thinking (e.g. words defined not by relating them to objects, but by explaining them with more words—or rather: Context shapes how everything is perceived (even citing geometry is a context)). Post-structuralists are often difficult to read, because they often self-consciously try to enact their theories in their writing (e.g. if you believe language is fundamentally about allusions, use allusions in your writing). They would see others as being used by the structures of language, rather than self-consciously using the language, etc. Three clear reasonable books on the topic: For the Frankfurt School: Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas – by David Held For Post-Modernism: Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations – by Steven Best & Douglas Kellner For Deconstruction: Erring: A Postmodern A/Theology – by Mark C. Taylor

SK:

In answer to the reporter's question, "What took the Dallas journalists so long to catch on?" two plausible explanations (each of which is a mirror image of the other) are (a) that there was no previously existing precedent-class of actual journalists in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, so that yet another non-journalist merely added one more to the class of non-journalists; or (b) that there is no real difference between the class of journalists and the class of con-men and con-women, so long as members of both classes can generate text. 

It's something like this, I'm sure. 

Reminds me of the time Alan Sokal succeeded in publishing his phony post-structuralist essay in Social Text.  Since there never was -- nor ever will be -- a precedent-class of authentic post-structuralist thought, how the hell were the editors possibly going to tell that Sokal's submission was a fake?

Sort of like the books that Oprah Winfrey recommends to her club. Or arguments over the character of Spiderman.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

The point is that the 100% that the Palestinians want is the right of return, literally meaning that 3.5 million Pals get to go into Israel and go back to their homes. This practically means the end of Israel and of course will never be agreed to. So your 90% comment makes no sense.

I read Finkelstein's Dennis Ross critique, his first point tells the story:

"Ross's execution of this debunking and truth-telling enterprise, however, is problematic. His account of the peace process is based almost entirely on his memory and notes. Its authority derives chiefly from the fact that he was the "point person" (p. 106) for the Clinton administration on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Yet his "inside story" of the Camp David negotiations differs fundamentally on crucial points from what other participants have said and written."

Of course anything anyone writes is based on "memory and notes." This does not make it wrong or "problematic". He then adds that this differs from what others have "said and written" (which presumably Finkelstein agrees with) -- same thing as memory and notes, right? Thus the only thing "problematic" about Ross is that it contradicts Finkelstein and it pisses him off. Then I see no evidence of anyone else's memory or notes, just minutia trying to dispute Ross's assertions. Ross was the main US negotiator, NO ONE except the main Israeli and Palestinian negotiator know as much, not you, me or Finkelstein. Only what the Pal and Isr negotiator write their books will we know more.

Sorry Ross places most of the blame on Arafat. So do the Saudis (see a prior listing, let me know if you need the evidence) if you need another data point from one of the leading Arab nations. Let's see Finkelstein debunk the Saudi point of view.

Israel evacuated Gaza and Lebanon and that happened is that rocket and other attacks increased. Don't you think chances of peace would shoot through the roof if the Arabs side maintained peace after Israel left? Please answer this question. Do you expect Israel to unilateraly evacuate a third time and hope for peace? No, there has to be a negotiation whereby Israel gives up land for peace. This was the point of UN 242 and still is what needs to happen today. It worked for Egypt and Jordan. Israel still waits for someone on the Palestinian side who accepts this formula. I hope to god Abbas is the person and somehow it can be pulled through (My hope is that somehow an agreement with Abbas for a West Bank state for peace is completed... Hamas will have no choice but to join in peace once this West Bank state is formed with worldwide support... I realize this is all unlikely).

The rockets by Hamas can be traced back to Hebron Massacre of 1929 where Palestinian Arabs murdered 67 Jews in an unprovoked assault. Very well documented. The reason I say you can trace it back is that the goal was the same: To rid the entire land of Jews. This is what they wanted in 1929 and this is the goal of Hamas today. This is why the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the leader of the Pal Arabs in the 1940's collaborated with Hitler. It is all part of the same arc.

We have been debating for a while, I ask you one question:

Do you believe that the Jewish people, (who have had an unbroken presence in the region since before Islam was even born, and who are thus as much native indigenous inhabitants as Palestinians) have a right to an independent state in the region? YES OR NO. I know you believe that the Palestinians do. YES OR NO. Simple question.

Israel will be destroyed in the same manner that South Africa was "destroyed" in 1994 or perhaps it will be more like how the state I live in was "destroyed" couple of years ago (I only learned about this last year) when the ethnic balance shifted to make the erstwhile majority a minority.

Note to white people of paranoid persuasion in Maryland, Mississippi, Georgia, New York and Arizona: Your state will soon be "destroyed" as well.

Finkelstein has written an interesting article about Ross's The Missing Peace: http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=989.

There's some useful information about the Palestinians' rights and demands that demonstrates the falseness of your sweeping statement that "What the Palestinians want is 100% of all their demands, which can never happen. So if we wait for this to happen, there will never be peace, since 100% of what they want is the end of Israel."

By the way, does your statement imply that if "the Palestinians" get, say, 90% of "what they want" 90% of Israel will be destroyed?

Some pictures of qassam rockets:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"You think if the US forced Israel to leave every inch of Gaza and WB there would be peace?" Chances of peace would shoot through the roof compared with now. For starters, the US could stop protecting Israel in the UN and stop giving them "aid" of about 3 billion dollars a year. They could cut off or drastically reduce the arms deals. In short, stop treating Israel as a US offshore military base, and treat it like any other country in the world. Have it ever struck you that perhaps the rocket attacks from the Palestinians may be retaliations for the 40-year long occupation and oppression? Pangaea Oslo, Norway

True. Not everybody has shown the same hatred for democracy as the US and EU. There has also been contact between the Norwegian officials and the US officials (or diplomats or whatever we should call them), so that the US know what Hamas is saying, and so forth. Just as in Iraq (with the resistance), I'm sure the US are in contact with Hamas in some way or another. If nothing else, they are getting the word from Norway in this instance. Now Rice have apparently opened up the coffers again for the new Palestinian government (couldn't bare to see the press conference as I'd just be too upset by the lies and double standards). I'm not too much into the Palestinian constitution, but a guy from PRIO (Peace Research Institute in Oslo) said a few days ago that according to the constitution, Hamas (the Palestinian government) should have had control over the security forces, not Fatah (the President). So that could mean the recent "show-down" in Gaza is actually justified by the Constitution. I'm just paraphrasing what he said though, I'm not sure what the facts actually are. Worth looking into though. Also instructive to see how the US has navigated between the presidency and the government. When Arafat was president, they had connection with the government (if we can call it that). Then their guy won the presidential election, and Palestinians voted the wrong way so that Hamas won the cabinet, so the US shifted 'trust' over to the president. Now there is a new government in place (sort of), and Abbas is weakened, so now the US will shift their focus over to the government again. A quote I rather like, as it reflects the truth shortly and neatly: "The US has interests, not friends" The same is true of virtually every country, of course, but it's especially obvious in the US case. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

Given Moran's specialty is "Public Diplomacy" and the numerous Journalism and Press Club awards he's won, I'm not surprised. I came across this delicious local story about an annual Journalism "award" last night. Whatever became of "journalism ethics"?

SK:

Yeah.  Salam Fayyad looks just like what the Doctor ordered.

And on top of it, get a load of this crap:

"'Hamastan' Takes Shape on the Gaza Strip," Michael Moran, Newsweek online, June 15, 2007 

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

This is the same Michele Montas who seemed to sing "an ode to the joys of free speech rather than the corruption of power" in an earlier life. A sobering tale in its own right.

In other ways too, there are several "Design Patterns" of imperialism that can be divined in both Haiti and Palestine (or in other parts of the Thrid World, for that matter). The favored candidate of the bearers of the White Man's Burden was a former World Bank/IMF functionary parachuted in to take over, but who lost out to popular leadership. Yet, patient application of other patterns from the catalog of dirty tricks allowed his ilk to be restored to its rightful place in the satrapy. Norman Solomon has done fine work on the patterns of delusion in the Imperial metropolis, but it would be neat if phases of the "spin cycle" in the hinterland could also be named, so that such infamies could be dealt with in a more structured manner, without the need for reinventing the wheel at every "intervention". Here's an early pattern that is still applied thousands of years after it was first delineated.

Pangaea:

Yes.  Of course.  (In answer to your initial question.)

Documents such as Alvaro de Soto's End of Mission Report (May, 2007) are important not because we can't see for ourselves what he's talking about taking place on the ground.  For example, nobody needs to tell us that the mythical "Quartet" and "Road Map to Peace" are fraudulent and simply the latest in a long series of ruses stringing along the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without any intent on settlement.  Or that "even-handedness has been pummelled into submission in an unprecedented way since the beginning of 2007" -- though de Soto's calendar does appear to be off by at least 35 years.  

But the document is important because it's internal.  So inside the world's leading multilateral organization with the responsibility for maintenance of international peace and security, a Special Envoy with a specific portfolio is complaining that the outcomes are being steered toward more conflict rather than negotiations and peace, and that in this instance, Culprit No. One is the United States and the control that it exercises over the General Secretariat.

Still.  Despite The Guardian's having performed the public service of posting a copy of the de Soto document to its website, very few news reports have been generated on the basis of it (e.g., after The Guardian's, I've caught wind of reports in the Financial Tmes, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post), and this at a time when the Gaza penal colony is exploding.  Asked at a UN news conference what the Secretary-General had to say about the document, Ban Ki-moon's spokeswoman Michele Montas complained that it was "deeply regrettable" that the report evensaw the light of day (see June 13). 

  Question: But what Mr. de Soto says here though is that the Secretary-General did not allow him to speak with the Palestinians and Syrians, and that the current violence that's going on within the Palestinian situation is the result of the fact that the Secretary- General has supported the US, which has taken the side of Israel, and has not been an independent party.
  Michele Montas: I will not comment on the contents of the report. It is a confidential report addressed to the Secretary-General. I will not comment on that.

I suspect that had de Soto reached more positive conclusions, Montas would have found it within herself to say a lot more.   

The previous Secertary-General also was horrible, no doubt about it -- but he did a remarkably good job of advocating for the agenda of successive Washington regimes. -- For two quick takes on the previous Secretary-General: 

"'Power Harnassed to Legitimacy'," ZNet, September 2, 2004
"Principals of World Order II," ZNet, October 5, 2004

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

 

There seems to be nothing but bad news coming out of the Middle East. TRUE

Thankfully for the Israelis the rockets of the Palestinians hit more or less random targets, so the chances of taking lives are quite low. TRUE. But still a war crime. Intent (i.e. trying to kill civilians as an end to itself) is the key here. Also thankfully for the Palestinians, as a high body count in Israel forces the government to react, and show that they are protecting their citizens. Retaliating against Hamas usually and tragically means civlians dead as Hamas/Quassam use civilians areas for their attacks, a war crime.

If Europe had any balls, they could have played a positive role. TRUE

Peace seems more distant than perhaps ever. TRUE

As always, Palestinians suffer for the lack of political will among the powers that be. TRUE, especially as political pawns of all the arab states since 1948.

The US holds the key. NOT SURE HOW. You think if the US forced Israel to leave every inch of Gaza and WB there would be peace?

If you want to see wiping out, check out Hamas and Fatah fighting, which has killed more Pals than Israel has killed in 2 years ! If Israel wanted to "wipe out all the arabs", one F16 could kill about 50,000 in a day. Why is it then that 23 Israeli soldiers died in Jenin fighting in close combat, why not just bomb the town to bits? Why did Israelis die in Bint Jbail in close combat, why not flattern the town? WHY? Because the policy is NOT to bomb random civilians. Yes, civilians (many) die in war, especially when Hezbollah and Hamas attack and hide in civilian locations. Israel has a tragic choice, take the rockets, or fight back. Either way civilians are the losers, Israel has decided to protect its civilians.

Israeli Army v Terrorists (Hezbollah/Hamas) = Asymetric warfare

Terrorists attacking from and hiding in civilian locations = war crime

Attacking terrorist hiding in civilian locations = tragedy for both sides

Quassam/Katyushas randomly fired on Israel = terrorism & war crime

Attacking locations where rockets are fired at you = legitimate

 

Not every government has chosen to turn a blind eye to suffering.

