Sunday 1 January 2012

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Help me make a Middle East reading list

This is a guest post by Matt Hill
Writing about the Middle East at Harry’s Place can feel like putting your hand in a pool full of flesh-stripping piranhas – and I mean that as a compliment. One of the milder criticisms I’ve received is that I may be unduly influenced by authors with a pro-Palestinian bias. Insofar as moderate Palestinians (like Sari Nusseibeh and Raja Shehadeh) and liberal Zionists (like Tom Segev and David Grossman predominate on my bookshelves, it’s true they display something of a leftward tilt.
I’m the kind of person who likes to stay home on Friday night and read (yes, I’m as exciting as I sound), but I still buy books faster than I can finish them. My bedroom looks a bit like a warehouse in a pulping plant. I half expect to end up like Leonard Bast from Howards End, killed by an exemplary avalanche of books.
So I’m planning to use an upcoming spell in Israel as a kind of study break. Fond as I am of my second home, Nazareth, it  offers relatively few distractions, barring a sudden outbreak of war (not, mind you, an altogether trivial caveat, as I discovered in July 2006). A few titles, as they say of footballers vying for a World Cup call-up, have already booked their seat on the plane. I’d be grateful if Harry’s Place readers could help me choose the rest by suggesting some of their favourites.

I have just two criteria as a reader: hedonism and promiscuity. My first loves were fiction and poetry, and while I no longer spend whole nights tangled in the bedsheets with Philip Roth, my undergraduate passion has ripened into long-term dependency. Meanwhile it’s usually history, polemic and biography that raise my pulse nowadays. Nonfiction may be less sexy and glamorous than its rival, but it has a worldly quality, a frisson of the real, that’s hard to beat.

So I’m looking for good writing of all kinds, especially history and political argument. My focus is on Israel-Palestine, but I’d like to read more about the wider Middle East too. I’m particularly interested in the ‘peace process’ up to the present day, and the status of Israel’s Palestinian citizens. And it’s axiomatic to me that some of the best books are those you can have a profitable argument with: there’s no point seeking out your own opinions repackaged between two covers. The only blacklisted books should be those that are hateful, or boring.

So, with those wide parameters in mind, what would you recommend I take to Israel? Which books on the subject do you consider indispensable; have changed the way you see the conflict; or have simply given you the most pleasure?  Feel free to explain why, in as much or as little detail as you like.
I’ll get the ball rolling with some titles that have already claimed a coveted place in the squad. Any views on the following?

Gershom Gorenberg, The Unmaking of Israel
Edward Said, Out of Place: A Memoir

Comments

Greg   
  28 December 2011, 9:25 pm
Six Days Of War by Michael Oren. The go-to book on the conflict. You can tell how good it is by the fact the Jeremy Bowen felt compelled to write his own book on the subject with the typical BBC perspective.
Fred   
  28 December 2011, 9:25 pm
Karsh’s “Palestine betrayed” and Robin Shepherd’s “A State Beyond The Pale.”
Not fiction or poetry but you should read them anyway.
Dcook   
  28 December 2011, 9:34 pm
The Mandate For Palestine, Resolution 242 & The Hamas Charter. You can read them from the Internet.
Alan Dershowitz – The Case For Israel.
Dor Gold – The Fight For Jerusalem.
Any book by Robert Spencer (because its Islam focus means a history of the Middle East from an Islamic perspective)
The Koran
Dcook   
  28 December 2011, 9:35 pm
Yes, I’d also add Robin Shepherd’s “A State Beyond The Pale.”

PetraMB   
  28 December 2011, 9:40 pm
LeeEsq   
  28 December 2011, 9:48 pm
Matt Hill, its long and Sacher is not the world’s most engaging writer but his History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Times is the most comprehensive history of Israel available in English. He focuses on all aspects of Israeli history, not just the Arab-Israel conflict. Its in its third edition now.
Naeem Malik   
  28 December 2011, 9:56 pm
Matt – This book perhaps will go someway in understanding the conflicts we find ourselves in
Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold Wa… (Hardcover)
by Mahmood Mamdani
Gabriel   
  28 December 2011, 10:03 pm
Here’s a list of a few titles compiled by the NYT with reviews of the books. Useful as an overview.
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/reading-list-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict/
Personally, I’d second both the Michael Oren’s Six Days of War book and Shachar’s “History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Times”. If I had to add one book, it’d likely be Benny Morris’s “The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem 1947-1949″ (most Morris if very good.) as histories. Most of the “New Historians” are good with the exception of Ilan Pappe
I haven’t yet read it, but I have heard very good things about “Once Upon a Country: a Palestinian Life”. The Palestinian side of the story is very rarely told in English.
Matt Hill   
  28 December 2011, 10:18 pm
Some interesting suggestions already; thanks.
Personally I think the Oren account of the Six Day War has been definitively superseded by Tom Segev’s magisterial 1967: Israel, the War and the Year that Shaped the Middle East.
Gabriel,
I agree about the New Historians, and I agree Pappe is the worst of the lot by some distance. Not only is he politically tendentious, his style is by turns lifeless, pretentious and jargon-ridden.
As it happens I gave Pappe’s latest book a rather mixed review here:http://review31.co.uk/article/view/8/strangers-in-their-own-home
Sari Nusseibeh’s Once Upon a country might be my very favourite book about the whole Israel-Palestine conflict. It’s fucking incredible, pardon me. As it happens I wrote a blog post about my top five books on Israel-Palestine, and the Nusseibeh and the Tom Segev are included. It’s here:http://themuddleeast.blogspot.com/2011/10/my-five-top-books-about-israel.html
I would urge anyone who hasn’t already to give themselves a great treat and buy Once Upon a country. If you don’t think it’s an incredible book I’ll reimburse you out of my own pocket.
yuval   
  28 December 2011, 10:23 pm
go make an imperialist anthropological study to satisfy your narcissistic needs on someone else
Alex bee   
  28 December 2011, 10:23 pm
Just finished ‘the unmaking of israel’- loved it, highly recommended. I would give a review, but Jeffrey Goldberg’s in the NYT says everything I would (but better)http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/books/review/the-unmaking-of-israel-by-gershom-gorenberg-book-review.html?pagewanted=all
Personally, I think Martin Gilbert- ‘Israel A History’ is the best book I’ve read on Israel. It’s incredibly long, but the most brilliantly researched book you will find.
Ronen Bergman- ‘The secret war with Iran’ is deeply interesting. You are left with a feeling that they (the Iranian establishment) are utter, utter bastards and very dangerous.
I’ve started ‘Ben Gurion A Political Life’ by Shimon Peres & David Landau. It’s compelling, but perhaps wait until it’s out in paperback as £15 is a little steep for a 200 page book.
Enjoy!


Matt Hill   
  28 December 2011, 10:30 pm
Alex bee,
Actually I’ve read a few chapters of the Gorenberg book already – it’s fantastic; I’ll be writing a review soon for the website I linked to above. I pretty much agree with every word he writes.
Interesting you mention the Martin Gilbert book. I’ve been looking for a one-volume history of Israel – the only ones I’ve read are Avi Shlaim’s and Ahron Bregman’s. I think there are complete histories by Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe and Arno J. Mayer too. Anyone have a view on any of these?
Matt Hill   
  28 December 2011, 10:36 pm
This is from the Telegraph review of A State Beyond the Pale (as quoted on Amazon):
“Robin Shepherd…explains that Europe’s pacifism is not, despite what it likes to believe, a symptom of maturity, but of tiredness, nihilism and suicide. Europeans no longer believe in Europe, they are not prepared to fight for it, and they are unwilling to believe that its enemies are willing to destroy it. So had the Nazis not faced the golden generation but instead the bed-wetter generation, how would history have spanned out?”
I must say I dislike this sort of rhetoric. It’s the kind of bollocks used by US Republicans to insult the European welfare state and to stir up paranoia about a mythical Muslim takeover. Is this an accurate reflection of the book’s content?
Matt Hill   
  28 December 2011, 10:41 pm
Why should we ‘fight for’ Europe? Who’s attacking us?
george   
  28 December 2011, 10:43 pm
David, based on your current list of good reads, I’d suggest that for consistencies sake you read anything by Noam Chomsky, Finkelstein, Howard Zinn or Pappe.
Matt Hill   
  28 December 2011, 10:47 pm
LeeEsq,
can you help me find that one? Do you have a link?
sackcloth and ashes   
  28 December 2011, 10:48 pm
Matt, some honest recommends for you:
Lawrence Freedman, ‘A Choice of Enemies: America Confronts the Middle East’.
Michael Totten, ‘The Road to Fatima Gate’.
Michael Young, ‘The Ghosts of Martyrs Square’.
Israelinurse   
  28 December 2011, 10:49 pm
Stephanie Gutmann – ‘The Other War’.
Michael Totten – ‘The Road to Fatima Gate’: will help you with the bigger ME picture.
Israel Weisler (Poochoo) – ‘After me in the Wilderness’.
But – more importantly – get out, go places, talk to people.
You can read books in the UK, but nothing beats actually listening to the people who live here.
Go to Sderot. Go to Hatzor HaGlilit and Kiryat Shmona. Listen to Ethiopians in Absorbtion Centres, people who live over the ‘green line’, Bedouin and Druze who serve in the IDF. Go to Lohamei HaGetaot, Yad VaShem. Go to Mitzpe Ramon, Yeruham and Ofakim. Learn some Hebrew.
richard millett   
  28 December 2011, 10:49 pm
What Zionists Believe by Colin Shindler. Very short and both polemical and historical. (It’s not the same Colin Shindler who wrote Manchester United Ruined my Life).
Dave rich   
  28 December 2011, 10:50 pm
Matt
The Transforming Fire by Jonathan Spyer is very timely, and has the best analysis of the newly emerging national-religious Israeli national identity that I have read anywhere.
Found Ajami’s Dream Palace of the Arabs is also very thought-provoking and worth a read.
Have a nice trip!
Israelinurse   
  28 December 2011, 10:55 pm
‘A State Beyond the Pale’ is a very important read indeed.
cityca   
  28 December 2011, 10:56 pm
Matt Hill
You ask, ‘why should we fight for Europe – who’s attacking us’?
Why bother reading when you don’t appear to learn anything?
Ray in Seattle   
  28 December 2011, 10:57 pm
Must have: The Six Day War/Oren, 1948/Morris
Great background on Arabs and Islam: Clash of Civilizations/Huntington, The Closed Circle/Pryce-Jones
No student of the Arab/Israeli Conflict should be far from these four when participating in a discussion of the conflict or reading someone’s opinions on it.
Matt Hill   
  28 December 2011, 11:01 pm
sackcloth and ashes,
Very interesting – thanks. Yes, the Lawrence Freedman looks exactly like the kind of concise survey I’d like to read more of about the Middle East. Have you come across Robin Wright?
Do you have a special interest in Lebanon or was it a coincidence that you mention two books about it. Do you know David Hirst’s book Beware of Small States?
Matt Hill   
  28 December 2011, 11:02 pm
cityca -
Educate me, then, please. Who should we Europeans be fighting against?
Matt Hill   
  28 December 2011, 11:05 pm
Israelinurse,
Thanks for the recommendations. I do get out, too, don’t worry: I was taking the piss out of myself when I said I stay in reading all the time. I have a lot of friends in Israel and the West Bank. I’d like to go to Sderot this time though. Where do you live, if you don’t mind me asking?
Matt Hill   
  28 December 2011, 11:13 pm
Israelinurse,
‘You can read books in the UK, but nothing beats actually listening to the people who live here.’
I know you mean well when you say this and I genuinely appreciate it. I would probably give the same advice to someone who appeared to be visiting Israel or any other country and planned only to sit at home and read. But my parents both live in Israel. I’ve visited the country almost every year since I was 14. My first girlfriend was Israeli. I’ve watched Israeli friends – Jews and Arabs – grow up, get married, start careers. I speak a little conversational Hebrew, badly – all my friends speak English so I’ve been lazy, I confess. I may try and take a crash course next time I have a few months in the country. The same for Arabic. Israel is a big part of my life. Not as big as yours, of course. But it is truly my second home.
Matt Hill   
  28 December 2011, 11:19 pm
richard millett,
I just read colin schindler’s book about Lukud – The Land Beyond Promise. It was an impressive piece of work, so I may very well check out his book on Zionism. Thanks.
Alexander   
  28 December 2011, 11:35 pm
If you dislike the leftiness of your bookshelf, why don’t you try traditional right-winged people like Jabotinsky? Or a more religious tone like the great Israeli thinker Rabbi Leibovich?
Though I honestly suggest, if you like reading on Zionism, to read about Zionist archaeology, which is fascinating. People like Sukenik and Yadin were essencial in their role in the creation of the State of Israel, particularly in their influence on the creation of the very image and identity of the futre, and then born State.
That’s my suggestion. I have no titles, I know, but I am sure you can find a nice title with a proper search. Good luck!
Uncle yo-yo   
  28 December 2011, 11:38 pm
Piety and Power: The World of Jewish Fundamentalism by David Landau.
Startup Nation by Dan Senor.
Power Faith and Fantasy by Michael Oren.
The Prime Ministers by Yehuda Avner (caveat: reading that one now).
Beakerkin   
  28 December 2011, 11:45 pm
Foxbats Over Dimona the true story of how the Soviets provoked the Six Day War.
The Judean War by Josephus try any mention of a Palestinian people there.
Indigenous People Under the Rule of Islam by Fred Isaac. This explains the situation in a larger context.
Rebecca   
  28 December 2011, 11:47 pm
Jerusalem 1913. If you want all the details of the 1948 war, Benny Morris’ 1948. For the Mandate period, Tom Segev’s One Palestine, Complete (you’ve probably already read it). And if you’re interested in Jerusalem architecture, I would recommend any of the books by David Kroyansky, in Hebrew and English. I liked Rabinowitz’s book about the Yom Kippur War. I prefer history to polemics, personally.
Uncle yo-yo   
  28 December 2011, 11:59 pm
How could I forget to recommend
“Right to Exist: A Moral Defense of Israel’s Wars” by Yaacov Lozowick a historian who curated at Yad Vashem and is left of center.
Error now corrected
rencontre senior   
  29 December 2011, 12:06 am
Recommends for you:
Lawrence Freedman, ‘A Choice of Enemies: America Confronts the Middle East’.
Michael Totten, ‘The Road to Fatima Gate’.
Michael Young, ‘The Ghosts of Martyrs Square’.
Sick of Spineless Liberals   
  29 December 2011, 12:10 am
Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Mohammed (aka The Book of Battles) –http://www.amazon.co.uk/Life-Muhammad-I-Ishaq/dp/0196360331/
Paul Fregosi, Jihad in the West from the 7th to the 21st Centuries –http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jihad-West-Muslim-Conquests-Centuries/dp/1573922471/
I would argue that the Koran is both hateful and boring. Ibn Ishaq is a least a (relatively) cogent narrative, and you get such a beautiful hardback for the price of a few pints (looking through the 30 or so chapters that take their names from battles, you see why the book was also known by that name, and why islam is definitively not a religion of peace). David Meir Levi’s book is probably the most important 125 pages written in the last 50 years.
Fregosi’s book is humorous (incredible, given the subject matter), balanced and very informative.
Nate   
  29 December 2011, 12:18 am
Would have been nice to have read up before all the thread-bare posts. And before referring to settlers and soldiers as capricious evil souls who take great joy in humiliating Palestinians.
zkharya   
  29 December 2011, 12:23 am
Walter Laqueur’s A History of Zionism? (I have David Vital’s three volume work, more recent, but haven’t read it. But I think Laqueur’s very good).
Children of Bethany, by Said K. Aburish.
The Siege, by Conor Cruise O’Brien.
In Search of Fatima, by Ghada Karmi, is useful for information, such as the standing pro-Hitler Arab Orthodox intellectual Khalil Sakakini had in general, though that is likely not her intention.



Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 12:24 am
Alexander,
Interesting tip – thanks. I should say that it’s not so much that I dislike the (centre-)leftiness of my book case as that some readers here dislike it. I like it fine – but I also enjoy complicating and challenging my own convictions by reading intelligent, well-informed arguments against them. For instance, I recently read the world-renowned military historian Martin Van creveld’s ‘Defending Israel’, which is about the military logistics behind a possible peace settlement. It really opened my eyes to a lot of issues facing Israel: it brought alive concerns about Israel’s potential vulnerability to attack, its famous ‘narrow waist’, and so on. (Which isn’t to say it repeated the kind of bogus claims you sometimes hear about the ‘indefensibility’ of the 1967 lines – quite the contrary.) It helped me understand what few lefties like to contemplate – that Israel has very serious and legitimate concerns about how a peace deal might impact its security. It also argues, however, that a secure Israel can indeed be established largely along the 1967 lines, under certain conditions. And of course none of this is to say that Israel’s neighbours don’t have, in many respects, precisely the same security issues in reverse. As Moshe Dayan said, in a different context, the road from Beirut to Tel Aviv is just as log as the road from Tel Aviv to Beirut, if you see what I mean.
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 12:28 am
Uncle Yo-Yo,
Very interesting choices. I think I’ll take a good look at the Prime Ministers book – looks absolutely fascinating. How are you finding it?
Joseph W   
  29 December 2011, 12:30 am
Stop reading Norman Finkelstein.
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 12:30 am
Rebecca,
Yes, I’ve read One Palestine, complete. I adore Tom Segev. I think he’s one of the most engrossing history writers from any country I’ve read. I love the novelistic detail of his histories, the way he tells history from the ground up. He’s a true democrat, in several senses.
Abu Faris   
  29 December 2011, 12:36 am
It’s all about me, me , me… again.
Tiresome, narcissistic post.
“Tangled in the bedsheets with Roth”? *Snort*. You wish.
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 12:44 am
Joseph W,
I wondered how long it would be before my appeal for book recommendations prompted somebody to start recommending the blacklisting of authors. I was thinking of adding something to my post about how, if you think an author or his/her ideas are foolish, their ideas are bound to wither in the daylight brought by reading them. Why shouldn’t I read Norman Finkelstein? I have no intention to ban him from my shelves any more than I plan to ban Alan Dershowitz, or Efraim Karsh. I also read Gilad Atzmon’s vile, silly book recently, and I’m glad I did. What possible justification could there be to ’stop reading’ any author? Either you’ve read him and concluded his work is worthless, in which case I think I should have the opportunity to come to the same concluson; or you haven’t read him, in which case you’ll forgive me, I’m sure, for paying no attention to your estimation of his writing.
Do you have a book you’d like to add to what’s already a fascinatig and varied list, or do you want to start your own list of books whose covers should be locked shut, in case their menacing ideas escape like some mad genie?
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 12:53 am
Abu Faris,
Read more closely and I think you’ll find this is a post about books. Since it’s a relatively trivial post I didn’t think there was much danger in writing in a self-deprecating first-person voice. I’m glad you found my Roth quip amusing; what amuses me is that you seem not to have realised I was making a joke. Ho hum.
And look up my previous posts at Harry’s Place and see how many of them are *about* me or even refer significantly to me. My previous one was about the growing role of religion in Israel-Palestine. Before that I wrote about potential details of a two state solution. Before that I wrote about Hisham’s Palace. Before that I wrote about why Israel is unfairly singled out among the world’s nations.
The only reason we ever end up talking about me is because of posts like yours a moment ago, showing an abject failure to engage with the substance of what I wrote, instead going straight for the ad hominem. I’m flattered you find me so interesting that you want to talk about me, but I’d really rather talk about books. Your contributions are normally admirably thoughtful; I’d stick to what you know about, if I were you: this sub-psychoanalysis clearly isn’t your strong suit. Nor are jokes. (Is this where I say *snort* to indicate that was making a stab at irony, Abu Faris?)
vildechaye   
  29 December 2011, 12:54 am
I wouldn’t read a book by Finklestein, or Pappe for that matter, but what you read is your own business. This post does seem a bit narcissistic, though.
Lamia   
  29 December 2011, 12:59 am
Matt,
possibly the most helpful thing anyone today could do for the Middle East and the people inside and outside is to stop paying it excessive attention. It is not inherently more important than anywhere else in the world, and treating it as such just encourages narcissism, bloodshed and an undue sense of grievance. In recent decades East Asia – for instance – has a far greater claim on our attention/sympathy/outrage than the Middle East in terms of the suffering of its people, although the people of that part of the world are possibly slightly the better off for not having everyone else adding their two pennworth. They are not themselves – as a group – quite innocent of the misfortunes that have befallen their people.
My suggestion is to read up on practically anywhere else in the world but the Middle East: the history of China; Central and South American mythology; Scandinavian pop music; Russian domestic politics; Belgian chocolate.
Only when the rest of the world stops being fixated on the Middle East and stops living its ideological struggles by proxy of the people there will the place possibly calm down and the world be able to move on.
I have no intention of ever visiting the Middle East. I feel somewhat sorry for the people living there but there are far more important people and places in the world and it has caused quite enough grief to elsewhere to be going on with.
To sum up: fuck Bethelehem, fuck Jersualem, fuck Mecca, fuck deserts, and fuck the stupid camels they all rode in on.
Joseph W   
  29 December 2011, 1:02 am
Fine okay read him, but then you talk about “Finkelstein’s excellent work in books like Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict and Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History”… it’s not nice.
That you can write:
“no matter how great a people’s suffering, it remains answerable for its own crimes”
just strikes me as a wrong (bit racist even?). I think it’s cos you read too much Finkelstein, and like what he writes.
Read better & more moral writers than Finkelstein and you’ll get a better perspective on Israel/Palestine, hopefully.
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 1:03 am
zhkara,
Someone gave me Laqueur on Zionism for xmas, actually. The Vital looks… fearsome. I’ll add it to a list of aspirations.
I read Aburish on Arafat. I thought the prose was extremely turgid, but maybe that was the translation.
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 1:10 am
Lamia,
That’s your choice – fair enough. The Middle East is just one subject I take an interest in: it just happens to be what I choose to write about.
It’s not that I feel people ought to have to brandish their credentials before opening their mouth, but my whole family and much of my life is bound up in Israel and the ME. There’s a good chance I could end up living there. That’s one reason why I read a lot about it. Not because I think I’m doing the Middle East a favour. And if I followed your advice and paid no attention to it, I doubt that would make much difference either.
It’s your right not to find the ME interesting. It’s mine to feel differently. There’s nothing to disagree about here.
lapsedmethodist   
  29 December 2011, 1:12 am
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. T.E. Lawrence.
Penny   
  29 December 2011, 1:19 am
“I must say I dislike this sort of rhetoric. It’s the kind of bollocks used by US Republicans to insult the European welfare state ”
Matt: check Robin Shepherds area(s) of expertise before you dismiss him.
In my view, the I/P conflict has to be viewed from many different angles: the wider you go the more you understand. Also, it does no harm for us to audit our perceptions from time to time before they become habitual responses. That way lies stagnation, surely?
Robin’s book certainly introduces new perspectives. It’s clear, concise and doesn’t try to over-intellectualise human behaviour.
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 1:21 am
Joseph W,
Thanks for the advice. I didn’t start this thread because I’ve never read a book about the ME before. The opposite: I read lots about it and I like hearing what other people read. Finkelstein is one writer I’ve read. The post you’re quoting actually condemns Finkelstein for some remarks he made once – you’ve selected the caveat: he’s done some good work, but…
Do you know what’s inside Truth and Reality, for instance? It’s a series of scholarly, historiographical essays taking issue with several mainstream accounts of Israeli history by Abba Eban, Michael Oren, and of course Joan Peters – the demolition job of a New York Times bestseller that made his name and won him praise from serious scholars all over the world.
As I’ve said, Finkelstein is by no means one of my main influences.
As for ‘a people is answerable for its own crimes’ – actually that’s me summarising a point Finkelstein makes, not my own point, isn’t it? And you’re taking it a bit out of context: as I remember Finkelstein was answering what he saw as the implicit claim that because the Jewish people has suffered, criticism of Israeli crimes should be silenced.
People are indeed responsible for their crimes, no matter how much they’ve suffered – that’s true of a Hamas suicide bomber too.
Why are we talking about this, Joseph? Must you try and derail this interesting thread?
Gene   
  29 December 2011, 1:26 am
Matt Hill,
I won’t recommend any books, but I will recommend you read the entire series of Harry’s Place posts dealing with Norman Finkelstein.
I’m afraid that if you take Finkelstein at all seriously, I can’t take you seriously.
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 1:28 am
Penny,
‘In my view, the I/P conflict has to be viewed from many different angles: the wider you go the more you understand. Also, it does no harm for us to audit our perceptions from time to time before they become habitual responses. That way lies stagnation, surely?’
Absolutely. That’s why I was appealing for recommendations of books that may contradict the liberal Zionist/centre-leftist narrative I’m familiar with. I just said that summary, from the Telegraph, sounded like the kind of rhetoric I dislike – the sort of Europe/USA, pacifist/militarist, ’socialist’/individualist binary code that seems designed to kick down a straw man version of the European social democracy I consider a great achievement. And bizarrely, whenever I hear such language, soon the conversation inexplicably seems to turn to Muslims and their nefarious aims to establish a new caliphate.
Perhaps it’s an unfair/simplistic description of the book though.
Lamia   
  29 December 2011, 1:32 am
Matt,
I am aware of your personal circumstances, which you have referred to previously. I don’t mean what I say to you in an abrasive way.
I do feel that on the whole too much attention is paid to the Middle East by people who don’t live and don’t have to live there, and who do more harm than good by their activism, ’solidarity’ etc, rather as the case was with Northern Ireland.
With the best will in the world, it will take the Middle East generations to move on and improve as a place for all its citizens. I hope they manage it. My part in that, beyond affirming fundamental rights for all sorts, especially minority groups, is to politely keep my nose out.
davem   
  29 December 2011, 1:34 am
most of these have already been mentioned but are def worth reading
Terror & Liberalism – Paul Berman
The Strong Horse – Lee Smith
The Truth About Syria – Barry Rubin
The Transforming Fire – Jonathan Spyer
The Road to Fatima Gate – Michael J Totten
The Ghosts of Martyr’s Square – Michael Young
The Closed Circle – David Price Jones
The Secret War with Iran – Ronen Bergman
The Persian Night – Amir Taheri
The Weight of a Mustard Seed – Wendel Stevenson
Israel’s Lebanon War – Ze’ev Schiff & Ehud Ya’ari
The Looming Tower – Lawrence Wright
Killing Mr Lebanon – Nicholas Blanford
Commanding Syria – Eyal Zisser
The Koran (compiled by Caliph Omar if I’m correct)
and
The Dirt: The Autobiography of Motely Crue – Neil Strauss
Joseph W   
  29 December 2011, 1:36 am
Forgive me for trying to derail this interesting thread entitled “Help me make a Middle East reading list”, by discussing your reading habits about the Middle East!
Seriously though, here is the reason why I am discussing this with you.
Your article condemns Finkelstein’s support for Hezbollah, but praises his writings about the way Jewish organisations commemorate the Holocaust.
You tell me you were just summing up his views.
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.
This seems to be an affirmation of Finkelstein’s writing on this subject.
If now you have rejected Finkelstein’s writings about Holocaust memorial, that’s great. I really hope you have. Say so & explain why, if you have.
Your article criticising Finkelstein, says nothing negative about his writing on the subject, rather about spoken comments he has made in favour of Hezbollah.
You write:
“I don’t believe one mistake – serious though it is – cancels all Finkelstein’s excellent work in books like Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict and Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History. Self-evidently you can be right about some things and very wrong about others, and I don’t believe in blacklisting authors. But while he continues to make excuses for murder, we’ve lost a courageous and principled moral voice. I only hope we get it back, soon.”
In the light of this, I would recommend that you read this article:
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=8&x_nameinnews=169&x_article=985
Abu Faris   
  29 December 2011, 1:41 am
Matt
I am perfectly aware of your stab at irony. Personally, I would have taken a stab at Roth – possibly one of the worst authors I have ever read.
And yes, given your response to me, this post was all about *you*.
Learn by looking and listening to the people around you, Matt, and then write about *this*. I would try to buy good Arabic and Hebrew language guides – you will find that actually getting out and talking to people will do wonders.
Oh and do not take your style from other writers: it never works, dear.
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 1:42 am
Gene,
You can decide whether to take me seriously or not. This isn’t a thread about Norman Finkelstein. Would you, and anyone else who wants to discuss him, perhaps like to direct your comments to the only public post I’ve ever made about him, where I applaud his oratory, but confess I have very mixed feelings about him, argue most of his published work is actually quite dry and detached, and conclude by saying, however, that he does show signs of extremism, and that some comments he made about attacking Israeli civilians were appalling.
I know that’s too nuanced for some people, who want me to say Finkelstein is a bad bad bad bad man. But I think it’s more complex than that. And I also think anyone who believes that, say, Image and Reality… is full of anti-semitism and extremism simply hasn’t read it. Try it – you’ll be disappointed to find quite a pedantic, scholarly work, full of investigation of footnotes, technical discussion of demographics, etc.
I could say much more – my feelings have evolved somewhat since I wrote that post, which was amongst the first blog posts I ever wrote. It’s not that I would retract anything – but I think the case is even more complex in some ways than I first thought.
Anyway, these are my last remarks on Finkelstein on this thread. You can choose whether to take me seriously or not – if you choose not to, I’ll survive. If you’d like to continue talking about this, why not post under my Finkelstein blog post? I’ll be happy to discuss this in more detail.
Again: I don’t blacklist authors. I read Finkelstein, Dershowitz, Karsh, Pappe, Atzmon, and any number of controversial authors. None of them is my favourite, but, as I said in the post, sometimes arguments with books can be fruitful, and seeking out a reflection of our own opinions is not.
Abu Faris   
  29 December 2011, 1:47 am
I think Matt’s glowing accommodation of Finkelstein rather says it all.
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 1:49 am
Abu Faris,
Matt
‘Personally, I would have taken a stab at Roth – possibly one of the worst authors I have ever read.’
We disagree on that. Which Roth have you read?
‘And yes, given your response to me, this post was all about *you*.’
No, that was my response to your irrelevant accusation of narcissism. But anyway, since we both agree we’d rather not talk about me any further, shall we either talk about something else or stop now?
‘Learn by looking and listening to the people around you, Matt,’
Are you a headteacher by any chance?
‘you will find that actually getting out and talking to people will do wonders.’
Nothing you ever say will convince me to leave the house and talk to people, Abu Faris.
Gene   
  29 December 2011, 1:53 am
Matt,
I suggested you read our posts about Finkelstein because you are looking for diverse sources of information about the Middle East (and related to that, Westerners who pretend to expertise on the ME)– and one of those sources, I believe, are the posts we have done about Finkelstein over the years.
Admittedly it’s not a book, but I think you might find some of it enlightening.
Abu Faris   
  29 December 2011, 1:55 am
I see I have pricked your ever inflating pomposity again, Matt. Case proven, I think.
I would recommend, as a book about the dangers of pompous pillocks surrounded by books but entirely lacking the moral discernment and compass to make sense of them, Elias Carnetti’s Die Blendung – you can even get it in English translation.
Abu Faris   
  29 December 2011, 1:57 am
‘Learn by looking and listening to the people around you, Matt,’
Are you a headteacher by any chance?
‘you will find that actually getting out and talking to people will do wonders.’
Nothing you ever say will convince me to leave the house and talk to people, Abu Faris.
What a silly ass, you are, little one.
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 1:57 am
can anyone explain this to me?
Norman Finkelstein = well known anti-semite, joke scholar
Avi Shlaim = renowned historian of Israel; blurbs Finkelstein’s books and praises him highly; therefore cannot be taken seriously; anti-semite enabler; probably racist
Shlomo Ben Ami = credits Avi Shlaim (unserious scholar and anti-semite enabler) as his main intellectual influence; unable to spot unserious scholarship and probable racism; racist?; minister of defence in government of . . .
Ehud Barak = somehow failed to spot suspect intellect and opinions of Ben Ami while PM of Israel; perhaps racist?; now defence minister to…
Benjamin Netanyahu = ???
What’s going on here? Who’s the fool, the one who’s unable to spot how suspect, unserious and racist his extremely close colleague is?
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 2:00 am
Gene,
I followed your link but it led to a list of every article in which Finkelstein is mentioned. If you have links to more specific posts where you reveal things about Finkelstein I don’t know – which is quite possible; I’m not a devotee of his – I’d be interested to read them. He is still a puzzle to me; I’m sorry I don’t see him in such black-and-white terms.
Gene   
  29 December 2011, 2:08 am
Gene,

