Coordinates	15°48′00″N47°54′00″N
Name	Gaza
Imgsize	90
Image3	Gaza City.JPG|imgsize3250
Caption3	Skyline of Gaza, 2007
Arname
Founded	15th Century BCE
Type	muna
Typefrom	1994
Altoffsp	Ghazzah
Altunosp	Gaza City
Governorate	gz
Population	449,221
Popyear	2009
Area	45,000
Areakm	45
Mayor	Rafiq Tawfiq al-Makki
Pushpin map	Palestinian territories }}

Gaza ( '''', , ''Azza'' ), also referred to as ''Gaza City'', is a Palestinian city in the Gaza Strip, with a population of about 450,000, making it the largest city in the Palestinian territories. Inhabited since at least the 15th century BC, Gaza has been dominated by several different peoples and empires throughout its history. The Philistines made it a part of their pentapolis after the Ancient Egyptians had ruled it for nearly 350 years. Under the Romans and later the Byzantines, Gaza experienced relative peace and its port flourished. In 635 AD, it became the first city in Palestine to be conquered by the Rashidun army and quickly developed into a centre of Islamic law. However, by the time the Crusaders invaded the city, it was in ruins. In later centuries, Gaza experienced several hardships—from Mongol raids to floods and locusts, reducing it to a village by the 16th century when it was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire. During the first half of Ottoman rule, the Ridwan dynasty controlled Gaza and under them the city went through an age of great commerce and peace.

Throughout its history, Gaza has never been self-ruled or independent. Gaza fell to British forces during World War I, becoming a part of the British Mandate of Palestine. As a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Egypt administered the newly formed Gaza Strip territory and several improvements were undertaken in the city. Gaza was captured by Israel in the Six-Day War in 1967, but in 1993, the city was transferred to the Palestinian National Authority. Following the 2006 election, conflict broke out as the Fatah party seemed unwilling to transfer power to Hamas, resulting in Hamas taking power in Gaza by force. Since then Gaza has been under a blockade by Israel and Egypt.

The primary economic activities of Gaza are small-scale industries, agriculture and labor. However, the economy has been devastated by the blockade and recurring conflicts. Most of Gaza's inhabitants adhere to Islam, although there exists a Christian minority. Gaza has a very young population with roughly 75% being under the age of 25, and today the city has one of the highest population densities in the world.

Etymology

According to Israeli geographer, Zev Vilnay, the name "Gaza," from the Arabic "Ġazza", originally derives from the Canaanite/Hebrew root for "strong" (ʿzz), and was introduced to Arabic by way of the Hebrew, "ʿazzā", i.e. "the strong one (f.)"; cpr. English ''stronghold''. According to Mariam Shahin, the Canaanites gave Gaza its name, the Ancient Egyptians called it "Ghazzat" ("prized city"), and the ancient Arabs often referred to it as "Ghazzat Hashim", in honor of Hashim, the great-grandfather of Muhammad, who is buried in the city, according to Islamic lore.

History

Gaza's history of habitation dates back 5,000 years, making it one of the oldest cities in the world. Located on the Mediterranean coastal route between North Africa and the Levant, for most of its history it served as a key entrepôt of the southern Levant and an important stopover on the spice trade route traversing the Red Sea.

Bronze Age

Settlement in the region of Gaza dates back to Tell es-Sakan, an Ancient Egyptian fortress built in Canaanite territory to the south of present-day Gaza. The site went into decline throughout the Early Bronze Age II as its trade with Egypt sharply decreased. Another urban centre known as Tell al-Ajjul began to grow along the Wadi Ghazza riverbed. During the Middle Bronze Age, a revived Tell es-Sakan became the southernmost locality in Canaan, serving as a fort. In 1650 BCE, when the Canaanite Hyksos occupied Egypt, a second city developed on the ruins of the first Tell as-Sakan. However, it was abandoned by the 14th century BCE, at the end of the Bronze Age.

Ancient period

Gaza later served as Egypt’s administrative capital in Canaan. During the reign of Tuthmosis III, the city became a stop on the Syrian-Egyptian caravan route and was mentioned in the Amarna letters as "Azzati". Gaza remained under Egyptian control for 350 years until it was conquered by the Philistines in the 12th century BCE, becoming a part of their "pentapolis". According to the Book of Judges, Gaza was the place where Samson was imprisoned by the Philistines and met his death.

