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 7th 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.
— 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 Zionismin 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.
According to Rector Professor Timothy van der Hagen’s Lackey I Posed a Threat to Delft’s ‘open and inclusive’ community unlike Lockheed Martin’s Admiral James O Ellis
The Student Magazine at Delft's Report of My Visit!
The Rector’s anonymous lackey was curt, short and to the point
‘The views of the invited speaker goes against the values that TU Delft stands for: an open and inclusive community where everyone feels safe.’
There was of course no explanation. The Rector’s lackey merely referred to the guidelines for demonstrations on the TU Delft Campus and the Code of Conduct. ‘gatherings on the TU Delft premises in which these values are violated are not permitted.’
Tony Greenstein speaking on the steps of the library at Delft University
There was of course no explanation as to which parts of the Code had been infringed nor why. This is how bureaucracies work. I was banned for being a Jewish anti-Zionist. We could of course guess that my presence was as welcome at a university liked Delft as a ham sandwich in a synagogue! But this is mere speculation.
Admiral James O Ellis, a warmonger extraordinaire is welcomed to Delft by its Administration
Two weeks before I spoke Admiral James O Ellis, who was on the Board of Lockheed Martin (2004-2024) was invited to speak at Delft. Lockheed Martin is one of the largest arms companies in the world, whose fighter aircraft have been prominent in the shredding of children in Gaza and in committing genocide.
Tony Greenstein speaking on the steps of the library at Delft University
Ellis was also President and CEO of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations until May 2012 and Commander of the US Strategic Command. One of the key ghouls in the US Empire, which has been responsible for the overthrow of elected governments and the invasion of countries, as well as the waging of war in the Middle East.
Tony Greenstein speaking on the steps of the library at Delft University
Ellis was considered a suitable speaker whose presence was quite compatible with the ‘values’ of their code of conduct. Clearly the code of conduct which I was held to be in potential breach of had nothing to say about warmongers and supporters of genocide.
Tony Greenstein speaking on the steps of the library at Delft University
I was only travelling to The Netherlands because an old friend, Sue Blackwell, who had been prominent in the launch of the Academic Boycott in Britain in 2005, was getting married to Egbert Harmsen. Both are involved in The Netherlands BDS. I let it be known that I was happy to speak to meetings while I was there and one was arranged at Delft University of Technology, the largest technical university in the country, ranked no. 49 in the world’s rankings.
Activists in the Palestine Collective at Delft therefore faced a dilemma, whether or not to go ahead. Understandably some were worried about attempts to victimise them but in the end it was decided that I would speak on the steps of their impressive library and that is what I did to a crowd of about 100 students.
Tony Greenstein speaking on the steps of the library at Delft University
In his profile the Rector of Delft, Professor van Der Hagen, stated:
The most important task of TU Delft is to make a contribution towards building a better society.
I felt sure that despite being professor nuclear physics he had a broad mind and would countermand his flunkeys. It was not to be.
When I learnt that I was banned from speaking I decided to write Hagen an Open Letter which students distributed around campus. I’ve always believed in going to the organ grinder rather than the monkey.
I explained that there was a genocide taking place in Gaza with the murder of 16,000+ children about which Israeli soldiers have boasted. I also explained that the Netherlands has a long history of colonial war crimes and in banning speakers exposing Israel’s war crimes, in which his university is intimately involved, given its collaboration with Israeli universities, he wasn’t setting a good precedent.
I pointed out that I had recently brought out a book Zionism During the Holocaustwhich explains the relationship of the Zionist movement towards anti-Semitism and the Nazis during the holocaust.
It is this which Delft’s thought police are trying to suppress. Genocide in Gaza does not come from nowhere. Zionism has always been a movement of racial supremacy.
I pointed out that my book carries blurbs from Ilan Pappe, Professor of Middle East History at Exeter University; Richard Falk Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Professor of Global Law at Queen Mary College, London; Moshe Machover, Emeritus Professor at King’s College, London as well as Ken Loach, twice winner of the Palme d’Or. All the aforementioned academics are Jewish and two of them are Israeli.
I felt sure that the good professor would take note and rescind my banning. I also pointed out that famous Jews such as Einstein, Hannah Arendt and Sigmund Freud had opposed the nationalist madness of Zionism in their time and warned of the consequences.