There seems to be nothing but bad news coming out of the Middle East. Let's hope, for both sides, that Israel doesn't attack the Gaza Strip once again. As expected rocket attacks against Israeli civilians will increase, as will killings in the OT. Thankfully for the Israelis the rockets of the Palestinians hit more or less random targets, so the chances of taking lives are quite low. The same cannot be said about the missiles from the Israeli side. Very hard to find any good news in this hellhole called the Middle East. Peace seems more distant than perhaps ever. The US holds the key, but they are hellbent on supporting Israel. As long as they do that, there will not be peace in the Middle East. If Europe had any balls, they could have played a positive role, but they don't. As always, Palestinians suffer for the lack of political will among the powers that be. They should all be ashamed of themselves. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

Much better to just wipe out all Arabs right? Get rid of the problem once and for all and be done with it. You've already 'ghettoed' them up, so it should be quite straightforward. And if some of them should get a crazy idea of trying to resist, you will label them as terrorists, and increase the attacks. A little fact to keep in mind: Military v Military = War Military v Civilians = State-terrorism Civilians v Military = Resistance Civilians v Civilians = Terrorism Pangaea Oslo, Norway

Yes, it is only 100s of rockets and only one village Sderot, why should Israel attack? They left almost 2 years ago, there is not a single Jew in Gaza, a good test to see how Hamas could run Gaza. So far they have managed to kill more Palestinians that Israel has since they left Gaza. How ironic. Hamas's next step was to launch quassams against Israeli towns. Pretty much everyone in the whole world agrees this is totally dumb, and pretty much a war crime. Hamas is already beleived to have weapons that can reach larger towns, Ashkelon. According to certain perverse logic, Israel can only retaliate in "proportion." So only after Hamas hits with a REALLY lethal attack can Israel retaliate...but using not more force, got to be proportional, right? If it was YOUR village, imagine any village in Europe or the US, or Syria for that matter, you can bet the attacking village would be leveled, no concern for proportionality. But here if Israel plans an attack (of course who knows if this report is true or not, but no matter), they have every right to. What you should really be sorry about is that Abbas, the only party with a true desire to negotiate with Israel, is losing power, while Hamas, who's charter calls for the end of Israel (De Soto's report which you talk about agrees that Hamas' charter is disgusting) is gaining power.

Friends:

FYI: For two very fine commentaries, followed by a very important news item:

"Crocodile Tears: The Gaza Cage," Uri Avnery, CounterPunch, June 16/17, 2007
"Those who denied poll result were the real coup plotters," Peter Beaumont, The Observer, June 17, 2007
"Israel plans attack on Gaza," Uzi Mahnaimi, Sunday Times, June 17, 2007

Evidence once again -- and for the millionth time at least -- that the chief scourge plaguing both the Israelis and the Palestinians is the enduring policy toward this region and its peoples of successive U.S. regimes for close to 40 years already.  Not to mention the rabid Americans who advocate for these policies.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

SK:

Yeah. Perry Anderson's review of the two recent tracts on Kofi Annan is strong work indeed.  I even quoted it in something that is forthcoming this October. 

The ten-year tenure of Kofi Annan as UN Secretary-General was the absolute nadir in the history of the General Secretariat. 

Though how much lower things will go from here, in the name of Ban Ki-moon, is anybody's guess.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

On this board Israel is a nazi country, right? Never any mistakes by the Arabs. The biggest mistake in Israeli history was building settlements. Stupid then and still stupid. Having 8,000 settlers in Gaza was ridiculous. The retaliation against Hezbollah was a mistake, although justified, a response not just to "capturing soldiers" but to firing Katyushas at civilians a war crime. Who are you in safe Oslo to say what is a "proportional" response? I assure you if rockets are fired at Oslo you will not sit and think about a proportional response, you will respond with as much force as you can to stop it. But yes, still as mistake, Israel did a terrible job understanding the consequences of its attacks. Israeli society discrminates against its 20% Arab population, similar to discimination against Blacks in US, Muslims in France, Gypsies in much of Europe, Koreans in Japan, etc. Not justified though and a big mistake and problem in Israel. The checkpoints in WB need to be more humanely managed, although with suicide bombers always a concern, it is a tough balance, but still Israel has to put more resources to make this better, to correct this mistake. Israel should have provided Abbas much more support over the last year, part of the problem is the imcompetence of the Olmert government, the worst in many years. MANY MANY mistakes.

Let's look at some Arab/Palestinian mistakes. The first was rejecting the UN partition plan in 1948 creating a Jewish and Arab state. After numerous reports and studies, the British and UN figured out (as we still know today), that 2 states was the right solution. The Arabs rejected this 2 state solution and attacked the new Jewish state, and lost. The Arabs made a mistake by not allowing Jews to have 13% of the Palestine Mandate as a state (87% was given to Arabs, including Jordan). They have been trying to undo this mistake for 60 years.

Another mistake was Egypt and Jordan occupying Gaza and WB from 1948 to 1967. This would have been a great time to create a Palestinian state. The next mistake was blockading Israel's port and calling for its destruction in 1967, and Jordan's unprovoked attack against Israel from the WB. If this war was not launched by Arabs (and again in 1973), Gaza and WB would still be free of Israel, and could still have been used to create an independent Palestinian state. After the 1967 war, Israel offered ALL of Gaza and WB back to the Arabs in return for peace. The Khartoum resolution was another mistake, the Arabs responding to Israel with "no recognitio, no peace, no negotiations" (the order might be reversed). Another mistake is for the entire Arab world to let the Palestinians live in poverty from 1948 and on, at the same time Israel absorbed 800,000 Jews expelled from all the Arab countries. Lebanon does not let Palestinians in its country be citizens or hold jobs.

Perhaps someone on the Arabs side should ask these questions and maybe some self criticism is needed as well. It can't all be Israel's fault.

Just as the US attack on Iraq was a defensive war :rolleyes: As mentioned above, it's pointless to discuss with you. I have better things to spend my time on that to argue with people who are incapable of having a reasonable open mind. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

Congrats, you managed to find some negative words about the victims. Just as Chomsky manages to find some elements of truth in the mainstream media, this doesn't mean the report is saying Israel is a victim and Hamas is the problem in the Middle East. I think you should read it again. Perhaps you'll get what it's about. Otherwise you can read the article in the Guardian. The report doesn't say Hezbollah "kidnapped" the Israeli soldiers (soldiers being the key word..), they were "captured". Yes Hezbollah did start the war, as it did capture two soldiers. But how does that justify the Israeli "response" (forgetting the entire past of Israeli actions in Lebanon and the OT)? The report mentions that Israeli warplanes make sonic booms overflights of Gaza every day, but not that they did the same before the Lebanon war. Lebanon is a soverign country, so by flying deep into Lebanese territory, Israel were breaking international law. This is nicely forgotten. Time begins when the other side do something. Everything the US and Israel does is wiped out from the public record. In your first post I thought perhaps it was worthwhile to discuss some things with you, but as the conversation has progressed, I see there is no point. When we come down the the core issues, it's futile. Israel can do no errors. Period. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

Couldn't resist sharing the following fine letter (one of many) from this page at Norman's website:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


December 19, 2006
Matthew Rothschild, editor
The Progressive
409 E Main Street
Madison WI 53703

Mr. Rothschild,

My subscription to The Progressive expired just now. It's unusual for me to write to a magazine to explain why I'm not renewing; ordinarily it's because I have limited funds and wish to rotate my subscriptions. But this is a special case, not least because I had intended to renew this time.

I learned about Ruth Conniff's offhand smear of Norman Finkelstein just before I got the latest renewal notice. That was a relief: I'd have been annoyed if I'd discovered this only after I'd mailed in a check. Your defense to Finkelstein of her remarks confirmed my decision that I would not renew my subscription this time. Not just because they were unconvincing, but because they seemed cheerfully irrelevant and even snotty.

So, Ms. Conniff "in no way acted with any malice toward" Finkelstein, nor did she intend him any harm? That makes me feel much better, but I can't see the point of making these "tangential" and "fleeting statements of opinion" about him, which just happen to mention that "he's going up for tenure" and that he's "a Holocaust minimizer" (whatever that is supposed to mean). Granted, I didn't hear the full one-hour radio program, so I have no idea how the subject came up. But while "Holocaust minimizer" might be a statement of opinion, "going up for tenure" is not, and "he's a celebrity in a certain, a pretty ugly anti-semitic group in the country" is dubious. It seems much more like a smear, reminiscent of the smears one reads of Noam Chomsky and other critics of Israel. (Or even of the late Steven Jay Gould, whose modifications of Darwinian theory were sometimes taken up by Creationists who didn't understand them; but that didn't make him their ally, let alone a Creationist himself.) It's one thing to express disagreeable opinions; Molly Ivins's recent weirdly pointless column on Fidel Castro, for example, annoyed me but didn't drive me away. Ms. Conniff's remarks and your justification of them are something quite different.

Now, Norman Finkelstein has published some important scholarship on Israel and the Holocaust. Perhaps you and Ms. Conniff have not read his work, or having read it you disagree with it. In either case, it would be possible to criticize him responsibly, by addressing the matter of his opinions, rather than by disingenous personal attacks. An abject apology on both your parts would be in order, instead of the derisive self-justification you offered Finkelstein. I don't expect to see that, of course; so I'm taking my money elsewhere.

In her latest column in The Nation, Katha Pollitt scolds the left for seeming to "think its magazines can live on air, then slaps its collective forehead--oh noooo!--when yet another publication gasps its last." I share her concern, which is one reason I have maintained my subscription to The Progressive, among others, for so many years, and I'll be subscribing to other left journals in your place. But I think that the same concern applies to people as well as magazines. There aren't that many left scholars or other public figures in the US, yet the left feels free to slime them, often ignorantly as Ms. Conniff did with Norman Finkelstein. (Ms. Pollitt is not innocent of this sort of thing herself, in other contexts.) If Norman Finkelstein does not get tenure at Northwestern University, The Progressive will not be responsible for that in the same way as Alan Dershowitz, for example, nor are you likely to become celebrities in the pretty ugly group that seeks to silence reasoned debate on the Middle East. No doubt, judging by your response to Finkelstein, you will be able to distance yourself from them quite neatly, at least in your own minds. After all, you meant him no harm. But you have added your voice to that chorus of disinformation and intimidation, and that's not innocent.

Sincerely,
Duncan Mitchel

Friends:

For starters: "Fallout from a Smear: Finkelstein and The Progressive," John Halle, CounterPunch, June 16/17, 2007. 

In what in my opinion is a related matter, take a close look at the horrible interview that The Progressive published this past March with the alleged guru of non-violent activism, Gene Sharp.  (The Progressive Interview, March, 2007, pp. 33-37. -- Unfortunately, it still isn't available online.)  

Where Sharp and his interviewer, The Progressive's Amitabh Pal, dealt with Sharp's itinerary over a very long career that reaches back to the 1950s, the whole of it read like just what you'd expect from a devout American Cold Warrior: "Communist" regimes targeted by Washington with destabilization were the focus of Sharp's activism. 

Then, late in the printed version of the interview, Pal asked Sharp: 

  Amitabh Pal: So do you see a nonviolent approach working in the other countries that the Bush Administration is targeting, such as Iran?
  Gene Sharp: Our work is available in Iran and has been since 2004.  People from different political positions are saying that that's the way we need to go.  And that kind of struggle broadly has important precedence in Iranian/Persian history, both in the 1906 democratic revolution and in the 1979 struggle against the Shah -- all predominantly nonviolent forms of struggle.  If somebody doesn't decide to use military means, then it is very likely that there will be a peaceful national struggle there.

You see what I mean?  Both Pal and Sharp were talking about the use of Sharp's activist skills to destabilize -- not the Washington regime, which you might expect any truly progressive American to take an interest in -- but Iran, among the "countries that the Bush administration is targeting...." 

On questions of American Power, war, and peace, a disturbingly large segment of the quote-unquote "progressive" and "left" in the USA is in the bag.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

 

FYI, for a useful backgrounder on the UN in recent times, check this out.

Our energies are better spent spreading the word among those with an open mind about Norman Finkelstein's exemplary upholding of universal values than in getting stuck on a merry-go-round with those "who refuse to grow up".

`

My thanks also for the End of Mission Report link— Alvaro de Soto's report is quite lucid and instructive. I think it is important for people to realize that Hamas is not, as de Soto says, an “epiphenomena”—but is deeply rooted. Possibly the Israel Policy Forum's Director of Policy Analysis, M.J. Rosenberg's view expressed at this link is typical of many: Hamastan: We can thank ourselves He quotes Nahum Barnea from Yediot Ahronoth, on the topic of Gaza “falling” to Hamas, “The US and Israel had a decisive contribution to this failure. The Americans, in their lack of understanding of the processes of Islamization in the territories, pressured [the Palestinians] to hold democratic elections and brought Hamas to power with their own hands.... Since the elections, Israel, like the US, declared over and over that 'Abu Mazen must be strengthened,' but in practice, zero was done for this to happen. The meetings with him turned into an Israeli political tool, and Olmert's kisses and backslapping turned Abbas into a collaborator and a source of jokes on the Palestinian street” It seems to me, that too often, “enemies” like “Iran” and “Hamas” are treated by policy makers like surface problems to be isolated and eliminated—like quarantining some disease (a boycott). But such alienating of whole peoples seems ridiculously naïve about how many of the people involved really feel. As if these other peoples are to be manipulated (as with the “carrot and stick” talk concerning Iran; or the failure to shape Palestinian democracy noted above), and not engaged in open frank dialogue. Attitude is not everything, but when someone treats their “partners” like “tools” they shouldn't be surprised at the fomented resentment. Of course, I don't want to apply that “double standard” of “hypocrisy” that is often decried—Militant terrorism is the flip side of superpower manipulation. Just as terrorists really have no clue what they'll get from their hostile actions (Iraq from 9/11… who knew?), “superpowers” should realize they'll probably get the same clueless result for theirs.

While I believe that De Soto for the most part glosses over most of the terrorist attacks against Israel, he still mentions some key points which contradict most of the Israel haters.

