May is coming, and it’s not bringing flowers — its bringing the delusional yet dangerous Storming Norman Finkelstein to a college campus near you. As part of the national Muslim Student Speakers circuit for a while, he always crawls out from his rock in time for May.
Now you may remember that we chimed in during the debate on whether he should get ordained by DePaul and given a real full time job. I offered to teach Norman Hebrew, since he freely admitted that he does not speak Hebrew, nor Arabic. I mentioned that mastery of one or more Semitic languages that are an integral part of the regional conflict would help his chances of getting tenure. He never contacted me for the free lessons and was denied tenure.
We have published too many posts on this nutty professor. Yet, his staying power and his hypocrisy just shout out “blog me!”
Here are some of his upcoming performances:
Brown University— April 15
Boston College — April 16
Grinnell College — April 21 (Passover edition)
University of Southern Maine — April 29
University of Montreal and University of Ottawa — May 3
University of Toronto — May 4
University of Arizona — May 5
University of California, Irvine — May 7
The Evergreen State College, WA — May 8
New College of Florida — May 13
I counted nearly 30 colleges and universities on his published schedule in the US, UK, and Canada from January – May 2008. In other words, since being let go from DePaul he has catapulted to a rarefied status amongst Muslim Students. He is the token Jew, who along side Neturei Karta, say whatever they pay them to say. His performances condemning Israel are being heard by tens of thousands of impressionable young Americans who do not have the requisite knowledge to realize they are being duped. Finkelsteins lectures are often assigned for extra credit or even mandatory by multiple departments, meaning his “lectures” are always well attended.
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You actually make it seem so easy with your presentation but I find this topic to be really something which I think I would never understand. It seems too complicated and extremely broad for me. I am looking forward for your next post, I will try to get the hang of it!
bullshit! The Armenians incidently are now beginning to find out the REAL history of what happened. There is a very interesting video made by an armenian priest on this subject. All your efforts to cause trouble in that area look like disolving. Also, people now know you people did 911 . Obviously with the help of some dumb goyim who want to be your best mate, and are too dumb to read the talmud to know exactly what you “jews” (i put it in commas as the REAL jews follow the Torah of the Prophet Moses pbuh and NOT some crap to come out of Babylon on the orders of Rabbi Yahuvah HaNasi with the rubbish “oral secret law” as supposed to the true Law that the Prophet Moses pbuh brought – the clear and open and written one). It is said “the Lord knows well the blasphemy of the Jews who are not Jewish (ie they dont follow the Torah but another book that contradicts most of the important laws – ie Torah= do not steal/Talmud= steal the money of the Goyim) and they do nothing but lie”.
90% of the Jews are Ashkenasim or Khazarian ‘jews’ the white jews who appear to get rich off enslaving women from Russia and Poland into the white slave trade (people know that the russian mafia are really jews), and they are being to know that the KGB/KJV/Checka are actually Jews, they are begining to find out about the Katyn Massacre and the so-called ‘Russian’ politbureau of which the 315 members 300 were jews. They also starting to find out that Churchill was a Jew (Jenny Jacobson). The real question is how do you live with yourself knowing that pretty much everything say about trying to paint your evil group as good is bullshit, and that you as a race or whatever you call yourselves are behind the problems of the world. I know you know that, so dont lie to me and how you are shocked about what has been said. If you read the Quran and it says that most of the Jews are evil except for a small number for try as hard as they can to counter the evil of their group, dont tell me that you think that is bullshit. I know you know that is the truth. How do you continue to propagate something you know to be a lie, knowing that in the end you will die and meet God who will put you and your ilk into Hell? this is the real question.
John, the only bullshit here is yours. Goodbye.
You are right, John, my grandfather made up the 4 brothers he had, their wives, their children and his parents. Apparently he was an only child born to a tree. Likewise with my grandmother who lost 3 out of 4 of her siblings and their entire families except for one brother and one of her nephews. That’s right, John, we are all just imagining entire families being murdered BECA– USE WE HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO.
Moron.
The Einsattzgruppen alone murdered 1.5 million Jews before the Nazis even embarked on the Final Solution.
Finklestein is a liar as his way of refuting the murdering theiving Israelis is by banging on about the Holocaust. Ive looked into the Holocaust and it is a total lie. The proof of the murdered thousands by Pol Pot is the heaps of skeletons. There are no skeletons of the dead jews that were supposedly murdered. If you are to kill 3-4million people that means you will have to dispose of the bodies – they originally said they had been buried, but this was refuted as you bury that many bodies in that area and it would poison the water supply. Then they said they had been burnt. The amount of coke delivered to the nearby coke mine was carefully logged as the Nazis were very judicious with paperwork. This amount of coke (40kg per body) would not have been enough to burn even a couple of thousand bodies. Next it was suggested they burnt them with wood. It takes 1/2 a ton of wood to burn a body (made of 90% water and thus hard to burn) which means 2 million tons of wood – this means a logging company with transportation, a sawmill, a very large storage area to dry the wood out for burning and a hefty work force. They have pictures of this site taken in 1942 and 1943 when the deadmachine was supposedly at it height, and yet nothing, including no picture of the air vents put in by the russians later on which were said to be the place they threw in the gas (into the non-gas proof room!). Then youd have to get rid of the bones. There are 206 bones in a body x 4 million = 824 million bones, yet no evidence exists. If there is no evidence then the crime did not take place. The israelis/jews are cunning – they know the inconsistency of their lies is being refuted and the refutation is becoming well-known despite their placing a ban on even discussing it, so they get a jewish professor ‘who hates israel’ to talk a great deal about the holocaust in order to prop up a total lie that was used to silence critics with ‘anti-semetism’, steal and murder (palestine) and make endless racist remarks and demands of compensation from the innocent Germans who were really fighting a war of defence against the jews who instigated the war in the first place by placing an embargo on all German goods and destroying their economy, and then seized all their belongings from debt collection which Hilter rightly then took back. He was fighting them as he knew what they had done to Christian Russia with the Bolshovik (jewish) army (murdered them all in death camps in Siberia and then starved 100 million poeple) and to the Islamic Caliphate of Turkey. The Donmeh (crypto-jews pretending to be muslims) from Salonica headed by Kemal Ataturk were responsible for the genocide of the 1.5 million greek speaking armenians who were the merchant/admistrative class in Russia and Turkey, and therefore had to die as this was the best way of destroying both empires. Sultan Muhummad I did indeed start it, but the real genocide kicked in in 1908 after he had been deposed by the Jews and continued till 1923 – this is when the true amount were massacred, killed by the Jews who continue to forment trouble in that area between the Turks and Armenians by blaming the Muslims.
Lance has the uncanny ability to go on lengthy diabtribes and talk in circles without making one salient point.
Bravo sir! You win the spinning windbag award!
I’ve just finished Finkelstein’s Beyond Chutzpah. One of the best, most well-documented, well-argued books I have ever read. All you detractors are full of it.
“..It isn’t that all Jews are the same, they’re not (such as the principled ones I’ve listed).”
By “principled”, you mean those jews who give you a pass on your bias, blame themselves for your hostility and finally, absolve you of complicity in the mass murder of millions of Jews, Gypsys, Homosexuals, Communists, etc, etc.
I wonder if “serious pundit(s)” are in the same class as “serious historians”? The times they are a-changing.
—–
MSM propaganda at work: from http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/05/jerome-slater-pulls-intellectualhistorical-rug-out-from-under-goldberg.html#more
“Will Goldberg’s latest travesty discredit him as a serious pundit in all those famous U.S. newspapers and magazines? If you believe that, then I am the Queen of Sweden.”
Re: mod email –
Who am I talking to? “themiddle”? All I want is for you to allow a reasonbly unfettered discussion. It would help to not have to argue at every other turn that my comments/observations are not on par with Stormfront’s. It would help to be able to ignore your non-sequiturs about how many posts I’ve been allowed (at a ratio of something like 5 to 1 of pro-Zionist commenters, complaints of not answering – I’ve addressed quite a few whereas many I’ve posed are totally ignored, allegations that my comments are off-topic, etc., etc….).
You say (I think it’s you) I attribute to you things said by someone else (true – my error – I have more detractors to choose from) yet you have not challenged them on statements that claim to speak for all Jews (such as Alex’s Jews/Zionist conflation) though you tend to try to deconstruct every utterance I make (I at least acknowledge corrections). You have not even done much to correct the unethical conduct of Jewlicious as far as I know in regards to changing the text of a post with the unconscienable supposed self-statement of being a “neo-Nazi.” If you think that is no big deal then maybe you’ll understand why so many people brush off accusastions of anti-Semitism when lies that are perceived as truth is a regular propaganda ploy. It is spelled out in the Hasbara manual. I had some pro-Z declare the Hasbara manual was akin to the protocols when it is actually a pro-Zionist publication.
It is clear Jewlicious does not get its panties in a bunch over strict enforcement for much beyond comments from outsiders. You (group usage) pretty much preach to the choir and work the refs. How about just letting the chat progress on its own and quit trying to strangle it? If you have all your scary rebuttal points art the ready you should be able to handle it. Unless I missed it elsewhere, how about answering what is anti-Semitic about the Fredy perlman essay. You let a later post of it go thru but never provided a response. Is he not a good enough Jew for uyou? An unworthy Jewish voice?
Like I said, I like confining myslef to the Finkelstein thread and not venturing into the rest of the site. Can’t you at least allow an open discussion without your heavy-handedness? It’s not like you can’t drop the hammer if it gets to that point but you’re like the 1984 character asking Winston Smith how many fingers he is holding up. I do not know exectly where the bar is set because you set it so low.
— [email protected] wrote:
From: “DA”
To: LanceThruster@***.net
Subject: Re: [Jewlicious] New Comment Posted to “Norman Finkelstein Awareness Month”
Date: Thu, 22 May 2008 22:09:50 +0200
Oy Lance…
What do you want me to do here exactly? You need to be a little more detailed in your communication.
d.
Did I call you a POS? I don’t recall that. I think I’ve called you dirt all along. I definitely didn’t make a claim about “no serious historian.” That was Rootlesscosmo. I referred to one of your comments at one point, because you were so thrilled that Hilberg once said something nice about Finkelstein, saying that you were excited that a serious historian took him seriously once.
In other words, you’re talking out of your ass yet again. I guess we also need to recognize that it’s you who is the prevaricator here. Not to mention trollish provocateur.
And let’s be clear that you haven’t addressed the many responses that you’ve received, that you’ve been permitted to post ad nauseam, that your bigotry has been allowed to pass through, and that all of your attacks on me have been published.
Shalom, troll.
Well, at least I’ve been upgraded from POS to piece of dirt. What’s next, unter-menschen (sub-human)?
It isn’t that all Jews are the same, they’re not (such as the principled ones I’ve listed). As the banality of your (collective) inane arguments so often morph one in to the other, I address “you” singular, and due to the informailty of the medium, might continue my argument to “you” (the collective thought majority). Before you get too pedantic, let’s not forget that it was “you” (singular) that made reference to “no serious historian”,and then waffled on that point when you 9singular) were shown to be in error. And despite my point about death camps needing a slight correction while not altering the main issue of eyewitness recollections being somewhat less than fully reliable (Elie Weisel did not mention gas chambers until a much later printing of “Night”) it is not the same as your blanket statement.
It’s as if you said “No nuclear weapons have been used in anger!” and when I cite Hiroshoma, you say “Well OK, just that one” and when I mention Nagasaki, you say, “Yeah, but it’s only those two” as if it doesn’t totally kick your weasely little prevericating ass.
Good thing you’re a mod or you’be too busy wetting your pants to even enter the room. What a worthless POS you (“singular” though a few more of you {collective} qualify) are.
Shalom.
Please, you think Goatboy can afford to travel? Ha! Most people with such an unhealthy obsession with Jews and Israel can much less afford their own apartment than a trip to the Greatest City on Earth. The guy probably has less money than Finklestein has sources.
Alex, when you go, can you take the troll with you? Please!
Lance, you lying piece of dirt bigot, you were speaking to me in 158 and not to Alex. We can see this because you write to me:
So when you write that your assertion comes from what Alex wrote, either you’re lying or you’re unable to tell the difference between one Jew and another. I’ll bet it’s the first but with the unmistakeable odor of the second.
We can learn even from our enemies. – Ovid
I love rereading what I write! Thanks Goatboy for reminding me why I’m such a great pundit, and an arrogant Zionist! Any more compliments you want to pay me, are by all means, welcomed!
I won’t be around for a few days since I’ll be traveling to what your people and Jesse Jackson call Hymie-Town to visit other other Zionist family and friends I have there. My cousin just married a businessman from Israel and they live in the upper East side after their beautiful marriage in Tel Aviv a few months back, so I’m looking forward to seeing them and the dispatches they brought back from Mossad, as well as to get my latest Dual Loyalty marching orders. I’ll make sure to update the cabal on your latest whereabouts but as usual we will be triangulating you by reference to the largest herds of goats nearby.
Of course, I can not miss my favorite Manhattan past time of yelling at gay guys wearing Jew Killing Scarfs, otherwise known as Kaffiyahs, so I’m really excited for that. Oh, and I’m looking forward to going on a mad tirade inside every Urban Outfitters store I come across in Soho, Noho, etc.. Please do send me your address so I can send you postcards and sheep-skin condoms, your favorite. Wait til you see the picture of me hoisting the Israeli flag over the Statue of Liberty! It’s a real gas!
themiddle – hiding behind your legalistic BS again are you? The claim and answer are referring to the “you” as in “you here” (plural) or “your board” (apparently “you people” {here} has fallen out of fashion). When the responders operate in a gang-tackle fashion it is not always easy to separate each and every statement and identify exactly which and whose argument I am referring/responding to. If you want to play that game you go right ahead. The only “hard-on” here is you because you are indeed a gatekeeper who fancies himself “objective.”
—
— [email protected] wrote:
From: WordPress
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Jewlicious] New Comment Posted to “Norman Finkelstein Awareness Month”
Date: Tue, 20 May 2008 15:00:18 -0400
A new comment has been posted to “Norman Finkelstein Awareness Month”: https://jewlicious.com/?p=4438
Author: themiddle
Web Site: http://Jewlicious.com
Message: I released yet another of your diatribes.
I wanted everyone to see this in particular: “because anyone insufficiently pro-Zionist cannot be a Jew in good standing by your assessment. You purport to speak for all Jews as you decry any view outside your homogenous outlook.”
Can you find evidence of this claim?
Don’t bother responding or posting again until you can verify that claim.
—-
Thank you Mr. gatekeeper. Please sir, may I have another?
re: #165 – My assertion came from Alex’s comments at #134.
OK?
—-
[excerpt]
I really don’t understand how being a Jew and a Zionist are not one and the same. Israel is where we’re (as a people) from, where we are, and where we’re going. Judaism is rooted in Israel as is my Jewish identity. I support all of the following below, ardently:
“Zionism is an international political movement that originally supported the reestablishment of a homeland for the Jewish People in Palestine (Hebrew: Eretz Yisra’el, “the Land of Israelâ€), and continues primarily as support for the modern state of Israel.â€
I supposed being an anti-Zionist Jew is like being an anti-Greek Greek or an anti-Italian Italian or an anti-Christ Christian. At this point, why even identify at all? Denounce your Judaism or secular Judaism and become a humanist international tool and go to protests all day. But saying I’m a Jew but not a Zionist is like saying, I Support the Troops but don’t want to fund them and plan on spitting on them when they come home.
Anti-Zionist Jews are the result of 1) self-hatred, 2) poor understanding of history and politics, 3) appeasement to your enemies or appeasement to the left-wing organizations that appease your enemies.
Anti-Zionist Jews bring nothing good to anyone, not to other Jews, not to Israelis, not to Americans and surely not to Palestinians. If fact, they are a waste of space and time, and should shake their tiny fists at the sky and curse.
[end]
And I was just starting to feel special. 🙁
“…the Knesset also has legislation pending (the Talkback Law – currently on hold at the moment) that would outlaw any internet commentary that they consider inflammatory”
The purpose of the proposed Talkback Law in Israel is not to stifle debate, but to ensure that the largely Jewish and Israeli readership of Israel’s on-line publications would not be treated to an avalanche of anti-semitic and anti-zionist insults, as well as attempts to disenfranchise them as Jews and deligitimize their country for the sake of free speech. Anyone who has ever read some of the talkbacks on Haaretz(the most liberal and transparent of Israeli papers) knows what I’m talking about. This is about keeping the debate civil and respectful. If the legislation passes, it should applied equally and fairly to all comers. I do find it ironic however, that the very question of a Talkback Law would be impossible as Talkback features would never appear in any publication emananting from the PA or Gaza, as the powers that be would never allow such a level dissent.
Lance, to continue here, you have to respond to 159.
To those who wish to know, Lance quoted an article about Finkelstein from here. http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=1690
I don’t understand exactly what this Lance person wants from this site. If everything is ” shown” already and pretty obvious to all, why does he care if we agree with him or not? What is there to discuss? He won the argument hands down already, no? I guess he is pissed that his impeccable logic and facts have failed to move us. The giveaway for me is the word “backlash”. Alex, the “hard on” is for Israel’s demise, not for you. This wishful thinking I read about everyday from the the Lances of the world tells me that he is not concerned about Palestinians but about slapping the Zionists (Jews) down.
Lance, go to the ” comment is free site” of the Guardian. You will love it there. Join the hatefest there and leave this site alone.
themiddle,
I just tried to post a rseponse to mr. thruster, but when I hit “submit comment” it disappaered. I quoted a paragraph or two from his latest tirade. That might be the problem. Could you fish it out. I don’t think you’ll find anything objectionable
the Doobster
“…It is clear that you’re afraid to actually name any proponent of Zionism (especially the founders) because you’re most likely aware of some of the bigoted and brutal statements they’ve made (certainly Herzl). As far as sources go, I consider Forward, Commentary, and The Spectator very heavily pro-Zionist,”
Fear has nothing to do with it. I just don’t think the folks around here feel like feeding the monkey his lines. In any event, American history is filled with “bigoted & brutal” statements made by its leadership and clergy re. the ultimate fate of native americans and anyone else they felt needed to be dehumanized in order to exploit them for the greater glory of the republic. So once again, since you refuse to recognize your own sins and culpability insofar as your past (not to mention your present)is concerned, since you insist on double standards, any debate with someone such as yourself, would be an exercise in futility and would only be providing a venue for a set of half-truths taken out of context and then used and perverted to validate your bias. I would’ve termed The Foward as a “consistent supporter of zionism, with qualifications”. As it roots harken back to early 20th century Jewish socialism(with all the humanism and internationalism that entails), I believe that this would be a more apt description. The fact that you see the Foward as being; “very-pro-zionist” is instructive. Again, it points to a bias that is powerful enough to prevent you from understanding the differentiations and the nuances that exist within American Zionism, thereby allowing yourself to simplistically rationalize your screeds, by deluding yourself that American Zionists and Israelis are, with a few glorious exceptions, one settler-loving, palestinian hating, monolith. Since the reality is somewhat more complex, its no wonder you like to satisfy yourself with polemics.
“…Israel is trying to forbid the UN from using the term “nakbaâ€, the Knesset also has legislation pending (the Talkback Law – currently on hold at the moment) that would outlaw any internet commentary that they consider inflammatory (which as can be seen here is virtually any coherent argument). J-street and J-Pac acknowledge the extent that AIPAC controls the narrative in regards to US politics (and its enablers in the MSM).”