Tony Greenstein speaking on the steps of the library at Delft University
I also pointed out that contrary to the usual jibe of ‘anti-Semitism’ which is directed against opponents of Zionism, it is the anti-Semites themselves who are the best friends of Zionism. Indeed it was leading Nazis who were most fulsome in support of Zionism, because they both shared the belief that Jews did not belong in Germany. I quoted Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi Party’s theoretician, who was hanged as a war criminal at Nuremberg, who wrote in 1919 that
‘Zionism must be vigorously supported in order to encourage a significant number of German Jews to leave for Palestine or other destinations’
Mientje Meijer - the leader of the sewing girls strike
I pointed out that in Netherlands during the Nazi occupation, 75% of the Jewish population was exterminated. This was despite the fact that in February 1941 Dutch workers staged the Amsterdam General Strike, the only strike in Nazi occupied Europe against the deportations. The working class of The Netherlands was magnificent but not so the Dutch state. The strike was savagely repressed with 389 being deported to Mauthausen concentration camp where most died.
Dutch Nazi Collaborators from the NSB
The Dutch state, the Blue Police and its academic functionaries, collaborated extensively with the Nazi occupiers. The Dutch civil service produced an identity card which was almost impossible to forge making the life of Jews in hiding extremely difficult. The Dutch State adopted the Aryan Paragraph which deprived Dutch Jews of citizenship and allowed the deportations to be legally carried out. Jewish Supreme Court judge Lodewijk Visser was removed without protest from fellow judges from the Court by the Nazis.
In The Netherlands the Nazis set up a Jewish Council, the Joodsche Raad, under David Cohen, a leading Zionist official and Abraham Asscher. They assiduously compiled lists on Jews to be deported and carried out the Nazi instructions faithfully.
After the war Willy Lages, Commander of the German Security Police, was asked ‘How was the Jewish Council used?’ to which he replied, ‘In every possible way.’ To the question ‘Did you find them easy to work with?’ he responded, ‘Very easy, indeed.’
By way of contrast in France, where the Communists led the resistance and organised the rescue of Jewish children in particular, 75% of the Jews were saved. In Belgium half the Jews were saved. In both of these countries the Judenrat were forcibly prevented from operating and in Belgium its leader Robert Holcinger was executed by the resistance. Tragically the Joodsche Raad was not terrorised.
The Rector of Delft Professor Timothy van der Hagen
I explained all this to Rector van der Hagen but to no avail. I pointed out that his own University, Delft had a magnificent record.
Its students were the first to protest and strike on 25 November 1940 against the Nazi order 1940 barring the employment of 6 Jewish professors. When Professor Joseph Jitta was barred from giving his final lecture, the students decided to boycott his replacement. But as this report explains
‘While the Rector tried to prevent the strike the next day, the lecture hall seats on 25 November were virtually empty.’
It seems that the current Rector at Delft has a predecessor who did everything in his power to prevent solidarity by the students with a Jewish professor. The parallels go even further. His worthy predecessor did all he could to bar Jews from Delft’s campus and Prof. Hagan has approved the banning of a Jewish anti-Zionist.
A plaque to Frans van Hasselt, a Delft student murdered by the Nazis in Buchenwald - the present Rector has ignored the history of the anti-Nazi struggle at Delft in favour of wining and dining arms merchants
Most Jews in Europe before the holocaust were anti-Zionist. One of the reasons that the Zionists say little about Anne Frank is because in her diaries she didn’t dream of going to Palestine but living in a free Netherlands.
One of the University’s students, Frans van Hasselt, who inspired the strike with a rousing speech, was arrested by the Nazis the following April. He was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp where he died.
Dutch fascist leader Geert Wilders is welcome at Delft
I also asked Van Der Hagen whether in view of the ban on me he would also ban Geert Wilders from campus. But I guess not as it would appear that it is only Jewish anti-Zionists and supporters of the Palestinians, not fascists who are banned.
I also explained to Professor Hagen that the Nazis began with ethnic cleansing and ended with genocide and that is now the path that the Israeli state is taking with the complicity of the Dutch State.
I quoted Heinrich Heine who once remarked that ‘those who burn books will in the end burn people.’ It turned out to be prophetic and I offered to send him a copy of my book in order that he might have the opportunity of burning it.
I ended my letter by thanking Rector Magnificus Van der Hagen for what he and his flunkeys had done.
If I had been allowed to speak on campus perhaps 50 people would have heard me. As a result of your actions hundreds if not thousands will.
On Monday morning I arrived early on campus to meet with the organisers and have lunch. At close to 1 pm the meeting began on the steps of the library since we had been barred from any meeting rooms. About 100 students stopped to listen to this hastily organised meeting, literally at one day’s notice. I was introduced by Sue Blackwell who also finished the meeting. I took questions from anyone who wanted to ask one. Unfortunately so far only half an hour of the meeting has been caught on film though more may be available later on.
Tony Greenstein speaking from the steps of Delf's library
I also sold over 20 of my books to students who were interested in learning the history of the holocaust that is not taught in the Dutch or Western education systems. How the Zionists, who never hesistate to use the Jewish holocaust against the Palestinians and their supporters, were a quisling movement who betrayed the Jews of Europe.