I followed your link but it led to a list of every article in which Finkelstein is mentioned. If you have links to more specific posts where you reveal things about Finkelstein I don’t know – which is quite possible; I’m not a devotee of his – I’d be interested to read them. He is still a puzzle to me; I’m sorry I don’t see him in such black-and-white terms.
It won’t take you that long to read them (you can go to each post and search for his name to save time). I have no idea what you know or don’t know about him. But I think at the very least it will give you some idea of why Finkelstein is such a sore point with some of us, even on the left/liberal Zionist side of things.
Beakerkin   
  29 December 2011, 2:11 am
Matt
On the contrary I think you should read the works of Finklestein and Chomsky. It is important to grasp that those who are obsessed with Israel really have another agenda. Much of those who are obsessed with Israel really are equally obsessed with vitriol against Capitalism.
There is a profound difference in tone between those who are genuinely concerned about Arab refugees and those who are merely stoking populist Jew hatred for political gain.
Signs
1) Israel/ Nazi analogies
2) Rationalization of terror
3) Claims Jews are Khazars or no nation of Israel existed
4) Holocaust Trivialization
5) Mania about the USS Liberty and or 9-11 conspiracies
6) Blogs or writtings on little else other than Israel
7) Claims Jews control the media, congress
8) Talk of neocon cabals
9) Any use of ZOG (rare far right nuts)
10) Jews are Edomites ( rare religious Jew haters)
It is one thing to suport a Palestinian State. It is quite another to foment irrational hatred of Jews for political exediency. When Chomsky talks of NYC as a Jewish run area, he is letting his lack of charachter and political lunacy out in the open.
I did read Shlomo Sand who spares the reader any doubt of his lunatic fringe beliefs in the early pages of a really bad book.
It is very important to learn how non Muslims were historically treated by Islam. Thus it is important to read Assyrian, Coptic, Zoroastrian perspectives on a larger issue. History does not start in 1948 because the left deems it expedient. You should also read about how Jews were treated under Islamic rule. Even Palestinian coworkers readily acknowledge Jews were treated much worse in Syria than anything they experienced.
What you really see on the web is people who have pathological obsessions that actually hurt the Palestinians more than they help them.
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 2:16 am
Gene,
Thanks for being civil and for offering me the chance to inspect the evidence and understand your point of view. I’m going to have a look through now. can I ask that, if we’re to discuss this further, we do it elsewhere: perhaps underneath my Finkelstein post on my blog – http://themuddleeast.blogspot.com/2011/10/this-time-he-went-too-far-norman.html
It’s not that I don’t want to have this discussion – in fact, I would positively like to. It puzzles me a little that reasonable, intelligent people can differ so violently on the subject of Finkelstein that, on both sides, expressing mixed feelings about him simply isn’t tolerated. I think you’ll find I’m neither unreasonable nor slow to admit I’m wrong when it’s the case. I’ll read the material you link to with an open mind, and if I change my mind about NF I’ll write a note under my blog post saying so, with links.
I actually don’t have much at stake here – NF is hardly someone I have enormous affection or admiration for.
contrariwise, I won’t hear a word against Philip Roth…!
Christina Rossetti   
  29 December 2011, 2:21 am
You will learn more from the travellers starting with Lawrence but also including Thubron, Theroux and even the younger Dalyrymple at times! Dalyrymple, for instance did a good take on the ongoing current in fighting at the tomb, twenty odd years ago.
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 2:30 am
Gene (and Joseph W, and Abu Faris),
I read through all the articles that seemed to be about Finkelstein. If you’d actually like to discuss this at all, let me know, and we’ll repair to the NF thread on my blog. I actually would like to ask a few questions, but it’s up to you. We’re way off topic though so I won’t respond here.
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 2:35 am
Actually I’m very keen to discuss one or two of the issues raised in these Finkelstein threads – anyone?
Penny   
  29 December 2011, 2:46 am
“….the sort of Europe/USA, pacifist/militarist, ’socialist’/individualist binary code that seems designed to kick down a straw man version of the European social democracy I consider a great achievement.”
Well, there are areas open to question, Matt. Nothing is that binary.
One of Robin’s points which appears on the cover and which I happen to agree with, is that the I/P conflict is a test case for the West and its own ability to stand up for the values it claims as its own.
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 2:49 am
Which values are those, Penny?
Penny   
  29 December 2011, 2:59 am
Odd question, Matt.
We both live in the West so presumably, we know what its values are. Or should be. I think on some issues we struggle.
Gabriel   
  29 December 2011, 3:23 am
“One of Robin’s points which appears on the cover and which I happen to agree with, is that the I/P conflict is a test case for the West and its own ability to stand up for the values it claims as its own.”
I very much disagree. A lot of right-wingers want to frame the I/P conflict in terms of The West versus Islam (or something similar) but it just doesn’t fit. Israel isn’t a Western colonial occupier and it isn’t a bastion of Western civilization either. It’s its own country with some familiar problems and some unique problems. Palestinians are not faceless Muslim extremists, they have their own narrative (and see how many people picked books that tell that narrative) and their own issues.
Shlomo Yosef   
  29 December 2011, 3:24 am
The much too promised land by Aaron David miller if you want a deeper understanding of us israel peace process stuff
City of oranges by Adam lebor v poetic history of conflict told through real life stories of 10 families in jaffa 5 Arab 5 jewish
Penny   
  29 December 2011, 3:31 am
“…A lot of right-wingers ”
As I’ve said before, Gabriel, not everything can or should be viewed as left-right political issues.
If I disagree with you, that doesn’t automatically mean I’m taking a political view. I don’t refer to a party line or a set of values before I form my opinions.
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 3:33 am
Well I guess the values we claim as our own are things like democracy, human rights, the rule of law, universal freedoms, and so on. In fact, these are values I hold dear too. But it’s not quite clear to me how these values should find expression in our attitude towards Israel. For me I guess these values demand that we support the existence of Israel insofar as it’s a thriving liberal democracy based on the rule of law and universal rights. Insofar as it’s not, we should oppose it. So, for me, support for these values mandates support for the Israeli state within the Green Line with its many admirable qualities, opposition to the settler project whose primary purpose is to prevent the end of a military dictatorship over 3.7 million Arabs, and support for moves towards a negotiated settlement. Just as we should oppose the absence of democracy and the rule of law elsewhere in the ME.
I guess this isn’t what you had in mind. But I don’t see how we can support democracy but oppose it for the Palestinians. I guess now you’ll say Israel wants to give the Palestinians democracy and their own state, but it’s the Palestinians with their violence and extremism who prevent it from happening, effectively forcing Israel to oppress them against its will.
I respect you, Penny: you always seem articulate, decent and reasonable. But I don’t think we’re going to agree on this, not tonight. I’ve become accustomed to the argument, in these parts, that the continuation of the conflict is entirely the fault of the Palestinians – that Israel wishes it could find a way to stop oppressing them, but is blocked at every turn.
It’s just that when I look at Israel’s government today I don’t see a group of people leaving no stone unturned to bring an end to the occupation. In fact, I see a government working hard to remove many of the foundation stones on which Israeli democracy, and the other values it shares with Europe, rests.
And before I’m misinterpreted: first, we’re hardly perfect either; and two, Israel is better than most, even years into a second Netanyahu government. I’m talking about Israel’s relationship to its own democracy, not its relative moral standing.
Having said all that, I’m not sure about the claim that Israel is some urgent test of Europe’s values. Doesn’t Israel constantly urge the likes of us to stay out of its business? And how often are governments – at the national or the EU level – motivated by values, rather than interests? I think Israel is an urgent test of Israeli values, not European values. Europe has plenty of problems upon which it’ll need to bring all its values and other qualities to bear, if it wants to exist into next week.
Josh Scholar   
  29 December 2011, 3:34 am
I was gonna say Michael Totten.
Besides the Fatima Gate one he has a new book on Iraq I haven’t seen yet and a few pamphlet sized books too.
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 3:41 am
Back to the subject of books…
Shlomo Yosef,
Yes, the Adam Lebor book was quite lovely in parts. If you like that, you might like My Happiness Bears no Relation to Happiness by Adina Hoffman, which tells the story of Palestine/Israel through the life of a poet, Taha Mohammed Ali, who was a refugee in 48, infiltrated back unto Israel, became a celebrity writer late in life, and lived to help the author write an eccentric, heartbreaking, utterly unique book full of warmth and humour and colour and the strange quiddity of human life.
Penny   
  29 December 2011, 3:41 am
“But it’s not quite clear to me how these values should find expression in our attitude towards Israel”
The UN springs to mind here, Matt.
Values are far wider than those you’ve mentioned.
I’m whacked now – too tired to answer in full – but I can’t abide the hypocrasy that condemns the slightest infringement that takes place in, say, Jerusalem, whilst massive human rights abuses that outweigh the I/P conflict pass with little mention.
Think of England   
  29 December 2011, 3:42 am
Without a doubt this is basically mental masturbation; not always a bad thing. But the approval of Finkelstein exposes the real agenda.
Ben   
  29 December 2011, 3:45 am
Matt,
Try:
From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters
The Arab Awakening by George Antonius
The Revolt by Menachem Begin
Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine by Shmuel Katz
Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life by Sari Nusseibeh
The Israelis: Founders and Builders by Amos Elon
Berl: The Biography of a Socialist Zionist, by Anita Shapira
Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881-1948 by Anita Shapira
Penny   
  29 December 2011, 3:46 am
Matt
Have you read any of the books written by the Jewish refugees from Arab lands? Might those be worth a look?
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 3:52 am
I was going to comment on how surprised I am that many of the books I value haven’t been mentioned at all; is that because they’re too leftist/liberal? A lot of these must have been very popular:
Amos Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness
David Grossman, The Yellow Wind, Sleeping on a Wire, To the End of the Land
Shlomo Ben Ami, Scars of War, Wounds of Peace
Raja Shehadeh, Strangers in the House
Everything by Avi Shlaim and Tom Segev
Richard Ben cramer, How Israel Lost
Gershom Gorenberg, The Accidental Empire
Sari Nusseibeh, Once Upon a country
Likely to be controversial because it challenges key Israeli narratives, but this is indispensable:
clayton Swisher, The Truth about camp David
Some books about the wider ME I’ve loved:
Robin Wright, Dreams and Shadows: the Future of the Middle East (basically predicted the Arab spring)
Rory Stewart, The Prince of the Marshes (hugely recommended – incredibly gripping)
Brian Whitaker, What’s Really Wrong with the Middle East? (precisely one mention of Israel)
Also, perhaps the best ‘Israeli’ novel:
Philip Roth, ‘Operation Shylock’
Penny   
  29 December 2011, 3:54 am
How about a psychiatrist’s view?
The Oslo Syndrome by Kenneth Levin is one such view. I’ve just acquired this book so can’t give you an opinion, but it’s another avenue to explore.
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 3:55 am
Penny – I think Martin Gilbert has a book called ‘In Ishmael’s House’ – it’s a history of Jews in Muslim lands. That would probably be very interesting and I’m sure 20th century refugeehood would be a big part of that
Penny   
  29 December 2011, 3:58 am
The books I was thinking of are more the type written by those who actually experienced an expulsion rather than those writing from an historical perspective.
Shlomo Yosef   
  29 December 2011, 4:02 am
You need to read sari new book what is a state worth
Also have read lots of the ones you have put up but do look at Aaron David millers book, it’s under appreciated as its short and meant for lots of people but gives you a gret insight into us israel policy relations on peace process in the 90’s and 2000’s
Also it’s old and hard to get but kissing through the glass, Israelis and Americans gives you a view in how the relationship between both leaders and people was between the 60-90’s amazing to see messages and ideas during pollard and others
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 4:05 am
Think of England,
‘Without a doubt this is basically mental masturbation; not always a bad thing.’
Sure. But I’m going to end up buying maybe ten or fifteen of these books, reading them, and perhaps reporting back if anyone’s interested. So it will have a purpose.
‘But the approval of Finkelstein exposes the real agenda.’
Agenda? Oh come on, be serious. This whole Finkelstein bogeyman business is getting silly. Have you actually read any of his books? I say this with all respect, honestly. But once a consensus forms about someone, it’s very hard for anyone in a community like Harry’s Place to entertain mixed feelings or second thoughts. I felt that as I was reading Gilad Atzmon’s book lately – during the introduction, I started worrying that I couldn’t find any anti-semitism. I was worried I’d be a lone voice standing up for this guy who was already condemned as a racist. It would be difficult to do – I would inevitably have been tarred as a racist had I done so. (Luckily, the anti-semitism turned up in bucketloads by chapter 1.)
I’ve said I’m actually keen to talk over the whole Finkelstein issue with someone who’s well versed in the subject, because I’m not sure how I feel about him and I’d like someone to try and persuade me he’s an awful anti-semite. But the fact is nobody wants to discuss him – they just want to condemn him and anyone who doesn’t feel exactly as they do.
Abu Faris   
  29 December 2011, 4:21 am
That last paragraph just about sums up the intellectual dishonesty and special pleading that Hill everywhere smuggles into his posts. It is *not* a fact that “nobody wants to discuss [Finkelstein]“. Gene has linked Hill to a plethora of articles on this very site that extensively *discuss* Finkelstein’s views, blow by blow. The fact is that Hill does not want to read them.
“They just want to condemn him and anyone who doesn’t feel exactly as they do”.
Bull. Now put away the victim card.
PetraMB   
  29 December 2011, 4:39 am
It’s frankly pretty pathetic if you still don’t know how you “feel” about Finkelstein. He expressed his solidarity with Hezbollah — saying in effect: I don’t care about their politics, I support their right to resist — some 6 years after Israel had withdrawn to the internationally recognized border, and after some 20 incidents that happened after that withdrawal when Hezbollah violated this border: each and every time an act of war.
Following the same principle, there were plenty of Germans who said: I don’t care about the politics of the Nazis, but they provided jobs and soup kitchens.
Your childish “they just want to condemn him and anyone who doesn’t feel exactly as they do” only reflects your pseudo-sophisticated open mind. You want to keep an open mind about somebody who supports reactionary theocrats because they like to kill Jews — suit yourself.
That’s the very last time I commented on anything you write.
Nate   
  29 December 2011, 5:04 am
I think books and narrative haven’t really been the problem in your analyses nearly as much as basic facts. Ie. read up on what Palestinians mean when they refer to a two-state solution. You can find it in the words of their leaders and in their own words in pretty much every opinion poll. Read up on the history and context of UNSC 242. Read up on the history of Jerusalem under Muslim control and how central (or not) it is to their faith and culture.
Max   
  29 December 2011, 5:15 am
“The Prophet of Doom,” Available online here;
The only “hateful” bits are when it quotes the Koran, Hadith’s etc. It literally changed my perspective about the region and I now realise that Islam is simply an Arab Imperialist ideology used to keep Berbers, Copts, Western Saharans, Kurds, Assyrians, Maronites etc as second-class citizens. The reason Muslims hate Israel so much is that Jews broke out of this Dhimmi Paradigm a situation Muslim’s cannot accept.
Also, Israel has no “Palestinian citizens” but does have Arab-Israeli’s.
Arnon   
  29 December 2011, 5:48 am
“Why shouldn’t I read Norman Finkelstein? I have no intention to ban him from my shelves any more than I plan to ban Alan Dershowitz, or Efraim Karsh. I also read Gilad Atzmon’s vile, silly book recently, and I’m glad I did. What possible justification could there be to ’stop reading’ any author? Either you’ve read him and concluded his work is worthless, in which case I think I should have the opportunity to come to the same concluson; or you haven’t read him, in which case you’ll forgive me, I’m sure, for paying no attention to your estimation of his writing.”
“Had we but world enough and time….”
Unless you plan to live for ever I suggest you stop wasting your time on books by deranged people like Atzmon et al.
I would further suggest that you find a class syllabus by the best pro Israel Professor and the best pro Palestinian Professor around and start with their suggestions.
I personally don’t care for Segev since everything I read by him stacks the deck for his own pro single State point of view.
His book on the 67 war was pretty one sided. me thinks.
I would suggest that for every history book you read you also red some critical but informed reviews.
For example:
“THE FAILURE OF ISRAEL’S “NEW HISTORIANS” TO EXPLAIN WAR AND PEACE.”
“The Past Is Not a Foreign Country” by Anita Shapira
Think of England   
  29 December 2011, 5:56 am
I don’t have to devote my (precious) time close reading some anti-Semitic horseshit (i.e., Finkelstein). Matt, I’ve noticed since you’ve been here that you start out with some Pollyannaish, innocent sounding statement, or, in this case, a request, neutral, intellectual, rational, sober, but frankly anyone with those qualities for real would not devote more than a minute to a piece of shit like Finkelstein. If you can’t see what he is immediately, perhaps you are in agreement with him. Now, if you are, that’s OK, just be honest about it, rather than all this pretense.
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 6:08 am
Petra MB,
Well, that would be a shame because I always thought your contributions were thoughtful, but by all means boycott me if you think, I dunno, it helps.
I don’t know whether you’ll read this or not but I offer this as a general comment on Finkelstein, since lots of people are upset here.
comparing me to someone who has an open mind about Nazis because I’ve said I’m not sure I’m ready to condemn Finkelstein in the same terms as you is rather absurd. I’m sure you know that, but you’re angry. I understand. You think basically I’m indifferent to Hezbollah terrorism against civilians because I won’t unequivocally condemn Finkelstein. Once I’ve explained I hope you’ll reconsider that view.
I’m actually the last person who’s likely to be blithe about Hezbollah attacking civilians, because I could quite easily have been killed by them myself. I was in Haifa in July 2006, unable to leave the city, which was a ghost town, because hundreds of katyushas were raining down from Lebanon. I could pretend I suffered horribly for rhetorical effect; of course I won’t. My level of fear went up and down, depending on where the last rocket landed. Most landed in the sea, but some would crash into buildings in the city. Me and my friend were under no illusions that we were facing possible death. And people did die – 44 ordinary Israelis. I don’t want to go into some of the worst aspects of the situation because I don’t want to be seen to be exploiting the experience for the sake of this argument.
What’s my point? That I have no illusions whatsoever that if Hezbollah had been able to, it would have sent the whole city up in flames. In my Finkelstein article it’s precisely this point I condemn him for – for equivocating when offered a direct opportunity to condemn the killing of Israeli civilians. I thought that was appalling and, yes, the fact that I’d spent a week in Haifa under the bombs made it utterly real to me.
I’ve also condemned Hamas every opportunity I get for being depraved sado-masochistic death-cultists with a sordid monomania, defiling the Palestinuan cause with the blood of innocents. I LOATHE Hamas – because they kill people indiscriminately.
But Hamas and Hezbollah aren’t exactly the same, and even though the latter tried to kill me, it seems important to understand the difference.
Hezbollah HAS committed quite a few acts of terrorism – as I know full well. But most of its operations have been carried out against military targets in occupied Southern Lebanon, between 1982 and 2000. We don’t need to argue about whether Hezbollah was right to fight back against the occupation, though I will note that a pretty strong case could be made that it was the Lebanese people’s right to act in self-defence against a foreign occupation following an aggressive invasion that brought unthinkable tragedies in its wake. We can at least agree that striking against military targets on your own territory is not terrorism. And we do know that Hezbollah was formed for the purpose of fighting the occupation – not to terrorise Israelis.
Anyway, unlike Norman Finkestein I will unequivocally condemn any and all acts of indiscriminate violence against civilians. Hezbollah has been involved in hostage taking, was probably involved in some gruesome anti-semitic attacks in Argentina, and continued raids into Israel (albeit almost exclusively against military targets) after 2000, one of which resulted in the 2006 war. All of these actions I condemn equivocally, and not only do I condemn Finkelstein for failing to condemn them, the whole point of my article about him was to condemn him for that.
So why do I hesitate before condemning Finkelstein utterly? Quite simply, because although I think he’s mistaken and in some ways quite heartless on this issue, I don’t think his reasoning – tragically mistaken though it is – puts him in the category of an evil monster.
What is his reasoning? Well I happen to know because I’ve spoken to him about this and challenged him in the strongest possible terms, in front of a room of 30 adoring Finkelstein acolytes who frankly looked as though they were going to drag me outside and teach me a less scholarly lesson.
Remember I don’t agree with this argument – I’m with you, Petra MB, on this, to the extent that I consider him mistaken in all kinds of ways, appallingly mistaken and quite heartless, etc. Where we differ is that you see his remarks on Hezbollah as evidence of evil or psychopathy of some kind; I don’t.
So I told Finkelstein that I could see Hezbollah’s resistance to Israeli military enforcing the occupation could be legitimate on the grounds of self-defence, and I always believed it was an unjustified invasion and occupation. But I could not support kidnappings, terrorism in Argentina, and the continuation of cross-border raids after Israel’s withdrawal in 2000. Why didn’t Hezbollah stop fighting once Israel had withdrawn? Surely at that point it became the aggressor?
Finkelstein argues it’s naive to see 2000 as the end of the war between Israel and Lebanon. Israel would only coexist with Lebanon on the firm basis that it’s military dominance in the region was unchallenged. Israel would continue to meddle in Lebanon through its christian proxies, as it always had done, violating Lebanese sovereignty. And the threat of another invasion and more devastation would always exist. Therefore, the war continued, and Hezbollah’s raids into Israel should be seen as moves in the context of continued war. As for its involvement in kidnapping and overseas terrorism, he equivocated, seeming to argue it was unproven (strictly true, but implausible), or that the Argentina bombings couldn’t have been authorised at a high level (implausible), and that other acts of violence were insignificant compared to many Israeli crimes (irrelevant), and that given its relative weakness compared to Israel it had little choice but to use dirty tactics, just as all weak parties fighting a behemoth do, like some Israelis militias fighting Mandate Britain using terror (again – irrelevant – there’s right and wrong, even in war).
In any case, Finkelstein clearly saw the wrong Hezbollah had done as insignificant compared to the good it had done. He argued that making the occupation too costly for Israel to continue saved southern Lebanon from permanent occupation, like the West Bank, perhaps even settlement and eventual annexation. Finkelstein saw them as freedom fighters. I have a slightly more jaundiced view of their resistance to the occupation, but can I say, again, that the people of Lebanon had no right to fight back? Not if I believe, as I do, that the invasion and occupation were unjustified. Again, let me be clear: this in no way excuses or even mitigates, in my view, the vile acts of terror Hezbollah carried out.
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 6:24 am
I apologise for this mammoth off-topic post – but I wanted to have my say on this Finkelstein business once and for all, especially since I’m somehow being accused of condoning terror or condoning someone who condones terror. In conclusion, while I do and have condemned Finkelstein’s ’solidarity’ with Hezbollah, in the London Progressive Journal and to his face. I told him that his support for Hezbollah was an ‘intellectual and moral farce’.
But what is being demanded of me here isn’t just to condemn him but never to read his books on totally different subjects, never to entertain mixed thoughts and feelings about him, and to write off everything he’s ever said or written as worthless. I could only write someone off in that way if I believed they were pretty much evil. And I simply don’t think that of Finkelstein. I’m sorry. I would like to think you could respect my opinion and consider me misguided and perhaps foolish, but at least sincere and well intentioned.
There are those, of course, who argue, from the ‘other’ side, that anyone who’d not prepared to condemn certain Israeli crimes utterly, and to write off Israel as an evil and psychopathic state, is compromised in the same way. I say to those people the same that I say to you: sincere reasoning can lead us so far in different directions that we can barely see or hear each other. But most people are trying their best with the brain power and knowledge given to them. I believe that’s true of me, you folks, and Finkelstein too. Even if you don’t believe it of Finkelstein, please give me the credit of believing it of me!
Ben   
  29 December 2011, 6:36 am
“…I personally don’t care for Segev…”
It was Segev who suggested in a NY Times review of John Rothman’s book about Amin El Husseini, Icon of Evil, that it would be better to suppress the historical facts of Husseini’s wartime activities because they make a “peace agreement” harder to attain.
The man’s books are driven by the same scarcely-hidden agenda – to bring about an agreement that is not a true peace – and are suffused with an unbelievable arrogance and contempt for the truth.
Avi Shlaim is even worse – a man who shamelessly applies standards to the protagonists arbitrarily, legitimizing and justifying anything if it is the Arab or British who say or do it, and delegitimizing and demonizing, often with insulting and contemptuous ad hominem language, the very same thing if it is the Jews who say or do it.
Finklestein is emotionally ill and mentally unstable because he is the son of two death camp survivors. Studies in Israel have shown that the offspring of such unions almost always develop badly damaged personalities.
Israelinurse   
  29 December 2011, 6:38 am
Matt (11:05) – I’m lucky enough to live in one of the most beautiful places in Israel and possibly the world – the Golan Heights.
Israelinurse   
  29 December 2011, 6:46 am
“And we do know that Hezbollah was formed for the purpose of fighting the occupation – not to terrorise Israelis.”
Another for the reading list: Hizbollah charter – and in particular its definition of ‘occupation’. As has been written several times above, you can’t beat Michael Totten’s ‘Road to Fatima Gate’ for an up close look at Hizbollah.
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 7:04 am
Nate,
‘Ie. read up on what Palestinians mean when they refer to a two-state solution. You can find it in the words of their leaders and in their own words in pretty much every opinion poll.’
Why do you assume just because I don’t share your outlook I don’t know basic ‘facts’? You’re referring to the view that Palestinians see a two-state solution as including full return of the refugees, swamping Israel and effectively ending the Jewish state. Well, opinion polls certainly show that ordinary Palestinians see the right of return as crucial. Their leaders have moved on though. Abbas and PA top brass have been talking about a ‘just resolution’ to the refugee crisis – code for compensation and return to the Palestinian state – for years now. When Sari Nusseibeh argued before camp David that the PLO should just accept that there’d be no right of return and say so publicly in a newspaper article, Arafat collared him and reprimanded him. Why? Because that was ‘our best negotiating card’. Not because Arafat was deluded enough to think Israel would agree to its own dissolution.
As for 242, you must surely be aware there’s a kind of ‘pro-Israel’ way of interpreting it, based on the argument that Israel doesn’t have to withdraw from the territories unless it has a full peace agreement. Then there’s the pro-Palestinian interpretation, which stresses the inadmissability of aquiring territory by war. And of course there’s the whole definite article crux. I’m not sure I understand the point you’re trying to make this time, or is your purpose just to tell me to look up elementary information, for the sake of patronising me?
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 7:11 am
Israelinurse,
The Golan? Oh wow. How about a tour when I’m in town? You can tell everyone here how I turned up in a Norman Finkelstein mask and I’m even more obnoxious in real life than online.
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 7:25 am
Ben,
christ, that was impressive. i love the way you had those ’studies’ at the tip of your fingers to back up your diagnosis of mental illness – and even managed to find the cause too, even though you’ve never met the guy. you’re obviously a professional medic; are you in mental health or are you just some sort of polymath?
John Milton   
  29 December 2011, 7:46 am
Since therefore the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with less danger scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tracts, and hearing all manner of reason? And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read.
Peter   
  29 December 2011, 7:50 am
I must say I dislike this sort of rhetoric. It’s the kind of bollocks used by US Republicans to insult the European welfare state and to stir up paranoia about a mythical Muslim takeover.
As Cityca says, you may have read a lot but learned little. You think in shrill slogans.
Nick   
  29 December 2011, 7:51 am
Anything by Robert Irwin. For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and their Enemies is a smart counterpoint to Edward Said’sOrientalism, written by someone who trained as a scholar of Islamic history and the Arab world.
He is also a wonderful gothic novelist, which should satisfy your yen for hedonism and promiscuity: seek out The Arabian Nightmareand Prayer Cushions of the Flesh.
He also written a good introduction to classical Arabic poetry,Night and Horses and the Desert, and an excellent survey of Islamic Art.
Peter   
  29 December 2011, 7:54 am
It’s not that I feel people ought to have to brandish their credentials before opening their mouth, but
Followed, of course, by brandishing his (supposed) credentials.
I don’t think Hill has the slightest idea how much he sounds like a parody.
Sarah AB   
  29 December 2011, 7:54 am
I must go over to your blog, Matt, and see if anyone took up the offer of a Finkelstein debate. Although so many people whose views I respect seem to disagree with you on this one that I’d very likely end up thinking they were right and you mistaken – I think you are right to – not stick to your guns, because that suggests you are inflexible – but assert your perspective.
Peter   
  29 December 2011, 7:59 am
I think Matt’s glowing accommodation of Finkelstein rather says it all.
Even that is topped by MH calling Atzmon ‘controversial’.
DavidS   
  29 December 2011, 8:00 am
The fundamental problem with trying to understand the Israeli/Arab conflict is the mass of lies and deception that gets published on the subject. It took me years to realize how bad the situation is. Authors like Finkelstein write books that seem rational and well-documented, but the omissions and, sometimes, outright lies are critical to their arguments, albeit difficult or impossible to detect without broad knowledge of the history of the conflict, which is what most readers come to these books for in the first place. Please note that by “omissions”, I mean things that would be as serious as writing a history of the second world war that omitted any mention of the attack on Pearl Harbor, or a history of the American Civil War that made no mention of Abraham Lincoln.
Frankly, my feeling is that, if you spend your reading time on books by Finkelstein, you will need to spend far more time checking everything he says than reading his books. This problem was described particularly well by Peter Novick, who wrote “The Holocaust in American Life” (which was described by Finkelstein himself as a major inspiration for his book “The Holocaust Industry”):
“As concerns particular assertions made by Finkelstein . . . the appropriate response is not (exhilarating) “debate” but (tedious) examination of his footnotes. Such an examination reveals that many of those assertions are pure invention. . . . 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.”
If you want to spend your time reading books where you need to do this kind of checking, by all means have at it, but, without the checking, I find it hard to see how there is anything that one can usefully take from such books.
That said, my one recommendation is Yaacov Lozowick’s “Right to Exist: A Moral Defense of Israel’s Wars”. Lozowick is extremely careful get the facts right and to deal with any substantive arguments against his position — in other words, he is the opposite of a writer like Finkelstein. Whether you wind up agreeing with Lozowick or not, you will certainly learn what the broad center of the Israeli political spectrum believes and why they believe it. This is absolutely vital knowledge for understanding the current state of the conflict and I really do not know of another source that lays it out anywhere close to as clearly Lozowick. If you want to understand Israeli actions in the conflict, read Lozowick’s book.
Peter   
  29 December 2011, 8:02 am
As for 242, you must surely be aware there’s a kind of ‘pro-Israel’ way of interpreting it, based on the argument that Israel doesn’t have to withdraw from the territories unless it has a full peace agreement.
Err, maybe because that’s what it says.
Peter   
  29 December 2011, 8:02 am
And it doesn’t say ‘the’ territories. How about arguing in good faith.
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 8:09 am
Ben, here is the Tom Segev review you’re referring to. He doesn’t argue for suppressing historical facts to advance the peace process. He says the book is of almost no scholarly value and the growing trend of what he calls ‘Arab bashing’ in Israel is bad fpr Jewish-Arab relations. Nowhere does he call for suppressing facts. That was an outrageous bluff.

Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 8:15 am
DavidS,
Where did you find the quote accusing Finkelstein of being untustworthy? It’s quite a claim – I’d like to look into that further.
Sarah AB   
  29 December 2011, 8:21 am
DavidS – that seems a very precise, constructive comment about Finkelstein. It made me think how quickly some people fall apart, even when they seem on the surface very scholarly and academic, once forced to debate. (With someone like Atzmon, he gives himself away without help from anyone else, of course.) I read an online debate between two academics about Yugoslavia. Although I didn’t feel I had a huge knowledge of the topic it seemed easy to work out who was in the right because of internal evidence – I felt I knew who was arguing honestly, and being consistent.
Micha   
  29 December 2011, 8:26 am
Don’t read books!
All the books just tell the stories that fit their narrative.
Just use common sense.
Max G   
  29 December 2011, 8:32 am
Abu Faris,
You write that Phillip Roth is possibly one of the worst authors that you have ever read. Which of his books have you actually read?
Alexia   
  29 December 2011, 8:32 am
Top tip: get a Kindle.
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 8:35 am
Sarah, it may be precise, but it’s just an assertion at this stage. I’d like to see what evidence this chap has that Finkelstein just makes things up. It’s quite a claim to make about a high-profile academic, and if it’s true I wonder why nobody’s questioned Finkelstein’s use of sources before, and why figures like Avi Shlaim – Oxford professor, fellow of the British Academy, arguably one of the two or three most renowned Middle East historians in the world – have endorsed him so effusively. That is not a charge to be made lightly. Especially since Finkelstein’s speciality is to demolish scholarly works via the footnotes (see his famous destruction of Joan Peters, which virtually ended her career).
Again, I’m not saying it can’t be true. But I’d like to see some evidence. If some suspect footnotes in Finkelstein were pointed out to me, I’d be glad to check them out in the British Library today. It should be relatively easy if Finkelstein simply lies.
I may be wrong but I would treat that claim with a certain amount of skepticism. If I’m wrong I’ll happily admit it.
Max G   
  29 December 2011, 8:37 am
I have just bought ” Egypt on the brink” by Tarek Osman. I think that the country is heading for an Islamist take-over, so I want to gauge what has been going on.
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 8:47 am
It still might be interesting to read Novick’s article, but this is Finkelstein’s response to Novick:
(This is quite typical of Finkelstein the writer: extremely scrupulous to the point, sometimes, of being rather scholastic and dry.)
boyinthebubble   
  29 December 2011, 8:51 am
Matt,
Polemical books about competing narratives rarely engage me beyond processing data. Primo Levi’s, If Not Now, When? reads me as much as I read it.
In many ways we are what we read.
Read more poetry.
Read more poetry.
Sarah AB   
  29 December 2011, 8:51 am
Matt – sure.
By the way – this thread makes me feel rather – well very – ill-read, and it’s a good thing I only really post on I/P within a UK based context, eg the academic boycott issue …
But – I have read Lebor’s ‘City of Oranges’ and wondered whether my sense of it was the default one – it seemed very balanced to me – is that the concensus or is it generally perceived to favour one ‘narrative’?
Similar – Matt – you have been reading some of Crossing Qalandiya – I thought it was very well balanced – do you – and anyone else who has read it – think the same?
Matt Hill   
  29 December 2011, 9:02 am
Sarah,
I thought city of oranges was balanced. This may seem like a rather abstract point, but I’m a bit suspicious when people talk about an irreconcilable clash of narratives w/r/t I-P. It sounds suspiciously postmodern – underpinned by the idea, perhaps, that there’s no such thing as objective historical truth, no possibility of balance or middle ground, no hope of separating fact from fiction. As though truth is something generated within hermetically sealed communities, and each groups own truth floats free of every other’s, and from the meagre constraints of the quote unquote real. That’s not my view of history and truth at all.
Sarah AB   
  29 December 2011, 9:12 am
Matt – Well, I think I agree, but at the same time the truth, or history, is so huge and complex that it’s almost impossible to give a fair and complete version of events. So both sides will see things from their perspective. That will affect which events they talk about as well as how they narrate those events. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not worth trying to work out what really happened or that what happened has to be right in the middle of the two narratives, or that all narratives have equal worth. The historian Richard Evans has quite a balanced view of these issues, I think.
Chaim Yankel   
  29 December 2011, 9:51 am
On your original post you mentioned a book by Edward Said – I would go back to one of his earliest – the Question of Palestine – it certainly changed the way I understood the issues. Also going back a bit, Isaac Deutscher’s colection of essays on The Non-Jewish Jew is excellent. A good collection of various critical writers on Zionism and Israel is Prophets Outcast, edited by Adam Shatz.
Michael rabins   
  29 December 2011, 9:57 am
Does anyone else feel that Matt is using us in to join in with his masturbatory game. The guy is even weirder than Finkelstein.
Peter   
  29 December 2011, 10:52 am
I’m a bit suspicious when people talk about an irreconcilable clash of narratives w/r/t I-P. It sounds suspiciously postmodern – underpinned by the idea, perhaps, that there’s no such thing as objective historical truth, no possibility of balance or middle ground, no hope of separating fact from fiction. As though truth is something generated within hermetically sealed communities, and each groups own truth floats free of every other’s, and from the meagre constraints of the quote unquote real.
I think you have misunderstood completely what “irreconcilable clash of narratives” means in this context. There is an irreconcilable clash between serious history on the one hand, however much historians may disagree with each other, and pure fabrications on the other.
For example, claiming that Jews are white Europeans colonising a land with which they have no historical connection, which is a charge hurled at Israel all the time in order to delegitimise it, a charge invented by ME-based antisemites and bought and swallowed by what are laughingly called ‘anti-Zionists’, is a narrative, but it’s fiction, a racist lie from start to finish. Every single word in it is a lie, jointly and severally.
So yes, there is a clash between lies and truth. There is nothing ‘post-modern’ about it.
Dcook   
  29 December 2011, 11:08 am
I would recommend, as a book about the dangers of pompous pillocks surrounded by books but entirely lacking the moral discernment and compass to make sense of them
Abu, you nailed this for me with that comment
Does anyone else feel that Matt is using us in to join in with his masturbatory game.
Yes.
It seems to me to be like this:- Matt Hill gets invited to discuss his opinions of the I/P conflict and gets thoroughly trashed and owned (something he alludes to in his post). He then returns and appears to prostrate himself before the victors in an act of reconciliation, which turns out to be just another way of having an argument and engaging in controversy (Finklestein).
Its “Yeah, you say I got it so wrong and don’t know diddly-squat. Go on then, recommend me some books that will educate me in what you say I’m lacking”.
Yet, the idea is a waste of time because Matt isn’t going to read them all, he’s going to select the ones to read anyway and, most importantly, he’s not going to change any of his ideas or opinions because his existing perceptual filter will only use what he reads to re-inforce what he already believes.
If someone said “I really don’t know anything about the conflict, can someone recommend some books to help me?” it would be different. I define Matt by what he has already written and the opinions he has expressed. What is clear is that he lacks the historical perspective as a foundation. In the reverse pyramid of expanding knowledge he come to the debate far too late to be able to re-construct his beliefs and opinions from a better factual basis. He won’t change in any way other than to seek what re-inforces his opinions. His behaviour is little different to anyone else with opinions. Its the “20-year old who joins PSC and learns that all Israelis are bastards and that the Palestinians are all kind nomads who just want all the land back that was 100% stolen and anyway why should the Arabs pay for The Holocaust” syndrome.
The only change that Matt can make is if someone proves that something he believes is based on a lie, a decimal point in the wrong place.
Let me suggest the “Mother of All Posts” for you Matt. Have a think about this one:-
Give us a thread called “This is what I believe about the I/P Conflict” in the form of a number of sentences of the model:- “I believe xxx because of yyy”, and let people discuss with you whether “yyy” is a a fact or just your opinion. Let us discuss your structure of belief because maybe you made a mistake or two.
M=o=r=g=y   
  29 December 2011, 11:12 am
He has a hard-on for evil pieces of shit like Finkelstein. When even Gene points out how deluded he is….its time to wonder.
Dcook   
  29 December 2011, 11:16 am
Peter @ 29 December 2011, 10:52 am, you and I, and others, seem to have arrived at the same idea at the same time. The point about believing fiction and using it with a few facts tends to make fiction inseperable from the facts and creates an opinion based on falsehood. That is why I challenge Matt to concisely state the beliefs on which his whole structure of opinion rests and give us an opportunity to examine them.
unbelievable   
  29 December 2011, 11:27 am
Dan Cohn-Sherbok and Dawoud El-Alami, The Palestine-Israeli Confict: A Beginner’s Guide (Oneworld).
Joseph W   
  29 December 2011, 11:33 am
Matt, you watched this video, in which a distressed student tells Finkelstein not to make lots of references to Jewish people as Nazis. Considering Finkelstein presents himself as an expert on the Holocaust, this seems to be a fair request. However Finkelstein doesn’t think so:
The student says:
During your speech you made a lot of references to Jewish people as well as certain people in the audience, not Jewish people in general, but especially in the audience – to Nazis. That is extremely offensive to certain people who are German and also extremely offensive who actually suffered under Nazi war
Finkelstein replies:
I don’t respect that any more, I really don’t. I don’t like and I don’t respect the crocodile tears (interruptions) the crocodile tears (clapping and cries from audience) listen sir, allow me to finish
I don’t like to play to a foreign audience the Holocaust part but since now I feel compelled to – my late father was in Auschwitz, my late mother … please shut-up (applause) my late father was in Auschwitz my late mother was in Mgdonevice concentration camp – every single member of my family on both sides were exterminated, both my parents were in the Warsaw Ghetto
They taught me and my two siblings that I will not be silenced by Israel over their crimes against Palestinians.
I consider nothing more despicable than to use their suffering and their martyrdom to try to justify the torture the brutalization and the demolition of homes commits against the Palestinians
I refuse any more to be intimidated to be browbeaten by the tears, if you had any heart in you, you would be crying for the Palestinians.
His increasingly famous reply (which I urge you to watch, here) is worth quoting. After explaining that both his parents were Holocaust survivors, that they took part in the Warsaw ghetto uprising, and that all his other relatives died in the Nazi camps, he says [...]
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
I would say most of the people you are interacting with on HP, would agree with the points that the student made, for sensible reasons.
You clearly agree with Finkelstein, that many(most?) Zionist Jews are somehow using their suffering as an excuse to persecute Palestinians.
If that’s how you really feel, fine. But say so. Don’t be too polite.
unbelievable   
  29 December 2011, 11:35 am
I don’t much like Norman Finkelstein, btw, but his work in exposing Joan Peters and Alan Dershowitz deserves credit at least.
Peter   
  29 December 2011, 11:44 am
I don’t respect that any more, I really don’t. I don’t like and I don’t respect the crocodile tears
(Finkelstein on references to the Holocaust).
But it’s all right for him to reference it by way of calling Israelis ‘Nazis’.
‘Evil piece of shit’ (cf. Morgy) is way too polite for him. Of course, I strongly suspect that he is seriously not right in the head, just like Atzmon.
Citing him as any sort of authority on the ME is astonishing lack of judgement, to say the least.
Dcook   
  29 December 2011, 11:49 am
Its great when Matt so easily offers himself to ridicule when he offers us this:-
As for 242, you must surely be aware there’s a kind of ‘pro-Israel’ way of interpreting it, based on the argument that Israel doesn’t have to withdraw from the territories unless it has a full peace agreement. Then there’s the pro-Palestinian interpretation, which stresses the inadmissability of aquiring territory by war.
(Peter already called him out on it)
Quite frankly Matt you define yourself in complete exposure of your lack of foundational knowledge and ignorance.
Then there’s the pro-Palestinian interpretation, which stresses the inadmissability of aquiring territory by war
This is NOT an “interpretation” because this is a phrase that is at the start of Res 242 (and I’m not even going to re-read it as I know it backwards). The “inadmissability of aquiring territory by war” is a preamble to the action that is required to be taken and not a claim against Israeli side. In fact it is ambiguous in the sense that since it was the Arab side that sought to “acquire territory by law” and it could be seen as making sure their attack on Israel isn’t rewarded either. (Anyway, not my main point).
So, first of all you are factually incorrect because this is NOT an interpretation. The Palestinians don’t have to interpret anything because its what is actually written.
You make the mistake of writing “the territories”. This is another FACTUAL mistake, isn’t it Matt? It doesn’t say “the” in Res 242. So, you have now ignored a FACT and replaced it with an opinion. You have actually replaced the FACT with what was a Palestinianian OPINION. I’ll bet that you didn’t know that Arafat took the French translation of Res 242 that mistakenly add the word “the” to “territories”. For all legal documents only the English text has any legality as far as the UN is concerned. The Palestinians, presumably, still retain the illegal French version.
The point is that if Matt believes he is right and confident enough to state falsehoods then how many MORE facts has he trampled on in order to reach his opinions?
Sarah AB   
  29 December 2011, 12:12 pm
His response seemed cold and hateful – also something of a non sequitur, although I’m not quite sure what the Nazi references consisted of, exactly.
Michael Rabins   
  29 December 2011, 12:13 pm
Matt is a troll, albeit quite a sophisticated one.
On the one hand he offers the pretence of support, but his real motive is to advance Palestinian conquest. He substitutes sophistry for thought, faux compassion for morality and sloganeering cliche for analysis.
Do me a favour Matt. Go back to your stinking Euro-lefty chums. Who gives a fuck what you read, or what you don’t read, what you think, or what you don’t think? Not me.
In fact, I find your little games extremely tiresome. To paraphrase Yuval, take your stupid little imperialist anthropological fetishes somewhere else, you dishonest, mediocre narcissist.
amie   
  29 December 2011, 12:23 pm
Either Matt is the most amazing speed reader ever, or he is not entirely speaking in good faith when he says: (I wonder if all his reading is done like this0.
29 December 2011, 2:16 am
Gene,
Thanks for being civil and for offering me the chance to inspect the evidence and understand your point of view. I’m going to have a look through now
And then, all of 14 minutes later:
29 December 2011, 2:30 am
Gene (and Joseph W, and Abu Faris),
I read through all the articles that seemed to be about Finkelstein
OyVaGoy   
  29 December 2011, 12:28 pm
Anything by Daniel Gordis, particularly this onehttp://www.oyvagoy.com/2011/06/13/my-top-five-books-number-one/
amie   
  29 December 2011, 12:34 pm
Matt: Regarding your admiration for Avi Shlaim as a supporting pillar for your admiration for (parts of) Finkelstein:
note the comment from the HP comments, fortunately preserved in the point of no return post although vanished from here.
Gaby Charing   
  29 December 2011, 12:39 pm
David Fromkin: A Peace to End All Peace concerning British Middle East policy after WWI – absolutely essential if you haven’t already read it.
Jonathan Israel: The Radical Enlightenment – a wonderful piece of scholarship, immensely readable, unreasonably pro-Spinoza. The best book I’ve read in 10 years.
Aravind Adiga: The White Tiger – I’m not much of a fiction reader, but this is brilliant, about a part of India (Bihar) few foreigners visit. Sharp, funny, horrifying. I read it by the pool in Kerala after going to a wedding in Bihar, and couldn’t put it down.
Sarah AB   
  29 December 2011, 12:45 pm
Joseph W – thanks very much – that’s extremely helpful. Completely gratuitous and offensive references to Nazis as far as I could see.
Abtalyon   
  29 December 2011, 12:46 pm
Amnon Rubinstein and Alex Yacobson ” Israel and the Family of Nations.” A book steeped in scholarship, not polemic.
Vivo   
  29 December 2011, 12:50 pm
Michael Rabins, I think you’re right about Hill, especially his motivation. More than anything though, he reminds me of Tigger in Winnie the Pooh … very “bouncy”.
wardytron   
  29 December 2011, 1:04 pm
I used to have a copy of Why Blame Israel? The Facts Behind The Headlines by Neill Lochery. I can’t vouch for whether it’s any good*, but I remember it had a glowing quote on the back from Julie Burchill, and it’s got a 4 star review on Amazon from Michael Rosen. That would suggest a certain amount of evenhandedness. It’s on Amazon Marketplace for £0.01 plus postage & packing.
*Because I couldn’t be bothered to read it, preferring as I do Wodehouse, Kingsley Amis, Alexandre Dumas, Whizzer & Chips etc.
Micha Sass   
  29 December 2011, 1:10 pm
Someone should archive these comment box discussions. There is an awful lot of written content here that will soon be discarded. Considering the length of some of the comments this seems an awful waste of words. Is it legal for someone to do this (a scripted daily scrape and store) without the consent of HP?
jurekmolnar   
  29 December 2011, 1:13 pm
Mathias Küntzel, Jihad and Jew Hatred
Lee Smith, The Strong Horse
Dore Gold, Hatred’s Kingdom
Paul Berman, The Flight of the Intellectuals
Evan   
  29 December 2011, 1:32 pm
I don’t read many books.
If an author can’t succinctly express his or her ideas in 30 pages or less, it just becomes a fattening, sedentary waste of time.
Sarah AB   
  29 December 2011, 1:45 pm
Wardytron – that book must indeed be something if those two both like it!
PetraMB   
  29 December 2011, 2:12 pm
Matt, just to clarify:
1) I’m not “boycotting” you; but like some others here, methinks that you’re making a lot of points that are either intellectually dishonest or hopelessly naive — and you enjoy the attention you get when people waste their time responding to it — which is a waste of time because you’re then simply restating your views, including some snipe about how those who disagree with you are simple-minded/stuck with their badly thought-through world view etc.
2) You read a lot, but maybe a bit too fast too get what is written: I did NOT compare you with people who justified their Nazi-sympathies with jobs and soup-kitchens, but pointed out that this is what Finkelstein is doing re. Hezbollah
3) You must have written about your experience in Haifa during the 2006 war at least dozens of times; just understand that it won’t strike anyone living in Israel as particularly heroic. One last point, because I have to go out to get our gas masks:
4) I find this talk about Finkelstein being heartless, cold-hearted, evil etc. not particularly helpful. Somebody who declares his support for Hezbollah – while claiming he doesn’t know and doesn’t care much about their politics — is either brainless or thinks his audience is and wouldn’t notice that he endorses a murderous reactionary gang of terrorists because he approves of some parts of their murderous reactionary terrorist agenda.
— OK, off to get our gas masks, which I have to get because of the guys Finkelstein admires so much…
sackcloth and ashes   
  29 December 2011, 2:20 pm
‘Do you have a special interest in Lebanon or was it a coincidence that you mention two books about it. Do you know David Hirst’s book Beware of Small States?’
It’s part of something I’m working on now. Hirst’s book is a poor piece of work – typical Guardianista crap. Even Fisk’s ‘Pity the Nation’ has flashes of excellent reportage, even if it’s tarnished by his Judaeophobia (I still recall his throwaway statement about the IDF assassinating three Palestinians in Beirut in April 1973, without referring to the fact that they were Black September commanders responsible for the Munich massacre).
I’d also add Amos Harel and Avi Isaacharoff’s book on the 2006 war to the list.
Freedman’s book comes strongly recommended as a basic primer for anyone who wants to understand the USA’s interaction with the Middle East from the late 1970s onwards.
If you want stuff on Iraq, I recommend the one volume histories by Charles Tripp and Gareth Stansfield (the latter was also my rowing coach at uni – nice guy). George Packer has already been recommended, and I also recommend Rory Stewart’s account of his time as the CPA governor in Maysan and Dhi Qar provinces, ‘Occupational Hazards’.
On Iran, Ray Takeyh’s book ‘Guardians of the Revolution’ is a must. Ronen Bergman has also been referenced.
Yezid Sayigh’s ‘Armed Struggle’ is a beast of a book, but is required reading for anyone who wants to make sense of the PLO’s evolution. It could do with an update, though, as it was published in 1997. Barry Rubin’s ‘Revolution until Victory’ is also worth consulting.
On military history, Kenneth Pollack’s ‘Arabs at War’ is recommended.
I’ve got nothing else to add at present, except to encourage you not to read Chomsky, Finkelstein, Pappe or Karsh.
Peter   
  29 December 2011, 2:23 pm
Is it legal for someone to do this (a scripted daily scrape and store) without the consent of HP?
It’s on the Web. As long as you don’t make unauthorised use of it (which is essential), there is no law against it.
Mel   
  29 December 2011, 2:25 pm
Here are my favorite books on the ME, none related (directly anyway) to the IP conflict:
‘The Mantle of the Prophet’ – Roy Mottahedeh, one of the best books I’ve ever read.
‘A House of Many Mansions’ – Kamal Salibi, deconstruction of the various myths which underwrite Lebanon’s multiple identities.
‘Twice a Stranger’ – Bruce Clark, about the population exchanges between Turkey and Greece after WW1.
‘The Making of Modern Turkey’ – Bernard Lewis, account of the attempts and ultimate failure of the Ottoman Empire to save itself.
‘From the Holy Mountain’ – William Dalrymple, travel classic focusing on the decline of the Christians of the region.
‘Cairo: The City Victorious’ – Max Rodenbeck, brilliant portrait of an amazing city.
‘The Dream Palace of the Arabs’ – Fouad Ajami, beautifully written account of the aftermath of the failure of Arab Nationalism to solve the region’s problems.
Peter   
  29 December 2011, 2:27 pm
I don’t much like Norman Finkelstein, btw, but his work in exposing Joan Peters and Alan Dershowitz deserves credit at least.
He didn’t ‘expose’ anything.
And a recommendation from unbelievable, really is the well-deserved ultimate kiss of death, so thank heavens for small mercies.
Dcook   
  29 December 2011, 2:33 pm
Matt, have you anything to say about your inaccuracies concerning Res 242 as I pointed-out earlier?
Its a fundamental and pivotal point I make about your confusion between facts and opinions. I suggest that often your grasp of facts is thin on Res 242 so perhaps you would like to defend yourself. Have you any defence for your mistakes?
Mel   
  29 December 2011, 2:33 pm
Ah just saw Fromkin’s ‘A Peace to End All Peace’ mentioned above, I’d also include it.
And one more:
‘Islam and the Myth of Confrontation’ – Fred Halliday, a very clear-headed analysis of the supposed Clash of Civilizations (also contains IMO the best critique of Said’s Orientalism) by a scholar who should receive a lot more attention from Harry’s Place than he does.
Mel   
  29 December 2011, 2:37 pm
Penny   
  29 December 2011, 2:51 pm
Matt
“As for 242…” and the two interpretations you mention: Several weeks ago when responding to one of your articles, I sent you a link to the paper written by Eugene Rostow, co-author of Res 242. That should have settled this question of ‘interpretation’ – and more.
Dcook   
  29 December 2011, 3:21 pm
Matt

