Norman Finkelstein

[luke]

[luke]

[faceless]

That Indyk guy is contemptible. 'I'm not going to debate Finkelstein as he is a Hamas propagandist'. What a dick.

[luke]

what got me what his dismissal of international law and the international court of justice as just 'paraphernalia of legal resolution'

i bet he won't agree to do democracy now again, he'll stick to the main stream where he'll know he'll be able to pass off his lies with ease.

it just shows what lying bastards these people are, even after finkelstein had pointed out a number of times, quoting israels own ministry of foreign affairs website, israel broke the ceasefire on the 4th november to which hamas retaliated, he kept repeating like a broken record 'hamas broke the ceasefire' and accusing norm of 'ad hominem' attacks.

[luke]

Seeing Through the Lies
The Facts About Hamas and the War on Gaza

The record is fairly clear. You can find it on the Israeli website, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. Israel broke the ceasefire by going into the Gaza and killing six or seven Palestinian militants. At that point—and now I’m quoting the official Israeli website—Hamas retaliated or, in retaliation for the Israeli attack, then launched the missiles.

Now, as to the reason why, the record is fairly clear as well. According to Ha’aretz, Defense Minister Barak began plans for this invasion before the ceasefire even began. In fact, according to yesterday’s Ha’aretz, the plans for the invasion began in March. And the main reasons for the invasion, I think, are twofold. Number one; to enhance what Israel calls its deterrence capacity, which in layman’s language basically means Israel’s capacity to terrorize the region into submission. After their defeat in July 2006 in Lebanon, they felt it important to transmit the message that Israel is still a fighting force, still capable of terrorizing those who dare defy its word.

And the second main reason for the attack is because Hamas was signaling that it wanted a diplomatic settlement of the conflict along the June 1967 border. That is to say, Hamas was signaling they had joined the international consensus, they had joined most of the international community, overwhelmingly the international community, in seeking a diplomatic settlement. And at that point, Israel was faced with what Israelis call a Palestinian peace offensive. And in order to defeat the peace offensive, they sought to dismantle Hamas.

As was documented in the April 2008 issue of Vanity Fair by the writer David Rose, basing himself on internal US documents, it was the United States in cahoots with the Palestinian Authority and Israel which were attempting a putsch on Hamas, and Hamas preempted the putsch. That, too, is no longer debatable or no longer a controversial claim.

The issue is can it rule in Gaza if Israel maintains a blockade and prevents economic activity among the Palestinians. The blockade, incidentally, was implemented before Hamas came to power. The blockade doesn’t even have anything to do with Hamas. The blockade came to—there were Americans who were sent over, in particular James Wolfensohn, to try to break the blockade after Israel redeployed its troops in Gaza.

The problem all along has been that Israel doesn’t want Gaza to develop, and Israel doesn’t want to resolve diplomatically the conflict, both the leadership in Damascus and the leadership in the Gaza have repeatedly made statements they’re willing to settle the conflict in the June 1967 border. The record is fairly clear. In fact, it’s unambiguously clear.

Every year, the United Nations General Assembly votes on a resolution entitled “Peaceful Settlement of the Palestine Question.” And every year the vote is the same: it’s the whole world on one side; Israel, the United States and some South Sea atolls and Australia on the other side. The vote this past year was 164-to-7. Every year since 1989—in 1989, the vote was 151-to-3, the whole world on one side, the United States, Israel and the island state of Dominica on the other side.

We have the Arab League, all twenty-two members of the Arab League, favoring a two-state settlement on the June 1967 border. We have the Palestinian Authority favoring that two-state settlement on the June 1967 border. We now have Hamas favoring that two-state settlement on the June 1967 border. The one and only obstacle is Israel, backed by the United States. That’s the problem.

Well, the record shows that Hamas wanted to continue the ceasefire, but only on condition that Israel eases the blockade. Long before Hamas began the retaliatory rocket attacks on Israel, Palestinians were facing a humanitarian crisis in Gaza because of the blockade. The former High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, described what was going on in Gaza as a destruction of a civilization. This was during the ceasefire period.