I ended my speech to the students by saying that although Israel claims it inherits the memory of the Jews who died in the holocaust in reality it inherits the memory of those who killed them. That today, just as in the past, it is the anti-Semites above all who love Israel – from Geert Wilders in The Netherlands, to Marine Le Pen in France to Germany’s Alternative for Germany.
After the meeting two Jewish Zionist students came up to me. They didn’t seem particularly afraid for their safety and asked me the usual Zionist talking points – why there were no Arab democracies and about the collaboration of the Mufti of Jerusalem with Hitler. My response was simply that US imperialism which backs Israel has done its best to ensure that democracy doesn’t exist in the Middle East as their main interest is oil. Israel has helped them in that task. As for the Mufti, well he was appointed by Britain’s Zionist High Commissioner Sir Herbert Samuel in 1921 despite coming fourth in elections.
It wasn’t the Palestinians who elected him but the British and the Zionists! Nonetheless it was a common feature of the struggle against colonialism that the resistance adopts the position of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ although in fact thousands of Palestinians did serve in the British army during the war, unlike the Zionists who until near the end abstained from the war effort.
I also asked how it was that the Zionist terror organisation, the Stern Gang made not one, but two offers of military co-operation to the Nazis? One of their leaders, Yitzhak Shamir twice became Prime Minister of Israel and today the pro-Nazi leader, Yair Stern, is honoured in Israel. Postage stamps in his honour, streets are named after him. There is even a town, Kochav Yair.
However this meeting was important because it said that come hell or high water we will not allow the Dutch state and its academic servants, who collaborated so willingly with the Nazis during the war, to prevent our right to speak out. I have made it clear that I am happy to come back and speak if the students wish me to and to speak at other universities in The Netherlands too.
What the determination of the students at Delft proved was that the enemies of free speech on Palestine will back off when they are confronted because they have no arguments. They refer to codes of conduct and peoples’ safety all the while entertaining US Generals and Admirals and others who profit from death and destruction. Our message should be that
The racists and the imperialists will not silence us
My thanks go out to the students at Delft University and all those who helped make this meeting a success. Now let Professor van der Hagen live up to his words about making the world a better place by cutting his ties with Israel’s complicit universities and its military-industrial complex. Actions speak louder than words.
‘From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free’
Means Exactly That
An End to Zionism’s Jewish Supremacist
State
UPDATE
Norman has twice ignored, i.e. refused my offer to debate these issues. Clearly he has no confidence in his own positions!
Dear Norman,
You have been one of the most perceptive critics of
Zionist ideology, its misuse of holocaust memory and the practices of the Israeli
state.
So it is with surprise and dismay that during
Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza, you have suggested that there might be some basis
to Zionist accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’. This is something that Palestine supporters
experience day in day out from the Zionists and the right-wing media. They don’t
expect to hear it from you.
I am referring to your attack on the slogan, ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will
be free which has become the property of every single Palestinian
demonstration, encampment and protest march.
Norman Finkelstein Speaking to Students at
Columbia University
In your speech to Columbia University students on
April 21you said:
I don’t agree with the slogan
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” It’s very easy to amend
and just say, “From the river to the sea, Palestinians will be free.” That
simple, little amendment drastically reduces the possibility of your being
manipulatively misunderstood....
any movement has to ask
itself: What is its goal? What is its objective? What is it trying to achieve?
A few years ago, “From the river to the sea” was a slogan of the movement.
However, there’s a very big
difference when you’re essentially a political cult and you can shout any
slogan that you like, because it has no public repercussions or reverberations...
There’s a big difference between that
situation and the situation you’re in today,....
You have to adjust to the
new political reality that there are large numbers of people, probably a
majority, who are potentially receptive to your message. I understand that
sometimes a slogan is one that gives spirit to those who are involved in the
movement. ...
I believe one
has to exercise — not in a conservative sense, but a radical sense — in a
moment like this, maximum responsibility to get out of one’s navel, to crawl
out of one’s ego, and to always keep in mind the question: What are we trying
to accomplish at this particular moment?
Finkelstein speaking to Columbia University Students
It is nothing less than a stab-in-the-back for you
to attack this slogan at a time when it is being criticised
as anti-Semitic by the establishment and racists such as Suella
Braverman. It might be a good idea
if you took your own advice to get out your navel and crawl out of your ego.
At Columbia you shied away from your own argument,
perhaps because you realised that the audience was not receptive to your
argument. But in your Guardian interview you
‘questioned
the slogan “Palestine will be free, from the river to sea” as mostly
ineffective for these purposes, due to how it inflames fears among Israel’s
supporters and gives fuel to arguments that pro-Palestinian protests on US
university campuses are antisemitic and even “genocidal”.
