Professor Norman Finkelstein is one of the world's most outspoken and tenacious scholars on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and a fierce critic of the way Israel's supporters wield the memory of the Holocaust in America to gain sympathy of the unsuspecting Americans.

Author of Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, along with Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict and other books, Finkelstein was hailed by a leading authority of Holocaust studies, the late Raul Hilberg, for his "acuity of vision and analytical power" and by prominent Israeli-British historian Avi Shlaim as "as a very able, very erudite and original scholar."

In 2007, Prof. Finkelstein was denied tenure at DePaul University because of an intimidation campaign spearheaded by Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz.

Professor Norman Finkelstein, whose parents were victims of the Holocaust, speaks out on The Holocaust Industry with Dr. Israel Charny, Israeli psychologist and historian in this interview, please listen in:

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCKTKMFTprM

Prominent Jewish-American professor says Gaza rockets were 'symbolic resistance' to Israeli siege.

LONDON - Prominent Jewish-American Professor Norman Finkelstein accused Israel of perpetrating "war crimes" in Gaza through its ongoing siege of the Strip and its war at the turn of the year.

His accusation came within an international conference titled, "UNRWA and Future of Palestinian Refugees", organized in London Wednesday.

Prof. Finkelstein said the causes and effects of the war on Gaza are now coming to light, both in the Goldstone Report and in the recent arrest warrant issued by the UK for Tzipi Livni, who stated that she was "proud of everything she had done in Gaza".

Briefly assessing the history to the siege, Prof. Finkelstein noted that the ceasefire that was agreed between Israel and Hamas June 2008 was broken by Israel, not Hamas: whilst Hamas stopped its rocket attacks, Israel did not lift its illegal blockade on Gaza and launched a night raid on Gaza, whilst the eyes of the worlds were watching 4th November 2008 US elections.

Six Hamas resistance fighters were killed, provoking Hamas to respond, which it did by resuming rocket attacks. Prof. Finkelstein emphasised that this is not violence so much as "symbolic resistance".

He quoted one Palestinian who referred to the rocket attacks as "modest home made rockets are a cry of protest to the world".

Prof. Finkelstein commented that if we are going to condemn Hamas for these rocket attacks, we must suggest how else they should resist the pressure placed on them by persistent Israeli attacks, subjugation and persistent blockades that drain the small area of land.

If we cannot provide an alternative, we cannot criticise, he argued.

Prof. Finkelstein emphasised the disproportionate nature of the Israeli attacks.

The ratios of death and destruction are striking: 100 Palestinians were killed to 1 Israeli; 600 Palestinian civilians were killed to 1 Israeli; and 6000 Palestinian homes were destroyed to 1 Israeli home, he explained.

On this basis, Prof. Finkelstein said, it cannot be called a war as a minimum condition of war is that there are at least two sides firing at each other. Israeli soldiers themselves have stated that Israel used "insane amounts of firepower."

Israel's claims that the extent of devastation and death was due to Hamas using human shields and purposely positioning themselves in dense civilian areas has been undermined by reports by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Dugard Committee and the Goldstone Report which have found no evidence to support this claim.

The Goldstone Report stated that the siege was a "deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population".

Prof. Finkelstein notes that we can only assume that Goldstone, a self-confessed Zionist and a supporter of Israel, would have no interest in unfairly criticising Israel.

The world must assume therefore that what Goldstone has reported is an accurate reflection of abuse and apportionment of responsibility for what happened in Gaza, he added.

Prof. Finkelstein noted that Goldstone Report has, for the first time, put the assessment of human rights abuses first in this conflict, rather than the attention being persistently focussed on the "peace process".

The truth about the ongoing human rights abuses committed by Israel against Palestinians must be at the forefront of campaigning, stressed Prof. Finkelstein.

The Doha Debate, hosted by Tim Sebastian, took place amid mounting controversy over the role of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States and accusations that it has suppressed criticism of Israel - a charge that the lobby vigorously denies.

The motion of the debate was: "This house believes the pro-Israel lobby has successfully stifled Western debate about Israel's actions." Debaters: Norman Finkelstein, Andrew Cockburn, Martin Indyk, David Aaronovitch.

Norman Finkelstein, a leading academic critic of Israeli policies, argued in favour of the motion claiming that the Pro-Israel lobby sows confusion to avoid being held to account.

Finkelstein maintained that the American people are ignorant of solutions to the conflict that have been available for 30 years due to the "misinformation, disinformation, and sheer fraud which masquerades as scholarship that is validated by mainstream media."

Dr Martin Indyk, former US Ambassador to Israel and Director of the Saban Centre for Middle East Policy, argued strongly against the motion, saying that the event in Oxford was a proof of a lively debate on the subject. He said controversy over a recent book by former US president Jimmy Carter - branded anti-Semitic in some quarters - was further evidence that criticism of Israel was not being stifled.

At the end of the debate, two-thirds of the student audience approved a motion claiming that Israel's supporters are stifling western debate.

What is the power and influence of "The Lobby" (a.k.a. AIPAC) on US Foreign Policy?

