On Norman Finkelstein

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

Publications?

Your original posts on this thread have all been debunked. And as is consistent with your responses in other threads on this Message Board when things don't go your way you're now resorting to familiar juvenile tactics.

Case closed.

yosi

So...publications?

polaris_x

yosi wrote:

So...publications?

really? ... what does it matter if finkelstein did not get tenure for whatever reason!? ... honestly ... is anything he's ever written in his books proved to be lies? ... you aren't doing anything to discredit the man here ...

i can ask you a stupid question all day - what's the point?

yosi

The point is that people on this thread post quotes from this guy relying on his authority as a "scholar" to prove their point. The weight of the argument is tied to the authority carried by the author. I am simply trying to show that this authority is misplaced, since this guy has no scholarly credentials to speak of.

polaris_x

yosi wrote:

The point is that people on this thread post quotes from this guy relying on his authority as a "scholar" to prove their point. If weight of the argument is tied to the authority carried by the author. I am simply trying to show that this authority is misplaced, since this guy has no "scholarly" authority to speak of.

if you attribute "scholarly" to being a tenured prof ... then that's your prerogative ... but to me - one doesn't have to be in order to make valid and "scholarly" points ...

you would have much more impact if you could point to something he writes or states as being false

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

The weight of the argument is tied to the authority carried by the author.

No it isn't. The weight of the argument is tied to whether what he's saying is true or false, based on the historical record.

The reason you attack Norman Finkelstein instead of addressing any of the points he's made in his body of work is because you have no argument.

yosi

When you post a quote from somebody to make your argument you are inherently making an argument from authority. The only reason to assume that the opinion (and we are talking here about Norman Finkelstein's opinions, not facts) of the author is to be trusted is because the author is recognized in some capacity as a reliable authority. Since you so often quote Finkelstein you clearly think of him as a reliable source, and I think that attacking the credentials of the source is perfectly fair game, especially since his credentials are so shoddy. Essentially what you are doing when you quote him is saying "look, here is an AUTHORITY saying things that support my point," and what I am showing (so far without any real refutation) is that this authority is just some guy with a chip on his shoulder.

fuck

yosi wrote:

When you post a quote from somebody to make your argument you are inherently making an argument from authority. The only reason to assume that the opinion (and we are talking here about Norman Finkelstein's opinions, not facts) of the author is to be trusted is because the author is recognized in some capacity as a reliable authority. Since you so often quote Finkelstein you clearly think of him as a reliable source, and I think that attacking the credentials of the source is perfectly fair game, especially since his credentials are so shoddy. Essentially what you are doing when you quote him is saying "look, here is an AUTHORITY saying things that support my point," and what I am showing (so far without any real refutation) is that this authority is just some guy with a chip on his shoulder.

It seems to me that you're the one with the shoddy scholarship. Your point makes no sense. When you quote someone, this whole notion of authority you are trying to emphasize is actually not the point. The point of citing someone like Finkelstein when you're making a point is to say something like "here is someone else who also has well-researched facts that he is presenting at full length. If you'd like to read more about these, you can read Finkelstein's books where he does so." Despite whatever you want to make up, Finkelstein's published books are well-researched facts that he analyzes. His analysis has been approved by many of the world's then-leading scholars such as Edward Said, and present-day Noam Chomsky and John Mearsheimer. Say what you want but no one is buying your fake argument, it's weak and made only by the likes of Dershowitz who himself is a fraud and guilty of weak scholarship.

Your smear campaign against him won't work, you even tried to argue that you can personally recognize scholarship because your dad is a professor. what arrogance.

yosi

I never argued that I can personally recognize good scholarship because my dad is a professor (although you seem to be claiming that YOU can recognize scholarship, since you are so sure that the scholarship of everyone who agrees with you is well-researched and authoritative, but that everyone who disagrees with you is simply lying or doing shoddy work). What I said is that having grown up around professors I know what the standards are for getting tenure. The standard is that a scholar must publish widely in scholarly journals in his field. Can you please stop accusing me of saying things I haven't said. Maybe it would help if you read my comments twice, or read them more slowly, or read them out loud, because you seem to always be putting words in my mouth.

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

When you post a quote from somebody to make your argument you are inherently making an argument from authority. The only reason to assume that the opinion (and we are talking here about Norman Finkelstein's opinions, not facts) of the author is to be trusted is because the author is recognized in some capacity as a reliable authority. Since you so often quote Finkelstein you clearly think of him as a reliable source, and I think that attacking the credentials of the source is perfectly fair game, especially since his credentials are so shoddy. Essentially what you are doing when you quote him is saying "look, here is an AUTHORITY saying things that support my point," and what I am showing (so far without any real refutation) is that this authority is just some guy with a chip on his shoulder.