It
was reported
that ‘the students were largely unmoved’.
As soon as you finished speaking they started chanting the very same
slogan! You said:
The two problems I have with that
are very simple. ... If you want to build a mass movement, you want to bring as
many people as possible inside the big tent.... I have no doubt it was those
screaming headlines every day about those student demonstrations that made
Biden realize: “I have to do something now.”
I believe that a political slogan should be as
clear and succinct as possible, to allow for no wiggle room that can be
misinterpreted and exploited by the other side. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a slogan that
gives the other side a lot of room to exploit. “What do you mean by Palestine
will be free? Do you mean there is no room for Israel?”
I find this a strange argument. Of course there will
be no room for a Jewish supremacist state. Do you think a free Palestine can co-exist
alongside an apartheid state? Israeli Jews will have the right to continue
living there but on the basis of equality not domination. Just as in South
Africa Whites continued living there after Apartheid fell.
Your problem is that you don’t have an anti-Zionist
perspective. You don’t question why should Israel continue as a Jewish
Supremacist state. Your paradigm is an entirely different one based not on a
set of principles but on what is acceptable to the ‘international community’
and ‘international law’. You justify the resort to imperialism’s legal
architecture on pragmatic not principled grounds.
The ‘rules based order’, ‘international law’ and the
‘international community’ as represented by the UN, serve to legitimise the plunder
and exploitation of western imperialism post-WW2.
Despite your intellectual contributions to the
struggle of the Palestinians you have repeatedly sought to undermine the
solidarity movement by counterposing the justice of its demands to what is
acceptable to imperialism (the ‘international community’).
Only you know your own subjective motivation and why
you feel the need to attack even the most basic demands and campaigns of the
solidarity movement such as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions [BDS]. You don’t
feel comfortable with anti-Zionism because it questions the very basis of the US
imposed international order.
I
first became aware of your stance when I attended a talk by you arguing for the
two-state solution at the Institute of Education (11.11.2011). I covered it in
a blog,
Norman Finkelstein –A Wasted Opportunity
& Self-Indulgence. I wrote then that
When
Norman Finkelstein says that 2 States represents the best hope for the
Palestinians and that it is now very close, he is living on another planet. The
fact is that Zionism has always opposed any recognition of Palestinian
statehood and for very good reasons. Zionism is a settler-colonial movement. As
such it is expansionist and seeks regional hegemony not confinement,.... There
is absolutely no intention of granting any such thing. At best there will be a
continuation of autonomy under Abbas with the faces of Israeli soldiers and
jailers being replaced by that of Palestinians.
As Moshe Dayan was reported as saying
in Ha’aretz (12.12.75):
Fundamentally,
a Palestinian state is an antithesis of the State of Israel… The basic and
naked truth is that there is no fundamental difference between the relation of
the Arabs of Nablus to Nablus and that of the Arabs of Jaffa to Jaffa… And if
today we set out on this road and say that the Palestinians are entitled to
their own state because they are natives of the same country and have the same
rights, then it will not end with the West Bank. The West Bank together with
the Gaza Strip do not amount to a state… The establishment of such a Palestinian
state would lay a cornerstone to something else… Either the State of Israel —
or a Palestinian state.
The Obama Administration was pushing hard at that
time for Israel to agree to a two-state solution. The Israeli government
refused to countenance it because an Israeli state cannot co-exist alongside
those they have ethnically cleansed in a state, even in a part of Palestine.
The Zionist slogan was ‘a land without a
people for a people without a land’. It wasn’t half or three-quarters of Eretz Yisrael but all of it.
It is your failure to understand the nature and
dynamics of both Zionism and the Israeli state which has led you to campaign
for a two-state solution. What you failed to recognise then and now is that the
two-state solution served but one purpose – as a smokescreen for the continuing
colonisation of the West Bank until such time as a critical mass of settlers
would make such a state impossible to achieve.
Your appeal to the ‘international community’ and
‘international law’ was an appeal to imperialism to be reasonable when
imperialism by definition is unreasonable.
Your advocacy for two states also involved a
catastrophic failure to understand US imperialism in the post-war period.
International law has never provided justice except at the margins. If
international law had prevailed, the American blockade of Cuba would have ended,
Salvador Allende would not have been overthrown and the genocide in Guatemala
would not have occurred.
Today we can see that when international law and the
interests of US imperialism collide, as with the pending arrest warrants for Gallant
and Netanyahu, the US Congress calls for sanctions against them like some
second rate Mafiosi boss.
"I don't feel Israel is a Jewish state, Israel is a lunatic state."
