Norman Finkelstein's
International Jewish Conspiracy
(NRC Handelsblad, August 5, 2000)
Of course there are Jewish antisemites. Jews can hate other Jews. I am not too fond of some Jews myself. But Finkelstein's hate goes way beyond not liking other Jews. Finkelstein self-hate and knowingly espousing falsehoods about Jews and Israel is pathological. It also exists in other groups for a myriad of reasons. But for whatever his reasons, the consquences are the same; he is promoting harm to Jews and the destruction of Israel and for that, antisemites love to quote him. His writing and links can be found on Nazi and Arab hate websites. He is aware of this. He knows how his writing is being used by antisemites and that also makes Norman Finkelstein a Jewish antisemite. (Hank Roth)
About his credentials:
Finkelstein makes no pretense about his academic credentials, bragging that he's never been published in an academic journal and teaches at a "third-rate university" in Chicago because he was "kicked out of every job" in New York. But reasoned objectivity is not his aim, for Finkelstein is an angry man and writing is his therapy. "The only reason I ever write anything is because I get so angry I start screaming at the pages. My breath gets short and I start walking around. It's just all lies! Rather than having it locked up inside of me, I write it out." (Jerusalem Post - 12/9/2005 - Ben Naparstek)
Peter Novick: "No facts alleged by Finkelstein should be assumed to be really facts, no quotation in his book should be assumed to be accurate." Professor/author Peter Novick
In response to Hank Roth's request below, I am enclosing the original English text of my review of Finkelstein's book which was published in the SUEDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG....(posted to the Antisemitism List at H-ANTISEMITISM@H-NET.MSU.EDU
Peter Novick
Last summer, after the initial publication of Norman Finkelstein's THE HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY in English, there was said to be something called a "Finkelstein debate" in Germany. Now that the book has appeared in German translation, we will perhaps see this renewed. But it is hard to know what there is in THE HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY, then or now, that is "debatable."
Finkelstein's assertion that in negotiations with Swiss banks and German industrial corporations inflated numbers were often tossed around by claimants is hardly "debatable." It is simply a FACT that this was the case--as is the fact that, from the other side, deflated numbers were presented. Similarly, it is an undebatable fact that heavy-handed pressure tactics were sometimes employed on behalf of the claimants--a response to intransigence and delaying tactics on the part of the banks and corporations. One could certainly wish that the negotiations had been conducted differently; wish, especially, that all these matters had been disposed of decades ago. But they weren't: another undebatable fact. In any case, all of this is widely known, and widely-deplored: what was there, what is there, to debate?
As concerns particular assertions made by Finkelstein concerning reparations and restitution, and on other matters as well, 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.
Among his more startling claims is that the treasury of the World Jewish Congress has "amassed no less than 'roughly $7 billion' in compensation monies." Finkelstein's source for this startling revelation is an article in FAZ which reported the very unstartling fact that the WJC was holding discussions about how such monies might be distributed IF AND WHEN THEY WERE RECEIVED. This is not just carelessness on Finkelstein's part, since he KNEW when he wrote the book that the WJC had not received ANY such funds: deliberate deception. (Examples could be multiplied. No facts alleged by Finkelstein should be assumed to be really facts, no quotation in his book should be assumed to be accurate, without taking the time to carefully compare his claims with the sources he cites.)
Or is the issue in the "Finkelstein Debate" his overall thesis, of which the discussion of reparations and restitution is merely an illustration? That larger thesis is clearly stated in his book and is easily summarized. "American Jewish elites," Finkelstein argues, have cynically constructed a "Holocaust Industry" to serve their selfish interests. To anyone familiar with the author's lifelong crusade against Israel, it will come as no surprise that first among these interests is to "justify criminal policies of the Israeli state" But to credit "American Jewish elites" with SINCERITY in their concern for Israel would, in his view, be a mistake. In reality, he says, these elites are merely sycophantic tools of American imperialism. They came to support Israel only when it became a compliant tool of US policy-makers; they would abandon immediately if it ceased to be an American "strategic asset."
