- Professor Norman Finkelstein is one of a dying breed
of American mavericks that relentlessly defies any attempt at easy
categorization.
He is the son of Holocaust survivors but an unremitting critic of Holocaust
reparation claims; a Jew but is a life-long anti Zionist; and though very
much a Leftist, he is often praised by far Right revisionists of the Third
Reich, such as Hitler-admiring historian David Irving. He initially made
his name by revealing Joan Peter's massively successful From Time
Immemorial
(a book heavily promoted by the Israeli lobby, that claimed there were
no native Arabs before Zionist immigration into Palestine), as a colossal
fraud, and for 10 years he was a Professor of Political Science at New
York University.
-
- However, he is best known as the author of four books,
the most recent being The Holocaust Industry, which has catapulted him
into the spotlight, due to its contention that American Jewry have
ruthlessly
exploited the Nazi holocaust for political and financial gain. Often
lambasted
for his intemperate approach, Finkelstein is unlikely to win popularity
contests in America for the language he employs, as much as his arguments.
Like his close friend and mentor Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein is not
one to mince his words. In his eyes the mainstream Jewish organisations
are 'hucksters', 'gangsters' and 'crooks'; Elie Wiesel (celebrity Holocaust
survivor) is the 'resident clown' for the Holocaust 'circus'; reparations
claims against Germany for Nazi era slave laborers are 'blackmail'; and
he infamously dismissed Professor Goldhagen's critically acclaimed
Holocaust
bestseller 'Hitler's Willing Executioners' as the 'pornography of
violence'.
Small wonder then that he has few friends amongst the American Jewish
establishment,
with Elian Steinberg (World Jewish Congress Executive Secretary) stating
on TV that 'Finkelstein is full of shit', and the literary editor of the
pro Israeli New Republic describing him as 'poisonsomething you would find
under a rock'.
-
- In its initial hardback edition, The Holocaust Industry
was a tremendous success in many nations (selling 130 000 copies in a few
weeks on its publication in Germany), but in America its sales were limited
to a paltry 12000. This relative failure stateside is attributed at least
in part by Finkelstein to a fatwah by the Jewish establishment--he notes
indignantly that the New York Times book review was much more hostile
toward
The Holocaust Industry than it was even to Adolf Hitler's 'Mein Kampf'.
Now the revised paperback edition has just been released many of these
same periodicals are uncharacteristically silent, perhaps thinking they
can kill it more effectively through lack of exposure rather than outright
aggression. The following is an interview conducted with Norman Finkelstein
on 15 October 2001, on the eve of the paperback's publication.
-
- It is generally considered that growing up Jewish and
growing up Zionist are mutually inextricable. What made you break this
link?
-
- First of all, I don't agree that Zionism and growing
up in a Jewish household are inextricably linked. It is fair to say that
growing up Jewish and having a consciousness about Israel are inextricably
linked. As a Jew I felt that I bore a certain amount of responsibility
for the policies of Israel because Israel claimed to speak in the name
of the Jewish people, and therefore they were using the history and
suffering
of the Jewish people as a means to justify its policies. However, my family
were not Zionists, and therefore I see no special connection between the
two.
-
- You stated in a BBC interview that your radical politics
have exacted 'a substantial personal cost' to yourself. Have you found
yourself alienated from mainstream Jewish life?
-
- I wouldn't say that alienation has been the price because
I have managed to find a crowd of people who share my values in my life,
which has been quite satisfying to me. I'd say that without wanting to
pose a martyr, that I've paid a professional price for my views. Most
recently
I taught at Hunter College, City University of New York, and every semester
I was the highest rated professor in my department on student evaluations,
I had also published in the last five years, four books and I would say
that in every reckoning I had proven myself to be worthy as a professor.
Nonetheless, I was always the lowest paid by far, I had the heaviest
teaching
load, and this past May after 10 years faithful service at slave wages,
I was let go and forced--at the ripe old age of 49--to relocate to Chicago
to find temporary work.