It is because the one democratic state solution means the end of the
Israeli state that you feel the need to attack the slogan Palestine will be free from the river to the sea.’ Despite your
description of Israel as a lunatic or satanic state you refuse to
countenance its decolonisation.
Norman Finkelstein describing BDS as a cult
You have attacked BDS as a ‘cult’ for the same reasons. You argued that
although BDS didn’t demand the eradication of the Israeli state, its three main
demands
i.Israel ends the occupation of the lands
it occupied in 1967.
ii.That it guarantee equal rights and end
discrimination against Israel’s Arab citizens and
iii.That Palestinian refugees had the right
of return.
We
have to be honest,... They [BDS] don't want Israel. They think they're being
very clever, they call it their three tier – we want the end of the occupation,
... the right of return and ... equal rights for Arabs in Israel... they know
the result of implementing all three is what? What's the result? ... There's no
Israel... If you want to eliminate Israel that's your right but I don't think you're
going to reach anybody. I think it's a non-starter.
But what is this Israel that you believe has a right to exist? What is
this Israel that is unable to withdraw from the Occupied Territories, grant
Israel’s Arab citizens equal rights and allow Palestinian refugees the right of
return if not a state of entrenched inequality? Does an apartheid state have
the right to continue in existence?
You also assume that a demand for an end to the Apartheid Israeli state
will not be popular. Certainly it won’t be popular with Western imperialism.
But today, when Israel is engaged in the slaughter of thousands of Palestinian
children, the argument that Israel is a failed genocidal state is more popular
than ever.
In Brighton, from 2012-14 we picketed a Soda Stream shop forcing it to close
down. On innumerable occasions the Zionist counter-demonstrators quoted your
attack on BDS as a ‘cult’ to show that we were extremists. Are you aware of the
damage you are causing?
Controversial
American anti-Zionist academic Norman Finkelstein has launched a blistering
attack on the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel,
labelling it a "cult" led by "dishonest gurus".
If BDS was an insignificant cult why did the Israeli
government pass a law
barring its supporters from visiting Israel and another lawallowing Israelis to sue boycott
advocates? Why is it that 38 US states have passed
legislation penalising advocates for
BDS? At the heart of the Empire Israel’s supporters are frightened by BDS.
There
is public consciousness today that there’s something wrong with a state which
privileges Jews. As B’Tselem put
it, there is ‘aregime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan
River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid’. The real question is
how we build on what B’Tselem, Amnesty
and HRW
have said.
Your
difficulty, as you explained
in the Guardian is that:
“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.
You
are wrong about what you all the ‘settler colonial framework’. Your solution to
this problem was ‘constructive ambiguity.’
For me, the
ideal slogan would actually be: “From the river to the sea, one person, one
vote, Palestinians will be free.”
Even
if the movement did endorse your clunky slogan do you really think this would
solve the ‘anti-Semitism’ problem? The Zionists would simply respond by saying
that ‘Palestinians will be free’ meant Israeli Jews would not be free. If
anything your proposed slogan falls foul of the very objections that you
yourself make.
The
problem isn’t the wording of a slogan but the determination of imperialism to
protect its racist rottweiler in the Middle East. Your objections are simply a
distraction. You say
that the slogan
‘inflames
fears among Israel’s supporters and gives fuel to arguments that
pro-Palestinian protests on US university campuses are antisemitic and even
“genocidal.’
If
you are correct that the slogan inflames fears among Israel’s supporters then
that is because it demands that they relinquish their privileges. Perhaps I
should remind you of Martin Luther King’s ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’
where he wrote:
Lamentably, it is an historical
fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.
Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture;
but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than
individuals.
What
you are trying to do is depoliticise the Palestine solidarity movement for the
sake of bad faith objections. You are allowing the feelings of Zionists and
Israeli students to dictate our slogans.
The
‘anti-Semitism’ that is alleged is the reflex reaction of Israel’s supporters.
When Israel was taken to the ICJ it was ‘anti-Semitism’. When Netanyahu faced a
warrant for his arrest it was ‘anti-Semitism’. Most people can see through
this. We should not pander to it. Our slogans are not for changing!
As
for genocide Israelis, like other settler colonists, see the de-colonisation of
their state and the end to Jewish Supremacy as the destruction of their identity
and therefore genocide.
Ironically,
having begun your talk to Columbia students with a critique of cancel culture
and ‘hurt feelings’, you then engaged in that very same narrative. Israel’s
supporters are ‘hurt’ by the idea of living with Palestinians on the basis of equality.
As
Ali Abunimah argued (Finkelstein, BDS and the destruction
of Israel), Ulster Unionists viewed a united
Ireland as a mortal threat. In 1990 James Molyneaux, leader of the Ulster
Unionist Party, described the Republic of Ireland’s constitutional claim to the
North of Ireland as “equivalent to
Hitler’s claim over Czechoslovakia”.
