Dissident Veteran For Peace

According to Wikipedia, the passage appearing below is Isaac Deutscher's "most famous statement regarding Israel".

A man once jumped from the top floor of a burning house in which many members of his family had already perished. He managed to save his life; but as he was falling he hit a person standing down below and broke that person's legs and arms. The jumping man had no choice; yet to the man with the broken limbs he was the cause of his misfortune. If both behaved rationally, they would not become enemies. The man who escaped from the blazing house, having recovered, would have tried to help and console the other sufferer; and the latter might have realized that he was the victim of circumstances over which neither of them had control. But look what happens when these people behave irrationally. The injured man blames the other for his misery and swears to make him pay for it. The other, afraid of the crippled man’s revenge, insults him, kicks him, and beats him up whenever they meet. The kicked man again swears revenge and is again punched and punished. The bitter enmity, so fortuitous at first, hardens and comes to overshadow the whole existence of both men and to poison their minds.

Anyone involved for very long in the Palestinian solidarity/American liberation movement will most likely have encountered some form of this tale. It is an allusion to Jews fleeing the Holocaust and supposedly escaping to Palestine.

The tale is profoundly dishonest for at least three reasons. First, Zionist designs on Palestine long predate the rise of the Nazis in Germany—the man was planning to jump way before there was any fire. Second, the Zionists knew that Palestine was already occupied—the man knew he would land on and hurt someone else.Third, the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis to save the German economy from an international boycott—the man started the fire himself or, at least, actively kept it from being extinguished.

Labels: holocaust, Jews, Palestine, Wikipedia, Zionism

 

Ten years ago, Shulamit Aloni, a former Palmach fighter and Israeli Knesset and cabinet member, gave an interview to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now. Below is part of what the interview:

Goodman: Yours is a voice of criticism we don't often hear in the United States. Often when there is dissent expressed in the United States against policies of the Israeli government, people here are called anti-Semitic. What is your response to that as an Israeli Jew?

Aloni: Well, it's a trick, we always use it. When from Europe somebody is criticizing Israel, then we bring up the Holocaust. When in this country people are criticizing Israel, then they are anti-Semitic. And the organization is strong, and has a lot of money, and the ties between Israel and the American Jewish establishment are very strong and they are strong in this country, as you know. And they have power, which is OK. They are talented people and they have power and money, and the media and other things, and their attitude is "Israel, my country right or wrong", the identification. And they are not ready to hear criticism. And it's very easy to blame people who criticize certain acts of the Israeli government as anti-Semitic, and to bring up the Holocaust, and the suffering of the Jewish people, and that is [to] justify everything we do to the Palestinians.

You can watch the entire interview on Democracy Now. The segment quoted above starts at about 50:51.

Labels: hasbara, holocaust, Israel Lobby

In "Some Lessons of Maus" I mentioned Art Spiegelman's typology which cast his characters as animals according to their ethnicity. Below are links to three articles which take up Spiegelman's decision to cast Poles as pigs.

• Danusha Goska. "Maus." Bieganski the Blog. September 6, 2010.
• Linda Kornasky. "Writer Spiegelman no stranger to controversy." San Angelo Standard Times. February 16, 2011.
• Danusha Goska. "You ARE a Pig." Bieganski the Blog. August 14, 2011.

Labels: art and literature, Art Spiegelman, history, holocaust

I just reread the two volumes of Maus, Art Spiegelman's graphic biography of his father, Vladek. In this post I will talk about some of the less obvious items of interest in the books, meaning things less central to the main theme.

It has long been admitted—by folks such as Benjamin Ginsberg and Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin—that Jews have historically been disproportionately involved in communism. For some Jews this is a source of pride. For others, it is cause for shame or denial. Likewise, the fact that Jews are, in general, wealthier than non-Jews. Both things can simultaneously be true but when someone so indicates that I've noticed that defenders of all things Jewish and the 'politically correct' will frequently pounce on this contrived contradiction.

It therefore caught my attention when Art Spiegelman reveals that his father's fiancée (who would become Art's mother), Anja Zylberberg, was the very embodiment of Jewish communist supporter and rich, capitalist Jew. On page 20* we are told: "The Zylberberg family was very well off - millionaires!" The setting is 1936 Poland. According to Patricia Clavin, author of The Great Depression in Europe, 1929-1939, Poland was one of the three European countries "worst affected" by the Great Depression. Most Poles were hit very hard by the crisis but not the Zylberbergs.

