The State of "Palestine" Quiz

yosi wrote:

Finkelstein...employed the same dubious rhetoric and faulty logic he had identified in Goldhagen's work in order to propound his own, even ''crazier,'' thesis on the dark forces lurking, to his mind, behind his adversary's success.

It's a shame he was unwilling to provide us with any examples.

yosi wrote:

The fact that his sensational ''revelations'' and outrageous accusations draw a great deal of public and media attention is no fault of his own.

Once again, it's a shame that he isn't able to provide us with any example of a 'sensational revelation', or 'outrageous accusation'.

yosi wrote:

a reality that only he can perceive through the clouds of mystification and demagogy that have deceived thousands of lay persons, scholars, and intellectuals.

Actually, there's no mystification or demagogy in any of Finkelstein's book. They are perfectly clear and unambiguous, are heavily sourced, and rely solely on the factual record.
Though I find it ironic that an Israel apologist can have the audacity to accuse someone like Finkelstein of mystification and demagogy, considering that mystification and demagogy are the Israel apologists standard modus operandi.

yosi wrote:

Here he 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. Now, however, the Jewish conspiracy is intended to ''shake down'' (his favorite phrase) such innocent entities as Swiss banks, German corporations and East European owners of looted Jewish property, all in order to consolidate Jewish power and influence without giving the real survivors of the genocide anything but empty rhetoric.

Nowhere does Finkelstein mention that the main beneficiaries of compensation for forced labor will be elderly gentile men and women living their last days in poverty in Eastern Europe, or that German scholars like Ulrich Herbert, hardly an employee of ''Jewish interests,'' have been at the forefront of the struggle to gain compensation from corporations that for decades refused to admit their enormous gains from slave and forced labor. From the author's perspective, this is simply a case of organized American Jewry ''lording it over those least able to defend themselves,'' such as, presumably, the Swiss banks it was ''plotting'' to boycott, and ''the United States and its allies'' from whom it ''finagled another $70 million.''

Except the conveniently forgets to mention that the actual survivors of the holocaust in question have in the cases he documents in his book, failed to see a penny of the money 'shaken down' from the Swiss banks.

Still, at least he was able to throw in the old Anti-Semitism slur. The article would have been incomplete without at least one mention of it.

yosi wrote:

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.

Impressive use of a thesaurus here.

yosi wrote:

Finkelstein speaks of the ''Holocaust industry'' as ''cloaking itself in the sanctimonious mantle of 'needy Holocaust victims.' ''Yet he cloaks himself in that very same mantle, while at the same time showing little sympathy for the feelings of the survivors

Sure, he showed so little sympathy for the survivors of the holocaust, that he took upon himself to write an entire book on their behalf, denigrating those who have sought to exploit their suffering.

yosi wrote:

it is brimming with the same indifference to historical facts, inner contradictions, strident politics and dubious contextualizations

Once again, it really is a shame that this writer was unable to provide us with even one example of an indifference to historical facts, an inner contradiction, or a dubious contextualization.

yosi wrote:

This book is, in a word, an ideological fanatic's view of other people's opportunism

Thereby discounting any and all of the actual claims made in the book, all of which are supported by the factual record.

yosi wrote:

Like any conspiracy theory, it contains several grains of truth; and like any such theory, it is both irrational and insidious.

So there we have it; an entire article that fails to address any of the actual points made in the book itself, and which fails to provide us with even one single example of Finkelstein's 'faulty logic', 'sensational revelations', or 'outrageous accusations'.

Pathetic.

yosi wrote:

It's not bullshit at all. The man doesn't give a shit about other people's sensitivities. There's video of him reducing a college girl to tears in front of a college audience. Whether or not you think he's right (in that particular instance or in general), most people, I think, would consider the manner in which Finkelstein often addresses himself to others to be "dickish."

He didn't reduce her to tears. She was already weeping when she stepped up to the podium. The girl was pathetic, and attempting to use emotional blackmail and the memory of the holocaust to excuse and justify Israel's crimes against the Palestinians, and Finkelstein was right to put her in her place.

yosi wrote:

I don't get what the point of your last post is. It makes exactly my point. Finkelstein wrote a sensationalist book about holocaust profiteering, off of which he has profitted greatly. There is an irony there.

Would you have been happy if he had refused to accept any royalties for a book that he spent at least a year writing?
Your argument is pathetic.

yosi wrote:

Bartov never reversed himself. He never denied that there is holocaust profiteering. He simply thinks that Finkelstein's assertion, that the entire manner in which Jews relate to the holocaust the world over is some sort of conspiracy to extort money and shield Israel from criticism, is a crock of shit.

Except that isn't what Finkelstein said, and it isn't the purpose of the book at all. His assertion isn't that Jews, the World over, are guilty of this extortion, but that certain people and organizations are. But then you know that already. That's just an attempt on your part to trivialize and denigrate the book instead of addressing any of the facts contained in it.

yosi wrote:

You do understand that this was a book review. It's supposed to sum up the reviewers opinion of the book. It's not a legal brief. You can't fault the man for not writing an essay picking apart Finkelstein's book. That's not his job. His job is to write a review.

Your desperation is telling.
So now we're led to believe that it's beyond the remit of any review to actually provide any evidence supporting the criticism's it makes. We're just supposed to take the reviewers word for it, are we?

yosi wrote:

"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.”

So what? This critical thinking should be applied to any book, or article, should it not? In fact, I'm sure Finkelstein would agree wholeheartedly with Peter Novick's comments.

yosi wrote:

Really? Now you're pretending that Novick's comments aren't a criticism but just a friendly reminder to read critically?

I abridged a little. Here's a more complete version of Novick's quote:

“As concerns particular assertions made by Finkelstein concerning reparations and restitution, and on other matters as well, the appropriate response is …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."

But yeah, you're right, he's just making a general appeal for more critical reading.

That's very clever of you. You now accuse me of 'pretending' something?
The part of his quote you posted previously made no mention of Finkelstein indulging in pure invention, so I was perfectly right to take the quote for what it was.

Was this just a little trick you decided to play in the pursuit of one-upmanship?


Anyway, as far as Peter Novick's claim that Finkelstein has indulged in 'pure invention', I couldn't care less. Finkestein's book has been independently verified and supported by other scholars, as I pointed out above.


RAUL HILBERG: 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 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.
...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.

AVI SHLAIM: 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.