Tag: Norman Finkelstein
From the Israel-Palestine Memory Hole
From the Israel-Palestine Memory Hole: a very brief, incomplete summary of how we got where we are, in under two-three hours.
(* For “stealing a people’s country” read the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.)
- Hamas attack was ‘almost inevitable’ (Times Radio)
“For many years there’s been a complete absence of any kind of political process.” The “appalling living conditions in Gaza” and “two-sided Palestinian leadership” have made a conflict like this ‘inevitable’, says, former Gaza correspondent, James Rogers.
2. Israel launches most intense military operation in West Bank in years; at least 8 Palestinians dead 2023
U.N. Mideast envoy Tor Wennesland warned that the escalation in the West Bank was “very dangerous.” Asked about the Israeli drone attacks on residential areas, U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said: “Attacks on heavily populated areas are violations of international humanitarian law.”
Lynn Hastings, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in the Palestinian areas, said on Twitter that she was “alarmed by scale of Israeli forces operation” and noted the airstrikes in a densely populated refugee camp. She said the U.N. was mobilizing humanitarian aid.
UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, said many camp residents were in need of food, drinking water and milk powder.
3. Laying Siege to Gaza Is No Solution
“The latest Israeli military operation in Gaza is the most recent in a long string of such incursions over the past two decades. Major attacks took place in 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2018, and 2021—virtually every two years. Israel has pursued a strategy of “mowing the lawn,” a phrase it uses to describe the periodic bombing of Palestinians in the territory to keep armed groups at bay. But each time Israel says it is going to degrade and destroy the capabilities of Gazan militants, fighters soon prove they have only expanded and increased their capabilities.”
4. Israel imposing apartheid on Palestinians, says former Mossad chief
Pardo is among the highest ranking former officials to draw the once taboo parallel with the old South Africa. Israel’s former attorney general, Michael Ben-Yair, said last year “that my country has sunk to such political and moral depths that it is now an apartheid regime”.
The former speaker of the Israeli parliament, Avraham Burg, and the renowned Israeli historian, Benny Morris, are among more than 2,000 Israeli and American public figures who have signed a recent public statement declaring that “Palestinians live under a regime of apartheid”.
5. Norman Finkelstein: Outrage over Israeli Massacre Shows Power of Nonviolent Palestinian Resistance 2018-19
6. Norman Finkelstein: There was NO WAR in GAZA, it was a MASSACRE 2008-2009
7. An Issue Of Justice: Origins Of The Israel/Palestine Conflict 1948 – 2006
For more resources see the 100 Best Books on the Middle East.
Teaching John Stuart Mill in Iran: A Conversation with Norman Finkelstein
Norman Finkelstein is of course best known for his work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—his books, lectures and media interviews on the subject over the last three decades—and for the considerable controversy it has generated.
Less known is that for many years he also taught political theory. It might come as something of a surprise that among his favorite works is John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. This might come as a surprise since Finkelstein is well to the left of most admirers of the iconic nineteenth-century liberal thinker. Of course Mill was also a socialist and a feminist—indeed an early one (see Martha Nussbaum’s comments at the end of this interview). But in postcolonial studies Mill is widely regarded as an imperialist and a racist. An ambiguous and contested legacy, to be sure—which is part of Mill’s enduring hold on us.
Finkelstein recently taught a short course on Mill’s On Liberty in Iran. There’s a whole literature devoted to this phenomenon. Norma Moruzzi has written about reading Hannah Arendt in Iran. Ali Paya and Mohammad Amin Ghaneirad have mapped the multiple spheres of influence that Jürgen Habermas enjoys in Iran. The Iranian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo has published a book of conversations with Isaiah Berlin. (I myself have written a short book on Iran’s engagement with liberal thinkers.) When leading political thinkers (of varying persuasions) from Europe or North America—from Habermas and Antonio Negri to Richard Rorty and Immanuel Wallerstein—visit Iran, their lectures are major events and occasion considerable buzz. (For more on this, see Mehran Kamrava’s book Iran’s Intellectual Revolution, Farzin Vahdat’s God and Juggernaut: Iran’s Intellectual Encounter with Modernity, and Mehrzad Boroujerdi’s Iranian Intellectuals and the West.)