What does the record show? The record shows for the past twenty or more years, the entire international community has sought to settle the conflict in the June 1967 border with a just resolution of the refugee question. Are all 164 nations of the United Nations the rejectionists? And are the only people in favor of peace the United States, Israel, Nauru, Palau, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Australia? Who are the rejectionists? Who’s opposing a peace?

The record shows that in every crucial issue raised at Camp David, then under the Clinton parameters, and then in Taba, at every single point, all the concessions came from the Palestinians. Israel didn’t make any concessions. Every concession came from the Palestinians. The Palestinians have repeatedly expressed a willingness to settle the conflict in accordance with international law.

The law is very clear. July 2004, the highest judicial body in the world, the International Court of Justice, ruled Israel has no title to any of the West Bank and any of Gaza. They have no title to Jerusalem. Arab East Jerusalem, according to the highest judicial body in the world, is occupied Palestinian territory. The International Court of Justice ruled all the settlements, all the settlements in the West Bank, are illegal under international law.

Now, the important point is, on all those questions, the Palestinians were willing to make concessions. They made all the concessions. Israel didn’t make any concessions.

I think it’s fairly clear what needs to happen. Number one, the United States and Israel have to join the rest of the international community, have to abide by international law. I don’t think international law should be trivialized. I think it’s a serious issue. If Israel is in defiance of international law, it should be called into account, just like any other state in the world.

Mr. Obama has to level with the American people. He has to be honest about what is the main obstacle to resolving the conflict. It’s not Palestinian rejectionism. It’s the refusal of Israel, backed by the United States government, to abide by international law, to abide by the opinion of the international community.

And the main challenge for all of us as Americans is to see through the lies.

[faceless]

Israel broke the ceasefire by going into the Gaza and killing six or seven Palestinian militants. At that point—and now I’m quoting the official Israeli website—Hamas retaliated or, in retaliation for the Israeli attack, then launched the missiles.

I went looking for the info about this from the Israeli Foreign Affairs site and found this...

Ehud Olmert, November the 16th 2008:

"It is no secret that Israel did not wholeheartedly embrace the understandings that gave rise to the situation defined as calm but it honored them unilaterally. The responsibility for breaking the calm and creating a situation of recurrent continuing violence in the south lays entirely with Hamas and the other terrorist organizations active in the Gaza Strip. Let nobody come to the government of Israel and claim otherwise. We cannot tolerate the price that the terrorist organizations are trying to set for the prevailing situation there. It is our right to prevent further terrorism, threats and the breaking of the calm that is harming - first and foremost - the residents of the area. "

This, if you understand political bullshit, is a clear admission of Israel breaking the ceasefire - in order to, as they put it, "to prevent further terrorism". What form of justice allows pre-emptive attacks on civilians? None that I know of.

Here's the link - CLICK . If you use firefox, you will have to endure their shoddy web design - maybe they don't understand anything other than M$?

[luke]

heres an interview with finkelstein http://www.russiatoday.com/guests/video/2031 "The killing ratio was 100:1 …and yet they are talking about curbing Hamas’ weapons, not curbing Israels’! Its breath-taking!!! No embargo on Israel, who just committed a massive atrocity in front of the whole world’s eyes!"

[faceless]

cheers Luke, but the video was running really slow, so here's a copy

[mickyv]

Nice one Luke !

There was another interview I recently saw but I don't remember where, in which NF described Human Rights Watch as "prostitutes" because all they were concerned with during the first two weeks of Gaza, were about "Hamas rockets".

[nekokate]

This is the most magnificent speech I've ever heard Norman deliver. If you don't have time to watch it all, at least watch part 4.

[mickyv]

Why I resigned from the Gaza Freedom March coalition:

The original consensus of the International Coalition to End the Illegal Siege of Gaza was that we would limit our statement to a pair of uncontroversial, basic and complementary principles that would have the broadest possible appeal: the march to break the siege would be nonviolent and anchored in international law.

