Norman Finkelstein Seems to Have Been Stung by My Criticisms into Responding with an Infantile E-Mail

You Cannot Call BDS a ‘Cult’, Support the Existence of an Apartheid State & Attack the Slogan of the Movement ‘Palestine Must be Free’ & Expect To be Worshipped Like An Ancient God

Norman Finkelstein has been a remarkable analyst and critic but he has also acted like a bull in a china shop.

Finkelstein’s demolition of the fraudulent Joan Peter’s From Time Immemorial, which claimed that it was the Zionist settlement which attracted the Palestinians to Palestine and that there were therefore no refugees, was a classic example of how to deconstruct an opponent’s argument. To say that Finkelstein demolished Peters and her wretched book, whilst swimming against the tide of favourable reviews in all the mainstream press, the NYT included, is an understatement.

When Daniel Goldhagen wrote the execrable ‘The Germans: Hitler’s Willing Executioners’ which said that the Germans killed Jews because they were a particularly sadistic and cruel nation, Finkelstein tore him to pieces. So devastating was his criticism that Goldhagen threatened him with libel initially, rather than reply to the substance of the criticism.

Holocaust Industry

Finkelstein’s Holocaust Industry, helped change the debate over the weaponisation of the memory of the holocaust but it nonetheless refrained from drawing any conclusions about the relations between the Zionists and the Nazis which are surely relevant to the Zionists’ exploitation of the holocaust?

The pre-eminent holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg, author of the Destruction of European Jews was a ‘strong supporter’ of Finkelstein. Finkelstein savaged the Zionist Jewish Claims Conference which has embezzled millions of dollars, intended for the holocaust survivors, for the Zionists’ pet projects (as well as engaging in more mundane corruption).

This was all too much for the Socialist Workers’ Party resident guru, Professor Alex Callinicos [Finkelstein and the holocaust] who declared, in a review which, more than anything, demonstrated that the SWP is incapable of a serious analysis of anti-Semitism today or how the holocaust has been used to undermine Palestine solidarity.

How different is his assertion that “the field of Holocaust studies is replete with nonsense, if not plain fraud” from the Holocaust revisionist David Irving’s rantings during his recent libel case?... so exaggerated is his polemic that at times he comes, quite contrary to his own intentions, dangerously close to giving comfort to those who dream of new holocausts.

Perhaps this is one reason why the SWP front organisation, Stand Up to Racism, continues to march with genocidal Zionist organisations like Glasgow Friends of Israel.

The misnamed Zionist group Honest Reporting was more than happy to take advantage of Finkelstein's attack on BDS as were other Zionists

Finkelstein is not an anti-Zionist

I say all this because Finkelstein has one major flaw. And it’s not just an overweening ego. Finkelstein is not an anti-Zionist nor is he a socialist, despite once having been a Maoist. His support for a 2 State Solution, which he has never disavowed, is based on the myth of the ‘International Community’ which is nothing more than an attempt to cloak the interests of US imperialism in a democratic garb. His faith in International Law as the arbiter of relations between states and nations has been shown to be hollow with the genocide in Gaza.

Gaza has demonstrated that international law is unable to prevent Israel from committing genocide in Gaza because it has no enforcement mechanism. As long as Israel is backed by the United States it can and does act with impunity. International law can’t even prevent states like Germany and Britain supplying arms for the genocide.

Finkelstein is erratic in that he took a correct position on the 7^th October attack by the Palestinian Resistance, namely that it was akin to a slave revolt against their masters, but he refused to draw the necessary conclusion that the slaves destroyed the institution of slavery where they could (Haiti) because it was incompatible with their own freedom and liberty.

Norman has consistently supported the continued existence of the Israeli state and played down its supremacist and apartheid nature. That's what support for 2 States means.

Finkelstein's Opposition to the slogan 'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free' echoes what the Zionists say

In his interview with the Guardian, Finkelstein made plain his disagreement with the slogan ‘Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea’ when he said:

“What do you mean by Palestine will be free? Do you mean there is no room for Israel?”

But then he went on to say something even more interesting.

 “Palestine will be free” can also mean something else. It can fit into what’s called the settler colonial framework, which basically says, “Settlers do not have legitimate rights to the land. The land belongs to those who are ‘Indigenous’ to it. And everybody else, at most, can live there on the sufferance of the Indigenous majority, or they have to pack up and leave.” And the reason that slogan is ambiguous is because the movement is ambiguous about what its goal is. And if you try to remove the ambiguity, you risk breaking up the movement.