He clearly views Hamas's charter as abominable (why, because it calls for the destruction of Israel) and clearly states that Israel will not accept a Palestinian state which based on this charter will be turned into a launching pad against Israel. This is the crux. With an END OF CONFLICT guarantee, Israel WILL give up the WB and Gaza. De Soto also clearly places all the blame on Hezbollah for the Lebanon war, and also, in what is almost always ignored, says that not only did Hezbollah kidnap soldiers, but it also fired rockets as a diversion. These rockets were Katyushas and hit Israeli towns causing injuries. Thus he acknowledges that Hezbollah attacked first, including commiting a war crime by firing rockets into civilian areas.

The intent of 242 was to promote a peaceful settlement. This required Israel to return land captured in defensive wars (again, clearly not ALL the territory) and also placed obligations on the Arab side to terminate all acts of hostility against Israel. It required actions on both sides, which of course necessitated negotiation. No interpretation can mean that Israel unilateraly returns land; it must be met with recognition by states in the "Middle East" to its sovereignty. Except for Egypt and Jordan, no state in the reqion even recognizes Israel. So UN 242 requires a negotiated settlement, not just Israel doing and everyone else watching.

Israel didn't grab Gaza and WB. The 1967 war was started by the Arabs. Forgetting about the threats by the Arab nations to destroy Israel leading to the war (very well documented if you need evidence), the first undeniable act of war was Egypt placing a military block on Israel's passage to its key southern port. No one can deny that a military blockade of a port is an act of war (NO COUNTRY in the world can be expected to tolerate a military blockade, they have every right to retaliate).  Israel did not wait for more, it retaliated and won.  Jordan, also undeniably, attacked Israel, completely unprovoked (the Egyptians lied to Jordan about winning the war, Jordan decided then to be part of the victory and attacked) after being warned not to. This resulted in Israel retaliating and capturing the territorty that Jordan used to attack Israel, the WB. If the Arabs did not attack first, Gaza would still be OCCUPIED by Egypt and WB would still be OCCUPIED by Jordan, as they were before 1967 (no one could care less about a Palestinian state under THESE occupations).

In conclusion, answering your question, I am 100% for a Palestinian state comprising 97-98% of the WB and Gaza with land swaps to make the territory amount the same. YES Israel should leave Gaza (which they have already) and WB.. YES and YES. (This would be unusual, in that land captured in a defensive war is rarely given back entirely to the attacking side). But anyway, I am 100% for this. In return, the Palestinians, simply, must END THE CONFLICT. This mean no more claims for Israel, no more claims for more land, no more claims that 3 million Palestinians get to return to Israel and return to their "homes" all backed up by no attacks against Israel, and controlling terrorism. (Again, never in history has the attacking party been able to get back what they lost in war as if they never started a war - in this case I mean 1948, another war started by the Arabs, undisputed). This means the end. More than 70% of Israelis support this. Unfortunately, Hamas' definition of End of Conflict = End of Israel. (Don't you find it Ironic that Hamas and Fatah have killed more Palestinians themselves than Israel has killed in the last two years? Must be genocide by Hamas).

So what does Israel get now if they leave WB permanently? I ASK YOU, do you think if Israel leaves the WB fully and completely that Hamas lays down their weapons and decides to live in permanent peace with Israel? Abbas I believe maybe would, because he realizes that trying to go back 60 years ago is foolish, time to accept the end means a state in Gaza and WB only....but too bad he is not in power. The Palestinians are worse off than ever with Hamas, as their leadership is not interested in only a state in Gaza and WB and they are now beholden to Iran which certainly will not tolerate a Jewish state in the Middle East (CAN YOU? or only Muslims get states?). I wish for all sake that this was not so, and that a independent peaceful state could be formed in Gaza and WB.

 

I agree that in 1967 "Israel was not a pet client of the United States". But IIRC the US stood in the way of being more explicit in the resolution about the Israeli occupation of both "Palestine" and other lands. According to Finkelstein Israel didn't become a favourite pet before the beginning of the 1970s, which I think is quite correct. But they were still offering Israel some protection before then too, it just wasn't blind protection, as it is now. To be fair, IIRC, other veto powers also were against mentioning Palestine of Palestinians, not only in UNSC 242, but in other resolutions, conferences, or even captions to art (as mentioned by Edward Said in his last interview). So it was probably not just the US that pushed for being fairly vague in UN 242. Now such a resolution would never go through. Now it's not even possible to criticise Israel of its occupation of Palestine, as the US will veto it, no matter how it's worded. The UN's legitimation of the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan is outrageous. As mentioned in the DeSoto report, it's perhaps one of the reasons why the UN was attacked in Iraq in 2003. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

Thanks a million for that report David (hope it's okay to call you by your first name). Very good reading, and a very good report that laid blame on all sides, particularly, as expected, on the US and Israel. I was surprised at the criticism of Annan (and subsequently Ban ki-Moon), but then I didn't know what role he played. I agree with his analysis with regard to the UNSG's role, and possible downsides to it. This is also very relevant to the writings of Chomsky, and in particular Finkelstein. Pretty much all in that report supports Finkelstein's view. Which naturally puts the DePaul decision in an even darker light. I also see other scholars are afraid of the restriction to academic freedom this (and other) decision seem to indicate. I regret the Ban Ki-Moon's comment to the leaking of this report. Every institution in the world should be as transparent as possible, handing out reports like this to the public. Instead he says this should never have happened. I guess he prefers the reports that say very little, but doesn't upset Israel and the US. Which of course underlines deSoto's criticisms as to the UN's role in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Downloaded and filed for future reference :thup: PS: I wish there was a place on ZNet where important reports like this was available (full text or links), for easy access. It's hard pick the important reports from the unimportant ones in the vast cyberspace of the UN's websites (and others'). Perhaps an idea for the re-design of ZNet (which seems to drag out infinitely). This one and the Iraq dossier was available from the Guardian, but many others never enter the big news outlets, and are therefore hard to come by if you don't know what you're looking for. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

Pangaea et al.:

One thing that the adoption of S/RES/242 (November 22, 1967) shows is that at the time, Israel was not a pet client of the United States -- or else such a resolution never would have survived the U.S. veto.

Compare October 1973, for example.  And everything since.

These days, not only is the UN Charter principle forbidding the acquisition of territory by war not enforced.  (Unless, say, it's August 2, 1990, and Iraq's military seizure of Kuwait.)

But the frickin' Security Council and General Secretariat very well may place the UN's Seal of Approval on certain acquisitions of territory by war. 

See, e.g., S/RES/1546 (June 8, 2004).  And countless other examples over the past 17 or 18 years.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

I haven't quoted a word from UN242. You know as well as I do (should at least) that the intent of 242 was to end the Israeli occupation of the land they grabbed in the war. This and many subsequent resolutions have said the same. If you can't even agree that Israel should give back the land they grabbed through war, you can just forget about peace. It will never happen. Palestinians are firing rockets (which I think is stupid btw) because they are horrible oppressed and nobody cares one iota about it. If I had lived under a brutal occupation for 40 years, I'd probably get many horrible thoughts too. The checkpoints on the WB has nothing to do with security, but a lot to do with strangling the Palestinian economy and making their life much more difficult. So you're saying Arafat rejected Oslo now? Guess the handshakes on the White House lawn was an illusion then. That said, I wish he DID reject it, as it's been a catastrophe for his people. I'll ask a simple question: do you think Israel should return the land they 'got' in the 1967 war? Pangaea Oslo, Norway

242 DOES NOT SAY "ALL" this is a common error, the intent of UN 242 was clearly stated that Israel was NOT required to leave ALL the territory. The word ALL is not in the resolution. Read it again !!

It says: (i) Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;

Not even THE territories. It left it to be negotiated. The Arabs also were required to agree to:

ii)Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;

You are right that TODAY there are checkpoint and WB is divided, this is due to dozens of suicide bombs launched against Israel. The Clinton peace plan would have ended all this of course. Oslo was a disaster for the Palestinians ONLY because ARAFAT rejected it. The Saudis know it, the Americans know it, the Europeans know it. Only those who want to see Israel go away don't admit was is clear to even the most casual examiner of the events (read Dennis Ross's book, he was the lead negotiater for the US). Clinton says so in his book as well.

Israel offered to return WB and GAZA, already returned GAZA and only gets more violence in return. Why did Hamas launch Quassams after Israel vacated?

First read 242 AGAIN and learn what it really says. Do a bit more reasearch on this resolution and certainly don't misquote it by adding words that do not exist.

Friends:

For some events that Alan Dershowitz won't object to (except for the fact that they are reported, that is), see:

End of Mission Report, Alvaro de Soto, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, May, 2007 (as leaked to The Guardian (U.K.))
"UN was pummelled into submission, says outgoing Middle East special envoy," Rory McCarthy and Ian Williams, The Guardian, June 13, 2007

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

UN 242 demands that Israel pull out of all the occupied territories. Sadly not a word about Palestinians, but that's due to the powergame between the US and USSR back then. There are countless other resolutions demanding the same. Palestinians don't want to wipe Israel off the map (neither does the Iranian nutcase, but that's a different discussion). They want their land back. They want East-Jerusalem as their capital. And they want right of return for the refugees. Hardly terrible demands. International law gives them these rights, so it's only fair that they get it. "Settlements" are generally established where there is arable land, and on strategic locations such as hilltops. If these spots of land (and all the other land connected to them Israel has taken for "security" purposes) are handed over to Israel, then there will not be much left for an independent Palestine. Please look at a map what the West Bank looks like. There are roads and checkpoints totally dividing the West Bank apart. Compare it with the bantustans of South-Africa, and it's arguably worse. Land swap where same value land is swapped is fair, but not when it removes the possibility of East-Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state, which is what Israel are trying to achieve. Let's assume for a moment that the Palestinians had accepted the Clinton-Barak plan. Roughly 10 years earlier Arafat had accepted the terms in Oslo in the hopes of getting somewhere. He got nowhere. Israel broke the terms (as usual), and the situation got much worse for Palestinians. It's highly likely the same would have happened again. For every 'negotiation' they get less and less. Oslo was a disaster for the Palestinians, and is regarded as such in the scholarly literature. This is exactly why Israel and the US keep nagging about "previous agreements". They don't mean UN 242 or anything agreed in the UN, but the Oslo agreement, because that was a huge victory for Israel, and a huge loss for the Palestinians. It pretty much destroyed the possibility of a Palestinians state. Follow UN 242, ie give back the land Israel took in the 1967 war, and there will be much, much better chances of peace. This is the consensus in the international community. So why won't Israel do this? At last, I'd like to add a good article from Robert Fisk. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

Hehe, not a bad comparison sk ;) Pangaea Oslo, Norway

The UN and International law NEVER say anything about 100% of the West Bank and Gaza having to be used to create a Palestinian state. Show me what law you mean.

The land around Jerusalem is not very arable, if you have ever been there, and as anyone who has knows. This is another canard. A land swap is perfectly reasonable for equal type land.

The point about Bandar, as memorialized by Saudi web sites, is that most people think Arafat rejected a great compromise for both sides. What the Palestinians want is 100% of all their demands, which can never happen. So if we wait for this to happen, there will never be peace, since 100% of what they want is the end of Israel.

As I said, Israel will not accept a non-Jewish majority in their country, why should they? There are muslim majorities in dozens of countries, why can't Jews have there own state? Why is this wrong vs. Saudis that deny all other religions, and won't allow any churches or any hint of another religion in their country? Israel is the only country in the region that offers freedom of religion. Muslims have NEVER respected Judaism or their holy sites. If you want a one-state solution you really mean the end of Israel. It is only semantics.

Read Dennis Ross's book, he was the lead negotiator on the Clinton/Barak/Arafat plan. The sad fact is that the next negotiation, the Palestinians will get less. If there is ever anyone else to negotiate with, because with Hamas in power, the only thing to negotiate is the terms of Israel's destruction. A unilateral pullout by Israel in the West Bank is the wrong move also, as demonstrated by pullouts in Lebanon and Gaza. All this means to the Muslim side is another platform to attack Israel. Imagine that Hamas created a peaceful regime in Gaza after Israel pulled out? The call for Israel to leave the West Bank would have been so strong, and it would have been done. But if Israel leaves the WB it will just be another launching pad for Quassams.

