Norman Finkelstein on the Holocaust
Norman Finkelstein was recently hosted by Leeds PSC, whilst on a UK tour with the Palestine Return Centre (PRC). The PRC is a Hamas front network who have previously courted Hungarian fascist Krisztina Morvai.Finkelstein toured with the pro-fascist London Hamasniks of the PRC.
Finkelstein has previously been hosted by the PSC in the UK. I saw him appear in Leeds in 2009, in a talk in which he praised the “heroic resistance” of Hezbollah to Israel. Unsurprisingly, on the night, Finkelstein did not deal with a question about whether celebrating child-murderer Samir Kuntar could really be described as part of a heroic resistance.
Previously Finkelstein has favourably compared Hezbollah with the French resistance against the Nazis.
Here’s the thing.
Finkelstein is presented as an expert on the Holocaust, because he has noted that there are Holocaust survivors who do not receive payments, and many of the money intended for Holocaust survivors does not end up in the right place. This is not an observation unique to Finkelstein – but he blends his writing on this theme, with his antizionist politics and his love of antisemitic terrorists.
Is though, Finkelstein an expert on the Holocaust?
Does he understand what the Holocaust was?
When German publication Die Welt, said to Finkelstein:
“You call the holocaust an ideology”
He replied,
“To be more precise, an ideological construction, that originally served the interests of the Jewish elite in America and has now degenerated into a money-making instrument. It has become a extortion racket.”
Here there was no distinction between what Finkelstein sees as the manipulation of the Holocaust (“the Holocaust industry” sic.), and the Holocaust itself. Finkelstein commented further,
The Holocaust is an ideological club, used to hold Germany in a vice like grip. This routine is just a cheap opportunity for us to escape our moral responsibility.
The worrying thing is, Finkelstein speaks about the “ideology” of the Holocaust, and how dangerous that is, before actually discussing the facts of the Holocaust itself. And on the facts of the Holocaust, Finkelstein can even appear deferential to Holocaust deniers.
He has written:
The hysterical allegation of Holocaust deniers lurking in every corner is apparently also contrived to justify the endless proliferation of Holo-trash. [...] It is indeed easy for the non-expert to be tripped up on the details especially when on crucial matters like the gas chambers (a favorite target of the deniers), there exist, as historian Arno Mayer noted, “many contradictions, ambiguities, and errors in the existing sources,” none of which however “put in question the use of gas chambers in the mass murder.” On a personal note I myself vividly recall reading Arthur Butz’s Hoax of the Twentieth Century and not being able at the time to answer many of his simplest challenges.
If Norman Finkelstein finds it tricky to answer Arthur Butz’s simplest challenges, he is no expert on the Holocaust.
There is also this:
Were it not for the fact that my late parents passed through the Nazi holocaust, I myself would probably would be a skeptic by now. Who can any longer believe a single word coming out of the Holocaust industry?”
What did Jews “learn” from the Holocaust?
“The Zionists indeed learnt well from the Nazis. So well that it seems that their morally repugnant treatment of the Palestinians, and their attempts to destroy Palestinian society within Israel and the occupied territories, reveals them as basically Nazis with beards and black hats.”
What does Finkelstein think about people who align themselves with Holocaust deniers, such as the Neturei Karta?
Here is Finkelstein on Neturei Karta:
I’m not religious, Neturei Karta is in my opinion sometimes kooky, but at least their hearts haven’t been poisoned and their souls aren’t diseased. As for the rest of the Israelis…
Finkelstein then reproduces an article by Rabbi Meir Hirsh of the Neturei Karta, which states:
We beseech G-D to quickly save the Palestinian people and its leaders from the claws of the Zionist monsters and strongly await the day when the legitimate rule over all of Palestine will return to the later with Al-Kuds as is capital and all the Zionists will be driven out of the land by G-D’s hand and we should see with our eyes G-D’s the crystallization of G-D’s promise to his faithful prophets to reign over the entire world in His Holy Kingdom and then all Nations shall serve Him together.
This article is meant to complement the sentence “As for the rest of the Israelis…”
Finkelstein even appears to be opposed to Holocaust education in Gaza. Linking to an article on the subject, Finkelstein commentssatirically:
Goebbels to teach Jews in Warsaw Ghetto history of German persecution by Mongols
This is deeply wrong on many levels, and obviously downplays the horror and scale of the Shoah.
In this clip, Finkelstein compares the ADL’s Abe Foxman with Adolf Hitler, then smirks:
“At least Hitler didn’t do it for the money.”
When the filmmaker takes offence at this comparison, Finkelstein becomes hysterical, telling him angrily:
“You come from a society in which everyone calls everyone a Nazi, right? They call Rabin a Nazi, Ben Gurion called Jabotinsky a Nazi, Jabotinsky called Ben Gurion a Nazi, Begin called Ben Gurion a Nazi. Each of them said one is worse than Hitler, that’s the whole language of your society.It’s also the language I grew up with, you know, everything in my house. The food? Worse than Auschwitz! The clothes? Worse than Auschwitz! That’s the house you grow up in. And all of a sudden, you get so pious when I go like that. Your whole society is like that!”
In the same clip, Finkelstein says of American Jews:
“The best that could ever happen to Israel, if they get rid of these American Jews who are war mongers from Martha’s Vinyard, and they’re war mongers from the Hamptons, and they’re war mongers from Beverely Hills, and they’re war mongers from Miami. It’s been a disaster for Israel. It’s the best thing if they can ever get rid of American Jewry. It’s a curse.”
Norman Finkelstein claims that the Holocaust is an “ideological club” and an “ideological construction”, “a money-making instrument” and an “extortion racket”. Finkelstein’s heroes are Jew-hating terrorists.
He is toured around the UK by fascist-loving antisemites in the PRC, then hosted by Leeds “pushing all Israelis in to the Mediterranean is now not an option” PSC.
Noxious – but not to the PRC or the PSC.
Comments
| 31 December 2011, 7:24 am |
Whither Matt Hill now?
| 31 December 2011, 8:15 am |
From renowned Holocaust scholar (he practically invented the field of Holocaust Studies) and lifelong Republican Raul Hilberg:
Q: What are your thoughts on the current debates over how to interpret the Holocaust and its legacy in the work of people like Norman Finkelstein or Daniel Goldhagen?
Hilberg: Well Finkelstein is now maligned all over the place. There were obviously lobbies who tried to dislodge him from his position. Finkelstein is a political scientist. I believe he has a PhD degree from Princeton and, whatever you may think of Princeton, this is a pretty strong preparation to be a professional political scientist. He wrote to me a couple of times. He was the first one to take Goldhagen seriously. He attacked Goldhagen in a very long essay which I could never have written because I would have never had the patience. Goldhagen is part of an academic group that in my kind of research is a disaster…
Q: Why is that?
Hilberg: Because [Goldhagen] was totally wrong about everything. Totally wrong. Exceptionally wrong. In other words, this whole fury of his anti-Semitism was, at the root, that it was especially eliminationist anti-Semitism, was totally absurd. He talks about anti-Semitism among Germans, Estonians, Ukrainians, Latvians, and Lithuanians, but where did this unique eliminationist anti-Semitism come from? It is just totally absurd. I mean, totally off the wall, you know, and factually without any basis. Finkelstein took this seriously. I took it less seriously, but I was a latecomer in attacking this Goldhagen fellow.
Now Finkelstein had a second point, which, in my opinion, was one hundred percent correct and that is that the response to the issue of the Swiss banks and German industry, which had coincided during the War, was not only coercive on the part of the Jews who mobilized, but also on the part of all the insurance commissioners, the Senate, the House, and the critical committees. The only thing they could not break through was to the courts, which still have independence. So they lost at court, but they threatened people like Alan Hevesi in New York. They could make threats because Swiss banks wanted to expand here. For Finkelstein, this was naked extortion and I’m not sure who agreed with him except for me and I said so openly. In fact, I said so to the press in maybe seven countries.
The press did not expect my answer. The World Jewish Congress was led by a man who was appeared to be from his own autobiographical statements to be totally, not even average, but like a child almost. What this tycoon, who took over the World Jewish Congress, was saying was totally preposterous. The claims lawyers, joined by the World Jewish Congress, made an incredible display of totally inappropriate behavior.
Now when he talks about the Arabs, some Jews feel that he is also anti-Zionist, that he is anti-Israel; that he seems to always emphasize the suffering of the Arabs. I do not join him in this particular venture because I have my own view, but you cannot say he is altogether wrong either. Would you like to be an Arab citizen in Israel? Think of the doors that are closed. You may eat better and have a better income than if you lived in a slum in Cairo. The great irony is that the economic condition of Israeli Arabs is considerably better than the proletariat in some other Arab countries, but a person needs something more. A person needs a feeling of dignity. Think of the security check points. It is a life that certainly something ought to be done about it in one way or another. This particular battle cannot be fought forever. It cannot be. The Israelis will tire of it. The Israelis will simply tire of mistrusting people. It is not possible to go on this way forever. Finkelstein has the corner on the germ of correct vision in these matters because he is pretty sharp. More often than not, especially with regard to these other matters like Goldhagen and the Swiss banks he has been right.
| 31 December 2011, 8:49 am |
One of the nonsensical (I prefer “noxious”) references to Jews as Nazis on his site:
The ultimate mission: Join real-life Nazis as they starve Jews in Warsaw. Help a Nazi shove an elderly Jew into an oven. Set fire to a crematorium and watch the ashes of a Jewish newborn come out the chimney. Then travel with the Wehrmacht to the Russian front and watch the Nazis exterminate Slavs. (And I do so hope, sincerely and truly, that when these tourists look out over a Hezbollah position, a Party of God missile dispatches them to their Maker.)”
This man is not well.
| 31 December 2011, 8:54 am |
Agreed.
He needs help.
Can someone not find him a good psychiatrist?
Preferably not Jewish …
| 31 December 2011, 8:59 am |
Joseph W, thanks so much for your nailing of Finkelstein (Something that Gene has pointed-out on another thread is a consistent policy at HP) . Its clear that he is an antisemitic, Jew-hating bastard. Little different from the beliefs and preaching of Qaradawi against the Jews and in denial of The Holocaust, no different from the views of Hamas, Hezbollah and Fatah. No different from Abbas, leader of the Palestinians who wrote a thesis based on his own Holocaust denial.
