Norman Finkelstein

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Norman G. Finkelstein (born December 8, 1953) is an American professor of political science and author. The son of Jewish Holocaust survivors, Finkelstein is known for his writings pertaining to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and for his contention that the Holocaust is being exploited both for personal financial gain and for pro-Israel political ends.

A graduate of Binghamton University, he received his Ph.D in Political Science from Princeton University. He has held faculty positions at Brooklyn College, Hunter College, and New York University, and most recently, DePaul University, where he has been an assistant professor since 2003.

Contents 1 Education and career 2 Books 3 Finkelstein on From Time Immemorial 4 Praise of Finkelstein's scholarship 5 Criticism of Finkelstein's scholarship 6 Finkelstein, the Anti-Defamation League, and the allegation of Holocaust denial 7 Finkelstein and Alan Dershowitz 8 Notes 9 Bibliography 9.1 Books, articles, and translations by Norman G. Finkelstein 9.2 Interviews with Finkelstein 9.3 Profiles about Finkelstein 9.4 Reviews of books by Finkelstein 9.5 Critical controversies engaging Finkelstein 10 External links 11 See also

[edit] Education and career

Finkelstein grew up in New York City. He completed his undergraduate studies at Binghamton University in New York in 1974, after which he studied at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. He went on to earn his Master's degree in political science from Princeton University in 1980, and later his PhD in political studies, also from Princeton. Finkelstein wrote his doctoral thesis on Zionism, and it was through this work that he first attracted controversy. Finkelstein has taught at Rutgers University, New York University, Brooklyn College, and Hunter College and currently teaches at DePaul University in Chicago.

Finkelstein has written of his parents' experiences during World War II. His mother, Maryla Husyt Finkelstein, grew up in Warsaw, Poland, and survived the Warsaw Ghetto and the Majdanek concentration camp, as well as two slave labor camps. His father, Zacharias Finkelstein, was a survivor of both the Warsaw Ghetto and the Auschwitz concentration camp.^[1]

[edit] Books

• 1984: Norman Finkelstein on From Time Immemorial
• 1995; 2001; 2003: Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict
• 1996: The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years
• 1998: A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth (Co-author with Ruth Bettina Birn)
• 2000; 2001; 2003: The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering
• 2005: Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History

[edit] Finkelstein on From Time Immemorial

Norman Finkelstein examined the book From Time Immemorial, by Joan Peters, in detail in his doctoral thesis and alleged that the book was a "monumental hoax". A "history and defense" of the state of Israel, Peters' book has been effusively praised in mainstream United States media sources. According to Finkelstein, his charges initially roused little attention in the U.S.: "By the end of 1984, From Time Immemorial had...received some two hundred [favorable] notices...in the United States. The only 'false' notes in this crescendoing chorus of praise were the Journal of Palestine Studies, which ran a highly critical review by Bill Farrell; the small Chicago-based newsweekly In These Times, which published a condensed version of this writer's findings; and Alexander Cockburn, who devoted a series of columns in The Nation exposing the hoax....The periodicals in which From Time Immemorial had already been favorably reviewed refused to run any critical correspondence (e.g. The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, Commentary). Periodicals that had yet to review the book rejected a manuscript on the subject as of little or no consequence (e.g. The Village Voice, Dissent, The New York Review of Books). Not a single national newspaper or columnist contacted found newsworthy that a best-selling, effusively praised 'study' of the Middle East conflict was a threadbare hoax" (Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict 45-46).

However, after a number of reviewers in the British and Israeli media supported Finkelstein's criticisms, a few U.S. journals began publishing more critical reviews of the book. In the magazine Foreign Affairs, William B. Quandt described Finkelstein's criticism of From Time Immemorial presented in chapter 2 of Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict as a "landmark essay" and a "victory to his credit." ^[2]

The controversy that surrounded Finkelstein's research caused a delay in his earning his Ph.D. at Princeton University. Noam Chomsky, a friend of Finkelstein's, wrote in Understanding Power that Finkelstein "literally could not get the faculty to read [his thesis]." According to Chomsky, Princeton eventually granted Finkelstein his doctorate only "out of embarrassment," though they didn't "even write a letter for him saying that he was a student at Princeton University."^[3]

Finkelstein published portions of his thesis in the following publications:

• "Disinformation and the Palestine Question: The Not-So-Strange Case of Joan Peters's From Time Immemorial." Chapter 2 of Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question (1988); and
• "A Land Without a People (Joan Peters' "Wilderness" Image)." Chapter 2 of Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (1995).