“As for 242…” and the two interpretations you mention: Several weeks ago when responding to one of your articles, I sent you a link to the paper written by Eugene Rostow, co-author of Res 242. That should have settled this question of ‘interpretation’ – and more.
Penny, you highlight that this thread has been a complete waste of time for participants because we have this fantasy that Matt will read some of our suggestions and come to new conclusions, more in line with the many lessons he has been taught by posters at HP.
But, your post seems to suggest that the opinion that Matt is so entrenched on a loose structure of misunderstandings that he will fail to recognise facts that destroy those foundations.
I feel we have been jerked-off by Matt and I sincerely hope we won’t be insulted by yet more of his threads. He has his OWN blog. Why isn’t that good enough?
Peter   
  29 December 2011, 3:43 pm
DCook:
Seconded. Except that I am not sure MH is jerking us off deliberately. I have a feeling that he is so steeped in his fantasy world, he genuinely can’t see it. For example, he has decided that 242 says XYZ, although you and I know it says ABC. He seems physically unable to read it and see in it anything other than what he would have liked it to say. Similarly for the Hamas charter, and everything else. Moreover, it goes without saying that he has a vastly overinflated sense of his own erudition, wisdom, experience and not least importance. He is a good example of a little learning: he has read a few texts, mostly misunderstood them, and has no feel for the context and the history of the Middle East. On that basis, he feels he is in a position to lecture people who know far more about it than he does, or is ever likely to because he listens to himself narcissitically and blocks out everything else.
Peter   
  29 December 2011, 3:47 pm
I mean, after all, what would the natives know about their own region? It takes a Harrow man to teach them about it.
Sick of Spineless Liberals   
  29 December 2011, 4:04 pm
“I’m a bit suspicious when people talk about an irreconcilable clash of narratives w/r/t I-P. It sounds suspiciously postmodern – underpinned by the idea, perhaps, that there’s no such thing as objective historical truth”
Postmodernism is the last refuge of the losing side. Brute force is the only response with people who reject the very idea of truth and reason.
Nate   
  29 December 2011, 4:11 pm
You have decided that a just solution is code, but how could you know that? And you never once addressed that fact that the leadership would never be able to enforce this “code” since they’ve helped educate their people to be violently against any compromise on the matter. As for the “definite article” matter, the history is clear. It was for lack of trying to impose a definite article, but by clear intent. Different narratives are one thing, but different facts are quite another.
Nate   
  29 December 2011, 4:12 pm
And still no response re: your description of soldiers and settlers
Gabriel   
  29 December 2011, 4:12 pm
Agree with many here that Finkelstein is scum. He’s not a stupid man and much of what he writes is true, unfortunately, it’s that extra bit which turns all of us off. For example, it is true that there is a Holocaust industry that has made millions of dollars off of the suffering of survivors. However, Finkelstein is not interested in writing about that, he is interested in showing some sort of secret Jewish cabal that controls everything so he just leaves out what he doesn’t like, over-emphasizes things that are not important, and comes to a conclusion he already knew he was going to have.
To me, it’s similar to The Israel Lobby. Instead of writing a serious book about the very real power of the Israel lobby, Mearshimire and Walt wrote a book that made it seem as if the Israel lobby is behind every aspect of foreign policy. It’s this lack of nuance and obvious bias that rightly leads to many dismissing these kinds of writers entirely.
In general, any time there is an obvious agenda in the writing, it is going to be worse. It’s something I admire about Michael Oren and Benny Morris. They are both Zionists but like all good historians their writing generally attempts to find truth rather than confirm what they already believe. Incidentally, this lack of genuine scholarship is true about many of the right-wing writers listed above. Ephraim Karsh is the flip-side of Ilan Pappe. He’s a polemic not particularly interested in the truth, rather just in blaming Palestinians for everything. (The closest comparison to Finkelstein for me would be someone like Robert Spencer. A bigot who tries to intellectualize his bigotry.)
Joseph W   
  29 December 2011, 4:14 pm
Well said Gabriel.
Mel   
  29 December 2011, 4:16 pm
Keep remembering more. If we include Afghanistan in the Greater ME, well it has inspired some of the very best travel writing, which as someone above pointed out is always an enjoyable way to learn about the region.
Anyway, there is Robert Byron’s classic ‘Road to Oxiana’, Jason Elliot’s ‘An Unexpected Light’ (written as the Taliban bombarded Kabul in the winter of 1995/95) and of course Rory Stewart’s ‘The Places In Between’ (a walk from Herat to Kabul completed during the winter of 2001/02).
Others to look out for are anything by Colin Thubron (he’s primarily focused on Central Asia, but his early books were on Cyrus and Damascus if I remember correctly) and Robert Kaplan’s ‘Eastward to Tartary’ which is an interesting read 10+ years on as Kaplan just loves making predictions about the future. Paul Theroux’s ‘Pillars of Hercules’ has some interesting chapters on the ME, although his attitude puts many readers off.
mel   
  29 December 2011, 4:18 pm
Dcook if I wanted to be cynical I would suggest he is using HP as a marketing tactic to develop his own blog. Brand awareness and SEO.
Then again I am not that cynical. Maybe, he is just a nice guy who wants to develop his thinking re the middle east.
What worried me I suppose was when Matt wrote,”It’s quite a claim to make about a high-profile academic, and if it’s true I wonder why nobody’s questioned Finkelstein’s use of sources before, and why figures like Avi Shlaim – Oxford professor, fellow of the British Academy, arguably one of the two or three most renowned Middle East historians in the world – have endorsed him so effusively” Because someone is a ‘high profile academic’ does not prove anything. The same goes for Avi Shlaim. A certain Jazz musician has quite a high profile in certain circles but that does not make him right. Then there there is a world renowned academic whose views on the killing fields in Cambodia were a ‘little’ contentious.
As I write I think Matt that I just don’t feel that you are open and honest in your writing. I think you choose what you are saying to prove your point rather than exploring a set of ideas to move forward. I would add that is a feeling which it is impossible tp prove one way or the other.
Joseph W   
  29 December 2011, 4:20 pm
I’d just like to reiterate this point:
You clearly agree with Finkelstein, that many(most?) Zionist Jews are somehow using their suffering as an excuse to persecute Palestinians.
Nate   
  29 December 2011, 4:24 pm
“When Sari Nusseibeh argued before camp David that the PLO should just accept that there’d be no right of return and say so publicly in a newspaper article, Arafat collared him and reprimanded him. Why? Because that was ‘our best negotiating card’. Not because Arafat was deluded enough to think Israel would agree to its own dissolution.”
Where to begin? You’re hero Nusseibeh is vehemently against a Jewish state. Also you make a huge leap as to why Arafat had him collared… could it not be because he disagreed with him? But most amazingly, despite all the terrorism that can be traced back to Arafat’s doorstep and ships loading with armaments, you really seem to believe that Arafat was negotiating in good faith and that he had given up on the right of return when he was talking to his people about the staged plan from day one after Oslo. On what do you base this insistence on giving a terrorist the benefit of the doubt despite his own words? It’s an attempt to create moral equivalence when one doesn’t always exist. What makes more sense? Lying to your enemies and then destroying them? Or lying to your people and ensuring that they hate and turn on you? Seems like a pretty easy one to me.
amie   
  29 December 2011, 4:30 pm
Micha Sass
29 December 2011, 1:10 pm
Someone should archive these comment box discussions.
I already thought to myself it would be a very great pity if a thread like this is lost. It deserves to be preserved.
Peter   
  29 December 2011, 4:50 pm
Mel,
Well said about Shlaim. That was a ridiculous argument by MH. But it is all of a piece: someone who supports Finkelstein’s views must be right, according to MH, therefore because he is right he is right. Quite a portmanteau of fallacies there.
Nate,
Good point. MH wants to believe Arafat, so he believes him. It’s beyond parody.
Nate   
  29 December 2011, 5:01 pm
“Well, opinion polls certainly show that ordinary Palestinians see the right of return as crucial. Their leaders have moved on though.”
So are you in favor of the PA dictators continuing their undemocratic rule by acting against the will of the people? How long would that last?
vildechaye   
  29 December 2011, 5:12 pm
I have been watching a lot of Christopher Hitchens on Youtube since he died. Hitchens wouldn’t take questions from 9/11 truthers. In the same vein, I won’t read Finklestein. It’s possible he makes some good points. 9/11 truthers may, for that matter, make a few salient observations too. That doesn’t mean they aren’t hammered, and, in the case of Finklestein, doesn’t mean he isn’t wicked. So to hell with him and his scribblings.
Mark Ramsden   
  29 December 2011, 5:51 pm
Try this God manual thingie, called the Bible or something similar. The apocrypha’s the best bit. Very trippy.
The Second Plane Martin Amis. Post September 11 musings. Patchy but some superb research into the origins of the idiocy now known as Islamism and, a lot of show off literary writing but…it’s lovely stuff. Very poetic. Funny, too.
Nick Collins   
  29 December 2011, 6:19 pm
Recommended books:
All the Y. Porath books – Emergence of the Palestine Arab National Movement etc.
All the Benny Morris books and articles
Land of Dust – Lawrence Friedman
Zionism and History – Shmuel Almog
Imagining Zion – Troen
Zionism and the Arabs – Gorny
The Balfour Declaration – Leonard Stein
Islam and Dhimmitude – Bat Ye’or
Islamic Imperialism – Ephriam Karsh
Books by Naomi Shepherd
Palestine 1948 – Yoav Gelber.
Enjoy.
Uncle yo-yo   
  29 December 2011, 6:21 pm
I too keep reluctantly coming back to the belief that Matt Hill will never change his mind no matter how much he reads. He still believes that he has the secret to peace in the ME — and the hell with whatever facts disagree with his fantastic plan for peace in our time.
My guess is that Matt is in his 20s — certainty and narcissism like his usually fades over time.
Dcook   
  29 December 2011, 6:45 pm
Has Matt deserted? Gone AWOL? Sleeping? Bored with it all?
Not even returned to say Thank You for all your suggestions. Not come back to say “Sorry, I was wrong about Res 242″.
Maybe he’s travelling.
Abu Faris   
  29 December 2011, 7:02 pm
Nothing you ever say will convince me to leave the house and talk to people, Abu Faris.
I wonder if Matt Hill would like to expand on this?
Abu Faris   
  29 December 2011, 7:07 pm
Another recommendation I would make would be
The Orientalist, by Tom Reiss
Tom even maintains a website dedicated to his worthy obsession with the bizarre life of Lev Nussmibaum:
And then there is Nussimbaum’s wonderful book:
Ali and Nino…
but that is another story.
I would also recommend Tom Nashe’s “Unfortunate Traveller”, but I think that would whoosh over Hill’s pointy little head.
Dcook   
  29 December 2011, 7:21 pm
Matt Hill:-
I’ve become accustomed to the argument, in these parts, that the continuation of the conflict is entirely the fault of the Palestinians
Who’s fault in 1948?
Who’s fault in 1967?
Who’s fault in 1973?
Who’s fault the Intifadas’
Who’s fault the two wars with Gaza?
Maybe you could answer just one of those with thesentence model “This wasn’t the Palestinians/Arab’s fault because……..”
I remind you that Abbas said “I won’t discuss peace until there is a settlement freeze” Israel had a freeze for a year and Abbas still refused to talk.
All parties settled Res 242 EXCEPT the Palestinian side. Why?
The Security Barrier was built because the Palestinians who came to work in Israel also used the route for suicide bombers. So, who’s fault is the Barrier?
In a two-way discussion of course there will be some blame that can fairly be put on both sides but it is NOT equal blame. The Palestinian side is MORE to blame for the intransigence than Israel as demonstrated by the war-like nature of the Palestinian/Arab side.
How do you end a conflict? You defeat the agressor or the side with most to gain compromises the in order to secure peace for itself and achieve its goals.. That agressor is the Palestinian/Arab side and the side with the most to gain in this case. Just explain to us what the Palestinians have to offer in order to have peace and a state? The answer is zero, actually.
Abu Faris   
  29 December 2011, 7:28 pm
Dcook
I think you will find that Matt Hill will now be leaving his responses to Max G…
Ben   
  29 December 2011, 7:46 pm
Matt said: [re Finklestein]“…are you in mental health or are you just some sort of polymath?…”
Neither. I did, though, grow up among people who survived death camps, labour camps, and concentration camps. I have observed them, and their children, and have seen what I speak of with my own eyes.
Many others in Israel of my generation have seen the same phenomenon close-up. Some have actually investigated it in a scientific way. The conclusion that death camp survivors who were imprisoned for some period of time almost all have severely damaged personalities is widely accepted. The prognosis concerning the health of their children when both parents were thus afflicted are also well-attested.
It is ironic that you should belabour me on this matter in this blog, when others on an earlier occasion have berated me for calling on them to cease piling on Finklestein.
Matt said [re Segev]: “…He doesn’t argue for suppressing historical facts to advance the peace process…”
That’s exactly what he argues for. He doesn’t want books about Husseini and WW2 by the likes of Rothman to be published, only books that he writes. And his books, in his opinion of course, do have scholarly value.
Matt said [re Joan Peters] “… demolished her career…”
I recommend you read her book if you haven’t (have you?)
It is not perfect, but her main thesis, that there was massive Arab immigration into Palestine at a time when Jewish refugee immigration was restricted, is incontestable. Gore-Booth, one of the British officials responsible for policy, puts the number at 250000, a conservative estimate. Peters also wrote in this work on the oppression and persecution of Jews in Arab countries in the 20th century and before, and on the criminal activities of the Palestine leader Amin el Husseini in WW2.
For a scholarly sympathetic appraisal of her work, read Rael Jean Isaac’s article in Commentary magazine.
NicoleS   
  29 December 2011, 7:53 pm
I’ve suddenly realised who Matt Hill reminds me of. That combination of pomposity, self-absorption, thick skin and touch of creepy masochism – it’s Kenneth Widmerpool. For those who don’t know, he’s a lead character in Anthony Powell’s 12-volume Dance to the Music of Time, another highly recommended read, although it will tell you nothing at all about Israel-Palestine or anything remotely connected with Jews.
Abu Faris   
  29 December 2011, 7:53 pm
You’ve got to love the way the snake seeks to evade being scotched:
I’ve also condemned Hamas every opportunity I get for being depraved sado-masochistic death-cultists with a sordid monomania, defiling the Palestinuan cause with the blood of innocents. I LOATHE Hamas – because they kill people indiscriminately.
Sorry, but where is the bit about loathing an organisation because its theocratic ideology condemns an entire people, the Jewish people, to some future genocide, displacement and exile? Where is the condemnation of Hamas as a clerical fascist organisation determined to aid and abet the dismal downward spiral of the entire MENA region into some dystopian vision of 7th Century Hell in which whole peoples, faith groups, women and homosexuals (amongst others) are subjected to a regime of repression and lack of civil and individual liberties?
What is strikingly telling about the above comment from Hill is his contempt for Hamas’ tactics – but not a peep about the ends for which Hamas fight.
But Hamas and Hezbollah aren’t exactly the same, and even though the latter tried to kill me, it seems important to understand the difference.
Here we go again. This is a common sleight of hand played by Hill last on the alleged distinction between Hamas and MB (the latter Hill appears to have some sort of hots for as ‘genuine anti-imperialists’ or some other bull).
We do know that Hezbollah was formed for the purpose of fighting the occupation – not to terrorise Israelis.
Hizbullah were formed to gain political power in Lebanon for a strikingly aggressive, militant and frightening variety of Shi’a Islamism and have lined up behind, aided and abetted and supported every variety of Islamist and non-Islamist anti-Israeli movement in the region. They have repeatedly sold Lebanese sovereignty to the Syrian and Iranian regime in return for assistance. They have repeatedly refused to disarm or hand over their telecommunications systems to the Lebanese government, despite the fact that Hizullah control over the machinery of war and its logistics have made them effectively a state within a state seriously undermining Lebanese territorial integrity and political state authority – and all without any reference to Israeli “invaders”. If you are seriously suggesting that Hizbullah cannot be regarded as primarily ant-Israeli then you are either entirely ignorant of Hizbullah’s own published statements, or you are a liar.
One cannot commit terrorism against one’s own military? Are you for fucking real?
DavidS   
  29 December 2011, 8:06 pm
Matt,
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:
I found the link to the full article in a long collection of documents related to the conflict between Alan Dershowitz and Finkelstein here:
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:
If you look at the original review by Novick, you will see that the quote is accurate, although the second ellipses join sentences from two successive paragraphs and the first eliminates reference to a specific context that might be taken to limit the judgement somewhat. In any case, the full review, which I have only just skimmed, is full of devastating charges of dishonesty.
Dcook   
  29 December 2011, 8:16 pm
I’ve suddenly realised who Matt Hill reminds me of.
His cousins Harry and Benny?
Abu Faris   
  29 December 2011, 8:54 pm
NicoleS
You may be on to something. Widmerpool was loosely based on Powell’s wartime boss in the Joint Intelligence Commitee (JIC), Denis Capel-Dunn, a secretive cove who made Powell’s life a misery (although it appears to have been reciprocated). An enormously fat Catholic, Powell and other subordinates referred to Capel-Dunn as “The Papal Bun”. The one-time British ambassador to Mongolia (God, what a fiendishly horrid posting that must have been in the ’40s!) wrote of “The Papal Bun”:
“Like Widmerpool, Capel-Dunn was a very fat, extremely boring, overwhelmingly ambitious arriviste. His conversations were hideously detailed and humourless”.
As I wrote, you may be on to something.
Peter   
  29 December 2011, 8:54 pm
But Hamas and Hezbollah aren’t exactly the same, and even though the latter tried to kill me, it seems important to understand the difference.
Oh, I see: their military objective was to kill M. Hill. Never mind that their own public statements make it clear that their objective is to kill all the Jews; what we should really, really focus on is that they tried to kill M. Hill. Has there ever been more blatant narcissism.
And also, M. Hill thinks that because Hezbollah ‘tried to kill him’, he now has some special perspective and knowledge about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Quite breathtakingly naive, or something.
mel   
  29 December 2011, 8:55 pm
David S great links
Abu Faris   
  29 December 2011, 9:01 pm
I suppose the next question should be: is Matt Hill enormously fat?
Abu Faris   
  29 December 2011, 9:51 pm
I would agree with Nick, up thread: anything by Robert Irwin.
Peter   
  29 December 2011, 9:55 pm
Well, he is fat-headed, anyway.
Abu Faris   
  29 December 2011, 10:15 pm
Peter
Yes, quite clearly Hizbullah were firing tens of missiles in an ultimately futile attempt to kill Hill. That we missed that at the time is quite an astounding oversight on our part. Clearly Matt Hill’s assassination is up there with the killing of countless thousands of Lebanese (therefore not terrorism) committed by Hizbullah and must have something to do with Hill’s adamant lack of support for Hizbullah’s assertions that it wants to drive the Jews into the sea.
Or something.
Abu Faris   
  29 December 2011, 10:17 pm
Although, I do have to say that I am still roaring with laughter at Hill’s (elsewhere and memorably desperate) comment that Hamas and Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood were not connected because
(1) They had a different name from each other;
(2) he read it somewhere in a book.
Dcook   
  29 December 2011, 10:25 pm
Its true that we can drive a coach & horses through many things that Matt has said but we are pi..ing in the wind and just rehearsing what we already know.
Matt wants books that would help him understand why posters at HP have been pirahnas concerning his opinions. Its a suggestion that Matt wants to change.
I fear he doesn’t and this thread has gone the same way as every other Matt Hill thread. Entertaining but no suitable conclusion or educational benefit to Matt will ever be achieved.
Uncle yo-yo   
  29 December 2011, 11:59 pm
Matt has form. When anyone threatens his pet theories, he (1) find things to quibble about rather than addressing any main points; (2) narrows his position to what he thinks is a more defensible position (it usually isn’t), without admitting he has done so; and (3) eventually goes away quietly.
What Matt HIll never does — no matter the facts or proof sent his way — is (1) simply admit his mistakes, (2) concede in any way that his “Matt Hill Master Plan for Selflessly Bringing Peace unto the Poor Benighted Residents of the Middle East” is flawed, unworkable, and based on demonstrably untrue assumptions, or (3) do anything else that would require either humility or a lack of overweening ego.
That said, he should really read the Lozowick book I (and someone else) recommended earlier.
Uncle yo-yo   
  30 December 2011, 12:00 am
Matt: To answer your question to me, I am only about 60 pages into the Prime Ministers book (about 700 pages to go), so I cannot say anything else other than “so far so good” and it “continues to look promising.”
Matt Hill   
  30 December 2011, 12:35 am
‘Has Matt deserted? Gone AWOL? Sleeping? Bored with it all?
Not even returned to say Thank You for all your suggestions. Not come back to say “Sorry, I was wrong about Res 242″.
Maybe he’s travelling.’
No, I had to take a break and get some work done. I assumed you would cope without me for 24 hours or so.
I’m going to go through these comments to try an answer them all, but a few words first, in response to the general charge that I’m… well, I’m not quite sure what the charge is, but it seems to be a combination of several claims: that I’m cynical, ignorant, hateful, narcissistic, fat, and, in general, a bad bad man. Maybe not quite as bad as Finkelstein, but pretty bad.
I’ll go through the specific accusations shortly, but a general point. I don’t even quite understand what people mean when they say I’m ‘using’ HP or that I have some kind of underhand ‘agenda’. My only agenda here is to get some book recommendations, because most of the books I read about the subject have a similar outlook. As someone who sees himself on the centre-left, instinctively I frame my arguments in opposition the hard left. I’ve realised lately that’s something of a limitation. When I started posting here at Harry’s Place, I confess some of the counter-arguments surprised me. As one small example, some people argued that there was nothing undemocratic about the West Bank occupation, because the Israelis could vote in Knesset elections and the Palestinians could vote in PA elections – i.e. there were two parallel more-or-less democratic regimes for two separate peoples on the same territory. I don’t claim everyone believes this – many HP readers share my opposition to the occupation – but it was an argument I’d never heard. That’s just one example.
So I realised that I should be hearing more counter-arguments from the pro-Israeli side. I read Ephraim Karsh’s book Palestine Betrayed on the recommendation of a reader here. I didn’t agree with its overall thesis but I learnt a lot from the detail. And I realised I would benefit from hearing more pro-Israeli, pro-Zionist views, both to sharpen my opinions if I disagree, or to complicate or even change my views.
Several people have accused me of being inflexible. But in the short period I’ve been posting here, my views have changed in several respects. In some respects these changes are vague: I strongly symapthise with the argument that goes, ‘How dare the Arabs, after spending decades trying to destroy us, now come and demand their “rights” with talk of peace and justice – when we all know if they had half the chance they’d destroy us! How dare they demand that we take a knife and carve a state for them out of our own flesh – when they as much as say they’ll use it to try and take more, or destroy us?’
Apart from growing more sympathetic to the emotional appeal of many such arguments, my views have changed in several substantial respects too. Previously I would have balked at calling myself a Zionist. Now I am at least an anti-anti-Zionist, and in a sense I don’t mind saying I’m a Zionist – in that I believe the Jewish people has a right to a state in historic Palestine, and not just a state but a homeland. That is, a state that in some respects serves the world Jewish people, as a defence against persecution.
This is probably the main way in which my views have changed. I now support Israel’s right to exist AS A JEWISH STATE. That is, previously I believed Israel had a right to exist inside the 1967 lines, but as a purely secular, democratic state, with no national character that discriminated against non-Jewish Israelis. Now I believe Israel can be both a Jewish state and a state for all its citizens. There is no reason Israel cannot have a permanent Jewish majority, a distinctively Jewish public sphere in several important respects, a role as a bulwark against future anti-semitism all over the world and a possible destination for Jews facing persecution – and still meet the standards expected of a democracy, guaranteeing all the important rights of Arab Israelis, and granting them full equality with just one or two small caveats.
And I consider it the utmost hypocrisy when people argue for the establishment of a Palestinian state WITHOUT JEWS while condemning the Jewish nature of Israel. I support two states for two peoples – one with a Jewish majority, a distinctively Jewish public sphere, and equality for non-Jews; and another with an Arab majority, a distinctively Arab public sphere, and equality for non-Arabs.
One specific respect in which my views have changed is that I now see that Jews have a historical right to live in places like Hebron – as they did for centuries before the brutal 1929 massacre – and a future peace deal should recognise that right. (There’s no time to go into the details of what this could mean right now.)
Another way in which my views have changed is that I’ve become much more critical of the pro-Palestinian movement in the west. The fact that some sections of it give a platform to the likes of Gilad Atzmon – whose absurd and vile book I just read while holding my nose – amazes and appalls me, and indicates that there are serious problems with hypocrisy and anti-semitism within the movement. It seems to me that the movement holds Israel to standards it won’t hold the Palestinians to. And the vogue for supporting the so-called one-state solution, or the one-state so-called solution, while a symptom of incredible naivety for some people, looks like a desire to reconquer the whole of historic Palestine for others.
I have made these sentiments known publicly at sites like Liberal conspiracy, and I will increasingly do so (remember I have only been blogging for about three months). Ironically, at some pro-Palestinian sites I have applied to writer for, I have been told I am not welcome – partly for views such as those outlined above, and my longstanding opposition to the ‘right of return’ – but also because I am now considered ‘Harry’s Place writer Matt Hill’!
So while I come here and get almost endless abuse – much of it, I feel, unfair – at other sites I am considered tainted by the association. And I should also point out I have publicly defended Harry’s Place against those who have condemned it for being hateful and ‘Islamophobic’ and reflexively and uncompromisingly anti-Arab. I even condemned one blogger who used the treatment I’d received from readers to support his claim Harry’s Place is some kind of anti-Arab conspiracy.
There are endless other ways in which my views have been complicated by writing here, too many to mention. I’ve been persuaded that the Palestinian people aren’t ready to accept what I consider a reasonable compromise, based on their attachment to the RoR. I am less inclined to condemn Israeli leaders who’ve made stupid anti-Arab comments (ironically because I’ve seen readers here hang, draw and quarter PA officials for making stupid and uncharacteristic anti-Israeli remarks). I have developed a huge admiration for early Zionist culture – its idealism, romanticsm, intellectualism, even its feminism. And yes, I would probably write my pieces on Finkelstein and anti-Israeli prejudice differently now.
I won’t pretend I’ve had a Damascene conversion and changed my fundamental opposition to the occupation and support for the Palestinian cause. And not all of these issues I’ve mentioned are entirely due to conversations I’ve had at Harry’s Place – I was already in the process of drifting slowly away from the uncritical pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist views of my early 20s (to end speculation that I’m actually 15, I’m 27). But I’ve become much more aware, and sympathetic to, a lot of the sensitivities and arguments of pro-Israeli readers here – even as a lot of them were expressed as attacks on me.
Look, if someone were posting here in support of the one-state solution, and attacking Israel for being a Jewish state, and making excuses for Hamas, and dismissing claims that the Arab world has huge problems with parochialism and anti-semitism – then HP readers and I would be on the same side. For many pro-Palestinians on the web, I would indeed be, and am, lumped in with Harry’s Place.
We have serious areas of disagreement, no doubt. I am simply appealing to everyone reading this to credit me with sincerity, a willingness to learn, and an eagerness for debate.
One more note, on the claim that I’m narcissistic or that it’s ‘all about me’. I have no desire whatsoever to talk about myself. This post was framed in a self-deprecatory first-person voice, because an appeal for books would be boring. But I really just want to talk about books (and in between the raging argument, there have been some fascinating suggestions). It’s never, ever me who makes things personal on these threads. It is a source of great frustration to me that we always end up talking about myself – normally in response to claims that I must be immature, mentally deficient, racist, etc. (The comments here about my being fat, and about where I went to school, are particularly egregious.)
So I would really like to continue what’s been an interesting chat about books, and jettison the rest. Soon I’ll post a list of the books I’ll be reading on the suggestion of HP readers, and when I go to Israel later in January I’ll post a running commentary on the books I read on my blog.
Abu Faris   
  30 December 2011, 12:47 am
No, you don’t “want to talk about books”; you really want to talk about yourself, how important you think you are, and generally be an annoying squirt.
Joseph W   
  30 December 2011, 12:51 am
And yes, I would probably write my pieces on Finkelstein and anti-Israeli prejudice differently now.
What would you now say about Finkelstein?
Matt Hill   
  30 December 2011, 1:04 am
Abu Faris,
Well, test me. You stop talking about me, and see if I stop talking about me.
mel   
  30 December 2011, 1:05 am
Did you read the links from David S at 8.06.
And the same question as Joseph W
Abu Faris   
  30 December 2011, 1:08 am
Erm, Matt are you so dense that you are unaware that your last post failed your own test.
Honestly, what a bullshit merchant.
Abu Faris   
  30 December 2011, 1:10 am
And we are now going to be inflicted with what Matt Hill has decided to read from the suggestions above?
Personally, I think I would rather watch paint dry.
Abu Faris   
  30 December 2011, 1:32 am
“You stop talking about me” – and exactly who else should we be talking about, Matt – this is, after all, your thread!
Honestly, you could not make it up.
Matt Hill   
  30 December 2011, 1:45 am
Joseph W,
I’m afraid you still won’t like what I have to say, because I still think there is much of scholarly value in his books. But outside his books, I just can’t understand him. It’s not just the remark I pointed out in my post, where he fails to condemn attacks on civilians. The more video footage I see of his trip to Lebanon and his views on Hezbollah, the more baffled I am. I don’t know how he can call Nasrallah a reasonable, thoughtful man – he’s on record as making some astonishingly anti-semitic and stupid comments. And while I could understand it if he restricted himself to supporting Hezbollah’s right to resist Israeli invasion, I think it’s absurd and dishonest of him to say he doesn’t care about Hezbollah’s domestic politics, and to excuse its post-2000 provocations and attacks on Israel. If he doesn’t take an interest in internal Lebanese politics, why does he take such an interest in internal Israeli politics? And how are Hezbollah protecting Lebanese civilians by provoking the superpower next door? There’s so much wrong with Hezbollah – even if, as I’ve said, it arguably had the right to resist the 1982-2000 occupation – that I think Finkelstein was insane to express any kind of support for the group.
So I would focus more on that. I would call him out on comments like ‘Israel needs to suffer a defeat like Germany in 1945′ – what the hell does that mean? Is he advocating a military attack on Israel? Again, he is so casual about Israeli lives.
I would have several disagreements with him on issues touched on above: his opposition to a ‘Jewish state’; his failure to acknowledge the history of Arab rejectionism; his failure to acknowledge Israel’s genuine and legitimate security concerns, both now and in a hypothetical peace deal; also his support for BDS (which I’ve always opposed, actually, because it singles Israel out unfairly); his failure to see that Zionism has meant and can mean very different things, some totally benign, and needn’t have entailed dispossession and occupation of Arabs. These are all disagreements I have with mainstream pro-Palestinians I guess.
I also think a lot of the reason NF is so loathed is the way in which he expresses himself – the speedy way he resorts to Nazi analogies being his worst characteristic. I also think he’s very reckless about the kind of thing that turns up on his website, which is run by students who are clearly very amateur and have a habit of linking to idiotic and nasty material.
I guess the main issue for most of Finkelstein’s detractors is the whole Holocaust Industry business. I don’t know how many people here have read the book – I understand many people refuse to, because they feel they know enough about him to reject his views. That is fair enough – I feel the same about, say, Nick Griffin. I would say the same about Atzmon, but I’m reviewing his book for another site (and I’ll be opening a can of whuppass on it). That is a rational choice and considering some of Finkelstein’s absurd public comments, I don’t blame people who make it.
But I feel the Holocaust Industry is a less controversial book than people think. There are two main sections. One is a very dry, actually quite boring investigation of the saga where Jewish organisations claimed money from European banks who were, they alleged, holding looted assets from Holocaust victims. This section is really just an investigation of the various government and corporate reports into the cases, and I think it’s persuasive.
The more controversial section, and here I do have problems with it, is where Finkelstein attacks some of the various ways the Holocaust has been misused. I agree – and I think most would agree – with him about the schlocky, sentimental books that are 90% trash as history or fiction or whatever they claim to be. I agree a lot of books cheapen the subject.
The more controversial claim, which is a small part of the book, is that the Holocaust has been, and is, used to mitigate or distract from Israel’s crimes. I don’t think many would disagree that the Holocaust HAS been misused in that way. Take the absurd comments of Israeli PM Menachem Begin before the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, where he constantly compared Arafat to Hitler and said the Jewish people had a chance to kill Hitler once and for all. In fairness, Begin was starting to lose his mind at this point, and was always deeply traumatised by the Holocaust which claimed much of his family. And the Israeli public was largely horrified by such language.
Where I do disagree strongly with Finkelstein’s thesis is when he argues that the Holocaust only became a large part of Israeli life around 1967. The implication is obvious: that Israel began exploiting the memory of the Holocaust to underwrite its colonisation of the West Bank. But the scant evidence Finkelstein provides for this daring claim is deeply unpersuasive. There are several reasons why in the mid-60s the Holocaust started to play a bigger role in the national discourse: the Eichmann trial, the fear that Nasser was plotting another Shoah, the fact that many survivors were genuinely too traumatised to speak about their experiences for some time. The 1967 claim is bollocks, and quite offensive. And it is on this scanty basis that Finkelstein builds an unconvincing and slightly paranoid case that the Holocaust is being cynically and systematically manipulated.
One reason for Finkelstein’s paranoia is the fact he’s said he’s a communist. It’s a common habit amongst people on the hard left to see public events being manipulated by shady, semi-concealed forces. This looks a bit like the old anti-semitic trope about a Jewish cabal – but, while he might have taken greater care to disown, Finkelstein has never supported.
However, there are complicating factors in the overall assessment. Finkelstein remains committed to the two-state solution, which makes his relatively moderate in the current pro-Palestinian movement. I’ve even heard him described as a Zionist by some pro-Palestinians, who (rightly) note that support for two states implies support for Israel’s right to exist. Although this would make everyone from chomsky to Arafat a Zionist! The point is that, when it comes to the peace process, Finkelstein is actually not all that extreme.
So he’s a complex figure, and there may be more about him I don’t know. I think I might plan a longer piece on him, trying to account for all his different characteristics and understand how they fit together. I’m afraid this won’t satisfy you, Joseph W, but I’m trying to be honest about how I see him.
Matt Hill   
  30 December 2011, 1:50 am
‘“You stop talking about me” – and exactly who else should we be talking about, Matt – this is, after all, your thread!’
On the one hand you criticise me for talking about myself, and then you say ‘what else is there to talk about?’
Talk about I-P books, Abu Faris. That is what the thread is supposed to be about.
You’re an intelligent man. You can understand the difference between talking about my views, or the subject I have raised here, and speculating on whether I’m fat. Would you like to know how much I weigh?
If you’d rather watch paint dry than continue with this, can I respectfully request that you go somewhere and watch paint dry. Because this was an interesting thread about books before you derailed it.
Please, enough. This is childish and beneath you, Abu Faris.
Abu Faris   
  30 December 2011, 1:51 am
Matt Hill does not want to talk about himself; but read this:
Soon I’ll post a list of the books I’ll be reading on the suggestion of HP readers, and when I go to Israel later in January I’ll post a running commentary on the books I read on my blog.
What a tedious, self-absorbed turd.
Abu Faris   
  30 December 2011, 1:52 am
I tell you what, Hill – what is beneath me is dealing with stuck up little cunts like you; but I do all the same. Silly of me.
Abu Faris   
  30 December 2011, 1:54 am
Patronising oik.
Matt Hill   
  30 December 2011, 2:02 am
Well, don’t then! Please!
Abu Faris   
  30 December 2011, 3:49 am
Suits me, you narcissistic, talentless gnome.
Think of England   
  30 December 2011, 4:09 am
Now, now, A.B., he’s not talentless. He got your blood pressure way up. Speaking of stuff, are you safe now? I mean, in a place where you’re safe?
Matt Hill   
  30 December 2011, 4:24 am
Thanks for your thoughtful contribution.
Matt Hill   
  30 December 2011, 4:44 am
It does sound as though you’re very stressed out, Abu Faris. I too hope you’re safe where you are and looking after yourself. I’ve always thought your posts were thoughtful and well-informed; I’d much prefer to be having a civilised debate with you.
Matt Hill   
  30 December 2011, 4:47 am
‘Thanks for your thoughtful contribution.’ – that was to Abu Faris
Paul M   
  30 December 2011, 4:48 am
Jeez, Abu,
You’re an educated, thoughtful, smart man with a staggering breadth of experience, whose opinions I value even when I disagree with you. And when, as now, you’re an ass, you’re a world class ass. If you don’t like reading what Matt writes, don’t read it. Right now you’re being a troll.
Matt’s worst sins mostly come down to naivety and youth, but he seems to be trying to expand his knowledge and to challenge his ideas, and he’s brave enough to wade into the bear pit. I think he’s got a long way to go, but he’s trying to get there and I’d be happy if all of Israel’s critics were like Matt. Give him a break. Let him do his summer reading, then perhaps we’ll see if he’s making progress. If nothing else, I should thank him for inspiring a thread of a million good ideas of things for me to read.
Matt: If you want my take on Finkelstein (you do, of course) it’s this: The loathing of all things Israeli comes first with him, and his concern about the Holocaust “industry” came after. He thinks he’s found a great weapon. He’s decided that remorse, guilt or what have you about the Holocaust shores up Israel’s legitimacy, and he’s made it his life’s work to hack away at it. It’s not so much Israel or Zionists that harp obsessively about the Shoah — if you look around you, you’ll see that few of us use it as a central argument in Israel’s defence — it’s Finkelstein himself. He builds it up so he can knock it down, perhaps without any awareness that he does, but it brings him name recognition and a ready audience so why stop?
For the rest, you too can be a pain in the arse, sometimes almost up to Abu’s high standard. Good luck with your education: I hope you’re really as open to persuasion as you claim and sometimes actually seem to be, because I have to believe that the more you learn the more you’ll understand that Israel’s is the less sinning side. God knows we could use more articulate, well-read people willing to stand up for Israel and its best ideals.
Abu: Have a beer. You’ll be a kinder, gentler human being.
Matt Hill   
  30 December 2011, 5:33 am
Paul M,
Well, thanks. Obviously I think your remarks about my youth and naivety and ‘making progress’ are a little patronising – I’m pushing thirty! – but I suppose there’s every chance you’re right, and that in a few years I’ll look back on my 27 year old self and feel the same way. (On the other hand, lots of people who are older than me have similar or much more extreme views – I guess some of us never grow up.) If my views are so simplistic, it should be easy for you and others to explain where I’ve gone wrong, of course. I don’t understand, if my writing is so hilariously, contemptibly stupid, why it provokes so much indignation here. Normally if people’s views are beneath my contempt, they don’t bother me much. To your credit, you’ve actually explained why you disagree with me – which is all I ask. How will I ever learn and ‘make progress’ if nobody shares the benefit of their vastly superior wisdom with me.
I can’t tell you how much I want to thank you for frankly disagreeing with me about Finkelstein and explaining why. So far I haven’t come across anyone on this site who thinks their loathing of Finkelstein requires explanation.
I think you’re right to a very large extent that Finkelstein exaggerates the degree to which Israel and its supporters depend on the Holocaust to legitimise its existence and behaviour (the Begin example I quoted notwithstanding; Shamir was rather prone to it too). As a strong supporter of Israel’s right to exist myself, I think it’s a legitimate state for a very simple reason: it does exist, it has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, and it is viewed as legitimate by its citizens. That’s the only grounds on which any state has a ‘right to exist’, as far as I’m concerned.
So if Finkelstein argues that Israel habitually uses the Holocaust to legitimise its existence and actions, I think you’re right to say he’s mistaken. Only the most simplistic and uneducated advocacy for Israel draws a straight line between the Holocaust and modern Israel. Even the initial establishment of Israel had little to do with the Holocaust, so it’s not true to say, as is often claimed, that the Arabs are being punished for Europe’s sins. I think it’s also true to say he has a loathing of all things Israeli. It clouds his judgement in some ways.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I agree Israel is the less sinning side. It’s true that Israel doesn’t deliberately target civilians. It doesn’t have suicide bombers. It’s a much more liberal, democratic state than Palestine is likely to be. My response is to say: what does this change? Does it make the decades-long rule over 3.7 million people legitimate? If a people had to pass a virtue test before they gained statehood, there’d be few countries in the international community. The reasons the Palestinians deserve sovereignty and justice isn’t that they’re humans, it’s that they’re angels.
I actually don’t think the occupation started as a cynical attempt at conquest and exploitation. It was, as Gershom Gorenberg says, an ‘accidental empire’. It resulted from the unplanned, battlefield logic of the Six-Day War. But holding on to the territories – for reasons of realpolitik and short-sightedness, not malice – was a disaster for Israel, and every day the occupation continues, it becomes harder to end. This view isn’t incompatible with my strong support for Israel’s existence and security, and my great affection for the land and people.
Joe   
  30 December 2011, 5:47 am
I actually don’t think the occupation started as a cynical attempt at conquest and exploitation. It was, as Gershom Gorenberg says, an ‘accidental empire’. It resulted from the unplanned, battlefield logic of the Six-Day War. But holding on to the territories – for reasons of realpolitik and short-sightedness, not malice – was a disaster for Israel,
Lets put aside the fact that you do not understand the text and meaning of SC Resolution 242, which explicitly makes the final border of Israel the product of a “secure and recognised” border with her future neighbour, the answer is The Khartoum Resolution of 1967
The best remembered action at Khartoum, however, was the adoption of the dictum of “Three NOs” with respect to Israel:
1.NO peace with Israel
2.NO recognition of Israel
3.NO negotiations with Israel