It's not really important what Saudi kings say (after all, these are loyal to the US, despite some dissident remarks now and then). What is important is what Palestinians say. I'd also like to add that Schlomo Ben-Ami has said that if he was a Palestinian he would have rejected that offer too. It was the least bad deal the Palestinians have been offered, but it was far from a good deal. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever Palestinians should accept that Israel gets the land where the settlements are. Usually this is the best land (most arable etc). Throughout the years the Palestinians have lost more and more land. Compare what they have now with the partition plan for instance. Also take into account that the West Bank is now effectively bantustans, and they control almost all aspects of life there. By this proposal of yours, Israel would have been successful in expropriating more and more land, in contradiction with international law and the UN. No law-abiding citizen can accept that. Why would a right of return (as per international law) mean the end of Israel? It would perhaps mean the end of a Jewish majority, but it would most certainly not mean the end of Israel. I'd like to go through the Barak offer more carefully, but I don't have time now, and I suspect it's futile anyway. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

Walt K.—I think you should do a little internet research before you put your foot in your mouth. Did you look at Norman Finkelstein's webpage? Note not only what reviewers are saying about his work, but who they are reviewing it for: "Informing Finkelstein's analysis is a universal ethics... He, and not the Jewish organizations he criticizes, is following the example set by the great Jewish prophets." -- The Nation "...clever, explosive, sometimes even wryly funny." -- Salon.com "... a short, sharp and copiously noted polemic." -- Times Higher Educational Supplement "... his basic argument that memories of the Holocaust are being debased is serious and should be given its due." -- The Economist "... Finkelstein has raised some important and uncomfortable issues... examples cited can be breathtaking in their angry accuracy and irony." -- The Jewish Quarterly "Finkelstein is at his best when he skewers those who would sacralize the Holocaust..." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review As someone who plans to self-publish someday, I know that my work will never get reviewed at such a level. Yes, Finkelstein is polemic—and he may have picked or escalated his fight with Alan M. Dershowitz (btw, Dershowitz is not pro-Torture: he really claims that warrants should be used with torture as a legal wedge to garner accountability and transparency that would hopefully reduce or end its use (but why make torture a "subtle" issue?)), and both Finkelstein and Dershowitz seem to be a little addicted to hyperbolic slick media exposure—which can be good to whip up interest in certain topics (that we might never forget)- but Finkelstein is most certainly more qualified for tenure than many tenured professors are. As Paul Street noted, there are noted academics on the left, middle and right, with tenure—proving that the club does not 100% exclude all radicals. And just about everyone has a political axe to grind: some are more open about it (the “political” ones)—others are more insidiously subversive and simply pass it on in what they assume and expect others to assume. I think it is the latter kind (the subtle subversive ones) that can be more dangerous—overt political posturing can be easily perceived just for what it is. Did the president of DePaul want to avoid controversy? A fairly inept attempt if so. No one in the center of the controversy was silenced, but some on the margins may be.

Wow, the threat is made up? Have you ever read the charters of Hamas, the PLO, and Hezzbolah? The explicitly threaten Israel and Jews. The current violence in Gaza is a direct result of one faction saying it is time for peace and another faction saying we want to continue trying to kill Jews.

If you tell me I'm threatening your right to exist, I look at you oddly and say "what?" If then you proceed to kill my children because of the threat you just made up, I might not want to acknowledge your right to exist, you fucking murderer. I might want to bring out my miserable rockets and strap-on bombs against your bulldozers, billion-dollar artillery and aircraft, depleted uranium, and illegal atomic bomb.

For Bandar is an honourable man.

This is the star witness from the other side produced by our advocate for Zionism.

Pangaea,
You might enjoy comparing a photo in this page with a similar photo in the first link.

I think it goes back to the original Clinton/Arafat/Barak plan. This was the best deal for both sides, unfortunately Arafat rejected it. I know revisionist historians will say it was a bad deal or that Israel rejected it, but no less than Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia clearly states that Arafat rejected a good compromise for all sides. He is quoted as saying to Arafat "If we lost this opportunity , it is not going to be a tragedy. This is going to be a crime." You can read the whole article, published in the New Yorker (3/24/2003). The article is posted on the web site of the Saudi Embassy (http://www.saudiembassy.net/StatementLink/03-ST-Bandar-0324-NewYorker.pdf), so any claim that the article is bogus or misrepresents the Saudi would be hard to make.

Quite simply, as most Israelis agree, the majority of the West Bank and all of Gaza is turned into an independent Palestinian state. Certain portions of the West Bank with the major Israeli settlements (mostly near Jerusalem, the claim that the deal "split" the west bank is not true) go to Israel, with basically an equal land swap of existing Israeli terriroty to the Palestinian state. The formula ended up providing some 96% of the West Bank and 100% of Gaza as a Palestinian state. There would be some kind of compensation formula and some small amount of Palestinians allowed into Israel to satisfy the right of return claim (as we all really know that a true right of return, with 3 million Palestinians allowed to enter Israel and take over homes = end of Israel). The formula for Jerusalem basically gave East Jerusalem to the Palestinian state as well as effective control of the Temple Mount. There was also good compromises on all kinds of issues like borders, security, police forces, etc, etc.

The key thing the Arafat had to agree to, and ultimately why he rejected the plan is that is required an "end of conflict." That would be it. No more claims. Agree that Israel exists for good. Arafat would die before ever agreeing to this.

In fact, only two arab nations/leaders in history have agreed that Israel is here and has a right to exist. Egypt and Jordan, and in both cases Israel gave up land for peace with these nations. Once the other side accepts that Israel has a right to a permanent presence, a permanent country, then peace can be discussed. What is there to discuss with Hamas? The terms of Israel's destruction? Code words for Israel's destruction: Right of Return & One-State Solution. Both mean the end of Israel as a Jewish homeland. No one suggests that there is a problem with a many many Muslim homelands. I would agree to no Jewish OR Muslim homelands at all, and a one-state solution, when ALL nations in the region guaranteed freedom of religion, press, education, speech, movement, equality for womeni.e. democracy. This would mean that Jews could live throughout the region in peace, so then no real need for a Jewish state. But today, pretty much all of the middle east except for Israel does not provide freedom of religion. In fact, and time a Jewish religious site fell to Muslim hands, it was destroyed.

Just a few of my two cents. I know Finkelstein would disagree with every single comment here, but nothing is so black and white.

What do you think should be done to solve the conflict? Pangaea Oslo, Norway

Palestine (under old maps under the Turks, and the British Palestine Mandate) always included today's Jordan.  The Brits split of Jordan as a reward to the Hashemites in 1922.  The people of Jordan are Palestinian. The brits installed an outsider as monarch, a dynasty that last until today. If I am wrong, tell me how.

pangeae wrote: We are responsible for the crimes against "Palestine" and Iraq (Palestine in question marks as there is no Palestinian state, despite an international consensus on it for decades). That is why we are discussing the issue, and why we are doing what we can to stop those crimes.

I think people of the world should do what "nations" don't have the moral integrity to do; people should recognizes the Arab State of Palestine and re-draw its borders and partition since the US and Israel arent negotiating.

Hey "Walt K"....reading your "dialogue" with Street here and back on his blog (back before he kicked your sorry ass into your own little dunce corner like I suggested) is always like watching the old M. Ali boxing a 70-year old drunk or something. The guy stops every weak punch you throw and just caves your face in again and again...and you just keep coming back for more.  I'd put good money on it that he has acurately exposed you as Kauppila the physicist at Wayne State. Now you have a freaking Z-Net link in your own name on the net; do your name on google and yahoo and look for the third or fourth link down.  That'll be up on the web for a few years I'd guess.  Nice job you stupid fucking right wing idiot. Way to be the ultimate academic dumbass!  

You say: "Organized American Jewry has exploited the Nazi holocaust to deflect criticism of Israel's and its own morally indefensible policies."

I'd love to see some concrete examples.

What's funny is previously I argue that there is clearly an intense focus on Palestinians/Israelis, when we all agree that the total population here is small at 10 million total (maybe slightly more) and that atrocities by other nations are much greater. Responses back are statements like so what, or one evil does not justify another, or this is what we are talking about now so forget other topics, or this is what we can influence so this is what we focus on.

Now you write about how the Holocaust gets alot of coverage, and what do you do? You bring up other atrocities that we should focus on instead, and complain that one gets too much coverage !!

Friends:

FYI: Like me, I'm sure you've all noticed that the multi-year battle that led DePaul University of Chicago to deny tenure to Professor Norman Finkelstein, the outstanding Jewish-American academic, has been pretty seriously misrepresented by establishment news accounts. To take just one example, as Ed Pilkington of The Guardian (London) told it, interested parties from both sides cast their lots either with or against Finkelstein, and in the end, those against turned out to be victorious. ("University denies tenure to outspoken Holocaust academic," June 12.) But to suggest that this battle was two-sided simply isn't true. For in fact the long knives were drawn and used by the assassins of Finkelstein's professional life and reputation, and by them alone. The anti-Finkelstein side was as merciless as its was fanatic. This point must not be forgotten.

Another point worth mentioning is that no less a revered scholar of Nazi Germany's "final solution" for the "Jewish question" than Raul Hilberg defended both the academic soundness of Finkelstein's work as well as the merit of his tenure bid. This point also needs to be remembered, as it shows that the anti-Finkelstein fanatics never really contested his academic credentials (How could they?), despite a lot of theatrics and dodgy dossiers from the likes of Harvard's Alan Dershowitz -- a man for whom it appears there is always a lower level yet to descend.

Instead, what Finkelstein's assailants contested was Finkelstein's message. Clearly, as these tactics and DePaul University's unpardonable surrender to them attest, Norman Finkelstein's assailants figured that in time-honored fashion, the best way to rid themselves of his message was to get rid of the messenger.

With this in mind, I'm reproducing here something from what is perhaps Norman Finkelstein's finest exercise in moral debunking:

The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (London and New York: Verso, 2000), 1st Ed. -- Reproduced from the author's "Conclusion," pp. 143-150.

Imagine an "institution of higher learning" having had the chance to bring Norman Finkelstein into its fold on a tenured basis, and saying NO!

Boycott DePaul University.

CONCLUSION

It remains to consider the impact of The Holocaust[*] in the United States. In doing so, I also want to engage Peter Novick's own critical remarks on the topic.[#]

Apart from Holocaust memorials, fully seventeen states mandate or recommend Holocaust programs in their schools, and many colleges and universities have endowed chairs in Holocaust studies. Hardly a week passes without a major Holocaust-related story in the New York Times. The number of scholarly studies devoted to the Nazi Final Solution is conservatively estimated at over 10,000. Consider by comparison scholarship on the hecatomb in the Congo. Between 1891 and 1911, some 10 million Africans perished in the course of Europe's exploitation of Congloese ivory and rubber resources. Yet, the first and only scholarly volume in English directly devoted to this topic was published two years ago.[i]

Given the vast number of institutions and professionals dedicated to preserving its memory, The Holocaust is by now firmly entrenched in American life. Novick expresses misgivings, however, whether this is a good thing. In the first place, he cites numerous instances of its sheer vulgarization. Indeed, one is hard-pressed to name a single political cause, whether it be pro-life or pro-choice, animal rights or states' rights, that hasn't conscripted The Holocaust. Decrying the tawdry purposes to which The Holocaust is put, Elie Wiesel declared, "I swear to avoid…vulgar spectacles."[ii] Yet Novick reports that "the most imaginative and subtle Holocaust photo op came in 1996 when Hillary Clinton, then under heavy fire for various alleged misdeeds, appeared in the gallery of the House during her husband's (much televised) State of the Union Address, flanked by their daughter, Chelsea, and Elie Wiesel."[iii] For Hillary Clinton, Kosovo refugees put to flight by Serbia during the NATO bombing recalled Holocaust scenes in Schindler's List. "People who learn history from Spielberg movies," a Serbian dissident tartly rejoined, "should not tell us how to live our lives."[iv]

The "pretense that the Holocaust is an American memory," Novick further argues, is a moral evasion. It "leads to the shirking of those responsibilities that do belong to Americans as they confront their past, their present, and their future." (emphasis in original)[v] He makes an important point. It is much easier to deplore the crimes of others than to look at ourselves. It is also true, however, that were the will there we could learn much about ourselves from the Nazi experience. Manifest Destiny anticipated nearly all the ideological and programmatic elements of Hitler's Lebensraum policy. In fact, Hitler modeled his conquest of the East on the American conquest of the West.[vi] During the first half of this [the 20th] century, a majority of American states enacted sterilization laws and tens of thousands of Americans were involuntarily sterilized. The Nazis explicitly invoked this US precedent when they enacted their own sterilization laws.[vii] The notorious 1935 Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of the franchise and forbade miscegenation between Jews and non-Jews. Blacks in the American South suffered the same legal disabilities and were the object of much greater spontaneous and sanctioned popular violence than the Jews in prewar Germany.[viii]

To highlight unfolding crimes abroad, the US often summons memories of The Holocaust. The more revealing point, however, is when the US invokes The Holocaust. Crimes of official enemies such as the Khmer Rouge bloodbath in Cambodia, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and Serbian ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, recall The Holocaust; crimes in which the US is complicit do no.

Just as the Khmer Rouge atrocities were unfolding in Cambodia, the US-backed Indonesian government was slaughtering one-third of the population in East Timor. Yet unlike Cambodia, the East Timor genocide did not rate comparison with The Holocaust; it didn't even rate news coverage.[ix] Just as the Soviet Union was committing what the Simon Wiesenthal Center called "another genocide" in Afghanistan, the US-backed regime in Guatemala was perpetrating what the Guatemalan Truth Commission recently called a "genocide" against the indigenous Mayan population. President Reagan dismissed the charges against the Guatemalan government as a "bum rap." To honor Jeane Kirkpatrick's achievement as chief Reagan Administration apologist for the unfolding crimes in Central America, the Simon Wiesenthal Center awarded her the Humanitarian of the Year Award.[x] Simon Wiesenthal was privately beseeched before the award ceremony to reconsider. He refused. Elie Wiesel was privately asked to intercede with the Israeli government, a main weapons supplier for the Guatemalan butchers. He too refused. The Carter Administration invoked the memory of The Holocaust as it sought haven for Vietnamese "boat people" fleeing the Communist regime. The Clinton Administration forgot The Holocaust as it forced back Haitian "boat people" fleeing US-supported death squads.[xi]

Holocaust memory loomed large as the US-led NATO bombing of Serbia commenced in the spring of 1999. As we have seen, Daniel Goldhagen compared Serbian crimes against Kosovo with the Final Solution and, at President Clinton's bidding, Elie Wiesel journeyed to Kosovar refugee camps in Macedonia and Albania. Already before Wiesel went to shed tears on cue for the Kosovars, however, the US-backed Indonesian regime had resumed where it left off in the late 1970s,[xii] perpetrating new massacres in East Timor. The Holocaust vanished from memory, however, as the Clinton Administration acquiesced in the bloodletting. "Indonesia matters," a Western diplomat explained, "and East Timor doesn't."

