Alan Dershowitz has just published a piece on the "Great Independent Scholar with a PhD from Princeton", Norman Finkelstein. Here, Dershowitz quotes an answer Finkelstein gave to a questioner as to whether Palestinians have the right to target Israeli civilians. This came in the wake of the Itamar slaughter of the Fogel family. The below article appears in the Hudson New York blog.
http://www.hudson-ny.org/2033/norman-finkelstein-supports-targeting-israeli-civilians
As is my wont, I will be frank when it comes to Finkelstein. He is an arrogant, sick, twisted, intellectually dishonest fraud of an academic who no self-respecting university would touch with a ten-foot pole. At least to hire. He still hits the university lecture tour to bash Israel and accuse them of all kinds of wild crimes, atrocities, and diabolical plots that exist only in his head. I've sat at UC-Irvine and watched how lefty professors, deans, asst deans, vice chancellors and head janitors will sit and swoon at this man's nonsensical ravings. Spend ten minutes listening to this psycho and you will wonder how many bodies he must have buried in his basement. No matter how many atrocities committed by Hamas, Hizbollah, Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Islamic Jihad and others, he still supports them-even after a family of five is slaughtered including a three-month-old baby.
Other than that, he's a pretty good egg.
I've never heard of Finkelstein, except at this blog, so he must not be having a big impact on public opinion in the midwest. I suspect outside of a a very limited band of self-congratulating devotees on the college lecture circuit, nobody pays much attention to him at all.
ReplyDeleteIf I wanted to indulge in the kind of insinuation I sometimes see here, I would point out that Dershowitz is a limelight-seeking celebrity attorney who defended the arrogant tax cheat Leona Helmsley, right up to her helicopter ride into federal prison.
dogstem - another Freudian word verification.
But, Dershowitz could hardly slander Finkelstein. Slander requires knowing falsehood.
The Dershowitz Finklestein debate on Democracy Now made Mr. Dershowitz look like a buffoon. Finklestein, like always, drones on and on and looks smug the entire time.
ReplyDeleteI dare say his speech at UCI is 99% the same every year, all I've learned is to not call him "norm".
I am not a fan of Dershowitz since he helped get von Bulow and OJ off the hook.
ReplyDeleteWe all agree then -- there's nothing much to respect about either of them. Isn't unity wonderful?
ReplyDeleteNorman Finkelstein rules. Please learn about a person before you tarnish them. Look up one of his lectures online.
ReplyDeleteNorman Finkelstein rules. Look up one of his lectures online. He dispels a lot of myths and is a very important person both historically and for Jewish people. He is very "left" but the general message is agreed on by a lot of people, even within Israel. Look up Hajo G. Meyer, he's a holocaust survivor and his views are not that different than Norman Finkelstein, he just approaches the subject from a more personal place (since he was there) whereas Norman Finkelstein approaches it historically (since his parents were survivors).
ReplyDeleteLearn about a person before you tarnish him/her please.