# Posted 8:07 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

ARE JEWS PARANOID? (or FINKELSTEIN UNHINGED): I attended an Orthodox Jewish school from kindergarten through twelfth grade. One of the most popular teacher at my school was a rabbi who asked me once, in all seriousness, if I really believed that another Holocaust couldn't happen here, meaning in the United States.

I was probably 15 or 16 at the time and didn't have a very good answer for him. Almost all of us in school had grown up in a Jewish cocoon, barely interacting with the outside world. We attended Jewish summer camps, Jewish after school programs and Jewish youth groups . And of course Saturday (Shabbos) was for synagogue. So if an authority figure informed us that our fellow Americans had the potential to become this generation's Nazi Germany, it was hard to dispute.

This rabbi's question didn't represent mainstream thinking at our school, which was generally quite pro-American, or even patriotic, but it was a candid expression of the paranoia that had a life of its own, no matter good things were for our people.

The purpose of Norman Finkelstein's book, Beyond Chutzpah, is to demonstrate that exaggerated accusation of anti-Semitism are not just pervasive, but systematically employed to shut down criticism of Israel, and especially of its human rights violations.

Finkelstein's book is comprised of two parts. The purpose of the first is to expose precisely how groundless accusations of anti-Semitism are constructed and deployed in Israel's defense. The second part comprises an extended refutation of Alan Dershowitz's book, The Case for Israel. This post concerns the first of the two.

My sense of Finkelstein is that he has a lot in common with the rabbi who once asked me why another Holocaust couldn't happen here. The difference is that the polarity of Finkelstein's paranoia has been reversed. Instead of a wild fear of anti-Semitism, he has a wild fear of the American Jewish community being corrupted by its obsession with anti-Semitism.

Two of Finkelstein's favorite tactics are to accuse his targets of either being traitors or behaving like Communists. For example, he writes that:

Altough Israel's apologists claim to allow for criticism of the occasional Israeli "excess" (what is termed "legitimate criticism"), the upshot of this allowance is to delegitimize the preponderance of criticism as anti-Semitic -- just as Communist parties used to allow for criticism of the occasional Stalinist "excess," while denouncing unprincipled criticism as "anti-Soviet" and therfore beyond the pale. (p.34)

One might say that Finkelstein deserves some small credit for at least acknolwedging that American Jews condemn Israel's excesses. Unfortunately, Finkelstein never really explores those branches of the American Jewish community that have shown particular concern for Israeli human rights violations, especially the Reform and Conservative Jewish establishments. Instead, he just conjures up an analogy to Communism.

Later, Finkelstein condemns "an October 2004 report solicited by the [French] Interior Ministry" which invented the category of "anti-Semitism by proxy." The report defines anti-Semites by proxy as those whose "opinions, words, or sometimes simply silence lend support to [anti-Semitic] violence." This sounds like a somehwat problematic definition, but Finkelstein goes much further. He describes it as:

A direct throwback to the darkest days of Stalinism, when those criticizing the Soviet regime were, by virtue of this fact alone, branded "objective" abettors of fascism and dealt with accordingly. (p.49)

Funny that. The fascists used to argue all the time that Communism was a Jewish conspiracy.

Anyhow, it's important to note that accusations of Stalinist behavior quickly shade into accusation of treason. In a chapter entitled "Crying Wolf", Finkelstein discusses "domestic American Jewish organizations such as ADL [the Anti-Defamation League] and the Simon Wiesenthal Center and their counterparts elsewhere in Europe." In all seriousness, Finklestein writes that:

These organizations stand in the same relationship to their respective host countries as Communist parties once did, except that they view Israel rather than Stalin's Russia as the Motherland. (p.67)

So, you might ask, where is Finkelstein's evidence that these nominally independent organizations are subversive criminal enterprises that take orders directly from Jerusalem? Actually, evidence is not important. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you.

With regard to conspiracies, Finkelstein is a veteran detective. Drawing on his previous book, The Holocaust Industry, he writes that:

Under the guise of seeking "Holocaust reparations," American Jewish organizations and individuals at all levels of government and in all sectors of American society entered into a conspiracy -- this is the correct word -- to blackmail Europe. It was on account of "Jewish money" that the Clinton administration went along with this shakedown operation -- even to the detriment of U.S. national interests. (p.82)

I haven't read The Holocaust Industry, but allegations of vast Jewish blackmail conspiracies are a pretty good indicator that someone has lost touch with reality.