[edit] Praise of Finkelstein's scholarship

Today he is rather unpopular and his book [The Holocaust Industry] will certainly not become a best seller, but what it says is basically true even though incomplete. It is more a journalistic account than an in depth study on the topic, which would need to be much longer." --Raul Hilberg^[4]

[Beyond Chutzpah is a] very solid, important and highly informative book. Norman Finkelstein provides extensive details and analysis, with considerable historical depth and expert research, of a very wide range of issues concerning Israel, the Palestinians, and the U.S. --Noam Chomsky^[5]

Beyond Chutzpah is the most comprehensive, systematic, and well-documented work of its kind. It is one of the harshest—rational and nonemotional—texts about the daily practices of the occupation and colonization of the Palestinian territories by Israel, and it is an excellent demonstration of how and why the blind defenders of Israel, by basing their arguments on false facts and figures, actually bring more damage than gains to their cause." --Baruch Kimmerling^[6]

On display are all the sterling qualities for which Finkelstein has become famous: erudition, originality, spark, meticulous attention to detail, integrity, courage, and formidable forensic skills. --Avi Shlaim^[7]

The scholarship is simply superb. Finkelstein has clearly done his homework, and consulted and mastered a breathtaking range of material: primary sources and documents, scholarly works, reports old and new, correspondence with relevant individuals, and numerous other sources too. He has left no stone unturned. --Mouin Rabbani^[8]

[edit] Criticism of Finkelstein's scholarship

Finkelstein and Nur Masalha share a method: they selectively quote from [my books] what suits their purposes while ignoring, and in Finkelstein's case, ridiculing what doesn't. Neither seems to know anything about 1948 beyond what is to be found in my books and neither marshals sources or material from elsewhere that could serve to contradict my findings. --Benny Morris^[9]

It is only through such wholesale falsification of evidence that Finkelstein can give surface plausibility to his attack...Finkelstein can make this...argument seem plausible only through out-of-context quotation, the manifest twisting of meaning, and blatant misrepresentation. This is also his standard technique for inventing the aspersion that I have misused sources...

Finkelstein’s gross misrepresentation of my book is just one indication that his attack on it has little to do with any knowledge of, and concern for, scholarship on the Holocaust and everything to do with his burning political agenda...Even though the primary material and critical secondary material are in German, he does not cite a single German source because he does not even read German. Nevertheless, the neophyte Finkelstein makes a string of pronouncements (and errors) about what the sources prove, all the while pretending that the enormous amount of evidence that contradicts his wishful assertions and ideological pronouncements do not exist."----Daniel Jonah Goldhagen.^[10]

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…. I had not thought that (apart from the disreputable fringe) there were Germans who would take seriously this twenty-first century updating of the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion.' I was mistaken. --Peter Novick.^[11][12][13]

It [The Holocaust Industry] is filled with precisely the kind of shrill hyperbole that Finkelstein rightly deplores in much of the current media hype over the Holocaust; it is brimming with the same indifference to historical facts, inner contradictions, strident politics and dubious contextualizations; and it oozes with the same smug sense of moral and intellectual superiority....Like any conspiracy theory, it contains several grains of truth; and like any such theory, it is both irrational and insidious.--Omer Bartov.^[14]

Bottom line: if you are looking for a book that gathers for polemical purposes every anti-Israel argument in the arsenal of its opponents, and if you enjoy the rhetorical style of the arrogant academic pit bull, this may be the book for you. If you are looking for balance, fairness, context, a critical weighing of evidence on different sides of a controversial issue - the qualities that one might expect in a publication by a distinguished University Press - you will not find them here. --Marc Saperstein^[15][16]

[edit] Finkelstein, the Anti-Defamation League, and the allegation of Holocaust denial

Finkelstein has frequently claimed that the Anti-Defamation League's true purpose is to defame critics of Israel, rather than to expose and counter anti-Semitism. Ultimately, he argues, the ADL trivializes real anti-Semitism by "crying wolf" with fraudulent allegations of Holocaust denial and "New anti-Semitism".^[17]