Why don't you try attacking any of the points he makes instead? If he's said something that you can disprove by reference to the facts then go ahead.

Why don't you take Finkelstein out of the equation and focus on his arguments? Or are you incapable of doing so?

Pepe Silvia

yosi wrote:

When you post a quote from somebody to make your argument you are inherently making an argument from authority. The only reason to assume that the opinion (and we are talking here about Norman Finkelstein's opinions, not facts) of the author is to be trusted is because the author is recognized in some capacity as a reliable authority. Since you so often quote Finkelstein you clearly think of him as a reliable source, and I think that attacking the credentials of the source is perfectly fair game, especially since his credentials are so shoddy. Essentially what you are doing when you quote him is saying "look, here is an AUTHORITY saying things that support my point," and what I am showing (so far without any real refutation) is that this authority is just some guy with a chip on his shoulder.

then why do you use dershowitz as a source when he has published false information and there his book sits on shelves containing false information?

yosi

Screw Dershowitz. I don't care about Dershowitz. But...he is published, and he is tenured, and as far as I can tell the most you can say about him (other than calling him names because you disagree with what he has to say) is that there is a typo in one of his books. Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill.

Pepe Silvia

yosi wrote:

Screw Dershowitz. I don't care about Dershowitz. But...he is published, and he is tenured, and as far as I can tell the most you can say about him (other than calling him names because you disagree with what he has to say) is that there is a typo in one of his books. Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill.

what names have i called him?

if a book was published saying only 60,000 jews died in the holocaust would you care a book with false information was being sold? and would you consider that author a credible scholar?

you're the one using dershowitz as a source....

fuck

yosi wrote:

Screw Dershowitz. I don't care about Dershowitz. But...he is published, and he is tenured, and as far as I can tell the most you can say about him (other than calling him names because you disagree with what he has to say) is that there is a typo in one of his books. Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill.

actually byrnzie already posted the article and the Democracy Now interview that outlines perfectly why Dershowitz is a fraud. It's hilarious how you still refuse to read or watch any of that and yet you talk about how everyone else who disagrees with you is close-minded.

yosi

If it was a typo I wouldn't care.

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

If it was a typo I wouldn't care.

Like I pointed above, you don't know what you're talking about. I bet you've not even seen the Democracy Now debate between Dershowitz and Finkelstein.

yosi

Benny Morris on Fink:

"Norman Finkelstein is a notorious distorter of facts and of my work, not a serious or honest historian."

Also:

Peter Novick, a University of Chicago professor whom Finkelstein has cited as an inspiration, wrote in London’s Jewish Chronicle that Finkelstein’s The Holocaust Industry is characterized by "false accusations," "egregious misrepresentations," "absurd claims" and "repeated mis-statements" ("A charge into darkness that sheds no light," July 28, 2000).

"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," Novick later warned. (Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Feb. 7, 2001)

And:

Peter Novick, Professor of History at the University of Chicago and a noted Holocaust historian whose work Finkelstein says inspired "The Holocaust Industry," has also strongly criticised the latter's work, describing it as "trash."

Pepe Silvia

yosi wrote:

Benny Morris on Fink:

"Norman Finkelstein is a notorious distorter of facts and of my work, not a serious or honest historian."

Also:

Peter Novick, a University of Chicago professor whom Finkelstein has cited as an inspiration, wrote in London’s Jewish Chronicle that Finkelstein’s The Holocaust Industry is characterized by "false accusations," "egregious misrepresentations," "absurd claims" and "repeated mis-statements" ("A charge into darkness that sheds no light," July 28, 2000).

"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," Novick later warned. (Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Feb. 7, 2001)

And:

Peter Novick, Professor of History at the University of Chicago and a noted Holocaust historian whose work Finkelstein says inspired "The Holocaust Industry," has also strongly criticised the latter's work, describing it as "trash."

but can you point to any false information in any of his books like appears in dershowitz's book??

what do you think of this guy supporting Finkelstein?

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/5/9/it ... _amount_of
“It Takes an Enormous Amount of Courage to Speak the Truth When No One Else is Out There”—World-Renowned Holocaust, Israel Scholars Defend DePaul Professor Norman Finkelstein as He Fights for Tenur

The battle over political science professor Norman Finkelstein to receive tenure at DePaul University is heating up. Finkelstein has taught at DePaul for the past six years. Finkelstein’s two main topics of focus over his career have been the Holocaust and Israeli policy. We speak to two world-renowned scholars in these fields: Raul Hilberg, considered the founder of Holocaust studies, and Avi Shlaim, a professor of international relations at Oxford University and an expert on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Shlaim calls Finkelstein a “very impressive, learned and careful scholar”, while Hilberg praises Finkelstein’s “acuity of vision and analytical power.” Hilberg says: “It takes an enormous amount of courage to speak the truth when no one else is out there to support him.”