"The Holocaust Industry," Finkelstein tells us, also serves domestic American purposes. Keeping alive the memory of the Holocaust immunizes American Jews from "justified criticism" for their shift rightward in recent years. But here too, we are told, one should not credit "American Jewish elites" with SINCERE concern for the well being or reputation of American Jewry: "If US ruling circles decided to scapegoat Jews, we should not be surprised if American Jewish leaders acted exactly as their predecessors did during the Nazi holocaust. . . . 'Jews would lead Jews to death.'"
The overall argument of Finkelstein's book is that "American Jewish elites" conspire only in their private interest: to line their own pockets and to facilitate their "entry into the inner sanctums of American power." For these elites, he tells us, "the Holocaust performed the same function as Israel: another invaluable chip in a high-stakes power game." For Finkelstein, it is only by acknowledging this long-standing conspiracy of "Jewish elites" that one can REALLY understand what was involved in reparations and restitution negotiations.
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: last summer the reviewer for the FAZ compared the book's author to Hannah Arendt; said that reading the book was "like opening a window for a sudden gust of fresh air."
Understandably dismayed by this sort of response to Finkelstein's book, there were those in Germany who said that it was "impermissible" for Germans to discuss the questions which the book raised. As an outsider, I hesitate to express an opinion on how Germans conduct their public discourse, but I must say that I am opposed to their ruling any subject "impermissible" or "out of bounds." And this applies PARTICULARLY to subjects having to do with the memory of the Holocaust.
Germany's relationship to the Holocaust and its memory is not "given"--set in stone--but, must, like the relationship between any collectivity and its memories, be the subject of continued rethinking and renegotiation. Among American Jews, the rethinking and renegotiation of how we handle the memory of the Holocaust has been underway for some time, and it has been the occasion of lively debate. Though obviously the two cases are very dissimilar, many of the same issues arise. As the years pass, what should change and what should stay the same in our relationship to the memory? How does one steer a path between forgetfulness and obsession? What should be the relative weight of this memory compared to other memories of the collective past? If we've made mistakes in how we've memorialized the Holocaust, how can we learn from those mistakes and do better in the future?
On neither side of the Atlantic should discussion of any of these issues be "impermissible." Indeed such discussions are highly desirable. But Finkelstein's rant is not a contribution to such discussions; it is a subtraction from them.
The writer, Peter Novick, is the author of The Holocaust in American Life (1999) published by Houghton Mifflin and is a professor of history at the University of Chicago. His 1988 book, That Noble Dream: The Objectivity Question? and the American Historical Profession, was awarded the prize for best US history book of the year by the American Historical Association.
Peter Novick: "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." (Offene Fenster und Tueren,’Sueddeutsche Zeitung,
February 7, 2001)
Finklestein is an AntiSemite
By Brian Henry (as forwarded to Hank Roth)
Bernard Weinrub takes issue with my suggestion that Jews who have become Jew-haters are no longer Jews and with my suggestion that Norman Finkelstein should be described as an antisemite.
Weinrub writes:
"To conclude from his [Finkelstein's] views that he in "not Jewish" seems unwarranted. Indeed, I cannot imagine anyone having the moral authority to make such a judgment, based on his views alone. We are not, after all, a club, constantly vetting the applications of members, and considering motions to expel members who no longer please us."
I agree entirely that the Jewish people is not a club; there is no membership committee and nor should there be. I'm not interested in expelling people, but I'm interested in describing them accurately.
Obviously Norman Finkelstein is ethnically Jewish - in the sense that he was born and raised in a Jewish family. But ethnicity in the narrow sense of who your parents were does not make a Jew. Otherwise, we wouldn't describe converts as Jewish and it would be perfectly natural to talk about Jewish bishops.