I salute HP on its consistent exposure of the hate-monger Finkelstine and those who give him any atom of support or who find some truth in his words.
Its what I call the “Hitler wasn’t a complete monster” syndrome whereby someone would argue that because Hitler was kind to dogs he can’t be all evil.
Its the “Yes, but”‘ers.
I can guess what is about to follow…………..
| 31 December 2011, 9:07 am |
Finkelstein is a brilliant man who is unfortunately quite deranged. His extraordinarily vicious hate-filled writings suggest he has some sort of mental or deep emotional problem. No normal academics shriek and scream their heads off like he does.
If he’s consorting with nonentities like Leeds PSC, he’s clearly on his way down. He is widely loathed, discredited by US academia, and his future looks gratifyingly bleak.
| 31 December 2011, 9:14 am |
@Roscoe Turi
Where did this interview with Raul Hilberg come from? I wouldn’t mind seeing the original.
| 31 December 2011, 9:17 am |
I think that Finkelstein’s mother may have been encouraging him in all this. Didn’t she ask a question at one of his talks, not letting the audience know who she was?
If this was the case, what a disfunctional family this must be!
| 31 December 2011, 9:25 am |
Thanks Joseph – and DogOfTears for highlighting that particularly hateful example. (The link for that is under ‘nonsensical’ in Joseph’s post BTW).
| 31 December 2011, 9:28 am |
Some people passing opinions on the I/P conflict find a degree of merit in Finklestine’s point of view.
“Why shouldn’t I read Norman Finkelstein? …….As I’ve said, Finkelstein is by no means one of my main influences.” (ergo Finklestine IS an influence but not a main one)
“In other words, no matter how great a people’s suffering, it remains answerable for its own crimes. In a debate so often marred by relativism and special pleading, Finkelstein’s moral axiom (in short: two wrongs don’t make a right) is as unimpeachable as his rhetoric is exhilarating.”
Those are quotes of a leftist blogger from “Muddle East” who has guested at HP. He factors what he thinks of Finkelstine’s writing into his opinions about Israel and The Palestinians I wonder if such (apparent) respect shown to some of Finklestine’s views merits exposure and helps our understanding of the moral standpoint of the blogger. After all, when the likes of Sizer endorse the writings of antisemites and Holocaust deniers we don’t hesitate to condemn and characterise their moral standpoint.
Its the “He isn’t ALL bad” argument. When core beliefs start to leak you can only wonder what else is inside.
I feel sure that Joseph W’s excellent thread is a response to the argument he had with said blogger on the “Books” thread.
| 31 December 2011, 9:39 am |
Let me declare my support for Goldhagen and all his works! I’ve now read all his books: Hitler’s Willing Executioners, A Moral Reckoning and Worse than War. I don’t agree with all his conclusions in all the books, but I’ve never found obvious errors of fact. Willing Executioners was some of the most salutary reading I’ve ever done: rather than the awful “latent savagery of Man” or “we might all have done the same” stuff that Marxists and other determinists purvey (even William Golding’s Lord of the Fliesbelongs to this school), it pins the blame squarely and rightly on an increasing obsession among the Germans of the time that the Jews were pseudo-humans responsible for all the Germans’ (and probably mankind’s) real or imagined woes, even that the War was principally one against the Jews, and that killing little Jewish children was like disinfecting bacteria for the benefit of mankind. That’s of course why they often made strategic mistakes on the Eastern Front: their most urgent priority was not to defeat real Soviet units, but to send in Einsatzgruppen to find and kill any local Jews as soon as possible. (This nowhere implies that other nations weren’t antisemites also, indeed collaborators with the German genocide effort; but I’m more than a little tired of the position that the Germans were normally a “civilised” people, that the real antisemites are Slavs, and even, as per Karl Popper, that the worst Germans were Prussians and that they are Slavs really.)
As an academic linguistician, whose non-Chomskyan department was eliminated from the campus against a background of funding cuts by Chomskyan intrigue (“Professor M [my department head, a Dutch Catholic] has no international reputation”) emanating from the Chomskyan psycholinguists of the university psychology department, I’ve always been allergic to Chomsky and anyone who works with him, as Finkelstein very much has done.
| 31 December 2011, 10:01 am |
Yes Finkelstein says he got his sense of moral outrage from his mother who got it from watching her first husband and family die during the Holocaust.
I will admit that Finkelstein has unfortunately seem to have gotten more willing to say outrageous things. Then again he had his academic career destroyed unlike no one else in since McCarthyism. There are professors who support biological racial differences or think Stalin is a swell chap that never had to endure what Finkelstein has. This is now just a full blown character assassination based on ill advised comments.
“If Norman Finkelstein finds it tricky to answer Arthur Butz’s simplest challenges, he is no expert on the Holocaust.”
Butz’s Holocaust denial rag came out in 1976. Finkelstein got his MA in 1980, and has done a lot of research since then. So just how is his work on the Holocaust somehow suspect after years of academic research? How is it suspect when the leading scholar of the Holocaust has supported Finkelstein?
Even Finkelstein’s supporters have said his sense of moral outrage can be too much sometimes. But to argue that Finkelstein is insensitive to the Holocaust given both his parents were survivors is as bad as what you accuse Finkelstein of. Let’s look at what he also says in the same article the comment about Butz’s book comes from: “It should go without saying that whether the figure is closer to five than six million is of zero moral significance – except for a moral cretin, who could utter ‘only five million?’” The article is his obit for Hilberg. In it he notes that Hilberg was brave for researching the Holocaust, despite objections from other academics and backlash from the Right Wing. Hardly an example of Finkelstein playing down the Holocaust. It’s how it is used is his main point of contention.
His outrage over the Israeli-Palestinian issue is that he feels that an event in which if family suffered greatly in is being used as an excuse to cover for Israeli’s occupation. If you want to blame anyone for encouraging Finkelstein’s worldview, go ahead and blame his Jewish mother who survived and watched her family die Holocaust. I dare you. If you want credibility why not actually post a debunking of his academic work and might as well go after Hilberg too, on the Swiss Banks since he supports that perspective. I’m not even as critical as Finkelstein is about Israel, but I feel he was persecuted over his academic works. All HP can provide are a few ill advised comments. Anyone with any notion of logic knows that does not automatically make his books wrong.
| 31 December 2011, 10:09 am |
I think they amount to rather more than ‘a few ill advised comments’. He may be extremely sensitive to the Holocaust in one sense, yet still trivialise it, or indeed deploy it to make an antisemitic point (it seems to me), in another sense/context.
| 31 December 2011, 10:24 am |
I’ve never been a member of what this horrible man calls the “Holocaust Industry”. I’ve just had to ask “Why didn’t I have a grandfather, any aunts or uncles, or any first cousins?”. If Israel had existed, I would have done.
Probably all I work with, several former friends, even some members of my family, believe that the remnant of the continental-European Jews were taken by the Americans from DP camps to a Palestine inhabited entirely by a nice bucolic authentic “Palestinian” population descended from the Philistines or some other ancient people – the Jews may never have lived there, because “the only evidence” that they did is the Bible and the Bible is “a faith book”, not history – and that these nice authentic Palestinians were hoofed out, probably in scenes of great cruelty including massacres, to make room for these Jewish refugees.
Anyone who’s read any Greco-Roman, medieval or Ottoman history, let alone what’s clear as daylight from 20th-century media, knows that this is all poppycock, in detail as well as in the broad picture. Indeed, it’s very much a Goebbels-style Big Lie: if you say something sufficiently outrageously untrue, people will start to think there’s something in it.
This is the real industry of falsification. Finkelstein has clearly been part of it. If people concerned for the truth, which Zionism has on its side, have not been very receptive to granting Finkelstein tenure or too much of a platform, this is not “persecution”. And even if it were, I’d be with it.
| 31 December 2011, 10:30 am |
Invoking Raul Hilberg in this context is a misuse of authority imo.
Hilbergs support for Finkelstein relates to his dispute with Daniel
Goldhagen and to the Swiss bank issue.Subjects of little relevance to this post.
Hilbergs support for Finkelstein relates to his dispute with Daniel
Goldhagen and to the Swiss bank issue.Subjects of little relevance to this post.
| 31 December 2011, 10:39 am |
Sure I disagree with his hounding of Abe Foxman. He seems to relish the battle while I don’t think he needs to engage with him to get his point across. Well in his mind he’s not trivializing it though that is not a defense. I certainly do not consider that he uses it in an anti-Semitic fashion. We could debate that issue for hours, and no one’s minds will be changed.
No Jewish friends of mine have called me an anti-Semite for reading Finkelstein. Some of them read him too. Then again they are part of that young cohort critical of Israel that HP pretends doesn’t exist or are at best written off as a bunch of campus radicals and at worse called self-hating.
I mention this because this is related to the quality of this piece. This is a hit piece, nothing more based on Finkelstein’s stupid stubborn comments. He clearly has the kind of personality where feuds consume him. No I don’t think he should be associating with some of these groups if HP’s allegations are true about them and from what I’ve looked at they seem to be. I think some of Finkelstein’s stupid moves and “alliances” result from the scrutiny he has received that ruined his career. Again not an excuse but I’m trying to put things in context that he is not some rabid self-hating anti-Semite that wants to see all the Jews thrown into the Sea. What he has written is quite different that Atzmon and Shamir. Anyway getting back to the quality of the piece is that it’s a weak attempt to link Finkelstein’s poor judgment to his scholarly work. Where is the strong well research to Finkelstein’s work? I’d be impressed if HP can provide one. The defending Israel’s actions and denouncing its critics as anti-Semites has become increasingly hard to do, so all we see now are smear pieces. No serious engagement with the issues. Like I mentioned before I know many young adult Jews, proud of being so but are not taking the Hasbara seriously at all. The Israeli government knows it, Israel’s defenders know it, so we end up with crap like this post that avoids the actual issues. Uncritical defenders of Israel must love Finkelstein, he shoots himself in the foot enough to avoid actually engaging his work.
| 31 December 2011, 10:51 am |
Yes, but as Matt h points out, holocaust schmolocaust, his grammar is perfect and his eyes are rather beautiful in the right light. Oh, and Hezbollah rock!
| 31 December 2011, 10:53 am |
The Holocaust is an ideological club
ffs.
