Finkelstein, Norman G. 1953–

PERSONAL: Born December 8, 1953, in New York, NY; son of Harry and Maryla (Husyt) Finkelstein. Education: State University of New York—Binghamton, B.A., 1974; attended Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris, France, 1979; Princeton University, M.A., 1980, Ph.D., 1988.

ADDRESSES: Office—DePaul University, 990 W. Fullerton, Room 2217, Chicago, IL 60604. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, adjunct lecturer in international relations, 1977–78; Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, Brooklyn, NY, adjunct assistant professor of international relations and political theory, 1988–91; Hunter College of the City University of New York, New York, NY, adjunct associate professor of political theory, 1992–2001; New York University, New York, NY, adjunct associate professor of political science, 1992–2001; DePaul University, Chicago, IL, visiting professor, 2001–03, assistant professor of political science, 2003–.

MEMBER: Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS: Excellence in Teaching Award, New York University, 1995; Golden Key National Honor Society Teaching Award, 2000; Fulbright Senior Specialist, 2002.

WRITINGS:

(Translator) Samir Amin, The Future of Maoism, Monthly Review Press (New York, NY), 1983.

Image and Reality of the Israel Palestine Conflict, Verso (New York, NY), 1995.

The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years, University of Minnesota Press (Minneapolis, MN), 1996.

(With Ruth Bettina Birn) A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth, Holt (New York, NY), 1998.

The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, Verso (New York, NY), 2000.

Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 2005.

Also contributor to books, including Blaming the Victims, edited by Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens, Verso (New York, NY), 1988; and Palestinian Refugees and Their Right of Return, edited by Naseer Aruri, Pluto Press (London, England), 2001. Contributor to periodicals, including Journal of Palestine Studies, New Left Review, Index on Censorship, London Review of Books, Christian Science Monitor, Middle East Report, Tikkun, and Al Ahram Weekly.

SIDELIGHTS: Norman G. Finkelstein has built a reputation as a controversial figure on the topics of Zionism, Israeli-Palestinian relationships, and the Holocaust. Although some have labeled him a "self-hating Jew" for criticizing Israel's political policies and the way, as he claims, some Jewish organizations use the Holocaust to justify raising money for selfish purposes, Finkelstein is obdurate when he asserts that he is not dishonoring the lives of those who died during World War II. As he once told CA: "My mother and father were both survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Nazi death camps. My main concern is upholding justice and truth. This means defending the oppressed (hence my two books documenting Israeli wrongs against the Palestinians) and opposing lies (hence my book A Nation on Trial, which documents that Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's much-acclaimed study, Hitler's Willing Executioners, is effectively a fraud)."

Finkelstein first made news with his book Image and Reality of the Israel Palestine Conflict, which was written in direct response to the best-selling, National Jewish Book Award-winning work by Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial. Peters' book claimed that the Arab peoples who were forced out of Palestine when it became the state of Israel had only been there since the nineteenth century, and that they, therefore, could not claim that they were indigenous to that land. Peters' theories were widely praised by book critics and the Jewish community as a way to justify Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. However, in Image and Reality of the Israel Palestine Conflict, Finkelstein suggested that From Time Immemorial was replete with flawed and misleading research. "Finkelstein exposed Peters's work as a tangle of fudged quotations, miscalculations, and distortions worthy of a professional propagandist," observed Eyal Press in the Progressive. Furthermore, as Press explained, the author exposes "what he sees as Zionism's basic incompatibility with democratic values. As Finkelstein shows, Zionism emerged as a subspecies of European romantic nationalism grounded in the notion that the state, and hence citizenship, belongs to one group. That is why Israel has no written constitution outlining civil rights for Jews and non-Jews."

Finkelstein also asserts in his book that the Holocaust and the oppression of the Jews by the Nazis do not justify Israeli oppression of and discrimination against the Palestinians. Finally, the author concludes that the on-again, off-again peace process in the Middle East actually aids the Zionist goal of separating the Arabs from the Jews, and that Israel, contrary to apologists such as Israeli historian Benny Morris, is actually orchestrating an organized plan to systematically rid itself of any significant Arab presence within its borders. Despite using facts to back up his attack on Peters, Finkelstein's theories were largely dismissed in America, where his book was barely reviewed. However, Foreign Affairs critic William B. Quandt felt that "this thoroughly documented book is guaranteed to stimulate and provoke."

To research his books, Finkelstein does not rely on printed documentation alone. He has made repeated trips to Palestinian towns in areas occupied by Israel, finding living conditions there, in his opinion, appalling. He wrote about these people in his second book, The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years. Even after this work's publication, he continues to travel to the Middle East. "I stay in close touch with the families of whom I write in the book," he told Don Atapattu in a Counterpunch interview. "When I first went it was a moral test of the values that are meaningful to me, and I wanted to see if I could bridge the chasm between a Jew and a Palestinian based upon our common humanity and our shared commitment to justice and decency." Finkelstein found that the Palestinians he met were hardworking, good people who only wished to enjoy life and be afforded life's basic necessities. He was surprised when they accepted him, a Jew, into their homes openly. Finkelstein feels that accords such as the one reached in Oslo, Norway, in 1993 have only served to make the situation worse for Palestinians like those he has met, and events such as the intifadas can be seen as justified (he compares them to rebellions similar to the Warsaw ghetto uprising of Jews against the Germans). Although a Publishers Weekly reviewer felt that the author could, at times, be "sententious," the critic added that Finkelstein "brings a unique perspective to his subject."