The ADL has described Finkelstein as "an obsessive anti-Zionist". According to ADL National Director and chairman Abe Foxman, Finkelstein thinks "anything that... benefits Israel must be a calculated attempt to cover up Israel's essential depravity"; thus, according to Foxman, The Holocaust Industry "applie[s] this 'logic' to Holocaust education initiatives and attempts to obtain compensation for survivors, insisting that these be viewed not as efforts to learn from history or obtain justice for survivors, but as cynical efforts by powerful Jewish groups to somehow 'immunize Israel from criticism' for its alleged human rights abuses."^[18]

Foxman also criticizes Beyond Chutzpah on similar grounds, arguing that Finkelstein believes "efforts of Jewish organizations and other concerned bodies to oppose anti-Semitism around the world are really nothing more than an effort to 'exploit' or 'manufacture' claims of Jewish suffering in order to 'immunize Israel against criticism' for its 'racist' and 'Nazi'-like treatment of Palestinians and its 'unprecedented assault on international law.'"^[19]

In a letter to Georgetown University, the ADL referred to Finkelstein as a "known Holocaust denier".^[20][21]Finkelstein has routinely dismissed this last charge as spurious, pointing to his various descriptions of the Holocaust as an indisputable fact, and referring mockingly to "each of the many occasions that ADL has slandered this writer as a 'well-known Holocaust denier.'"^[22] A 2006 article in The Washington Post concluded that the ADL's allegation of Finkelstein being a Holocaust denier "have proved baseless."^[23]

In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, Finkelstein argued that in the eyes of the ADL "anyone who's a critic of Israel becomes an anti-Semite. And the truth of the matter is, the real anti-Semites, they don't really care about -- or the real Holocaust deniers, which is their other favorite epithet to hurl at people or expectorate at people who are critical of Israel." In that same interview, Finkelstein went on to say that genuine instances of Holocaust denial – such as Mahmoud Abbas's doctoral dissertation (which claimed that less than a million Jews were killed by the Nazis) or Silvio Berlusconi's claim that Mussolini was a "benign dictator" who "never killed anyone" (thousands of Italian Jews were sent to their deaths under Fascism) – are routinely downplayed by the ADL if the perpetrator is regarded an ally of the U.S. and Israel.^[24]

The accusation of Holocaust denial and Holocaust revisionism have been periodically echoed by other writers, including Phyllis Chesler^[25], David Hornik^[26], and Steven Plaut^[27], all writing in Front Page Magazine, Martin Peretz, the publisher of The New Republic^[28], and Marc Fisher in The Washington Post.^[29] After several exchanges of letters and phone calls with Finkelstein, the Washington Post issued a retraction, in which Fisher wrote "Finkelstein has never denied the existence of the Holocaust, and I did not intend to suggest that."^[30]

Finkelstein says that he relies on the work of Raul Hilberg for historical facts about the Holocaust, and cites as authoritative Hilberg's figures for the numbers of Holocaust Jewish victims killed (5.1 million).^[31] He has also written that "no rational person disputes that the Nazis systematically exterminated 5-6 million Jews" and "whether the actual figure was closer to 5 rather than 6 million might have historical significance...but zero moral significance."^[32][33] In The Holocaust Industry Finkelstein takes issue with the numbers of Holocaust survivors cited by groups seeking Holocaust reparations; Finkelstein told an interviewer, "There's not a single word in the book that can be interpreted as Holocaust denial. Rather the contrary, I insist throughout the book that the conventional view of the Nazi holocaust - i.e, an assembly-line, industrialized killing of the Jews - is correct, and that the conventional figures on those killed are (more or less) correct."^[34]

[edit] Finkelstein and Alan Dershowitz

See main article: Dershowitz-Finkelstein Affair

Shortly after the publication of the book The Case for Israel, Norman Finkelstein complained that it is "a collection of fraud, falsification, plagiarism, and nonsense".^[35] Saying that Dershowitz lacked knowledge about specific contents of his own book during their joint interview by Goodman, Finkelstein also speculated that Dershowitz did not write the book, and may not have even read it.^[35].

