Norman Finkelstein, the former Depaul University professor, is whining about how horrible his life has been since he was denied tenure by the university: http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/41838/.
Don't you feel sorry for him? I sure do...............
13 comments:
I do feel sorry for him. I think he is in dire need of some professional conselling. His behaviour is completely unhinged. There is something very wrong with him.
It is clear that telling uncomfortable truths about Israel makes one a target. Hasbara parrots revel in attacking critics of the Zionist state. Hacks such as Alan Dershowitz are rewarded for fraudulent scholarship while truth-tellers such as Dr. Norman Finkelstein pay the price for their integrity.
What makes you think that Dershowitz is a hack and Finklestein is a truth-teller? Based on what criteria?
Finklestein is being cynically and ruthlessly milked for the maximum damage his case do to Jews, Israel and the Holocaust memory. He is also hypocritical. He exploits the Holocaust to further his own agenda, in exactly the same way he decries in his questionable book. I have great pity for him, for he exhibits the great mental pain and confusion that characterizes many Holocaust survivors's children. Unfortunately for him and his family, he is going about healing that anguish in the worst possible way.
Anybody who wants to judge for themselves can check out Finkelstein's website http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/
You made a comparison between Dershowitz and Finklestein, and came down on the side of the latter as a truth teller. The very least you can do is try to show how you came to this conclusion, based on what parameters, what arguments?
If you can't be bothered to support your allegation, why make it in the first place?
centrist - Cool your jets. Your initial comment lacked any substantiation yet you are chomping at the bit for me to provide some (rather than just make an observation) though none of your subsequent posts have provided any actual examples of those things you contend. You also seem to think that enough time has passed for you to follow up your unsupported statements with a challenge for me to support my own as if I was hiding from them in some manner.
I recently saw Dr. Finkelstein speak for the 2nd time in a visit to my own campus. The local Hillel organization tried to take him to task for his statements but was thoroughly shown to be ignorant of the facts.
There is a video of the talk from Justice Vision (http://justicevision.blogspot.com/). The talk from UCLA is listed but the one from USC is not indexed yet. You can write Ralph and get the entire "Middle East Awareness Week" series at USC for $5.
As to supporting my statements re: Dershowitz vs. Dr. Finkelstein, I will direct you to what Frank Menetrez PHD wrote about the issue here: Dershowitz v. Finkelstein
Who's Right and Who's Wrong?
04.30.2007 By Frank J. Menetrez
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=999
He deals with both the question of plaigarism by Dershowitz as well as Dershowitz's actions in regards to tenure for Dr. Finkelstein.
[begin excerpt] When I started to research and write this article, I intended to evaluate every charge that Dershowitz's List levels against Finkelstein. I started with the charges related to Beyond Chutzpah, both because they seemed the most relevant to Finkelstein's tenure case and because I thought they would be the easiest to investigate, since the documentary record concerning those charges is extensive and readily accessible. After wrapping those up, I intended to move on to the other items on Dershowitz's List. But I have abandoned that project. Here's why:
[...] I concluded that the first sentence of the first item on Dershowitz's List of the "clearest and most egregious instances" of Finkelstein's lies is itself a fraud. And on that basis I concluded that my original project--to sift through and evaluate every single claim on Dershowitz's List--should be abandoned.
[end excerpt]
This is but one example of many that I have seen where Dr. Finkelstein's scholarship holds up and that of Alan Dershowitz falls flat. I look forward to your substantiation (with specific examples) of his Holocaust exploitation as well as how he is "being cynically and ruthlessly milked for the maximum damage his case do [sic] to Jews, Israel and the Holocaust memory" and by whom.
"chomping at the bit"? I re-read my comments to you and there was nothing personally debasing in them. I have to wonder why you resort to this kind of animalistic language when talking to or about Jews.
I will, nonetheless, ignore your vulgarities and will post an answer later about Finkelstein's hypocrisy with regard to the Holocaust exploitation.
You provide this quote:
“But I have abandoned that project. ..--to sift through and evaluate every single claim on Dershowitz's List--.”
As supporting this statement:
“This is but one example of many that I have seen where Dr. Finkelstein's scholarship holds up and that of Alan Dershowitz falls flat.”
Yet by the author’s own admission, he abandoned the project of actually looking into Dershowitz’s allegations.
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Finkelstein’s main beef with Jews is that they cynically and dishonestly invoke the Holocaust, to promote their own interests. What would those interests be? Lining their pockets with German blood money and immunizing Israel from criticism about its treatment of Palestinians.
How do they achieve these aims? By carping upon the horrors of the Holocaust, keeping the memory alive, emotionally blackmailing poor, guilt-stricken Germans into giving more money to Jewish claims.
In other words, he claims that these tactics are a fallacy, Argumentum ad misericordiam (argument or appeal to pity).
There is nothing morally wrong in using appeal to pity in order to argue for the benefits of a certain policy. The Holocaust did happen, it was as horrendous as it is described, and seeking reparations is one way of addressing the injustice.
Finkelstein places the allegation that the Holocaust industry is based on a logical fallacy at the core of his thesis. Yet, in contradiction to his own declared distaste for the “appeal to pity”, he keeps referring, repeatedly, to the fact that his parents are Holocaust survivors. Why does he do that? Because in his opinion, it gives him moral authority or leverage: here is a son of Holocaust survivors who is brave enough to stare down Holocaust industrialists, like Elie Wiesel and his minions. As when he says in the following examples:
“[A]ny temptation to "indulge in a bout of self-pity," he [Finkelstein] said, was halted by thinking of his parents, who survived the Warsaw ghetto and the Nazi death camps while the rest of his relatives were exterminated. "They survived," he said. "I'll survive."
