James Doogue

I've been posting a lot about Israel and Gaza recently. In Response, I was directed to "watch or listen to a great Jew on the Israeli Palestinian terror - Norman Finkelstein. He states the facts and is a Jew. Many Jews are embarrassed and saddened by what the Nitinjew [sic] is doing!"

My response was far too long to post as a comment, so here it is in case anyone else has been listening to Finkelstein.

Of course I am aware of Finkelstein and his views. I'm a bit surprised that you think I wasn't. I don't write strongly on matters I don't have a deep understanding of unless I specifically note that my knowledge on the topic is limited.

Finkelstein has achieved almost celebrity status among many anti-Israelis in the media. He's always ready to provide a damning quote against Israel.

For instance Norman Finkelstein, described Israel's attack on the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza as "a horror of the highest magnitude" and said, "Israel always denies responsibility. "

Israel were blamed for the deaths of some 500 people at the time. Yes, Israel did deny it. We all know now there was an explosion in the hospital car park, not the hospital. We know it was caused by a malfunctioning rocket fired from Gaza, not an air strike from Israel. And we know the number of dead was much lower than originally reported when blaming Israel.

Finkelstein didn't immediately publish a correction. He certainly didn't note that thousands of rockets were being fired at Israeli civilian targets. Or that some 30% of rockets fired from Gaza land in Gaza killing and maiming Gazans, and destroying property.

Of course as far as the citizens of Gaza are told, it's all Israel's fault.

The fact is, it's not hard to find anti-Zionist Jews. Then people think, well if that Jew doesn't support Israel, then he must be right.

Some time ago when asked if he agreed that Hezbollah was a terrorist organisation, after he had publicly expressed admiration and support for Hezbollah, Finkelstein's response was along the lines:

"I would agree to that premise only if it is accepted that Israel is at least 25 times as bad as Hezbollah."

That's the type of anti-Israeli thinking the great Finkelstein brings to the table.

With regards the Israeli/ Palestinian issue, Finkelstein's preference is for a 'one-state solution' where all of the former British mandated Palestine, minus Jordan of course, becomes one Palestinian state.

He also would add that 'Palestinian refugees' who left the land that Israel and the West Bank currently make up including their children, grand children and great grand children if any, be allowed to return to their ancestral property. This is regardless of whether they truly are refugees now. This would mean Jews would be outnumbered in the new one state.

We have a good model of a Jewish state where just over 20% of the population are Muslim Arabs with many identifying as Palestinians. They live as equal citizens though they are not obliged to do military service, and they enjoy some areas of positive discrimination to assist in further education and employment. They make up members of parliament, sit in the High Court, hold senior ranks within the police, IDF and civil service, and they are not generally the target of violent crimes by Jews.

We do not however have a single good model of a country where Jews are in the minority in a Muslim majority country, and enjoy the same rights as Muslims, serve in high ranks within the society, and are not the target of violent attacks against them simply because they are Jews. That is why hundreds of thousands of Jews had to flee from Muslim countries in The Middle East and North Africa.

So what do you think would happen to Jews in the Finkelstein one-state solution?

Well even Finkelstein admits it really isn't a viable option. Which is why he supports a two-state solution creating a contiguous Palestinian State by removing some Jewish settlements perhaps with a land swap arrangement. But there are two problems with the two-state solution:

1. In the past, the principle was accepted by Jewish peace negotiators, and that was supposed to be where the Oslo Accord was meant to lead to. But Palestinians withdrew from the negotiations. While some Palestinians accepted the idea, many simply maintained their constant demand that there should be no Jewish state and that Jews should be driven from the region.

This was one of the reasons why both Hezbollah and HAMAS refused to accept the Palestinian Authority rule over Gaza and the Palestinian designated parts of the West Bank. It is why after winning the 2006 elections in Gaza, HAMAS death squads hunted down and executed Fatah leaders. HAMAS referred to them as 'collaborators' .

Of course HAMAS haven't held elections since then. Finkelstein seems unconcerned with this violent autocracy, or the fact that the corrupt HAMAS leaders are billionaires living in Doha.

Netanyahu may be a flawed leader, but he hasn't been skimming billions of dollars meant for the Israeli people so he and his family can live a life of luxury.

Hamas has declared many times that it is committed to 'armed resistance' against Israel and the creation of an Islamic Palestinian state in Israel's place.

In other words, HAMAS does not support a two state solution. So why does Finkelstein think that's the answer?

2. Palestinians, and particularly HAMAS have not demonstrated they would be good neighbours to the Jewish state.

It is why Israel had to put up security fences between their land and Palestinian settlements.

From September 2000 until the end of 2006, more than 3,000 terrorist attacks originated in the West Bank, resulting in the deaths of 1,622 and the injury of many more Israelis inside the Green Line. By comparison, since 2007, when most of the fence was erected, until mid-2022, only 141 attacks originating from the West Bank killed 100 people.

Giving Palestinians a contiguous state which dissects the state of Israel would make Israel indefensible. It would be suicide for Israel.