Novick points to passive US complicity in human disasters dissimilar in other respects yet comparable in scale to the Nazi extermination. Recalling, for example, the million children killed in the Final Solution, he observes that American presidents do little more than utter pieties as, worldwide, many times that number of children "die of malnutrition and preventable diseases" every year.[xiii] One might also consider a pertinent case of active US complicity. After the United States-led coalition devastated Iran in 1991 to punish "Saddam-Hitler," the United States and Britain forced murderous UN sanctions on that hapless country in an attempt to depose him. As in the Nazi holocaust, a million children have likely perished.[xiv] Questioned on national television about the grisly death toll in Iraq, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright replied that "the price is worth it."

"The very extremity of the Holocaust," Novick argues, "seriously limit[s] its capacity to provide lessons applicable to our everyday world." As the "benchmark of oppression and atrocity," it tends to trivializ[e] crimes of lesser magnitude."[xv] Yet the Nazi holocaust can also sensitize us to these injustices. Seen through the lens of Auschwitz, what previously was taken for granted -- for example, bigotry -- no longer can be.[xvi] In fact, it was the Nazi holocaust that discredited the scientific racism that was so pervasive a feature of America intellectual life before World War II.[xvii]

For those committed to human betterment, a touchstone of evil does not preclude but rather invites comparisons. Slavery occupied roughly the same place in the moral universe of the late nineteenth century as the Nazi holocaust does today. Accordingly, it was often invoked to illuminate evils not fully appreciated. John Stuart Mill compared the condition of women in that most hallowed Victorian institution, the family, to slavery. He even ventured that in crucial respects it was worse. "I am far from pretending that wives are in general no better treated than slaves; but no slave is a slave to the same lengths, and in so full a sense of the word as a wife."[xviii] Only those using a benchmark evil not as a moral compass but rather as an ideological club recoil at such analogies. "Do not compare" is the mantra of moral blackmailers.[xix]

Organized American Jewry has exploited the Nazi holocaust to deflect criticism of Israel's and its own morally indefensible policies. Pursuit of these policies has put Israel and American Jewry in a structurally congruent position: the fates of both now dangle from a slender thread running to American ruling elites. Should these elites ever decide that Israel is a liability or American Jewry expendable, the thread may be cut. No doubt this is speculation -- perhaps unduly alarmist, perhaps not.

Predicting the posture of American Jewish elites should these eventualities come to pass, however, is child's play. If Israel fell out of favor with the United States, many of those leaders who now stoutly defend Israel would courageously divulge their disaffection from the Jewish state and would excoriate American Jews for turning Israel into a religion. And if US ruling circles decided to scapegoat Jews, we should not be surprised if American Jewish leaders acted exactly as their predecessors did during the Nazi holocaust. "We didn't figure that the Germans would put in the Jewish element," Yitzhak Zuckerman, an organizer of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, recalled, "that Jews would lead Jews to death."[xx]

                * * * * * * * * * *

During a series of public exchanges in the 1980s, many prominent German and non-German scholars argued against "normalizing" the infamies of Nazism. The fear was that normalization would induce moral complacency.[xxi] However valid the argument may have been then, it no longer carries conviction. The staggering dimensions of Hitler's Final Solution are by now well known. And isn't the "normal" history of humankind replete with horrifying chapters of inhumanity? A crime need not be aberrant to warrant atonement. The challenge today is to restore the Nazi holocaust as a rational subject of inquiry. Only then can we really learn from it. The abnormality of the Nazi holocaust springs not from the event itself but from the exploitive industry that has grown up around it. The Holocaust industry has always been bankrupt. What remains is to openly declare it so. The time is long past to put it out of business. The noblest gesture for those who perished is to preserve their memory, learn from their suffering and let them, finally, rest in peace.

[* As Norman Finkelstein explains at the very outset of his book, "In this text, Nazi holocaust signals the actual historical event, The Holocaust its ideological representation" (n. 1, p. 3).]
[# See Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1999).]

[i]Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (Boston: 1998).

[ii] Elie Wiesel, Against Silence, selected and edited by Irving Abrahamson (New York: 1984), v, iii, 190; cf. v. i, 186, v. ii, 82, v. iii, 242, and Elie Wiesel, And the Sea Is Never Full (New York: 1999), 118.

[iii] Novick, The Holocaust, 230-1.

[iv] New York Times (25 May 1999).

[v] Novick, The Holocaust, 15.

[vi] John Toland, Adolf Hitler (New York: 1976), 702. Joachim Fest, Hitler (New York: 1975), 214, 650. See also Norman G. Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (New York: 1995), chap. 4.

[vii] See, for example, Stefan Kühl, The Nazi Connection (Oxford: 1994).

[viii] See, for example, Leon F. Litwack, Trouble in Mind (New York: 1998), esp. chaps 5-6. The vaunted Western tradition is deeply implicated in Nazism as well. To justify the extermination of the handicapped -- the precursor to the Final Solution -- Nazi doctors deployed the concept of "life unworthy of life" (lebensunwertes Leben). In Gorgias, Plato wrote: "I can't see that life is worth living if a person's body is in a terrible state." In The Republic, Plato sanctioned the murder of defective children. On a related point, Hitler's opposition in Mein Kampf to birth control on the ground that it preempts natural selection was prefigured by Rousseau in his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. Shortly after World War II, Hannah Arendt reflected that "the subterranean stream of Western history has finally come to the surface and usurped the dignity of our tradition" (The Origins of Totalitarianism [New York: 1951], ix).

[ix] See, for example, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, The Political Economy of Human Rights, v. i: The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism (Boston: 1979), 129-204.

[x] Response (March 1983 and January 1986).

[xi] Noam Chomsky, Turning the Tide (Boston: 1985), 36 (Wiesel cited from interview in the Hebrew press). Michael Berenbaum, The World Must Know (New York: 1993), 3.

[xii] Financial Times (8 September 1999).

[xiii] Novick, The Holocaust, 255.

[xiv] See, for example, Geoff Simons, The Scourging of Iraq (New York: 1998).

[xv] Novick, The Holocaust, 244, 14.

[xvi] On this point, see esp. Jean-Michel Chaumont, La concurrence des victimes (Paris: 1997), 316-318.

[xvii] See, for example, Carl N. Degler, In Search of Human Nature (Oxford: 1991), 202ff.

[xviii] John Stuart Mill, On the Subjection of Women (Cambridge: 1991), 148.

[xix] It is no less repugnant to compare the Nazi holocaust, as Michael Berenbaum proposes, only in order to "demonstrate the claim of uniqueness" (After Tragedy, 29).

[xx] Yitzhak Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory (Oxford: 1993), 210.

[xxi] I refer here both to the Historikerstreit and to the published correspondence between Saul Friedländer and Martin Broszat. In both instances, the debate largely turned on the absolute versus relative nature of Nazi crimes; for example, the validity of comparisons with the Gulag. See Peter Baldwin (ed.), Reworking the Past, Richard J. Evans, In Hitler's Shadow (New York: 1989), James Knowlton and Truett Cates, Forever in the Shadow of Hitler? (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: 1993), and Aharon Weiss (ed.), Yad Vashem Studies XIX (Jerusalem: 1988).

 

 

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Bobo, you appear to be something of an ignoramus. The notion of Left indoctrination and hegemony  in U.S. higher education is a paranoid right-wing fantasy that you have childishly swallowed.  Here is a more accurate account of conservative political and ideological realities on U.S. campuses.   

The obsessive right wing troll and crackpot “Walt K (not verified)” --- so darkly and viciously preoccupied with me (he has a man-crush going back at least three years) that the poor old boy had to be given his own special troll board --- makes wild assertions with no elementary attention to basic facts.

 “Notice how Paul was denied a position at DePaul,…”

I never applied for a position at DePaul; simply taught a couple of evening courses as an adjunct. Thought the authorities I had to deal with there were nuts and moved on.  

“…through what are most likely self-publishing houses, or houses that are so small they'll take anyone”

My books are with reputable publishing houses (Paradigm, Routledge, Rowman & Littlefield) and these are on top of numerous articles and chapters in refereed journals and collections.

Real "self-publication" shops - you bet.

As for Finkelstein's (much more) impressive record, my cyber stalker can go to amazon.com and find publisher names like University of California Press and Verso and the like.  Yes, real “self-publication” shops those. Brilliant.  

“Finklestein has been called on the carpet as well”

Not by his field.  By higher institutional authorities, who reversed his department's decision, which was informed by scholarly opinion beyond DePaul. He was “called on the carpet” not for poor scholarship (his scholarship is widely understood to be excellent) but for dissenting from doctrinal wisdom on Israel, the Palestinians, the Middle East and more.

“There's a huge difference between quality and quantity, which again, is lost on this board.”

My books can be purchased at amazon.com.  If “Walt K” has a substantive criticism to make of anything in any of these books (or in various other academic publications he may run down) , we hear none of it here. There's nothing stated here so no basis for his suggestion that quantity has trumped quality in my work or that of others. 

And incidentally where are “Walt K's” books and/or other scholarly publications for us to investigate? What field are they in? Where have they been reviewed? Is this just some asshole sitting in the stands who thinks he knows better than an actual shortstop how to turn a double play or does “Walt K” claim to be an actual infielder of some sort?   

 “…because DePaul is full of a bunch of do-nothings.”

Remembering that I never applied for a position at DePaul, the do-nothings (“Walt K” may be one of them but his identity is a matter of speculation) are in fact ubiquitous in academia; that's no fiction. Neither is the mediocre dweebs' fear of being made to look bad…it's a well known problem in academic hiring that has received explicit attention in the Chronicle of Higher Education and elsewhere.

As for the claim that one must choose between academics and politics, the notion that one could not at one and the same time be a leftist and a serious scholar is childish and authoritarian nonsense. Here are some names that come to mind: Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm, Pierre Bourdieu, Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman, Henry Giroux, David Noble, Perry Anderson, Mike Davis, Robert Brenner, William I. Robinson…serious scholars all and the list goes on and on. And of course the academy is loaded with heavily ideological and highly political liberals, neoliberals, centrists and even some neocons and open imperialists (Niall Ferguson, for example) who seem to be allowed to function in accord with often aggressively advanced political agendas without being expected to renounce their claims to be reputable scholars.   Politics is all over the academy.

Again with “On the Jewish Question” (which mediocre “Walt K” cited on at least 12 separate occasions my blog before being given his own time out room), an essay “Walt K” could not grasp if his life depended on it. 

As for the Midwestern universities line, I think I may have applied for a position once in Minnesota.  I like Minnesota but they wanted someone with more background in the nineteenth century.  It was a great tragedy for me.

 This blog seems to be attracting some Zionist Hoodlums. These nutcases just come & talk trash. That is because Finkelstein is the topic. Zionists are drvien mad when Finkelstein's name is mentioned.

Thanks for the link and info David :) Top 15 spenders As has been known for years now, the US spend almost 50% of the world's total military expenditure. I'm not sure if that includes the so-called "black budget" as well, which is used on secret R&D on development of new nuclear weapons, new military weapons and planes etc. You can also see that despite sharp rises in recent years in China (though compared to GDP it has actually fallen), they spend about 10 times less than the US. In fact, the US spend almost 10 times more than number 2 on the list (UK). Would be interesting with a table broken down after countries, but I can't find it right now. We know that just a fraction of what is spent on the military worldwide (or the US for that matter) is enough eradicate the diseases that kill the most people, and in effect get rid of poverty. But we don't do it. To quote from the "Ghosts of Rwanda" documentary I just finished watching, in tears, 1 hour ago: "The US don't have friends, it has interests". I believe the same is true for every country (perhaps with a partial exception for Venezuela) Pangaea Oslo, Norway

I tried to explain the reasons for many person's emphasis on crimes in "Palestine" and Iraq in the above reply. The link sk posted to the Chomsky clip says it quite well. We (neither us personally nor our governments) are involved in the crimes against Tibet or its people. We are responsible for the crimes against "Palestine" and Iraq (Palestine in question marks as there is no Palestinian state, despite an international consensus on it for decades). That is why we are discussing the issue, and why we are doing what we can to stop those crimes. If you feel you have any chance of impacting the Chinese government's policy towards Tibet, be free to try to influence them. I sure won't stop you. I suspect, though, that it's a strategy to deflect attention away from the crimes being carried out by Israel and the US (and more indirectly all Western governments). That clip was quite good, as it laid out both my reasons above. The time we have available and the chance of influencing powerful interests to change their ways. Not even Chomsky can be the world's conscience on all conflicts and suffering in the world. Regular working people certainly have no chance. We have to focus no issues we have a chance of influencing. I know from personal experience that it IS possibly to reach in to the right people and influence them. It's not easy, and they won't change 180 degrees. But just a small change of direction can have a huge impact. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

I think there is finally a backlash against Politically Correct indoctrination on American campuses. Those who are P.C. (e.g. people complaining about what happened at DePaul) are unhappy that the tides have turned.

