U.S. academic Finkelstein meets top Hezbollah official in Lebanon

A vocal American critic of Israel met Monday with a senior official from the militant Hezbollah group and visited villages in southern Lebanon that witnessed heavy fighting in the 2006 war between the guerrillas and the Jewish state.

snip

He visited the border village of Maroun el-Rass where heavy fighting between Hezbollah guerrillas and Israeli troops took place during the two side's 34-day war in the summer 2006, according to the state-run National News Agency and Hezbollah's Al-Manar television. Finkelstein also toured the border village of Aita al-Shaab, the location from where Hezbollah guerrillas triggered the war after they crossed the border, killing three Israeli soldiers and capturing two others in hopes of trading them for Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails, according to the report.

snip

"After the horror and after the shame and after the anger there still remain a hope, and I know that I can get in a lot of trouble for what I am about to say, but I think that the Hezbollah represents the hope. They are fighting to defend their homeland," the Brooklyn-born Finkelstein told reporters. The U.S. government has labeled Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/942454.html

:popcorn:

it's one thing not to support Israel; another to describe Hezbollah as 'representing the hope'. Unless you really love far-right fundies.

Finklestein will be debating Israels right to exist in a debate at the Oxford Union.

http://www.oxford-union.org/hilary?SQ_CALENDAR_VIEW=event&SQ_CALENDAR_EVENT_ID=1275&SQ_CALENDAR_DATE=2008-01-24

Re the Oxford Union: they do have some strange speakers. They are a private debating society, run by a small number of current and former Oxford students, who tend to take the attitude 'any publicity is better than none'. Last term, they had David Irving the Holocaust-denier, and Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP - there was an enormous protest as you can imagine! They also invited Tom Delay to give a talk. This term's speakers will also include Justice Scalia (and no, we will NOT keep him!) and David Icke. I suppose a private organization has the right to invite anyone it wishes; but many people wish they'd make it clearer that they don't represent the university or its student union.

Israel's right to exist. (Thanks for the link BTW).

Event Name Middle East Debate
Start Date 24th Jan 2008 8:30pm

Proposition

Description This House Believes That The State of Israel has a Right to Exist

In Proposition -

Norman Finkelstein
Prof Ted Honderich

In Opposition -

Ghada Karmi
Ilan Pappe

link: http://www.oxford-union.org/hilary?SQ_CALENDAR_VIEW=event&SQ_CALENDAR_EVENT_ID=1275&SQ_CALENDAR_DATE=2008-01-24

-------------

In spite of commonly held perceptions which admittedly I can understand -Dr. Finkelstein is not anti-Zionist like Professor Pappe by any means.

There is a slightly dated panel discussion with Norman Finkelstein and Ali Abunimah which occurred on 30 January 2005. Still almost all of the discussion is still very relevant.

The one real contentious point where the two definitely do not see eye to eye was on the discussion of the two-state versus one-democratic-binational state proposal. Mr. Abunimah is a leading advocate for the one-democratic-binational state solution. Although Dr. Finkelstein does not reject binationalism in principle--he passionately argues that raising the issue now and not staying the course advocating the two-state proposal is a dangerous diversion of energy. That discussion occurs about 50 minutes into this 2 hour and 20 minute panel discussion. You will hear Professor Finkelstein get quite hot under the collar in his defense of the two-state solution and against the movement for a single-state solution.

Available on Quick Time (26.5MB -- 2hours and 20 minutes long)

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3581.shtml

.

I wonder how he squares support for Israel's right to exist with regarding Hezbollah as 'the hope'. Maybe someone will ask him at the debate!

I believe he is also quite impressed with their vast web of social supports.

He quotes senior Hezbollah officials as saying that though they do not believe Israel is a legitimate state that they still would support whatever decission the Palestinian leadership makes since this is their struggle and their decission.

At least that is his opinion as I understand it.