I agreed with this approach and consequent statement and decided to remove myself from the steering committee in order to invest my full energies in mobilizing for the march. During the week beginning August 30, 2009 and in a matter of days an entirely new sectarian agenda dubbed "the political context" was foisted on those who originally signed on and worked tirelessly for three months.

Because it drags in contentious issues that--however precious to different constituencies--are wholly extraneous to the narrow but critical goal of breaking the siege this new agenda is gratuitously divisive and it is almost certain that it will drastically reduce the potential reach of our original appeal.

It should perhaps be stressed that the point of dispute was not whether one personally supported a particular Palestinian right or strategy to end the occupation. It was whether inclusion in the coalition's statement of a particular right or strategy was necessary if it was both unrelated to the immediate objective of breaking the siege and dimmed the prospect of a truly mass demonstration.

In addition the tactics by which this new agenda was imposed do not bode well for the future of the coalition's work and will likely move the coalition in an increasingly sectarian direction. I joined the coalition because I believed that an unprecedented opportunity now exists to mobilize a broad public whereby we could make a substantive and not just symbolic contribution towards breaking the illegal and immoral siege of Gaza and, accordingly, realize a genuine and not just token gesture of solidarity with the people of Gaza. In its present political configuration I no longer believe the coalition can achieve such a goal.

Because I would loathe getting bogged down in a petty and squalid public brawl I will not comment further on this matter unless the sequence of events climaxing in my decision to resign are misrepresented by interested parties. However I would be remiss in my moral obligations were I not humbly to apologize to those who, either coaxed by me or encouraged by my participation, gave selflessly of themselves to make the march a historic event and now feel aggrieved at the abrupt turn of events.

It can only be said in extenuation that I along with many others desperately fought to preserve the ecumenical vision that originally inspired the march but the obstacles thrown in our path ultimately proved insurmountable.


http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/

[luke]

The anatomy of Finkelstein's Monster
A resurrected Docudays film festival reopens with ‘American Radical,’ a profile of a complex American dissident



A dissenting voice is a peculiar thing. For those with a stake in a political status quo, the more contentious the issue, the more the dissident must be silenced. How this is done depends on how confidently the political class controls the state.The more insecure the political class, as conventional readings would have it, the more likely it will resort to imprisonment and execution to eliminate domestic dissent. When the political class is secure – or faces institutional obstacles to the use of arbitrary coercion – it must resort to discrediting and ostracizing the dissenting voice.

“American Radical: The Trials Of Norman Finkelstein” is in many ways a study in how the American political class – specifically the segment of this class that advocates Israel’s state of exception in American foreign policy – goes about silencing its dissidents. The film by David Ridgen and Nicolas Rossier opened the Docudays film festival on Tuesday evening.

The film adheres to the classical template that has been adopted when profiling figures on the American Left – the industry standard having been set by Peter Wintonick and Mark Achbar’s 1992 doc “Manufacturing Consent,” a portrait of Finkelstein’s mentor, MIT linguistics professor and US foreign policy critic Noam Chomsky.

“American Radical” interviews Finkelstein about his up­bringing and its relationship to his work, interspersed with foot­age of him hectoring hostile aud­iences and the like. This is supplemented with testimonials from colleagues, friends, family and adversaries, with the aim of rendering a multifaceted image of the man. Given the tone of un­compromising adulation that can underlie such profiles, audiences may be surprised at how frank this portrait of Finkelstein is.

Adversaries like American lawyer Alan Dershowitz can be counted on to deliver withering criticisms of the subject – not unexpected given that, after reading Dershowitz’s New York Times bestseller “The Case for Israel,” Finkelstein accused him of plagiarism.

Colleagues like Chomsky and John Mearsheimer (who co-wrote with Stephen Walt “The Israel Lobby”) praise Finkelstein’s careful scholarship.

Finkelstein’s family and friends are confident his strong Israel-critical position derives from the iconoclastic lessons his parents (and particularly his mother) learned in the Nazi concentration camps. Rather than emerging from the experience with strong, unconditional loyalty to the state of Israel, Finkelstein’s mother evinced a visceral distaste for injustice that, in the words of her son, verged on hysteria. Finkelstein the younger internalized this position, particularly when the memory of the Holocaust was invoked to justify Israeli injustice against the Palestinians.