It's funny how this board seems to think that merely publishing, through what are most likely self-publishing houses, or houses that are so small they'll take anyone, is a qualification for academic merit. There's a huge difference between quality and quantity, which again, is lost on this board. The truth is, most of this "leftist" work crumbles under leftists scrutiny. You're a bunch of crack pots. Ward Churchill was "outed" after his "work" was more closely examined, and now Finklestein has been called on the carpet as well. Of course, it's all a big conspiracy that the more powerful Jew Dershowitz, at Harvard no less, is behind. (Is this an example of Marx's "The Jewish Question?"). Notice how Paul was denied a position at DePaul, not because of his questionable academic credentials, but because DePaul is full of a bunch of no-nothings. People like Ward Churchell, Finklestein, and Street are not engaged in academics, they are engaged in politics. Unless you can separate the two, they will remain unemployable.

BTW, Paul, is there a mid-western University that you haven't been denied employment at?

I'd see a need for radical universities... I read what chomsky had to say on the energetic parecon, chomsky appears very positive about change. I was trying to find the article but I fell on this negative article on tenure and manure.

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=1057

My apologies, I guess, we will have to wait the Dershowitz manure to cool off a bit and wait for albert or spannos positivism to re-invades the blogs again.

Well, didn't have much impact on DePaul. I was exiled to teaching overworked adults in some suburban campus for a couple of courses in a bizarre tuition-chasing experiment DePaul called "The School for New Learning" (SNL). They were trying out some elaborate academic marketing ruse called "experiential learning." I tried to get them to explain to me what the con was all about and they sent me stacks of incoherent academic gibberish. I would call various DePaul offices and ask them to explain what it meant and they didn't have a clue....or a care. The place was run by the standard moronic and self-satisifed academic idiots. I tossed the gibberish and proceeded to hold Left cell meetings on class relations and class struggle. On a more serious level....if you look at Finkelstein's publication and teaching record its pretty scary for any politically engaged Left academician who would like to get tenure some day (I'm not a big fan of tenure [I've seen it hideously abused again and again] but bear in mind not getting it amounts to being fired and experiencing difficulty in working/teaching again). He's got a large number of really major publications at major presses and great teaching evaluations. He's got an Ivy League degree (Princeton). You know he has completely out-performed most if not all of DePaul's tenured faculty (not to mention the university's idiotic President)to an extent that is just laughable but he gets shot down because the academic thought police can't tolerate a single vocal Left dissident on the Middle East in one department at a relatively non-elite school (DePaul is ranked far below Northwestern and the University of Chicago). Its pretty ludicrous. "So sorry. You are the smartest and best professor at this institution but you have stepped outside doctrinal parameters and so must be professionally crucified in the name of the established order. You are controversial. You upset powerful people. You are not nice." For what it's worth, I routinely receive rejection letters from academics I've completely out-published...(my numerous books and hundreds of articles/book chapters v. their no books and a few articles is a not atypical breakdown); I know nothing about their teaching records, of course, but their interview questions (on the rare occasions where I "merit" an interview) are generally less than impressive. In a few cases, I've been told by insiders that I was googled up and "outed" as an open Leftist and that that killed the process for me. It's just laughable. Part of it is that mediocre and conservative/neutered dweebs with tenure (there are thousands of these in academia) don't want to be shown up (that is, made to look like mediocre dweebs)by engaged and passionate thinkers. A good friend of mine --- the author of an excellent, widely read and wonderfully researched monograph on the anarchist and working-class movement in late 19th century of Chicago (and an excellent teacher) --- was run out of Central Michigan University's History Department by a bunch of no-publish, bad-teaching, do-nothing "historians" during the 1990s. His great sins? 1. Being a radical. 2. Joining an effort to form a union of full-time temporary instructors. 3. Making mediocre CMU dweebs look bad. I have numerous other and similar stories from the academic wasteland, so I tend to be less than surprised when I hear about these bigger and sexier cases of academic authoritarianism. There are thousands and thousands of little and less spectacular stories --- all quite depressing --- from the aforementioned "moral sewer."

haha,, so dePaul was good university for at least two semesters.. I just saw Finkelstein on Youtube , a gratuitous link from sk. the man is cool, he is sligthly Bill Maherish.. regardless he appears well informed.. y bet is he made class full every semesters..

Mitchell or anyone else who knows about protest/resistance actions...I hope there is some effort on the part of faculty to resist the egregious assault on academic freedom. I taught at DePaul for at least two semesters during the late 1990s. I have have stricken all references to the school from my professional resume - it's like they never happened. Just spoke to a kid who is killing his law school application there. He was in for some money from but says "no way I'd go to a place like that." I spoke also with a tenured DePaul professor who is now seeking a position at another school -- anywhere but there and maybe even outside academia. DePaul faculty should be pressured to refuse to hold classes and even perhaps to resign after something like this. There's worse things in life than not holding a tenured position at a place like DePaul. Personally, I'd rather drive a Chicago cab or work a dishwashing machine than be affiliated with an academic department there after something as shameful as this. Holtschneider has disgraced his institution and should be pressured to resign.

We're talking about Finkelstein, who is an authority on Israel and Palestine. He is not an authority on China or Tibet. Nobody is arguing with you about China and Tibet, or Russia and Chechnya. You're fine on those issues, everybody knows. We can talk about it as much as you want, but in this discussion, you're deliberately (and may I say annoyingly) changing the subject. "Deflecting," as you say.

There is no "ploy" here. It is a legitimate question that deserves thoughts. No one is deflecting anything from anyone. Does the question bother you or make you uncomfortable?

Dragging in atrocity stories from other parts of the world is Standard Operating Procedure for nationalists to deflect attention from enormities carried out by their holy state. It's an old diversionary ploy designed to muddy the waters, as shown in this clip from the late '80s of Noam Chomsky being questioned by David Frum, the neocon sloganeer.

As someone pointed out here, the whole to do about Finkelstein boils down to Palestinians/Israelis. Once again, a conflict the embroils less than 10 million people (population of Gaza. WB and Israel, maybe a bit more than 10), captures an enormous amount of attention. I think one of the reasons that many if not most people have issue with Finkelstein and others who agree with him is that they claim to care so much about the plight of disadvantaged people, and claim to be against oppressors, but when actions are taken and statements are made, the most vigor is reserved for Israel. You never hear "Criminal Terrorist State" said about China or Russia. You never hear that these two countries have policies like the Nazis. And as I already pointed out, in every way and in every statistic (from # dead, to displaced, to refugees, to cleansing, etc.) I can show you that the atrocities by Russia and China are much worse (and of course this does not justify anyone else's atrocities). I think Finkelstein and others would have much more credibility if they showed that they were not only singling out Israel for their goals of bettering the world, but focusing on a wide range of conflicts, and importantly, using the same terms they reserve for Israel for other nations as well (these terms are powerful, don't underestimate them). This is why it is so important in my opinion to discuss these issues. We should be honest here and question why there has been no blog in months or probably years focusing on the atrocities that continue against Tibet. Why is this occupation ignored? Why do we not care that the Dalai Lama is in exile and religious freedom is still stifled, and that 100s of 1000s were killed and persecution continues?  On the other hand, every month there is a blog that somehow ends up being about Palestinians/Israelis.  (can you imagine the blog if Israel kicked out Imams from the West Bank?) Think about it. I have made my point, I will stop.

I hav problem to believe that this university does not want Finkelstein for professor. The man is rather prestigious. I think it was rather good for dePaul. I would hope the decision get re-considered.

Friends:

Many of you have been arguing over the notions of outage and responsibility.  Great to see it.

Consider, first, this new documentary that has just been released as a DVD:

War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, Norman Solomon et al., Media Education Foundation, 2007

Consider, next, how many statesmen, pundits, and activists are hard at work these days spinning a possible U.S.-U.K. attack on Iran, and making it that much easier.  (Denouncing the Iranian regime has been a profitable enterprise in the United States since 1979. Just like denouncing the Iraqi regime was prior to that U.S. invasion.  Or denouncing the Belgrade Serbs in 1998 and early 1999.  Or denouncing Manuel Noriega back in 1989.  And so on.  And so on.  In an uninterrupted chain whose links stretch all the way back to the beginning of the Empire during the old colonial conflicts of Britian, France, and Spain.)

Consider, lastly, the following two exercises in spinning from Human Rights Watch, the largest and most prestigious U.S.-based non-governmental organization working this circuit: 

"Human Rights Watch Policy on Iraq," ca. late 2002 - early 2003
"Iraq: Execution of Captive Soldiers Violates the Laws of War," Human Rights Watch, June 8, 2007 

Like Pilate, Human Rights Watch looked away, and washed the coming blood from its hands at the precise moment that taking a stand aganst the imminent supreme international crime of its own state would have mattered.  

And now, when it doesn't, what does Human Rights Watch do? It decries the Iraqi resistance's treatment of two of the captured soldiers of the invading military.

You see what I mean?  Where U.S. responsibility was greatest, Human Rights Watch took a dive.  On the other hand, where Tehran's responsibility is the issue, or the responsibility of whomever captured the American soldiers, the Moral Tartuffes in the States and elsewhere play pile-on.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

I don't understand. Is my/our outrage at Israeli military and government atrocities somehow worse than my/our outrage at Chinese atrocities? Isn't the point that we all should abhor atrocity when we see it? Like the rest of us, you seem to be opposed to, and anxious to expose, all such government/military crime. Does Israeli government/military behavior deserve special justification for some reason? I think maybe we should try to focus on the central issue: that the US (and other) media seem to actually approve of Israeli government/military atrocities, or at least virulently deny that they happen. Are you denying? Are you justifying? What are you doing? This is central to the debate we're having about Finkelstein. Among people who are reasonably well-informed about Israeli state terrorism and apartheid, there are only two basic points of view: outrage (this is criminal and must be stopped) and justification (this is unfortunate but necessary for the survival of Israel). These are the points of view respectively of Finkelstein and Dershowitz. The denial promoted by the media bolsters the latter as it handicaps the former. Isn't this what we're supposed to be talking about? That the tight bond of media denial and Israeli justification is related to the ostracism of Finkelstein? Tibet etc. is a whole other subject. Why do you keep drawing it in? Nobody's going to argue with you about it.

Pangea, You say time is a factor, fair enough. How about we all start by boycotting all Chinese products, very easy, I'm sure there are many at the stores you visit. After all, if you do only a bit of research, China invaded Tibet, exiled hundreds of thousands, killed tens of thousands (the exiled Tibetan government estimates 1.2 million Tibetans have died due to the invasion and occupation of Tibet by China; even Chinese estimates show over 80,000 killed). The ethnic cleansing of Tibet by China in the 1950's, with an occupation continuing to this day is WELL DOCUMENTED. I challenge you to tell me how anything Israel has done is worse than what China has done (and is still doing) to Tibet. There is no question, no disputes, that Tibet was an independent nation conquered and occupied by China, still is occupied by China, no freedom of religion, forced population transfers and the killing of tens of thousands.

Where is the energy on this topic? no UN resolutions on this  one (kind of hard when China has veto power on Security Council) Chinese products are everywhere, it should not take much "time" to not buy these products. Or is China too big to take on? Easier to focus energies on a nation with 6 million people, right?

Friends:

FYI: Just released:

SIPRI Yearbook 2007: Armaments, Disarmament, and International Security, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

As always, see Ch. 8, "Military Expenditure," and the accompanying tables (which are accessible if you look for them).

Although a built-in bias causes SIPRI to underestimate the true scale of the resources, human and material, that the Americans and the world devote to military account (i.e., in terms of sheer human and opportunity costs, every dollar spent on military account causes immeasurable permanent losses in the lives of countless people), nevertheless, here is what the online summary of its 2007 Yearbook reports:

  World military expenditure in 2006 is estimated to have reached $1204 billion in current dollars. This represents a 3.5 per cent increase in real terms since 2005 and a 37 per cent increase over the 10-year period since 1997. Average spending per capita increased from $173 in 2005 to $184.

  World military expenditure is extremely unevenly distributed. In 2006 the 15 countries with the highest spending accounted for 83 per cent of the world total.

  The large increase in the USA's military spending is to a great extent due to the costly military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Most of the increase resulted from supplementary allocations in addition to the regular budget. Between September 2001 and June 2006, the US Government provided a total of $432 billion in annual and supplemental appropriations under the heading ‘global war on terrorism'. This increase in US military spending has contributed to the deterioration of the US economy since 2001. Taking both immediate and long-term factors into account, the overall past and future costs until year 2016 to the USA for the war in Iraq have been estimated at $2267 billion.

Controlling for the boilerplate, this annual volume is an amazing resource.

But my question is this: Who do you suppose is more plugged-into and supportive of the $1,204 billion system of annual expenditures globally, and the rule-by-violence and intimidation that it purchases: Norman Finkelstein?  Or Alan Dershowitz, Harvard University, and DePaul University? 