The explanation for the support is to be found in the activities of the Israel Lobby, also known as the Jewish Lobby, or as AIPAC (the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee), which uses its formidable influence to shape American foreign policy in accordance with Israeli interests. This opinion has most recently been associated with an article published in the London Book Review, co-authored by Professor Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Professor Walt of Harvard University (more about this here and here).

Here is a debate on this subject between Norman Finkelstein (professor of political science at De Paul University) and James Petras (an Emeritus Professor of sociology at SUNY, Binghamton):

powered by ODEO

Dershowitz and other racists embarked on a program to press DePaul University to deny tenure to our friend Dr. Norman Finkelstein.

If you are not familiar with Finkelstein's excellent work, take a look around his website. Anybody who read Beyond Chutzpah knows how meticulous is the research of Prof. Finkelstein. Dershowitz's plagiarizing and garbage would not be tolerated if he was not part of an elite that were used to having their way in America. But above all, Dean Suchar should not accept the attack on free speech by these desperate, mean, and increasingly (if that is possible) fanatical elite. McCarthyism and witch hunts should not be tolerated in America! I hope you will take time to write letters especially if you are in academia (I am sure they are receiving letters from racists who do not like the facts articulated in Finkelstein's books or his other scholarly work):
Dean Prof. Charles Suchar csuchar@depaul.edu
President The Rev. Dennis Holtschneider, CM president@depaul.edu

Also, read and sign the We Support A Fair Tenure Process for Dr. Norman Finkelstein Petition:
http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?nf200704

Update: If you need some inspiration to write to DePaul University, here is a copy of a letter written by Prof. George Salzman - University of Massachusetts at Boston [Hat tip: Robin]

Monday, 9 April 2007

The Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, C.M., Ed.D.
President De Paul University

Dear Reverend Holtschneider,

I write you regarding the effort of Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz to intervene in De Paul University's tenure consideration of Professor Norman G. Finkelstein.

Setting aside for the moment which of these two bitter academic contestants is more accurate in portraying the true nature of the Israel-Palestine conflict, I urge a strong, principled stand by your institution, utterly rejecting the legitimacy of Mr. Dershowitz's attempted intervention.

The Chronicle of Higher EducationI account at http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=tqyfjnxDdNnvzcffqm3kYcxKjWm3pgDH , on which I am relying, reports that your Liberal Arts and Sciences' Faculty Governance Council, at its meeting on November 17, 2006, "voted unanimously to authorize a letter to DePaul's president, Dennis H. Holtschneider, and the university's provost, Helmut P. Epp, along with the president of Harvard University and the dean of Harvard Law school. The letter was to express "the council's dismay at Professor Dershowitz's interference in Finkelstein's tenure and promotion case" which "Professor Dershowitz's emails" violate.

Your Faculty Governance Council should be commended not only for the substance of its principled stand but for making available the minutes of its meeting at which its decision was taken.

The intervention of Alan Dershowitz in Norman Finkelstein's tenure review is particularly egregious because Finkelstein has shown, with meticulous care, irrefutably, that Dershowitz, in his book The Case for Israel, plagairized substantial material from Joan Peters' book, From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine. Peters' book is well known to be a total fraud. Finkelstein, a skillful and committed scholar, has been relentless in uncovering the massively organized propagandistic misrepresentation of the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The false, pro-Israel version held almost undisputed sway from 1948 until it began to be challenged in 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon. Dershowitz used Peters' material to help meet his own apparent psychological need to justify Israel's actions. That he knowingly claimed the material taken from Peters' book was his own historical research was, independently of the fraudulent nature of the material itself, surely grounds for Harvard to have revoked his tenure and fired him. Lying, as a faculty member, by claiming plagairized material to be his own academic research, is unacceptable academic conduct, tenure notwithstanding.

Dean Charles S. Suchar of your College of Liberal Arts and Sciences appears to have based his rejection of the unanimous recommendation by the College Personnel Committee in favor of Finkelstein's tenure on his judgment: "I find the personal attacks in many of Dr. Finkelstein's published books to border on character assassination and, in my opinion, they embody a strategy clearly aimed at destroying the reputation of many who oppose his views." It is certainly true that Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky write very different kinds of polemics. However, Chomsky, like Finkelstein, exposes the shallow scholarly basis on which 'the reputation of many who oppose his views' are based, and in that way Chomsky acts to destroy their scholarly reputations. Among those 'many' are the uninformed but not malicious academics and others who honestly believe Israel is righteous. But Mr. Dershowitz is in a different category. He is not acting out of ignorance. His efforts to stifle open discussion and debate on the Israel-Palestine conflict are both legion, and undertaken with full readiness to lie. In this he acts as a lawyer, not a scholarly academic. His goal is to win 'the case for Israel', not to uncover the truth, and if besmirching Finkelstein and trying to destroy his livelihood and thus punishing him for not shutting up are, in Dershowitz's belief, useful tools for his campaign, he seizes them without hesitation. In my opinion his efforts are despicable.

I know full well that universities are not isolated from the society at large, and are subject to political and financial pressures, but I hope that you and your university will not be influenced by Dershowitz's attempted intervention.

Very sincerely,
George Salzman
Prof. Emeritus
University of Massachusetts at Boston