After being ruled by the Israelites, Assyrians, and then the Egyptians, Gaza achieved relative independence and prosperity under the Persian Empire. Alexander the Great besieged Gaza, the last city to resist his conquest on his path to Egypt, for five months before finally capturing it 332 BCE; the inhabitants were either killed or taken captive. Alexander brought in local Bedouins to populate Gaza and organized the city into a ''polis'' (or "city-state"). Greek culture consequently took root and Gaza earned a reputation as a flourishing center of Hellenic learning and philosophy.

Gaza experienced another siege in 96 BCE by the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus who "utterly overthrew" the city, killing 500 senators who had fled into the temple of Apollo for safety. Josephus notes that Gaza was resettled under the rule of Antipas, who cultivated friendly relations with Gazans, Ascalonites and neighboring Arabs after being appointed governor of Idumea by Jannaeus. Rebuilt after it was incorporated into the Roman Empire in 63 BCE under the command of Pompey Magnus, Gaza then became a part of the Roman province of Judaea. It was targeted by the Jews during their rebellion against Roman rule in 66 and was partially destroyed. It nevertheless remained an important city, even more so after the destruction of Jerusalem.

Throughout the Roman period, Gaza was a prosperous city and received grants and attention from several emperors. A 500-member senate governed Gaza, and a diverse variety of Philistines, Greeks, Romans, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Jews, Egyptians, Persians, and Bedouin populated the city. Gaza's mint issued coins adorned with the busts of gods and emperors. During his visit in 130 CE, Emperor Hadrian personally inaugurated wrestling, boxing, and oratorical competitions in Gaza's new stadium, which became known from Alexandria to Damascus. The city was adorned with many pagan temples; the main cult being that of Marnas. Other temples were dedicated to Zeus, Helios, Aphrodite, Apollo, Athene and the local Tyche. Christianity began to spread throughout Gaza in 250 CE, last in the port of Maiuma. Conversion to Christianity in Gaza was accelerated under Saint Porphyrius between 396 and 420. In 402, Theodosius II ordered all eight of the city's pagan temples destroyed, and four years later Empress Aelia Eudocia commissioned the construction of a church atop the ruins of the Temple of Marnas. It was during this era that the Neoplatonic philosopher, then Christian, Aeneas of Gaza called Gaza, his town, "the Athens of Asia". Following the division of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century BCE, Gaza remained under control of the Eastern Roman Empire that in turn became the Byzantine Empire. The city prospered and was an important centre for the Levant.

Islamic era

In 635 CE, Gaza was quickly besieged and captured by the Rashidun army under general 'Amr ibn al-'As following the Battle of Ajnadayn between the Byzantine Empire and the Rashidun Caliphate in central Palestine. Believed to be the site where Muhammad's great grandfather Hashim ibn Abd Manaf was buried, the city was not destroyed by the victorious Rashidun army in spite of the stiff and lengthy resistance. The arrival of the Muslim Arabs brought drastic changes to Gaza; at first some of her churches were transformed into mosques, including the present Great Mosque of Gaza (the oldest in the city), a large segment of the population swiftly adopted Islam, Arabic became the official language. In 767, Muhammad ibn Idris ash-Shafi'i was born in Gaza and lived his early childhood there; al-Shafi'i founded a prominent Sunni Muslim legal philosophy (or ''fiqh'') called Shafi'i, in his honor. Security was the key to Gaza's prosperity which had been maintained in the early rule of the Muslims. Although alcohol was banned in Islam, the Jewish and Christian communities were allowed to maintain wine production and grapes, a major cash crop in the city, were exported mainly to Egypt. Because it bordered the desert, Gaza was vulnerable to warring nomadic groups. In 796, Gaza was destroyed during a civil war between the Arab tribes of the area. However, by the 10th century CE the city had been rebuilt by a third Arab caliphate ruled by the Abbasids; Arab geographer al-Muqaddasi described Gaza as "a large town lying on the highroad to Egypt on the border of the desert." In 977 CE, a fourth Arab caliphate ruled by the Fatimids established an agreement with the competing Seljuk Turks, whereby the Fatimids would control Gaza and the land south of it, including Egypt.