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

He is labelled as controversial by the media (and certain others), because what he says is controversial to them and the interests they look after. He is not controversial to the vast majority of people in the world. He is simply stating the facts about the conflict. Most people happen to agree with him. Israel and the US are the only two countries where the population don't, reflecting the very one-sided bias in the media. "censored by the UN"? What is this supposed to mean? Israel has countless UN resolutions condemning their actions. This despite the fact USA are protecting Israel in all kinds of ways in the UN. This is why the UN has been unable to do anything meaningful in the conflict for the past few decades. "the major national media" isn't exactly a small factor in shaping public opinion. Every majour newsoutlet in the USA are skewed in Israel's favour. I'd say that is true for most European countries as well, especially if we take into account the comments we would see if any other country in the world did the same. On point after point Israel are doing what Apartheid-South Africa did. On some areas even worse ("settlements" for instance). I most certainly agree that what the Lebanese government and army is doing against Palestinian refugees should have received much more cover. It's outrageous what they have done there, no matter how fundamentalist the group they are supposedly targeting is. Slaughtering massive amounts of people isn't apartheid, it's genocide or crimes against humanity, which is worse (like what Israel did to Palestinians in 1947-48). What the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed militia is doing in Darfur is of course massive crimes, and some have labelled it genocide. Of course we should also focus on that and try to stop it, as many do. It is however much harder for us to stop or influence the behaviour of the Sudanese government and its militia, than Israel or the US. This is why many focus on "Palestine", Iraq and Afghanistan ahead of other conflicts such as Darfur and Sri Lanka. You can say it is double standards, and to a degree it is. But it is a reflection of what we actually have a chance to do something about. It is better to focus on one (or a few) problem or conflict, get very good knowledge about it, and try to influence power-centres as best you can, than to have shallow knowledge about all conflicts in the world. After all, the day only has 24 hours, and that is limiting what we can learn and do about a certain conflict, especially as at least 8 hours each day is occupied by a job and other occupations tied with running a family and generally living in a consumer society. We all have to make choices of what to focus on because of these constraints. People like Chomsky and others who can spend their entire day on things like this, can go into many more conflicts, but most people can't. It is therefore rational to focus on a conflict where we have a reasonable chance of influencing the majour actors to come to their senses and stop the calamity. You should also keep in mind that large amounts of people pretty much devote their lives to try to stop the atrocities in Darfur. One could label them as having double standards too, as there will always be a conflict somewhere viewed as worse than others. The Congo civil war took a lot more lives than in Darfur for example. One could also say that even all conflicts in the world combined do not kill as many people as structural problems such as poverty and disease does, which is true. This is something I am personally very much involved in. It is however much harder to change the international trade system (etc etc) than to stop the occupation of the West Bank. Btw, I have not equalled what the Jews do with what the Nazis did, nor do I think anybody have. Hitler tried to wipe out an entire "race", Israel do not do that. They 'just' try to force them to leave the land. This involves all sorts of crimes, horrors and atrocities, but it's not as bad as what the Nazis did, obviously. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

LeftMarxist and others are on target when they say  Universities everywhere are moral sewers. You have to suck up to powers that be both within and outside to get tenure.

   It is very revealing that these universities can't even handle one single dissident in their midst. After all, there are how many true dissidents in an average US University like DePaul. May be 1% or 2%. Not more than that. The fact that they can't stand even such low numbers of heretics tells a lot about the totalitarian mentality of these commissars.

         Leftists should build alternative institutions and leave these moral cesspools to rascals like Dershowitz. Dershowitz is evil beyond compare. 

  I have come across one such alternative institution. It is Murray Bookchin's Institute of Social Ecology. I don't know much about it. But I guess it is better than most universities.

   Finkelstein would have benefitted greatly if given tenure because he could have access to good research facilities , borrowing books which are needed.

   Anyway, it is very sad to see this happening to a courageous scholar to Finkelstein. This is a truly kafkaesque experience.

 

If our righteously miffed friend here were to rewrite Crime and Punishment, he would thread the plot so as to make Raskolnikov go mad at news of murders carried out by a perfect stranger of people he had never heard of, instead of losing his mind over bringing down an axe over two women's heads with his own hands. After all, the number of dead bodies is the same in either case, or it may even be greater in the former situation.

Truly a surreal cast of mind. Perhaps you can be persuaded to go to Hollywood and apply for a position as a script doctor. If so, here's a public domain movie that'll get the creative juices flowing, not that their viscosity needs any improving.

Pangea, whatever you believe, Finkelstein IS controversial. By definition: "A controversy or dispute is a matter of opinion over which parties actively disagree, argue, or debate." No matter if you think he is right or wrong, LARGE numbers of people disagree. Dershowitz is controversial and so is Finkelstein. At least realize that many many people disagree with you and Finkelstein, and they all believe they are right and will also say they back up claims with "facts." At least acknowledge this.

The fact that Israel is the ONLY country censured as many times by the UN almost contradicts your point. This is well documented by the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC and CNN and much more. In reality, in the USA, only Fox and Wall Street Journal (or the major national media) are consistently skewed in Israel's favor. The Media feedback is pretty silent re what Lebanon is doing in the Palestinian camp near Tripoli (shelling randomly, nearly the entire camp has fled, killing civilians). Are you telling me Sudan does not have an Apartheid policy? Yes, I guess slaughtering 200,000 people of a different ethnic background isn't apartheid, right? You are right, one evil does not make another evil OK. But only critisizing one evil and not the other, calling one nation like Nazis and not the other....this is another kind of evil and is just plain wrong.

You're absolutely right in calling Russia, China, Sudan, etc. all terrorist states. If you and I are in the least bit morally sound, we should be concerned with what WE are responsible for and what WE can affect. THEN we can move on to adress other people's crimes. This holds even if someone else is killing far more people than we are, as its rather pathetic to compare suffering and atrocities and attempt to rank them. They are ALL atrocities. And they should ALL be stopped. If we have the least bit of moral integrity, we should be firstly concerned with what we can directly affect, then we can move on. Otherwise you are simply supporting state power by shouting down the others without first checking to see that you are actually practicing the thing that you are preaching.

[/Chomsky Emulation mode off]

Lenny Wilson

SK:

Or how best to improve the effectiveness of violence in subduing resistance movements in theaters where your favorite state doesn't belong (a.k.a. "counterinsurgency"), as they do at Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. 

But -- and here's one critical difference, among many others -- Norman Finkelstein never would.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Postscript. Can anybody tell me whether DePaul University academics have ever made a significant contribution to the U.S. Government's prolific threat and use of force over the years?

 

"It's all relative", Pangaea (which, not so coincidentally was a favorite ploy of apologists for white supremacism in South Africa for decades). 

You'll get a better handle on who you're dealing with once you've read this description of his ilk.

I am just echoing Prole's comment: "Don't expect much from academia when it comes to promoting 'freedom and democracy'".

Mike Davis was once asked whether having been a butcher ever bothered him. He replied, "Why would being a butcher bother me? Unlike so much of academia, it is socially important, skilled labor."

I remember reading somewhere that less than 1% of papers published in American Political Science journals (Finkelstein's area) during the Vietnam War--a "political" event that had a profound impact on this society--deigned to deal with that conflict. The gatekeepers of the field directed research toward weightier matters like identifying umpteen ways of statistically slicing and dicing data on voting patterns in upstate New York.

Anyone who is responsible enough to deal with actual concerns of actual people risks being labeled "irresponsible".

I'm fully aware it was your opinion. I didn't really question your numbers either, as I don't know. Maybe you are correct, maybe not. You are probably also correct that only the most progressive Jews believe what Finkelstein says. My point was that much of what he says is taken from the historical record, and isn't controversial. What most Jews think of that is a different matter. A lot of things are like that. The media tell one story. Naturally most of the public will believe this, unless they know better from other sources or personal experience etc. I think it's the same about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There is no doubt whatsoever that Israel have committed horrible atrocities on the people in "Palestine", and Finkelstein talks about this. I agree that Israel is a terrorist state. They have proven that for 40 years now (some say ~60). The countries you mention have also carried out horrible crimes, and indeed state terrorism. But I don't see how that somehow makes it allright what Israel does to Palestinians (not saying you mean that, of course). One man's evil doesn't make another man's evil okay. The countries you mention haven't carried out the apartheid policy we see in the Occupied Territories. True, they have caused a lot of suffering and death, but people don't live in a de facto prison, or are separated from others, and have fewer rights, based on race (peculiar to call different humans different races though...). But you are correct that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict gets more attention than many other conflicts (such as Darfur, or Rwanda or Congo in its day). The coverage of the conflict though, is skewed towards Israeli views. How often do you hear in the news-media that Israel are breaking international law, have countless UN resolutions condemning their actions, have a World Court decision against them? etc. If what Israel are doing happened in any other country in the world, there would be massive outcries against it. Can you imagine the media feedback if, say, Syria did the same in Lebanon? Or Russia in Chechnya? We would see headlines containing the words "gulag" and "concentration camp". But we don't see that in the context of "Palestine". It is only natural to point out the double standards of this, and try to rectify it by spreading information and discussing the matter. What is very perplexing to me is that Jews can allow this to go on, with the history of what they have gone through. This is where Finkelstein's Holocaust industry comes into play. I just hope Israel can change its policies towards the OT. Otherwise I'm afraid massive crimes in the other direction will happen somewhere down the line. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

OK so we agree:

Russia -- Criminal Terrorist State

China -- Criminal Terrorist State

Syria -- Criminal Terrorist State

Agreed, correct?

The Russians reduced much of Chechnya, certainly the capital Grozny, to mostly rubble. Civilian deaths are estimated anywhere from 35,000 to 100,000, many more refugees. This dwarfs the death caused by even the worst estimate of Israeli actions. So is Russia's Criminal Terrorism more or less flagrant that Israel's Terrorism? Like Nazi Germany? What about Sudan? Like Nazi Germany? (more refugees, more villages destroyed, more dead that anything you can dig up about Israel -- do you really need facts on this?). If you use the Nazi Germany line on Israel, then I ask you to apply it to these other countries. Since this is quite a statement, it demands a bit more exposition from you.

This is important I think, because my problem with much of the criticism of Israel is less the content, but the concept that Israel is singled out. So when British Professors boycott Israel, I say OK fine, but why not Russia, China, Sudan, etc. If they are such humanists, why not create a long list of criminal terrorist states and boycott them. Surely Russia and China are more influential (and have oppressed and killed many more people in most recent history) in the worldwide stage that 6 million strong Israel.

Yes, insofar as I know (and I'm limited) all of the places you mention reveal the same kind of criminal terrorism on the part of their ruling regimes. I would add New Orleans since 2005 under the GW, Haiti today under US/France/Canada (and under US since Wilson), dozens of Latin American "coups" under nearly every US administration since Polk, the Philippines under Theodore Roosevelt, virtually all Native American polities under every North American administration since Winthrop and John Smith, Algeria under France, Armenia under the "Young Turks" . . there are differences of degree, and I do say that the official Israeli government and military activity in the occupied territories is among the most flagrant, comparable not only to South Africa under apartheid (as old South African visitors to Israel always say) but even to Nazi Germany. I suspect that, If I were Palestinian, I would be strapping a bomb under my shirt--it's that infuriating and hopeless both. If I were a bit privileged and a bit twisted besides, I might even consider hijacking a plane and going straight for the White House. T

Clearly I state my OPINION as a response to the opinion of Dr. Boyle that Finkelstein, where he somehow believes that Finkelstein represents Jewish values. I don't speak for Jews, I am just saying that based on my vast experience in the Jewish community (and as a leftist on most topics), most (in my opinion 95% +) Jews don't believe this and find him repulsive in almost every way, especially when it come to his views on the Holocaust. I am certain that a is a survey was conducted, I would be correct. Again, believe what you want to believe but realize that only the farest left Jews support Finkelstein.

As to terence who states that "Israel is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a criminal terrorist state," I would like your opinion on whether the same title applies to Russia (re Chechnya), China (re Tibet), Sri Lanka (re Tamil's/Jaffna), Indonesia (re Aceh), Sudan (Darfur), Syria (Destruction of 10,000 people in Homa in 1980s and more), Iraq under Saddam (re gassing Kurds) and many more examples I can provide you. If you need evidence of the horrible atrocities in all these areas, they are easy to provide. Just answer for each country, yes or no, and if no, why. If you can show me that you can be consistent in your definitions and spend as much time focusing on the wrongs of these countries, I will have a lot more respect for your opinions on Israel.