Later, in 1937, it turns out that "Anja was involved in conspirations [sic]!" ( p. 29). She was translating "communist messages" into German and "pass[ing] them on". Warned by a friend that the police are coming, instead of destroying the incriminating documents Anja foists them upon a seamstress, a tenant in the Zylberberg's apartment, who ends up taking the fall and spending upwards of three months in prison.

Another interesting thing are the expressions by Jewish characters of disbelief in the holocaust. Here's an example from page 90:

Art: When did you first hear about Auschwitz?
Vladek: Right away we heard ...
Vladek: Even from there - from that other world - people came back and told us. But we didn't believe.

Art doesn't seem to question the idea that people could go to and return from "that other world" and Vladek doesn't elaborate.

On page 109, the following conversation takes place inside (!) a Jewish internment camp in 1943:

Persis: ... You've all heard the stories about Auschwitz. Horrible unbelievable stories.
Matka Zylberberg (Vladek's mother-in-law): They can't be true!

The Goldhagen thesis suggests that the German people were "Hitler's willing executioners". But even Jews living in Poland, where most of the "death camps" were located, didn't believe the stories, according to Maus. This is consistent with what many Germans have said, too—they didn't know.

There's an exchange on page 171 where Art and his wife, Françoise, talk about how she should be represented. Spiegelman chose to portray Jews as mice, Germans as cats, Poles as pigs, Americans as dogs, Gypsies as moths (and you never see any in the camps), and Swedes are antlered deer. The conversations goes like this:

Art: ... what kind of animal should I make you?
Françoise: Huh? A mouse, of course!
Art: But you're French!
Françoise: Well ... how about the bunny rabbit?
Art: Nah, too sweet and gentle.
Françoise: Hmmph.
Art: I mean the French in general. Let's not forget the centuries of anti-Semitism.
Art: I mean how about the Dreyfus Affair? The Nazi collaborators! The -
Françoise: Okay! But if you're a mouse I ought to be a mouse too. I converted didn't I?
Art: I've got it! Panel one: My father is on his exercycle ...
Art: I tell him I just married a frog ...
Art: Panel two: He falls off his cycle in shock.
Art: So you and I go to a mouse rabbi. He says a few magic words and zap! ...
Art: By the end of the page the frog has turned into a beautiful mouse!
Françoise: Hmph
Françoise: I only converted to make Vladek happy.

There's a lot in this passage. As it turns out, Spiegelman does represent French people as frogs, including the Frenchman who saved his father's life (p. 253). This passage above also tells us that Spiegelman's choice of animals is indicative, in part at least, of what he perceives as a people's national character. It is meaningful, then, that Poles are pigs, etc.

And the "magic words" from the rabbi have real power in Maus, even an insincere conversion transforms Françoise into a mouse, as she is represented throughout the book. Contrast this with the children on page 291—the offspring of a German mother and a Jewish father are hybrid cat-mouse creatures.

Finally, it's interesting how Art's broad-brush charge of French anti-Semitism goes unchallenged by Françoise. Didn't even Jews collaborate with Nazis as Maus attests? And the Dreyfus Affair split French society and resulted in a complete exoneration and reinstatement of Alfred Dreyfus into the French Army.

In closing, I'll turn to the impact on Vladek of his suffering at the hands of the Nazis. Was it a harsh lesson that instilled in him a sense of compassion and a hatred of injustice and violence against all innocent people? Well, not exactly. On page 290, we are treated to a recounting of Vladek's visit to Würzburg in the immediate aftermath of WW II.

Würzburg was subjected to Dresden-style aerial bombardment. Here's one brief description of the devastation: "About 82% of the living space, almost every public building and most of the cultural monuments and churches are destroyed. A total of about 5,000 people - about 3,000 of whom are women and 700 children and adolescents - perish in the inferno."

Here's the exchange on p. 290:

Vladek: We came to one place, Würzburg - what a mess!
Vladek or his traveling companion Shivek: Where can we find water?
German father: Hah! We haven't had any water in three days!
German mother, holding child: The Americans destroyed - sob - everything!
Vladek: Not one building was still standing.
Vladek: We came away happy.
Vladek: Let the Germans have a little what they did to the Jews.

* All page numbers refer to the 1991 Pantheon Books edition of Maus, in which both volumes are bound together.