I notice that you like to use the same devices over and over. In this case it would be your gratuitous use of Jews and Jewish organizations that seemingly validate your views, in order to heighten the contradictions that are inherent in this sort of “guerrilla theatre”. A couple of months ago, Mr. Obama made a speech to a group of Cleveland Jews where he stated;
“…Barack Obama reportedly said something very important and long overdue to a group of some 100 Cleveland Jewish leaders on Sunday — that being pro-Likud and being “pro-Israel†are two different things.”
“I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt a unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you’re anti-Israel and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel. If we cannot have an honest dialogue about how do we achieve these goals, then we’re not going to make progress.â€
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2008/02/25/obama-distinguishes-between-pro-israel-and-pro-likud/
I happen to like Mr. Obama and believe he has been correct about most things, this included. That being said, The J-Street Project, would actually deserve your sobriquet of being “very pro-zionist”. Jeremy Ben-Ami comes from a distinguished family of zionists(from both the right and left side of the political spectrum) who are among the founders of Tel-Aviv. Yes Barack Obama is correct when he states that one can be Pro-Israel without being Pro-Likud. Conversely, One can be anti-Aipac and still be pro-zionist, as the J-Street project admirably proves.
Sorry Lance, I’m not into guys who are into goats. Flattered though. Speaking of arrogant Zionists, my friends just gave birth to a new one the other day. Ain’t life great?
Awesome, I got an anti-semite with a hard-on for me!
I released yet another of your diatribes.
I wanted everyone to see this in particular: “because anyone insufficiently pro-Zionist cannot be a Jew in good standing by your assessment. You purport to speak for all Jews as you decry any view outside your homogenous outlook.”
Can you find evidence of this claim?
To my knowledge, I’ve never thought or believed anything of this nature, but you seem to know better. Either that or you’re trolling again.
Don’t bother responding or posting again until you can verify your claim.
It is clear that you’re afraid to actually name any proponent of Zionism (especially the founders) because you’re most likely aware of some of the bigoted and brutal statements they’ve made (certainly Herzl). As far as sources go, I consider Forward, Commentary, and The Spectator very heavily pro-Zionist, but when they offer fact rather than opinion it would a valid citation. Kurt Nimmo is the source for the Fredy Perlman piece and so I use it (great illustrations to boot in addition to unassailable logic).
You hide behind your ad hominems with all the sense of purpose of a troop of howler monkeys. In the last few days, I’ve read more and more current events that support my assertions. Israel is trying to forbid the UN from using the term “nakba”, the Knesset also has legislation pending (the Talkback Law – currently on hold at the moment) that would outlaw any internet commentary that they consider inflammatory (which as can be seen here is virtually any coherent argument). J-street and J-Pac acknowledge the extent that AIPAC controls the narrative in regards to US politics (and its enablers in the MSM).
Finally, Philip Weiss cites how the attitudes and arrogance of people like Alex is what concerned Hannah Arendt and Henry Kissinger who feared a backlash from Israeli/Jewish intractability in the I/P conflict [http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/05/arendt-and-kiss.html ]. Especially insightful is the first comment by Glenn Condell. This is exactly the type of dialogue missing here because anyone insufficiently pro-Zionist cannot be a Jew in good standing by your assessment. You purport to speak for all Jews as you decry any view outside your homogenous outlook.
It’s too bad you most likely did not hear former M*A*S*H actor Mike Farrell on NPR this morning because he spent several years in the occupied territories and he used all the terminology that you purposely and incorrectly deem as Jew-hatred, i.e. criminal, brutal, illegal, immoral, controlled narrative, propagandistic, violations of international law, etc.
Your irritation over my contributions to the discussion is not because I am parroting the tone of Aryan Nation, and Stormfront, but because I am not. You claim so much of my citations and observations are off topic yet it all ties into the position argued by Dr. Finkelstein. Israel misrepresents the facts (shown), violates int’l law (shown), capitalizes on the horror of the Holocaust for its own purposes shown), and controls the dialogue by scurrilous attacks on anyone presenting uncomfortable facts (shown), maintains a degree of control on US politics and media coverage (shown) has infiltrated the US with fifth columnist loyal almost exclusively to Israel (sometimes termed “dual loyalty†– shown), and apply a different standard in examining the aggression of Israel’s enemies versus Zionist aggression (shown).
“themiddle†is able to be judge, jury, and executioner; which is handy because he cannot offer a credible defense. He is a petty little infant. He too will be part of the reason for the backlash that Arendt and Kissinger fear. Israel has invested much in the genome project and most likely has genetic/biological/bacterialogical weaponry at the ready for use similar to their “Samson Option.†You better hope that works as planned or a lot of innocent Jews will unfortunately pay the price. Thankfully there are many of them trying to give a fair account of the conflict, despite your protestations. If you could make a better argument you would. It is unmistakable from your behavior here that is not possible.
“…I wanted to ask any willing to volunteer the info, who are your champions? Who do you see as presenting in an accurate and compelling manner the strong points of Zionist philosophy and commitment to justice? Surely there’s at least a few voices you would have to offer unreservedly. I would like to examine the types of things they’ve said about the jewsih state, the Palestinians, and the prospects of peaceful coexistence.”
You would like to “examine”?
You have no intentions of “examining” anything that is brought to the table. On the contrary, It’s obvious to anyone with working optical nerves, that the purposes of your request has less to do with careful study, or a sincere effort at scrutinizing any source of information or listening to any argument that might contradict any of your “facts”, and and more to do with stage craft and the need for material. The whole thing is like a bad stand-up routine. Since it was known to you upon entry that you would not find much support for any of your views amongst the good folk here at Jewlicious, your stated reason for being here is not credible. I would say a need to engage in agitiprop would be the more likely reason. You see folks, it’s this sort of thing that killed vaudeville ;-). But all kidding aside, your behaviour is understandable. No bias this deep seated would allow any sort of erudition or objectivity.
In regards to your sources which you believe are unimpeachable. I apologize. My standards are ridiculously high, you’re going to have to do better than untenured professors, Kurt Nimmo or Lawrence of Cyberia. If you must cull the internet instead of actually reading books to support your theories, at least try a URL with an .edu at the end of the address. At least then we can be sure that the source you are quoting from is at least near books, if not actually reading them.
You have been too generous with your time with this Lance character. Don’t respond to him, he will leave eventually.
Blah blah blah. Lance, you get the filter. Don’t like it, tough luck. There are plenty of other sites on the Internet where you can troll.
The parasitic nature of those wishing to promote Zionism is apparent.
You qualify as a true representative of Norman Finkelstein, you little piece of dirt bigot.
If you let me post without blocking, losing or deleting them, I’ll take the time to respond to every one. You do not apply the standard evenly, and you and the rest tend to ignore those questions put to you.
You claim I ignore your responses yet I do not remember you setting any deadline. It’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 4-5 to 1 so it takes a bit more on my end to see that everyone is addressed. You block posts but can’t exactly remember why (though it was supposedly so egregious) as well as waffle on your admission that you ever blocked or deleted any in the first place. Stuff I posted initially didn’t go through and I wrote to ask why. You all said it happens till you decide to say it does, but not in your case. Like I said, if I feel that I can be confident that a posted reply will go up, I’ll take the time to scroll back and deal with whatever issues we differ on. But if everytime themiddle gets his panties in a knot (which is a lot) means that running the gaunlet gets more difficult, then it puts me at a disctinct disadvantage. I quit duplicating the posts at Robert Lindsay’s site, because it looked as if you were finally allowing comments to go through. As I pointed out earlier, at least memebers of Jewlicious aren’t changing my text as they have in the past, though they have still chosen not to rectify that ethical lapse on their part. They still play infantile gotcha games such as the incorect claim on my part of a half-million dollars (cited from memory w/o scrolling back) of Holocaust compensation for Dr. Finkelstein’s father (instead of 1/4 mil) but that it was a negotiated pension paid out til the end of his life and not some sort of lump sum award as it was made to sound. I’ve no problem conceding the point as it has no bearing on the facts that Dr. Finkelstein points out. Massive payouts have been made yet appeals still go out for Holocaust survivors in Israel living in poverty. US tax money pays for yet another Holocaust memorial yet a WWII memorial is funded largely through private donations. The parasitic nature of those wishing to promote Zionism is apparent.
You quit being a whiny ass little b**** themiddle and I’ll go from the top and work down. You keep pretending that everytime your delecate little sensibilities get offended that you are obligated to drop the hammer, then you’d be better off venturing outside of your cocoon for the answers you claim a willingness to deal with.
Lance, you were countered with plenty of facts. We even gave you a chance to just post stuff that had nothing to do with anything. As you were doing it, you were still whining about censorship. This post has a majority of comments made by you, has you ignoring the responses and information you’ve sought, has all these cut and paste comments with links to sites that you think are valuable and yet you keep complaining. You also keep ignoring the substantive responses you receive. You’re a troll, nothing else. And we’ve been more than accommodating despite your hysterical theatrics. See ya next time you pull this stunt. *wave*
Yeah, I could tell you were a coward from the get-go. Like I said, facts to a Zionist is like Kryptonite to Superman.
And you were so certain you weren’t going to take your bat and ball home with you when things got a little rough. Why am I not surprised? Once a Zionazi, always a Zionazi. What obstacles? No obstacles here. Let’s see your papers. This checkpoint’s closed. Come back tomorrow (it will be closed tomorrow too).
Must feel good to finally your hatred run free. Defend the official narrative at all cost (with anything other than a coherent rebuttal).
Bye bye, little whiner. *wave*
You’ve got a lot of nerve regarding any claims of dodging the issues as the bulk of the initial posts were almost exclusively ad hominem. When you realized that didn’t fly, you switched to a swarm defense where you bitched and moaned about how your scary rebuttal was being ignored. You don’t bother to apply the same rules to pro-Zionists or worry about keeping anyone else on topic but you trot out your righteous indignation as you insist on your Jehovah-given right to preach to the choir unmolested. Fine. Just don’t claim you’re willing to engage in any sort of rational discourse because that has been shown to be total BS.
Funny how with all you rock-solid arguments, I never see you little fish in a bigger pond. You think you have facts to rebut a Philip Weiss essay? Go over there and tell him so. The real reason you don’t is that you’d be shown to be a clueless ideologue. Good riddance indeed
Life is hard for the hater, huh?
Let’s see if I remember your comment. You ignored, of course, everything that was said to you. Again. This was the sixth or seventh time in this discussion (at least) that you’ve ignored comments that prove you wrong or that attack your premises. So there goes your “rebuttal” claim.
Until that comment, everything you wrote that didn’t go directly into the junk filter did get published and we don’t even know whether your comments went into the junk folder but took you at your word. So there goes the insinuation that things weren’t “fair and balanced.”
I no longer recall what was in your comment either other than that it was unrelated to the discussion and that the link you gave was a USS Liberty site. Considering that you had to address Ostrovsky, Carter, Finkelstein’s dad and the Declaration of Independence, it seemed a little odd that you would, again, change directions and open a new line of criticism. Well, actually, it didn’t look that weird, it looked stereotypical.
Don’t let that door hit your bigoted ass on the way out.
Well it looks as if the clock has run out here. I got a personal message from themiddle indicating he would not post my last response unless I justified how it was not anti-Israeli propaganda. It would have been nice of him to provide a copy of the post being withheld as a bit of memory refresher but it is clear that only pro-israel propaganda gets the express service.
Again, I was willing to address any rebuttals but if it needs to get past the fair and balanced ‘themiddle’ then there’s not much point.
So much for ‘awareness’ of Dr. Finkelstein, or Zionism, or anything outside of the official narrative. Alex will visit a country other than his own with pretty much complete freedom of movement whereas those who’ve lived there all there lives, as have their families through generation after generation, are subjected to the whims of the dominant power as they continue to enforce their collective punishments on the people of the region.
Happy 60th Birthday Israel!
Lance, did it ever occur to you that Ostrovsky was, you know, exaggerating? He was trying to sell books, the poor guy, and trying to make a living in Canada. That book basically blamed Israel for any prominent news story he read. It was a joke of a book written by a cynical possibly bitter man, but taken with your Finkelstein fetish, it’s not surprising to see you’re an admirer. Or maybe you enjoyed Ostrovsky’s secret service pool fantasy.
Like Ostrovsky, I have no idea why I’m supposed to discuss Carter’s book just because you want to discuss his book. Did I bring it up in this conversation? You sure are trying to cover any and every angle you can with your propaganda.
Since you ask, I’ll tell you that I care about Carter’s midleading title, but I care more about Carter’s constant insinuations in his public talks and tv interviews that Jews somehow control the debate. He is living proof that Jews don’t and he should be ashamed of this subtle insinuation. Since you want lies from his book, I’ll just let you read the following and you can Google for more.
http://camera.org/index.asp?x_context=8&x_nameinnews=187&x_article=1238
I never said Finkelstein’s father got half a mil. I said he got a quarter of a million dollars in reparations. Learn to read. You should also learn to Google. I’m now wondering, since you couldn’t locate a simple article on a simple search, how you’re getting all your cut and paste links. Anyway, enjoy learning about his dad’s big paydays.
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=3&ar=41
As for which Zionists I or anybody else here admires, I don’t think that way and I’m pretty sure most of the others here don’t as well. Your admiration for Finkelstein as your champion is very funny. I will help you out a bit, though, since you seem to be looking for something to bite into with your links.
I have my own understanding of what Zionism was meant to be, what it is, and how the parts of Zionism that interest me. This information has been gleaned by reading all sorts of books and articles on the subject, thinking hard about the history of the Jewish people, about the history of Israel and the Yishuv and about the present conflict with the Arabs. I don’t need ideologues to tell me what Zionism is, or biased untenured ex-professors who have an axe to grind. If that bothers you, tough luck.
If you want to learn a little about Zionism, I encourage you to read the Declaration of Independence for Israel. http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/mideast/israel.htm
And I’ll point out again that you continue to ignore corrections to errors that you’ve made, as well as a few responses to your comments. Instead, you continue to push your links and propaganda, except that now Jewlicious is officially permitting and therefore supporting your actions.
By the way, I hold an Israeli passport as well as an American one. As an Israeli citizen my attitudes are somewhat more cynical and blase than that of the average American Jew, when it comes to my religion or my loyalties. It is as it has always been and as it always shall be.
As an Israeli, I don’t suffer guilt pangs when someone accuses Jews of dual loyalties. Actually, I start laughing. Who has the time for dual loyalties? I barely have time for one. No, one must be practical about these things. I beleive in the Coreleone dictum; “Never go against the family”. Since the very idea of peoples and nation-states has laregly become a public-relations ploy, the question of loyalties has become moot. Like most Americans who’ve made it past middle-school, the very idea that I would sacrafice myself or my freedoms for some ethreal, abstract national interest is laughable. I do however find it interesting that you have taken great pains to equate the very belief in a jewish homeland as proof of national betrayal
Ostrovosky was a failed mossad operative with a beef. He dicovered that the Mossad operated like any other intelligence service, became disgruntled, was incompetent as a field operative and got bounced. So now he has an ax to grind and an oppurtunity to make some money. Though I will not comment on the veracity of some of his claims, lets just say for the moment, that his story is as pure as the undriven snow. So what? It bothers you that every other Jew is an Israeli spy or fellow traveller? Why would that bother you anymore than chinese spys at our atomic weapon facilities? Why would that bother you anymore than Euro-industrial spying or Russian spying or Saudi Arabians flying passenger jets into skyscrapers? I wonder, where are the websites for pseudo-intellects and half-assed amateur polemicists to go and howl about the disloyalty of people like the Hansen’s or the myriad other “christian” Americans who actually did betray their country? None, huh? Well then I guess I should stop wondering why you ended up here.
Re;
“… If Alex says that he enjoys that some Americans get upset over the special status Israel has and directs ad hominem attacks himself at those who would object and try to work within the political system to change that, then ’sayan’ is pretty mild.”
I see. And therein lies the rub. You don’t like his politics. Its irrelevant whether or not he is amused by your discomfiture. As far as ad hominems go, your no slouch in this dept. But again in light of the rest of your adloscent, neophyte, claptrap, this double standard is not a surprise. In any case, other than the fact that he is Jewish, what makes him different from any other ethno-centric political fanatic in this country? What makes him different than say Mexican immigrants who wave Mexican flags in the street on May Day in U.S. cities? What makes his adherence to zionism any different than that of a Mexican-American who adheres to the precepts of the Azatlan Movement?
Re;
“… what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard”
How is that possible? Look, I’m not bad. But you? Your a Rembrandt to my Warhol when it comes to inanities. No, no, I must humbly bow to your greatness in this particular discipline. I have no doubt you are your own biggest fan.
Doobie – If Alex says that he enjoys that some Americans get upset over the special status Israel has and directs ad hominem attacks himself at those who would object and try to work within the political system to change that, then ‘sayan’ is pretty mild.
Funny how to make note of fairly commonplace activity (according to Ostrowsky) is slanderous according to you. Does that mean that you denounce US citizens who would act in manner that puts the interests of Israel ahead on the US? If so, you essentially condemned the whole of US Zionists who treat such a prioritization as a given (as evidenced by uber-loyal Alex). I guess that makes you an anti-Semite. I suppose you might get an ‘A’ for effort as it appears you’ve tried really, really hard.
I’ll offer my own scholastic quote:
Principal: Mr. Zionist, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
Mr. Zionist: Okay, a simple “wrong” would’ve done just fine.
Gilad Atzmon is a treasure.
Anatomy of a Conditionally Unresolved Conflict – http://mwcnews.net/content/view/22331/26/
“While the Palestinians will use all their available, yet limited, resources to make you look at their faces, in their eyes, to carry you into a dynamic process of mutual recognition, the Israelis would expect you to accept their narrative blindly. They would expect you to turn a blind eye to the clear fact that as far as the Middle East is concerned Israel is an aggressor like no other. Israel is an occupying regional super power, a tiny State heavily engaged in exploring different nuclear, biological and chemical arsenals. It is a racially orientated apartheid state that bullies and abuses its minorities on a daily basis. Yes, the Israelis and their supportive Jewish lobbies around the world want you to ignore these facts. They insist upon being the victims, they want you to approve their inhuman policies referring to Jews endless suffering.”
themiddle – I have done no such thing as far as avoiding any points. You want to summarize/list whichever ones you feel I’m ignoring? Is this give and take only one-sided? You guys seem to throw a bunch of stuff at the wall to see what will stick but expressly avoid any point that you’d be hard-pressed to address.
How about some of the ones I’ve put forth?
1) Cite lies in Carter’s book.
2) Cite reference 1/2 million dollar Holocaust payment for Dr. Finkelstein’s father.
3) Provide names of Zionist proponents you feel mirrors your view of Zionism.
Most of what I’ve seen here is a variation of something I read recently on the strategy of reverting lawyers use.
It used the example of being bitten by your dog and the responses.
1) My dog doesn’t bite.
2) My dog was tied up at the time.
3) You weren’t really bitten.
4) I don’t have a dog.
I would add a few that seem to be the hallmark of Zionist argument.
5) Your dog is worse.
6) Your dog is ugly.
7) You are ugly.
“Alex can therefore feel good about the continuation of Israel’s fleecing of the American taxpayer for the benefit of Israel. His tactics are more Sayan-lite but he is clearly open to doing his part for the homeland he has no intention of moving to if he were appraoched by those who needed his assisatance.”