-
- How have Jewish academics and Middle East specialists
reacted to the arguments that you have expanded upon in your books?
-
- The reviews of my first book (Image and Reality of the
Israel-Palestine Conflict), were given the content of the book remarkably
favorable. I was quite surprised by the positive reception of the first
book. Generally speaking, I don't have much contact with the mainstream.
I don't publish in mainstream journals, and have never been asked to
publish
in them. It is also true that my name comes up quite a lot in articles
in mainstream publications; my writings on a variety of subjects are quite
frequently cited.
-
- While researching your second book (The Rise and Fall
of Palestine: The Intifadah Years), you lived with Palestinian families
in the Occupied Territories. How do you regard this time in
retrospect?
-
- First of all, it's not looking back, I still go fairly
frequently, I was there in June and I stay in close touch with the families
of whom I write in the book. When I first went it was a moral test of the
values that are meaningful to me, and I wanted to see if I could bridge
the chasm between a Jew and a Palestinian based upon our common humanity
and our shared commitment to justice and decency. To that extent I would
say that it was a satisfying experience, because I think that we developed
close and meaningful relationships.
-
- Were conditions in the territories as bad as you had
anticipated?
-
- I would say that the situation there is horrible.
Whenever
I go I almost literally count the minutes before I leave. I can't stand
it there because you feel that you are watching people endure a living
death for no justifiable reason people are suffering and they're wasting
away a life. It's very hard to bear, because it is impossible to
rationalise
to oneself why you should have a meaningful and satisfying life, and these
people have to endure a meaningless and horrifying life. It is impossible
to rationalise, unless you consider yourself a superior human being and
deserve better, than maybe it would be a tolerable situation. When you
recognise your common humanity and realise that for reasons for nothing
to do with anything these people have ever done that they should have to
suffer this way.. it's really hard.
-
- Did you ever experience any hostility because of your
background (as an American Jew)?
-
- Quite the contrary. The first couple of years, I was
treated like royalty and people were gracious and wonderful, by the third
year no one could care less that I was Jewish. It was not even a topic
of discussion. Even this summer I spent time in Gaza, where the people
knew I was Jewish, and they didn't care. It's not an issue; the issue is
whether you are for or against the occupation.
-
- 'Image and Reality of the Israel Palestine Conflict'
is a radical reinterpretation of Israeli-Arab history, turning on its head
the standard Western notion of Israel being the constant victim of Arab
aggression. How have historians reacted to the arguments contained within
it?
-
- As I said earlier it does get frequently cited. The
chapter
on Joan Peters--the hoax about Palestine being empty on the eve of Jewish
colonization--is considered a standard text, everybody cites it. The
chapter
on Benny Morris and the Palestinian refugee question (in which Finkelstein
dismisses Morris' claims that there was no overall plan by the Zionists
to expel the Arabs from Palestine), is considered the definitive critique
on the Morris book, and nowadays most scholarship agrees that I'm closer
to the truth than Morris. The last chapters on the `67 and `73
wars...they're
pretty much ignored.
-
- Regarding your most recent work, The Holocaust Industry,
can you explain who the Holocaust Industry (according to your
interpretation)
are and what their goals might be?
-
- The Holocaust Industry, is as I conceive in the book,
is 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. It is hard to say the main ones, but the mainstream Jewish
organisations and individuals such as Elie Wiesel, they feature prominently
in the book.
-
- Do you believe the 'Holocaust Industry' were responsible
for the poor sales of the book in the US in comparison with its spectacular
success elsewhere?
-
- 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.
-
- Do you believe these people were involved in your
dismissal
from New York University?
-
- I think it works much more subtly in our system.
Sometimes
phone calls are made, no doubt about it, but I think things work through
a crystallising of a consensus--in the sense of 'this guy is more trouble
than he is worth, and so it is time to let him go'. I think this is what
happened at Hunter College, that yes I had an excellent teaching record,
yes I had an excellent publication record, but it's also true that 'a lot
of people are complaining about him and we do get all these phone calls
and there are faculty members who are very uncomfortable with him because
he is just not professional' and so on and so forth. Finally, a consensus
crystallises that it is time to let him go.