See also: Poles as Pigs

Labels: art and literature, Art Spiegelman, history, holocaust, repression, War

How do you turn Muslim children into Zionists? One recipe can be derived from pages 32-33 of a 2007 UK report entitled, Teaching Emotive and Controversial History 3-19:

As with other key stages, emotional engagement is necessary to challenge mindsets. The rigour of historical methods of enquiry is essential, but not powerful enough in themselves to necessarily overcome prejudice and stereotyping. Emotional engagement forms a significant partner in the structuring of activities. The use of local history, reconstructions, a focus on child labour and making deliberate links to the present is how one history department seeks to hook pupils' personal engagement.

As part of the teaching of Arab-Israeli coursework at Abraham Moss School in Manchester, students take on the role of UN commissioners given the task of dividing Palestine in the late 1940s. They are reminded of the horrors of the Holocaust and the likely impact on world opinion. The students also consider how the survivors of the Holocaust would respond to the question Why did I survive? and how that might have impacted on the desire for a Jewish state. A timeline of events and information about who lived in the area and attitudes of different organisations, states and peoples are provided to help pupils consider the division of land. Given the predominance of Muslim pupils in the School and the existence of potential anti-Jewish sentiment or ignorance of Jewish culture, this task presents a complex challenge. The results are very interesting. The vast majority of students partition the land evenly between Arabs and Jews, even though the Jewish population was far smaller, and they establish Jerusalem as a neutral zone. The reasons pupils give for their decisions vary, but they are predominantly associated with the following: issues of fairness, acknowledgement of the suffering of the Jews in the Holocaust, a recognition that Jews had lived in the region for centuries before the Arabs, and a desire to find a solution where both sides could live in peace.

Boiling it down, after establishing your authority as a 'teacher,' the first task is to set the agenda: Don't raise the question of whether it is/was right for UN commissioners to divide another people's land, just simply give your subjects students the "task of dividing Palestine." Then to make sure they divide it and divide it properly, drill them in the catechism of "the Holocaust" while studiously ignoring Zionist collaboration with the Nazis (beginning in 1933). Encourage them to emotionally identify with victims of "the Holocaust" (Zionist Jewish victims only, please; I mean, does anyone else really matter?). Don't encourage them to identify with or consider partition from the perspective of "Arabs" (not Palestinians). Don't encourage them to consider the inherent injustice of forcibly taking away one people's land to give it to another group of people allegedly on account of the crimes of a third party. Don't encourage them to consider more just alternatives. Don't let them know that Jewish designs on Palestine long predate "the Holocaust." Do teach them the Jewish narrative/Orientalist perspective as if it were uncontested historical fact, e. g. "Jews had lived in the region for centuries before the Arabs." Follow these simple do's and dont's and you, too, can brainwash the "vast majority of students" (Christian children, too, undoubtedly) into becoming Zionists.

See also: The "General Eisenhower Warned Us" Hoax

Labels: children, critical thinking, hasbara, holocaust, Islam, Palestine, Zionism

I recently received a copy of a hoax chain e-mail with the subject line: "General Eisenhower Warned Us." Below, with some minor edits, is the response I sent to the more than two dozen e-mails addresses listed as having received or sent it before I received it.

The "General Eisenhower Warned Us" message below is a sad example of anti-Muslim fear-mongering. This hoax chain e-mail is based upon an earlier 2007 hoax chain e-mail that said, "Recently, this week, UK removed The Holocaust from its school curriculum ... " (see Snopes.com). The current version (below) says, "This week, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offends' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred."

This sweeping generalization or stereotype, even, is absurd on its face. It claims: "[The Holocaust] 'offends' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred." As a press release for a 2006 scientific poll of UK Muslims noted: "There is no universal, monolithic Muslim opinion - there is as much variety as among non-Muslims." Regarding the holocaust and Muslims, it reported, "2% denied it happened entirely." The same poll found that a plurality of Muslim respondents believe the Holocaust happened "as History teaches".

Moreover, there is no evidence that the UK ever "debated" removing "The Holocaust" from its curriculum. The 2007 report that apparently elicited the Islamophobic frenzy, "Teaching Emotive and Controversial History 3-19," is available online and you can read it yourself. Nowhere in it is there any debate about not teaching about the Nazi holocaust.