"Because she's an Eichmann-like bureaucrat currying favour with the powerful while blandly following orders. Were my mother still around, I am quite sure - I mean this literally - she would have taken the first train to Cambridge and - just as she did with the Nazi guards from Maidanek when confronting them at the postwar trial in Dusseldorf in 1979 - called Kagan a whore to her face and then throttled her."
And then there is this:
“Afterward, Finkelstein says, he lost seventeen pounds. “People saw me wasting away,” he says. A student group held a hunger strike; Chomsky and others defended him. One of his colleagues made him a mix CD with tracks like “I Will Survive” and “What’s Goin’ On?” “I’m an old fan of the Negro spirituals,” Finkelstein says. “I was going around singing to myself, ‘Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there?’ That’s how I felt. I was being crucified by the end.”
His “persecution” manifests itself in physical symptoms, visually reminiscent of the extremely thin apparitions that greeted American liberators of the concentration camps. This is a pathological attempt to create equivalence between his situation and that of Holocaust survivors. It is the worst, most macabre kind of “fetishization of balance” that I have seen.
Why is he doing this? Why is he invoking his personal memory of the Holocaust when he so rigorously castigates others for doing the same?
Because it serves his interests, his quest for political and academic influence and a secure source of income, because he cannot discuss any aspect of Holocaust without this personal dimension.
An appeal to pity may not be aesthetically pleasing but it is morally acceptable. However, if you castigate others for resorting to that fallacy, you ought to make damn sure that your own discourse will be clear of any trace of that same distasteful practice. Which is where I locate Finkelstein’s hypocrisy.
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As for your third “challenge” about Finkelstein being milked to promote Palestinian causes, all you need to do is look who his “friends” are and in which academic journal most of his articles were published.
Just as Finkelstein asks “Cui bono” from the “Holocaust industry”, I ask, who benefits most from his tribulations. Certainly not him.
It is hard not to notice that of the few academics whose tenure process was embroiled in great controversy, he, the Jew, is the only one who has not been tenured…
I would have never seen the expression "chomping at the bit" as a slur anymore than "cool your jets" was insinuating that you were actually a pilot.
The reason Dr. Menetrez stated he need go no further in deconstructing Dershowitz is that Dershowitz's own claim that he is putting his strongest argument first has shown to be wholly lacking.
Dr. Finkelstein "invokes" his own history with the Holocaust to put his other tribulations in perspective.
Nowhere have you shown that Dershowitz has established that Dr. Finkelstein is a liar and yet it is quite easy to reference the reverse. Having shown that Dershowitz has lied it is rational to conclude that he is a liar.
The attacks on Dr. Finkelstein focus on almost anything other than his scholarship; particularly in regards to the Israel/Palestine conflict. You diagnose him as unhinged as a diversion to what he actually says.
That's what you asked:
" I look forward to your substantiation (with specific examples) of his Holocaust exploitation as well as how he is "being cynically and ruthlessly milked for the maximum damage his case do [sic] to Jews, Israel and the Holocaust memory" and by whom."
I provided my answers, complete with supporting quotes and arguments, which you clearly don't like but you don't do anything to refute. You create new "challenges" ... As in, I feel it must be so, therefore it is so...
When an opinion cannot modify itself when new information or new arguments are brought in, it is no longer an opinion but a prejudice.
And your prejudice is manifested not only in your rigid support for Finkelstein, even though you clearly understand very little about where he is coming from, but from your manner of engagement, goinfg for the personal insult by way of silencing your interlocutor.
centrist said - "I provided my answers, complete with supporting quotes and arguments, which you clearly don't like but you don't do anything to refute. You create new "challenges" ... As in, I feel it must be so, therefore it is so..."
I do not consider "all you need to do is look who his “friends” are and in which academic journal most of his articles were published." as anything of the sort in regards to providing supporting answers, quotes or arguments.
You started out by saying the man is unhinged and I said I think he is a truth-teller. I think I have established this whereas you have ventured far afield from your original contention merely throwing more shite against the wall hoping some of it will stick.
You established nothing of the sort. You linked to an article.
I stated that Finkelstein exploited the Holocaust for his own ends and I supported my statement with direct quotes from his writings.
If you were half as knowledgeable about Finkelstein as you pretend, you would know "who his “friends” are and in which academic journal most of his articles were published." And why these facts support my contention that he is being milked for all the damage he can do to Jews and Israel by the usual suspects.
Of course he is unhinged. I'm surprised you are not worried about him yourself, such an admirer as you are, when he likens himself to Jesus and invokes the image of the musulman. All because he was denied tenure.
CC- So declare "Victory" then and be done with it. Dr. Finkelstein has established that the vultures of the "Holocaust Industry" have continued to line their own pockets under the banner of helping out Holocaust survivors. http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=3&ar=83
For you to equate pointing out such abuses with the people committing the abuses is ludicrous, yet fully in keeping with Hasbara propaganda tactics. Anonymous gave the best advice when he/she indicated that one could check out the good Dr.'s website and decide for themselves [http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/index.php].
I merely interjected that the contentions of Bald-Headed Geek and Contentious Centrist were without merit. The responses that followed only confirmed that. I have nothing further to add.
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