Uncritical defenders of Israel must love Finkelstein, he shoots himself in the foot enough to avoid actually engaging his work.
Uncritical supporters of Finkelstein must love HP, it shows Finkelstein shooting himself in the foot enough to give them a reason to leap to his defence.
| 31 December 2011, 11:03 am |
I first came across Finkelstein when his ‘Holocaust Industry’ book was being lauded in a 4 page special in The Guardian’s G2 section. Must have been a decade ago or more, I cannot remember. I took the trouble to read it too.
He has always appealed to people who could never forgive jews for the holocaust.
When someone speaks reverentially of the man or his views I move on. It marks them out as an utter fool and someone who has a problem with jews (whether they are aware of it or not). Its quite similar to the Gilad Atzmon test which so many ‘right on’ people failed so very miserably.
mattG
| 31 December 2011, 11:09 am |
He’s in many ways a narcissistic fool who has said many imprudent things. But the reason he’s hated around here is because of the forensic work he did to expose Joan Peters, Alan Dershowitz and Daniel Goldhagen. It really is a simple as that.
| 31 December 2011, 11:09 am |
dirigible when was I uncritical of Finkelstein? I want to see his work engaged not his horrible choice of venues and hosts used to dismiss what he has written.
| 31 December 2011, 11:18 am |
unbelievable – I once invoked Joan Peters’ ideas (unwittingly), though not with anti-Palestinian intent, and was politely corrected by someone who is very much an HP regular. There must be quite a lot of possible middle ground between her and NF.
| 31 December 2011, 11:18 am |
Hasbara is not a derogatory word. It is merely telling the truth about Israel, which is constantly lied about by its exceptionally hate-filled and merciless enemies.
As a democracy and a particularly lively open society, Israel couldn’t sustain co-ordinated favourable lies about itself, or its foundation or its background. People of good faith and good will would simply say “I like the supportive intention behind what you’re saying, but unfortunately it just isn’t true.”
So what emerges in apparent dissent from a favourable account of Israel’s present reality, its history and its pre-history tends to emanate from people of bad faith and/or ill-will. (For instance, it now seems that at least some accounts of the supposed massacre at Deir Yasin originated in accusations made by the Labour-Zionist Haganah to discredit the Revisionist Irgun.)
One problem that a blog like HP faces is that there isn’t the space to tell the whole story. One knows that there was an ancient kingdom of Israel (later split into North Israel and Judah); that no descendants of an earlier population are known to have outlived it so as to survive to the Persian, let alone the Roman period; that there has never been a time when at least the major towns – Jerusalem, Hebron (yes!), Gaza (yes!), Tiberias, Tzfat, etc – did not have a substantial Jewish population; that nomadic Arab tribes and later neo-Arabic-speaking small farmers or farm labourers came to settle there, perhaps even before the first Caliphate but not much earlier, and continuing into the period of the British Mandate, and that “Palestinian” is a name for their descendants conceived by 20th-century propaganda; that modern Zionism dates from the 1880s, and had already settled hundreds of thousands of diaspora Jews in the land on the eve of WW2; that the extreme (often Nazi-inspired through Mufti Amin al-Husaini) hatred and intransigence of the Arabs led to constant attacks, culminating in declaration and prosecution of war in 1948 against the Jewish entity by all the surrounding Arab states; that Jews held out and won; and that this is the basis of the current situation.
What there isn’t space for is “documentary proof”, which frankly shouldn’t be necessary. Obviously you can get it from a near-infinity of sources. As for me, I’m 54 and was well aware of the news and its background as far back as the JFK assassination. I see no evidence that the radio and TV news, e.g. those of the BBC, were slanted in Israel’s favour at the time of the 1967 or 1973 wars – or even that classic Zionist films like Exodus or Cast a Giant Shadowwere other than dramatic depictions of what was essentially an accurate narrative, both in denotation and in connotation.
| 31 December 2011, 11:20 am |
Why is Finkelstein doing a speaking tour for PSC? What is the connection between Finkelstein’s subject – the holocaust, and the Palestinian situation? I would suggest the only connection is a rhetorical one that essentialises Jews. It depicts them as prisoners of their own history who are morally flawed as a result. This dishonest pseudo-history peddled by political fanatics is the thing that really brings Finkelstein’s reputation as a historian into disrepute. Israelis do not persecute Palestinians in a Nazi-like way and justify it because of their own treatment by the Nazis. Who could claim that this is any sort of historical analysis?
| 31 December 2011, 11:36 am |
Israelis do not persecute Palestinians in a Nazi-like way and justify it because of their own treatment by the Nazis. Who could claim that this is any sort of historical analysis?
There certainly are people who do. Its been alluded-to on HP threads that some people who support the Palestinians believe there is some historical truth in it and that even today The Holocaust is used to attack Israel’s nervousness at the threats around it.
One could easily demonstrate that the inheritors and propogators of the Holocaust rhetoric are the Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians of the ME region by charter, policy and public statements. They also use The Holocaust to state that this is why Israel exists which is to provide a fig-leaf that the reason is because they hate the Jews so much that the UN created a partition plane with statehood to be confered on Israel in 1948, and they created The Jewish National Home in 1922.
| 31 December 2011, 12:04 pm |
Roscoe’s absurd apologia can be boiled down to:
But to argue that Finkelstein is insensitive to the Holocaust given both his parents were survivors
This is a complete non sequitur. His words and his actions, as quoted by Joseph (unless you are accusing him of lying, to which you come close by calling this rational expose ‘character assassination’) prove his insensitivity, his utter pathological vileness. Relying on his parents’ personal history to excuse his antisemitic screeds is utterly pathetic.
A pox on Finkelstein and all his admirers, incl. on other threads (cf. DCook – that was a very astute observation, if you don’t mind my saying so, D.).
A pox on Finkelstein and all his admirers, incl. on other threads (cf. DCook – that was a very astute observation, if you don’t mind my saying so, D.).
| 31 December 2011, 12:10 pm |
the forensic work he did to expose Joan Peters
He did no such thing. You keep peddling this nonsense, but it’s still nonsense.
has said many imprudent things
The fact that this is your characterisation of F. in defiling the memory of millions of Holocaust victims – the murdered and the survivors – tells us all we need to know about the moral sewer you inhabit.
| 31 December 2011, 12:14 pm |
This is the real industry of falsification. Finkelstein has clearly been part of it. If people concerned for the truth, which Zionism has on its side, have not been very receptive to granting Finkelstein tenure or too much of a platform, this is not “persecution”. And even if it were, I’d be with it.
Very well said. It needed saying, and thank you for doing so.
| 31 December 2011, 12:25 pm |
[Finkelstein even appears to be opposed to Holocaust education in Gaza. Linking to an article on the subject, Finkelstein comments satirically:]
Let me be a little satirical and ask the question do they teach The Nakba in Israel from the Palestinian perspective? –
Let me be a little satirical and ask the question do they teach The Nakba in Israel from the Palestinian perspective? –
I admire Norman’s analytical approach to a very difficult and emotive subject the conflict presents, so why attack him?
He has many qualifications, his books are well read and his lectures well attended – He presents the most cogent arguments for the peaceful solution to the conflict in the Middle East based on international consensus. Every other option is going to bring about catastrophe to the region and the wider world.
| 31 December 2011, 12:42 pm |
But the reason he’s hated around here is because of the forensic work he did to expose Joan Peters, Alan Dershowitz and Daniel Goldhagen.
Substantiate that or withdraw it.
~alec
| 31 December 2011, 12:49 pm |
do they teach The Nakba in Israel from the Palestinian perspective
They tend to concentrate on facts, unless its a class on mythology.
| 31 December 2011, 12:54 pm |
do they teach The Nakba in Israel
Which Nakba – Arafat? Abbas?
| 31 December 2011, 12:54 pm |
See above for my substantive agreement with Goldhagen. I’ve read Dershowitz’s The Case for Israel, though nothing else by him; and yes, I’ve read Joan Peters’s From Time Immemorial, which I regard as slightly too loose in its claims to be strictly refuted, or for that matter corroborated – its usefulness is mainly in presenting for the first time a possibility (indeed likelihood) that hadn’t previously been considered, i.e. that there was at least as much Arab immigration into Mandate Palestine as Jewish. How does the word on the street claim that Finkelstein has “exposed” them? What could be his “forensic work”, given that even he must consider himself mainly an ideologue?
| 31 December 2011, 12:57 pm |
Yohnitzl
Excellent comments.
May I urge you to develop these slightly into a complete post entitled: ‘Israel and the Jews: Myth and Reality’?
Or something like that.
You have expressed the position with honestly and power.
| 31 December 2011, 1:14 pm |
Inevitably this can only be settled by a
‘celebrity wrestling death match up ‘ between finklestein and Atzmon . The loser dies and the winner gets to keep the crown of biggest antisemite
.
‘celebrity wrestling death match up ‘ between finklestein and Atzmon . The loser dies and the winner gets to keep the crown of biggest antisemite
.
| 31 December 2011, 1:14 pm |
j.r.
31 December 2011, 11:20 am
31 December 2011, 11:20 am
Indeed, there is a symbiotic relationship between a rightly failed academic like nutty Norm and an organization that does more harm than good to the cause it ostensibly embraces.
| 31 December 2011, 1:21 pm |
What do you want substantiated Alec? It is a conjecture, nothing more, though, I think, a plausible one.
| 31 December 2011, 1:28 pm |
No, Unbelievable. You did not say “a reason”. You said “thereason”; so, by extension, disgust expressed by HP stalwarts to Finklestein’s wretched comments are not sincere. It only is ‘cos of his views towards Israel.
There’s a word for people who suggest that accusations of antisemitism are used as cynical political ploys by Jews. Just as there is for people who make emotion-driven comments which reflect their entrenched opinions of what [they think] a blog represents instead of engaging with any recognized rules of debate.