Raul Hilberg - One of the best-known and most distinguished of Holocaust historians. He is author of the seminal three-volume work “The Destruction of the European Jews” and is considered the founder of Holocaust studies. He joins us on the line from his home in Vermont:

Raul Hilberg: Yes. I read this book, which was published about seven years ago, even as I, myself, was researching actions brought against Swiss companies, notably banks, but also other enterprises in insurance and in manufacturing. And the gist of all of these claims, all of these actions, was that somehow the Swiss banks, in particular, and other enterprises, as well, owed money to Jews or the survivors or the living descendants of people who were victims. The actions were brought by claims lawyers, by the World Jewish Congress, which joined them, and a blitz was launched in the newspapers. Congressmen and senators were mobilized, officials of regulatory agencies in New York and elsewhere. Threats were issued in the nature of withdrawal of pension funds, of boycotts, of bad publicity.

And I was struck by the fact, even as I, myself, was researching the same territory that Professor Finkelstein was covering, that the Swiss did not owe that money, that the $1,250,000,000 that were agreed as a settlement to be paid to the claimants was something that in very plain language was extorted from the Swiss. I had, in fact, relied upon the same sources that Professor Finkelstein used, perhaps in addition some Swiss items. I was in Switzerland at the height of the crisis, and I heard from so-called forensic accountants about how totally surprised the Swiss were by this outburst. There is no other word for it.

Now, Finkelstein was the first to publish what was happening in his book The Holocaust Industry. And when I was asked to endorse the book, I did so with specific reference to these claims. I felt that within the Jewish community over the centuries, nothing like it had ever happened. And even though these days a couple of billion dollars are sometimes referred to as an accounting error and not worthy of discussion, there is a psychological dimension here which not must be underestimated.

I was also struck by the fact that Finkelstein was being attacked over and over. And granted, his style is a little different from mine, but I was saying the same thing, and I had published my results in that three-volume work, published in 2003 by Yale University Press, and I did not hear from anybody a critical word about what I said, even though it was the same substantive conclusion that Finkelstein had offered. So that’s the gist of the matter right then and there.

AMY GOODMAN: Why do you think, Professor Hilberg, he was criticized and you were not?

RAUL HILBERG: Well, Finkelstein—I believe Finkelstein was criticized mainly for the style that he employed. And he was vulnerable. And it was clear to me already years ago that some campaigns were launched—from what sector, I didn’t know—to remove him from the academic world. Years ago, I got a phone call from someone who was in charge of a survivors’ group in California who told me that Finkelstein had been ousted from a job in New York City at a university—actually, a college there—and this was done under pressure.

And then, again, I gave a lecture a year and a half ago in Chicago, which is the place where Finkelstein had been employed at DePaul University, and my lecture was about Auschwitz, and it was based on the records, which we’ve now recovered from Moscow, about the history of this camp. Not exactly a simple topic. But there was a question period, and I awaited pertinent questions, when someone rose from his chair and asked, “Should Finkelstein be tenured?” Now, for heaven’s sake, I said to myself, what is going on here?

And whether he’s being intimidated, whether he is in a situation where, whatever else may be happening, the employers are being intimidated, it’s hard for me to say, but there is very clearly a campaign, which was made very obvious in the Wall Street Journal, when Professor Dershowitz wrote in a style which is highly uncharacteristic of the editorial page of this newspaper, which incidentally I read religiously. So I, myself, cannot fully explain this outburst, but it clearly emanates from the same anger, from the same revolt, that prompted the whole action against the Swiss to begin with...

AVI SHLAIM: Yes. I think very highly of Professor Finkelstein. I regard him as a very able, very erudite and original scholar who has made an important contribution to the study of Zionism, to the study of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, in particular, to the study of American attitudes towards Israel and towards the Middle East.

Professor Finkelstein specializes in exposing spurious scholarship on the Arab-Israeli conflict. And he has a very impressive track record in this respect. He was a very promising graduate student in history at Princeton, when a book by Joan Peters appeared, called From Time Immemorial, and he wrote the most savage exposition in critique of this book. It was a systematic demolition of this book. The book argued, incidentally, that Palestine was a land without a people for people without a land. And Professor Finkelstein exposed it as a hoax, and he showed how dishonest the scholarship or spurious scholarship was in the entire book. And he paid the price for his courage, and he has been a marked man, in a sense, in America ever since. His most recent book is Beyond Chutzpah, follows in the same vein of criticizing and exposing biases and distortions and falsifications in what Americans write about Israel and about the Middle East. So I consider him to be a very impressive and a very learned and careful scholar.

