The first time I heard Norman Finkelstein's name it was uttered in the same way a person might utter the name of Goebbels or Arafat. With venom. As if, there goes a bad man, a hater of Israel, a nasty, ignorant self-hating Jewish lunatic of the wretched left.
But somewhere along the line, during my research on the issues in Palestine, I watched a video of Mr. Finkelstein speaking. It was quite impressive. He was knowledgeable, logical, fair-minded, and articulate.
I watched another. Same thing. And again. He was even funny.
I think now I have seen every video of him on youtube. And I have two of his books, the others not being so easy to get in Israel.
I would call Mr. Finkelstein my go to guy for understanding what's going on over here on a political level. Being an Observant Jew, I won't go to him for his view on religion since he is an atheist of sorts. Nobody is perfect. In his professionalism and integrity, he doesn't talk about religion. He limits his comments to the topic on which he is a first class expert.
Finkelstein is living proof of the unbelievable power of the Israel lobby as he has been unemployed from academia for a decade, his tenure having been denied at DePaul University after a vicious campaign by Alan Dershowitz. The staff at the Poly. Sci. dept. at DePaul had recommended Finkelstein unanimously for tenure.
I went to some fancy colleges myself and I can't say I ever met a professor as impressive as Finkelstein. In addition to his amazing scholarship and insights, he seems to care about his students a good deal and encourages them to challenge him. Any school would be lucky to have him. But the Israel lobby won't allow it.
Wow. When I was a kid I though WASPs ran the country. Who knew?
So on what I do I disagree with Finkelstein? On one point really. He cited a survey that showed that Israels are one of the happiest peoples on earth. I forget if they ranked 16th or what. Something like that. And Finkelstein didn't question this survey. He just explained it by referencing the health of the Israeli economy.
Well I live in Israel. And I can tell you that Israelis are not only not one of the happiest people on earth, they might be the most miserable. As Finkelstein notes correctly, Israel is a "mean place." Happy people are not mean. They are not impatient, hot-tempered, judgmental, small minded, loud-mouthed, and bigoted as so many Israelis are much of the time. Not all of them, but so many that you will meet several every day of your life.
So why would Israelis tell the survey they are happy? And the answer is because they are too arrogant to ever want to be seen as unhappy. How could people as wonderful as us ever be unhappy? We are good at everything. The smartest, most moral people in the world, the best soldiers cannot be unhappy.
Israelis don't know what happiness is. The culture is so sick, as the country's president noted, that most Israelis don't know what they are feeling. Many probably confuse the feeling of superiority with happiness. Or maybe they deem self-pity to be happiness.
I have been all over the world. I have never seen a society like this. I refer much more to the secular society than to the religious. When it comes to the Arabs, the secular and the National Religious lead the way and the Charedim get caught up in it to some extent.
I don't know what to compare it to. I do feel that the real villains here are the leaders and the legacy of the founders. Most of the people would probably become normal human beings if they would just stop electing psychopaths to lead them. But the brainwashing is so intense. You try to converse with people on the topic and all you'll hear are the 4-Hs: Hebron, Husseini, Holocaust, and Hamas. Over and over, the same cliches, the same fallacies, no matter who you talk to. Anybody who questions the postulates is a traitor. I have never in my life heard the word traitor used more frequently than in Israel.
My spirits really sag at times and I get very down on the Jewish people for their stupidity and heartlessness when it comes to the local Arabs. I wish I could say the Orthodox are better but usually they are nearly as bad, at least in word as few Charedim take part in any actual military activities. And they really are quite ignorant of what goes on. They don't know about the home demolitions, torture, midnight arrests and so forth, not that many of them look for the truth. However, the anti-zionists, like Neturei Karta and Satmar, are much better. The writers at Haaretz and some ex-patriots like Mikko Peled and Avi Schlaim are refreshing. With them, one will hear sympathy for the Arabs.
But Finkelstein cheers me up most of all and actually strengthens my religious feelings. He's such a fighter. It's awesome. He puts the fight back in me. It helps me to know that there's a Jew out there who is as sickened and heartbroken as I am for what we have done to the locals and what we are doing to ourselves. Who would have thought, a spiritual uplift from an atheist. It's a wild world.