European Crusaders conquered Gaza from the Fatimids in 1100 and King Baldwin III built a castle there in 1149. After the castle's construction, Baldwin granted it and the surrounding region to the Knights Templar. He also had the Great Mosque converted into the Cathedral of Saint John. In 1154, Arab traveller al-Idrisi wrote Gaza "is today very populous and in the hands of the Crusaders." In 1170, King Amalric I of Jerusalem withdrew Gaza's Templars to assist him against an Islamic Ayyubid force led by Saladin at the nearby city of Deir al-Balah; however, Saladin evaded the Crusader force and assaulted Gaza instead, destroying the town built outside the castle. Seven years later, the Templars prepared for another defence of Gaza against Saladin, but this time the Islamic forces attacked Ascalon. In 1187, Saladin captured Gaza and ordered the destruction of the city's fortifications in 1191. Richard the Lionheart apparently refortified the city in 1192, but the walls were dismantled again as a result of the Treaty of Ramla agreed upon months later in 1193. The Ayyubid period of rule ended in 1260, after the Mongols under Hulagu Khan completely destroyed Gaza, which became his southernmost conquest.

Following Gaza's destruction by the Mongols, Muslim slave-soldiers based in Egypt known as the Mamluks began to administer the area in 1277. The Mamluks made Gaza the capital of the province that bore its name, ''Mamlakat Ghazzah'' ("the Governorship of Gaza"). This district extended along the coastal plain from Rafah in the south to just north of Caesarea, and to the east as far as the Samaria highlands and the Hebron Hills. Other major towns in the province included Qaqun, Ludd, and Ramla. Gaza which entered a period of tranquility under the Mamluks was used by them as an outpost in their offensives against the Crusaders which ended in 1290. In 1294, an earthquake devastated Gaza, and five years later the Mongols again destroyed all that had been restored by the Mamluks. However, circa 1300, Syrian geographer al-Dimashqi described Gaza as a "city so rich in trees it looks like a cloth of brocade spread out upon the land." In 1348, the Bubonic Plague infested the city, killing the majority of its inhabitants and in 1352, Gaza suffered from a destructive flood, which was rare in that arid part of the Southern Levant. However, when Arab traveler and writer Ibn Batutta visited the city in 1355, he noted that it was "large and populous, and has many mosques." The Mamluks contributed to Gazan architecture by building mosques, Islamic schools, hospitals, caravansaries, and public baths. Meshullam of Volterra found sixty Jewish householders in 1481, and in 1488, Obadiah of Bertinoro noted that Moses of Prague was the rabbi of the town.

Ottoman rule

In 1516, Gaza—at the time, a small town with an inactive port, ruined buildings and reduced trade—was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman army quickly and efficiently crushed a small-scale uprising, and the local population generally welcomed as fellow Sunni Muslims. The city was then made the capital of Sanjak Gaza, part of the larger Province of Damascus. The Ridwan family, named after governor Ridwan Pasha, was the first dynasty to govern Gaza and would continue to rule the city for over a century. Under Ahmad ibn Ridwan, the city became a cultural and religious center as a result of the partnership between the governor and prominent Islamic jurist Khayr al-Din al-Ramli, who was based in the nearby town of al-Ramla.

Although no explanation is provided in the biographies of the Ridwan family, they chose Gaza as their home and the location of their castle, Qasr al-Basha.

Gaza was briefly occupied by the French Army under Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799, but they abandoned the city after the failed siege of Acre that same year. Starting in the early 19th century, Gaza was culturally dominated by neighboring Egypt; Muhammad Ali of Egypt conquered Gaza and most of the south of Ottoman Syria in 1832. American scholar Edward Robinson visited Gaza in 1838, describing it as a "thickly populated" town larger than Jerusalem, with its Old City lying upon a hilltop, while its suburbs laid on the nearby plain. Gaza's port was inactive in the mid-19th century, however, the city benefited from trade and commerce because of its position on the caravan route between Egypt and northern Syria as well as from producing soap and cotton for trade with the Bedouin. Robinson noted that virtually all of Gaza's vestiges of ancient history and antiquity had disappeared due to constant conflict and occupation.

