- Norman Finkelstein is the nearest you can get to a Jewish
heretic. He is a Jew but an anti-Zionist; the son of Holocaust survivors
but a ceaseless critic of what he terms "the Holocaust industry";
a left-wing historian whose views are often praised by revisionist right-wingers
such as David Irving.
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- He is a pugilist by inclination, never missing an opportunity
to fire insults at his enemies among Jewish organisations in the US and
Israel.
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- They, it must be said, are not slow to respond in kind.
Insults flew within minutes when Finkelstein appeared recently with an
Israeli government spokesman on RTE Radio 1's Morning Ireland, and Cathal
Mac Coille, the presenter, had to call the two off each other and beg for
calm. "You're supposed to lie down and take the insults, and I'm not
going to do it," Finkelstein says. "The level of arrogance of
these people just boggles the mind."
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- He believes Jewish organisations are "huckstering"
the Holocaust by extracting huge sums in compensation that never get to
the survivors. "What they have done, by turning the central tragedy
of Jews in the 20th century into a weapon for shaking down people for money
is pretty disgusting; it's wretched." He denounces some of the campaigns
for reparations against Swiss banks and claims that more than $20 billion
(E17.5 billion) has been collected in compensation claims arising from
the Holocaust.
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- Because he is Jewish, Finkelstein gets away with the
kind of language others would never be allowed to use. He accuses Jewish
organisations, for example, of conducting themselves "like a caricature
from Der Sturmer", the notorious Jew-baiting magazine of the Nazis.
He repeatedly refers to the organisations as "crooks" and has
even called Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor who won the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1986, the "resident clown" of the Holocaust circus.
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- The roots of his anger lie in his parents' experience.
Finkelstein's father survived the Warsaw Ghetto and Aushwitz concentration
camp; his mother lived in the ghetto and ended up in Majdanek camp. He
describes both as confirmed atheists.
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- His father received compensation from the German government.
"I still remember the blue envelopes that came in every month. At
the end of his life he was getting $600 a month, or a grand total of about
$250,000. Even though there was no love lost between my father and the
Germans - he hated them all - there was never any complaint about the money.
The Germans were always very competent and efficient."
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- In contrast, his mother's compensation was channelled
through American Jewish organisations. "Even though they went through
the same experiences, she got a grand total of $3,000 and no pension. That's
what you get from Jewish organisations."
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- THE line he takes on the Israel-Palestine conflict is
similarly controversial, at least within his community. "A colossal
wrong has been inflicted on the Palestinians, and no amount of rationalisation
can justify that. There are possibilities for peace, but the Israeli elite
won't allow them to happen."
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- Finkelstein's latest book, a second edition of Image
And Reality Of The Israel-Palestine Conflict, is a scholarly attempt to
undermine the popular image of Israel and its dispute with the Palestinians.
He situates the creation of Israel firmly in the colonial tradition and
seeks to debunk writers who claim the Palestinians never existed historically.
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- He compares Israel's treatment of the Palestinians to
apartheid South Africa's attitude to its blacks or US settlers' view of
native Americans.
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- "All these settlers used the same language. What
was left out of the picture was that there were people living there before
they arrived. We were told there was a wilderness, that it was virgin land
and that every once in a while there were these savages, slightly above
the level of the fauna, who would attack the settlers."
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- A New Yorker by birth, Finkelstein admits he has very
little direct experience of Israel, although he has visited the occupied
territories more than 20 times. "When I'm there no one even cares
less that I'm Jewish. In the first year I was a novelty; by the third or
fourth it was just, hey, Norman's back."
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- So is he, along with other solidarity workers who spend
time with Palestinians but enjoy freedom of speech and personal security
back home in the West, just a meddler? "I don't want to be there.
I'm a complete coward. My hat comes off to those young people who work
in difficult circumstances, who help Palestinians dig a well or who come
to aid of people who are being shot at. If that's meddling, I say we need
a lot more meddling in the world."
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- Asked if Israel can be considered a democracy, he responds:
"Was South Africa a democracy in the old days? It was a democracy
for whites, for the 'superior people'. Similarly, Israel, for the larger
part of its history, has been a society where half the population has all
the rights and half the population has none."
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- But what about the democratic rights of Palestinians
under Yasser Arafat? "How can you have a democracy under occupation?
People there have no rights without the approval of Israel. How democratic
is Alcatraz? Or a concentration camp?"
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- There is a solution, he insists. "I don't think
the way out is so complicated. People constantly try to shroud the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict in all kinds of mystification. They say it's about ancient enmities,
it's about the Bible or religion or it's about the clash of cultures. But
when you go to live there you see it's not complicated at all. The fact
is that there's a military occupation, and that has to end." And then
what? "Then you hope Palestinians and Israelis will live together
in peace."
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- Although Finkelstein enjoys the security of being a US
citizen, he has paid a price for his views. His four books have been popular
successes in Europe - The Holocaust Industry sold 130,000 copies in Germany
in three weeks - but in the US he has been shunned and his books have been
savaged.
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- The New York Times, he once commented, gave a more hostile
review to The Holocaust Industry than it did to Hitler's Mein Kampf. This
clearly rankled, and he returns to it. "I don't want to play the martyr,
but if you look at my history I didn't make out so well. I didn't get the
headlines. I'm in exile in [DePaul University in] Chicago because I was
thrown out of every [university] school in New York.
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- "I'm not happy to be in Chicago. I want to be at
home. That's why I keep an apartment there. I'm still praying for a miracle.
I've had a hard time."
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- © Copyright 2003 The Irish Times
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- http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4012.htm
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