~alec
| 31 December 2011, 1:37 pm |
Bandwidth, Peter: I’m very flattered. It’s just that the subject of this post seems to combine 2 of my pet hates: (1) perpetuating the ever-more-widespread myth that Israel was created in 1948 by totally expelling an ancient and exclusive indigenous population to provide room for European Jews; (2) using the network of Chomsky admirers to intrigue behind the scenes against the “narrative” provided by the open media and objective record – claiming, of course, that these are no such thing, as Marxists (whether Trotskyists like Finkelstein or Council Communists like Chomsky) would of course claim. I don’t know how to graduate from commenting on a post to “blogging under the Harry’s Place banner”, as seems to be suggested. But thanks!
| 31 December 2011, 1:40 pm |
Alec: there are zillions of people out there with opinions about Israel that are offensive to the proprietors of Harry’s Place, Finkelstein is just one of of them. However, unlike most of those people, Finkelstein has some genuine and serious research that discredits some of the propagandists on “your” side. Hence the importance of slinging mud at him here.
| 31 December 2011, 1:49 pm |
Does “zillions” indicate a tangible number?
Don’t try to wriggle out of it now. You did not say that HP merely is implacably opposed to Finklestein’s views (which, insofar as a corporate position exists, is broadly accurate).
You said that it is entirely based on whatever he said about those on some laundry list you’ve compiled – without associated links to approval of them on HP – and that any so-called disgust towards his comments regarding events with predate the founding of Israel are insincere and simply political cynicism.
Hence the importance of slinging mud at him here.
You said it, boy!
~alec
| 31 December 2011, 1:59 pm |
As I just said on another thread, Alec, your conduct here as a moderator is a disgrace.
| 31 December 2011, 2:15 pm |
And as I said to you, you’re a whining Flashman-wannabe who doesn’t have the necessary courage or strength of character.
A wise old man once said to me that the sign of intellectual inquiry is to read a newspaper you don’t agree with or engage with opponents in an argument whom you disagree with.
All life is on HP, which is why you despise not being able to control it.
~alec
| 31 December 2011, 2:22 pm |
Correction Finky is a Maoist who presently calls himself a Green. In person he avoids any mention of his Maoism. He also leaves out the fact that his mother was a Stalinist. He presents her as an ordinary apolitical Holocaust survivor. His ordinary Jew outrages by Zionism is part of the Communist stoking populist Jew hatred Industry,
| 31 December 2011, 2:23 pm |
For me, the most cogent comment on Finkelstein’s book is that from Professor Omer Bartov, who reviewed the first edition in the New York Times.
This adverse review provoked the usual torrent of invective from Finkelstein from which logical rebuttal of the criticism was notably absent.
The German reparations were a vital factor in keeping Israel afloat during the hard years of the fifties and helping resettle Jewish refugees from all lands. Overall, a sum of 3 billion D-marks was paid out, a modest sum indeed.
How big a contrast with the fact that only last year, the Germans completed paying out a grand total of 22 billion GB pounds reparations laid down in the Treaty of Versailles over 90 years ago, money that was to be used to correct the devastation of Holland and Belgium in the First World War. I don’t think I’ve read that Finkelstein has accused the current Dutch and Belgian governments of playing the “victim card.” Has anyone?
| 31 December 2011, 3:11 pm |
Interesting exchange athttp://www.paulbogdanor.com/antisemitism/finkelstein/scholarship.html
| 31 December 2011, 3:17 pm |
Beakerkin, thanks for the Trotskyist->Maoist correction about Finkelstein. It actually makes a lot of difference: while Trotsky personally probably didn’t have too much blood on his hands, and his distant disciples include some quite decent Shachtmanite epigones like Sean Matgamna and his Workers’ Liberty – Mao not only never broke with Stalin, he vastly exceeded even his mentor in mass slaughter and cult of personality. For someone today to choose Maoism, out of all the far-left shades of opinion accessible and affiliable, says all that needs to be said about his values.
| 31 December 2011, 3:32 pm |
Abtalyon,
The reparations did, indeed, help a lot of the victims throughout their lives, including in old age when due to losing their earning potential as a result of physical and mental trauma in the camps, and having only a minimal state pension, they would otherwise have had to live on a pittance. They deserved the reparations several times over, and they went only a tiny way towards compensating them for their sufferings. Anyone begrudging them this is beneath contempt.
As to the banks, insurance companies etc: there is persuasive documentary evidence that they did hold huge amounts in funds robbed from Jews, in dormant accounts, and in insurance policies. From the little evidence I have personally seen, I have no doubt that not of all it was ever repaid or likely to be repaid.
Finkelstein is not motivated by the truth or by scholarship. He is an evil man, and apologists like Naeem, Malik, Roscoe and unbelievable are rooting for a moral black hole.
The reparations did, indeed, help a lot of the victims throughout their lives, including in old age when due to losing their earning potential as a result of physical and mental trauma in the camps, and having only a minimal state pension, they would otherwise have had to live on a pittance. They deserved the reparations several times over, and they went only a tiny way towards compensating them for their sufferings. Anyone begrudging them this is beneath contempt.
As to the banks, insurance companies etc: there is persuasive documentary evidence that they did hold huge amounts in funds robbed from Jews, in dormant accounts, and in insurance policies. From the little evidence I have personally seen, I have no doubt that not of all it was ever repaid or likely to be repaid.
Finkelstein is not motivated by the truth or by scholarship. He is an evil man, and apologists like Naeem, Malik, Roscoe and unbelievable are rooting for a moral black hole.
| 31 December 2011, 3:34 pm |
I meant to say Naeem, M. Hill, Roscoe and unbelievable.
| 31 December 2011, 3:56 pm |
It’s the best thing if they can ever get rid of American Jewry.
The great irony being that this is a comment by yet another loudmouth – like Richard Silverstein and Judith Butler – who derives their ‘authority’ from being Jewish and their ignorance from being part of a cossetted ‘progressive’ section of a society that safeguards its citizen’s rights better than pretty almost any other in the world, but which they persist in childishly likening to a fascist state, while swooning over actual fascists like Hamas. Parochial, self-loving fools.
Yes indeed, some of ‘American Jewry’ is undoubtedly an almighty pain in the arse. But I wouldn’t go so far as to advocate ‘getting rid’ of Silverstein, Butler, Finkelstein et al.
| 31 December 2011, 4:11 pm |
I like American Jewry. I wish I belonged to it, frankly. And when I see Friends – most of the actors, almost all of the scriptwriters Jewish – accidentally left on as video Muzak (the channel unswitchable) in my computer-support office, and colleagues try to outdo each other with their remarks about how they can’t stand the people, “Do you feel you’ve anything in common with them?”, “Can’t stand how they all talk at the same time”, “Can’t they stop waving their hands around all the time?”, and “Why are they all so whiny?”, I know exactly where they’re coming from.
| 31 December 2011, 4:35 pm |
Finkelstein’s fans often refer to his “debunking” of Dershowitz, but like Finkelstein’s historical “scholarship”, it is non-existent. He hasnever published any sort of historical article in any recognized scholarly journal (and has even admitted as much). For a while Finkelstein and his fans were trying to get Dershowitz labeled as a plagiarist but that effort soon collapsed. The bottom line is that Finkelstein is no historian and his views on the Holocaust, the Jews and Israel are utterly perverse, an extreme variation on the “asajew” position. Whatever kernel of insight he might have had regarding Goldhagen, for example, has long been interred under propaganda for Hezbollah and its ilk.
| 31 December 2011, 5:19 pm |
I hate Finkelstein’s writing for two reasons. One, because it’s polemical rather than historical. Roscoe Turi, you can accurately say that Finkelstein is right about many things. He is. He’s also a smart guy. However, as a historian, your allegiance should be to the truth. Not 75% of the time, but 100% of the time. Finkelstein deliberately misleads in order to get his point across. That is unforgivable.
The second reason I dislike him is that Finkelstein is the type of writer who is read by people who have already made up their minds and want that confirmed. He’s not a primary source historian, he’s someone who takes work already done by others and interprets it in his biased way. If you want to know the history surrounding 1948, you can read Benny Morris who painstakingly goes over every document and account he can. If you want to learn about the Holocaust industry, you can read Peter Novick. It’s like saying “I want to learn about Jewish history so I read Shlomo Sand instead of dozens of other writers who have much more knowledge on the subject”.
| 31 December 2011, 5:22 pm |
Yawn,
Roscoe’s defence of Finklestein is that because he is critical of Israel, he is ’smeared’ as an antisemite and he should know because he has Jewish friends!
Hilberg, and other legitimate scholars, rightly defended NF in his tenure struggles, that Roscoe re-imagines as McCarthyism.
Roscoe’s defence of Finklestein is that because he is critical of Israel, he is ’smeared’ as an antisemite and he should know because he has Jewish friends!
Hilberg, and other legitimate scholars, rightly defended NF in his tenure struggles, that Roscoe re-imagines as McCarthyism.
‘The Holocaust Industry’ is a tawdry piece of work that lacks all the sublety of the seriously flawed, Novick’s ‘The Holocaust in American life’. Mind you, when it comes to Israel, Jews and Palestine, subtlety is the first casualty.
As is so often the case, people like Roscoe think NF is great because he appears to challenge orthodoxy whilst in reality, he merely repeats the most reactionary of views when it comes to American Jews.
“If you want to blame anyone for encouraging Finkelstein’s worldview, go ahead and blame his Jewish mother who survived and watched her family die Holocaust. I dare you.”
Jaqueline Rose has made a career out of such a ‘dare’.
| 31 December 2011, 5:35 pm |
Here are some links I saw on a previous thread provided by DavidS
I have not read all the comments that have been posted since you asked for the source for Novick’s comments on Finkelstein but, in case no one has provided it yet, here it is. The comments were in a review by Novick of “The Holocaust Industry” that was published in “Sueddeutsche Zeitung” on 7 February 2001. The full review is available here:
http://www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/div/racket/holindustry/novickeng.html
I found the link to the full article in a long collection of documents related to the conflict between Alan Dershowitz and Finkelstein here:
http://www.alandershowitz.com/publications/docs/depaulletter.htm
The specific quotation that I copied into my comment, with the ellipses, comes from Dershowitz and is found in a number of places in his writings on Finkelstein. I believe that I copied it from here:
http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/dershowitz/statement.html
http://www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/div/racket/holindustry/novickeng.html
I found the link to the full article in a long collection of documents related to the conflict between Alan Dershowitz and Finkelstein here:
http://www.alandershowitz.com/publications/docs/depaulletter.htm
The specific quotation that I copied into my comment, with the ellipses, comes from Dershowitz and is found in a number of places in his writings on Finkelstein. I believe that I copied it from here:
http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/dershowitz/statement.html
interesting info re debates on finklestein
| 31 December 2011, 5:54 pm |
“so why attack him”
Because he is a sh1t, an unbalanced sh1t at that, whose central thesis:-
1. fails completely to understand the huge significance of the holocaust for Jews, and all of humanity
2. trivialises the holocaust and insults the memory of its victims
3. and uses the biggest tragedy of the Jewish people to make an attack on Israel and Zionism has ism which is partly false, partly dishonest and utterly baseless (not that there are no valid substantive criticisms of Zionism and the conduct of the Israeli state/ governments)
| 31 December 2011, 5:54 pm |
If you want to learn about the Holocaust industry,
So, according to Gabriel a “Holocaust industry” exists. Can you provide any clues as to where one can find it Gabriel?
| 31 December 2011, 6:04 pm |
Naeem Malik,
The term “Nakba” was coined to describe the FAILURE of 5 Arab armies to invade and murder every Jew they could get their hands on, just 3 years after the end of WW2 and the Holocaust.
