[wvns] Dr. Norman Finkelstein lecture: Report
Dr. Norman Finkelstein lecture
A report by Dr. Henry Lindner
Binghamton University
I had the great pleasure of seeing Norman Finkelstein lecture on the
Israeli/Palestinian conflict at Binghamton University. Binghamton is
Norman's alma mater and just a 60-minute drive from my home. He sat
behind the podium with a beautiful smile on his face as he watched the
audience pile in. Our group of two "adult" couples stood out in an
auditorium filled with college kids. We sat front and center. About
one-third of the audience appeared to be Jewish. He spoke resolutely
and passionately, unfolding the long sequence of events in the history
of Israel and Palestine. He made eye contact with every person in the
audience.
The speech was most remarkable in how Norman used direct quotes from
Israeli officials and historians to dismiss so many of the myths
surrounding this conflict. He made it very clear that the Zionists
were, from the beginning, committed to "the way of transfer" to deal
with the "population problem". He quotes numerous observers and
historians to support the argument that it was the Palestinians' real
and justified fear of expulsion that caused them to resist and attack
Jews in the pre-war years, not some irrational "anti-semitism". He
recounts how in 1967 the transfer option was no longer available, so
Israel has attempted the "apartheid option" instead. He recounts
Israel's long and bloody efforts to avoid a two-state solution. e
graphically recounts the violent Israeli response to every
Palestinian/Arab two-state "peace offensive"--from the 1982 invasion
of Lebanon to the recent Operation Defensive Shield and bombing of
Gaza. He highlighted a few salient facts: Israel mourns the deaths of
20,000 Jews, mostly combatants, in the last 120 years of struggle. By
comparison, Israel killed 20,000 Palestinians and Lebanese, mostly
civilians, in just four months in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. 5000
Israeli settlers in the Jordan Valley consume an amount of water that
is 75% of the total water consumed by 2 million Palestinians in the
West Bank.
Norman recounted how the Oslo accords were basically an attempt to
create a permanent apartheid regime, with Arafat lording it over the
Palestinians as an agent of Israel, meanwhile enjoying the trappings
of statehood and enriching himself and his cronies. In the end,
Arafat, corrupt as he was, had the courage, or the fear of his own
people, to refuse the Barak bantustan plan.
br>With the apartheid option dead, Norman believes that the situation
is moving tragically towards a new attempt at the "transfer option".
He recalled that in 1989, Benjamin Netanyahu (my Antichrist
frontrunner) urged the Israeli government to exploit politically
favorable circumstances like the Tiananmen massacre to carry out
"large-scale"expulsions when the "damage to Israel would have been
relatively small." Norman fears this horrible event may occur during
the US attack on Iraq, after international journalists and activists
have been expelled from Israel and the West Bank. He hopes that some
combination of Palestinian non-violent resistance and international
pressure will bring an Israeli withdrawal, but one can sense that he
doesn't believe it will happen. He urged everyone of us to do anything
we could to prevent it--so that we would not feel that we had known it
was coming and did nothing.
After speaking for nearly two hours, he took questions for an hour. It
was a marvel to behold his grp on the subject and his skill in
providing the right response for that particular individual. He knew
all the standard questions/accusations that would be brought by the
Jewish members of the audience. He made a point of picking them out
from among the many hands raised and he seemed to relish their angry
remarks and questions. His skill is understandable, since he's been
lecturing on the Israel/Palestine since he was a young man. In fact he
and his mother lectured together. She would deal with the Nazi/Jewish
Holocaust, then he would deal with the Israel/Palestinian conflict. He
said that audiences always loved his mother's presentation but hated
his--even though they both were examples of ethnic cleansing.
When accosted with the classical "the land belongs to the Jews"
argument. He asked the questionner how he would feel if a man showed
up at his door one day and said "according to my Bible, your house and
land belong to me." "Would you leave?", he asked.
In response to complaints aout Palestinian anti-semitism and violence,
he made an analogy to the American Indians. He reminded readers that
the Indian resistance to white colonialism was often very, very
bloody--yet no one accused the Indians of an irrational hatred of
Europeans. It was, as in Palestine today, a war over land. To a young
Jews who excitedly raised the old "Arab radio told them to leave" and
several other myths, Finkelstein offered praise for his lack of
cynicism, and gently explained to him that the "radio" story was a
myth that had long ago been disproved. He mentioned that Americans
Jews repeat many myths that Israeli Jews stopped using years ago. He
gently encouraged the young man to question everything, and to do his
own research, starting with Finkelstein's own copious references in
his text on the web. At one point Finkelstein asked Jews in the
audience, "What crime did the Palestinians commit?" "Their only crime
was to be born in Palestine."
Norman has lived in the West Bank with Palestinian familie. He gave us
a graphic portrayal of their lives during these past months and their
current fear and foreboding as they wait helplessly for the
dreadful unknown--will the Israelis invade their homes, shell their
neighborhoods, or even attempt to expel them en masse? He broke into
tears when he told of how he offered to bring two daughters of a
Palestinian family here to the US until this crisis is past. The
father refused, saying that such an action would demoralize his family
and all his friends.
I asked Norman about the possibility of a one-state solution, named
"Israel", following the South African model. He acted as though he was
hearing this for the first time and seemed rather unable to offer a
response. He noted that in SA, the whites still had most of the money
and controlled most of the businesses and the government, but he did
acknowledge that institutionalized discrimination and state violence
no longer exist there. Personally, I felt that Norman found it
impossible to envision Israel asanything but a Jewish state--and here
I think that his personal and family background limited his vision. He
knows that the two-state solution is impossible now due to Israeli
settlements, he knows that apartheid cannot work now due to
Palestinian rejection. The only other solutions are transfer and
one-state. Since he abhors transfer, shouldn't he be arguing for a
single, multiethnic, republican state with full guarantees for
minority rights? If Norman can't grasp the only possible win-win
solution, how many Jews can?
I was struck with the thought that the Jewish people of the world are
now being driven to a kind of self-destruction by the logic of
Zionism. How long can Israel exist as a racist state in this modern
world? How long can it endure the hatred of neighbors and of cognizant
people all over the Earth? How long can American politicians,
preachers, and media provide it the necessary cover?
How will the world react when Israel expels all but a few Arabs from
Palestine? How will the word feel about Jews and Judaism then? How
will Jews feel about themselves and their religion? It appears that
the Jewish people are not thinking about any of this--they are letting
their Israeli/Zionist leadership drive them blindly on, via an
increasing cycle of violence, to an inevitable, horrible, ignoble
end.
I believe that, in the end, the Jews' paranoia will ruin them. They
will get their superpower Jewish state free of Palestinians, but they
will be more hated than ever and will feel less secure outside of
their great ghetto Israel. Once the fighting is over, when the great
conflict is finished, those outside Israel will begin to assimilate
while those inside the ghetto will go about their lives behind their
walls, loathing themselves and each other, ashamed to look each other
in the eye.
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