Wow. You know so much about me and my backers. If I were you I’d watch your back and guard your grill. I just got a call from the Mossad via the ZOA and you’ve been marked. Just sayin. One more remark out of you and I’m taking soccer practice off, to come get you. If soccer practice runs too long, I may have to schedule time between my dentist appointment and lunch, but I’ll check with my employer and see if they can give me a couple of extra hours for my “spy” operations. My copay is low so if I have too much fun beating you with my shin guards and break a nail, I can handle it. Have you ever seen Munich? I’ll be coming for you quietly, and I’ll get you wherever you are. I may have to trick your mom into letting me into the basement (your room and HQ) but hey, you know us tricky Jews and really, inbreds like your parents can’t be too smart. Do you have a facebook account? This whole tracking you down thing is taking too much time away from fleecing the American taxpayer and it may be easier if you can share a Google Map with me that already has your mom’s address tagged and preferably directions from the shul I was Bar Mitzvah’d at. Gas is kinda pricey these days, so I may ride my bike and that takes a bit longer you know, but hey, I don’t want to damage the environment just to take care of a little weasel like you.
“..I think that future generations will look back on the crimes of Zionism with shame.”
If so, than certainly no more than the generations of “solid” Americans such as yourself when reflecting today on what your ancestors did to native americans 100 years ago in order to satisfy their self proclaimed rights and historical imperatives.”
By Sayan I mean someone whose primary loyalty is to a country other than the one he or she resides in and is willing to engage in acts against other citizens of the country of their residence to further the aims of the country that they hold primary loyalty to.
“…Alex can therefore feel good about the continuation of Israel’s fleecing of the American taxpayer for the benefit of Israel. His tactics are more Sayan-lite but he is clearly open to doing his part for the homeland he has no intention of moving to if he were appraoched by those who needed his assisatance.”
This is an Argumentum Ad Hominem.
“argumentum ad hominem (Latin: “argument to the man”, “argument against the man”) consists of replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to a characteristic or belief of the person making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim. The process of proving or disproving the claim is thereby subverted, and the argumentum ad hominem works to change the subject.”
Therefore the correct answer to my question is;
“Why yes, my slander is based on my hostility toward Alex’s political beliefs, not on substance.
You get an F.
“Mister Hart, here is a dime. Take it, call your mother, and tell her there is serious doubt about you ever becoming a lawyer.”
John Houseman, “The Paper Chase” (1973)
GoatThruster: Party Pooper
As everybody can see, Lance has continued to avoid all remarks challenging points he has made. He continues to accuse people here of “dodging” while he dodges and continues to post his little bit of propaganda. Jewlicious is now complicit in permitting this charade.
More on the notion of a biased narrative; though themiddle is asserts that my presence is largely no more than cut & paste, I think my method is valid in that I generally make observations and provide excerpts and the links to back them up. He and others may disagree, but I’ve at least shown other voices have a similar take on issues. Many of the ones I’ve learned a great deal from are Jewish voices. I do not judge their merit primarily by the number of their followers but by the strength of their arguments.
——
From the site of Desertpeace – A Jewish Israeli – http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2008/05/06/is-google-ethnic-cleansing-the-internet/
IS GOOGLE ETHNIC CLEANSING THE INTERNET?
In the past two days, the same number of pro-Palestinian Blogs were locked by Google…. accusing them of being Spam Blogs. They claim it is ‘Robots’ that are doing the dirty work…. I claim it is a very sophisticated, well organised cell of zionists at work.
Robots don’t log into Blogs randomly and read entries…. as Google has been doing on a number of occasions this week. Google’s Blogsite, Blogspot, also insisted late last year that users log in using a gmail.com account…. Does this mean they are also logging in to our private emails?
———-
Another piece describing the situation that a number of posters in Jewlicious deny even exists.
———–
The loathsome smearing of Israel`s critics – http://www.israelenews.com/view.asp?ID=1967
On: Thursday, May 08, 2008 – By: Israel e News
________________________________________
In the US and Britain, there is a campaign to smear anybody who tries to describe the plight of the Palestinian people. It is an attempt to intimidate and silence – and to a large degree, it works. There is nobody these self-appointed spokesmen for Israel will not attack as anti-Jewish: liberal Jews, rabbis, even Holocaust survivors.
……
The former editor of Israel’s leading newspaper, Ha’aretz, David Landau, calls the behaviour of these groups “nascent McCarthyism”. Those responsible hold extreme positions of their own that place them way to the right of most Israelis. Alan Dershowitz and Melanie Phillips are two of the most prominent figures sent in to attack anyone who disagrees with the Israeli right. Dershowitz is a lawyer, Harvard professor and author of The Case For Israel. He sees ethnic cleansing as a trifling matter, writing: “Political solutions often require the movement of people, and such movement is not always voluntary … It is a fifth-rate issue analogous in many respects to some massive urban renewal.” If a prominent American figure takes a position on Israel to the left of this, Dershowitz often takes to the airwaves to call them anti-Semites and bigots.
———–
In my name, and in the name of Jewish people throughout the world, an indigenous population was almost completely expelled. Village names have been removed from the map, houses blown up, and new forests planted. In Arabic, this is called the Nakba, or catastrophe. In Israel, this is called “independence.”
— This land was theirs by Hannah Mermelstein; The Jewish Advocate, 24 Apr 2008.
“Stand before the people you fear and speak your mind – even if your voice shakes.
When you least expect it, someone may actually listen to what you have to say.”
— Maggie Kuhn
Regarding the comment about the views of the majority of Jews and Zionism:
I’ve no doubt that a majority of Southerners in the antebellum South supported the practice of slavery and a majority (or at least those in power) of South African whites supported the apartheid system.
When an outraged Hitler produced a paper entitled “100 Scientists Against Einstein” he simply replied, “If I were wrong, one would have been enough.”
I think that future generations will look back on the crimes of Zionism with shame. It appears that their influence may have actually peaked and that a more accurate assessment is starting to take place.
The term c’hampion’ is a figure of speech. You dismiss Dr. Finkelstein and sometimes reference a particular article or author which is fine. But who has expressed the essence of puurpose of Zionism in a way that you concur with? Is it Herzl himself? Some of the other notables in the foundation of the state of Israel?
It’s neither a difficult question nor an unimportant one. Typical themiddle dodge that referencing a ‘champion’ means one is not thinking for oneself. He’s probably too afraid to see the type of statements these promoters of Zionism have also made.
Let me be damned! I have never been to Israel but should be going for the first time in a couple of months to visit family and friends all over our beautiful homeland. Shhhhh. Really, it’s just my mission to bring back secrets to the Zionist Cabal! Shhhh.
I really don’t understand how being a Jew and a Zionist are not one and the same. Israel is where we’re (as a people) from, where we are, and where we’re going. Judaism is rooted in Israel as is my Jewish identity. I support all of the following below, ardently:
“Zionism is an international political movement that originally supported the reestablishment of a homeland for the Jewish People in Palestine (Hebrew: Eretz Yisra’el, “the Land of Israelâ€), and continues primarily as support for the modern state of Israel.”
I supposed being an anti-Zionist Jew is like being an anti-Greek Greek or an anti-Italian Italian or an anti-Christ Christian. At this point, why even identify at all? Denounce your Judaism or secular Judaism and become a humanist international tool and go to protests all day. But saying I’m a Jew but not a Zionist is like saying, I Support the Troops but don’t want to fund them and plan on spitting on them when they come home.
Anti-Zionist Jews are the result of 1) self-hatred, 2) poor understanding of history and politics, 3) appeasement to your enemies or appeasement to the left-wing organizations that appease your enemies.
Anti-Zionist Jews bring nothing good to anyone, not to other Jews, not to Israelis, not to Americans and surely not to Palestinians. If fact, they are a waste of space and time, and should shake their tiny fists at the sky and curse.
By Sayan I mean someone whose primary loyalty is to a country other than the one he or she resides in and is willing to engage in acts against other citizens of the country of their residence to further the aims of the country that they hold primary loyalty to.
Alex can therefore feel good about the continuation of Israel’s fleecing of the American taxpayer for the benefit of Israel. His tactics are more Sayan-lite but he is clearly open to doing his part for the homeland he has no intention of moving to if he were appraoched by those who needed his assisatance.
Former Mossad agent, Victor Ostrovsky has written in detail about this network. American Sayan are like Mary Kay reps, each one operates independently based on their perception of the needs of the state.
Heike, you don’t even have to look far. Salon, in comment 112, challenges some of his data. The others challenge his conclusions and the expression of those conclusions from the data – data he borrowed from Novick. Salon, NY Times, and David Greenberg who is a prominent professor and not such a great fan of Israel would all constitute “reputable” sources.
And for fun, here’s Paul Bogdanor.
Um, most people I know don’t have “champions.” They can think for themselves. That you have Finkelstein for one speaks volumes about you. And let’s be straight here that it’s people like you, bigoted people like you supporting the hateful views of people like Finkelstein – so hateful that even anti-Zionists like the ones I quote in the book reviews above recognize it and call him on it – who are a disgrace to America. For you to speak about “rudeness” is too funny for words.
It’s not that hard to use Google to find out that Finkelstein’s father got substantial reparations. For somebody who seems to have ready cut and paste jobs to promote your views, you sure seem to be a lousy researcher when it comes to your “champion.” I’d give you the link, but it was the second link to come up on my Google search. I’m sure you’ll manage to find it.
Lancethruster said; “Alex is a sayan, nuff said. A disgrace to America.”
If by Sayan, you mean anyone who is either an Israeli, or diaspora zionist, then yes, Alex is a sayan. If however, you mean to imply that Alex is an American citizen operating covertly on behalf of Israel that would be slander, as you have no proof of that other than the fact that Alex is a fervent zionist with rightist leanings, and you feel that by itself damms him. Which is it?
On the other hand, it would appear that you have at the very least, a bias against Jews and Israel. This calls into question your credibility and skews your objectivity on the matters pertaining to the Holocaust and Zionism. Making the tired references to the odd Jewish friend or acquaintance(“Some of my best friends are jews”) only serves to enhance this perception.
As far as being a disgrace to America is concerned, no more than any other American born in the last 50 years, including malcontents such as myself, and absurd left wing diletantes who style themselves intellectuals. Wrapping yourself in the flag? Didn’t you hear? Its the last refuge of a scoundrel.
OK, now that it looks as if I have a reasonable expectations of posts going up, I’ll take some time and go back to see what questions/claims I need to address. This even goes for the ones going out of their way to be rude but will terminate those discussions earliest as they are geared to generate heat rather than light.
I’d like to see someone address the question about their Zionist champions as well as the person who said the Dr. Finkelstein’s dad got 1/2 million in Holocaust compensation. That would seem a pretty easy item to confirm.
Alex is a sayan, nuff said. A disgrace to America.
Yes, I’m a Zionist, and my posts make it into the spam filter about 20% of the time. And GoatThruster is still an anti-semite. Same old same old.
Further confirmation of what I have been saying all along.
——-
[from: http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/17560/muting_the_alarm_over_the_israelipalestinian_conflict.html ]
[excerpt]
“Muting the Alarm over the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”
The New York Times versus Haaretz, 2000-06
Journal Article, International Security, volume 32, issue 2, pages 84-120
Fall 2007
Author: Jerome Slater
Belfer Center Programs or Projects: International Security; Quarterly Journal: International Security
ABSTRACT
The prospects for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remain poor, largely because of Israeli rigidity as well as Palestinian policies and internal conflicts. The United States has failed to use its considerable influence with Israel to seek the necessary changes in Israeli policies, instead providing almost unconditional support. The consequences have been disastrous for the Palestinians, for Israeli security and society, and for critical U.S. national interests in the Middle East. A major explanation for the failure of U.S. policies is the largely uninformed and uncritical mainstream and even elite media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the United States. In contrast, the debate in Israel is more self-critical, vigorous, and far-ranging, creating at least the possibility of change, even as U.S. policy stagnates. A comparison of the coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by the two most prestigious daily newspapers in the United States and Israel—in particular the breakdown of the peace process in 2000 and the ensuing Palestinian intifada, the nature of the Israeli occupation, the problem of violence and terrorism, and the prospects for peace today—underscores these differences. While the New York Times has muted the alarm over the dangers of the United States’ near-unconditional support for Israeli policies toward the Palestinian, Haaretz has sought to sound the alarm.
Does anyone following this thread have a reputable source that responds to Finkelstein’s claims regarding Holocaust compensation? I have written to Isi Lieber who had his own beef with the WJC but didn’t really get a good reply. Others in the WJC have called Finkelstein vulgarities but really haven’t given a point by point rebuttal. You will note that the “support” F. often brings forth from people like Hilberg deals with his “revelations” on the compensation issue. On everything else, Hilberg restricted himself to “it’s not my style.”
Middle, those comments were published and later removed, which I first thought happened accidentally as this can happen when there’s a long list of spam to click away in the comments, but then the message could get retrieved if need be. The reposted comments were also removed, the topic usually was the spelling or meaning of a Yiddish word, nothing personal at all, so I thought that was a bit odd, childish at best, like “Hoo, I’m the Jewlicious prankster! Fear my clicking finger!” 😉
As for Lance’s comments he claims have disappeared, I checked the spam filter literally within minutes of his claimings the comments had disappeared, but they were neither in the moderation queue nor the spam filter, so unless there have been odd technical problems on his end (e.g. temporary disconnecton from the internet; has happened to me as well at times), I could as well claim the comments have never been submitted. Seeing how he’s lied before, truth would not be in favour of him.
If the US government weren’t so ‘heavily invested in Zionism’, imagine all the money we’d have for countries that never see an American dollar and truly share our values, like Saudi Arabia.
No, that’s a false premise. The Palestinians paid heavily for ongoing violence against the Jews and for not having the same approach to building the infrastructure of a community and a state. The Yishuv built itself up irrespective of the Holocaust. They were far more concerned about attacks by Arabs on them.
ck – fair enough. Will you ban anyone else for being a ‘dick’ if they are doing so but hold a pro-Zionist viewpoint? Btw, this week I go to a retirement party for our Rabbi from the religion dept. She is on the Masada2000 SH*TLIST for her work with Jewish Voices for Peace. We agree to disagree on many issues but she calls me a ‘mensch’ and not an anti-Semite even though her dept has had to deal with those who would direct harrassment my way. She is a teacher in the truest sense of the word and I am a better person for having known her.
Of course having close acquaintances from any group does not protect one from being bigoted, but when they are true friends, you can speak openly and honestly, even when wrong. I consider sharing one’s actual views a sign of respect and the basis for true mutual understanding. My governement seems to be heavily invested in Zionism at the expense of many (Palestinians, US citizens, etc.) and regardless of the dismissing of the difficulties in presenting this viewpoint, I have indeed come across many first hand instances of just that.
In this very essay, Rabbi Yoanh alludes to the reason, in his view, that Dr. Finkelsteins lectures are well-attended, and yet not one person indicated that he might be a conspiracy theorist. We all present our observations and compare notes. I’m willing to revise mine, but then I came into this whole issue being very pro-Israel. I grew up on WWII history and Holocaust documentaries. It isn’t that outrage that is being argued for the most part (details of historical specifics aside), but as Dr. Finkelstein writes, what it provides justification for. The Palestinians weren’t the Nazis but they paid quite a heavy price for Nazi genocide.
Froylein, your comments probably went directly to the junk filter and then erased in a mass erasing. That’s what I think happened to the post or two Lance keeps bitching about. There are some key words that take the post right to the “back” filter where we get all the porn, pharmacy links etc. As you know, those accumulate rapidly and it’s easier to nuke’em all at once than to go through them one by one.
For the record, in this discussion I have not deleted any of Lance’s comments in the comment filter. I may have done so inadvertently in the junk filter, but there have been some groups of 400-800 spam emails in there and I did not go through them before erasing. He should stop using the nastier key words. 😉
ck, it was a while back last year, early this year and then again a couple of weeks ago. They were initially published but gone a little later, and when I reposted, they disappeared shortly afterwards. I didn’t think it was you, but didn’t consider it so important either.
froylein: what??? your comments were deleted? no one has ever done that here. You should tell me this ASAP and I can get to the bottom of it.
This isn’t really my blog per se. I mean I can shut it down at a moment’s notice of course, but that’s not really the point. Lance, listen to me for a moment. Let me assure you that as a Zionist myself, I have no fear of reasoned discussion. As long as you stay civil, as long as you avoid repetition, I will not stop you from stating your opinions – despite the fact that I believe you are wrong. Your comments have never been blocked. We have a spam filter and sometimes it seems a tad arbitrary. You can ask Alex, a commenter here who toes a right wing Zionist position, about how his posts got filtered as well. In any case, of course there were Jews that opposed Zionism. Sucj=h Jews exist today as well. But the fact remains that they are a tiny insignificant minority. They are given platforms by every anti-Israel group imaginable because by trotting out their token Jew, they can claim that they are not anti-Semitic.
What is far more common is the existence of Jews, many, many Jews, both in Israel and in the Diasporah, who are critical of Israel. This sort of thing is welcome – only by open discussion and criticism can we continue to impove ourselves. Contrast this with the situation in the West Bank and Gaza where dissenters are routinely murdered. This sort of thing impacts negatively on the growth and evolution of a society and probably explains to at least a certain degree why they are in the position that they are in.
Lance, you may want to read this article in the Spectator to balance out the bollocks you seem to be focused on now.
Again, I won’t have you banned for respectfully expressing your opinions, but I will ban you for being a dick. Keep that in mind.
froylein, I’ll agree with you about the ‘repeatedly’ part. I assume there should and must be limits– you can’t have the site overrun.
Tom, he has claimed censorship even though his comments have been approved. It’s ultimately ck’s decision as it’s his blog, but personally I don’t see why we should give anybody the opportunity to repeatedly reproduce anti-Semitic rants by copying & pasting them here. There’s freedom of speech, but as I’ve said numerous times before, it ends where somebody else’s freedoms get impacted otherwise there would be no PC policies in companies as they indeed can get into legal trouble if they passively condone of hate speech. Also, I think we should consider our other readers that certainly don’t want to be loaded with that kind of garbage every time they check in just to see that a large share of the recent comments have been made by what appears a rabid anti-Semite by choice of words, reasoning and choice of sources. In addition, comments of mine on other threads on Jewlicious (usually re: Yiddish spelling or vocabulary) that weren’t in the slightest bit offensive, at the utmost tongue-in-cheek, were repeatedly deleted by whoever (initially I thought somebody had accidentally marked the comments as spam, but they kept disappearing), so I reasoned somebody among the other bloggers must have taken offence for reasons I did not actually see but had to take into account. We don’t encourage anything positive by letting him post here, he’s not up to an exchange of ideas or a constructive debate. Anti-Semitism is a facet of Jewish life, but I don’t think we should provide a podium for it. Considering that there were commenters that reacted somewhat aggressively, in European standards, to me quoting excerpts of anti-Semitic publications in context of a post as they (which I even would consider understandably) thought Jewish blogs should not promote those claims by reproducing them and I did not have the back of the other bloggers on here then, at least not prima facie, it does make me wonder whether there’s a need for ck to establish a definite policy.
I also agree with ck. Besides, as a practical matter, rendering arguments taboo increases their allure, and enables people like Lance plausibly to claim to be victims. Lance has a profound (and comic) longing to be censored by Jewlicious so he can declare it a triumph and wear it as a badge of honor. I see Middle’s POV, but as we lawyers say: res ipsa loquitur.