Happy Nakba Naeem Malik to you and yours forever more!
| 31 December 2011, 6:08 pm |
. I see no evidence that the radio and TV news, e.g. those of the BBC, were slanted in Israel’s favour at the time of the 1967 or 1973 wars – or even that classic Zionist films like Exodus or Cast a Giant Shadow were other than dramatic depictions of what was essentially an accurate narrative, both in denotation and in connotation.
I’m with you on this and you highlight a VERY important point. Some people, for example a 27 year old leftist idealist with muddled ideas about the I?P conflict, are no match for someone of 54 who has lived through some of the important history and retains contemporary facts rather than second-hand opinions and filters.
I also endorse the film Exodus as retaining some very important historical facts about the formation of Israel untainted by the filter of lies that people today base their historical perspective on. I always quote that “Exodus” establishes the very important fact that “The Palestinians” were the Jews of Palestine and that the tag “Palestinians” was gathered by Arafat and placed upon the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza after 1967.
| 31 December 2011, 6:09 pm |
“So, according to Gabriel a “Holocaust industry” exists. Can you provide any clues as to where one can find it Gabriel?”
Not according to me, it very clearly exists. An “industry” in this sense does not mean a secret cabal, but there are people who have very clearly profited off of the Holocaust (while the actual survivors often suffer. More than a quarter of survivors in Israel live in poverty.) Any time there is big money involved, there will always be people who find a way to get a chunk of it.
(like thus: http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=21795&pageid=16&pagename=Opinion)
(like thus: http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=21795&pageid=16&pagename=Opinion)
| 31 December 2011, 6:26 pm |
Not according to me, it very clearly exists. An “industry” in this sense does not mean a secret cabal, but there are people who have very clearly profited off of the Holocaust
Do you have a factual link that an “industry” exists? Posting a link that has the word “Opinion” as a search phrase is, er, an opinion. That’s like you having an opinion and pointing to another opinion as evidence. Name someone who you claim has “profited from The Holocaust”.
Any time there is big money involved, there will always be people who find a way to get a chunk of it.
I’m at a loss to understand how to make money from The Holocaust. Please enlighten us. I can certainly see how some people have made their careers from denying and minimising The Holocaust. So, do you mean Finkelstine who says there is a “Holocaust Industry” because he is part of it? Hence, he is criticising himself.
I’m kind of guessing that you mean that the Arabs and Muslims are diving in there to make money out of The Holocaust. That would be a bit racist. Maybe I’m wrong though and if so I 100% apologise. I’m just trying to guess who these chancers are. Wondering if I might know who they are. Maybe you don’t have any particular people in mind who are attracted to “big money”. Its usually bankers and financiers who come to mind. Is that who you had in mind?
| 31 December 2011, 6:33 pm |
“I’m at a loss to understand how to make money from The Holocaust. Please enlighten us.”
Did you click on the link? I doubt it because if you had, you would have read that it was someone’s opinion based on factual events. Since that level of reading comprehension is obviously beyond you, here is a link directly to the news story.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8123929/FBI-charges-17-with-stealing-42-million-from-Holocaust-survivors-charity.html
There isn’t some secret Elders of Zion-like cabal out to misuse the Holocaust for profit, but to pretend that everyone ever involved with reparations had only the purest of motives and nobody has ever used the Holocaust for personal financial gain is obviously ridiculous.
| 31 December 2011, 7:21 pm |
Where’s Matt Hill to remind us that Finkelstein has friends who have friends who are aren’t anti-semites therefore only the most disreputable low slinking Shylock would stoop to sully his shining reputation.
| 31 December 2011, 7:21 pm |
I’ve always been sceptical of Finkelstein’s basic thesis that it’s possible to attribute any kind of personal syndrome to a nation state or a global organisation. It’s not possible for a nation state to suffer from a psychosis, or guilt complex, the way an individual can. To say they can is a supposition based on a fantasy he merely wants to be true. The problem with Finkelstein is that he reads history through a lens of his own making and castigates anyone who disagrees with what he sees as true.
| 31 December 2011, 7:26 pm |
Did you click on the link? I doubt it because if you had, you would have read that it was someone’s opinion based on factual events. Since that level of reading comprehension is obviously beyond you, here is a link directly to the news story
Strange how you accuse me of lacking comprehension but you clearly don’t know the difference between an “Industry” and “A single criminal act of stealing money”. In your loose World of definitions each act of robbery is an “Industry”. Show me where this “Industry” is situated?
You failed to answer the points I made.
There isn’t some secret Elders of Zion-like cabal out to misuse the Holocaust for profit, but to pretend that everyone ever involved with reparations had only the purest of motives and nobody has ever used the Holocaust for personal financial gain is obviously ridiculous.
I never said that. You made it up as a straw man argument to disguise the fact that you couldn’t respond to telling us where this “Holocaust industry” is located. All you did was tell us about stealing money from a Holocaust survivors fund.
I would conclude, therefore, that your denial above is a contradiction to the statement that there is an “industry”, isn’t it?
| 31 December 2011, 7:42 pm |
Anyone still unconvinced of Finkelstein’s mendacity ought to follow the link provided by Mel Photo above. Here it is again:
| 31 December 2011, 7:50 pm |
Strange how you accuse me of lacking comprehension but you clearly don’t know the difference between an “Industry” and “A single criminal act of stealing money”. In your loose World of definitions each act of robbery is an “Industry”. Show me where this “Industry” is situated?
Thank you Dcook that was a pretty good attack on one of semantic slippages that is being used here to minimize the holocaust and attack the victims. Surely Finkelstein didn’t have any actual crimes in mine when he called the Holocaust an industry. Finding one and using as an excuse is to substitute one meaning for another. It’s a trick akin to defending antisemitism by pretending that it means “hating semites” instead of “hating Jews”
No one should be allowed to get away with these dishonest slippage tricks just so they can wallow in the muck with the Jew haters.
| 31 December 2011, 8:39 pm |
“I never said that. You made it up as a straw man argument to disguise the fact that you couldn’t respond to telling us where this “Holocaust industry” is located. All you did was tell us about stealing money from a Holocaust survivors fund.”
Oh, I love this “show me where” stuff like this. Want an address? Here’s one for you.
1359 Broadway, Room 2020
New York, NY 10018
New York, NY 10018
Here’s a good article on Ynet (http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/1,7340,L-3338282,00.html) showing how people are making millions of dollars off of the Holocaust while the actual survivors get very little. This is just like some of the most rabid attackers of The Israel Lobby who pretended as if the lobby is insignificant or doesn’t even really exist and exactly why it’s so hard to pay attention to those people. To try to pretend that there isn’t a Holocaust industry is just ridiculous.
You can also read about it and follow the links on Wiki.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claims_Conference#Criticism
You can also read about it and follow the links on Wiki.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claims_Conference#Criticism
The Claims Conference and Israel have received something like $80 billion in total restitution. $80 billion which is hundreds of thousands of dollars for each survivor. Yet, somehow survivors in Israel are starving while executives for the Claims Conference are getting paid millions. No, no corrupt industry there.
| 31 December 2011, 9:07 pm |
Gabriel at the beginning of a new year to play games with the meanings that finklestein has used is frankly both amusing and despicable. I refer you to the links DaveS provided that aim some very big questions at the door of finklestein. (I provided those links above)
I find the idea of a holocaust industry offensive. That there may be a load of fiddling going on but that is no more than all sorts of monetary irregularities from MP’s fiddling their expenses to bankers creating financial instruments that cause a worldwide recession.
Finklestein uses the idea to say much much more and you know it.
I find the idea of a holocaust industry offensive. That there may be a load of fiddling going on but that is no more than all sorts of monetary irregularities from MP’s fiddling their expenses to bankers creating financial instruments that cause a worldwide recession.
Finklestein uses the idea to say much much more and you know it.
| 31 December 2011, 9:26 pm |
“Finklestein uses the idea to say much much more and you know it.”
Here we go again. I can make myself explicit and half the people here pretend I am saying something else entirely. I don’t like Finkelstein at all and have said so (and why) very clearly on a number of occasions. Does that matter? No! Of course not. However, there is a Holocaust industry and the fact that you don’t like that is irrelevant. In fact, you, DCook (why do I ever respond to him??) and others are doing exactly what Finkelstein does wrong. You are ignoring facts because they don’t suit your beliefs.
“No one should be allowed to get away with these dishonest slippage tricks just so they can wallow in the muck with the Jew haters.”
There should be an award on every thread on HP about which post does the most to dilute the meaning of anti-Semitism. Josh Scholar, as he often does, wins on this thread.
| 31 December 2011, 9:53 pm |
To try to pretend that there isn’t a Holocaust industry is just ridiculous.
Maybe you have an SIC code for it. Do you know if they are hiring at the moment? Is there a convention I can attend? Do they have a franchise program?
Isn’t Finkelstine a prime mover in this “Industry” since he seems to be making a living by describing something called “The Holocaust Industry”.
The idea I think that Finkly is trying to impart is that Jews and Israel use The Holocaust to gain some political/emotional advantage by referring to it. One must avoid the elephant in the room because it is so inconvenient.
When you describe Holocaust survivors being ripped-off you are describing classical fraud and nothing more conspiratorial.
xxx Broadway, Room yyy
New York, NY zzzzz
New York, NY zzzzz
How would I address my letter? To “The Holocaust Industry (New York Division)”?
| 31 December 2011, 10:15 pm |
I can’t understand why we’re not taking Finkelstein’s concern for Holocaust survivors seriously.