Finkelstein's 1998 work, A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth, written with Ruth Bettina Birn, offers counter arguments to Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. That book argued that all Germans shared responsibility for the persecution of the Jews during the Nazi regime. Finkelstein refuted this idea, as he explained to Atapattu: "In the case of Germany you were dealing with a fascist, terrorist state in which the population had, relatively speaking, no say in the making of policy and no say in the crimes committed." The authors received some negative feedback against their position. For example, Stanley Hoffmann wrote in Foreign Affairs that the authors of A Nation on Trial "repeatedly distort" Goldhagen's arguments. However, compared to Finkelstein's next book, reaction to A Nation on Trial was relatively meek.

With the 2000 release of The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, Finkelstein boldly maintains that the Jewish elite of today exploits the tragedy of the Holocaust for their own personal and political gain. It was for this position that many accused Finkelstein of being a "self-hating Jew" and anti-Semite. Given that his own parents lived through the Holocaust, the author contends that such declarations are patently ridiculous. Not to be misunderstood, the author asserts that the Jewish elite (he includes people such as those who run the World Jewish Congress and well-known Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel) insist that the Holocaust was a unique historical event and not comparable to any other genocides that have occurred at any other time. They then exploit this position by extracting funds from governments, banks, and non-profit organizations in compensation while giving little in return to actual Holocaust survivors who might need the money. "They steal," Finkelstein said in his interview with Atapattu, "and I do use the word with intent. Ninety-five percent of the monies earmarked for victims of Nazi persecution [is kept by these organizations], and then [they] throw you a few crumbs while telling you to be grateful."

Finkelstein further maintained that recent efforts to extract money from Swiss banks and the German government for compensation is all a scam (for example, he says evidence shows that there is no hidden Nazi money in secret Swiss bank accounts). The Israeli government, too, uses the international community's guilt over the Holocaust as an excuse "to exempt Israel from criticism of its own oppressive treatment of the Palestinians," as Adam Newey explained in the New Statesman. According to Finkelstein's book: "Rationally comprehending The Holocaust amounts, in [Elie Wiesel's] view, to denying it. For rationality denies The Holocaust's uniqueness and mystery. And to compare The Holocaust with the sufferings of others constitutes, for Wiesel, a 'total betrayal of Jewish history.'" The author points out that many other people, including millions of Gypsies and those suffering from handicaps, were also executed by the Nazis, not to mention the many other genocides that have been perpetrated around the world.

In his interview with Atapattu, Finkelstein characterizes the attitude of the Jewish elite and their sympathizers this way: "Nothing compares to the Jews. Everything that the Jews endure, everything that the Jews achieve, is special, because we're the 'chosen people,' so don't compare us with garbage like the Tasmanian savages (the entire indigenous population of Tasmania were exterminated under British colonial rule), or don't compare us with the Gypsies…. You have to understand that the great tragedy of the Second World War was not that Jews per se were killed, but such a cultured people were killed—if you kill uncultured people, who cares?" Although he was castigated by many of his fellow Jews, as well as others in the liberal community, some reviewers asserted that his arguments have merit. Newey, for example, concluded that "this is … a lucid, provocative and passionate book. Anyone with an open mind and an interest in the subject should ignore the critical brickbats and read what Finkelstein has to say." An Economist reviewer, while maintaining that the author "exaggerates Israel's failings" and that he "is obsessive, and he rants," still felt that "his basic argument that memories of the Holocaust are being debased is serious and should be given its due."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Finkelstein, Norman G., The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, Verso (New York, NY), 2000.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, October 15, 2005, Bryce Christensen, review of Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, p. 9.

Contemporary Review, December, 2000, review of The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, p. 381.

Counterpunch, December 13, 2001, Don Atapattu, "A Conversation with Professor Norman Finkelstein: How to Lose Friends and Alienate People."

Economist, August 5, 2000, "Explosive Charges," p. 79.

Foreign Affairs, May-June, 1996, William B. Quandt, review of Image and Reality of the Israel Palestine Conflict, p. 152; July-August, 1998, Stanley Hoffmann, review of A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth, p. 128.

New Statesman, July 31, 2000, Adam Newey, "The One and Only," p. 42.

Progressive, April, 1996, Eyal Press, review of Image and Reality of the Israel Palestine Conflict, p. 42.

Publishers Weekly, November 11, 1996, review of The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years, p. 70.

Race and Class, January-March, 1997, Edna Homa Hunt, review of Image and Reality of the Israel Palestine Conflict, p. 104.

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November, 2005, Sara Powell, review of Beyond Chutzpah, p. 42.

ONLINE

Norman G. Finkelstein Official Web Site, http://www.normanfinkelstein.com (February 7, 2002).