Actually, that reminds me of an old joke. Two Jews were sitting on a bench in Berlin in the 1930s. One was reading a Jewish newspaper, the other was reading Der Stuermer, a Nazi propaganda publication. The Jew reading the Jewish paper turned to his friend and asked how any self-respecting Jew could read such filthy anti-Semitic garbage. His friend calmly responded that he would much prefer to read how Jews control the media, the banks and the American government rather than reading about Jews being beaten, robbed and abused by agents of the German government.

Going back to theme of treason, Finkelstein observes in an extended footnote that:

In recent years it has become nearly impossible to empirically test the hypothesis that U.S. national interest trumps the Jewish lobby or vice versa. This is because the degree of interpenetration, or revolving door, of personnel between the Jewish lobby and U.S. administrations effectively precludes such a test...

How can one really know on what interest or at whose behest a Martin Indyk, Dennis Ross, Paul Wolfowitz, or Richard Perle is acting when he argues policy on the Middle East?

I knew it! Jews control both the Democratic and Republican parties. And in order to cover up their conspiracy, the Jewish Democrats and Jewish Republicans pretend to disagree with each other.

For example, I saw Dennis Ross -- Clinton's special coordinator for the Middle East -- give a lecture just over a week ago. (This is not a set up for a joke. I really did attend Ross' presentation. 'P' was there and she can verify it.) Ross had some very unkind words for the Bush administration and its handling of just about every aspect of Middle East diplomacy. Little did I know that such criticism was just a clever way of deflecting attention from Ross' nefarious collaboration with Wolfowitz and Perle.

So, now that I've run down what I dislike about Finkelstein's book, is there anything good to say on its behalf? Actually, yes. It does document the extent to which Jewish leaders sometimes say things that are pretty much absurd. For example, the title page for Part I of Finkelstein's book includes a quote from ADL director Abraham Foxman, who inisted not long ago that:

We currently face as great a threat to the safety and security of the Jewish people as the one we faced in the 1930s -- if not a greater one. (p.19)

I find that kind of rhetoric to be extraordinarily unhelpful. Above all, it detracts from the credibility of substantive accusations of anti-Semitism by suggesting that they may be the product of paranoia.

On the other hand, Finkelstein never even asks whether there is a real debate within the American Jewish community about the validity of certain accusations of anti-Semitism. Instead, Finkelstein tends to focus on the most extreme accusations while presenting them as the product of the mainstream. For example, one of his favorite targets is Phyllis Chesler, author of a fairly prominent book entitled The New Anti-Semitism.

Curious about Chesler's standing in the Jewish community, I called up my father and asked him if he'd ever heard of her. I asked the question point-blank, careful not to give away why I was asking it. My father's immediate response was "Phyllis Chesler is a nut...she finds anti-Semites under every rock."

So you know, my father is very active in the New York Jewish community. He has been a vice-president of our synagogue for more than a decade and is very strongly pro-Israel and pro-peace. Although talking to my father doesn't constitute a scientific survey of Jewish opinion, it is a small indicator of the vibrant debates that characterize the American Jewish community. As the saying goes, two Jews, three opinions.

Even in the absence of Finkelstein's paranoid polemics, American Jews would be having substantive discussions about the important issues he raises.

Labels: Anti-Semitism, Israel, Norman Finkelstein, Palestinians

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# Posted 7:11 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

THE CASE FOR (AND AGAINST) ISRAEL: I have decided to lay my opinions on the table and subject them to critical scrutiny. I am firmly pro-Israel, but have come to recognize that my cursory knowledge of the situation on the ground prevents me from engaging at a higher level in the ongoing debate about Israel and the Palestinians. For challenging me to rise that higher level, the credit goes to my colleague P, who has a remarkable amount of knowledge about this subject at her fingertips.

As I mentioned last week, one priority of mine is to read up on the origins of the Palestinian refugee crisis. However, my attention has been diverted from that subject by two passionately argued books about the conflict. The first is Alan Dershowitz's The Case for Israel. The second is Norman Finkelstein's Beyond Chutzpah, which is devoted in no small part to refuting Dershowitz.

This post will focus on the introduction to Finkelstein's book. Later, I will turn to Dershowitz. But for the moment, I would like to point out two critical similarities between the two authors and their books. The first is that both men are unequivocally committed to the peace process and to the two-state solution to the ongoing conflict. That is good news. The second similarity is that both men have total, unflinching confidence in their diametrically opposed evaluations of the facts on the ground. This is a problem.