Beyond birth and family ties, to be Jewish, one must identify with the Jewish people - or at least, one must not reject the affiliation. This is why a convert to Christianity is no longer Jewish, because the convert has clearly rejected his Jewish affiliation.
I think we must consider Jews who become Jew-haters or who have built their careers on demonizing Israel in precisely the same light. Such people have rejected their affiliation with the Jewish people. They may claim to be Jewish, but we must recognize the claim for what it is - a transparent attempt to licence their antisemitism.
Of course this leaves open the question of whether it's correct to describe Norman Finkelstein in particular as an antisemite. Weinrub writes:
"I detect in his [Finkelstein's] views no hostility to Jews as such, no demonization of Israelis as people.. He is certainly hostile, contemptuously so, to the current Israeli government, and to what he calls the "Jewish Establishment" in this country."
I'd suggest reading Finkelstein's words more closely. He doesn't confine his hostility to "the current Israeli government," and he does demonize Israel and Israelis. For example, in the that Weinrub references, Finkelstein slanders Ashkenazi Israelis as racist and Nazi-like. Finkelstein says:
"[Dr David Rabeeya] claims that the wholesale importation of Russian Jews was to ensure the demographic majority of secular European Jews over their Sephardic countrymen for generations to come. "There is some truth to that, because a large percentage of the so-called 'Russian Jews' are not Jewish. In recent years, it has been more than 50%, and the reason why is because the Israeli establishment likes the blue eyed, blonde haired Aryan types as a racial group."
While in the above canard Finkelstein attacks a subgroup of Jews, elsewhere in the interview he extends the charge of racism to Jews in general:
"that is the standard view of these organisations. Nothing compares to the Jews. Everything that the Jews endure, everything that the Jews achieve, is special, because we're the 'chosen people', so don't compare us with garbage like the Tasmanian savages (the entire indigenous population of Tasmania were exterminated under British colonial rule), or don't compare us with the Gypsies. I mean God forbid those uncivilised savages be compared with us. You have to understand that the great tragedy of the Second World War, was not that Jews per se were killed, but such a cultured people were killed--if you kill uncultured people, who cares?"
One might plead that Finkelstein means to slander only Jewish organizations, not Jews as such, but I think it's clear he's talking about "the Jews," and in so far as he's talking about Jewish organizations at all, he's speaking of them as representative of the Jews.
Indeed, Finkelstein makes no real distinction among the Jewish establishment and Jewish organizations and the Jews. For example, in the Counterpunch interview Finkelstein says:
"These organisations frankly, bring to mind an insight of my late mother, that it is no accident that Jews invented the word "chutzpah". They steal, and I do use the word with intent, 95% of the monies earmarked for victims of Nazi persecution, and then throw you a few crumbs while telling you to be grateful."
Who is Finkelstein really slandering here - Jewish organizations or Jews? "It is no accident that Jews invented the word Chutzpah," he says - look at the way their organizations steal and then ask you to be grateful. If Finkelstein weren't ostensibly Jewish, would anyone have any trouble identifying this remark as an anti-Jewish slur?
In the Counterpunch interview, Finkelstein defines "the Holocaust Industry" as:
"institutions, organisations and individuals who have put to use Jewish suffering for political and financial gain. Throughout the little book, I am not at all shy of naming names, so large numbers of organisations and individuals are cited for their activities in the exploitation of the Nazi holocaust."
According to Finkelstein, the Holocaust is used to justify any and all Israeli actions, so when he includes those who use Jewish suffering for political gain in his definition of the Holocaust Industry, Finkelstein intends to indict all Jews and Jewish groups who in any way support of Israel. Thus, while it's true the Finkelstein concentrates on slandering the larger American Jewish organizations and well-known individuals such as Elie Weisel, Finkelstein gives such an elastic definition to his target group that it includes all Jews who aren't actively anti-Israel.