In addition, Finkelstein noted that in twenty instances that all occur within about as many pages, Dershowitz's book cites from the same passages that Joan Peters used in her book From Time Immemorial (a book which Finkelstein says is widely regarded by serious scholars as fraudulent), in largely the same order often quoting exactly the same words with ellipses in the same places. In at least two instances, Dershowitz reproduces Peters' errors (see below), from which Finkelstein draws the conclusion that he could not have checked the original sources as he claims.^[36] Finkelstein suggests that this copying of quotations amounts to copying ideas.^[37] Dershowitz stated that if "somebody borrowed the quote without going to check back on whether Mark Twain had said that, obviously that would be a serious charge"; however, he insisted emphatically that he himself did not do that, that he had indeed checked the original source by Twain.^[35]

On behalf of Dershowitz, Harvard Law School dean Elena Kagan asked former Harvard president Derek Bok to investigate the charges; Bok exonerated Dershowitz of the charge of plagiarism.^[38]

Dershowitz threatened libel action over the charges in Finkelstein's book, and, consequently, Finkelstein deleted the word "plagiarism" from the text before publication. [25] Finkelstein also removed the charge that Dershowitz was not the true author of The Case for Israel, the publisher said, because "he couldn’t document that."^[39]

Asserting that he did consult the original sources, Dershowitz says that Finkelstein is simply accusing him of good scholarly practice: citing references he learned of initially from Peters' book. Dershowitz denies that he used any of Peters' ideas without citation. In a footnote in The case for Israel which cites Peters' book, Dershowitz explicitly denies that he "relies" on Peters for "conclusions or data".^[40]

In their joint interview on Democracy Now (which Finkelstein terms a "debate" and Dershowitz does not), however, Finkelstein cited specific passages in Dershowitz's book where a phrase that he says Peters coined was incorrectly attributed to George Orwell: "[Peters] coins the phrase, 'turnspeak', she says she's using it as a play off of George Orwell which as all listeners know used the phrase 'newspeak'. She coined her own phrase, 'turnspeak'. You go to Mr. Dershowitz's book, he got so confused in his massive borrowings from Joan Peters that on two occasions, I'll cite them for those who have a copy of the book, on page 57 and on page 153 he uses the phrase, quote, George Orwell's turnspeak. Turnspeak is not Orwell, Mr. Dershowitz, you're the Felix Frankfurter chair at Harvard, you must know that Orwell would never use such a clunky phrase as 'turnspeak'."^[41]

James O. Freedman, the former president of Dartmouth College, the University of Iowa, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has defended Dershowitz:

I do not understand [Finkelstein’s] charge of plagiarism against Alan Dershowitz. There is no claim that Dershowitz used the words of others without attribution. When he uses the words of others, he quotes them properly and generally cites them to the original sources (Mark Twain, Palestine Royal Commission, etc.) [Finkelstein’s] complaint is that instead he should have cited them to the secondary source, in which Dershowitz may have come upon them. But as the Chicago Manual of Style emphasizes: 'Importance of attribution. With all reuse of others’ materials, it is important to identify the original as the source. This not only bolsters the claims of fair use, it also helps avoid any accusation of plagiarism.' This is precisely what Dershowitz did.^[42]

[edit] Notes

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Books, articles, and translations by Norman G. Finkelstein

• Translator of The Future of Maoism, by Samir Amin. The Monthly Review [volume, issue no.?] (1983): [pages nos.?]. ISBN 0-85345-622-4. [Translator of a portion of a book; a chapter?]
• Contributor to Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question. Ed. Edward W. Said and Christopher Hitchens. Verso Press, 1988. ISBN 0-86091-887-4. Chapter Two, Part One: "Disinformation and the Palestine Question: The Not-So-Strange Case of Joan Peter's "From Time Immemorial."
• Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. Verso, 1995. ISBN 1-85984-339-5.
• Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996. ISBN 0-8166-2859-9.
• Co-author with Ruth Bettina Birn. A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth. Henry Holt and Co., 1998. ISBN 0-8050-5872-9.
• Contributor to The Politics of Anti-Semitism. Ed. Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. AK Press, 2001. ISBN 1-902593-77-4. [What is the title of the "contribution"; page numbers?]
• Contributor to Palestinian Refugees: The Right of Return. Ed. Naseer Aruri. Pluto Press, 2001. ISBN 0-7453-1776-6. [What is the title of the "contribution"; page numbers?]
• The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, Verso, 2003. ISBN 1-85984-488-X.
• Contributor to Radicals, Rabbis and Peacemakers: Conversations with Jewish Critics of Israel, by Seth Farber. Common Courage Press, 2005. ISBN 1-56751-326-3. [What is the "contribution"; page numbers?]
• Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History . U of California P, 2005. ISBN 0-520-24598-9.