The Bubonic Plague struck again in 1839 and the city, lacking political and economic stability, went into a state of stagnation. In 1840, Egyptian and Ottoman troops battled outside of Gaza. The Ottomans won control of the territory, effectively ending Egyptian rule over southern Syria. However, the battles brought about more death and destruction in Gaza whilst the city was still recovering from the effects of the plague.

Modern era

While leading the Allied Forces during World War I, the British won control of the city during the Third Battle of Gaza in 1917. After the war, Gaza was included in the British Mandate of Palestine. In the 1930s and 1940s, Gaza underwent major expansion. New neighborhoods were built along the coast and the southern and eastern plains. International organizations and missionary groups funded most of this construction. In the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan, Gaza was assigned to be part of an Arab state in western Palestine but was occupied by Egypt following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Gaza's growing population was augmented by an influx of refugees fleeing nearby cities, towns and villages that were captured by Israel. In 1957, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser made a number of reforms in Gaza, which included expanding educational opportunities and the civil services, providing housing, and establishing local security forces.

Gaza was occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War following the defeat of the Egyptian Army. Frequent conflicts have erupted between Palestinians and the Israeli authorities in the city since the 1970s. The tensions lead to the First Intifada in 1987. Gaza was a center of confrontation during this uprising, and economic conditions in the city worsened. In September 1993, leaders of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) signed the Oslo Accords. The agreement called for Palestinian administration of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho, which was implemented in May 1994. Israeli forces withdrew from Gaza, leaving a new Palestinian National Authority (PNA) to administer and police the city. The PNA, led by Yasser Arafat, chose Gaza as its first provincial headquarters. The newly established Palestinian National Council held its inaugural session in Gaza in March 1996. In 2005, Israel pulled out the troops occupying Gaza, along with thousands of Israelis who had settled in the territory.

Since the Palestinian organization Hamas won a surprise victory in the Palestinian elections of 2006, it has been engaged in a violent power struggle with its rival Palestinian organization Fatah. In 2007, Hamas overthrew Fatah forces in the Gaza Strip and Hamas members were dismissed from the PNA government in the West Bank in response. Currently, Hamas has ''de facto'' control of the city and Strip.

In March 2008, a coalition of human rights groups charged that the Israeli blockade of the city had caused the humanitarian situation in Gaza to have reached its worst point since Israel occupied the territory in the 1967 Six-Day War, and that Israeli air strikes targeting militants in the densely populated areas have often killed bystanders as well. In 2008, Israel commenced an assault against Gaza. Israel stated the strikes were in response to repetitive rocket and mortar attacks from the Gaza Strip into Israel since 2005, while the Palestinians stated that they were responding to Israel's military excursions and blockade of the Gaza Strip. In January 2009, Palestinian sources stated that at least 1,300 Palestinians were killed in the conflict. In April 2009, Israeli sources stated that at least 63-75% of the deaths were of men of combat age, based on the list of casualties published by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), supplemented by Hamas and Fatah websites and official Palestinian government online sources.

Geography

Central Gaza is situated on a low-lying and round hill with an elevation of above sea level. Much of the modern city is built along the plain below the hill, especially to the north and east, forming Gaza's suburbs. The beach and the port of Gaza are located west of the city's nucleus and the space in between is entirely built up on low-lying hills.

Gaza is southwest of Jerusalem, south of Tel Aviv, and north of Rafah. Surrounding localities include Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun, and Jabalia to the north, and the village of Abu Middein, the refugee camp of Bureij, and the city of Deir al-Balah to the south.

The municipal jurisdiction of the city today constitutes about . In the British Mandate era, Gaza's urban or "built-up" area consisted of , while its rural area was . Irrigated land made up and lands planted with cereals made up .

The population of Gaza depends on groundwater as the only source for drinking, agricultural use, and domestic supply. The nearest stream is Wadi Ghazza to the south, sourced from Abu Middein along the coastline. It bears a small amount of water during the winter and virtually no water during the summer. Most of its water supply is diverted into Israel. The Gaza Aquifer along the coast is the main aquifer in the Gaza Strip and it consists mostly of Pleistocene sandstones. Like most of the Gaza Strip, Gaza is covered by quaternary soil; clay minerals in the soil absorb many organic and inorganic chemicals which has partially alleviated the extent of groundwater contamination.