Matt Hill   
  30 December 2011, 5:52 am
Paul M,
And by the way, a few posts ago I anticipated your claim that Finkelstein exaggerates the extent to which the Holocaust is used to legitimise Israel – I said the idea that the Holocaust is being ‘cynically and systematically manipulated’ is ‘unconvincing’, ‘paranoid’ and even ‘offensive’.
I guess the subject being what it is, for many people this is enough to write Finkelstein off altogether – especially when they’re unlikely to find much to agree with in the less offensive parts of his oeuvre. I understand that. But I repeat that the vast majority of content in books like ‘Image and Reality’ is mainstream scholarship, if strongly leftwing and pro-Palestinian. I have a feeling a lot of readers would be quite shocked to encounter this other Finkelstein – a pedantic scholar with a footnote fetish. He’s a bit like the Wizard of Oz: a monster with a fearsome and mythical reputation who turns out to be a skinny little guy shouting through a loud-hailer.
I’m not discounting the serious issues I recited earlier. But I don’t think he’s a genuinely racist and unhinged individual, like Atzmon. And I don’t think anyone who agrees with me is an anti-semite or stupid or unhinged. Otherwise you have to account for why Avi Shlaim – who praises him effusively, is held in such high regard by Israeli and international writers who most of us respect, including Shlomo Ben Ami, who considers Shlaim his mentor and was interior minister to Netanyahu’s current defence minister, Ehud Barak!
Joe   
  30 December 2011, 6:07 am
I have a question. Earlier in the thread Joan Peters book was mentioned, as per usual in a dismissive derrogatory tone. I understand that this book is supposedly debunked famously (initially by Edward Said, hardly an impartial commentator) and more recently by the agenda riddent Finkelstein.
(Ironically, Matt refers to the extansive bibliography of Finkelstein’s books as proof of their authority. Peter’s book was also very well notated, I have even checked a few of the references and found them to be accurate.)
Heres my question, what is the basis of dimissing this book out of hand. I remember that Peter’s had several theses;
1) Historically an independent Palestine (since the end of Jewish Commonwealth circa 70AD) has never existed (barring a period of Christian domination). — If I am not mistaken this is factually true.
2) Palestine has always been part of a Greater Syria (again factually true)
3) Jordan was part of manditory Palestine, and was cleaved off to create an Arab state within Palestine. (again factually true)
4) Wilson notions of ethinic self determination was dependent on several factors. The presence of an ethnic group in a geographic area was in and of itself not necessarily reason enough to grant a group a seperate nation/state to one that already existed. The existance of other states that shared cultural/religeous/linguistic/historic ties to a particular group in fact mitigates against seperate self determination. In this context (Peter’s argued) Arab self determination in Israel, Judea and Sumaria are redundant since Lebanon, Syria and Jordan all exist which provide the outlets for self determination in what used to be a single provence of the Ottoman Empire. Israel on the other hand is linguistically, religiously and culturally different. The argument that Peter’s makes is that an independent Palestine is redundant (my word). (This argument makes no statement on the enfranchisment of Arabs living under Israeli control, it is simply an argument against self-determination.)
4) The continuing refugee crisis amongst Palestinians is political not real. The definition of a Palestinian refugee includes ecconomic immagrants to Palestine in the post war period. These people were not themselves Palestinians, but became refugees by the unique definition of a Palestinian Refugee. To me this was the most tenuous argument in the book, but was it wrong?
5) Palestinians, particularly in major population centres like Haifa were encouraged to stay in place by their Jewish neighbours. (Factually true), and most of the emigres from places like Haifa left well before the War of Independence, thus, again belying the idea of their refugee status.
6) A Palastinian Refugee includes descendant of the first genreation of refugees. The refugees are refused resettlement in areas where they share linguistic, cultural and religious identiy with the host. The continueing refugee issue is a political rather than humanitarian problem.
From the top of my head these are 6 prominant arguements that Peter’s makes. Perhaps someone here can debunk each of them for me.
Matt Hill   
  30 December 2011, 6:09 am
Joe,
Two points, in reverse order. First, Khartoum was 45 years ago. The PLO accepted resolution 242 twenty years ago. The entire Arab League offered Israel full peace and normalisation of relations in 2002, and repeated the offer in 2007, in return to withdrawal to the 1967 and a ‘just solution’ to the refugee issue. It was also made clear that this was seen as the basis for negotiations, not a take-it-or-leave it offer. So Khartoum quite clearly no longer applies. It’s true the Arab world has a history of rejectionism with regard to Israel, but I don’t think it makes sense to quote resolutions adopted 45 years ago as some kind of ‘gotcha’ proof that the Arab world rejects Israel’s existence.
Second, if I don’t understand 242, please explain it to me. Are you arguing it constrains Israel to stay in the West Bank until a border has been negotiated? That until that day, Israel simply has no choice but to occupy the Palestinians? That 242 compelled Israel to settle hundreds of thousands of its citizens in the West Bank? Does that mean the Gaza ‘withdrawal’ was in violation of 242? What do you mean?
Answer me this: do you think the settlement project and the occupation since 1967 have been conducive to the realisation of the goals laid out in 242, or the opposite?
Joe   
  30 December 2011, 6:13 am
Well, opinion polls certainly show that ordinary Palestinians see the right of return as crucial. Their leaders have moved on though. Abbas and PA top brass have been talking about a ‘just resolution’ to the refugee crisis – code for compensation and return to the Palestinian state – for years now. Their leaders have moved on though. Abbas and PA top brass have been talking about a ‘just resolution’ to the refugee crisis – code for compensation and return to the Palestinian state – for years now.
Matt Hill 29 December 2011, 7:04 am
But a Just resolution would simply be granting them citizenship in their existing and current place of residence. A Just resolution would acknowledge that the “refugee problem” is a political rather than humanitarian problem.
Secondly, where is this code book that you keep talking about, and who understands this code (other than you)? Clearly this code is meant to deceive the “ordinary Palestinians” that their leaders are holding strong for their interests.
Joe   
  30 December 2011, 6:19 am
. Try it – you’ll be disappointed to find quite a pedantic, scholarly work, full of investigation of footnotes, technical discussion of demographics, etc.
Matt Hill 29 December 2011, 1:42 am
I guess it would be futile to point out that merely having copious footnotes is itself not proof that the author is fairly or accurately reflecting what s/he claims to be referencing. David Irving was notorious for his copious documentation and referencing, except when placed under scrutiny it was found that he deliberately and mendaciously misrepresented and skewed the interpretation of his documents to fit is preconceived conclusions rather than to honestly represent how the historical documents related to his narrative.
The point is, of course, mimicking academic style and format is itself not proof of academic critical analysis and honest reporting and representation.
Joe   
  30 December 2011, 6:26 am
. The entire Arab League offered Israel full peace and normalisation of relations in 2002, and repeated the offer in 2007,
blah blah blah…
The point I was responding too was your suggestion that Israeli occupation of Judea and Summaria post 1967 was a planned conquest of those territories. You inferred that Israel could have and should have withdrawn from those territories at that time, rather than create and accidental empire. What has happened post Oslo is irrelavent to that discussion.
However, what is clear is that Post-Oslo Israel has tried to formulate a peace agreement with the Palestinians, you, however, refuse to accept that the failure to reach such an agreement, and the continued occupation of Judea and Sumaria is at least partially due to a lack of will by the Palestinian leadership to reach such an accomidation. The Arab League offers of 2000 and 2007 are irrelavent since the Palestinians, through their own elected representatives (again post-Oslo) have not themselve commiteed themselves to an end of conflict and an end of claims.
The true reason why peace is elusive is because the Palestinians do not want to agree to these two points.