"Now, Stalin's record on human rights was NOT exactly what you would call stellar. And neither was the record of the Communist Parties... but we all recognize the right of any people to resist a foreign occupation of their land. And the Hezbollah resisted the brutal Israeli occupation of Lebanon and dealt them a swift blow and defeat. I, for one, am very glad about that. I think a foreign occupier should be thrown out of countries. And I personally would be the very worst hypocrite in the world were I to condemn the Hezbollah for it's defeat of the Israeli occupation, whereas 'till this day I still celebrated the Red Army's defeat of the Nazi occupation of Europe. I refuse to be a hypocrite. They had a right to expell the foreign occupiers, so does Hezbollah. It was a splendid victory."

link: http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=600

more on Dr. Finkelstein's opinions regarding Hezbollah:

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=hezbollah&btnG=Google+Search&domains=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.normanfinkelstein.com&sitesearch=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.normanfinkelstein.com

.

about hizballa crossing the intl border and killing israelis........or is that not considered hypocritical?

and the Hazbollah are still terrorists whose aim regarding Israel is no different than Hamas.

Who needs the opinion of Hezbollah on anything? Dr. Finklestein is a fool.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

I think Hezbollah's actions last summer were very, very foolish to put it mildly.

I was just stating his opinions - not necessarily mine..

He is certainly a brilliant scholar. But I think some of his rhetoric is a bit over the top,

And a number of world class scholar agree with the brilliance of Dr. Finkelstein's scholarship even if they also find some of his polemic style a bit much:

From Democracy Now:

"Finkelstein’s two main topics of focus over his career have been the Holocaust and Israeli policy. We speak to two world-renowned scholars in these fields: Raul Hilberg, considered the founder of Holocaust studies, and Avi Shlaim, a professor of international relations at Oxford University and an expert on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Shlaim calls Finkelstein a “very impressive, learned and careful scholar”, while Hilberg praises Finkelstein’s “acuity of vision and analytical power.” Hilberg says: "It takes an enormous amount of courage to speak the truth when no one else is out there to support him"


Raul Hilberg. One of the best-known and most distinguished of Holocaust historians. He is author of the seminal three-volume work “The Destruction of the European Jews” and is considered the founder of Holocaust studies. He joins us on the line from his home in Vermont.

Avi Shlaim. Professor of international relations at Oxford University. He is the author of numerous books, most notably “The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World.” He is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading authorities on the Israeli-Arab conflict."
___________

link to full interviews/listen or watch online or download or read transcript:

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/5/9/it_takes_an_enormous_amount_of


______________

"AVI SHLAIM: Yes. I think very highly of Professor Finkelstein. I regard him as a very able, very erudite and original scholar who has made an important contribution to the study of Zionism, to the study of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, in particular, to the study of American attitudes towards Israel and towards the Middle East.

Professor Finkelstein specializes in exposing spurious scholarship on the Arab-Israeli conflict. And he has a very impressive track record in this respect. He was a very promising graduate student in history at Princeton, when a book by Joan Peters appeared, called From Time Immemorial, and he wrote the most savage exposition in critique of this book. It was a systematic demolition of this book. The book argued, incidentally, that Palestine was a land without a people for people without a land. And Professor Finkelstein exposed it as a hoax, and he showed how dishonest the scholarship or spurious scholarship was in the entire book. And he paid the price for his courage, and he has been a marked man, in a sense, in America ever since. His most recent book is Beyond Chutzpah, follows in the same vein of criticizing and exposing biases and distortions and falsifications in what Americans write about Israel and about the Middle East. So I consider him to be a very impressive and a very learned and careful scholar."

"RAUL HILBERG: I will say, however, that I am impressed by the analytical abilities of Finkelstein. He is, when all is said and done, a highly trained political scientist who was given a PhD degree by a highly prestigious university. This should not be overlooked. Granted, this, by itself, may not establish him as a scholar.