The reason I think Finkelstein is pro-Israel, and people like Dershowitz, Bush and Olmert is not, is that he sees things on a longer time-frame. There is no future for Israel with its current policies (no, I'm not advocating 'wiping' it off the map). Israel can't occupy Palestinian land and oppress Arabs for decades to come, and not expect strong resistance down the line (perhaps including mass crimes). Terrible oppression is a breeding ground for extremists (as we have seen in "Palestine" and many other conflicts). Israel could have returned the Golan Heights to its rightful owner, not started the settlement policy, and ended its occupation of "Palestine". Then it could quite likely have lived in peace with its Arab neighbours. I am certain that much of what he says is shocking to Jews and many others. Simply because it clashes with how they view the conflict. The thing is that facts support Finkelstein's views. It's not something he has come up with to smite Israel or Jews. I'm talking about facts about the conflict here, not the Holocaust industry. That part can be discussed. What he says about the conflict is uncontroversial and based on the historical record, including many Israeli sources and (ex-)government officials. He (and others) have asked Dershowitz to point out what is wrong in his books, but he has never gotten a reply. If there were so many errors, there would be nothing to lose for Dershowitz by pointing it out. The fact he has not done so, tells a lot. Both about him as a person, and about the argument (or lack of one) he is trying to put forth. And to be fair, it's not strange that most Jews (particularly those living in the US and Israel) view Finkelstein as a bit of a nutter. When the media creates an image of him as a nutter, people will naturally belive it, unless they read what the guy has actually said and know the facts. If I am religiously convinced the US went to Iraq to free its people from an evil dictator and give them democracy, I will view people like Chomsky as a nutter for having a radically different view on the situation. It's the same with Finkelstein on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

One thing you say is clearly wrong--Israel is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a criminal terrorist state. You can perhaps say its criminal terrorism of the non-Jewish population in its occupied territories is politically necessary, but you can't deny the fact. T

the difference is that you claim to speak for Jews while Finkelstein never has.

The writer of the letter thinks that Finkelstein represents Jewish values, that is a matter of opinion, and has nothing whatsoever to do with what other people think or what you think other people think.

Luckily for those of us who care about truth, there are still some people, even academics, who base their opinions on facts and not the supposed beliefs of a propagandized public.

I am not going to debate the merits of Finkelstein's arguments here. But let's be clear. He does not "represent the real values and ethos of the Jewish People." As a Jew, and actively involved in Jewish organizations, here and in Israel, he is viewed as revolting to most Jews, and generally ignored. A well documented statement like this: "I am not exaggerating when I say that 1 out 3 Jews you stop in the street in New York will claim to be a survivor [of the Nazi Holocaust]." Most Jews do not believe that there is a holocaust industry, or that Israel is a criminal terrorist state. Since some 5-6 million Jews already live in Israel out of a paltry 14 million worldwide, it would be hard to claim a majority of Jews, or even a substantial number, believe anything that Finkelstein has to say. Most of the people commenting on this blog view Finkelstein as a hero (I would question how such a narrow topic as Palestine/Israel, which is so minor in terms of human suffering on both sides compared to so many other conflicts, once again gains SO much prominence), but don't kid yourselves, he is pretty much discredited by what I would say in my opinion is 95%+ of Jews worldwide. I am sure that most of the Jews on this board are in the "support" camp, but MOST people who have family who was killed in the Holocaust (I am one of these) view Finkelstein as completely revolting (and I realize Finkelstein is a son of a survivor, which only compounds the revulsion). And most Jews support Israel, we can debate what this means, but most Jews would not consider Finkelstein a "supporter" of Israel. So believe what you want to believe, but don't kid yourselves, most Jews (at least outside of Znet) view Finkelstein as WAY outside the mainstream, or even what I would consider the mainstream left, on Jewish values or ethos or on thoughts about the Holocaust or Israel.

(Copy of Letter submitted by Francis Boyle to the Palestine Chronicle.)

De Paul & Dershowitz v. Finkelstein

To the Editor:

I think I have read almost every book Professor Norman Finkelstein has written. He is on my "automatic buy" list along with Noam Chomsky and a handful of others. Professor Finkelstein is an outstanding scholar who has had and will continue to have a momentous impact on Middle East Studies.

It is a disgrace that DePaul University -- which purports to be Catholic -- succumbed to political pressure and inflicted this grave injustice upon Professor Finkelstein at the behest of Alan Derhsowitz and his Neo-Conservative confederates.

As for Dershowitz, he is a self -incriminated war criminal who publicly admitted that he serves on a Mossad Committee that authorizes the murder and assassination of Palestinians, which constitutes a grave violation of the Geneva Conventions and thus a serious war crime. Dershowitz is also infamous around the world for being this country's foremost advocate for torture.

In my opinion it is Professor Finkelstein who far better represents the real values and ethos of the Jewish People. In any event, it is a shame that the University named after St. Vincent DePaul has allied itself with Dershowitz against the courageous Norman Finkelstein. Unlike Dershowitz, Professor Finkelstein has always spoken the Truth to those in Power. By comparison, Dershowitz is nothing more than an Errand Boy for those in Power. But as St. Vincent DePaul University should have understood: "You shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall set you free!"
 
Francis A. Boyle
Professor of Law
University of Illinois College of Law

"The Jihad of Alan Dershowitz," Liaquat Ali Khan, CounterPunch, September 30, 2004

 

 

This incident plus the earlier Ward Churchill broohaha seem to invite public exposure of many among those who do possess tenure and/or lucrative visiting academic positions. How many criminal Iraq War neocons are currently holding such positions at "moral sewers" (exactly right) like Georgetown and the like? I can think of numerous power-worshipping and/or do-nothing academicians who were granted lifetime job security simply because of their eager willingness to advance hiearchy within and beyond their institutions of "higher education." Investigating their full records could prove interesting. Beneath academia's claims of obsessive concern with "merit" and "objectivity" and the like, it's all about kissing the master's ring. And sadly, beneath the myth of radical/Left academia (a right-wing fiction), most of the professoriat is more than happy to assume the position of abject subordination. They like it, on the whole. The message of this tenure denial and the Churchill discharge is clear: "step out of line and refuse to serve as a tool of the masters' desires and the man will take you away. Keep your mouths shut little professors, you hear?" Most of the professoriat doesn't need the message, but a few rogue academicians with moral and intellectual integrity still need to be disciplined. The American university is not about merit or truth or any of that. It's not about critical and engaged reflection toward the creation of a democratic society. It's about service to dominant hieararchies, the reproduction of ruling-class ideologies and the production of a safely indocrinated coordinator class to manage key tasks of "elite" socieconomic, political, imperial and cultural management. Perhaps it is time to pick out a worthwhile sample of safely ensconsned academics and subject their full scholarly and political records (or non-records) to serious and engaged scrutiny, comparing those records with the prolific output and contributions of people like WC and NF.

Pangaea:

This is a great idea.  No kidding.  What the various layers of the Depaul University Board on Promotion and Tenure Denial ought to have done, all culminating in the Rev. Holtschneider's June 8 letter, was to inform Norman Finkelstein that on issues of major contemporary import, he has devoted his academic career and his activism to very forcefully arguing cases that conflict with Great Worldly Power, and that do so quite effectively; and DePaul University, being aligned as an institution with the same Great Worldly Power, therefore finds him persona non grata. 

Case closed.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA 

 

Friends:

Yes all the way around.  And thanks, SK, for the great hyperlinks.  As always.

But -- do you really mean to say that, in the human world, this is not the first time that the gatekeepers of gilded History, aligned with great worldly power (and a priest to boot), colluded to punish and to excommunicate from their ranks one regarded as dangerous, in the name of protecting the freedom and the integrity of inquiry for all?   

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

 

Friends:

Can't help but wonder how many fundamentalists -- and therefore open to the kind of otherwise one-sided, Eurocentric inquiry that the dudes behind the orignal Fundamentalism Project at the University of Chicago launched way back in the late 1980s -- there are among the newer leadership at DePaul University?

I mean, I can think of many fields of inquiry that desperately need reclaiming from the pharisees now in control.   

Do you suppose that Depaul University's current President, the Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider -- among those who just sat in judgment over Norman Finkelstein -- wears this medallion to bed at night?

 

The Presidential Medallion

The presidential medallion symbolizes the authority conferred as a sacred trust by the Board of Trustees upon the President as the chief executive officer of the university. By virtue of his office the President is personally entrusted with the responsibility of promoting the mission and values that underlie DePaul University's service to its students and its distinctive identity as a Catholic, Vincentian and Urban institution.

Created in 2004 by the renowned Chicago silversmith William N. Frederick, the DePaul University presidential medallion is in the form of the University seal, cast in silver and suspended from a chain with links to the heraldic symbols of each of the university's eight schools and colleges.

The new medallion was commissioned by the Office of Mission and Values, and the Office of Academic Affairs in honor of the inauguration of the Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, C.M., as the university's 11th president.

 

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Mitchell:

Thanks for these important hyperlinks:

"Finkelstein Protest," Chicago Independent Media Center
"Support Petition for Norman Finkelstein's Tenure," Finkelgate.com  

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

FYI: DePaul students are taking action today (Monday) on the issue. The first (sketchy) dispatch is posted here. Additional posts will likely be posted to Chicago Indymedia throughout the day.

They could just have been honest about it. "Your views on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is controversial among elites. You are therefore denied tenure at DePaul university." It's beyond comment that they dare to slag off Finkelstein for ad hominem attacks and not respecting the opinions of others. Hello?!!! This to a person that is the victim of around the clock ad hominem attacks from certain others in academia. In short, doublespeak. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

It's not just at the modern American university that moral fecklessness is a problem. When Mussolini required all university professors to take an oath of allegiance to the Fascist regime, only 12 out of 1225 professors refused and were fired. One of these unemployed was a renowned scholar of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, Giorgio Levi della Vida. A former student of della Vida--who writes at this very site--commented on this excerpt from the diary of another silenced academic:

In his remarkable diaries of his life as a Jew under Nazism--escaping the gas chambers by a near miracle--Victor Klemperer writes these words about a German professor friend whom he had much admired, but who had finally joined the pack:

“If one day the situation were reversed and the fate of the vanquished lay in my hands, then I would let all the ordinary folk go and even some of the leaders, who might perhaps after all have had honourable intentions and not known what they were doing. But I would have all the intellectuals strung up, and the professors three feet higher than the rest; they would be left hanging from the lamp posts for as long as was compatible with hygiene.”

Klemperer's reactions were merited, and generalised to a large part of recorded history.

Prole is right on when he says "Don't expect much from academia when it comes to promoting 'freedom and democracy'. Drop out now before they pollute your mind and corrupt your values any further!"

I signed the Finkelstein petition a while back, telling DePaul they would deserve shame if they denied him tenure. But I did so knowing from long and direct experience that the modern United States university is a power-worshipping moral sewer --- a complete disgrace.  I cringe to think how much good moral and intellectual energy has been wasted and perverted by radicals seeking to find comfortable homes and approval in corporate-imperial academia. You get academic tenure and promotions and esteem by sucking up to power both within and beyond your institution of "higher learning" (I know at least one case where tenure was achieved by quite literally by sucking power). Mind pollution and values corruption are exactly what these universities are about. Most of the people I know who have survived through tenure and beyond in academia have done so only at terrible and tragic prices to their own moral and intellectual integrity. There are exceptions (Finkelstein would have been one of them I'm sure) but they are relatively rare. It's a very perverse and authoritarian world --- the most noxious and vicious milieu I ever had the misfortune to inhabit and I've worked in some truly terrible capitalist workplaces. His field (History, I believe) is especially narrow and stupid at present. I feel terrible for Finkelstein, a fine and courageous Left scholar, and I would certainly support efforts to have him reinstated but but I can never escape the feeling that leftists are better off not being in universities.  Leave those places to assholes like Dershowitz and the rest and set up alternative institutions and methods of critical reflection outside and against the vicious and vapid little world that academic authorities oversee in service to their own business class and military-industrial masters.

Prole:

Your very last sentence says an awful lot, I'm afraid.  And the irony of the fact that (actually, like all universities -- but not pool halls, as far as I'm aware) DePaul University maintains an Office of Mission and Values will not be lost on you.

 

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Big names stand up for Finkelstein.. Raul Hilberg and Avi Shlaim, Chomsky, and even Robert Fisk on tenure.. I think it is a big lost to loose Finkelstein..

I wonder how many people like Finkelstein, end up loosing their jobs for analysis that aren't unreasonable.. according to what i read about Finkelstein, he has lost quite a few. However this is not indicative of him being a bad person. Whereareas Dershowitz and DePaul are failing with their thinking is to provide proof that Finkelstein is not accurate or is misleading. It would be cool if Finkelstein run for elections.

"The president of DePaul goes along with it"? More likely, the right reverend was more than willing to carry it out without any prompting from a dink like Dershowitz. Dershowitz's influence should not be overestimated or the pervasive prejudice against Finkelstein's views from many quarters underestimated. With or without Dershoshitz, the power structure has it in for iconoclasts like Finlelstein. Universities are part of the problem. Complaisant accomplices of the ruling  elites dedicated to promoting imperialist ideology and suppressing dissent. "It was questioned by some [UNNAMED] whether Dr Finkelstein contributes to the public discourse [UNDEFINED] on sensitive societal issues." Perfectly fatuous academic boilerplate. The Orwellian criticism about "respect...free inquiry" and "ad hominem attacks" goes beyond the pale, a truly Dershowitzian degree of chutzpah. But it is probably completely true that "the impression that our process and decision have been influenced by outside interests, ...are mistaken".  DePaul and its pious president probably would have done it anyhow, not content with merely denying tenure but giving Finkelstein the axe altogether, and probably effectively ending his academic career anywher. The suggestion that he call the Office of the Provost and make an appointment if he has any gripes - even going so far as to condescendingly give the number (area code included!) - only adds insult to injury. Don't expect much from academia when it comes to promoting 'freedom and democracy'. Drop out now before they pollute your mind and corrupt your values any further! 

FYI, interesting take on arrogance of power and the unintended consequences that come of it...

How did Alan M. Dershowitz get to Harvard ? it must be money because i cant see whatever intelligence got him there..