Finkelstein knows this and has said as much.

But Finkelstein is also a denialist in support of HAMAS in the same way he claims the Holocaust was exaggerated and in many areas fabricated by what he calls the Jewish Holocaust Industry.

Norman Finkelstein is continuously wrong because he is blinded by his anti-Israel bias. For example, he dismissed the notion of underground tunnels dug underneath Gaza’s main hospital, suggesting they were no more than Israeli propaganda. This is despite extensive documentation by the Israeli army, and confirmation journalists in Gaza, and indeed admissions by captured HAMAS operatives including a doctor in the hospital.

He probably believes there isn't almost 300 miles of tunnels dug with money and resources meant for the Gazan people.

But worse than his denialism is his support for the 7 October massacre by HAMAS. He thinks there is a moral equivalence to what HAMAS did and the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, a site I visited in October this year.

On his Substack, Norman Finkelstein in response to the 7 October attack, wrote that Hamas’ actions:

"warms [sic] every fiber of my soul” and compared the attacks to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising:

".. if we honor the Jews who revolted in the Warsaw Ghetto—then moral consistency commands that we honor the heroic resistance in Gaza.

I, for one, will never begrudge—on the contrary, it warms every fiber of my soul—the scenes of Gaza’s smiling children as their arrogant Jewish supremacist oppressors have, finally, been humbled.”

What a disgusting creature!

He admires the brutal raping of women young girls and even men. The torturing of captives. The burning alive captuves bound together. Shooting women they had raped in the vagina. Or breaking their legs because the gang rapes were so savage. Shooting one woman in the head while raping her. Cutting off the breasts of a live rape victim. Cutting out the baby from a live pregnant woman. Burning and beheading babies. Killing family members in front of each other. I could go on.

This warms Finkelstein's soul?

The one person you name to support an anti-Israeli position had every fibre of his soul warmed by such actions - you have to be kidding me?

Almost every time Finkelstein refers to Gaza, he refers to it as a concentration camp filled with people who were forced to leave their land now occupied by Israel in 1948.

The fact that Israel's current population includes about 21% Arabs descended from Arabs who lived there prior to 1948, clearly demonstrates that Arabs were not forced out of Israel.

Those Arabs who stayed enjoy a better life in Israel than most other Arabs in The Middle East. There are no Arab refugees trying to escape Israel.

Apart from some isolated cases where the local Jews thought the local Arabs posed a security threat because of what they had said and done before Israel's declaration of Independence in 1948, arabs were certainly not forced out of what is now Israel by the Jews.

Many sold their land to Jews and left. They didn't want to live in a Jewish state. They are counted as Palestinian refugees. Others were encouraged to leave by neighbouring Arab nations who basically said they might get killed in the crossfire as they liberated the land from the Jews, or accused them of being collaborators if they didn't leave.

They left, because they thought the Jews would be defeated and then they could return to their land.

Can you blame Israel for not accepting those Arabs back after they had just fought for their very existence against the Arabs they supported?

At that time, after winning the fight for their existence against most of the Arab world, Israel had the right to determine who came into their country.

Finkelstein never criticises Egypt for having a security fence along their border with Gaza. And HAMAS didn't break into Egypt to commit brutal rape and murder. Why are the Jews an acceptable target?

Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, have all kicked out Palestinians or in the case of Jordan keep them as a cheap workforce but contained to refugee camps.

No Arab State has offered to accept refugees from Gaza and a number have outright refused. They know the trouble they would be importing.

It's not hard to find anti-zionist Jews. Some are anti-zionist on the basis of secularism. They do not support any state based on religion. These secularists are generally critical of Israel's existence , but don't seem to be outspoken against Islamic and Christian states.

Some ultra orthodox Jews believe in leaving everything in the hands of God. They are the ones who walked meekly into the ghettos, concentration camps and then the gas chambers.

The ultra-Orthodox groups Neturei Karta and Satmar Hasidism perceive Zionism and the estab­lishment of the State of Israel as an anti-messianic act, conceived and born from sin.

These groups vigorously deny the very legiti­macy of the collective political return to the Holy Land and to Jewish sovereignty.

For them, this is the handiwork of humans, violating the Jewish people’s oath of political quietism.

These ultra orthodox Jews believe they were not to return collectively to the Land of Israel by the exertion of physical force, nor to "rebel against the nations of the world,” nor to "hasten the End.”

In short, they were required to wait for the heavenly, complete, miraculous, supernatural, and meta-historical redemption that is totally distinct from the realm of human endeavor.

This waiting over two millennia manifests the very essence and singularity of the Jewish people, expressing their faith in divine providence, in the assurance of the prophets, and in messianic destiny.

I think they are just as deluded as Norman Finkelstein. But there is no shortage of them at anti-Israeli protests such as the ones who occupied the US Capitol building recently.

Just because you find a Jew who criticises Israel, it doesn't mean they are doing so from a logical perspective.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 12:32 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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