However, leaving aside the question of style -- and here, I agree that it’s not my style either -- the substance of the matter is most important here, particularly because Finkelstein, when he published this book, was alone. It takes an enormous amount of academic courage to speak the truth when no one else is out there to support him. And so, I think that given this acuity of vision and analytical power, demonstrating that the Swiss banks did not owe the money, that even though survivors were beneficiaries of the funds that were distributed, they came, when all is said and done, from places that were not obligated to pay that money. That takes a great amount of courage in and of itself. So I would say that his place in the whole history of writing history is assured, and that those who in the end are proven right triumph, and he will be among those who will have triumphed, albeit, it so seems, at great cost. "

link to full interviews/listen or watch online or download or read transcript:

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/5/9/it_takes_an_enormous_amount_of

.

one reader in the Haaretz article summed up their opinion of Dr. Finkelstein this way:

" Title: Fan of Finkelstein`s Scholarship but not his views

Name: benjamin

City: State:


As an American jew i have followed Dr. Finkelstein`s scholarship and career. I don`t think anyone can doubt he is a serious scholar and a good one at that. However he essentially has the same problem as those he ideologically disagrees with. He sees in things in terms of moral black and white where one side is completely justified and the other is pure evil. If history shows us anything in most cases conflicts are shades of grey. I have no problem with him meeting Hezbollah, i do have a problem with him acting as if Hezbollah is the symbol of innocence and hope. It can be argued that Hezbollah did try to defend Lebanon, but it cannot be denied that they too are guilty of atrocities, the only way to reconcile such a fond view of hezbollah is to accept a completely non-moral view, that in wars of survival, their is no moral actions, only necessary ones. "
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/942454.html

He sees in things in terms of moral black and white where one side is completely justified and the other is pure evil.

no "brilliant" scholar would see things in this conflict as black and white....if this is true, and i have not read much of him, that as far as i am concerned that puts him along side of hamas, arutz 7, settlers of hebron, islamic jihad, anarchists, etc

a view that promotes and encourages a singular view of "justice" only encourages and promotes the conflict.....thats not brilliant, i have a different set of descriptive words that fit.....

and a strong opponent of the movement for a one-state solution

He will be a principle debater at the Oxford Union later this month in defense of the proposition that Israel has a right to exist. And I'm sure his arguments will be absolutely brilliant.

http://www.oxford-union.org/hilary?SQ_CALENDAR_VIEW=event&SQ_CALENDAR_EVENT_ID=1275&SQ_CALENDAR_DATE=2008-01-24

I hope it will be carried by some network and will be available on the web.

.

I think that he gets to the heart of the issue:

'However he essentially has the same problem as those he ideologically disagrees with. He sees in things in terms of moral black and white where one side is completely justified and the other is pure evil. If history shows us anything in most cases conflicts are shades of grey.'

I strongly oppose the blinkered views of the blindly 'patriotic' or pro-establishment, who consider that their group and its leaders are Good, and their enemies are Bad (e.g. Bush's phrase 'Axis of Evil'). However, some very anti-establishment people are what I call 'mirror-image-ists' who take this view, turn it on its head, and assume that all that opposes their own leadership must be Good, and its supporters and allies Evil. I think that Finkelstein falls into this trap.

When I heard him raise his voice to Ali Abunimah is a very rude way (and that was Dr. Finkelstein arguing for the two-state solution) I kind of bit my tongue...his tone was unnecessarily harsh toward a friend who agrees with him on most other matters.

Someone I know over the internet who knows Norman Finkelstein personally says that he really was affected by growing up in a household where both of his parents were survivors of years in the Nazi death camps.....and his entire extended family died in Hitler's gas chambers. Its clear he did not have a particularly harmonious household as a child.

But he does have a truly awesome mind and a breathtakingly powerful intellect.

my cousin wrote her master thesis on the children of parents of the holocaust (american).....a real mess up bunch to put it mildly (she is one). I get the impression that the israeli children faired better in that respect.

. . of the strong emotions of conflict - not necessarily a sick personality. When sufficiently aroused we can all do that - we can all become killers of other humans if necessary. And that requires the belief the we are totally right and our enemy is totally wrong.