So it begins. Mr. themiddle makes a foray into rebuttal for once. Very good. Froylien takes another tack claiming (though the mods have admitted as such) that complaints about posts not going up are manufactured as she is convinced they were never submitted (though it is clear some mod could confirm the truth by stating that they did in fact keep some posts from going up)’
Over the weekend, I submitted a link and titled it:
“In Honor of Holocaust Remembrence Day”
An Essay by Fredy Perlman – http://kurtnimmo.com/perlman/01.html
Fredy Perlman was a youth who escaped the Reich before the roundup and executions of Jews and others took place on a systematic scale. He wrote on his reflections of morality and Zionism. It was relevant and well written by a Jew who had much insight on the birth of Israel.
I will continue to answer questions and submit my own comments as long as they’re allowed. That some get a bit agitated that someone dares to question the official narrative is not new. That the issue is painted as giving a forum to hate speech is not new either. The official narrative requires it to supplant thinking. I really love that quote from #77. It rejects the notion that Zionist Jews speak for all Jews, though (many) Zionist Jews like to make others think that is so. To counter that he spoke up. To counter the extent that what’s good for Israel influences the affairs of my country; I speak up. That those supporting Zionism object to this, instead of causing them to speak up as well, more often than not it causes them to try to shut others down. That is the testament to the weakness of their position.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/08/06/reviews/000806.06bartovt.html
Finkelstein views himself as innocent of any desire to exploit ”The Holocaust” for his own ends, unlike his apparently countless enemies. The fact that his sensational ”revelations” and outrageous accusations draw a great deal of public and media attention is no fault of his own. Nor is his vehement anti-Zionism and seething hatred of what he perceives as a corrupt Jewish leadership in the United States anything but a reflection of a reality that only he can perceive through the clouds of mystification and demagogy that have deceived thousands of lay persons, scholars, and intellectuals. From his Mount Sinai, everything is clear and obvious. It’s just that his voice is too faint to be heard in the valley.
The main culprit, in the world according to Finkelstein, is ”the Holocaust industry,” made up of Israeli officials and fat lawyers, Jewish agents well placed in American political circles and ruthless Zionists determined to subjugate the Palestinians. 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.”
Thus have the great powers of the world capitulated to what The Times of London called the ”Holocash” campaign in the United States, according to Finkelstein. He reserves special contempt for the Claims Conference, an umbrella of Jewish organizations that distributes reparations funds to survivors, and quotes approvingly the right-wing Israeli Parliament member Michael Kleiner, who called the conference ”a Judenrat, carrying on the Nazis’ work in different ways.” Indeed, as Finkelstein says in another context, les extrmes se touchent: in denouncing the ”shakedown” of German corporations, this left-wing anti-Zionist uses precisely the kind of rhetoric that Menachem Begin employed when he spoke out against taking ”blood money” during the right-wing riots against the restitution agreement with West Germany in the early 1950’s, which almost toppled the Israeli government.
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. As was shown in Peter Novick’s far more balanced (though not entirely satisfactory) book, ”The Holocaust in American Life,” the changing perception of the Nazi genocide of the Jews has also opened the way for a variety of exploiters and small-time opportunists. Yet to make this into an international Jewish conspiracy verges on paranoia and would serve anti-Semites around the world much better than any lawyer’s exorbitant fees for ”shaking down” a German industrialist.
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 and enormous zeal in exposing the ”reckless and ruthless abandon” of the ”Holocaust industry,” which he calls ”the main fomenter of anti-Semitism in Europe.” By its ”blackmailing of Swiss bankers and German industrialists,” as well as of ”starving Polish peasants,” the ”Holocaust industry” seeks endlessly to augment that pile of gold, or ”Holocaust booty,” on which Jewish and Zionist leaders are now allegedly sitting. ”The Holocaust,” Finkelstein concludes, is possibly ”the greatest robbery in the history of mankind.”
What I find so striking about ”The Holocaust Industry” is that it is almost an exact copy of the arguments it seeks to expose. It is filled with precisely the kind of shrill hyperbole that Finkelstein rightly deplores in much of the current media hype over the Holocaust; it is brimming with the same indifference to historical facts, inner contradictions, strident politics and dubious contextualizations; and it oozes with the same smug sense of moral and intellectual superiority.
This book is, in a word, an ideological fanatic’s view of other people’s opportunism, by a writer so reckless and ruthless in his attacks that he is prepared to defend his own enemies, the bastions of Western capitalism, and to warn that ”The Holocaust” will stir up an anti-Semitism whose significance he otherwise discounts. Like any conspiracy theory, it contains several grains of truth; and like any such theory, it is both irrational and insidious. Finkelstein can now be said to have founded a Holocaust industry of his own.
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Omer Bartov’s most recent book is ”Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide, and Modern Identity.”
http://archive.salon.com/books/review/2000/08/30/finkelstein/index1.html
…
The reparations issue is the most detailed and troubling section of Finkelstein’s short book. Recent reports that $400 million has been paid to U.S. accounting firms such as Arthur Andersen, KPMG and Price Waterhouse, which charged sky-high auditing fees in connection with the international investigation of Swiss banks, lend credence to many of his charges.
On a broader level, Finkelstein is justified in questioning the authenticity of the emotional and other claims staked by Holocaust keepers of the flame. The memory of this singular event has too often been soiled by vulgarity, political calculation, hypocrisy and greed. Former Israeli Foreign Secretary Abba Eban long ago observed: “There’s no business like Shoah business.” But Finkelstein’s swings are so wild and his tone so vitriolic as to raise doubts about his agenda, and even about that which may lie deeper in his heart.
On the issue of reparations, he barely acknowledges the wrongs committed by the Swiss and German institutions — the burying of Jewish bank accounts, the use of slave labor — that gave rise to the recent reparations drive. The fear that the reparations will not wind up in the hands of those who need and deserve them most is a legitimate concern. But the idea that survivors have been routinely swindled by Jewish institutions is a gross distortion. The chief reason why survivors have so far seen nothing of the $1.25 billion Swiss settlement, reached in 1998, is that U.S. courts have yet to rule on a method of distribution. On other reparations and compensation settlements, the Claims Conference, a particular b�te noire of Finkelstein, says that it distributed approximately $220 million to individual survivors in 1999 alone.
Other Finkelstein generalizations are as absurd as they are sweeping, and do a great disservice to the serious and enlightening scholarship that has been produced by Holocaust writers over the past 40 years. Thus Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s “Hitler’s Willing Executioners,” which explains the extermination of the Jews as an outgrowth of purely German anti-Semitism, Finkelstein asserts, is “standard Holocaust dogma,” when in fact it has been furiously disputed by other Holocaust historians. “Fragments,” the wholly fictitious account of a child survivor by Binjamin Wilkormirski, Finkelstein adds, is “the archetypal Holocaust memoir,” ignoring major contributions from survivors such as Primo Levi (“The Drowned and the Saved”) and German Jewish observers like Victor Klemperer (“I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years”), both published when the so-called Holocaust industry was supposedly in full flourish.
An ideologue of the left, Finkelstein takes predictable swipes at the “criminal policies of the Israeli state,” backed, naturally, by an imperialist U.S. foreign policy. Never mind that U.S. administrations and Jewish interest groups in fact have often been at odds, especially during the Bush administration, Finkelstein insists on seeing “elites” everywhere, notably those of the Jewish persuasion, “marching in lockstep with American power.” These elites, the hidden hand of “organized American Jewry” behind the Holocaust industry, have one goal: not the teaching of history but the furthering of “Jewish aggrandizement.”
Finkelstein employs such sentiments and language, so associated with standard anti-Semitism, quite freely. Not only might historical anti-Semitism be “grounded in a real conflict of interests” (a classic formulation of Stalinesque leftism), but the Jews, in Finkelstein’s view, are often to blame for it. The pursuit of reparations, in another of Finkelstein’s wild and baseless charges, “has become the main fomenter of anti-Semitism in Europe.” His assertions become ever more rancid: Israelis and American Jews are nowadays the great oppressors — “lording it over those least able to defend themselves” — the former over Palestinians, the latter over American blacks. Holocaust denial is also the fault of the Jews. “Given the nonsense churned out daily by the Holocaust Industry,” Finkelstein writes, “the wonder is that there are so few skeptics.”
Finkelstein is quick to remind us of his credentials as a child of survivors. Nevertheless his distrust of and distaste for his co-religionists are rather apparent. In a telephone interview with a British publication recently he said: “I’m not exaggerating when I say that one out of three Jews you stop in the street in New York will claim to be a survivor.” Particularly irksome are those “arriviste and shtetl-chauvinist Jews of Eastern European descent like New York City mayor Edward Koch and (former) New York Times Executive Editor A.M. Rosenthal,” whom Finkelstein holds largely responsible for the Holocaust industry and all its foul works.
In the end, Finkelstein acknowledges the “staggering dimensions of Hitler’s Final Solution,” seeking merely to restore the phenomenon “as a rational subject of inquiry.” But what we have here, ultimately, is a rather rancid settling of personal and ideological scores. How that furthers rational inquiry is hard to see. And if truly, as he states at the very end, he wishes for nothing more than for the vanquished to “finally, rest in peace,” he might ask himself how his own rage and dogma will help them achieve that.
salon.com
– – – – – – – – – – – –
About the writer
Andrew Ross is executive vice president of Salon.com
http://www.whatnextjournal.co.uk/Pages/Newint/Finkel.html
Finkelstein’s Follies: The Dangers of Vulgar Anti-Zionism
Tobias Abse
From New Interventions, Vol.10 No.2, 2000
NORMAN Finkelstein’s new book, The Holocaust Industry, does no service to the left, to Jews or to genuine anti-fascists of any variety. Objectively, this book, whose very title echoes the rhetoric of Holocaust denial rather in the way that the phrase ‘race relations industry’ is a hallmark of all British racists, provides considerable comfort to every Holocaust denier, neo-Nazi and anti-Semite on the face of the planet.
….
However, as the book progresses, any initial sympathy one might have had with Finkelstein as a leftist engaged in an unequal battle with the American Zionist establishment vanishes. My initial assessment – influenced by the views put forward by Alex Callinicos on behalf of the Socialist Workers Party, which having very publicly endorsed Finkelstein’s critique of Goldhagen two years ago at Marxism 1998, now felt some need to distance itself from him in the light of the Irving trial and the London nail bombings – that Finkelstein’s judgement of the European situation had been warped by his years with the Palestinians on the West Bank, which had led him to see Zionism as the main enemy rather than merely an enemy, and that his curt dismissal of the Holocaust deniers as an insignificant grouping whose importance had been inflated by Deborah Lipstadt and other writers close to the Zionist organisations (a dismissal in which he echoed Novick’s views) was a product of the very American ignorance of the link between Holocaust denial and the European fascist hard core, who attracted a far wider periphery with other forms of anti-immigrant racism, now strikes me as too mild. In short, I can no longer concur with the SWP view that Finkelstein is a comrade who is mistaken, and whose work was undertaken in good faith even if it ends up serving the enemy. Indeed, having enthusiastically promoted Finkelstein when he was pushing his largely legitimate critique of Goldhagen, the SWP is now recoiling from his larger project. Mike Simons’ review of The Holocaust Industry (Socialist Review, September 2000) shares many of my criticisms of it, but is written more in sorrow than in anger. The judgement of Finkelstein made by the Zionist intellectual Leon Wieselter, and reported by Finkelstein himself on page 66 – ‘You don’t know who Finkelstein is. He’s poison, he’s a disgusting self-hating Jew, he’s something you find under a rock!’ – became a lot easier to understand by the time I finished the book!
With ever increasing frequency, the overall tone of Finkelstein’s work becomes increasingly reminiscent of a neo-Nazi tract; no non-Jewish anti-Stalinist left-wing opponent of Zionism would ever dare to indulge in such blatant anti-Semitic stereotyping, at least in Europe and the USA, although such a discourse would be widespread in the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and might find an echo in one strange British sect originating in the Stalinist milieu (whose rentier theoretician was once the youth organiser of the ultra-Stalinist New Communist Party) that has become notorious for its convoluted apologias for Irving and Le Pen. By citing the fraudulent Holocaust memoirs of Kosinski and Wilkomirski (the latter being the nom-de-plume of a Swiss Gentile masquerading as a Polish Jew) in a fair amount of detail (pp.55-62) immediately after making the general observation that ‘indeed, the field of Holocaust studies is replete with nonsense, if not sheer fraud’ (p.55), Finkelstein could easily lead the unwary reader to suppose (and one suspects this might be intentional) that all, or at least the vast majority, of survivors’ accounts are totally fraudulent, a notion that fits in easily with Irving’s view of survivors as fraudsters that was aired during his trial and in videos of his North American tour. There is no attempt by Finkelstein to convey the awkward fact that these two notorious hoaxes are an insignificant proportion of the dozens, if not hundreds, of perfectly straightforward reminiscences, whose literary and historical value vary widely in the same way as examples of any other autobiographical genre would, but are in no sense conscious falsifications, whatever distortions of memory they may contain.
…
If parts of the second chapter, ‘Hoaxers, Hucksters, and History’, start to induce nausea, the third chapter, ‘The Double Shakedown’, is impossible to stomach for anybody not already committed to an anti-Semitic world-view, and changes the overall balance of the text from a tract that might have been written by a sincere Jewish socialist whose awareness of a wider context in which his work might be misused is obscured by an excess of anti-Zionist zeal, to a truly pathological example of Jewish self-hatred the like of which has probably not been seen since early twentieth century Vienna. In his ‘Introduction’, Finkelstein claims: ‘The time is long past to open our hearts to the rest of humanity’s sufferings.’ (p.8) Most readers would naturally assume that this means opening our hearts to the wretched of the earth, and the book contains a fair number of references to the sufferings of native Americans, African Americans, Vietnamese and Palestinians, even if these people’s genuine woes are largely deployed to relativise the seriousness of Jewish grievances.
Defending Swiss Bankers
In this context, Finkelstein’s solicitude for the Swiss bankers and, to a lesser extent, the German industrialists, whose alleged persecution by Jews receives a less extended treatment, is truly extraordinary. Even if every single allegation that Finkelstein makes about Jewish lawyers or Jewish organisations engaging in greedy and corrupt profiteering from Holocaust compensation claims were true, which seems unlikely, why should any leftist or indeed any humanitarian waste a single tear on Swiss bankers, probably the prime example of amoral beneficiaries of plundering dictators from Hitler to Mobuto and beyond? The so-called ‘shakedown’ about which Finkelstein waxes lyrical has not left a single Swiss banker bankrupt, let alone starving in the street. The fact that ‘American financial sharks’ (p.110) have engaged in similar operations to their Swiss counterparts is irrelevant; this is like saying that we should release Ian Brady because Dennis Nielsen killed more people. Finkelstein’s ire is reserved not for the Swiss bankers, but for their opponents. Finkelstein tells us that ‘the Holocaust industry orchestrated a shameless campaign of vilification’ and the ‘smear campaign proved unstoppable’ (p.91), before going on to lament ‘a libel of the Swiss people’ (p.93), and to deplore ‘the Holocaust restitution racket’ (p.94) – a phrase straight out of Irving’s courtroom harangues.
Similarly, Finkelstein’s humour reminds one of Irving or perhaps Le Pen, who can never resist a pun about gas ovens. Recounting Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s joy at the American D’Amato’s victory over the Swiss, Finkelstein writes: ‘…”a triumph of the spirit”. Pity he didn’t say “the will”.’ (p.103) One does not have to have any liking for Netanyahu or D’Amato to find this reference to Leni Riefenstahl and the Nuremburg Rally offensive. Finkelstein excuses his Swiss heroes by a comparison with the Americans: ‘And, although swamped in size and resources by the United States, Switzerland admitted just as many Jewish refugees as the US (approximately 20 000) during the Nazi Holocaust.’ (p.104) Finkelstein conveniently forgets that, unlike the USA, Switzerland had a border with the Third Reich, and that, unlike the USA, the Swiss sent Jewish refugees back in the 1940s knowing that they would die, which is very different from the unintended medium-term consequences of the St Louis tragedy in early 1939.
Finkelstein’s appetite for anti-Semitic humour is as gross and insatiable as Irving’s or Le Pen’s: ‘Unsurprisingly, the Holocaust industry didn’t launch a campaign to investigate US banks. An audit of our banks on the scale of the Swiss audit would cost American taxpayers not millions but billions of dollars. By the time it was completed American Jews would be seeking asylum in Munich.’ (p.117)
Finkelstein’s phraseology is not just deeply anti-Semitic, but frequently echoes that of the Holocaust deniers, as the following sentences will demonstrate: ‘In fact, to believe the Holocaust industry, more Jewish slave labourers are alive today than a half-century ago…. By the Holocaust industry’s reasoning, concentration camp conditions couldn’t have been harsh at all; in fact one must suppose a remarkably high fertility and remarkably low mortality rate.’ (pp.126-7)
For Finkelstein, the world Jewish conspiracy is boundless, for in words reminiscent of The Protocols of the Elder of Zion, he announces: ‘The shakedown of Switzerland and Germany has only been the prelude to the grand finale: the shakedown of Eastern Europe.’ (p.130)
…
Finkelstein’s gross ignorance of Eastern European anti-Semitism is not limited to Croatia. He asserts that ‘public opinion has so far not been averse to the blackmailing of the Swiss bankers and German industrialists, but it might look less kindly on the blackmailing of starving Polish peasants’ (p.134). Finkelstein’s rhetoric would undoubtedly enable him to embark on a well-paid second career as a speechwriter for such Polish anti-Semites as former President Lech Wałęsa and Catholic Primate Cardinal Glemp, but like many Americans his grasp of geography outside the 50 States of the Union is a bit hazy; as Novick says, in 1998 ‘almost half of Americans couldn’t locate Mexico on a map’. Is he perhaps confusing Poland with Ethiopia, Angola or Bangladesh? Even Western television footage repeatedly belied heavily loaded and crassly emotive Western television commentary as at the height of the well-orchestrated CIA-backed, Mafia-funded, Papal propaganda campaign before 1989, the corpulent and frequently obese bodies of Polish peasants, living on an ill-balanced but abundant diet, offered a very stark visual contrast to those of the real wretched of the world, the emaciated bodies of starving children from Ethiopia and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, tortured by swarming flies, whose ghastly and hopeless state genuinely recalled that of the survivors of Belsen. Finkelstein’s absurd romanticism about Poles – so odd in a son of survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, an uprising that the vast majority of non-Jewish citizens of Warsaw did nothing to assist, that even the most secular of non-Zionists cannot help seeing it as morbidly masochistic Jewish self-hatred – extends to a discussion of what Finkelstein calls ‘more colourful charges against postwar Polish governments’ (p.132). He thus ignores the appalling pogroms of 1945-46 against Jewish survivors fortunate enough to have obtained refuge in the Soviet Union during the war, the state-sanctioned anti-Semitism of 1968 utilised by the bureaucracy to nip a nascent student revolt in the bud, and the obsessive anti-Semitism of Wałęsa’s supporters, for whom every political opponent from Geremek to Kurón was either a Jew, a half-Jew or had a Jewish wife, regardless of the facts of the case.