Matt Hill   
  30 December 2011, 6:27 am
Joe,
Finkelstein’s attack on the book doesn’t relate to those points, which could be found in any pro-Israeli polemic. (Personally I agree with 1, 2 and 6. Your point 3 is not really true – historic Palestine was several things, including an administrative division for various empires, a name for an unspecified portion of land in the lexicon of western christians, and the name for a British mandate. The mandate for Palestine and Transjordan was a single entity for less than a year. You have two points 4. The first one I disagree strongly with, because it seems to me to misunderstand the rationale for a Palestinian state. Simply, the reason the Palestinians should have a state is that a people in any given territory should have the right to choose their own government – and the Palestinians can’t. Put another way, I’d have no problem if the people of the West Bank and Gaza wanted to attach themselves to an expanded Jordan. But if you’re arguing that the Arabs have Jordan already, so Israel should have the West Bank and Gaza, what are you proposing should happen to the 3.7 million Arabs living there? Should they just leave? And how would you achieve that?)
Anyway, Finkelstein debunked the argument which made Peters’s book distinctive and won it all kinds of accolades. The argument that Palestine was relatively unpopulated – truly a ‘land without a people’ – before the Zionists arrived, stimulating the economy and attracting Arab immigration. He checked her footnotes and saw that she was falsifying the information they contained, and wrote articles demonstrating how. For instance, she would add ellipses to remove information that reversed the meaning of sentences. She utterly falsified what all the important sources for this argument claimed. This would be bad scholarly practice in any case, but in this case it destroyed the argument that made the book a success. Finkelstein proved that Peters had deliberately and cynically concocted an argument for the obvious purpose of claiming that Palestine had no previous owner. He showed that the book was worthless from a scholarly point of view, and now no scholar would quote it and treat it as a reputable source. And Peters has made herself very scarce ever since. Whatever anyone says, for a graduate student to demolish a world-famous scholars career in this way was quite astonishingly brilliant.
Matt Hill   
  30 December 2011, 6:36 am
Joe,
‘But a Just resolution would simply be granting them citizenship in their existing and current place of residence.’
That would be part of it, I agree. The other main part would be the offer of citizenship in the new state of Palestine. I agree that the refugees have been shamefully treated by the Arab world, which has kept them disenfranchised and desperate as a human reproach to Israel. This is no way to treat human beings. And I don’t believe in the right of return, as I’ve said many times.
‘Secondly, where is this code book that you keep talking about, and who understands this code (other than you)? Clearly this code is meant to deceive the “ordinary Palestinians” that their leaders are holding strong for their interests.’
You’re right – the PA are too frightened to admit that they’ve effectively abandoned the RoR. It should come clean – it’s unfair to delude a desperate people with impossible fantasies.
Matt Hill   
  30 December 2011, 6:39 am
‘The point I was responding too was your suggestion that Israeli occupation of Judea and Summaria post 1967 was a planned conquest of those territories.’
My point was that it was unplanned.
‘You inferred that Israel could have and should have withdrawn from those territories at that time, rather than create and accidental empire.’
Are you saying it couldn’t have? What made leaving the territories, or at least administering them without settling them, impossible? Are you saying Israel had no choice but to settle hundreds of thousands of people across the Green Line?
Joe   
  30 December 2011, 6:39 am
if I don’t understand 242, please explain it to me.
Your first misunderstanding is to assume that 242 calls for the border to be established along the 1948 Armistice lines. It delibrately does not. It says that the formula for peace will involve the establishent of secure recognised borders, to which Israel will withdraw. It is the land for peace formulation, but it does not and never did anticipate a return to the status quo anti.
Are you arguing it constrains Israel to stay in the West Bank until a border has been negotiated?
Yes! Israel is the legal and internationally recognised adminstrator of the territories untill such a time as its final status is determined by negotiations.
That until that day, Israel simply has no choice but to occupy the Palestinians?
No you are right, they could abandon their leagal obligations at any time of their choosing. They could also unilaterally decree where their border is. But, and here is the point, unilateral action will and does only lead to further conflict.
That 242 compelled Israel to settle hundreds of thousands of its citizens in the West Bank?
No, and I fail to see the sequitour here.
Does that mean the Gaza ‘withdrawal’ was in violation of 242?
An intersting idea, I had not considered previously. While I thought, at the time, it demonstrated Israels willingness and integriety in the peace process, I have come to believe that it was a tacticle and strategic mistake. Israel is not substantially better off out of Gaza, and the Palestinians are worse off.
do you think the settlement project and the occupation since 1967 have been conducive to the realisation of the goals laid out in 242, or the opposite?
Answer me this, do you think that Arab foot dragging and diplomatic intransigence has been conducive to peace making. The construction of Jewish/Israeli housing is the inevitable consequence of a lack of good faith by the Palestinians in negotiating a peace, with and end of claims and an end of conflict. If the Arabs had negotiated in good faith for a speedy and precipitous end of the conflict there would have been no time for settlement activity.
Indeed continued settlement activity should be an incentive for the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table and quickly end the conflict!
Matt Hill   
  30 December 2011, 6:42 am
‘However, what is clear is that Post-Oslo Israel has tried to formulate a peace agreement with the Palestinians, you, however, refuse to accept that the failure to reach such an agreement, and the continued occupation of Judea and Sumaria is at least partially due to a lack of will by the Palestinian leadership to reach such an accomidation.’
You’re right, I refuse to accept this account of events. The evidence doesn’t support it. However I respect your opinion and I agree this is the key issue: who has blocked peace efforts? I plan to write a post on this at some point, so we can debate it there. Or everyone can join together to call me fat, stupid and racist.
Joe   
  30 December 2011, 6:43 am
You’re right – the PA are too frightened to admit that they’ve effectively abandoned the RoR.
Again where is this code book that you keep talking about. How can I take a face value anything that the PA says if they are delibrately misleading either me, or their own people? How can you be so certain that it is it’s own people they are misleading? They are afterall talking in tongues.
Joe   
  30 December 2011, 6:45 am
You’re right, I refuse to accept this account of events. The evidence doesn’t support it.
Yes by this evidence is all in code that only you understand. Or comes from sources that contradict the first hand accounts of the events, from source of dubious repute and intent.
Matt Hill   
  30 December 2011, 6:54 am
‘Your first misunderstanding is to assume that 242 calls for the border to be established along the 1948 Armistice lines.’
I don’t think that and I haven’t said it.
‘Yes! Israel is the legal and internationally recognised adminstrator of the territories untill such a time as its final status is determined by negotiations.’
It doesn’t oblige Israel to settle the territories or install a military dictatorship, with no rule of law or basic freedoms. That is what’s at issue here. If Israel ruled the territories in a benign manner until the Palestinians were ready to take over, I wouldn’t complain.
‘Answer me this, do you think that Arab foot dragging and diplomatic intransigence has been conducive to peace making.’
I think this is a fair explanation of events up to 1993, but since then the Palestinian leadership has been the much more willing side to negotiate peace. I realise you will be appalled by this claim, and it could prompt a long discussion, which I’m willing to have. But I’m not sure there’s time for the whole thing now.
‘The construction of Jewish/Israeli housing is the inevitable consequence of a lack of good faith by the Palestinians in negotiating a peace, with and end of claims and an end of conflict.’
Why inevitable? This is an excellent example of the claim that the Palestinians are forcing Israel to oppress them, which underpins all pro-Israeli polemic.
‘If the Arabs had negotiated in good faith for a speedy and precipitous end of the conflict there would have been no time for settlement activity.’
True. And if Israel had dropped an atom bomb on Ramallah in 1975, you could say the same thing. But that wouldn’t make dropping the bomb the right thing to do.
‘Indeed continued settlement activity should be an incentive for the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table and quickly end the conflict!’
I suppose in the same way that, if you and I had a dispute over who owned some land outside our house, if I started robbing you it would be a good incentive for you to settle our dispute. But anyone who understood human psychology would point out doing so would make you less forthcoming.