-
- A spokesman for the World Jewish Congress suggested that
you should be grateful to organisations such as themselves, for the
compensation
that your parents received. Is there not some truth in that were it not
for the awareness raising campaigns of these bodies, Holocaust survivors
would not have been compensated at all?
-
- 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. It is very hard to sink much lower than to
turn the colossal suffering of the Jewish people during World War Two into
an extortion racket. I really think that not even Julius Streicher (leading
anti Semitic publisher in 1930's Germany) were he editing Der Stuermer
today, could have conjured up the image of Jews huckstering their dead,
but that's exactly what this gang of wretched crooks have done. They have
disgraced the memory of the Jewish people's suffering on the one hand by
turning it into an extortion racket. If there were any doubt left, I would
point to the recent London Times article headlined 'Swiss Holocaust cash
revealed to be a myth', that is all the claims against the Swiss banks
were a fantastic concoction of the Holocaust hustlers. But then after
turning
Jewish suffering into an extortion racket.to then deny the actual victims
these monies extorted..it is very difficult to imagine sinking any lower
on a moral level than that. If they were all put behind bars, it wouldn't
be yet, in my opinion, be a just punishment.
-
- Many of the same adjectives crop up in the hostile
reviews
of The Holocaust Industry, such as 'bitter', 'angry', 'shrill', and
'polemical'.
Do you think this is because you are breaking a hereto untouchable
taboo?
-
- Only one of the many reviews I have read, made the
comment
that the book was very funny, and I think that there is a certain amount
of humour in the book. I didn't note personally any intimation of a rant
or shrillness. You find humour there and irony there, but I should point
out that the book went through several editors who were quite exacting
and wherever it did go over the top, they pulled me back. I think a lot
of reviews stem from the fact that most people (including myself), tend
to defer to authority, and the first reviews the word that was constantly
used was 'rant' and before you knew it everyone began to pick up on that,
and so that became the drum beat theme of the negative reviews. Therefore,
I don't think it is so much that I broke a taboo; I think the initial
negative
reviews set a tone for what followed.
-
- One extraordinary fact that I learned in your book was
that former President Reagan, and his UN ambassador Jean KirkPatrick,
received
the Simon Wiesenthal Center humanitarian of the year award (for their
staunch
support of Israel) despite providing political, financial and military
support to extreme Right terrorist groups in Central America. Do you agree
that it is an incredible perversion of history that the racism and violence
of the Nazi holocaust, is now used to justify turning a blind eye to racism
and violence?
-
- Well that is what you would expect from the Simon
Wiesenthal
Center. This is really a gang of heartless and immoral crooks, whose
hallmark
is that they will do anything for a dollar. As I point out in the book,
the guy who runs their headquarters in Los Angeles, runs it as a family
business, and in the mid 1990's they were collectively raking in $525 000
a year.
-
- Do you think The Holocaust Industry would have been
published
were you not the Jewish son of Holocaust survivors?
-
- (Laughs) No, I have no doubt about that. First of all,
it just got barely published as the son of Holocaust survivorsIf I weren't,
there would be no chance at all.I would have been buried alive. 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.
But, if you go to Germany and try to say the things that I did, the so
called 'Left' become absolutely hysterical as they have this huge vested
interest in being professional anti anti-Semites and semophiles. It's this
huge identity that they have carved out for themselves, and when I go out
there and say that of course be anti Nazis but a lot of what is being done
in the name of anti anti-Semitism, is in fact a gross falsification of
history .and unless exposed will do huge damage to the Jewish people, these
people go berserk. It is one of the peculiarities of this whole industry,
in that it has created an alignment between the Left in Germany and the
Right-wing Jewish establishment in the US. They sing the praises of people
like Israel Singer (disgraced executive V.P. of the World Jewish Congress),
a complete and total hoodlum - something that crawled out of the sewer.and
they sing the praises of him! You would think he was Demetrios the way
they talk about him.