…
To add insult to injury, on the very last page of his book, Finkelstein sides with the notorious revisionist Ernst Nolte in the Historikerstreit, claiming: ‘During a series of public exchanges in the 1980s many prominent German and non-German scholars argued against “normalizing” the infamies of Nazism. The fear was that normalization would induce moral complacency. However valid the argument may have been then it no longer carries conviction.’ (p.150)
Since the publication of Finkelstein’s slim volume, the neo-Nazi bombing of Jewish refugees near a Düsseldorf underground station has proved to be merely the beginning of yet another of the waves of racist violence that have swept Germany since reunification. Of course, Finkelstein, who has such an engaging habit of criticising Jewish organisations in the German press (see pages 128 and 130) regrets ‘the general German reluctance to openly criticise Jews’ (p.130), and engages in friendly personal correspondence with a right-wing (Christian Democrat) German deputy who is anxious to get the German government to acknowledge that Jewish organisations misled or defrauded the German state, a tactic that even if not strictly comparable to dealing with the far-right German People’s Union or National Democratic Party, is nonetheless a little hard to justify!
Anti-Semitism–and Not Very Good Anti-Semitism at That
There’s Holocaust criticism that opens our eyes anew–and then there’s cliche and paranoia
By David Greenberg
Review of
The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering
By Norman G. Finkelstein
Verso, 150 pp.
Two years ago, no one had heard of Norman Finkelstein. He was a lonely left-wing professor at the City University of New York, exercised over Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Then he wrote an essay in a book called “A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth.”
Finkelstein’s essay excoriated Harvard historian Daniel Jonah Goldhagen and his best-seller, “Hitler’s Willing Executioners” (1996). Goldhagen’s thesis–that ordinary Germans, not just Nazis, readily complied in the slaughter of European Jewry–had already undergone withering criticism by respected historians such as Omer Bartov. But Finkelstein had his own critique, which he advanced in an inflammatory review of “Executioners” for a left-wing British journal. Goldhagen’s book, Finkelstein claimed, was pure Zionist propaganda; his aim was to tar all gentiles as murderous so as to bolster support for an immoral Jewish state.
As Goldhagen rocketed to renown, Finkelstein clung to his coattails. He repackaged his book review for an American audience; Henry Holt published it in “A Nation on Trial.” When a few American Jewish leaders criticized Holt for endorsing what they considered anti-Semitic cant, Finkelstein parlayed the ensuing controversy into his 15 minutes of fame.
Now Finkelstein returns with “The Holocaust Industry,” a variation on his anti-Goldhagen broadside. Again he has recycled a book review into a book (though at 150 small pages, some blank, not much of one). This time he goes after “The Holocaust and American Life” (1999), by the esteemed University of Chicago historian Peter Novick.
Novick’s book–itself more polemic than history–had serious shortcomings but made some important points. In a tone more mischievous than bitter, Novick suggested that the Holocaust has become dangerously central to American Jewish identity. He argued that in today’s culture of victimology, where suffering confers virtue, Jews have interpreted the Holocaust as a claim to a share of the multicultural spoils. While his argument carried some unsavory overtones, Novick was clearly writing from a desire to protect the memory of the Holocaust, not to discount it.
Not so Finkelstein. As before, he attempts here to piggyback on another man’s ideas and celebrity to vent his own extreme views. In “The Holocaust Industry,” he has taken the parts of Novick’s treatise that support his own ideology–mainly its assertion that the Holocaust has been used politically–recast them in less temperate language, and discarded the rest. The upshot: a hate-filled screed against powerful “Jewish elites” who connive to exploit the Holocaust in order to succor Israel and line their own pockets.
The book’s defects appear on every page: misstatements of fact, faulty logic, abuse of evidence, and megalomania (Finkelstein dwells on the public reaction to his last book). To systematically vet this tirade would grant the book a legitimacy it doesn’t deserve.
It’s instructive, however, to examine the differences between Novick’s work and Finkelstein’s. Novick saw no malign motives in current attitudes toward the Holocaust. They stemmed organically, he suggested, from our era’s emphasis on multiculturalism, changes in religious observance and Israel’s security, the intensity of anti-Semitism in society, and much else. Rejecting this thoughtful argument, Finkelstein adopts a conspiratorial one: The Holocaust has assumed symbolic power because of the machinations of a coterie of sinister American Jews.
Finkelstein melds two strains of political paranoia. One, common to far-left thinkers, sees all global conflict as resulting from American imperialism. A second locates money-hungry Jews at the root of various international plots. The latter (uglier) conspiracy surfaces most blatantly during Finkelstein’s discussion of the effort to win reparations for Holocaust survivors and reclaim assets Jews had deposited in Swiss banks before and during World War II. In his telling, the nefarious “Holocaust industry” runs an “outright extortion racket,” shaking down innocent Swiss banks and German firms for loot.
Indeed, a conspiratorial worldview underpins this book. In trying to explain the rise in Holocaust writings after the Yom Kippur War, Finkelstein writes, in a typical sentence: “To increase Israel’s negotiating leverage the Holocaust industry increased production quotas”–as if to change the political attitudes, scholarly interests, and everyday concerns of millions required just a signal from on high.
Likewise, he portrays the lawsuits against Swiss banks as the doings of the Jewish liquor tycoon Edgar Bronfman (eager to augment his $3 billion net worth) and New York Sen. Al D’Amato (courting Jewish money and votes). In Finkelstein’s account, Bronfman’s World Jewish Congress “working with…the gamut of Holocaust institutions mobilized the entire U.S. political establishment. From President Clinton, who buried the hatchet with D’Amato, … through 11 agencies of the federal government as well as the House and Senate, down to state and local governments across the country, bipartisan pressures were brought to bear as one public official after another lined up to denounce the perfidious Swiss.”
Jews call the tune, the world dances.
For good measure, Finkelstein quotes approvingly a critic of the lawsuits: “[I]t is easy to understand why many Swiss believe their country was the victim of an international conspiracy.”
And so it goes, page after page. What this adds up to is pseudo-scholarship, extreme anti-Israel ideology and–there is no way around it–anti-Semitism. And it stinks.
So Lance likes cutting and pasting other people’s writings while ignoring challenges he finds unsuitable (comments 52, 97). Okay.
ck, I’m with Middle on that one. Only a few days ago we commemorated the victims of the Holocaust, and now we’re continuously offering a platform to someone who has not only been using vocabulary typical of anti-Semites that try to come across as liberal intellectuals, but has also repeatedly been making anti-Semitic statements as Middle listed above, making use of lies, false allegations (makes one wonder whether he’s ever even submitted those posts he claims have disappeared as they have never shown up in either the moderation queue nor the spam filter), purposedly misunderstanding statements or referring their structure to a different level of content, shifting the topic to unrelated personal matters in an attempt of backpaddling, etc.
I’d say, “Fight the beginnings.” That’s what we teach our students over here, and that’s what we believe in.
themiddle – Only with great effort to try to get submissions I’ve made to go up (working the refs) as opposed to a site that can handle with a bit more ease that not all commenters are of the same worldview. Yes, and it involves a bit more on my part to try to address the plethora of voices that all want to put in their $.02 (which is fine but it takes time).
If your buttons seem to get pushed by someone willing to allow for the usual give and take of online debating, then maybe your overload circuit needs to be rewired. I do think on the whole you are a WATB and that I am not even sure who is running the show here as several have made mention of allowing stuff in and checking for blocked material etc. Obviously by your admission, there is a certain level of gatekeeping going on here. I contend it has less to do with my approach, than it is about those uncomfortable facts that make Zionism a harder sell. Again, what about Fredy Perlman’s essay is hate speech?
Bottom line is that most apear largely unable to counter material dealing with Dr. Finkelstein in anything other than the most predictable manner (i.e. complain about the tone of the rebuttals and resort to ad hominems).
I wanted to ask any willing to volunteer the info, who are your champions? Who do you see as presenting in an accurate and compelling manner the strong points of Zionist philosophy and commitment to justice? Surely there’s at least a few voices you would have to offer unreservedly. I would like to examine the types of things they’ve said about the jewsih state, the Palestinians, and the prospects of peaceful coexistence.
You see, ck?
Somehow I supposedly “started to lose” “cried” and “threatened” while all the while Lance here gets to continue to ply his crap like “truth to Zionists is like kryptonite to Superman.”
Seems to me like somebody is pushing buttons and we’re giving him a platform.
Why?
Does Stromfront ever change the text of comments? I don’t know, I’m asking. I’ve never been there.
themiddle – I should hope you’d be defensive over the misinformation that is disseminated here. As to ‘allowing’ a platform for rebuttals to a thread topic of the sites own choosing, nice of you to be so magnanimous. You start to lose, you cry, and threaten to take your bat and ball and go home. And then blame it on the mean old anti-Semite to boot. I’m sorry if in your estimation, I admire the ‘wrong’ Jews. I happen to think they’re exceptional people (as in worthy of taking notice of).
I am able and willing to address any response here; but as I mentioned previously, truth to Zionists is like Kryptonite to Superman. Can’t let that become common knowledge. Wouldn’t do to expose the sham that is the Z-team.
I’d rather be douchey than make this site a promotional center for hatred of Jews. He’s had his say and plenty of room to have it.
How many times have you seen the following disclaimer before the attacks begin: “They’re going to call me an anti-Semite, but I’m not an anti-Semite;” “They try to censor us because they’re afraid of the truth.”
The intention is to put you on the defensive. If they say something anti-Semitic and you call them on it, they can remind you about their disclaimer. And of course, you feel intensely uncomfortable censoring them because we’re pretty good guys here and who wants to be labeled a censor?
Except that this is Jewlicious, not Stormfront. And we’ve both seen enough of this shit over the Internet to know where a person is coming from and where he’s headed when he starts with the supposedly false Holocaust numbers, the “not in front of the Goyim,” and the supposed Jewish government and media control.
As per your request, I’ve just released his last 4 comments. One is deep gratitude to you. Of course. The other three include accusations of dual loyalty by Jews, our supposed lack of ethics (again!!!) at Jewlicious, and a mention of how throughout history there’s been “blowback” at Jews because of Jewish attitudes.
Why are we providing a platform? Should we just make him a Jewlicious poster and then he can simply bring his crap up in posts instead of the comments?
ck –
My humble thanks for your request and comment.
Seriously.
This is one of the reasons I fear the Zionist infiltrations in my country:
[from – http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/05/in-rome-jews-su.html ]
In Rome, Jews Support a Neo-Fascist Because He’s Good for Israel
This is important. In Rome, a neofascist has won the mayoralty, the first such rightwinger since Mussolini. Says the Financial Times:
Packs of young, thuggish supporters of Gianni Alemanno greeted the new mayor’s appearance at the Campidoglio city hall with straight-armed “Roman” salutes, shouting abuse at communists and foreign immigrants.
Crucial to Alemanno’s election were Jews, about 9,000 votes.
[They] explain their shift to the right in various ways, most often because they see the National Alliance as firmly pro-Israel. Michel Bokhobza, whose family fled from Libya to Rome in 1967, says Italy’s centre-right is closer to Israel than the pro-Arab bias of the centre-left.
It just shows. Zionist Jews will abandon domestic issues, and historical voting patterns, in favor of Israel. It’s the neocon model, the Jews who left the Democratic party over defense spending re Israel–and the Iraq model, Jews who supported a disastrous war because it might be good for Israel. Good news for John McCain.
When will my people feel secure in western society? And in this case they’re supporting an actual neo-fascist, heir to the alliance that helped destroy European Jewry. Thanks to Dan Swanson for pointing this out.
Posted at 11:40 AM in Israel, Religion, U.S. Policy in the Mideast | Permalink
TM: I would humbly request that you take Lance out of the filter. While we may disagree with his views, I’d say he’s been pretty well behaved. Just because we don’t like what he says is no reason to curb his speech. This does not sit well with me at all. It makes me intensely uncomfortable. This isn’t, you know, those other douchey sites – tikkun anarchist or whatever.
froylein – Yeah, anything but address the actual issues at hand. Dr. Finkelstein is then at least within the bounds of credibility on his arguments against Goldhagen’s thesis. I’d love to see those who said Carter’s book is full of lies cite a few. Seems it would be pretty easy to choose from.
As to the rest of your pedantry, fine. I’m barely literate and am outshined at every turn by your brilliance. You have little need for specifics but prefer to dismiss with sweeping generalizations for the most part. Declare “Victory!” and move on.
Themiddle will continue to pat himself on the back for being so tolerant as posts fail to go up and he still fails to acknowledge to inherent unscrupulousness of a site he is defending actually changing someone’s words; that is creating a situation where words that are NOT those of the author could mistakenly be attributed to that person by the actions of Jewlicious.
If he says that the action was taken by someone no longer with Jewlicious, how about a disclaimer saying that
“Jewlicious regrets that the text of Mr. Thruster’s statements were changed by people with the authorization from this site to do so. Additionally, his handle was altered in a vulgar and childish fashion. Though we condemn the action, we have not chosen to take any corrective action until that point it was suggested by Mr. Thruster, who has continuosly used our failure to do so as a rationale to impugn our integrity. I hope this helps in some small way for Jewlicious to adhere to ethical principles.”
Let him deal with that before he starts lecturing anyone on ethics or what attributes make someone a POS.
themiddle – If there ever was a group that continuously ‘works the refs’, it’s Zionists and their enablers.
What about the Fredy Perlman link that did not get posted was bigotry? [ http://kurtnimmo.com/perlman/01.html ] Why is someone who feels an affinity towards truth-tellers, Jewish or otherwise, but in this case Jews, is branded an anti-Semite? It is from these thoughtful and insightful voices that my views of Israel evolved. I’ve read their detractors as well, and have drawn my own conclusions, which is all that any of us can do. You come to a different conclusion; fine.
There sure seems to be a lot of hostility over the fact that Norman Finkelstein and his views and those of other like him are being discussed in a thread about him. I would think you’d welcome the opportunity to weigh-in on the issue with all your unassailable counterpoints. I’m limiting my contributions here for the most part, so there should be no fear of my infecting any other thread, so what’s the problem?
Alex is proud that Zionist hucksters shake down the US in order to bully a people in a place where he has no plans of living in, but it makes him feel good that they do. Apparently he has no curiousity as to why there seems to a pattern of blowback from attitudes such as his throughout history because in his mind, the power imbalance will always be in place so that the bubble will never burst. But somehow I’m a bad guy for exercising my Constitutional rights in regards to politics and Israel. If we descend fully into a police state, it will be based on the Israeli model of intimidation and big brother surveilance.
Joesph Heller once commented that, “Catch-22 means that people have the right to do to you anything that you cannot prevent them from doing to you.”
Israelis should remember that that is a two-way street. What crimes are they willing to commit to maintain the current dynamic?
Middle, dear, while you’re already taking out the garbage…
🙂
What makes you think Finkelstein is the only person to have criticized Goldhagen. There was a huge debate among many members of various Jewish communities as well as Jewish scholars about the book. Finkelstein just made hay from it, like he made hay by attacking Dershowitz and earlier on, Joan Peters. No original work, just responses to popular authors, and by extension generating popularity for himself. Even his Holocaust Industry thesis is based on taking prominent Jewish individuals, organizations or ideas and critiquing them (somewhat bitterly). He’s basically a blogger with a Ph.D. (which has helped him get a salary to research his dreck) and a chip on his shoulder.
As for Weiss and Finkelstein’s views on Israel, you really do get your info from the bitter extremes. You should mention to Weiss that in 1937 and 1947, the Jewish Yishuv – the “transferists” as he calls them – agreed to divide the land and compromise over it with the Arabs. Don’t let him dance around this fact with lies like “they didn’t mean it.” They gave official responses in the affirmative at two key historic junctures. They did the same in 2000 and 2001. Also, you should stop trusting sources that take the work of Ilan Pappe seriously.
Lance, as I’ve told you, this site owes you nothing and so far we’ve let your bigotry and lousy behavior get play here despite all your screaming about censorship (good tactic!). I have now put you into the filter, which means that your posts will generally get stopped before being let through. Congratulations. I reserve the right not to let them through, so try really hard to stay on topic.
Maybe I think, just as any (non-)Jewish historian I know over here, that Goldhagen is not a person to be taken serious.
Mischaracterization? Rather Freudian thinking as you were the one to come up with the actually not at all fitting analogy. To suggest that ritual Jewish circumcision, regardless of my personal take on it, is an act of sexual molestation denotes a personality I’d not trust with any children.
And Lance, I’m put off by your improper punctuation, lack of reading comprehension skills – giving you the benefit of the doubt at that, and lack of understanding of when to use the Present Perfect.
I used to live in Germany, Lance. When I read Goldhagen’s book I immediately fled the country.
Speaking of German realty, maybe froylein can help you. I hear there’s a gracious villa in the lovely Berlin suburb of Wannsee that’s currently unoccupied.
froylein – It was my secular tribal lawyer friend, Bernie the Attorney, who told me, accusations of child abuse are par for the course in divorce cases as it causes so much immediate damage, is often difficult to defend against, and the penalties for false accusations are so often ignored.
It is a typical (in my view) mischaracterization on your point to equate my observation with an actual defense of such behavior, but then, I never taken a knife to a boy’s privates or given him an STD sucking the blood from the wound.
Your proudly proclaimed ignorance is a bit off-putting as well, but your issues of projection are a bit understandable. You never said anything about Goldhagen’s premise of inherently evil Germans and why you choose to live there anyway. Can I conclude that Dr. Finkelstien’s critique of it has merit by your silence?
Lance, Morris has a new book out on 1948. Read it and get back to us– it’s really long, though, so we’ll calendar you ahead for, say, November (if that’s enough time).
Funny you mention it, Lance. Just the other day (in light of the happenings in Austria) I asked my bf why any person in their right mind would try to find excuses for child molestors and rapists. His reply was, “I find that a lot of married men try to find excuses for horrific rapes and child molestations. I think its to rectify hidden desires or fantasies.”
So when will you tell us that the little bitch wanted it?
You gross me out.
Some thoughts on the admissions Benny Morris has made regarding the origins of the Jewish state.
[from – http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/05/make-sure-you-r.html ]
Margolick says that “transfer — or expulsion or ethnic cleansing — was never an explicit part of the Zionist program.” It just started happening in the course of the war, and the “Jewish leaders, struck by their good fortune,” pushed it along. This is not true; there is an abundance of evidence that contradicts Margolick’s claim. He ought to read Nur Masalha’s Expulsion of the Palestinians and Ilan Pappe’s The Ethnic Cleansing of the Palestinians. Plus, the argument fails the common sense test. Given demographics and where the Jews and Arabs lived, there was no way that the Zionists could create a Jewish state without transfer. Not surprisingly, that point was well understood by the Zionist leadership. Consider what Morris told a Ha’aretz interviewer in 2004: “Of course. Ben-Gurion was a transferist. He understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst. There would be no such state. It would not be able to exist… Ben-Gurion was right. If he had not done what he did, a state would not have come into being. That has to be clear. It is impossible to evade it. Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here.” Although Benny Morris tries to argue that the transfer was “born of war,” he provides too much evidence to the contrary in his books and interviews, which is what allowed Norman Finkelstein to undermine Morris’s case in Image and Reality (chapter 3).
Accusations of anti-Semitism are often much like those for child molestation. Getting the meme out there does the damage and there is rarely any repurcussions for those making false accusations.
Couple that with the assertion that Jews with criticisms of Zionism or Israel must be self-hating, and you’ve got a tailor made response system ready to be utilized by those short on facts.
I had to fight for any cheesecake.