Moreover, Finkelstein often presents Jews as acting as a conspiracy or as single corporate entity. In Counterpunch, the interviewer asks Finkelstein, "Do you believe the 'Holocaust Industry' were responsible for the poor sales of the book in the US?"
Finkelstein answers:
"First of all, I do name names and a lot of these individuals and organisations have a huge vested interest in the Nazi holocaust. It's a political weapon, but it's also plainly a financial weapon, and it's unsurprising that the book would die an early death in the United States. Given those facts, it would be shocking were it otherwise."
Moreover, Finkelstein holds, not just Israelis, but all Jews collectively responsible for supposed Israeli crimes. The question and answer on this point, allows Finkelstein and his interviewer (who really work as a tag team, not as interviewer and interviewee) to again make the Nazi-Jewish comparison:
"You dismiss entirely Professor Daniel Goldhagen's argument that the German public were collectively responsibility for the crimes of the Nazis, yet you seem to hold the Jewish people collectively responsible for the policies of Israel. Is this not a case of double standards?"
"Collective responsibility is not a term that is devoid of any meaning, whether or not it's true depends on the circumstances. In the case of Germany you were dealing with a fascist, terrorist state in which the population had relatively speaking no say in the making of policy and no say in the crimes committed. In other circumstances depending on which a collectivity influences policy and shapes criminal actions, it does bear a responsibility."
Finkelstein also frequently argues that Jews cause antisemitism. Specifically he argues that Israel causes antisemitism by its supposed Nazi-like behaviour and that Jews cause antisemitism by using the Holocaust as an extortion racket. Such accusations, that Jews cause antisemitism by being hateful, are standard stock in trade for antisemites.
For example, in Counterpunch, Finkelstein says:
"Just the other day I was speaking to someone who I cannot name for this interview, who met with a high government official in Germany who we both know. My friend asked him about the questions raised in my book concerning the number of surviving slave labourers, and whether the German government knew that the numbers had been grossly inflated to justify the extortion of huge amounts of money. His response was that 'of course we knew what he was saying was true', but a decision was made early on to go on with the blackmail because 'we were afraid of a huge anti Semitic reaction being unleashed in Germany', and the attitude was Germany was rich enough to pay the ransom."
Finkelstein reports this conversation between an anonymous informant and an unnamed "high government official in Germany" at second hand, so it can't be given any credibility. Indeed, I assume Finkelstein has fabricated the conversation. In any case, Finkelstein is using it to claim:
a) Jews are extorting the German government.
b) If this became known, it would cause antisemitism, and
c) rightly so.
The ADL has accused Finkelstein of being a Holocaust denier. I've seen this accusation elsewhere, as well; for example, in Canada's "country report" in the Stephen Roth Institute's However, it's not accurate to call Finkelstein a Holocaust denier.
Holocaust denial has two thrusts: First, to deny that the Nazis committed any crime against Jews, (and indeed, to deny that anything done to Jews can be considered a crime). Second, to reposition the Holocaust as a Jewish crime.
Finkelstein doesn't deny Nazi criminality. He does equate it with supposed Jewish criminality, though, and is attempting to position the Holocaust as a Jewish crime.
This is why neo-Nazis love him. Also they love Finkelstein because he's ostensibly Jewish, and thus can get away with gross antisemitic slurs such as talking about "Jews huckstering their dead," and with calling the Holocaust an extortion racket, which Holocaust deniers have been saying for decades.
Here's a bit from Ingrid Rimland, wife of convicted Holocaust denier, Earnst Zundel
(This article appeared July 11, 2000) "It's sweetly gratifying to know that a large circulation, mainstream publication says what Revisionists have been saying all along - and for which they have been viciously persecuted wherever the Holocaust Lobby has its claws around the necks of their minions in government and in the courts..."
Anyone interested, can find a Norman Finkelstein library at the site of another convicted Holocaust denier, David Irving.
In conclusion, I consider it beyond reasonable doubt that Norman Finkelstein is an antisemite, and while he was certainly born Jewish, I think we must seriously ask if one can convert to being a Jew-hater and still be a Jew. I don't think so.
