This Time We Went Too Far
Norman G. Finkelstein: ‘This Time we went too far’ - Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion. OR Books, New York, 2010 (www.orbooks.com)
Ever since disregarding Noam Chomsky’s warning more than 30 years ago that “expos[ing] the American intellectual community as a bunch of frauds” would lead to his destruction, Norman Finkelstein has continued to court disaster by exposing imposture. Joan Peters the spurious scholar (in Blaming the Victims, 1988), Daniel Goldhagen the unavowed propagandist (A Nation on Trial, 1998), Alan Dershowitz the unadulterated charlatan (Beyond Chutzpah, 2005) - all have been sliced apart by Finkelstein’s forensic razor. However, the figure who ends up bleeding on the ground often seems to be Finkelstein himself, while his discredited adversaries merrily pursue their careers of profitable mendacity.
In 2001 Finkelstein, the son of Holocaust survivors, was forced because of his pro-Palestinian views to leave Hunter College in New York for Chicago; seven years later he was deprived of tenure and the right of free speech in the windy city’s DePaul University; that same year he was banned from entering Israel for a decade because of alleged contacts with the Lebanese resistance movement Hizbollah; in February of this year he was forced to cancel a projected German tour when one venue after another cancelled his speaking engagements under pressure from Zionist lobbyists; his projected lecture at St George Greek Orthodox Church in Chicago, scheduled for 16 April, was cancelled when the parish council decided it “couldn’t be affiliated with the ideologies of Mr. Norman Finkelstein”.
Undoubtedly these good Christians were referring not to the pacifism of Mahatma Gandhi, to whom Finkelstein has lately devoted much reflection, but to the scholar’s unwavering contention that the Palestinian people have suffered and are continuing to suffer grievous injustice at the hands of the Israeli state, with the connivance of the USA and other “western” nations.
Nonetheless, Finkelstein has been dismissed as “a closet Zionist-a true Zionist, meaning, a Jewish supremacist” (the “Holocaust revisionist” Thomas Dalton), and “a venemous [sic] snake” who “needs to STOP making a living off the bleeding backs of the Palestinians” (www.ziomania.com). These calumnies are predicated on Finkelstein’s ongoing advocacy of what he calls “the international consensus” for a two-state solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict, and his rejection of the widely disseminated thesis that US support for Israel is explained by the machinations of an all-powerful Zionist lobby.
Given that there are some grounds for caution - Finkelstein, like his mentor Noam Chomsky, is certainly no anti-Zionist, although the epithet is frequently and carelessly applied to him - must we conclude that it is impossible to hold such views and simultaneously be an effective pro-Palestinian activist? Unfortunately the unforgiving absolutism of much pro-Palestinian discourse is on a par with that which renders any meaningful cooperation between individuals and groupings on the left an impossibility, to the great satisfaction of the more cynical right.
Possessors, in their own opinion, of the ultimate truth on every issue are not content merely to debate and perhaps agree to differ with those convinced of different interpretations, but seek to annihilate them with cries - metaphorical or actual - of “Zionist troll” and “shill”! In the process, the term “Zionist” is inflated to the point where it becomes as meaningless and hence useless as “Nazi” or “fascist”, with the further consequence that “anti-Zionist” also becomes an empty label.
***************************************
This lengthy preamble is necessary because some more opinionated readers, if they take up this book at all, will proceed no further than page 40. Here Finkelstein tells us that “[t]he international community, apart from Israel and the United States, has consistently supported a settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict that calls for two states based on a full Israeli withdrawal to its June 1967 borders, and a ‘just resolution’ of the refugee question based on the right of return and compensation.”
Given that the two-state solution is increasingly contested and indeed has been rendered all but physically inconceivable by Israel’s colonisation policies, the repetition of this mantra without qualification is irritating and unhelpful. Finkelstein’s thesis is that Israel’s invasion of Gaza in December 2008 was designed, like so many of its previous atrocities, to fend off an imposed solution permitted by “Palestinian pragmatism”. But surely Israel would deploy such brutal tactics whatever “solution” was being proposed from outside, one-state, two-state, or no-state? One can only feel that Finkelstein’s formulation is merely another reverential nod towards Chomsky, who has frequently deployed this identical form of words.