A well-known hill southeast of Gaza, known as Tell al-Muntar, has an elevation of above sea level. For centuries it has been claimed as the place to which Samson brought the city gates of the Philistines. The hill is crowned by a Muslim shrine (''maqam'') dedicated to Ali al-Muntar ("Ali of the Watchtower"). There are old Muslim graves around the surrounding trees, and the lintel of the doorway of the ''maqam'' has two medieval Arabic scriptures.

Old City and districts

The Old City forms the main part of Gaza's nucleus. It is roughly divided into two quarters; the northern Daraj Quarter (also known as the Muslim Quarter) and the southern Zaytoun Quarter (also known as the Christian Quarter). Most of the structures date from the Mamluk or Ottoman eras and some were built on top of earlier structures. The ancient part of the Old City is about .

There are seven historic gates to the Old City: Bab Asqalan (Gate of Ashkelon), Bab al-Darum (Gate of Deir al-Balah), Bab al-Bahr (Gate of the Sea), Bab Marnas (Gate of Marnas), Bab al-Baladiyah (Gate of the Town), Bab al-Khalil (Gate of Hebron), and Bab al-Muntar (Gate of Tell al-Muntar). Some of the older buildings use the ''ablaq'' style of decoration which features red and white masonry, prevalent in the Mamluk era. A few of Gaza's main markets, such as the Gold Market as well as the city's oldest mosque, the Great Mosque of Gaza, are located here. In the Zaytoun Quarter lies the Church of Saint Porphyrius, the Welayat Mosque, and Hamam as-Sammara ("the Samaritan's Bathhouse").

Gaza is composed of eleven districts (''hai'') outside of the Old City. The first extension of Gaza beyond its city centre was the district of Shuja'iyya, built on an eastern hill during the Ayyubid period of rule. In the 1930s and 1940s, a new spacial residential district, Rimal, was constructed on the sand dunes west of the city center, and the district of Zeitoun was built along Gaza's southern and southwestern borders, while Shuja'iyya expanded into the east to form the al-Judeide ("the New") and al-Turukman districts.

The areas between Rimal and the Old City became the districts of al-Sabra and al-Daraj. To the northwest is the district of al-Nasser, built in the early 1950s and named in honor of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. To the northeast is the district of Tuffah, which is roughly divided into eastern and western halves. The district of Sheikh Radwan is to the north of the Old City and is named after Sheikh Radwan—the tomb of whom is located within the district. Gaza has absorbed the village of al-Qubbah near the border with Israel, as well as the Palestinian refugee camp of al-Shati along the coast, although the latter is not under the city's municipal jurisdiction. In the late 1990s, the PNA built the more affluent neighborhood of Tel al-Hawa along the southern edge of Rimal. Along the southern coast of the city is the neighborhood of Sheikh Ijlin.

Climate

Gaza has a relatively temperate Mediterranean climate with mild winters and dry, warm to hot summers. Spring arrives around March–April and the hottest months are July and August, with the average high being . The coldest month is January with temperatures usually at . Rain is scarce and generally falls between November and March, with annual precipitation rates approximately at . |date=August 2010 }}

Demographics

Population

Year	! Population
1596	6,000
1838	15,000-16,000
1882	16,000
1897	36,000
1906	40,000
1914	42,000
1922	17,426
1945	32,250
1982	100,272
1997	306,113
2004 (Projected)	342,247
2006 (Projected)	395,680
2009	449,221

According to Ottoman tax records in 1557, Gaza had 2,477 male tax payers. The statistics from 1596 show that the Muslims consisted of 456 household heads, 115 bachelors, 59 religious persons, and 19 disabled persons. In addition to the Muslim figure were 141 ''jundiyan'' or soldiers in the Ottoman army. Of the Christians there were 294 household heads and seven bachelors, while there were 73 Jewish household heads and eight Samaritan household heads. In total, an estimated 6,000 people lived in Gaza, making it the third largest city in Ottoman Palestine after Jerusalem and Safad.