In general, there seems to be a consensus that the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is extraordinarily complicated. Men and women on both sides of the line have suffered greatly at the hands of the other. Men and women on both sides make powerful arguments for the justice of their cause. But Finkelstein will have none of it. He writes on the second page of his book that:

Looking back after two decades of study and reflection, I am struck most by how uncomplicated the Israel-Palestine conflict is. There is no longer much contention among scholars on the historical record... [emphasis in original]

My sense is that scholars like Efraim Karsh, Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe are still at each other's figurative throats, but that is a secondary point for the moment. The bigger question is this one:

Yet if, as I've suggested, broad agreement has been reached on the factual record, an obvious anomaly arises: what accounts for the impassioned controversy that still swirls around the Israel-Palestine conflict? To my mind, explaining this apparent paradox requires, first of all, that a fundamental distinction be made between those controversies that are real and those that are contrived.

So which are real and which are contrived? (pp.6-7)

Most of the controversy surrounding the Israel-Palestine conflict is, in my view, contrived. The purpose of contriving such controversy is transparently political: to deflect attention from, or distort, the actual documentary record. One can speak of, basically, three sources of artificial disagreement: (1) mystification of the conflict's roots, (2) invocation of anti-Semitism and The Holocaust, and (3) on a different plane, the vast proliferation of sheer fraud on the subject.

These issues deserve attention, but my mind immediately raced ahead to a subject that seemed to be the cause of a very real controversy: suicide bombing. As a supporter of Israel, I stand by the position that the intentional and unrepentant murder of civilians is morally depraved and absolutely never justifiable. But I don't dismiss out of hand as depraved or dishonest the argument that such atrocities cannot be considered apart from questionable Israeli methods that also result in great suffering.

The issue here is morality, not facts. Even if both sides were to agree on the facts, their moral significance would remain the subject of debate. Yet Finkelstein explicitly refuses to acknowledge that supporters of Israel even have a legitimate point to make about Palestinian atrocities. He writes that:

In the course of resisting European encroachment, Native Americans committed many horrendous crimes. But to understand why doesn't require probing the defects of their character or civilization. Criticizing the practice, in government documents, of reciting Native American "atrocities," Helen Hunt Jackson, a principled defender of Native Americans writing in the late 19th century, observed: "[T]he Indians who committed these 'atrocities' were simply ejecting by force, and, in the contests arising from this forcible ejectment, killing men who had usurped and stolen their lands...What would a community of white men, situated precisely as these Cherokees were, have done?"

To apprehend the motive behind Palestinian "atrocities", this ordinary human capacity for empathy would also seem to suffice. (p.14)

This kind of logic strikes me as extremely dangerous. Although Finkelstein doesn't explicitly condone suicide bombing, he tells us that it is pointless to condemn such acts, because the Palestinian cause is fundamentally justified. After all, what would a community of white men, situated precisely as these Palestinians were, have done?

Although Finkelstein seems to endorse the concepts of international law and human rights, his position on Palestinian "atrocities" is equivalent to an unmitigated assertion that those with a just cause (according to what standard?) can disregard both what is legal and what is right. In essence, Finkelstein wants to have it both ways. He wants to condemn Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights but write off Palestinian violations as a natural response to an unpleasant situation. As someone who believes that we are all responsible for the morality of our behavior, especially in matters of life and death, I disagree with Finkelstein fundamentally.

Perhaps the more immediate question is whether Finkelstein would consider my disagreement to be legitimate, or whether he would dismiss it as a contrived position designed to distort the factual record. While respecting the right of others to disagree with my argument, I would be extraordinarily suspicious of someone who sought to triviliaze my point by insisting that I have dark, ulterior motives.

I must admit that after reading only twenty pages of Finkelstein's book, I am approaching the conclusion that its author has been so consumed by partisanship that few of its contents can be trusted without extensive verification. But I will finish the book. Finkelstein is cited so often by advocates of the Palestinian cause, that I think it is simply necessary to read his work in order to enter the debate.

More importantly, my experience indicates that even the most committed partisans often have a fair amount of legitimate criticism to offer. To be continued...

Labels: Alan Dershowitz, Israel, Norman Finkelstein, Palestinians

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