His recollections of his parents’ Holocaust experience, his response to Israel’s violence upon the Palestinians, even his forceful broadsides upon his adversaries, radiate emotional fragility. In short, Ridgen and Rossier’s profile is far from an unconditionally flattering one.

The reasons America’s Zionist sympathizers feel compelled to silence Finkelstein will be no surprise to habitués of this region. He is among a handful of US intellectuals to present forceful, reasoned and systematic critique of Israeli policies vis-à-vis the Palestinian people.

As several of Ridgen and Rossier’s informants point out over the course of this 87-minute-film, Finkelstein’s Jewish heritage lends his arguments a particular cache. This is a position he shares with a small number of Jewish critics of Israel, ranging from Chomsky to younger activists like Adam Shapiro, co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement, to certain ultra-orthodox Jews who regard Zionism as anathema to God’s will.

Though he faces many of the same moralizing epithets as these colleagues – “self-hating Jew” seems popular – Finkelstein is singled out for special opprobrium by Zionist apologists due to the acerbic tone with which he frames his critique. Much as they respect the substance of his work, even colleagues like Chomsky and Mearsheimer wonder whether his findings are best served by his style.

His answer to the charges that his Zionist-critical positions are driven by his emotionally conflicted identity is at once informative and creditable: “Let’s say I have deep identity conflicts … What’s the relevance? The only relevant question is whether what I’m saying is true or false. Let’s say Einstein had deep identity conflicts. How does that influence one’s judgment about his physics?”

As with any art form, one criteria for the worth of a documentary film lies in its implied relevance, which gives the work petinence beyond its explicit narrative. More than outlining what opposition a Zionism-critical in­tellectual faces in the US today, “American Radical” suggests some of the emotional and intellectual extremity that makes an individual willing to oppose a prevailing political hegemony.

Finkelstein and his colleagues on America’s intellectual Left implicitly confront something much more fundamental than Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians. By questioning Israel’ presumed state of exception, they challenge post-modernity’s tribalization of politics, which since 1948 has pushed minority exceptionalism – whether religious or ethnic, in Israel, the former Yugoslavia or this country – into the vacuum left by the retrenchment of state responsibilities to its citizens.

Perhaps this is a fitting context in which to appreciate Fin­kelstein’s inability to get a tenure-track job in the US, despite his extensive list of citcally praised publications. After the US publication of his book “The Holocaust Industry” in 2001, Hunter College, where Finkelstein had worked for nine years, cut his salary and workload, forcing him to resign. When, after a years-long media battle with Dershowitz, Finkelstein came up for a tenured position at DePaul University, the university ad­ministration denied him this po­sition, despite the overwhelming support of the university faculty.

Subsequently, the film in­forms you, a group called “The Jewish Defense Organization launched a ‘Drive Out Traitor to the Jews’ campaign, plastering flyers in [Finkelstein’s] apartment building and calling on the landlord to evict him.”

Docudays continues at Metropolis Art Cinema until 30 September. ‘American Radical: The Trials Of Norman Finkelstein’ will screen again on 26 Septmber. For more information see http://www.docudays.com.

from http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=4&Article_id=106677

[mickyv]

New interview ;

[mickyv]

Recent talk ;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpMpHgw7yVk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcNI0ebtzaE&feature=related

(listen out for the loud Israel supporter during the Q&A)

Press TV interview;

http://www.presstv.ir/programs/detail.aspx?sectionid=3510529&id=107405#107405

(Maybe it can be downloaded & saved somewhere before it disappears from the Press TV Site)

[mickyv]

I've just came across this Finkelstein interview on YouTube by somebody called Michael Coren (who I've never heard of before), and I was amazed at how obnoxious & rude this self-important C**t is to his guest;

Watch all 6 clips and marvel how NF kept his cool & didn't let this thug presenter provoke him;