Yours,
Brian Henry
editor & writer
b.henry@3web.net
Instructor, Writing Workshops & Seminars
G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Studies
Ryerson University
Toronto, Canada
Jonah Goldhagen wrote:
"Finkelstein’s work is, from beginning to end, a tendentious series of inventions. [T]he examples from his article that are deemed to be the strongest are thoroughly misleading and without merit. Finkelstein’s writing is the sort of transparent political polemic that—had others not cynically propped him up as an expert and a champion of truth—would not even merit a response. This is a man who has made a career of attacking Israel's legitimacy. His documented inventions about my book, it is worth noting that Finkelstein has never before written anything on the Holocaust or German history and cannot read German…which means that he cannot read many of the sources on which he is passing his ‘expert’ opinion. [A] man who has arrived overnight to a scholarly field made up of massive scholarly literature, not to mention all the documents, who, to boot, cannot read most of the sources because they are in German.”(Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, - A comment by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen on: A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth.)
"Norman G. Finkelstein and Ruth Bettina Birn's manifestly unscholarly book is based on systematically falsified evidence. While presenting itself as a work of scholarship, it amounts to a thinly disguised ideological tract, most of which comes from Finkelstein, a well known anti-Zionist agitator, whose wild claims and inventions about Holocaust studies -- which derive directly from his explicit anti-Zionist political agenda -- on their own disqualify him as a reputable commentator about scholarship on the Holocaust." (ibid - see above)
About Finkelstein, Professor Goldhagen says: "This is a man who has made a career of attacking Israel's legitimacy, including likening those who support Israel to the "Gestapo..." (Goldhagen referencing Finkelstein in the Washington Report)
Goldhagen: "Now, suddenly, he turns to Holocaust studies, which he discovers to be a Zionist conspiracy, the purpose of which is to "celebrate" the Jewish state "as a bastion of Western Civilization doing battle on the front lines with and, against all odds, smashing the Arab hordes" (Goldhagen referencing Finkelstein in New Left Review, July/August, 1997, p. 84)Goldhagen writes: "In addition to his documented inventions about my book, it is worth noting that Finkelstein has never before written anything on the Holocaust or German history and cannot read German -- about which he even boasts -- which means that he cannot read many of the sources on which he is passing his "expert" opinion."
"...Finkelstein's attack on my work flows explicitly and inexorably from his ideology, and bears no accurate relationship to the real contents of my book........."
Political Scientist Jonah Goldhagen wrote the book, Hitler's Willing Executioners, which posits that ordinary Germans not only knew about but were actively in favour of the Holocaust because of a supposedly unique and virulent "eliminationist" antisemitism in the German identity, which developed in the centuries preceding the event. Goldhagen claims that this special mentality cannot be fully understood by non-Germans and is unique to Germany, where it grew out of medieval attitudes from a religious basis but was eventually secularised.
David Rosen, a professor of anthropology and law Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, N.J. writes:
"The Left continues to spin out this "Good Jew/Bad Jew" dichotomy in its baseless distinction between Judaism and Zionism. The return to Zion is a central part of Jewish discourse and cannot be exorcised from Jewish life. A thin parade of deracinated Jews give voice to this position but it's an absurd view. In the end, what remains is only the lefts inchoate anger directed at Jews who refuse to assimilate to the lefts agenda." (Rosen)
"He is now finishing a book titled Children at War for Rutgers University Press, which deals with child soldiers in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, the civil war in Sierra Leone, and Jewish partisan fighters during WWII. (Rosen)
"While the Left celebrated other forms of self-determination and nationalism as bridges to the socialist future, Jewish self-determination was reviled. In Europe, Zionism was despised from the very beginning but even the socialist and non-Zionist Jewish Labor Bund was suspect because of its promotion of Jewish culture within the Jewish working classes. Leon Trotsky quipped that the members of the Labor Bund were just Zionists who were afraid to travel. The lefts solution to AntiSemitism was for the Jews to disappear or at least to erase their identity in service of the larger vision of a socialist future. It cannot fully confront AntiSemitism because of its own ambivalence toward Jewish identity." (Rosen)
Sol Stern in Front Page Mag - (September 19, 2003) - Symposium: Leftist AntiSemitism - Stern, a contributing editor to City Journal and a Manhattan Institute senior fellow, wrote:
"Actually the Left was never really opposed to "oppression in all its forms" -- nor did it even claim such a universalistic mantle. I was on the Left for many years. I can't recall marching for the rights of Bhuddists in Tibet, or Catholics in Eastern Europe during the Soviet occupation, or the Kurds, or blacks in the Sudan. You can trace this all the way back to Marx, who was willing to sacrifice the little peoples and nations (including the Jews) in the name of scientific progress toward socialism."