Perhaps he and that man he admires, Hassan “I’m glad all the Jews gathered in Israel so we can kill them all” Nasrallah can make an advert imploring the remaining few Holocaust survivors not to be taken in the the “Holocaust Industry”
I note that the ynet article Gabriel linked to is disputed by people in the comments who say it’s a smear job because WJC is not CC money, ie it’s not holocaust funds that are being wasted.
| 31 December 2011, 10:35 pm |
Out of curiosity of the use of the phrase “Holocaust Industry” I googled it.
And this one from a google cache of “blood and honor world wide” (there are sites I won’t go to directly)
“David versus Goliath II! or Or David Irving versus the Holocaust Industry! David Irving the worlds leading historian on the Third Reich is engaged in the biggest legal action involving Real History that has ever been fought. … On the one side, skulking in the darkness, are the massed battalions of the old version of history, as propagated by the traditional enemies of truth…”
“David versus Goliath II! or Or David Irving versus the Holocaust Industry! David Irving the worlds leading historian on the Third Reich is engaged in the biggest legal action involving Real History that has ever been fought. … On the one side, skulking in the darkness, are the massed battalions of the old version of history, as propagated by the traditional enemies of truth…”
Nice to finally be able to agree on terminology with the Nazis. Building bridges with former enemies eh?
| 31 December 2011, 10:38 pm |
“When you describe Holocaust survivors being ripped-off you are describing classical fraud and nothing more conspiratorial.”
I never said it was a conspiracy, in fact, I said the opposite. Those are your words. Systemic diverting of millions of dollars from survivors to unrelated groups and to executives is exactly the type of thing I am talking about. That’s people who are not survivors and who shouldn’t be getting the money profiting off of the Holocaust.
There are many other links of people talking about the corruption. Anshel Pfeffer in Haaretz sums up one of the big issues well:
“In addition to the money going to survivors, the conference distributes tens of millions of dollars annually to a long list of organizations loosely involved in Holocaust commemoration and education. Many of these institutions are subsidiaries of the organizations represented on Claims Conference board of directors. They are not interested in altering this cozy arrangement, despite claims by survivors’ groups that in the final years of survivors’ lives, every spare cent should be going to their welfare.”
| 31 December 2011, 10:48 pm |
“Out of curiosity of the use of the phrase “Holocaust Industry” I googled it.
And this one from a google cache of “blood and honor world wide” (there are sites I won’t go to directly). Nice to finally be able to agree on terminology with the Nazis. Building bridges with former enemies eh?”
And this one from a google cache of “blood and honor world wide” (there are sites I won’t go to directly). Nice to finally be able to agree on terminology with the Nazis. Building bridges with former enemies eh?”
On what, the tenth page of google? Every page I can see is about Norman Finkselstein’s book (reviews, reference, etc…). Why would you go looking for neo-nazi sites Josh?
(And BTW, even though I dislike Finkelstein and but I am aware that there is a Holocaust industry, that makes me an anti-Semite/.Nazi-lover/etc… Raul Hilberg actually liked the book. What does that make him? Scum of the earth? Worse than Hitler? When you start off with ridiculous hyperbole, you have nowhere to go. Also, amusing is the people who attack Finkelstein for his weak scholarship but like people like Daniel Goldhagen who is even less respected by other historians.)
| 31 December 2011, 11:02 pm |
Heh, I googled “Holocaust Industry” David Irving because when I hear that phrase I think of Nazis like him ranting about Israel.
It’s amazing how hard it is to tell left Nazis from right Nazis these days, but at least they’re calling the whole population of Israel Nazis for resisting being driven off the earth, so at least I can tell ordinary citizen Nazis from the left and right ones.
| 31 December 2011, 11:05 pm |
Once again, why doesn’t Norman make an anti-holocaust industry advert along with his we-will-finish-the-holocaust heroes? Won’t everyone appreciate their concern?
Also, why are YOU concerned with defending this ahem, man.
| 31 December 2011, 11:07 pm |
Let’s be clear,there’s no difference between Finklestein, the Hezbollah fan and David Irving the Nazi. They’re on the same side and they use the same terminology.
So Norman Finkelstein wrote a long wink of a book to get a bunchy of lefties screaming “Holocaust Industry” along with the Nazis and it doesn’t make you feel dirty at all to scream along with them. How sweet.
| 31 December 2011, 11:14 pm |
“Also, why are YOU concerned with defending this ahem, man.”
I am not defending him. I don’t think he’s a good historian and I think he’s actually deeply troubled. DCook just took a phrase I used and tried to twist it into being an anti-Semite (which he does with everything.)
I also dislike the attacking of Finkelstein’s scholarship by people who revere Robert Spencer, Goldhagen, Joan Peters, etc…It’s like listening to Syria criticize someone else of human rights violations.
| 31 December 2011, 11:38 pm |
And you assume I revere these people?
Really?
I must I guess, I’m attacking that man you don’t like and I don’t have the appropriate pedigree as a Jew Hater.
| 1 January 2012, 12:01 am |
like listening to Syria criticize someone else of human rights violations.
Jesus Christ.
One, you’re absolutely disgusting. Two I don’t support those people. Three, you should learn that a tu quoque always fails to excuse the user, only men who are hysterical beyond all reason fall for a tu quoque.
| 1 January 2012, 12:27 am |
I just have had to Google for Joan Peters. Previously, on seeing the name, I’d think of that gal who went hammer ‘n tongs at Darcus Howe. I really would.
I don’t think he’s a good historian
He’s not a historian fullstop/period. He’s a mouthy political scientist.
~alec
| 1 January 2012, 2:20 am |
Why do you continue to call it a holocaust industry. The holocaust happened and a lot of people died especially Jews. Part of the reason for its specificity is the way the German government defined jews and their goal of a final solution. The industrial efficiency factory like was another part of what was different about this killing. To use the word industry to describe the attempts to get reparations for Jews and to recover their assets from institutions like the swiss banks is offensive. It offends me. I have the feeling that finklestein used the word industry to offset what was special about the holocaust. Lets look at it the other way around. How about all the attempts not to give jews back their assets. Where did all the teeth, the hair, the cases, the paintings,the property go. I repeat the use of the word industry is offensive. How about focus on the people who stole all these assets in the first place.
| 1 January 2012, 3:42 am |
“Why do you continue to call it a holocaust industry.”
Nazis and other anti-Semites use it in order to show their resentment and disregard for the surviving Jews and their descendants. Finkelstein no doubt uses it because he also resents the existence of Israel, he reveres Hezbollah and other Jew haters and it must feel awfully good to him to fool progressives into accepting the terminology of Nazis. He’s building a bridge between his two sides.
Sometimes words live for their connotation not their denotation.
| 1 January 2012, 10:01 am |
I just love the way the shill for Islamist clerical fascism and proven liar, Naeem Malik, refers to Finkelstein by his first name.
He’s a mate of yours, then, Malik?
Telling.
| 1 January 2012, 10:34 am |
So, a few crooks stealing money from charities = Israel/Jews systemtically abusing the Holocaust in order to oppress the Arabs?
Weak, very weak, even by Gabriel’s standards.
Weak, very weak, even by Gabriel’s standards.
| 1 January 2012, 11:06 am |
An industry is usually an enterprise grouping designed to make money. The only “Holocaust Industry” are people like Finkelstein who make money from The Holocaust.
His meaning is probably that there are people, Jews, who use the Holocaust to promote some political concessions. He suggests that the memorial of 6m Jews slaughtered by Hitler is something to be criticised. Its Holocaust denial and minimalisation of the worst kind. Its a bit like “hey, it wasn’t so bad” and “so what, it was so many years ago”.
It was Gabriel who translated the political use of The Holocaust into money. Gabriel writes about people cynically making money from The Holocaust. You have to wonder what Gabriel’s inner motive is for introducing this and illustrating it with an alleged crime of stealing based on a Holocaust charity.
I went along with Gabriel and parodied HIS concept of Industry. He said this:-
Not according to me, it very clearly exists. An “industry” in this sense does not mean a secret cabal, but there are people who have very clearly profited off of the Holocaust (while the actual survivors often suffer. More than a quarter of survivors in Israel live in poverty.) Any time there is big money involved, there will always be people who find a way to get a chunk of it
big money?
From what protocol does that derive?
Finkelstein chose the word “Industry”, one suspects, because of the mimicry of the industrial-like scale of The Holocaust and as a taunt.
Gabriel sees that it “clearly exists” and his example is big moneyand monetary fraud.
He accused ME of lack of comprehension? Yeah, sure!
Finkelstein gives support for antisemites.
| 1 January 2012, 11:17 am |
@ Josh,
Nazis and other anti-Semites use it in order to show their resentment and disregard for the surviving Jews and their descendants
Following Finkelstein’s offensive “Holocaust Industry” you see the Arab/Muslim/Palestinian World use it.
We have the invention of the “Nabka” which the Muslim Council of Britain used in their refusal to acknowledge Holocaust Memorial Day since “The Nabka” wasn’t being recognised.
In a cheap and offensive way its as if the Palestinians had to have their own “Holocaust” because they thought it would give them some equal status with The Holocaust.
We have some UK Muslim leaders invoking that the plight of Muslims in Europe is just like what happened to the Jews in Europe, ignoring that some Muslims in Europe are responsible themselves for the rise in antisemitism.
We have the Palestinians asking “Why should WE pay for The Holocaust?” when they aren’t. (To which one answers “Well, your leader Al Husseini was an instigator of The Holocaust – Nuremburg trial)
To insist that the “industry” exists means that someone is also insiting that it is the Arabs/Muslims/Palestinians who have propogated The Holocaust into theoir own political engine.
But Gabriel can only identify that as a charity allegedly ripping-off money designated to Holocaust victims.
| 1 January 2012, 11:53 am |
Dcook
We have the Palestinians asking “Why should WE pay for The Holocaust?”