Abunimah
described
how the language of the Unionists when faced with the possibility of a United
Ireland ‘resembles that used by Zionists.’
For you to describe the abolition of the Israeli state and a one-state
solution, as tantamount to Israel’s “destruction” implies that an end to a Jewish
Supremacist state is equivalent to genocide.
Zionist
objections to the ‘Palestine will be free’
slogan would be no different if you replaced it by ‘Palestinians will be free’ because what they object to is the
disappearance of their Jewish supremacist identity. It appears that this is also
your real objection because at heart you support the idea of a Jewish state.
The
thread running through all your arguments is your belief that Zionism can be
‘normalised’ within the confines of two states. For all your criticism of
Israel’s human rights record and its falsification of history you still believe
that Zionism can return to a ‘golden age’.
This
was brought home to me when we exchanged correspondence in August 2020. You
wrote:
‘I actually don't think Netanyahu is a Zionist. He's
a Jewish supremacist and a ruthless thug. "Zionism" gives people like
him much more credit than they deserve. The original Zionists were austere,
fanatically committed to an Idea. (9.8.2020)
To
which I responded
‘Yes Netanyahu is a Jewish supremacist and a
ruthless thug. But he's also a Zionist. Zionism isn't some benign dream of a future Jewish
utopia.
Professor Norman Finkelstein, whose parents survived the Holocaust, describing Israel as “a satanic state.” pic.twitter.com/4t41jZd7ZB
The Yishuv and Israel's early years had agreeable,
even attractive features: the kibbutzim, the austere life, the idealism. That's
why Chomsky and Deutscher felt such an affinity for it. It was sort of like the
rugged individualism of the settlers in the American West. Something to admire
then, if you weren't an Indian; something to admire in Palestine if you weren't
an Arab. It would be nice if the world came in neat little packages labelled
Good and Evil, but human affairs are more messy. I would have to say, however,
that in my opinion the redemptive features in Israeli life have altogether
vanished, and it's now a pretty Satanic place.
At heart your attempt to
undermine the slogan ‘Palestine will be free’, owes less to any fears of
genocide and more to do with your belief in the mythical past of heroic Labour Zionist
pioneers farming the land that they had just evicted the Palestinian peasants
from.
Chomsky may have enjoyed
his time on a kibbutz, although he also noted that it was built on the
ruins of Arab villages and that ‘some pretty ugly things had happened in
1948’. What Chomsky didn’t understand was that the kibbutzim were stockade
and watchtower settlements marking out the future boundaries of the Jewish
state, Jewish-only settlements founded upon the dispossession of the native population.
It is little wonder that the settlers on the West Bank lay
claim to be the continuation of that pioneering spirit you so admire.
What we need, as Naomi
Klein put it is an ‘Exodus from Zionism’ not a pandering to its unerring ability to
paint itself as the victim, even whilst committing genocide.
Since I suspect that you
won’t be convinced by my arguments I want to challenged you to a debate over these
issues for a wider audience to consider.
Solidarity,
Tony Greenstein
Background to my
letter
Norman Finkelstein
is difficult to pigeon hole. He is not an anti-Zionist nor does he claim to be.
Politically he is close to Noam Chomsky who never disavowed Zionism.
On the other hand Finkelstein’s analysis, dissection and demolition of
various Zionist propagandists and frauds masquerading as
historians and scholars is unsurpassed. ‘Victims’ of his
include Joan Peters, Daniel Goldhagen and Alan Dershowitz.
Finkelstein is without doubt a caustic critic of Zionism and its
pretensions. He is also in the habit of making rash statements that are
damaging to the solidarity movement such as calling BDS a ‘cult’, or advocating
for an apartheid 2-state solution when it is clear to all bar Finkelstein that two
states would, in James
Connolly’s words, create a carnival of reaction on both sides of the border.
Norman Finkelstein on holocaust denier David Irving
I have had some
experience of Finkelstein in a free speech panel discussion when he praised David Irving as a historian without
also mentioning that Irving was a neo-Nazi and holocaust denier whose attempt
to suggest that Hitler knew nothing of the holocaust rested on tampering with and
falsification of his sources.
This led to an article in the Jewish Chronicle and by the CommunitySecurity
Trust which suggested that anti-Zionists had uncritically praised a
holocaust denier. It also led David Rosenberg of the Jewish Socialists Group to
accuse the panel, and David Miller in particular, of agreeing with
Finkelstein’s comments. Rosenberg eventually and grudgingly
withdrew his remarks since I had in
fact corrected Finkelstein.