But somewhere along the line, during my research on the issues in Palestine, I watched a video of Mr. Finkelstein speaking. It was quite impressive. He was knowledgeable, logical, fair-minded, and articulate.
I watched another. Same thing. And again. He was even funny.
I think now I have seen every video of him on youtube. And I have two of his books, the others not being so easy to get in Israel.
I would call Mr. Finkelstein my go to guy for understanding what's going on over here on a political level. Being an Observant Jew, I won't go to him for his view on religion since he is an atheist of sorts. Nobody is perfect. In his professionalism and integrity, he doesn't talk about religion. He limits his comments to the topic on which he is a first class expert.
Finkelstein is living proof of the unbelievable power of the Israel lobby as he has been unemployed from academia for a decade, his tenure having been denied at DePaul University after a vicious campaign by Alan Dershowitz. The staff at the Poly. Sci. dept. at DePaul had recommended Finkelstein unanimously for tenure.
I went to some fancy colleges myself and I can't say I ever met a professor as impressive as Finkelstein. In addition to his amazing scholarship and insights, he seems to care about his students a good deal and encourages them to challenge him. Any school would be lucky to have him. But the Israel lobby won't allow it.
Wow. When I was a kid I though WASPs ran the country. Who knew?
So on what I do I disagree with Finkelstein? On one point really. He cited a survey that showed that Israels are one of the happiest peoples on earth. I forget if they ranked 16th or what. Something like that. And Finkelstein didn't question this survey. He just explained it by referencing the health of the Israeli economy.
Well I live in Israel. And I can tell you that Israelis are not only not one of the happiest people on earth, they might be the most miserable. As Finkelstein notes correctly, Israel is a "mean place." Happy people are not mean. They are not impatient, hot-tempered, judgmental, small minded, loud-mouthed, and bigoted as so many Israelis are much of the time. Not all of them, but so many that you will meet several every day of your life.
So why would Israelis tell the survey they are happy? And the answer is because they are too arrogant to ever want to be seen as unhappy. How could people as wonderful as us ever be unhappy? We are good at everything. The smartest, most moral people in the world, the best soldiers cannot be unhappy.
Israelis don't know what happiness is. The culture is so sick, as the country's president noted, that most Israelis don't know what they are feeling. Many probably confuse the feeling of superiority with happiness. Or maybe they deem self-pity to be happiness.
I have been all over the world. I have never seen a society like this. I refer much more to the secular society than to the religious. When it comes to the Arabs, the secular and the National Religious lead the way and the Charedim get caught up in it to some extent.
I don't know what to compare it to. I do feel that the real villains here are the leaders and the legacy of the founders. Most of the people would probably become normal human beings if they would just stop electing psychopaths to lead them. But the brainwashing is so intense. You try to converse with people on the topic and all you'll hear are the 4-Hs: Hebron, Husseini, Holocaust, and Hamas. Over and over, the same cliches, the same fallacies, no matter who you talk to. Anybody who questions the postulates is a traitor. I have never in my life heard the word traitor used more frequently than in Israel.
My spirits really sag at times and I get very down on the Jewish people for their stupidity and heartlessness when it comes to the local Arabs. I wish I could say the Orthodox are better but usually they are nearly as bad, at least in word as few Charedim take part in any actual military activities. And they really are quite ignorant of what goes on. They don't know about the home demolitions, torture, midnight arrests and so forth, not that many of them look for the truth. However, the anti-zionists, like Neturei Karta and Satmar, are much better. The writers at Haaretz and some ex-patriots like Mikko Peled and Avi Schlaim are refreshing. With them, one will hear sympathy for the Arabs.
But Finkelstein cheers me up most of all and actually strengthens my religious feelings. He's such a fighter. It's awesome. He puts the fight back in me. It helps me to know that there's a Jew out there who is as sickened and heartbroken as I am for what we have done to the locals and what we are doing to ourselves. Who would have thought, a spiritual uplift from an atheist. It's a wild world.
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