Indeed. And as Adorno tells us, the odds of an unresolved conflict with a violent mother are the higher the more somebody harbours anti-Semitic thoughts.
Maybe he’s right. Jews should never ever under any circumstances accuse anyone of anti-semitism lest it increase, you know, anti-semitism.
Robert, you’ve got to be kidding. I’m a gentile with no dog in this fight, but I can read.
Well, all this too shall pass. Lance, Robert, and (dare I say) Middle will together lift high the banner of the Obama campaign, maybe as soon as tomorrow morning….. ‘And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, And the leopard will lie down with the young goat …And a little boy will lead them.’
Prize question:
How come conspiracy theories resonate best among societies with high rates of alcoholics?
Keerist! Yet another post filtered out. No ‘conspiracy’, just a system of filtering and moderationg that seems to selectively block those comment submissions that answer the high-volume of fecal matter flung here.
I also like how a majority of posters here supposedly object to generalizations, yet not a peep over comments that declare essentially, “Jews feel this way, non-Jews this way.” Nothing like a nice big double standard.
It’s relatively easy to address each of your claims, it’s just next to impossible to get them to see the light of day. SPAM filter my keister!
And the ‘still here’ inquiry…why wouldn’t I be? You make points, assertions, and claims…and I’m willing to respond. Seems reasonable.
You titled the thread “Norman Finkelstein Awareness Month.” That gives me a few days at least to increase the awareness of this man. BTW, nice to see you here Robert. I’ll check out your thread and start submitting duplicats of posts here there to show what exactly gets filtered out. Thye mockingly offer such actions as a Mossad plot, but ignore the traditional role of the sayan.
Robert, if by squalid you mean that we:
Let a person who wishes us ill come in here,
Let that person insult us
Let that person make all sorts of accusations
Let that person have his say
Let that person go far beyond his say to publishing what is nothing less than propaganda entirely disconnected from this topic
And all the while watch as the person keeps screaming about how he’s being censored even though he has 27 of the first 80 comments in this discussion.
If that makes us a “giant anti-Semitism producing factory,” I would think the anti-Semites you’ve found were predisposed in the first place.
I became acquainted with the Finkelstein phenomenon two years ago after I saw one of his interviews in the Oslo daily “Aftenposten.” He was calling then for a boycott of Israel although a year later, when asked his views on the subject, he claimed he was agnostic on the subject. Anyone in academia has the right to assemble the evidence and draw conclusions, so long as they do not simply exclude any evidence that contradicts their views. What I find objectionable in Finkelstein’s “scholarship” is how he replaces evidence with insults and basically misrepresents the views of others. As I have pointed out elsewhere in exhausting detail, he has taken Phyllis Chesler to task for a number of sins she didn’t commit, and used this misrepresentation to characterize her as crazy, a lunatic, and an imbecile. He calls the MEMRI organization “Nazi,” and uses the same sobriquet for Alan Dershowitz, who also got called a whore madame, or Singer who was something that “crawled out of a sewer.” Catholics who get under his skin are “Freemasons.” I have never seen in academia such a textbook case of someone who substitutes name calling for genuine scholarship, and I’m sure that’s what did him in finally at De Paul U. As to the quotes in #79, they are to be condemned, but I’d like to see the writer be equally vociferous in condemning the vicious anti-Semitic exhortations and remarks of Hizbollah’s and Hamas’s representatives (“sons of apes and pigs,” to start with, exhortations to kill Jews). And those who excoriate Israel for killing Palestinian children — why don’t you condemn the Palestinians for inciting their own children to become suicide bombers?
Obviously no country is perfect, Israel included. But to pretend that it is the root of all evil, perpetrating “genocide†against the Palestinians who themselves by an overwhelming majority approve of suicide attacks on Israelis, is simply grotesque.
Blog post on the squalid spectacle on this page. You Zionist Jews (I mean the ones who act like you guys or worse) are nothing but a giant anti-Semitism producing factory, but I guess that is the plan?
You done yet, Lance?
and from SOTT – http://www.sott.net/articles/show/154411-Cheerleading-genocide
“Notwithstanding all its success and achievements, Israel remains a state based on racism, apartheid and criminality against the Palestinian people whose homeland it seized and whom it is trying to obliterate to this day. To be sure, Israel has failed. Palestinians remain, both as a human entity and as a national entity.
Israel, in order to achieve its goals, always sought to acquire, by hook or by crook, as much Palestinian land as possible while taking in as few Palestinian people as possible. The policies and tactics employed by Israel to achieve this goal are both blunt and insidious and amount to ethnic cleansing and the international crime of genocide. Israel has institutionalised racism, bulldozed hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages, shamelessly confiscated Palestinian land and property, including private homes, and recently built the so-called “Separation Wall” in the West Bank, aimed first and foremost at annexing to Israel as much Palestinian land as possible.
On top of all of this, Israel has perfected the practice of state-sponsored mass terror; a deliberate policy aimed at making Palestinian life as unbearable as possible with the ultimate goal of forcing Palestinians to leave their homes and land altogether. This is done in broad daylight; in full view of key world powers, such as the US, EU, Russia and China, which either keep silent or issue a few terse and innocuous words about the need to stick to a peace process that has form but very little substance.
Today, as Israel is getting ready to celebrate its 60th birthday, the massive theft of Palestinian land in the West Bank, especially in East Jerusalem and its surroundings, continues unabated. Against all odds, the Palestinian people have survived. Indeed, Palestinian resilience to Israeli oppression is legendary — a trait that continues to baffle and frustrate Israeli strategists. Perhaps it is this resilience that is encouraging influential Israeli political, military and religious leaders to openly call for genocide of the Palestinians.
Recently, Israel’s Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai threatened to “inflict a greater holocaust” on Palestinians. Similarly, a growing number of rabbis associated with the two largest religious camps in Israel, the Haredi ultra-Orthodox religious sector and the national Zionist religious sector, issuing one edict after the other, permitting soldiers to murder at will Palestinian civilians, including children, on the grounds that in war all among the enemy population ought to be treated as combatants, including children.
One might imagine that this is exaggerated, but it is not. Recently Rabbi Yisrael Rosen, director of the Tsomet Institute, a religious seminary attended by Israeli settlers in the West Bank, declared: “All of the Palestinians must be killed; men, women, infants, and even their beasts.” And the chief rabbi of the City of Safad, Shmuel Eliyahu, urged the state and the army recently to hang the children of a Palestinian fighter who last month attacked the Merkaz Haarav Centre, run for Jewish settlers in West Jerusalem, killing eight pre-military Talmudic students in retaliation for the killing by the Israeli army of more than 130 Palestinians, most of them innocent civilians, in the Gaza Strip.”
BTW, the “not in front of the goyim” comment was what was said to Hannah Arendt at a talk on victims of the Holocaust at a held Jewish senior center. It was a mixed crowd and she had the nerve to speak of the extermination of the Roma. An elderly Jewish woman felt that info should be not disseminated as it detracted from the focus of Jewsih suffering in the Holocaust.
Quote of the week from Lawrence of Cyberia – http://lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/news/2008/05/quote-of-the-we.html
“Anti-Zionist Jews are not and do not claim to be any more authentic or representative than any other Jews, nor is their protest against Israel any more valid than a non-Jew’s. But “If I am not for myself”, then the Zionists will claim to be for me, will usurp my voice and my Jewishness. Since each Israeli atrocity is justified by the exigencies of Jewish survival, each calls forth a particular witness from anti-Zionist Jews, whose very existence contradicts the Zionist claim to speak for all Jews everywhere.”
— The first time I was called a self-hating Jew, by Mike Marqusee; The Guardian, 4 Mar 2008.
And a Jew Monster that may have looked like EV’s.
Maybe Syrian ones.
I wonder if he had Nazi toy soldiers as a child.
Nah. He’s down there, curled up next to the sump pump.
He claimed his mum hasn’t got a basement, which made me feel sad.
“Wonder if Lance believes that the Mossad’s out there to get him.”
Boy, how I wish it were. Too bad they actually have real threats to pursue and not losers or professors that live in heir mother’s basement.
Middle, can we please take a break from Rev. Wright?
Tom, sometimes they’re amusing and sometimes they are amusing until they run things.
Tom, I’d find him pretty amusing, too, if he were not as persistent as a red wine stain on a white silk blouse.
Jewish reaction to Lance: highly offensive. Gentile reaction to Lance: source of amusement.
Wonder if Lance believes that the Mossad’s out there to get him. 😉
Middle, why don’t you just admit you’re a Mossad agent being funded by the Council on Foreign Relations, originally inserted to “handle” Lee Harvey Oswald?
This is antisemitism:
And btw, I’m quite envious of the extent that Israelis get to discuss these hot button issues but the coverage is largely suppressed in US as per the maxim, “not in front of the goyim.â€
Lance, you sure do complain quite a lot for somebody who has been given all the room he wanted to push through his little agenda in this discussion. Your behavior is pretty typical behavior by the anti-Jewish and anti-Israel crowds isn’t it. “Look, they are censoring us” they shout everywhere without any difficulty whatsoever.
Don’t worry, you’re in good company considering that Carter and Walt and Mearsheimer have made similar claims…while doing national tours and selling numerous books. Come to think of it, that’s Finkelstein’s modus operandi as well. Did you ask him how much he’s earned from his little personal Holocaust Industry?
Beinin is a professor at Stanford but he complains about censorship because a synagogue doesn’t wish to hear his anti-Israel views? He has all the platforms he needs, as does Judt from Columbia. So does Chomsky, and so does Finkelstein. How many scholars receive this kind of attention in the media and across the Internet? Name one pro-Israeli professor who does.
As a matter of fact, the ADL did not ask that Judt be prevented from speaking through the Polish consulate. The Polish consulate decided this on their own once they learned from the ADL what his views were. THEY didn’t want controversy because diplomats are not in the business of courting controversy. They killed the talk because they wanted outreach and he was going to give them something different.
With respect to your ongoing other mistakes, I have come to the conclusion that you are simply here to spout your world view about the supposed good Jews (those critical of Jews and/or of Israel) and the bad Jews (those who are supportive of Jews and/or Israel). At this point, you’ve made your views clear with your open claims about Zionist and Jewish control of the US, the media, the need for Jews who support Israel to go and live there, etc.
As pointed out already, you are a piece of dirt bigot. The fact that some Jews agree with you doesn’t change what you are.
I think at this point you’re just posting the entire mess of dirt you want to unload about Jews and I’ve told you this site won’t be a platform for that regardless of how much you scream about deserving our permission to post it. You’ve had the chance to spout off conspiracy theories against us, against Jews in general and against Zionists as well. You’ve had a chance to throw in Holocaust denial or Holocaust minimization. You’ve had a chance to attack Israel and its supporters from every direction. You’ve had a chance to post numerous links to your sources. We’ve even allowed you to defend that mediocre scholar, Norman Finkelstein. So I’d say this was a successful outing for you.
However, since at this point it just appears that you’re trying to milk this for all it’s worth (while complaining that somehow you’re a victim of Jews) without any rhyme or reason (you make a claim, are proven wrong, make a mild apology and plow ahead with the next claim while suggesting that we are covering up something), I think I’m coming to the end of the line with you. Go ahead and finish up. Get it all of your chest because your time here is about done. And when it is done, you will finally have a legitimate beef with me.
Here are the outright lies left behind by the endearing goatthruster:
“I guess it’s understandable that they get blocked in one thread but not in another.” – Yes, but to a conspiracy theorist, everything is a conspiracy.
“That means in the Zionist eyes, Norman Finkelstein and Aryan Nation are indestiguishable.” – No, both are distinguishably idiotic, evil, and corrupt in their own right. Don’t ruin it for Norm by grouping him with other losers. He deserves to be appreciated for his own remarkable ability to hate and lie to do so.
“I’m quite envious of the extent that Israelis get to discuss these hot button issues but the coverage is largely suppressed in US as per the maxim, “not in front of the goyim.— – Ha! That made me LOL dude. Really.
“athiest Jew Norman Finkelstein is quite secure in traveling to occupied Palestine.” – I’m sure he is. I’m sure they roll out the red carpet for that dirty POS. As excited as they are to celebrate Hitler’s birthday in fact. So?
“Organizations claiming to represent American Jews engage in a systematic campaign of defamation, censorship and hate-mongering to silence criticism of Israeli policies.” – Yet another claim that’s a straw man. Never been proven, only repeated, like mot propaganda.
“They hollow the ethical core out of the Jewish tradition, acting instead as if the highest purpose of being Jewish is to defend Israel, right or wrong.” – I love how anti-Semites think they can dictate what Jews consider anti-Semitic. You guys kill me! We will always defend Israel, as Israel is inextricable from Judaism. It is our home. Yup, you heard me, it’s my home, and I’ve never been there. Bother you? Even better. As a famous rabbi once said, “and this Jew lives in Jerusalem”
My favorite one, because there are too many to list is: “Carter’s most vociferous critics have not challenged him on the issues.” – Are you f****** kidding me? Really? Really? haha.
Lance, work on your reading comprehension.
froylein – No, I said Death Camps (which also go by the name “Extermination Camps”). I was wrong about stating that my point about incorrect assertions made of gas chambers in Germany relied on there not being *any* gas chambers in Germany.
As far as the fact of unscrupulous behavior by Jewlicious already established (changing text of comments), it is clear that since the gist of my comments are about net porn, penis enlargement, car sales, and Nigerian bank accounts , I guess it’s understandable that they get blocked in one thread but not in another.
Skipping past your other stuff and cutting to the chase, in the Zionist lexicon, “neo-Nazi” seems to be anyone not onboard with the official narrative. That means in the Zionist eyes, Norman Finkelstein and Aryan Nation are indestiguishable. And btw, I’m quite envious of the extent that Israelis get to discuss these hot button issues but the coverage is largely suppressed in US as per the maxim, “not in front of the goyim.” It would be nice of you to address some of the clearly irrefutable quotes about the Zionist views of the indigenous populations but I guess the cherry picking of points is understandable.
Gotta run for the time being but your simplistic cause and effect of what causes people to flee their own lands is based exclusively on the supposed superiority of the destination. Scores Iraqis have fled their homeland specifically because of the instability brought on by the GWOT. To negate your other point, athiest Jew Norman Finkelstein is quite secure in traveling to occupied Palestine. I’ll leave you with this snippet I came across.
[from http://www.sott.net/articles/show/126719-ADL-in-Action-Silencing-Critics ]
Organizations claiming to represent American Jews engage in a systematic campaign of defamation, censorship and hate-mongering to silence criticism of Israeli policies. They hollow the ethical core out of the Jewish tradition, acting instead as if the highest purpose of being Jewish is to defend Israel, right or wrong.
No one is spared. New York University Professor Tony Judt also moved to Israel with notions of justice. Judt learned, as I did, that most Israelis were “remarkably unconscious of the people who had been kicked out of the country and were suffering in refugee camps to make this fantasy possible.” In October, the Polish Consulate in New York canceled a talk by Judt after pressure from the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee.
Even former U.S. presidents are not immune. Jimmy Carter has been the target of a smear campaign since the release of his latest book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” Carter’s most vociferous critics have not challenged him on the issues. Rather, they discredit him with personal attacks, even insinuating that the man who has achieved more than any other American president in Arab/Israeli peacemaking is anti-Semitic.
Why discredit, defame and silence those with opposing viewpoints? I believe it is because the Zionist lobby knows it cannot win based on facts. An honest discussion can only lead to one conclusion: The status quo in which Israel declares it alone has rights and intends to impose its will on the weaker Palestinians, stripping them permanently of their land, resources and rights, cannot lead to a lasting peace. We need an open debate and the freedom to discuss uncomfortable facts and explore the full range of policy options. Only then can we adopt a foreign policy that serves American interests and one that could actually bring a just peace to Palestinians and Israelis.
Joel Beinin co-edited “The Struggle for Sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993-2005.”
Lance, “those hurdles”. i.e. the spam filter, are there to save readers from literally hundreds of spam ads for credits, porn sites, car deals and thelike any given day. Even comments by me have ended up in the spam filter, often they are waiting in the moderation queue even when I’m logged in. That’s how all blogs on WordPress I know of work, and I do find it odd that you keep suggesting that we’d hold back your comments on purpose. You insisted on that there were no concentration camps on Germany territory. I provided you with a source that showed you a considerable number of concentration camps dating from as early as 1934 on Third Reich territory. Then you claimed that the map made a distinction between concentration camps and death camps, which it most definitely doesn’t and which anybody with a basic knowledge of French and who bothers to click on the link I provided (courtesy of Fraunhofer Institut in co-laboration with Haus der Geschichte Deutschlands) can clearly see. Why the lie? You claimed there were no gas chambers on Third Reich territory, and I replied I’d been to one in Hadamar. Should I be convinced to believe that your “knowledge” is merely based on neo-Nazi propaganda that’s flooding the internet? Why asking my reasons for not making aliyah? To divert my attention into a direction that you feel more easily attackable as it may well be based on subjective feelings? If you’re so in line with what’s on Lebanese children’s TV, why don’t you move to Lebanon? Possibly because human rights for Christians there are anything but guaranteed, atheists are considered animals there as per the teachings of the Quran that entail that a person without religion is not human? Hmmm, and what about the Arab view on Palestinians? Have you never wondered why no Arabic country admits Palestinians to their respective territories? And did you think that Israelis forced Arafat to deposit tens of millions of European development aid in Swiss accounts for his family to enjoy? And if you’re so concerned about human rights, why not read into the history of Christians among Palestinians? Oh, BTW, a father of a Syrian Kurdish student of mine once said that without Israel they’d be dead as if not for Israel, nobody would give a damn about human rights in the Middle East. How come most intellectuals from Muslim countries have fled to Europe or Northern America? If “the Zionists” silenced people that contradict them, how come there’s so much anti-Israeli bias void of hands-on knowledge among self-proclaimed intellectuals all over the globe? How can there be blogs like Jewschool that decidedly are on the political left of Jewlicious? How can even on here be bloggers that will report critically on Israeli governmental actions? And if you consider all of us intellectually inferior to you, who, if he were a true academic, would not even consider citing Wikipedia, why don’t you just go and enjoy yourself? Your neo-Nazi acclaimed sources won’t convince or impress anybody on here.
froylein – the main point (regarding what is known as ‘revisionism’) is that some details were offered as credible testimony that were shown to be absurd. I’m less enthusiastic about trying to link and reference each and every one due to the missing or blocked post structure here (kind of like sayan-lite) but whenever/wherever possible will add the appropriate links when I find them. One that comes to mind is the evaluation of testimony by refugees emigrating to Israel and their own Holocaust researchers concluded that roughly a third were not credible for various reasons but for the most part attributed it to the desire to add to the weight of evidence against their tormentors.
I am wondering why you have not made aliyah since unless you agree with Dr. Finkelstein’s refutation of Goldhagen’s “Hitler’s Willing Executioners”, that Dr. Goldhagen supposedly established that there is something uniquely sinister about the German character that fostered the Holocaust in the first place. Plus, do you not see any contradiction as far as moral high ground goes that a Jew from anywhere in the world has the right to move to Israel (notorious criminals have often taken advantage of this to avoid punishment for their crimes) but people who actually lived there for and still have the keys to their stolen homes have no such right of return? I believe it was you who mentioned Israel as the Middle East’s only functioning democracy but that would entail one person, one vote which is not how representation is allotted. And as been mentioned by others, to cite the worst abuses of Arab/Muslim lands, to claim that Israel is at least better that that is setting the bar pretty low, no?