This from a Der Speigel interview with Yasser Arafat in 1979, Arafat is talking about the Holocaust:
It is regrettable only because others [the Palestinians] must now foot the bill.
| 1 January 2012, 11:55 am |
The whole interview, in which Arafat discusses – inter alia – the recent Iranian Revolution, Khomeini, Black September and various other issues (including the Holocaust) can be had here (unfortunately in a very poor photocopy of the original magazine):
(in German) PDF
| 1 January 2012, 4:41 pm |
I find it amazing that so many here are denying that victimization narratives are used for political advantage and even financial gain.
That is the backbone of the modern Left coalition. Victimized minority groups.
Then again, maybe I dont find it amazing that Leftwingers choose to deny any of that.
But they sense something isnt quite right because the Islamists are now following the playbook to power, influence, payouts and wealth.
| 1 January 2012, 5:04 pm |
As with most of what Finkelstein does, the Hezbollah / French resistance comparison is offensive and hyperbolic.
However it does touch on a problem Israel faces, which is that Hezbollah has been extremely successful in positioning itself as a cross-cultural, national resistance movement, rather than an extremist, Islamist group.
The latter is still very much there, but given the prominent support they get from Maronite Christians, they’ve done well to present their cause in a less divisive way.
| 1 January 2012, 5:36 pm |
Smirker
Sort of… the Maronite elite have their own particularist reasons for lining up beside Hizbullah at the moment… not least because they perceive Hizbullah as carrying the Shi’a constituency which is a counterweight to the claims of the Sunni and other confessional minorities who are mightly fucked off with the continued power and influence of the Maronite minority..,
| 1 January 2012, 7:56 pm |
Finkie of course is not the ONLY Jewish-born Holocaust Denier. There is of course Gilad Atzmon, but also the Israeli Neo-Nazi Neve Gordon, and the American bloggrer for the Hamas and Neo-Nazi Richard Silverstein.
| 1 January 2012, 8:22 pm |
Tony, you’re quite welcome to comment here, even though the same courtesy may not be extended to critical commenters on yer blog. That said, I think you’ve put your foot in your mouth re Gordon and _definitely_ Silverstein.
Now, as you’re here, I’ve run into difficulties before when describing summat which happened c. 1982 in which you – in your mid 20s – are said to have had words with an early teenage girl who was wearing an Israeli badge-pin.
What did those chaps who approached you – as one of their girlfriends led the lass away – say to you? I know what the girlfriend is [alleged] to have said.
~alec
| 1 January 2012, 8:55 pm |
[I'm not completely sure this is TG. Apologies, TG, if it is.]
| 1 January 2012, 9:26 pm |
The term ‘Holocaust Industry’ is an illegitimate term. It is used by those who believe, as does NF, that Jews exploit the Holocaust for their own narrow and often malicious purposes.
Gabriel misuses it.
He is also wrong to speak of ‘the’ Israel Lobby.
Gabriel misuses this term also.
There are many organisations relating to Holocaust reparations. He is right to say that there are problems with some of them in terms of who is getting the money.
He is right to note the existence of lobby groups who advocate for Israel in the US and elsewhere.
He errs when he reduces these multiple bodies and institutions to single entities, as in ‘the’ Holocaust Industry and ‘the’ Israel Lobby.
It is the type of slippage that many make but who do not fully understand the implications of their error.
Gabriel misuses it.
He is also wrong to speak of ‘the’ Israel Lobby.
Gabriel misuses this term also.
There are many organisations relating to Holocaust reparations. He is right to say that there are problems with some of them in terms of who is getting the money.
He is right to note the existence of lobby groups who advocate for Israel in the US and elsewhere.
He errs when he reduces these multiple bodies and institutions to single entities, as in ‘the’ Holocaust Industry and ‘the’ Israel Lobby.
It is the type of slippage that many make but who do not fully understand the implications of their error.
| 1 January 2012, 10:14 pm |
ignorance is bliss I like your post of 9.26
| 1 January 2012, 11:18 pm |
@ unbelievable
the reason he’s hated around here is because of the forensic work he did to expose Joan Peters, Alan Dershowitz and Daniel Goldhagen. It really is a simple as that.
As Mel Photo’s link demonstrates in some detail, Finkelstein’s ‘forensic exposure’ technique often appears to consists – like that of his hero Chomsky – in provably lying about what his targets have said. He distorts information and completely invents quotes. Novick, whom Finkelstein himself cited as a major influence, has rejected Finkelstein’s work as inherently untrustworthy:
Among his more startling claims is that the treasury of the World Jewish Congress has “amassed no less than ‘roughly $7 billion’ in compensation monies.” Finkelstein’s source for this startling revelation is an article in FAZ which reported the very unstartling fact that the WJC was holding discussions about how such monies might be distributed IF AND WHEN THEY WERE RECEIVED. This is not just carelessness on Finkelstein’s part, since he KNEW when he wrote the book that the WJC had not received ANY such funds: deliberate deception. (Examples could be multiplied. No facts alleged by Finkelstein should be assumed to be really facts, no quotation in his book should be assumed to be accurate, without taking the time to carefully compare his claims with the sources he cites.)
And here once again is the link given by Mel Photo and then Kyle:
It’s quite an eye-opener, and I recommend it. If only a fraction of it were true it should be grounds for Finkelstein never being allowed inside a university or school again. Someone who simply invents quotes and provably distorts texts is not a scholar at all, but rather a fraud and an enemy of truth and learning.
Some of Finkelstein’s defenders have cited ‘freedom of speech’. no academic has ‘freedom of speech’ to invent quotes and provenlyand maliciously lie about the wording of texts they claim to be writing about. Any ‘academic’ doing so deserves to be shot.
| 2 January 2012, 3:40 pm |
I find it amazing that so many here are denying that victimization narratives are used for political advantage and even financial gain.
So the Holocaust is a “victimization narrative”? What a disgusting statement.
| 3 January 2012, 5:19 pm |
‘Whither Matt Hill now?’
Ha. Hello – sorry to keep my fans waiting for my thoughts. I’m planning to write a longer, more considered piece on Finkelstein. I admit some of these links give me some pause, and they’ve certainly complicated my views on NF, which were previously fairly positive (with caveats). Now I think he’s a more complex case. I think some of the remarks Joseph has posted here are nowhere near as bad as he seems to think – ‘The Holocaust is an ideology…’ obviously is a way of speaking that anyone in academia and most normal people should be able to understand, and doesn’t in any way imply it’s ONLY or primarily an ideology, as opposed to an event in history. Also the comment about not being able, immediately, to refute some cruxes in a Holocaust denialist argument – again, that’s pretty weak; he’s not in any way endorsing denialism, merely pointing out that it sometimes requires some sophistication to refute. (As Saul Bellow said: ‘a great deal of intelligence can be invested in stupidity when the need for delusion is deep’.) I agree with some of the comments of some of the posters here who’ve stuck their necks out and tries to provide a different view, and I appreciate the fact it’s not me getting stick from all sides for a change. However I’m afraid I’m going to keep my counsel for now as I plan a more detailed piece that takes into account all NF’s work. This piece is more of a hit-job, and while it provides a useful service in some ways, it doesn’t really take the full measure of the man and his work. Even monsters – if you think NF is one, though I don’t – need to be understood.
| 3 January 2012, 5:35 pm |
‘I find it amazing that so many here are denying that victimization narratives are used for political advantage and even financial gain.’
Peter: ‘So the Holocaust is a “victimization narrative”? What a disgusting statement.’
That’s not what s/he said, Peter. Surely if we’re going to talk about the Holocaust with due seriousness, we shouldn’t be playing these games where we seize on someone’s statements and twist them into something we can get outraged about.
Here are some obvious facts. 1 The Holocaust happened. 2 It was the most appalling single crime in history. 3 Some assets of Holocaust victims were kept by European banks. 4 There are Jewish organisations who stand to benefit if they can persuade the world that those assets are extremely valuable and that the banks acted improperly in seizing and keeping them. 5 A campaign was launched to precisely this effect, leading to the banks turning over millions of dollars. 6 It is worth investigating how proper this whole process was, whether the banks indeed were hoarding the assets claimed, what subsequently happened to the money and whether this was in accordance with the promises of those organisations. 7 Indeed, investigating these events, if done properly, is a valuable service to the Jewish community, the victims of the Holocaust, and anyone with an interest in historical truth and justice.
Would anyone like to contest any of these claims?
| 3 January 2012, 7:34 pm |
Peter, perhaps if you were not – as you accused another commenter – so quick to abuse other posters, you’d be more likely to have all your comments approved.
~alec
| 4 January 2012, 2:52 am |
Yohnitzl,
‘even some members of my family, believe that the remnant of the continental-European Jews were taken by the Americans from DP camps to a Palestine inhabited entirely by a nice bucolic authentic “Palestinian” population descended from the Philistines or some other ancient people – the Jews may never have lived there, because “the only evidence” that they did is the Bible and the Bible is “a faith book”, not history – and that these nice authentic Palestinians were hoofed out, probably in scenes of great cruelty including massacres, to make room for these Jewish refugees. [. . .] This is the real industry of falsification. Finkelstein has clearly been part of it.’
Total nonsense: Finkelstein has never said anything of the sort.
| 4 January 2012, 2:57 am |
thomask,
‘Invoking Raul Hilberg in this context is a misuse of authority imo.
Hilbergs support for Finkelstein relates to his dispute with Daniel
Goldhagen and to the Swiss bank issue.Subjects of little relevance to this post.’
Hilbergs support for Finkelstein relates to his dispute with Daniel
Goldhagen and to the Swiss bank issue.Subjects of little relevance to this post.’
Not true. See here:http://www.democracynow.org/2007/5/9/it_takes_an_enormous_amount_of.
I’ve said elsewhere I’m not an enormous fan of Finkelstein, and believe he’s said some absurd, stupid and offensive things. But anyone who thinks only a fool or a bigot could support him must explain why Raul Hilberg – the acknowledged authority on the subject of the Holocaust and a great scholar of modern times – must deal with his praise for the man.
| 4 January 2012, 3:02 am |
Michael Rabins,
‘Yes, but as Matt h points out, holocaust schmolocaust, his grammar is perfect and his eyes are rather beautiful in the right light. Oh, and Hezbollah rock!’