-
- Another matter that puts you at odds with the Jewish
establishment, is your rejection of the uniqueness of Jewish persecution
compared to the suffering of other peoples. What is the position of groups
like the World Jewish Congress on financial reparations for the
Indo-Chinese,
Black slavery, the slaughter of the American Indians etc?
-
- They don't say anything, well I shouldn't say they don't
say anythingDuring the US Congressional hearings on the Holocaust
compensation,
Maxine Waters (US Congresswoman) raised the issue with the special US envoy
on Holocaust compensation, and of course he responded in exactly the way
you would expect--he said you can't compare and it is not the same thing,
and 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?
-
- What is your position on the comparison between Israel
and the Occupied Territories and South Africa under apartheid (as raised
during the recent UN convention on racism in Durban)?
-
- I don't think the comparison with South Africa is exactly
precise for a number of reasons. Israel proper--pre June `67 Israel, is
a fairly lively democracy, Palestinian Arabs do enjoy rights of citizenship
(as) second class citizens, it is probably similar to the situation to
Blacks in the American South before the civil rights movement. The
difference
is that in the US South, Blacks did not have the right to vote, but that
question is due to numbers, where American Blacks were the majority in
several states in the South and that is why they were disenfranchised,
whereas Israel's unstated official policy is that they will tolerate a
minority of approximately 15%, so long as the Arabs remain around this
percentage its OK to give them the right to vote because it won't affect
the Jewish majority. In addition to the second-class citizenship of the
Israeli Arabs, there is also the occupation in the West Bank and Gaza,
and that too is not really comparable to South Africa because I think it
is much worse.
-
- Dr David Rabeeya (Iraqi born American rabbi), talks of
a caste system in Israeli society, where the Arabs are clearly at the
bottom,
but also the non European Jews are considered to be of lesser value. He
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. The
Russians
look right even if they are not Jewish, and they preserve the Ashkenazi
elite's dominance.
-
- You argue in The Holocaust Industry that if it were no
longer in America's interest to support Israel, the Jewish elites would
quickly forget about the Jewish state. Is this really tenably considering
the huge emotional attachment American Jewry has to Israel?
-
- Generations of Americans Jews have not been brought up
on Zionism. Before 1967, Israel barely figured at all in American Jewish
life, as anyone who goes back and reads the publications of the US Jews
before then will tell you. Even nowadays people are not Zionist by
conviction,
they are Zionist because it is useful for their political and more recently
financial self-interest. The guiding light is what serves their
self-interest,
not ideological commitment.
-
- Raul Hillberg (leading Holocaust academic) says that
he hopes you will expand on your work in The Holocaust Industry. Are you
currently working on anything?
-
- No. I suffered the blow of losing my job so I have to
make ends meet to survive.
-
- Did you not receive a substantial sum from the
spectacular
success of The Holocaust Industry in Germany and elsewhere?
-
- No, that is science fiction. You don't receive
substantial
sums. I received a $5000 advance for the book, and in total I have received
about $50 000. You are not going to get rich out of this...I mean $50 000
is the average annual salary in the United States, I have never made more
than $22,000 in a year, so it is about two years salary. OK, I am not a
kid anymore, but I expect to be living more than two more years.
-
- I noticed that the publication of the paperback of The
Holocaust Industry has been delayed in the UK
-
- (Interrupts) No, no it's been published but I don't
expect
it to get any kind of publicity. It's not a bad paperbackthere is a lot
of new material in it.
-
- 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, so you have to examine each individual case
for how much collective responsibility is applicable.
-
- Following the tragedy on September 11, Left-wing writer
Christopher Hitchens, criticised people like yourself and Noam Chomsky
for their 'masochistic' response to the 'Islamic fascism' practised by
Bin Laden and his followers. What do you think an appropriate response
would be to the destruction of the World Trade Center?