Lauren A. E. Schuker (Harvard Crimson) Dershowitz Accused Of Plagiarism 09-30-2003 - Israel Faxx wrote:
"In his book, Dershowitz points to Finkelstein as a propagator of the notion that "Jews have exploited the Holocaust to gain sympathy for a Jewish state at the expense of the Palestinians, who bear no responsibility for Hitler's genocide against the Jews."
"Finkelstein declined to comment on his response to the case Dershowitz laid out in the book, but said his bone of contention is more scholarly. He speculates that the HLS professor didn't do his own research. Finkelstein said that borrowing citations from Peters' book is worse than borrowing from others because, he asserts, the book is biased and unreliable. "He not only plagiarized, but he plagiarized from a certifiable hoax." (Israel Faxx)
"Dershowitz said he worried that Finkelstein was sending "an insidious message that if you dare to write a pro-Israel book, you risk being called a plagiarist...or having your integrity attacked. This could easily frighten someone with tenure away, but in this case, they picked the wrong person. I have the resources to fight back." (Israel Faxx)
Omer Bartov, author of A Tale of Two Holocausts (New York Times, Aug 6, 2000) writes:
"This book is, in a word, an ideological fanatic’s view…by a writer so reckless and ruthless in his attacks... [His theory is] both irrational and insidious…an international Jewish conspiracy verges on paranoia and would serve anti-Semites…. [Finkelstein] combines an old-hat 1960's view of Israel as the outpost of American imperialism with a novel variation on the anti-Semitic forgery, ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,'' which warned of a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world…. [A] series of vague, undocumented and contradictory assertions…. There is something sad in this warping of intelligence, and in this perversion of moral indignation. There is also something indecent about it, something juvenile, self-righteous, arrogant and stupid."”Professor Bartov is considered one of the world's leading authorities on the subject of genocide. He is the author of four books and the editor of three volumes; his work has been translated into several languages. Professor Bartov's book Murder in Our Midst (1996) received the Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History. His most recent book, Mirrors of Destruction (2000), is an analysis of the relationship between total war and state-organized genocide and the emergence of modern identity. During 2002-2003 he was on leave at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, where he wrote a new work entitled The "Jew" in Cinema: From the Golem to Don't Touch My Holocaust (forthcoming). At the same time, he conducted research on another project, the history of interethnic relations and violence in the East Galician town of Buczacz. This research took him to western Ukraine, where Buczacz is now located and he will continue working on this project through a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation. Professor Bartov received his D.Phil. from Oxford University.
Resource
- Here is a very prodigious list of Norman Finklestein "top ten lists" of dumb and nutty things he has said..
- Also see Norman Finkelstein's World in the Jerusalem Post.
In accordance with the Fair Use Doctrine for educational and discussion purposes, there are quotes here which are from copyrighted material in an effort to advance understanding. I believe this constitutes a 'Fair Use' per section 107 of the US Copyright Law.
As Einstein once said: "The difference between genius and stupidity is that there are limits to genius.?"
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