The report notes the holocaust is one of several controversial subjects for some students and references on page 15 "a history department in a northern city recently avoided selecting the Holocaust as a topic for GCSE [General Certificate of Secondary Education] coursework for fear of confronting anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils." The GCSEs apply only to students aged 14 to 16. So, what you have here is one department in one city not selecting one topic for students aged 14-16 because of an unfounded or founded (we do not know which) fear of confronting "anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial" (whatever these mean) among SOME "Muslim pupils." That's all.

When the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth (Ynet is their online edition) covered the story in 2007, they reported:

" 'There is no evidence that schools are not teaching the Holocaust.' Orla Delegray of the Dept for Children, Schools and Families said.

" 'We have made clear there are certain, non-negotiable subjects which will be protected in schools and that includes the Holocaust,' she wrote. According to her, the British Education Ministry has even invested millions of pounds this year in subsidizing programs through which British students visit Auschwitz.

" 'The suggestion that the Holocaust is being dropped from the UK national curriculum is entirely false,' said Karen Pollock, Chief Executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust."

As for the bit about "Now, more than ever, with Iran , among others, claiming the Holocaust to be 'a myth,' ..." that's a hoax, too. Calling the holocaust a myth is not Iranian state policy. The president of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad--who is second-in-command after the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei--has been accused in the West of holocaust denial but so has Norman Finkelstein, son of two holocaust survivors and the author of The Holocaust Industry. I've read several of Finkelstein's books, including The Holocaust Industry and he is no holocaust denier.

But to return to Ahmadinejad consider the testimony of Shiraz Dossa: "... Ahmadinejad has not denied the Holocaust or proposed Israel’s liquidation; he has never done so in any of his speeches on the subject (all delivered in Farsi/Persian). As an Iran specialist, I can attest that both accusations are false. U.S. Iran experts such as Juan Cole and UK journalists such as Jonathan Steele have come to the same conclusion."

So, now ask yourself with US troops occupying two predominantly Muslim countries, with Iran in the cross-hairs of Israel and US Neo-cons, and with predominantly Muslim Palestine under the thumb of US-backed Israel, who benefits from spreading lies and distortions that cast Muslims is such a very bad light. Who gets hurt?

If you are a Christian and you passed this "General Eisenhower Warned Us" garbage on to other people or failed to challenge it then shouldn't you ask yourself if you have sinned? Leviticus 19:16 says "You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbour: I am the Lord." Christians are not under the Law but that is no license to harm our neighbors or spread falsehoods.

According to Jesus: "It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles. ... what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person ..." They didn't have keyboards and computer mice in Jesus' day but it seems to me the principle is timeless and not restricted to one form of communication.

Perhaps the most offensive and most revealing part of this hoax is the closing. It says: "God Bless America!"

See also: Turning Muslim Children into Zionists
-----Original Message-----

Sent: Mon, 20 Oct 2008 10:44 am
Subject: Fwd: [Fwd: Fwd: Fw: General Eisenhower Warned Us]

Labels: Christianity, critical thinking, Empire, holocaust, Iran, Islamophobia, Jesus

Below is an excerpt from "Will Smith Got the Farrakhan Treatment with Hitler Quip" by Earl Ofari Hutchinson. There are some interesting comments on the page I've linked to above.

Mega buck actor Will Smith got the shock of his life when he got word that gossip columnists had twisted and mangled his quip about Adolf Hitler. The celebrity gossip buzz was that Smith praised Hitler as a good guy.

Smith, of course, did no such thing. What he said was that Hitler wasn't inherently obsessed with doing evil; but being the calculating, scheming megalomaniac that he was, he wound up doing the ultimate in evil.

Apparently Smith used the Hitler reference to underscore his belief that there's good in everyone. Smith was naive in making reference to Hitler to make any point no matter how well intentioned.

Hitler is the supreme taboo example to use to make any point about good and evil, human foibles and frailties, let alone a political point. Smith was even more naive in thinking that a Hitler reference would slip under the media and public’s radar scope.

If ever there was a quote that was ripe for the gossip pickings to be distorted, and draw instant howls of outrage from some quarters, it was Smith citing Hitler.

There's an even bigger reason that Smith momentarily got dumped on the hot seat for his Hitler quip. Though Smith is an immensely popular guy on the screen and with much of the public, he's an African-American. While that in no way earns him the designation as an activist or leader, which he isn't, there is a special sensitivity when references to Hitler slip from the lips of a noted African-American. Former Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan can be thanked for that unhappy burden. Two decades ago Farrakhan lambasted Judaism and in an even more intemperate moment called Hitler a great man. It was a rotten, ill timed reference, but Farrakhan's intent solely was to make the point that Hitler had rebuilt a war devastated Germany. That point and his intent was quickly lost or deliberately distorted in the storm of fury and condemnation of Farrakhan.