In 1838, there were roughly 4,000 Muslim and 100 Christian tax payers, implying a population of about 15,000 or 16,000—making it larger than Jerusalem at the time. The total number of Christian families was 57. Before the outbreak of World War I, the population of Gaza had reached 42,000; however, the fierce battles between Allied Forces and those of the Ottomans and the Germans in 1917 in Gaza resulted in a massive population decrease.

According to a 1997 census by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), Gaza and the adjacent al-Shati camp had a population of 353,115 inhabitants, of which 50.9% were males and 49.1% females. Gaza had an overwhelmingly young population with more than half being between the ages of infancy to 19 (60.8%). About 28.8% were between the ages of 20 to 44, 7.7% between 45 and 64, and 3.9% were over the age of 64.

A significant number of Gaza's pre-1948 residents were Egyptians or their descendants who had fled political turmoil in Muhammad Ali's Egypt. A massive influx of Palestinian refugees swelled Gaza's population after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. By 1967, the population had grown to about six times its 1948 size. In 1997, 51.8% of Gaza's inhabitants were refugees or their descendants. The city's population has continued to increase since that time to 449,221 in 2009, making it the largest city in the Palestinian territories. Gaza has one of the highest overall growth rates and population densities in the world: 9,982.69/km² (26,424.76/mi²). Poverty, unemployment and poor living conditions are widespread and many residents rely on United Nations food aid to survive.

Religion

The population of Gaza is overwhelmingly composed of Muslims, who mostly follow Sunni Islam. While held by the Fatimids, Shia Islam was dominant in Gaza, but after Saladin conquered the city, he promoted a strictly Sunni religious and educational policy, which at the time was instrumental in uniting his Arab and Turkish soldiers.

There exists a small minority of about 3,500 Palestinian Christians in the city. The majority of Gaza's Christians live in the Zaytoun Quarter of the Old City and belong to the Eastern Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, Roman Catholic, and Baptist denominations. In 1906, there were only 750 Christians, of which 700 were Orthodox and 50 were Roman Catholic.

Gaza's Jewish community was roughly 3,000 years old, and in 1481 there were sixty Jewish households. Most of them left Gaza after the 1929 Palestine riots, when they consisted of fifty families. In Sami Hadawi's land and population survey, Gaza had a population of 34,250, including 80 Jews in 1945. Most of them left the city after the 1948 War, due to mutual distrust between them and the Arab majority.

Economy

Nineteenth century

Gaza was among six soap-producing cities in Palestine, overshadowed by Nablus. Gaza's factories purchased ''qilw'' from merchants from Nablus and Salt, Jordan. Gaza's port was eclipsed by the ports of Jaffa and Haifa, however, it retained its fishing fleet. Although its port was inactive, commerce thrived because of its strategic location. Most caravans and travelers coming from Egypt stopped in Gaza for supplies, likewise Bedouins from Ma'an, east of the Wadi Araba, bought up all sorts of provisions from the city to sell to Muslim pilgrims coming from Mecca. The bazaars of Gaza were well-supplied and were noted by Edward Robinson as "far better" than those of Jerusalem. Its principal commercial crop was cotton which was sold to the government and local Arab tribes.

Contemporary economy

The economy of Gaza grew by 8% in the first 11 months of 2010, and by 5.4% in 2009. Economic activity is largely supported by foreign aid donations, with the latter regarded as the main reason for recent growth.

The major agricultural products are strawberries, citrus, dates, olives, flowers, and various vegetables. Pollution and massive population pressure on water have reduced the productive capacity of the surrounding farms, however.

Small-scale industries in the city include the production of plastics, construction materials, textiles, furniture, pottery, tiles, copperware, and carpets. Following the Oslo Accords, thousands of residents were employed in the various government ministries and security services, while others were employed by the UNRWA and other international organizations that support development of the city. Gaza contains some minor industries, including textiles and food processing. A variety of wares are sold in Gaza's street bazaars, including carpets, pottery, wicker furniture, and cotton clothing; the modern Gaza Mall opened in July 2010.

There are a number of hotels in Gaza, including the Palestine, Grand Palace, Adam, al-Amal, al-Quds, Cliff, al-Deira and Marna House. All, except the Palestine Hotel, are located along in the coastal Rimal district. The United Nations (UN) has a beach club on the same street. Gaza is not a frequent destination for tourists, and most foreigners who stay in hotels are journalists, aid workers, UN and Red Cross personnel. Upmarket hotels include the al-Quds and the al-Deira Hotel.