I would like to make one last point, which is that his style is very polemical, and I don’t particularly enjoy the strident polemical style that he employs. On the other hand, what really matters in the final analysis is the content, and the content of his books, in my judgment, is of very high quality.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Shlaim, what about the whole issue of when you criticize the Israeli government, being charged with anti-Semitism? What is your response to this? You were born in Iraq. You’re also an Israeli citizen and then moved to Britain?

AVI SHLAIM: I am. I was born in Baghdad. I grew up in Israel. I served in IDF. And for the last forty years, I have lived in Britain, and I teach at Oxford. My academic discipline is international relations, and I am a specialist in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

And I think that there is no—that we must be very careful to separate questions of anti-Semitism from critique of Israel. I am critical of Israel as a scholar, and anti-Semitism just doesn’t come into it. My view is that the blind supporters of Israel—and there are many of them in America, in particular—use the charge of anti-Semitism to try and silence legitimate criticism of Israeli practices. I regard this as moral blackmail. Israel has no immunity to criticism, moral immunity to criticism, because of the Holocaust. Israel is a sovereign nation-state, and it should be judged by the same standards as any other state. And Norman Finkelstein is a very serious critic and a very well-informed critic and hard-hitting critic of Israeli practices in the occupation and dispossession of the Palestinians.

His last book, Beyond Chutzpah, is based on an amazing amount of research. He seems to have read everything. He has gone through the reports of Israeli groups, of human rights groups, Human Rights Watch and Peace Now and B’Tselem, all of the reports of Amnesty International. And he deploys all this evidence from Israeli and other sources in order to sustain his critique of Israeli practices, Israeli violations of human rights of the Palestinians, Israeli house demolitions, the targeted assassinations of Palestinian militants, the cutting down of trees, the building of the wall—the security barrier on the West Bank, which is illegal—the restrictions imposed on the Palestinians in the West Bank, and so on and so forth. I find his critique extremely detailed, well-documented and accurate.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Hilberg, like you, Norman Finkelstein is the son of Holocaust victims, his mother and his father both in concentration camps. Your final thoughts on this whole dispute and whether Norman Finkelstein should get tenure at DePaul University in Chicago?

Raul Hilberg: Well, let me say at the outset, I would not, unasked, offer advice to the university in which he now serves. Having been in a university for thirty-five years myself and engaged in its politics, I know that outside interferences are most unwelcome. I will say, however, that I am impressed by the analytical abilities of Finkelstein. He is, when all is said and done, a highly trained political scientist who was given a PhD degree by a highly prestigious university. This should not be overlooked. Granted, this, by itself, may not establish him as a scholar.

However, leaving aside the question of style—and here, I agree that it’s not my style either—the substance of the matter is most important here, particularly because Finkelstein, when he published this book, was alone. It takes an enormous amount of academic courage to speak the truth when no one else is out there to support him. And so, I think that given this acuity of vision and analytical power, demonstrating that the Swiss banks did not owe the money, that even though survivors were beneficiaries of the funds that were distributed, they came, when all is said and done, from places that were not obligated to pay that money. That takes a great amount of courage in and of itself. So I would say that his place in the whole history of writing history is assured, and that those who in the end are proven right triumph, and he will be among those who will have triumphed, albeit, it so seems, at great cost.'

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

Benny Morris on Fink:

"Norman Finkelstein is a notorious distorter of facts and of my work, not a serious or honest historian."

Also:

Peter Novick, a University of Chicago professor whom Finkelstein has cited as an inspiration, wrote in London’s Jewish Chronicle that Finkelstein’s The Holocaust Industry is characterized by "false accusations," "egregious misrepresentations," "absurd claims" and "repeated mis-statements" ("A charge into darkness that sheds no light," July 28, 2000).

"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," Novick later warned. (Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Feb. 7, 2001)

And:

Peter Novick, Professor of History at the University of Chicago and a noted Holocaust historian whose work Finkelstein says inspired "The Holocaust Industry," has also strongly criticised the latter's work, describing it as "trash."

So now you're trumpeting Benny Morris? Don't let anyone accuse you of scraping the bottom of the barrel will you?

And it would be nice to know just what these "false accusations," "egregious misrepresentations," "absurd claims" and "repeated mis-statements" alleged by Peter Novick are. If you can enlighten us all Yosi I'd be grateful.

Pepe Silvia

by the way, i noticed you failed to cite what names i called dershowitz......