-
- (Incredulously) Well, my views are so conventional it
is hard to understand why Christopher Hitchens would point to me at all,
and frankly what Noam Chomsky had to say on the topic was interesting in
its insights, but his general view was utterly banal. You have to look
to the social and political roots of what happened, because if we were
just dealing with a bunch of lunatics on the loose, then the whole question
would be just a psychiatric and security question. We would bring to
psychiatrists
to explain what is the source of this lunacy, and we would rely on our
security services to correct the problem. But plainly, no one really
believes
this is strictly a psychiatric or a policing problem, because there has
been massive social and political commentary trying to explain it. The
moment you have massive social and political commentary trying to explain
a phenomenon, then you know we are no longer dealing with a strictly
psychiatric
question. When there were the Jim Jones mass suicides there was no such
commentary, as everyone knew they are a socially and politically marginal
cult, but nobody in their right mind would say the Bin Laden phenomenon
is something marginal. Everyone understands that this is rooted in a deeper
problem.
-
- The next question is what are the sources of the problem?
If you are a mainstream conservative the usual answer is that the
fundamental
source of the problem can be located in the Arab--Islamic world loathing
of modernity, freedom and all the virtues of enlightenment and capitalist
industry that the US stands for. If you are off the mainstream, or on the
Left end of the political system, you say the main source of the problem
is US foreign policy in the Middle East which has evoked hatred among
Arab-Islamic
society because of US crimes in Iraq, the US backed Israel crimes against
the Palestinians, and so forth. (Angrily) My point is that everyone, from
whatever end of the political spectrum, tries to locate the Bin Laden
phenomenon
in some deeper social and political current, so for Mr. Hitchens to come
along and say that to explain (the attacks) is a form of
rationalisation--this
is sheer idiocy! There is literally not a single person, apart from Mr.
Hitchens who tries to explain it in a deeper social and political current,
we may disagree on what this current is, but we all realise that this is
not Jim Jones, or the Branch Dravidians.
-
- What do you think of America's moral authority to
spearhead
a crusade against terrorism?
-
- If you understand terrorism to mean the targeting of
civilian populations in order to achieve political goals, then plainly
the US qualifies as the main terrorist government in the world today, if
only because of the sheer force it has at its disposal. I am not claiming
that another government were it to be in the position of the US would act
better, but given the predominant material and political weight of the
US today, means that they are going to be the main terrorist state in the
World today, and I think that's true.
-
- I think I can safely assume that you are not a supporter
of George Bush, so did you vote for Ralph Nader or Al Gore in the last
election?
-
- I voted for Nader, and I have no doubts at all that it
was the right thing to do because the Nader candidacy was extremely
energising
and a terrific phenomenon in American life, and I hope he continues.
-
- What do you think of the prospects for the Green Party
to become a genuine Third Force in US Politics?
-
- I think we are now heading for very dismal time. It seems
like Bush is launching a perpetual war. We endured the nightmare of the
destruction of Iraq, but at least that had a beginning and an end. This
current 'war' does not seem to have an end, and I think it is even
conceivable
that it going to endure the remainder of my lifetime and in this political
climate it is very speculative to make any meaningful predictions for the
future.
-
- How democratic is America given the enormous financial
and media powers with a vested interest in maintaining the status
quo?
-
- There are contradictory tendencies in American society.
There's a huge range of activities that one can engage in that mark it
as a quite free society. It's also true to say that the powers that be
have so much control over how people think that there are fewer and fewer
people make use of the rights and information available to them. So I think
that both are true. The amount of control exercised by the ruling elites
over the decisions, choices, lifestyles, and so forth of American society
mean that many of the rights and information that is available are not
accessed. I can say what I wantthe worst that is going to happen to me
is that I lose my job. I am not going to get shot or put in a psychiatric
hospital..though it is also true to say that if a movement developed which
actually tried to use on a mass level the rights available, I suspect there
would be substantial repression.