However, the hypothetical opinionated reader would be justified in discarding the book in exasperation only if s/he was uninterested in Finkelstein’s capacity to present us with finely honed weapons for activism, and ultimately this is precisely the purpose for which this little book is designed and for which agreement with the author’s two-state convictions is unnecessary.
‘This Time We Went Too Far’ (the title is a quotation from the dissident Israeli journalist Gideon Levy) is an account of the Gaza invasion and the ensuing United Nations Human Rights Council Fact Finding Mission (the “Goldstone Report”) that sees both as watershed occasions. “Operation Cast Lead” (the codename for the operation, derived from a Hanukkah song) was designed “to restore Israel’s deterrence capacity by using massive lethal force against a defenseless society.” The invasion and the Goldstone Report “have accelerated the dissolution of blanket Jewish support for Israel. Because this reflexive Jewish support has historically blocked the path to peace, the prospects for a just and lasting resolution of the conflict are better now than ever before” - but only if activists, within and outside Palestine, adroitly take advantage of the Goldstone Report.
That they may fail to do so is suggested by Tariq Ali’s lofty dismissal of Goldstone himself as “one of the most notorious time-servers of ‘international justice’” and the Report as essentially a whitewash (New Left Review, Jan-Feb 2010). Finkelstein’s point, however, is that it is precisely Goldstone’s status as an unimpeachable Zionist that renders his Report, even at its most evasive, so lethal for Israel. Finkelstein absolves us from ploughing through all 500 pages of the Report by summarising its essential points with the same lucid efficiency that he brings to bear on the massacre itself, of which his account is detailed, unflinching, and miraculously concise.
Finkelstein concludes that “[t]he Goldstone Report …marked the emergence of a new era in which the human rights dimension of the Israel-Palestine conflict moved center-stage…” My old friend the opinionated reader, if s/he has come this far, will groan at this further evidence of “liberalism”, but will again be on the wrong track. For Finkelstein, the Report marks a transition - from an era during which the human rights discourse all too frequently masked the necessity for a political discourse to one in which “the damning findings of human rights organizations have now become politically consequential” [author's emphasis]. Hence the violence with which Israel’s defenders have turned on “human rights organizations, which now stood accused of ‘law-fare’ - that is, trying to ‘isolate Israel through the language of human rights…’”
In calling for Israel’s accountability, Finkelstein commits his final faux-pas by citing Gandhi’s “doctrine of nonviolent resistance satyagraha, which he translated as ‘hold on to the truth.’” This stratagem will enable us to “vindicate” the suffering and martyrdom of the Gazans and eventually, in Edward Said’s favourite words from the Caribbean poet Aimé Césaire, to meet “at the rendezvous of history” where “there’s room for everyone.”
My opinionated pal will now apoplectically upbraid our author for apparently counselling the Palestinians to let the Zionists walk all over them. However, Finkelstein’s Gandhi is a tough-minded activist who said “Fight violence with non-violence if you can, and if you can’t do that, fight violence by any means, even if it means your utter extinction. But in no case should you leave your hearths and homes to be looted and burnt.” Finkelstein daringly applies this formula to Hamas’s decision to “fight violence by any means” “after Israel broke the ceasefire [on 4 November 2008] and refused to relax the illegal blockade that was destroying” Gaza. For this he will no doubt once more be roundly condemned by Israel’s fellow-travellers; supporters of Palestinian rights shouldn’t join the chorus.
To sum up and repeat: this book is an invaluable weapon for committed activists. Read it, memorise it, and ACT.
Raymond Deane is a composer and political activist (www.raymonddeane.com)
Norman G. Finkelstein: ‘This Time we went too far’ - Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion.
OR Books, New York, 2010 (www.orbooks.com)
Hardback $20, Ebook $10, Hardback and Ebook $25
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-9842950-3-6
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-9842950-4-3
We welcome and encourage lively discussion from the public about articles on Irish Left Review. You can leave a comment using the form at the bottom of the page. Please read through the existing comments before posting your own.