But Finkelstein did something a bit different. His students weren’t the usual liberal-minded suspects—who represent a significant swath of Iran’s educated classes, incidentally (a phenomenon that is underestimated and trivialized by many Western leftists, which I regard as a form of Left Orientalism). It would have been easy for him to teach the depredations of U.S. and Israeli policy in such a context—but it also would have been incredibly boring. He did something far more interesting. He taught Mill to largely conservative-oriented students in an institution that cranks out apparatchiks for the Islamic Republic.
That is just wickedly cool. Here’s our recent conversation about that experience.
The interview was filmed on April 24, 2014, as part the series of conversations with our guest lecturers that our Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver produces.
There was no war in Gaza, it was a massacre
Norman Finkelstein explains, what is obvious to those paying close attention, that there was no war in Gaza, what took place there was a massacre.
United States of Israel
Sarah Palin is just the latest GOP politician to visit to Israel after a string of possible Presidential hopefuls to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the past few months. Why is establishing your credentials in Tel Aviv before running for US president as vital as stumping in New Hampshire?
Richard Falk, Huwaida Arraf and Norman Finkelstein on the Freedom Flotilla
Huwaida Arraf and Norman Finkelstein are followed by Richard Falk.
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Norman Finkelstein v. Benny Morris
To readers I would highly recommend Norman Finkelstein’s new book, ‘This time we went too far’. It is the most systematic and thorough dismantling of the hasbara edifice erected by Israel and its apologists (including Morris). On paper, Morris is a fine historian, but in his media appearances he always dons the hat of the propagandist. In this debate from Russia Today’s CrossTalk, Benny Morris comes across as defensive and boorish. He uses the familar tools of the propagandist, derision and ridicule, to evade serious questions. Every one of his claims about Gaza — that Hamas used human shields, and that its leadership took sanctuary in basements of hospitals — is rebutted by extensive research carried out by the Goldstone Commission, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. (via MondoWeiss)
On this edition of Peter Lavelle’s CrossTalk, he asks his guests whether the current “indirect talks” between the Israelis and Palestinians are a waste of time.
Impact of the Gaza war on Israel
Norman Finkelstein on Al Jazeera’s Riz Khan Show.
Has there been a shift in Israel’s ties with its allies since the Gaza war and how will that affect the peace process with the Palestinians? Is international support for Israel dwindling since the Gaza war and is it losing the battle for global public opinion?
Finkelstein in Prague
Last week, Norman Finkelstein delivered a series of lectures in Prague as part of his European speaking tour. Finkelstein was initially invited to speak at the prestigious Czech Academy of Sciences but had his invitation revoked less than 24 hours prior to his scheduled talk, allegedly at the behest of the Prime Minister’s office. A similar fate befell Finkelstein’s appearance in Munich and Berlin, where the Heinrich Boll and Rosa Luxembourg Foundations cancelled the events, following “a concerted campaign by neoconservative and pro-Israeli pressure groups, such as Honestly Concerned and BAK Shalom, known for their unconditional support of Israeli policies and the defamation of critics as anti-Semites.”
Here is Finkelstein’s lecture at Casa Gelmi in Prague, organised by the Czech pro-Palestinian group ‘Friends of Palestine’.
Dissident Jews: Unwanted in Germany?
by Raymond Deane
A European country that scapegoats a Semitic people, persecutes defenders of human rights by stripping them of employment, and denies freedom of speech to Jews: surely a description of Germany during the Third Reich?
Yes, but unfortunately also a description of Germany at the outset of the 21st century.
In the wake of German Chancellor Merkel’s craven speech to the Israeli Parliament (the Knesset) two years ago, I wrote: “a penance is being paid for Germany’s past crimes… by the Palestinians to whose plight Merkel is so indifferent…. By scapegoating the victims of its former victims, Germany is compounding its past crimes.” (Scapegoat upon Scapegoat, Electronic Intifada, 20 March 2008).
Just one year later I described the case of Hermann Dierkes, forced to resign his position as representative of Die Linke (The Left Party) on Duisburg city council after tentatively advocating a boycott of Israeli goods. I commented: “It appears that freedom of speech, supposedly one of the proudest acquisitions of post-Fascist Germany, is readily suppressed when exercised to advocate positive action against the racist, politicidal institutions and actions of the Zionist state.” (A public stoning in Germany, Electronic Intifada, March 2009).
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