[edit] Interviews with Finkelstein

• De Martis, Giovanni. Interview of Norman G. Finkelstein about The Holocaust Industry posted on okokaustos.org. n.d.

[edit] Profiles about Finkelstein

• Andreatta, David. "'Hate' Storm Looms." New York Post 7 March 2006.
• Aysha, Emad El-Din. "Something to 'Finkle' about!" Egyptian Mail 16 December 2005.
• Garner, Mandy. "The Good Jewish Boys Go into Battle." Times Higher Education Supplement 16 December 2005.
• Naparstek, Ben. "His Own Worst Enemy." The Jerusalem Post 12 December 2005.
• Rayner, Jay. "Finkelstein's List." The Observer 16 July 2000.
• Shelag, Yair. "The Finkelstein Polemic." Ha'aretz 30 March 2001.

[edit] Reviews of books by Finkelstein

• Blokker, Bas. English translation of Dutch review Review of Beyond Chutzpah. NRC Handelsblad 24 February 2006
• Pappe, Ilan. Occupation Hazard. Review of Beyond Chutzpah. BOOKFORUM Feb./March 2006
• De Zayas, Alfred. Against Brazenness: The discourse on the Israel-Palestine Conflict Requires Intellectual Honesty. Review of Beyond Chutzpah. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 3 February 2006
• Merkley, Paul Charles. These Pigs on the Face of the Earth: Israel's most relentless critic. Review of Beyond Chutzpah. Christianity Today January/February 2006
• Desch, Michael C.. The Chutzpah of Alan Dershowitz. Review of Beyond Chutzpah. The American Conservative 5 Dec. 2005
• Goldberger, Ernest. English translation of German review Review of Beyond Chutzpah. Neue Zürcher Zeitung 10 Dec. 2005
• Marqusee, Mike. Israel, fraud and chutzpah Review of Beyond Chutzpah. Red Pepper (magazine) Jan. 2006
• Prashad, Vijay. Z magazine reviews Beyond Chutzpah. Review of Beyond Chutzpah. Z Magazine November 2005 Volume 18 Number 11
• McCarthy, Conor. The case against Israel Review of Beyond Chutzpah. Village Magazine, Ireland 17 Nov. 2005
• Gordon, Neve. Neve Gordon: Review of Norman Finkelstein's, Beyond Chutzpah. Review of Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, by Norman G. Finkelstein. History News Network 12 Oct. 2005
• Nicolás, Rubén. El conflicto entre israelíes y palestinos sólo empeorará. Review of Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, by Norman G. Finkelstein. El Mundo 23 Oct. 2003
• Bartov, Omer. A Tale of Two Holocausts. Review of The Holocaust Industry, by Norman Finkelstein. New York Times Book Review 6 Aug. 2000.

[edit] Critical controversies engaging Finkelstein

• Daniel Goldhagen, The New Discourse of Avoidance
  • Norman Finkelstein, Response to Goldhagen
• William Rubinstein et al., Letters on the Uses of the Holocaust
• Edward Alexander, The Dream-Jew of the Anti-Semites
  • Norman Finkelstein, Foreword to the Second Paper Back Edition of The Holocaust Industry
• Paul Bogdanor, The Finkelstein Phenomenon
• Anti-Defamation League, Letter on Finkelstein
  • How the ADL Fights Anti-Semitism, ADL letter with links that contradict its claims
  • The Washington Post Publishes a Restraction, Marc Fisher, WP columninst, publishes a retraction of his charge of "holocaust revisionism"
• CAMERA (Deborah Passner), Norman Finkelstein's Fraudulent Scholarship
  • CAMERA's Distorted Lens Reader letters
• Marc Saperstein. The Middle East Journal. Washington: Winter 2006. Vol.60, Iss. 1; pg. 183, 3 pgs. Negative review on Beyond Chutzpah.
  • Norman Finkelstein, The Attacks on Beyond Chutzpah
• Alan Dershowitz, The Hazards of Making the Case for Israel
  • Norman Finkelstein, The Dershowitz Hoax
• Alan Dershowitz, Norman Finkelstein's Obscenities

[edit] External links

• "Official website of Norman G. Finkelstein" Commercial website featuring biography, works by Finkelstein, past and upcoming speaking engagements, and other links to information about him and controversies in which he is involved.
• Norman G. Finkelstein's Curriculum vitae on his faculty directory webpage at DePaul University

[edit] See also

• Dershowitz-Finkelstein affair