Finkelstein has continued his tradition of being an iconoclast on the
Palestine question. After the October 7 breakout from Gaza he defended the
uprising as being in the tradition of slave break-outs such as Nat Turner. Yet
more recently he has started attacking the slogan ‘Palestine Must Be Free on grounds not dissimilar to that of the
Zionists.
My Open Letter to Finkelstein expresses my own dismay at his suggestion
that the slogan gives substance to Zionist claims that it could be genocidal.
In so doing he is reinforcing the idea that democracy and equal rights are
somehow genocidal.
From Time Immemorial -Joan Peters Hoax
At the beginning of his career Finkelstein, was the brightest star in
the firmament. His painstaking research in Image and Reality of
the Israel-Palestine Conflictdemolished Joan Peter’s hoax and forgery, From Time Immemorial, (1984). Peters argued that Palestine was an empty land before the
Zionist settlers arrived and that the Palestinians had only migrated to
Palestine as a result of Zionist immigration.
Peters’ argument was similar to that
of White South African settlers who had also argued that South Africa was an
empty land until they arrived. Settler-colonialism has always been attracted to
the idea that the lands they coveted were terra
nullis or empty lands. The natives have always been invisible.
Finkelstein’s review laid the basis for writers like David & Ian
Gilmour to continue the attack on Peters work.They cited errors such as quoting a medieval Arab historian, Makrizi,
who died in 1442, to support her statements about mid-nineteenth century
population movements. (LRB, 7.2.85. ‘Pseudo Travellers’).
The evidence that Peter's thesis was junk came from the Zionists
themselves. Leo Motzkin, a Zionist leader who in 1912 called on the Arabs of
Palestine to transfer themselves to other countries, told delegates to the 2nd
Zionist Congress in 1898 how
‘Completely accurate
statistics about the number of inhabitants do not presently exist. One must
admit that the density of the population does not give the visitor much cause
for cheer. In whole stretches throughout the land one constantly comes across
large Arab villages, and it is an established fact that the most fertile areas
of our country are occupied by Arabs..." (Protocol of the Second Zionist Congress, p.103).
We who
live abroad are accustomed to believe that almost all Eretz Israel is now
uninhabited desert and whoever wishes can buy land there as he pleases. But
this is not true. It is very difficult to find in the land cultivated fields
that are not used for planting.... We who live abroad are accustomed to
believing that the Arabs are all wild desert people who, like donkeys, neither
see nor understand what is happening around them. But this is a grave mistake.
The Arab, like all the Semites, is sharp minded and shrewd. ... The Arabs,
especially the urban elite, see and understand what we are doing and what we
wish to do on the land, but they keep quiet and pretend not to notice anything.
For now, they do not consider our actions as presenting a future danger to
them. … But, if the time comes that our people’s life in Eretz Israel will
develop to a point where we are taking their place, either slightly or
significantly, the natives are not going to just step aside so easily.
Peters ignored this and all other evidence that contradicted her thesis.
Peters’ book attracted rave reviews and
endorsements from the US’spolice state ‘intellectuals’,
such as Barbara Tuchman
and Lucy Dawidowicz.The book neatly fitted
into the Zionist agenda because it challenged the very existence of the
Palestinian refugee problem. The expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948 was according
to them a myth. They had never lived there!Finkelstein described how
I immediately
brought my findings to the attention of 20 or so publications and to several
individuals who I thought would find my discovery of some interest. Only Noam
Chomsky responded. ... I devoted some two months in the New York Public Library
to systematically going through all Peters’ documentation for her central
demographic thesis. To my utter amazement, I discovered that every single piece
of evidence in support of the central thesis of the book was falsified. Every
single one.
Subsequently I
discovered that extensive passages of the book were plagiarized from some
rather ludicrous right-wing Zionist propaganda tracts.
Despite
this no publication would print Finkelstein’s critique. Commentary turned down his response to Daniel Pipes’ review on the
grounds that the reviewer was not qualified to respond to it, which begged the
question why he had reviewed it in the first place!
Finkelstein’s critique of Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler's
Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (1996), was
equally clinical in its dissection of Goldhagen’s thesis that the holocaust had
occurred because Germans were uniquely anti-Semitic.
Goldhagen held Nazism to be benign except for the Jews. The problem was
not racial fascism but the Germans themselves who were ‘eliminationist’ anti-Semites.
Racism was apparently a biological inheritance. Finkelstein described it as ‘worthless
as scholarship’. See ‘Daniel
Jonah Goldhagen’s ‘Crazy’ Thesis: A Critique of Hitler’s Willing Executioners’
New Left Review I/224, July-August
1997.
In The
Holocaust IndustryFinkelstein argued
that Zionism had harnessed the holocaust to the needs of Zionism and the
Israeli state. Finkelstein took apart the
Zionists’ use and abuse of holocaust memory to both justify their human rights
crimes and to legitimise the apartheid practices of the Israeli state.