Finkelstein did not say this to the encampment at Columbia University. At Columbia he beat about the bush and was vague and waffled on about strategic goals. He didn’t say ‘what about Israel’ there because he knows the reception that would have got. As soon as he had he finished speaking the students broke into the very slogan that he was trying to get them to disavow! Clearly his argument was not very convincing.

What Finkelstein said in his Guardian interview is that he doesn’t agree with the settler-colonial framing that apparently sees Israel as a product of western colonialism and imperialism and in which the settlers have no rights. What Finkelstein is doing is deliberately distorting and caricaturing the settler-colonial paradigm. It does not say that the settlers don’t have legitimate rights to the land. That was never said in South Africa, quite the contrary. What it said was that the settlers were entitled to live as equals with the indigenous and that is what Palestinians say today.  Although to be blunt I wouldn’t blame Palestinians for saying for example that the neo-Nazi settlers on the West Bank should fuck off back home.

What the settler colonial framework does say is that the settlers’ rights are no greater than those who are indigenous to the land and they have to jettison their belief that they are superior. All of this Finkelstein disparages and distorts.

In essence Finkelstein is a liberal democrat. That is why he is so fond of the reactionary Mahatma Ghandi whose acceptance of communal electorates helped pave the way for Partition and the present day Hindu Supremacist state of India and the permanent military dictatorship of Pakistan. 

Finkelstein isn’t prepared to say that Israel is a settler colonial state that has got to go. On the contrary he admires the early Zionists, the kibbutzim, their ‘idealism’, the ‘austere life’ and the ‘rugged individualism’ of the early Labour Zionist settlers. This isn’t a matter of speculation. It is what he wrote in correspondence to me.

It is unfortunate that Finkelstein, who is very close politically to Noam Chomsky, who himself has never disavowed Zionism, hasn’t made his position clear on Zionism and the continued existence of a Jewish State. When Finkelstein calls Israel a ‘lunatic’ or ‘satanic’ state what he is doing is saying that the genocide it is carrying out today and the expansion now in Syria isn’t on account of Zionism but relates to the ‘thuggish’ messianic vision of Netanyahu as an individual.

https://t.co/To1e3mOWzT

— susan abulhawa | سوزان ابو الهوى (@susanabulhawa) November 30, 2024

Susan Abulhawa & the Oxford Union Debate 

Susan Abulhawa, who made that brilliant speech at the Oxford Union debate on November 28, which was won by 278-59, was highly critical of Finkelstein’s behaviour for many of the same reasons as I've given. Susan wrote:

Finkelstein decided to back out ostensibly because Morris wasn't coming, but in reality, I think he didn't want to be overshadowed by actual Palestinians who can speak more cogently and eloquently than him on the matters pertaining to our own lives, on which he claims expertise, almost exclusively. Norman is a star and shall be treated as a star. Therefore, he demanded to have his own Oxford Union session, undiluted with the voices of pesky Palestinians. That left a gaping hole in the opposition's side, which could not be filled on such short notice. That's why the president of the union, Ebrahim Osman-Mowafy stepped in....

Norman Finkelstein had his own event the following day and everyone fawned over our white American savior. Yes, I'm angry. Norman came to be invited because I suggested he be there to have an academic counterweight to Morris. Rather than supporting Palestinians, he withdrew, apparently because he's too special and important.

The Spires of Oxford

However it wasn’t Finkelstein’s event the next day which made a political impact but the Oxford Union Debate which the pro-Palestinian side won by 4-1. Given that he had been invited at Susan’s suggestion his failure to co-ordinate tactics with her is indicative of his individualistic and egotistical approach when it comes to being part of a collective movement.

Finkelstein's Infantile E-mail

It was because of my recent blog in which I called on Finkelstein to ‘Stop Undermining the Global Movement in Support of the Palestinians’ and then a subsequent challenge by me to debate his objections to the Palestine Must be Free slogan (which he declined) that he sent me an infantile email. I guess I should be amused at finding out how thin Norman’s skin is!

Norman’s email was notionally in response to a circular I sent to people advertising a webinar on December 3, How Anti-Semitism has Complemented Zionism in which Tony Lerman, Barnaby Raine, Michael Richmond and myself spoke. Norman wrote:

I’m tempted to ask readers of my book to email Finkelstein (normfinkelstein@gmail.com/norm6344@gmail.com) to disabuse him of his belief! However that would be to respond in kind.

All I can say is that it’s clear that Finkelstein was stung by my criticisms and  instead of debating it out as we have done before, our usually loquacious academic pundit responded with a temper tantrum. Clearly Finkelstein finds it difficult to defend his opposition to the slogan without having to defend his other views such as the two state solution.

Below is my letter to Finkelstein.

Tony Greenstein