Humans in the past who had the ability to see things that way when their lives were threatened apparently reproduced more successfully than their more laid back cousins. Feel free to "oppose the blinkered views of the blindly 'patriotic' or pro-establishment " but I think you are swimming against the current of human nature.

That's why even a little violence is so destructive in society. When people feel sufficiently threatened reason becomes impossible.

There are lots of aspects of human nature that evolved at a time when the world was very different and are dangerous to modern society. E.g. it's human nature to overeat when food is available, because during most of history people had insufficient and unpredictable access to food, so that eating as much as possible when food was available was essential for survival. But this tendency is hazardous to health in modern society. As obesity stems from behaviour that was healthy in our early evolution, but is bad for physical health now, so there are many many characteristics - such as violence and tribalism and oppression of the weak by the strong - which helped, or didn't hinder, our early ancestors to survive; but are nowadays not only immoral but dangerous to our survival as a species. We need to recognize these characteristics and try to combat them in ourselves and our societies. A religious person would probably speak of Original Sin and Repentance; as an atheist humanist, I prefer to think of maladaptive traits in the modern world, and the need to consciously combat them. For this same reason, I can never *fully* accept 'cultural relativism': the fact that an oppressive or violent characteristic is 'part of a culture' does not justify it or mean it's immutable, as all cultures should, can and do change all the time. The ability to change or reject aspects of one's existing culture is one of the central things that separates humans from other animals.

Incidently, the current US government has been branded a terror organization in most parts of the world, so for most of the world its pronouncements carry no weight.

"The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today. My own government" Martin Luther King.

what governments have branded the US government a terror organization?

every country by the vast majority of people. because of the violence and terror he has unleashed on the world.

I wish he were hated more here.

but when you make ridiculous statements like

The current US government has been branded a terror organization in most parts of the world or Bush is hated in nearly every country by the vast majority of people you are talking in pure hyperbole.

Back up such a statement with some cool, hard facts, How do you know that the US gov't has been branded a terrorist org and that Bush is hated by the majority of people? (Even if I were to wish that true, I don't think it is).

is well understood throughout the world.

No coincidence that consumers of western corporate-controlled media have such a difficult time accepting that view.

I don't think you understand the depth of the dislike that is felt for the Bush administration around the world. In the US yr on the inside looking in and not on the outside looking in at the way Bush has driven the US down a really horrible path. I live in a country that is historically a close ally of the US, and while our former conservative government (I'm hoping you guys in the US will end up with a left-wing govt next year) was led by someone who buried himself so deeply up Bush's arse that you couldn't even see his shoelaces, the view amongst the population was very different. There was and still is a deep resentment over what happened to David Hicks, which included torture, and both times Bush has visited here, the general mood in the street has been 'fuck off, you wanker. We don't want you here.' And the jokes about the gaffes he makes in his speeches? They're generally not said in a good-natured way. Of course there's the hardcore Liberals who adore him, but they're not in the majority. And there was very little dislike of Clinton during his presidency, so it's not like we tend to hate someone just coz they're the US President. Bush, with his blundering and dangerous wars, his scorn for the sovereignty of some other States, and his lack of interest in diplomacy has earned him the dislike of people around the world. Because if most people here dislike him, the feeling would be much more intense in countries like Venezuela and Jordan for example....

The danger is and always has been that the hatred of Bush spills over and becomes a general hatred of the US and its population. Over here, most people draw a distinction, but I suspect that's not always the case in some other countries. I've heard stories of American backpackers sewing Canadian flags onto their backpacks and trying to pass as Canadians when they travel, and I think that's sad as there's nothing wrong with Americans (except for the obligatory Ugly American that gets encountered in other countries) and they shouldn't feel they have to hide that they're Americans...

So you can stop wishing it's true, coz it actually is...

btw, you might be interested in looking at a thing called 'What The World Thinks Of America'. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/wtwta/default.stm It's a few years old now, but it was really interesting...

does not equal the USA being considered a terror organization.

. . on April 4, 1967?