-
- If you attended Nader's rallies and speeches as I did,
he was delivering a very hard-hitting critique of US capitalism, I mean
it is as tough as you can really get and he was able to pull it off. No
one prevented him from holding his mass rallies. They prevented him from
appearing on TV, they excluded him from appearing on the (presidential
candidates) debate, but he was able to organise in constituencies around
the country. If it ever became a bigger phenomenon, what would have
happened
. I don't know.
-
- The Pro Israeli lobby has had spectacular success in
getting its version of events picked up by the media, with even the openly
anti Arab / pro Israel polemic 'Exodus' on the US school curriculum. Noam
Chomsky has even criticised liberal publications such as the New Republic
for being openly racist toward Arabs, and Rana Kabbani has said that hating
Arabs (and Muslims in particular) is the last acceptable form of racism,
would you agree?
-
- I think that they are openly racist in that they say
things about Arabs that would not be permitted about other ethnic groups.
These people are not pro-Israel, but Israel serves an interest to the US
ruling elites and by that fact it serves a useful interest to American
Jewish organisations. The moment that Israel ceases to be an interest,
Israel will no longer be a concern of these organisations.
-
- You said in your second book that one small Palestinian
boy asked you if it was true that Americans believed all Palestinians to
be animals, and you didn't answer not having the heart to tell him it was.
Yet you also said that Arabs should reach out to America to try and build
a counter consensus to Hollywood demonisations. Is this really plausible
given the perceptions in American of Arabs and Muslims?
-
- Nowadays nothing is possible with the events of September
11, a lot of hard work over many years to try to build a counter consensus
disappeared in the rubble of the World Trade Center. I am utterly
pessimistic
about the prospects now, but I did not think it was impossible (before).
Israel was suffering quite a number of major public relations disasters,
beginning with the Lebanon War, the first Intifadah, and then the second
Intifadah. As much as the mainstream media tries to depict the reality
in a manner that suits US-Israeli interests, enough of the truth was coming
through that Israel was suffering a public relations disaster. There were
some prospects, how significant the prospects were we don't know, because
not enough effort was made in trying to exploit those prospects, but after
September 11 I don't think there is much hope.
-
- I get the impression that you think that the West was
in some way responsible for the tragedy of September 11.
-
- Lets put it this way. The so-called West, and really
we're talking about the United States, and to a lesser extent its pathetic
puppy dog in England, have a real problem on their hands. Regrettably,
it's payback time for the Americans and they have a problem because all
the other enemies since the end of World War Two that they pretended to
contend with .. were basically fabricated enemies. The Soviet Union was
a conservative bureaucracy by the end of World War Two, which apart from
the sphere of influence it carved out--mostly for defensive reasons--was
plainly in retrospect a stabilising force in international affairs. Then
the enemies that the US conjured up as the Soviet Union fell into decline
beginning in the early 1980`senemies like Libya, Iraq, narco-terrorists
and so forththese were basically enemies created by the United States
to--among
other things--justify repressive policies around the world, and to inflate
its military budget. Now they do have a problem on their hands, and its
going to exact a cost from Americans. The American elites can talk about
honour and creativity until the cows come home, but it's not going to be
like the Iraq shooting fish in a barrel situation, like they did when they
destroyed Iraq in 1991.
-
- Frankly, part of me says - even though everything since
September 11 has been a nightmare--'you know what, we deserve the problem
on our hands because some things Bin Laden says are true'. One of the
things
he said on that last tape was that 'until we live in security, you're not
going to live in security', and there is a certain amount of rightness
in that. Why should Americans go on with their lives as normal, worrying
about calories and hair loss, while other people are worrying about where
they are going to get their next piece of bread? Why should we go on
merrily
with our lives while so much of the world is suffering, and suffering
incidentally
not with us merely as bystanders, but with us as the indirect and direct
perpetrators. So that I think that you can summon up all the heroic and
self-aggrandizing rhetoric you want, but there is a problem facing all
of us now, and maybe it's about time that the United States starts having
to confront the same sort of problems that much of humanity has had to
confront on a daily basis for God knows how long.
-
- ___
-
- Don Atapattu lives in Manchester, England.
-
- http://www.counterpunch.org
|