Matt Hill   
  30 December 2011, 7:05 am
Joe,
’sources that contradict the first hand accounts of the events, from source of dubious repute and intent.’
Which sources are you talking about?
Paul M   
  30 December 2011, 7:15 am
Matt,
Yes, I probably was being a bit patronising toward you, though not by intention. Sorry. On the other hand, from a certain perspective 27 is not so old and I’ll be surprised if your opinions don’t continue to change as you approach my advanced age. I hope they do; I wouldn’t wish it on you to be one of the ones who never grow up.
“If my views are so simplistic, it should be easy for you and others to explain where I’ve gone wrong” Well, no. It’s the simplistic views that are easy to explain; that’s why they’re attractive, and why so many of us start there and have to work our way laboriously out of them. I’m not going to try here to explain everything I disagree with you about. It’s approaching midnight where I am, I don’t have the time or energy, and the thought of taking yet another lap around that track is not appealing. I don’t however, find your writing “hilariously, contemptibly stupid” and didn’t say I do, so if that comment was directed at me please don’t put words into my mouth. And I don’t hold that I possess “vastly superior wisdom” — only that I’ve experienced a bit more of the history as a contemporary than someone of your age, witnessed the process of facts getting rewritten and history being inverted, and seen the unexpected consequences of a number of well-intentioned ideas.
One point of yours I will pick up: “Does it [Israel's comparative virtue] make the decades-long rule over 3.7 million people legitimate?” Yes, actually, it does — or rather, that rule has independent legitimacy. It is unpleasant and causes some undoubted suffering, humiliation and anger, but it is lawful and it is necessary until the Palestinians agree to an unambiguous peace that protects Israeli rights and needs. I will make you an analogy that will be an open invitation for someone malicious to say “Paul M thinks the Palestinians are like dogs.” Not true: It’s just a simplistic way of clarifying a concept that anti-Zionists would much rather blur, nothing more. Imagine you are locked in a stand-off with a powerful and aggressive dog. You have both hands round its throat and are keeping it, mostly successfully, from doing you serious harm. You would much rather not be holding it. You’d prefer to be as far from it as possible. The dog, for its part, ought not to have to suffer under a choke-hold. It’s a living creature with needs — some would say rights — of its own, but it has given you every reason to believe that, if you release it, it will try and tear your throat out. Do you think I could persuade you that the dog’s right to freedom is the only thing that counts? (The analogy with the Middle East ends there, because dogs have no capacity to use reasoning to overrule emotion. The Palestinians do.)
Finally, a last comment on Finkelstein. He is despised not just because he accuses others of dishonest manipulation of the Holocaust, but because he himself manipulates it as a tool in the service of his open hatred of Israel. In the process, he shows the way to every reeking antisemite and Israel-hating bigot. Why should I care how many footnotes he uses to do that?


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