The controversy didn't end there. Farrakhan had unwittingly set an inverse standard of speech by which African-American public figures would be judged. There was a reason for that too. There was, and still is, the sneaky suspicion among much of the public that far too many African-Americans, and that includes activist black leaders, are smitten with anti-Semitic bias. ...

Uncle Abe Foxman's response would be hilarious if it weren't so disgusting. The Associated Press reports (12/27/07):

"We welcome and accept Will Smith's statement that Hitler was a 'vicious killer' and that he did not mean for his remarks about the Nazi leader to be mistaken as praise," Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a statement.

Smith "took immediate steps to clarify his words" and condemn Hitler, Foxman said.

Foxman said words "can be twisted by those with hate and bigotry in their hearts."

So true, Uncle Abe, and you and your fellow Zionist thought police, who jumped all over Smith's innocent remark are the living proof.

See also: "JDL NOT IMPRESSED WITH ADL SHOWING WILL SMITH LOVE: 'We are not backing down from our position.' " EURweb.com (12/27/07).

Labels: Abraham Foxman, hasbara, holocaust, thoughtcrime, Zionism

Reviewed: Norman G. Finkelstein. Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.

Beyond Chutzpah is the much-awaited latest book by Norman G. Finkelstein. In his Introduction, Finkelstein tells us:

The purpose of Beyond Chutzpah is to lift the veil of contrived controversy shrouding the Israel-Palestine conflict. I am convinced that anyone confronting the undistorted record will recognize the injustice Palestinians have suffered. I hope this book will also provide impetus for readers to act on the basis of truth so that, together, we can achieve a just and lasting peace in Israel and Palestine.

In the first part of the book—"The Not-So-New 'New Anti-Semitism' "—Finkelstein reveals how deserved criticism of Israel is periodically stymied by an outbreak of "new anti-Semitism" which just so happens to coincide "with renewed international pressures on Israel to withdraw from occupied Arab territories in exchange for recognition from neighboring Arab states." Among the current round of fear mongers he identifies are Abraham Foxman (Never Again? The Threat of the New Anti-Semitism (2003)) and Phyllis Chesler (The New Anti-Semitism (2003)). Finkelstein demonstrates that, "What's currently called the new anti-Semitism actually incorporates three main components: (1) exaggeration and fabrication, (2) mislabeling legitimate criticism of Israeli policy, and (3) the unjustified yet predictable spillover from criticism of Israel to Jews generally."

In the category of exaggeration and fabrication, Finkelstein notes that the reception of his earlier book, The Holocaust Industry, was cited as evidence of anti-Semitism. In its 2000-2001 survey, Antisemitism Worldwide, the Israeli Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism ominously observed: "Finkelstein's book ... [was] enthusiastically welcomed, especially in Germany." Apparently, unobserved by the Roth Institute, is that, among others, the dean of Holocaust studies, Raul Hilberg, praised The Holocaust Industry as an important "breakthrough"—"carefully" researched and with "trustworthy" conclusions.

Echoing similar remarks from The Holocaust Industry, Finkelstein closes the first part of Beyond Chutzpah with a potent charge that, perhaps, only the son of Holocaust survivors would dare make:

As already noted, Jewish elites in the United States have enjoyed enormous prosperity. From this combination of economic and political power has sprung, unsurprisingly, a mindset of Jewish superiority. Wrapping themselves in the mantle of The Holocaust ["an ideological representation of the [actual] Nazi holocaust"], these Jewish elites pretend—and, in their own solipsistic universe, perhaps imagine themselves—to be victims, dismissing any and all criticism as manifestations of "anti-Semitism." And, from this lethal brew of formidable power, chauvinistic arrogance, feigned (or imagined) victimhood, and Holocaust-immunity to criticism has sprung a terrifying recklessness and ruthlessness on the part of American Jewish elites. Alongside Israel, they are the main fomenters of anti-Semitism in the world today.

In the second, larger part of Beyond Chutzpah—"The Greatest Tale Ever Sold"—Finkelstein rebuts, in considerable detail, numerous claims made by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz in his best-selling book, The Case for Israel. Finkelstein exposes Dershowitz's reliance upon misinterpreted, non-existent, and discredited sources.