None of this even has a vague relationship with anything I’ve said. It’s as though we were having a discussion about whether Operation cast Lead was morally right or wrong, and I said: ‘Yes, but as Michael rabins points out, who cares about 1400 dead Arabs! The only good Arab is a dead one!’ It’s pathetic and it’s offensive.
| 4 January 2012, 3:12 am |
(I’m restricting myself to correcting some of the sillier untruths on this thread – picking some of the low-hanging fruit as it were. I won’t be dragged into a detailed debate about Finkelstein, other than to say I think he’s a complex case, a brilliant scholar in many ways who has a habit of saying absurd, stupid and ugly things. I also think it’s impossible to present a plausible analysis of him without reading his books, which so far as I’m aware nobody here has done. I’m planning a longer piece on him that will explain my views further.)
j.r.,
‘Why is Finkelstein doing a speaking tour for PSC? What is the connection between Finkelstein’s subject – the holocaust, and the Palestinian situation? I would suggest the only connection is a rhetorical one that essentialises Jews. It depicts them as prisoners of their own history who are morally flawed as a result. This dishonest pseudo-history peddled by political fanatics is the thing that really brings Finkelstein’s reputation as a historian into disrepute. Israelis do not persecute Palestinians in a Nazi-like way and justify it because of their own treatment by the Nazis. Who could claim that this is any sort of historical analysis?’
You postulate some kind of historical theory which exists only in your imagination, and then claim it brings Finkelstein into disrepute. I’ve never heard Finkelstein saying anything that resembles this business about Jews as prisoners of their history. And the fact that you’re actually totally ignorant of Finkelstein’s work is proven by the fact that you’re clearly not aware he is very much a scholar of the Israeli-Arab conflict and not just the Holocaust. Does that explain why he talks about the Israeli-Arab conflict?
| 4 January 2012, 3:37 am |
Dcook,
‘Some people, for example a 27 year old leftist idealist with muddled ideas about the I?P conflict, are no match for someone of 54 who has lived through some of the important history and retains contemporary facts rather than second-hand opinions and filters.
I also endorse the film Exodus as retaining some very important historical facts about the formation of Israel untainted by the filter of lies that people today base their historical perspective on.’
I also endorse the film Exodus as retaining some very important historical facts about the formation of Israel untainted by the filter of lies that people today base their historical perspective on.’
Brilliant! My understanding of history is being questioned by somebody who doesn’t read books and proudly announces it, and think ‘Exodus’ is history! The chutzpah!
| 4 January 2012, 3:41 am |
boyinthebubble,
‘I’ve always been sceptical of Finkelstein’s basic thesis that it’s possible to attribute any kind of personal syndrome to a nation state or a global organisation. It’s not possible for a nation state to suffer from a psychosis, or guilt complex, the way an individual can.’
Where does Finkelstein advance this thesis? I believe this is the thesis Finkelstein refutes in Goldhagen’s case; I’m not aware that he ever diagnoses a nation as suffering from a psychological syndrome.
| 4 January 2012, 3:49 am |
Josh Scholar,
‘Let’s be clear,there’s no difference between Finklestein, the Hezbollah fan and David Irving the Nazi. They’re on the same side and they use the same terminology.’
This is just one of your more baffling shrieks about Nazism, anti-semitism and so on. If you really cared about anti-semitism, you’d be a bit less liberal in your use of the phrase, which simply trivialises and dilutes it.
| 4 January 2012, 3:56 am |
mel photo,
‘he industrial efficiency factory like was another part of what was different about this killing. To use the word industry to describe the attempts to get reparations for Jews and to recover their assets from institutions like the swiss banks is offensive. It offends me.’
Well this is a good example of why it’s important to be free to offend people. So because the Holocaust killed people on an industrial scale, the word ‘industry’ is offensive in conjunction with the Holocaust?
I’ve never even heard this kind of argument before. The logic of it is quite amazing. So because a word could conceivably be used to describe the Holocaust, it should be banned in discussions of the Holocaust? How on earth will we ever discuss anything?
Personally I find the title of Primo Levi’s book ‘If this is a Man’ offensive, because the Holocaust killed several million people of whom you can say ‘this is a man’. Just reading that phrase upsets me due to its connotations.
Barmy…
| 4 January 2012, 4:09 am |
I’m just going to sign off by saying that my comments here shouldn’t be taken as defences of Finkelstein. I confess threads like this have complicated my view of the man, who I only knew through his books previously. He is a rather more temperate and scholarly character in his books, even if his views are rather fanatical and uncompromising for my tastes. In interview he is clearly prone to making ridiculous, offensive and nonsensical remarks, and he’s obviously someone who is consumed by his feuds and has the mistaken notion that the more outrageous his comments are, the braver he is. He’s clearly, to some extent, a bit of an egomaniac: he seems to have the sense that he’s in a personal, lone battle for truth against powerful interests, and that the fate of Middle East peace depends on his courage to say the first thing that comes into his head, no matter how nasty or puerile.
However it’s important to note that a piece like this is of rather limited value. It doesn’t engage with any of Finkelstein’s work (indeed the author has made no secret that he hasn’t read any of Finkelstein’s books). Of course, nobody is obliged to read through the work of someone they’re almost certainly bound to disagree with and dislike. But then anyone who’s not prepared to try and understand him a little better must accept that their opinions of the man as a whole aren’t very valuable. Most of the commenters here are quite obviously not interested in understanding Finkelstein; their purpose is to feel confident in dismissing him or to enjoy a satisfying bit of outrage.
| 4 January 2012, 4:23 am |
Let me make the key distinction. On the basis of a few isolated quotes, you’re free to say ‘these quotes are awful and loathsome and stupid’. You’re also free to say ‘a man who says these things isn’t a man I want to know more about’. But you can’t say something like ‘on the basis of these remarks I think *** about Finkelstein’s scholarship, I think *** about his psychological profile, I think those who disagree are ***’. You’d need to read a more representative sample of his writing before you did that.
| 4 January 2012, 9:05 am |
Hi! I can`t say I am a Holocaust expert, actually I just left the school bench but I payed attention to the History classes and at no point we talked money when referring to what those people went trough. I know that the Holocaust was real … I see it as a complex combination of actions, ideas, events and situation where people were hurt buy other people.
| 4 January 2012, 9:43 am |
What do you expect, when you talk about things you know nothing about and insult my murdered and surviving family members in the process?
There is no ‘victimisation narrative’. There is no ‘Holocaust industry’. Those who survived the camps and lost everything, their lives ruined, their families murdered, left literally penniless, with no health, no earning capacity, were entitled to every penny they got.
This I know first-hand: many powerful insurance companies, with batteries of expensive lawyers, spent decades refusing to pay out on life policies taken out on the survivor’s spouse because the claimant had no certificate to present. Yes, well, when you are rounded up at night and sent to Belsen, you don’t take your insurance certificates with you and keep them through all your time in the camp.
These are the people you insult when you talk about compensation in such snide terms. I am not the one debasing the terms and the discussion: you are.
There is no ‘victimisation narrative’. There is no ‘Holocaust industry’. Those who survived the camps and lost everything, their lives ruined, their families murdered, left literally penniless, with no health, no earning capacity, were entitled to every penny they got.
This I know first-hand: many powerful insurance companies, with batteries of expensive lawyers, spent decades refusing to pay out on life policies taken out on the survivor’s spouse because the claimant had no certificate to present. Yes, well, when you are rounded up at night and sent to Belsen, you don’t take your insurance certificates with you and keep them through all your time in the camp.
These are the people you insult when you talk about compensation in such snide terms. I am not the one debasing the terms and the discussion: you are.
Most of the commenters here are quite obviously not interested in understanding Finkelstein; their purpose is to feel confident in dismissing him or to enjoy a satisfying bit of outrage.
And you know this because …? Are you a psychologist? Have you examined them on the couch?
Personally I find the title of Primo Levi’s book ‘If this is a Man’ offensive, because the Holocaust killed several million people of whom you can say ‘this is a man’. Just reading that phrase upsets me due to its connotations.
What an absurd statement. You have not understood the book at all. Each person is a man, ‘a whole world’.
If you really cared about anti-semitism, you’d be a bit less liberal in your use of the phrase, which simply trivialises and dilutes it.
This is the usual lazy thinking: you musn’t never talk about any specific and concrete instance of antisemitism, because it ‘trivialises’ the phrase. You have never suffered from antisemitism: it’s highly insulting to tell its victims how to feel about it and how to talk about it.
| 4 January 2012, 1:26 pm |
Naive! Insulting! and just plain WRONG!!!!
Matt Hill:
There are Jewish organisations who stand to benefit if they can persuade the world that those assets are extremely valuable and that the banks acted improperly in seizing and keeping them. 5 A campaign was launched to precisely this effect, leading to the banks turning over millions of dollars. 6 It is worth investigating how proper this whole process was, whether the banks indeed were hoarding the assets claimed, what subsequently happened to the money and whether this was in accordance with the promises of those organisations.
Benefit??!!!!
You slaughter my family and steal all my assets and YOU seem to think that getting them back is a BENEFIT!!??
I call it Justice.
Perhaps you will now demonstrate how this is a “Holocaust Industry”. Maybe you think the parents of Stephen Lawrence (Rest his soul) were engaged in a Stepehen Lawrence Industry because of the spin-off charities and organisations.
sorry to keep my fans waiting for my thoughts
Delusional on many fronts.
| 4 January 2012, 3:58 pm |
Sore head this morning, Matt?
I also think it’s impossible to present a plausible analysis of him without reading his books, which so far as I’m aware nobody here has done.
I think we can make a reasonable estimation of him based on the link I provided, which has plenty of material that shows him hanging himself with various lengths of ropes. It is not surprising that you have a more indulgent view of Finkelstein based on reading his books alone. You may as well base a defence of Noam Chomsky’s reliability as a scholar on the evidence of his own books alone.
From the material Dershowitz cites – not just his own words, but those of other critics – it is plain enough that Finkelstein is a seriously dishonest writer who should not be teaching in any institution. If he were a student where I taught (one of the oldest universities in the world) he would have been liable for expulsion long ago. Those examples aren’t just a list of teensy oversights or errors, they indicate deliberate fabrication and misrepresentation of his opponents’ arguments.
That’s lying, Matt. It’s a no-no in academia. It’s fundamentally opposed to the spirit and purpose of universities, which is about honest learning and the propagation thereof.
If you can’t grasp that, then your forthcoming ‘analysis’ of the ’scholarship’ of Finkelstein won’t be worth much.
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