It seems that most everyone here that I’m addressing is somehow attached to the site with mod privileges so it is confusing as to why it seems so convoluted to get posts to go through and not be “mistakenly” deleted.
Prof. themiddle rests on refutation sans details but anyone still denying the facts and details confirmed regarding the USS Liberty is in denial, hopelessly dense, or lying. The burden of proof is on the one making the positive assertion (me) so I’ll look for links where I’ve already written this up for the Jewish Journal since recreating it here would be potentially a wasted effort (not in swaying anyone but rather getting posted at all – hard to create any reasonable continuity if some posts go up and some do not).
The dismissing of my sources out of hand (specifically or in general) is not valid as many of them are themselves from Jewish or Israeli sources. The IDF has dissenters that put US conscientious objectors to shame. “Breaking the Silence” is powerful testimony and many Israeli authors have written of the schizophrenic nature of Israeli society whereby on one hand they operate as a just and civilized society and on the other, adopt many of the worst abuses of their previous tormentors. But, these apparently can be discounted as the ramblings of ‘self-hating’ Jews. It is from these truth-tellers that one learns of things such as the psychological toll on the IDF soldiers from institutionalized abuse of Palestinians, Jews-only roads, the inequity of “unrecognized villages” in Israel, Naeim Giladi and “The Jews of Iraq”, who is actually using children as human shields, the Israeli atomic weapons program, and so forth. these could easily be confirmed by yourselves had you any desire to do so but I suppose it helps in your defense of Zionist policies to remain in the dark about them.
To be called a piece of dirt by someone who would seem to defend such practices provides ample evidence as to just how meaningless those characterizations are (a perfect example of “consider the source”). It also confirms what I said about the one-trick pony nature of Zionist apologetics. I will conclude that some of the most damning quotes about the nature of Zionism is from the Zionists themselves but those tend to be ignored as they do not fit neatly into the category of self-hating Jew. Overall, this is where legislating thought crimes comes into play (something pretty much unique to the Holocaust question) in that too much debunking of the official narrative might cause the whole house of cards to collapse. Many Israeli writers and Jews in general are concerned about the potential backlash should the extent of the misrepresentations ever become widely known.
[I’ll save this so that it can be forwarded to the site should it also not make it up – lot of extra work but that’s why those hurdles are there in the first place ]
There was also a death chamber (one I’ve occasionally visited with students a few years ago) in Hadamar near Limburg, which is located pretty centrally in Germany. Lance, I live in Germany.
Middle, Lance, I’ve just de-marked the post as spam as it indeed had ended up in the spam folder, so it’s up now.
The map makes the distinctions I listed above: concentration camps, prisons, labour camps.
Nothing in the junk folder of yours right now. It may have been erased. You sure do use a lot of those key words.
And don’t worry too much, it won’t be too tough. We’re already at the scripted part where you trot out all the canards about Jewish control of the media, Zionist control of the US, false Jewish assertions about the Holocaust, attack on the Liberty, Jewish censorship, etc., etc., etc., etc.
You are tiresome. You are a piece of dirt bigot.
Wow. This is going to be tough. Yet another post (somewhat lengthy) blocked due to? keywords? Will I have to request each post seperately be allowed through?
I’ll address the points as I’m able but one correction I need to make is the claim of no death camps inside of Germany when what I should have said was claims of (homicidal) gas chambers in Germany when those were actually established to be outside of Germany though this map makes a distinction between “concentration camps” and “death camps” which is what I said in the first place anyway.
[see: http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/pop-up-map.htm ]
This is distinct from the pilot program instances mentioned here: http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/places/germany/brandenburg/brandenburg-001.html
and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_chamber –
citing “In early 1940, the use of hydrogen cyanide produced by Zyklon B was tested on 250 Roma children from Brno at the Buchenwald concentration camp.[4] On September 3, 1941, 600 Soviet POWs were gassed with Zyklon B at Auschwitz camp I; this was the first experiment with the gas at Auschwitz.[5]”
The point being that facts were claimed that turned out to have no bearing in reality (such as Elie Wiesels “geysers of blood” from mass graves). In the meantime I’m hoping my other post that the spam filter blocked/deleted/whatever shows up. Do I need to write the mods with the actual missing post or can they pull it out of their blocked bin?
There are so many other sweeping assertions to address that I’ll have to do it a few at a time (such as an examination of Holocaust history somehow makes one a denier – at least in US currently it is not punished as a thought crime as it is in some other countries). Even considering the limitions of website back-and-forth, you debate much as a fifth grader would.
Just so we’re clear, it is not surprising that “piece of dirt bigot” is your considered opinion since it allows to disregard out of hand those things that might conflict with your world view. There’s still Jews who deny that the USS Liberty was attacked on purpose and not from accidental misidentification no matter how much evidence is produced to the contrary. A friendship I made with one of the officers on that ship when it was attacked gets smeared as an anti-Semitic bigot as well to this day, yet dual-loyalty seems to cause many to dishonor heroic (and truthful) US Navy personnel in order to provide a little face saving for murdering Israelis.
But, I guess I should be thankful that Jewlicious is not changing my comments this time around (which I actually am) though Mossad has the role of deception in its very motto and they are nothing if not skilled in the ways of the false flag attack.
Here’s a French map of the concentration camps (marked ‘K’), prisons (square) and labour camps (circle) in the German Reich from 1934.
Aditionally, from 1939 till March 1944, 22 new main camps with 1,200 adjacent camps (were people were gathered and sorted into work force or death sentence) were erected in the occupied territories.
Really? Rights and protections under the law? Wow. You might want to look that up on some unbiased websites or BOOKS. Then, why don’t you compare those rules to, for example, land sale laws under the PA (they like to kill the sellers if they sell to Jews) or general civic laws in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia (not very open to outsiders, check out how Kuwait evicted 300,000 Palestinians after they lived there for a couple of decades). Let me know what you learn. When you’re done, why don’t you inform us whether non-Jews in Israel may vote just like Jewish citizens, receive governmental assistance such as the child subsidies just like Jewish citizens. Since you mention the law, why don’t you check out some Supreme Court rulings about the treatment of minorities in Israel and then read Israel’s Declaration of Independence. Compare these to the Hamas or PLO charters just for fun.
In other words, you admit you were wrong. Just as you will after checking your first statement against my reposte.
Ooooooooh, the Joooooooos own the media.
Now, you did mean the Jews own or control the media, right? After all, you were talking about how pro-Zionists can’t let the truth get out and then to confirm this statement you talked about the sins of omission being those of the MSM. I can’t glean anything else from this.
Well, actually, David Irving was considered a “serious historian” who challenges the mainstream history of WWII with respect to the Nazis and the Jews. He sued and went to court in England over libel charges which are easy to win over there. He was beaten handily in court and by extension his entire oeuvre. He also ended up admitting that at least 4.5 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis.
Besides, we were talking about Zionists which you say demand that people “fall in line” or they are disrespected but then you started speaking about the Holocaust. Are you confusing Jews with Zionists again? Why not just say Jews? Even Finkelstein, your hero, doesn’t deny there was a Holocaust (how could he, his father got a quarter of a million bucks because of it).
This issue you have with confusing Zionists with Jews really seems unfortunate, don’t you think? But not to worry, nobody would imagine that you’re anti-Semitic, would they? After all, you’re a universal humanist! At least at the end you gave us “Israelis/Jews” so we understand what you’re saying.
Now, just so we’re clear, I consider you to be a piece of dirt bigot who does state and claim that “Jews/Israelis” (Zionists as you fondly call us) are different from the rest of humanity.
And when you have valid criticism, let us know and we’ll address it.
here’s a response to the quotes you posted without comment.
themiddle Says:
May 1st, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Who are you trying to kid? You intended to suggest that people like Finkelstein and Weiss are principled and the rest of the Jews aren’t.
Here are some of your choice quotes:
“Zionism ends where people of character begin.â€
—
Zionism is special pleading for behavior that would be universally condemned in any other context. Rights and protections under the law are based almost entirely on racial/cultural lines.
—
I’ve seen already that anything that goes against the ‘official narrative’ is eventually deemed anti-Semitic or hate speech
—
A statement of fact (although it would have to be qualified with either “quite often” or “at certain sites” or “with certain people.” Again, this is first hand experience with people unable/unwilling to craft a coherent counterpoint but instead immediately go on an ad hominem attack.
—-
…swoop on any factual information that pro-Zionists find troubling. Can’t let the truth get out as it is so hard to put the genie back in the bottle.
—–
Again, have seen first hand evidence of this. Many of the sins of the MSM are sins of ommision.
—–
It has long been a claim of Zionists to say that anyone not falling in line with their official narrative is not a serious historian. In fact, just the opposite is true.
—-
Again, established by fact. The 6 million number (horrible regardless of final tally) remains unchanged though at individual sites it has been credibly downgraded (such as the death toll figure on the plaque at Auschwitz) but without any impact on the total 6 mil figure. Another example is the claims at Nuremburg that death camps were operated in Germany itself whereas now it’s generally accepted (as per “serious” historians”) that the death camps were outside of Germany.
—
The UN officially ruled that Zionism is racism but through Israel’s pressuring of their global muscle (the US) the resolution was rescinded. Many politicians and political observers have commented on the Israel Lobby’s influence on US policy. In fact, it is discussed openly in Israeli media but it is a perilous thrid rail here for the most part. Example after example of the double standard in media coverage is available but to point to it gets one branded with the Zionist scarlet letter. I make no claim that Israelis/Jews are any different from any other segment of humanity, but they have through special pleading sought to armor themselves against any criticism, however legitimate, whatsoever.
I have a response submitted themiddle but it has not made it past the spam filter because of those pesky and mysterious keywords it seems. I wrote the site like ck suggested. I’d be tempted to put it in another thread to see if it would make it there but will honor the requests not to post OT comments.
Who are you trying to kid? You intended to suggest that people like Finkelstein and Weiss are principled and the rest of the Jews aren’t.
Here are some of your choice quotes:
“Zionism ends where people of character begin.â€
I’ve seen already that anything that goes against the ‘official narrative’ is eventually deemed anti-Semitic or hate speech
…swoop on any factual information that pro-Zionists find troubling. Can’t let the truth get out as it is so hard to put the genie back in the bottle.
It has long been a claim of Zionists to say that anyone not falling in line with their official narrative is not a serious historian. In fact, just the opposite is true.
Universal humanism, huh?
themiddle Says:
April 25th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Lance, I like how you divide the world into good and bad Jews.
———
Sorry Mr. themiddle, *you* divided the world into good and bad Jews. There are also ignorant or apathetic Jews. And don’t forget, Israel has a memorial to “Righteous Gentiles” so spare me your hypocrisy that to point out what I consider principled Jews means that all others are not by default. Anyone able to put universalist humanism into practice from whatever heritage or background is OK in my book.
One other thing to add regarding Alex’s statement about paranoid ranting, don’t forget who sees (a broad though valid generalization) almost every criticism of Israel as rampant anti-Semitism and the beginnings of the next Holocaust. If one is justified to be vigilant because others threaten to push Israel into the sea, what do you expect from the other side who have been characterized as “beasts on two legs” or hear that the tip of one Jewish fingernail is worth more than the lives of 1000 non-Jews? That’s some pretty barbaric accounting if you ask me.
Alex Says:
April 25th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Why is it that anti-Semites also make great paranoid ranters? It must come along with living in their mom’s basements and collecting Nazi paraphernalia.
————–
I wish I had either a mom or a basement. I have some war memorabilia including WWII but no Nazi stuff except for a widely circulated postcard of Adolf Hilter being greeted by young school girls in much the same way as mass-murderer Arial Sharon was treated like a conquering hero by much of the Israeli population.
I also have some Soviet stuff so according to your warped way of thinking, I must be some closet commie-lover because no one would collect historical artifacts except for those regimes they secretly admire. Is it hard for you to breathe with your head planted so far up your tailpipe?
Lance, I like how you divide the world into good and bad Jews.
Why is it that anti-Semites also make great paranoid ranters? It must come along with living in their mom’s basements and collecting Nazi paraphernalia.
Another interesting piece regarding Dr. Finkelstein by another principled Jew (Philip Weiss). Your all welcome to bring your scary arguments there btw, although you might be a little out of your league as there you would be little fish in a BIG pond. Note that he has his own issues with Dr. Finkelstein but still recognizes the impact that he has.
Once ‘Daniel in the Lion’s Den’, Finkelstein Comes Into the Mainstream on Israel/Palestine! – http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/04/norman-finkelst.html#more
More of Finkelstein’s argument:
When you have Israel’s most influential paper saying it’s apartheid, what do American Jews say to that? ‘Oh yeah, we support apartheid’? You can say that if you’re Pat Robertson or Dick Cheney. But it’s very hard if you’re an American Jew who claims to be a liberal to be making arguments like that. And I think you see the erosion in particular among college students because they study and they’re better informed, and they see that all of this stuff Israel is doing has now become morally indefensible. And so there’s some who are just embarrassed, and they have become, as it were, indifferent; and then there are those who have become completely hostile, in an active way. [Weiss emphasis]
—-
I attended two Finkelstein lectures (one at my own campus) and the opposition does indeed get worked up however cannot successfully rebut his arguments and instead resorts to ad hominems and non sequiturs.
Lance, when you call me “unethical” or suggest I have a track record of a “complete lack of ethics” you’re talking out of your ass. Again.
I won’t enlighten you about filter words. I sometimes also get sent to the filter and sometimes even to the junk filter. If that upsets you, tough cookies.
I’m sorry if you’re too stupid to differentiate between the professors you would like to list as your sources. If you call Finkelstein Dr. or just Normy, nobody is going to be impressed.
By the way, you are welcome to continue posting here, but your current behavior like publishing the same 6 comments in different posts yesterday is starting to grate and it has become quite unpleasant. Cut it out already. Nobody owes you anything and this site isn’t your public library.
Maybe you’ll enlighten me as to the keywords which activate the spam filter. The fact that so many comments failed to even get the “awaiting moderation” message though the same post would make it up promptly in another thread. As I said, you’ve already established a track record indicating a complete lack of ethics so my suspicions are well founded.
As far as my usage of Prof/Dr., the style guide shows that prof. might be preferred but since Dr. Finkelstein is not teaching at an institution of higher learning at the moment, I felt Dr. would be the preferred from of address. It is clear that many of you are grasping at straws since your actual arguments are so void of substance.
Complete Edition of Style Guide – http://www.calstatela.edu/style/editfullguide.htm
Professor/doctor
Use of professor is preferred. Professor is an academic rank or title. A doctor (in academics) is one who has earned the highest academic degree (e.g., Ph.D.). [note] Not all professors have doctorates, nor are all holders of doctorates professors. See titles of people.
Well, Lance didn’t know that Walt and Mearsheimer were able to use the title Dr. even though they are professors at U of Chicago and Harvard, so it’s understandable if he thinks Finkelstein’s work is “groundbreaking.”
Hey Lance, please keep using the wrong key words in your comments so they end up in the spam filter. It’s a lot of fun watching you scream about conspiracies.
grounbreaking? 🙂
You guys must be sooo excited to have Norman’s sockpuppet (Goatthruster) here! Wait til I tell everyone! But of course they’ll say, Norman Finkle..who? Then I’ll explain that he is the disgraced historical revisionist and terrorist aplogist that didn’t get tenured for good reason, and then we’ll go on talking about people who matter.
themiddle Says:
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:14 pm
[snip]
I also like the way you call Norman “Dr.†while you don’t bother to call either of the tenured Walt or Mearsheimer, “Dr.†A little insecure, perhaps? Why would you be insecure about Norman being called “Dr.�
———
Mr. ‘themiddle’, it was not out of insecurity but my own ignorance. I knew Mssrs. Walt and Mearsheimer were professors but did not know they were entitled to the designation Dr.. I will make sure to include that wherever applicable in the future. It’s nice tio be able to continue this in the thread it originally belongs in as Jewlicious was not posting my rebuttals here for a time.
If I get a chance I’ll address froylein’s comments later as well as the posts in the OT threads that dealt with the submission of mine that finally went up. Suffice to say that the claims that there is only one serious historian who sees value in Dr. Finkelstein’s work is also not correct. It is also clear that Raul Hilberg’s support goes beyond the trivial and correctly identifies the difficulty in gaining acceptance for groundbreaking work such as Dr. Finkelstein’s.
Tom Morrissey Says:
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:26 am
Hey, Lance, where can I get my own copy of that Moqtada al-Sadr poster for my bedroom? Did it help you get laid?
—————
It wasn’t the poster but the ham and cheese snack platter and bacon-wrapped cocktail wienies that got her juices flowing. Your mom was quite appreciative. Have your dad contact me I’ll tell him all about those things she really likes when she gets her freak on.
(sigh)
Back to the actual discussion at hand; more from the serious historians.
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.
AND
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.
[both excerpts taken from here:
http://www.willtotruth.com/2007/05/12/world-renowned-holocaust-israel-scholars-defend-depaul-professor-norman-finkelstein-as-he-fights-for-tenure/ ]
Lance, old chump, it gives me endless pleasure to see how angry you are.
I also like the way you call Norman “Dr.” while you don’t bother to call either of the tenured Walt or Mearsheimer, “Dr.” A little insecure, perhaps? Why would you be insecure about Norman being called “Dr.”?
I was watching an interview with him and Ben Ami the other day and Norman kept asserting all this information in a way that was either worded to make an impact (in other words, he was knowingly misinterpreting facts) or indicating that he didn’t understand the information (in other words, he’s stupid) or that he did understand it but incorrectly understood the information’s implications (in other words, his bias prevents him from seeing this information objectively and clearly). Ben Ami, rightly, looked pretty bored most of the time.
I’m sure undiscriminating people like you, Lance, were eating it up however.
Hey, Lance, where can I get my own copy of that Moqtada al-Sadr poster for my bedroom? Did it help you get laid?
Oh well, if treating Christian Lebanese people for free at Israeli hospitals is brutalizing, then yeah, that it’s indeed cruel. They shouldn’t have bothered and sent them away from the doorstep as Lebanese hospitals did. No shirt, no tie, no sharia, no service. Anybody minding Israel is welcome to return his mobile phone, Intel processors, large arrays of medical treatments and gamma-ray free environment (there’s a reason why even secular non-Jewish European journalists and politicians have called Israel a stabilizing factor in the Middle East) back to where they’ve come from, namely Israel. In the meantime, the gentlemen Finkelstein, Walt and Mearsheimer are welcome to bring literacy to many of the states they find so greatly oppressed. Funny thing, most of my Arabic students that have fled their homecountries thanks to religiously or ethnically biased crimes directed at them by their respective governments understand that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and do express the hope their countries of origin could be more like Israel, but what do those kids know? They’re only just from Syria, Algeria, Turkey, Morocco,…
…and Tony Karon, and James Petras, and Philip Weiss, and…
Am I addressing ‘themiddle’ that does unethical things but is no longer here or the one that does but is still here? Hard to tell with the constant waffling of what you do and do not do. Amazing how a spam filter somehow magically allows one to change identities at will. Much like your assertions that must be qualified (or ignored) at every step.