For instance, Dershowitz, citing a September 6, 1999, decision, claims, "the Israeli Supreme Court outlawed the use of all physical pressure in eliciting information from potential terrorists." Yet, as Finkelstein points out, a year before the publication of Case, Dershowitz, "referring to the same court decision ... acknowledged that it did not absolutely prohibit torture." After quoting the contradictory passage from Dershowitz, Finkelstein also quotes the opinion of the plaintiffs in the case—the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI)—regarding the 1999 decision: "The Court avoided the position of international law that rejects torture ... and creat[ed] an opening both for the existence of torture in practice, and lending legal and ethical legitimacy to this deplorable crime." The title of PCATI's 2003 followup report speaks for itself: BACK TO A ROUTINE OF TORTURE Torture and Ill-treatment of Palestinian Detainees during Arrest, Detention and Interrogation September 2001–April 2003.

In 1948, Zionist paramilitary fighters from the Irgun and LEHI murdered over 100 unarmed Arab men, women, and children in the village of Deir Yassin. Later that year, in the New York Times prominent American Jews, including Hannah Arendt and Albert Einstein, cited the Deir Yassin massacre in a letter protesting the US visit of former Irgun commander and future Israeli Prime Minster Menachem Begin as evidence of his and his party's—the Freedom (Herut) party (forerunner to the Likud party)—"fascist" and "terrorist" politics and actions.

In Case, Dershowitz claims that "Deir Yassin stands out in the history of Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine precisely because it was so unusual and so out of character for the Jews." He calls the massacre an "isolated although tragic and inexcusable blemish on Israeli paramilitary actions." Against this, Finkelstein quotes multiple passages from the noted Israeli historian and Zionist apologist Benny Morris—whom Dershowitz also quotes—to the effect that " 'Jewish atrocities' were 'far more widespread than the old histories have let on' " and " 'Jewish atrocities against Arabs . . . were generally unconnected to or lacked any previous direct, Arab provocation.' "Of course, Palestinians have long known about Zionist-perpetrated massacres and other atrocities—if we'd only listen.

Perhaps the best-known part of Finkelstein's attack on Case is Dershowitz's reliance upon and plagiarism of Joan Peters' now discredited book, From Time Immemorial. Not long after its publication in 1984, Peters' book received a scathing review in the New York Review of Books from Yehoshua Porath, professor of Middle East History at Hebrew University. Concluding, he wrote:

I am reluctant to bore the reader and myself with further examples of Mrs. Peters's highly tendentious use—or neglect—of the available source material. Much more important is her misunderstanding of basic historical processes ... Everyone familiar with the writing of the extreme nationalists of Zeev Jabotinsky's Revisionist party ... would immediately recognize the tired and discredited arguments in Mrs. Peters's book. I had mistakenly thought them long forgotten. It is a pity that they have been given new life.

In any event, the book—endorsed on the dust jacket by a number of Jewish 'luminaries'—was generally well received in the U.S. and went to become a national bestseller. In his doctoral dissertation on Zionism, Finkelstein cut his scholarly teeth by exposing Peters' "colossal hoax"—a verdict later upheld by "Baruch Kimmerling (of the Hebrew University) and Joel S. Migdal, in their authoritative study, Palestinians: The Making of a People."

In a detailed appendix, including tables and facsimiles of the advance uncorrected proofs of Case, Finkelstein shows how Dershowitz "appropriates large swaths" from Peters' book. One interesting example, albeit minor in comparison to the others Finkelstein documents, was exposed on a nationally broadcast debate between the two antagonists. In two places in Case, Dershowitz uses the term "turnspeak," attributing it in the book solely to George Orwell's 1984. Yet, Orwell never used the clunky term, which was in fact coined by none other than Joan Peters. It is the charge of plagiarism that prompted Dershowitz's campaign to suppress the publication and promotion of Finkelstein's book. Dershowitz claims he has been libeled; yet, the famous trial lawyer refuses to file suit against Finkelstein. Ostensibly, he does not want to give Finkelstein undeserved attention.

All in all, Finkelstein's book is a powerful refutation of The Case for Israel and a powerful corrective to the distorted record of the Israel-Palestine conflict. People who've never known or believed anything but the dominant Zionist narrative would do well to read Beyond Chutzpah and then, as the author hopes, "act on the basis of truth."

Labels: holocaust, Norman Finkelstein, Orwell, Zionism