The Holocaust Industrytook aim at the US Zionist
establishment which had built up a veritable industry of holocaust publications,
museums and memorials, all with the aim of providing a moral case for the Israeli
State and its treatment of the Palestinians.
Finkelstein showed how the Jewish Claims Conference had stolen and
defrauded the holocaust victims of the reparations that had been intended for
them, paid for by West Germany.
Finkelstein’s ‘Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and
the Abuse of History’ further established his reputation. The book also
proved that Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard Professor of Law, had plagiarised and
copied material from other sources, for ‘The Case for Israel’. He had
also copied their mistakes!
Included in the book was a detailed refutation of Dershowitz’s main
thesis by reference to numerous human rights sources. Herein lay a clue to
Finkelstein’s approach. To him the Palestine Question was primarily a human
rights not a political issue. These human rights abuses have a political cause.
Finkelstein’s primary weakness has been his failure to situate Israel's behaviour
within the political context of imperialism.
One of the consequences of Finkelstein’s attack on Dershowitz, was that
he was denied tenure at DePaul University. A good example of how, in the
aftermath of the ‘War Against Terror’ academic freedom has been relegated to
the status of a curious artefact in the USA.
I first criticised Finkelstein after attending a talk he gave at the Institute of Education in London (11.11.11).
Finkelstein spent the best part of 2 hours arguing why we should support a 2
State solution.
After a pre-talk interview with
activist Frank Barat surfaced my first reaction was that Finkelstein must be
suffering from a mid to late life crisis. Repeatedly he talked about how he had devoted his life time to the cause and how he was growing
tired and weary. He said:
‘Yes BDS
has had some victories, but the way people have promoted it, on the verge of
victory is sheer nonsense – it’s a cult. I’m tired of it. I went through my
cult stage I was a Maoist. There were 2 competing possibilities – you can be a
Maoist/Leninist and waste 20 years of your life. You can work with Ralph Nader,
lot of bills through Congress. Nice we have seat belts and airbags – that was
Nader. I’m not going to be in a cult again. Gurus in Ramallah giving marching
orders.’
You cannot but detect a feeling that Finkelstein believed he had wasted
his life on a cause that didn’t seem to be bearing any fruit. Finkelstein wanted
instant results. Hence Ralph Nader was his political hero for having obtained legislation
in support of seatbelts. An important issue no doubt, but it was hardly an
earth shattering, life-changing event for the world.
Finkelstein argued that ‘If you are serious about politics you can’t
go beyond what the public accepts, and that is international law.’ Herein lay
his most important mistake. He seems to believe that US foreign policy is
subject to popular support. But this isn’t true as Israel’s current genocide
proves.
Not only in Britain
and Germany,
but even in the United
States the public supports an immediate ceasefire. The public has been
extremely critical of Israeli genocide yet Biden, Sunak and Scholtz act in
complete disregard of public opinion.
It is true that Palestine solidarity supporters demand that Israel
upholds international law. But that does not mean we have any illusions in international
law. The fact that the rulings of the ICJ and ICC have been ignored proves
that.
Indeed the US’s reaction to the decision of the ICJ that Israel was
committing a ‘plausible’ genocide was to freeze contributions to UNWRA. Thus
the United States, Britain and other Western countries became complicit in Israel’s
use of starvation as a weapon of war.
The right of an occupied people to resist their occupier is not subject
to the dictates of international law. It is an inalienable right which is why
the decision of the ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, to issue warrants for Hamas
leaders is so ludicrous. It is as if the leaders of the French and Polish Resistance
should have appeared alongside Goering and the Nazi leaders at Nuremberg.
Congress has passed a resolution imposing sanctions on the ICC and Israel
has stalked
and threatened its previous Chief Prosecutor, Fatou
Bensouda. When the imperialists don’t like the rulings of a
court they threaten the court itself!
Israel does not rule over 5 million Palestinian Arabs because
‘international law’ granted them permission to do so. As the Anti Defamation
League acknowledged the Zionist settlers were intent on “creating
facts on the ground immigration, agricultural settlement of the land’. From
this there came the law, not the other way around.
International law has always been a fiction since it has no independent enforcement
mechanism. Who is going to take the United States to the International Court
for its invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan? What prevented the ICC from issuing
a warrant for the arrest of Bush and Blair like it did for Putin when Russia
invaded Ukraine?
The UN can only act when the United States allows it to. When Israel
breaks international law the US can be relied on to veto any critical resolutions
at the Security Council. To therefore rely, as Finkelstein does, on the
‘international community’ is to fail to recognise the reality of existingpower relations and who calls the shots.
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