Thankfully, through the efforts of Dr. Finkelstein, and Walt and Mearsheimer, and Anthony Lowenstein, and Jonathan Cook, and Uri Avnery, and Mordechai Vanunu, and others…the crimes of our little buddy in the Middle East are coming to light and with any luck, they’ll be forced to commit their aggression on their own dime. It’s a numbers game and, Israel’s nuclear weaponry aside, the future does not bode well for someone who’s brutalized its neighbors so completely, for so long.
Hmmm, would any serious scholar really think that agreeing with a person on one or few select issues equals to fully supporting the latter’s views? I’d likely agree with Stalin on that Kazakh shashlik and carrot salad are delicious, but I couldn’t be farther from a fascistoid Communist.
Lance, you already said goodbye and now you’re back.
Don’t worry about me coming up with credible responses. If and when you come up with something worth a response, you’ll get it.
As for people of character, you’re the one defending Norman Finkelstein. If I laughed any harder, I’d choke to death.
LanceThruster: do Indian cinema next! no, no — Basque cooking! man is this fun! here’s one: the production of fly ash as a byproduct of coal combustion! okay, GO!
My mistake. You are correct; it is Segev (thoughtless typo on my part). I’m less concerned about your ‘rationale’ for doctoring posts than the fact that you (Jewlicious) do it at all. Aside from being immensely childish it violates ones of the basic protocols of internet discourse in that a person’s viewpoint should be established by what they actually have said or written and not by the sour grapes of someone who can’t actually come up with a credible response. It is the same attitude that goes for a dig at a net nickname and then cries about someone responding in kind and acting as if I drew first blood (scroll up if you remember differently).
The only thing anyone here has ‘earned’ is the reputation for retreat under fire. And your anti-Semitism accusation is just more confirmation of that canard being the last refuge of a scoundrel.
As usually is the case, you tend to declare “Victory!” when nothing of the sort has transpired, but if it makes you feel happy, suit yourself.
The dig against Dr. Finkelstein is yet more sour grapes but as the people I consider credible (Jews and Gentiles alike) feel, “Zionism ends where people of character begin.”
Oh, poor Lance, victim of Jewlicious. Nobody here gets edited for going against the “official line.” I actually recall the previous incident with you, which is why I suspect I know who changed your name to Goatthruster. It was well earned, as I recall. We have plenty of robust debates here, including with piggish anti-Semites. You must have done something special to warrant the treatment you received.
The rest of your rant has me baffled. You haven’t made any case regarding Finkelstein other than that one scholar agreed with him once. A moment ago you were talking about Judenrat and now you’re on to the Nakba (it’s Segev, btw, not Negev) and you even managed to get a link into one of your sites. It’s all a little jumbled in that head of yours, it seems. Don’t worry, we understand that you don’t know exactly what you’re angry about but you’re really angry at somebody. Reminds me a little of Norman Finkelstein. Of course, now he’s really angry, having lost his tenure fight. Too bad.
Yeah ‘themiddle’, I’ve seen already that anything that goes against the ‘official narrative’ is eventually deemed anti-Semitic or hate speech. I should be pleased that you haven’t to this point doctored my comments as has been done so shamefully here before, regardless of which gutless wonder did it. ‘rootless’ has already conceded that he/she was incorrect in declaring a consensus about what serious historians think of Dr. Finkelstein. I could offer more examples in addition to other Jewish/Israeli historians who view the Nakba in a more unbiased light. [ a particular favorite from Tom Negev here: Looting, Looting, and More Looting – http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-Remembered/Story680.html ]
My work here is pretty much done as you all continue to backpedal on those assertions you made with such confidence (at least till those pesky facts got in the way!)
Shalom!
By the way, Lance, it’s a pleasure to watch Rootless clobber you. Please send our congratulations to Finkelstein that he got a serious scholar to accept one of his theses.
If the allegation is that complicity with genocide occurred– a crime, obviously, murder on a vast scale– then complicity surely requires a finding of state of mind. Murder is an intentional crime. So, absent a showing that Judenrat members intended to help the Nazis kill Jews– and no one would reach that conclusion–they can’t be accused of being complicit in the Final Solution, seems to me.
Would LanceThruster deem statements critical of the US made by an al-Qaeda hostage with a knife to his thoat, as amounting to the hostage’s free act and deed?
Actually, Lance, that wasn’t me. That appears to have been our junk spam filter at work and I suspect the person who modified your name at one point is no longer here at Jewlicious.
However, I have removed and modified anti-Semitic comments by visitors. I allow the spewing of anti-Semitic crap for a short while so that people can see what a dickhead the person is, but then at my discretion I will remove or edit their comments. My reasoning is that Jewlicious won’t serve as a vehicle for anti-Jewish hate. If you’re that interested in voicing hate for Jews and your free expression is important to you, go to one of the other several million blogs on the Internet and post there.
So far in this conversation, you haven’t acted in any way that would be considered offensive and as you can see, you’ve had free rein to post whatever you’ve wanted.
There’s no rule out there that says I need to be nice to anti-Semites.
FWIW, I agree with Hilberg’s comments on the Judenrat. I just question whether “complicity” is the right word to describe what they did and why, since it makes it sound as though what they were doing was somehow voluntary.
However, if one thinks that “complicit” can be defined as “forced to cooperate by having a gun put to their head”, then I suppose once could concede the point.
ck, can you get me a Greek font in the comment form so I may spell out “paranoia” every now and then?
As usual by design or lack of critical capacities, you misunderstand the Hilberg reference to the Judenrat. As ‘rootless’ pointed out, the conditions were such that it would be hard for any of us to know for sure what we would do in similar circumstances. That was Hilberg’s point as well yet even the mere examination of the particulars drew much ire from the mainstream. It appears that historical accuracy must bow to the feelings and official narrative of those profiting from the tragedy.
As far as the bogus claims of not fearing the truth, which applies in here as much as at some of the more egregious sites, I give you an earlier encounter of mine with Jewlicious. ‘themiddle’ was downright proud of his/her revisionism and unapologetically continued to change the text of my posts. For those claiming to be able to rebut any challengers, it is the ultimate in cowardice and hypocrisy.
[see: https://jewlicious.com/?p=2472 ]
Whether or not the Judenrat was “complicit in the genocide” all depends on how you look at it. “Complicit” can be assumed to mean either that they went along with it willingly like collaborators who wanted the Jews to be killed, which certainly cannot possibly be true, or that they were compelled to cooperate, which is clearly what actually happened.
This was, really, the heart of the issue, and the problem that was faced by every Jew: do we try to make it through this as best we can as we have always done or do we fight back? Which approach gives us the best chance at survival? This is a legitimate question, and it is really only in hindsight, after the enormity and the unprecedented nature and scope of the genocide became clear that it was obvious that the approach the Judenrat had taken was mistaken.
But seriously: if you were unarmed and defenseless and surrounded by Nazis armed to the teeth who said “give us 100 Jews a day or we kill you all right here, right now”, WTF would you do?
I mean, you’ve seen “Sophie’s Choice”, right? Give me a fucking break.
Sorry but “No serious historians” means NO serious historians where all I have to do to negate your premise is to show that there is at least one to counter your false assertion. Plus, it was on the particular topic you were mocking Dr. Finkelstein for in the first place. Game, set, and match. You lose.
you keep coming with this “we’re afraid of truth,” “Zionists silencing criticism,” “Can’t let the truth get out as it is so hard to put the genie back in the bottle,” blah blah blah.
dude no one on this website is afraid of the truth. you are in a room full of people (figuratively speaking) ready and willing to talk about this stuff. you are not some brave dissenter. serious people that seriously care about Israel argue about this stuff everyday. on this very website even. so you can stop with the phony bravery.
you stepped up trying to defend Finkelstein and all you could muster was (1) Hilberg’s beef with Yad Vashem and (2) one isolated quote where he suggests that the original Swiss claims figures were too high. none of these are deep dark secrets that the Zionists are keeping under wraps. we have engaged you in a forthright manner and you’ve failed to make a point here.
Look at yourself: you have been reduced at the end of this talkback thread to arguing the difference between “no historians” and “all historians but one.”
Basically a pathetic shell of what you obviously felt was some bold argument when you first stepped in here. you fail. sorry little dude.
All points were relevant. The Swiss banks were discussed (and referenced by Hilberg, regardless of his views of other of Dr. Finkelstein’s positions), Hilberg IS a serious historian (negating the claim that no serious historian backs Dr. Finkelstein), and the comment was made about the being outside the mainstream of Judaism and this serious historian (Hilberg) talks about the flack he received when his conclusions upset “main current of Jewish thought”. You set yourself up to be shown wrong when you use qualifiers such as “no” serious historian, rather than “most” or “some” or “many”. Try not to make the same mistake next time.
As far as Wikipedia bias, I though Robert Lindsay did a pretty good job exposing it for what it is (good and bad) here:
http://robertlindsay.blogspot.com/2006/04/wikipedia-ziopedia-or-judeopedia.html
There are other sites with their own agendas, and many neo-con sites argue it is decidedly anti-Israel. I feel it is more a case of working the refs to claim an anti-Israel bias in order to keep the pressure on to be biased in the other direction. That is what entities such as the Megaphone project are about to swoop on any factual information that pro-Zionists find troubling. Can’t let the truth get out as it is so hard to put the genie back in the bottle.
No Lance, I just didn’t take your comment seriously. It didn’t make much sense and suddenly we had Goldhagen in there as well as the Judenrat, all wrapped in the thin veneer of that well of personal bias and charlatanry, Wikipedia.
OK so you defend Finkelstein by citing the fact that Hilberg (a serious Holocaust historian I admit) *once* made a positive remark about his work. Is that all you got? (“with specific regard†— the devil is in the details; Hilberg has rejected nearly the entire body of Finkelstein’s work).
and then you careen into a total non-sequitor about and the Judenrat…by quoting Hilberg. WTF? we’re talking about Finkelstein here remember? would you like to cite some more of Hilberg’s totally unrelated remarks? Goldhagen? you seem to have difficulty staying on message here, Lance.
(and dude if you had actually read Hilberg (I have!) you would know that despite his charges of Judenrat complicity with the Nazis, he nonetheless qualifies their involvement by pointing out the extreme duress they were under and the historically unique situation they faced. but hey, don’t take my word for it: how about you try actually reading Hilberg’s work rather than relying on Finkelstein’s self-serving distillation of it?)
and I LOVE your sly backhanded defense of Wikipedia. could it be that Wikipedia is in fact your main source of Holocaust “scholarship?” in which case I’m sure you’d love to think it’s a reputable source…dude READ A BOOK.
At the end of the day, you tried to defend the work of a 2nd rate polemicist using an isolated quote by another historian, and then by adding some TOTALLY unrelated remarks about Professor Hilberg and his political differences with the leadership at Yad Vashem.
in short, you lost homie. go home.
yours truly,
rootlesscosmo, captain of the Z-team
PS that you would make fun of my name is rich indeed. have you considered a career in the adult film industry? your name is perfect.
The statements by Raul Hilberg are easily verified regardless. That you chose not the address the substance of the information shows that you have no response. Wikipedia has many issues regarding credibility and agenda yet is still useful for basic information (much like an actual encyclopedia). Not everything the Z-team megaphone disseminates can totally ignore the facts (though not for a lack of trying).
Didn’t Norman edit his own Wikipedia pages?
Your claim that I am actually Dr. Finkelstein shows you are either clueless, a liar, or most-likely, seriously humor-impaired. Considering you have “rootless†in your nickname, I can understand why you might be intimidated by a “LanceThrusterâ€. I also imagine that any mention of “sword swallower†causes dark, shameful thoughts to bubble up from your psyche but my advice is for you to just accept who you are.
Further material to support my contention that you conveniently ignore the facts are these excerpts on Raul Hillberg (serious historian) who is supportive of Dr. Finkelstein’s assessment of the Swiss banks as well as having his own issues with “main current of Jewish thought.” You’ve ceased adding anything meaningful to the discussion so you’ll forgive me if I decline to continue with your foolishness.
[from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raul_Hilberg ]
[begin excerpt]
Raul Hilberg (June 2, 1926 – August 4, 2007) was an Austrian-born American political scientist and historian. He was widely considered to be the doyen of the postwar generation of Holocaust scholars, and his three-volume, 1,273-page magnum opus, The Destruction of the European Jews, is regarded as a seminal study of the Nazi Final Solution.
Hilberg was damning of Goldhagen’s scholarship, which he called poor (“his scholarly standard is at the level of 1946”) and he was even more critical of the lack of primary source or secondary literature competence at Harvard by those who oversaw the research for Goldhagen’s book (“This is the only reason why Goldhagen could obtain a PhD in political science at Harvard. There was nobody on the faculty who could have checked his work.”), a remark that has been echoed by Yehuda Bauer.
Conversely, he was supportive of Norman Finkelstein’s The Holocaust industry, which he endorsed “with specific regard” to Finkelstein’s work showing that the money claimed to be owed by Swiss banks to Holocaust survivors was greatly exaggerated.[28]
What is most contentious about Hilberg’s work, the controversial implications of which influenced the decision by Israeli authorities to deny him access to the Yad Vashem’s archives,[3] was his assessment that elements of Jewish society, such as the Judenräte (Jewish Councils), were complicit in the Genocide.[29][30] and that this was partly rooted in longer-standing attitudes of European Jews, rather than attempts at survival or exploitation.
In his own words:
“I had to examine the Jewish tradition of trusting God, princes, laws and contracts […] Ultimately I had to ponder the Jewish calculation that the persecutor would not destroy what he could economically exploit. It was precisely this Jewish strategy that dictated accommodation and precluded resistance.”[31]
The result of his approach, and the sharp criticism it aroused in certain quarters, was that, as he records in the same book:
“It has taken me some time to absorb what I should always have known, that in my whole approach to the study of the destruction of the Jews I was pitting myself against the main current of Jewish thought.”[3]
[end excerpt]
I guess we should be flattered that Norm Finkelstein took time out of his busy lecture schedule to post here.
Why he chose to use the creepy alias “Lance Thruster” I’m not sure though….
Lance, you’ve gotta be kidding. First you give us an article about the WJC problems that DOES NOT prove anything Finkelstein says unless you mean that a Jewish millionaire giving up millions of dollars to pursue justice is a “huckster” (and an argument could be made about whether Singer also acted improperly). Second, of course his positions on Israel matter with respect to his views about the Holocaust. He is a critic of anything in the mainstream of Judaism and supports only the enemies or opponents of Jewish mainstream life including Israel. That’s how he ends up defending the “poor” Swiss who illegally kept Jewish funds that weren’t theirs as if they’re the victims of some Jewish cabal.
Finally, there are plenty of historians who take the works of Avi Shlaim or Benny Morris seriously, and their work isn’t friendly to Israel or Zionism. They, however, are respected. Finkelstein isn’t.
rootlesscosmo Says:
April 15th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
LanceThruster:
dude you don’t think a guy with a banner ad on his website entitled “In Defense of Hezbollah†has a bit of a credibility problem when he starts talking about the Holocaust?
—————
No. It is a non sequitur to conflate his position on Hezbollah, right or wrong, with his position on the abuses of those capitalizing on the Holocaust.
And it is a fallacy to state that no serious historian views his work favorably. It has long been a claim of Zionists to say that anyone not falling in line with their official narrative is not a serious historian. In fact, just the opposite is true.
thanks for the Finkelstein web address, though. I had forgotten about that site. LMAO right now as I look through the links.
A choice gem from Norm’s appearance on Lebanese (!) TV (and no I am not making this up):
“The basic facts are these. Number 1, most Jews before World War II were very, very poor. They lived in little villages in Eastern Europe. The villages were called shtetls. Most Jews were poor. Number 2, beginning in the early 1930s there was a worldwide depression, which means, even if you had money, you lost it during the depression. Number 3, if you had the money and you kept it, then you managed to escape during the Nazi holocaust…When you add those 3 facts up: #1, most Jews were poor, #2, there is a depression, and #3, the rich Jews escaped, which means logically there could not have been very much Jewish money in the Swiss banks. This was all made up by the Holocaust blackmailers.”
wow. BRILLIANT deductions.
one need only read the back cover of Tom Bower’s (or countless others’) books to dispense with this nonsense: http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Gold-Fifty-Year-Swiss-Nazi-Conspiracy/dp/0060175354
in fairness I suppose you’d have to wade through the whole first half of the first chapter to see Finkelstein’s entire body of “work” obliterated.
just pace yourself though; a few pages a day and before you know it you’ll have read a whole book!
LanceThruster:
dude you don’t think a guy with a banner ad on his website entitled “In Defense of Hezbollah” has a bit of a credibility problem when he starts talking about the Holocaust?
the guy is a polemicist, plain and simple. no serious historian of either the Holocaust or the Arab-Israeli conflict rides for him. his value lies solely in his ability to shock.
I’ve had my own personal run-ins with him that I won’t recount here. suffice it to say I am suspicious of anyone who fancies himself some sort of dual Holocaust/Arab-Israeli conflict historian. and in the case of Finkelstein, those suspicions are wholly justified. if the website you posted looks like that of a serious academic then I would be amused to know where you went to school.
PS are you Norm Finkelstein by any chance?
themiddle Says:
April 14th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
No, Lance, we attack him for his hypocrisy, his mistakes and his inability to consider anything in this area without such a profound bias that it distorts a good amount of his conclusions and dissemination of those conclusions. Sorry.
——
So, is it safe to assume that you take Israel and Zionists to task when their hypocrisy merits it, or is it just that they never act in a hypocritical manner? Furthermore, if his bias distorts a “good amount of his conclusions”, do you feel those conclusions that are accurate and not a product of bias or distortion have been addressed sufficiently? What I have found is that detractors usually go straight to ad hominem in order to bypass those elements of his argument that are not so easily countered. Dr. Finkelstein’s position on the whole holds up quite well IMHO and many times assertions he has made about a particular situation have later turned out to be right on the money. One such instance that illustrates this nicely is what happened in regards to Israel Singer, Edgar Bronfman and the WJC.
[ http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=3&ar=81 ]
These are exactly the type of Holocaust hucksters Dr. Finkelstein was referring to and is the very definition of a ‘Holcaust industry’. Somehow, it is ignored that Dr. Finkelstein was right about these individuals and this organization all along. Instead, there is the continuous line-up of those wishing to cast the first stone.
Sorry, his conclusions (with or without and any attendant bias) are clearly supported by the facts.
No, Lance, we attack him for his hypocrisy, his mistakes and his inability to consider anything in this area without such a profound bias that it distorts a good amount of his conclusions and dissemination of those conclusions. Sorry.
He was well received when he spoke at our campus. His detractors do not like it that he is armed with the facts whereas they can only attack him with smears.
Last time he was in Toronto, he shook the hand of my number one anti-Israel activist and everyday martyr for students’ rights and invited him out to dinner. He cried because he couldn’t go.
He also told mutual friend of mine they couldn’t be friends because he is Jewish. Double standards…?
The same guy told me he had a tough time believing that South African Jews actually fought against apartheid. I wonder if Finklestein could do a little improv and speak about the role of Jews in South Africa.
P.S. Does Norm ever go to shul? It must drive him crazy hearing about Zion and Jerusalem all the time. Do you suppose he has any thoughts on perhaps revising Judaism too?
Norman Finkelstein is worse than a capo.
Well, to be fair, he was already profiting from his own little “Holocaust Industry” even before he was denied tenure. I don’t think, however, that he’s being paid to say whatever they want him to say. He is saying what he wants to say. Of course, he’s a lot angrier now, but then again maybe not. Maybe it’s fun to have hatin’ groupies asking for autographs.