Many Gazans worked in the Israeli service industry when the border was open, but part of Israel's 2005 disengagement stipulated that Gazans will no longer be able to work in Israel and few Gazans are presently allowed to enter Israel. Gaza has serious deficiencies in housing, educational facilities, health facilities, infrastructure, and an inadequate sewage system, all of which have contributed to serious hygiene and public health problems.

According to a recent report by OXFAM, unemployment in Gaza is close to 40% and is set to rise to 50%. The private sector which generates 53% of all jobs in Gaza has been devastated, businesses have been bankrupted and 75,000 out of 110,000 workers are now without a jobs. In 2008, 95% of Gaza's industrial operations were suspended due to lack of access inputs for production and the inability to export what is produced. In June 2005, there were 3,900 factories in Gaza employing 35,000 people, but by December 2007, there were just 195 remaining, employing only 1,700 people. The construction industry was paralyzed with tens of thousands of laborers out of work. The agriculture sector has also been damaged severely and nearly 40,000 workers who depend on cash crops now have no income.

Gaza's economic conditions have been stagnant in the long-term and most development indicators are in decline. Food prices have risen during the blockade, with wheat flour going up 34%, rice up 21%, and baby powder up 30%. The number of Gazans who live in absolute poverty has increased sharply, with 80% relying on humanitarian aid in 2008 compared to 63% in 2006. In 2007, households spent an average of 62% of their total income on food, compared to 37% in 2004. In less than a decade, the number of families depending on UNRWA food aid has increased tenfold.

Culture

Cultural centers and museums

The Rashad Shawa Cultural Center, located in Rimal, was completed in 1988 and named after its founder, former mayor Rashad al-Shawa. A two-story building with a triangular plan, the cultural centers performs three main functions: a meeting place for large gatherings during annual festivals, a place to stage exhibitions, and a library. The French Cultural Center is a symbol of French partnership and cooperation in Gaza. It holds art exhibits, concerts, film screenings, and other activities. Whenever possible, French artists are invited to display their artwork, and more frequently, Palestinian artists from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are invited to participate in art competitions.

Established in 1998, the Arts and Crafts Village is a children's cultural center with the objectives of promoting comprehensive, regular and periodic documentation of creative art in all of its forms. It interacted on a large scale with a class of artists from different nationalities and organized around 100 exhibitions for creative art, ceramics, graphics, carvings and others. Nearly 10,000 children from throughout the Gaza Strip have benefited from the Arts and Crafts Village.

Gaza has one film theater, the Gaza Theater, which opened in 2004 using donated equipment and movies from Norway. The theater is not properly equipped and does not receive much funding from the PNA, depending mostly on donations from foreign aid agencies. The Qattan Foundation, a Palestinian arts charity, runs several workshops throughout Gaza that helps the local youth find artistic skills and give teachers basic drama skills. In 2005, the Gaza Theater Festival was held, playing in makeshift venues, although no foreign theater companies attended, as well as any company from the West Bank or Israel's Arab community.

The Gaza Museum of Archaeology, founded by Jawdat N. Khoudary, was opened in the summer of 2008. The exhibition is in a hall made partly of stones from old houses, discarded wood ties of a former railroad, and bronze lamps and marble columns uncovered by Gazan fishermen and construction workers. The museum collection features thousands of items, but some will not go on display, including a statue of a full-breasted Aphrodite in a diaphanous gown, images of other ancient deities and oil lamps featuring menorahs.

The Crazy Water Park was built in 2010, but shortly the water park was burned down by a group of about 40 masked individuals in a move that was seen by human rights groups as part of the increasing Islamization of Gaza.

Cuisine

Gaza's cuisine is characterized by its generous use of spices and chillies. Other major flavors and ingredients include dill, chard, garlic, cumin, lentils, chickpeas, pomegranates, sour plums and tamarind. Many of the traditional dishes rely on clay-pot cooking, which preserves the flavor and texture of the vegetables and results in fork-tender meat. Traditionally, most Gazan dishes are seasonal and rely on ingredients indigenous to the area and its surrounding villages. Poverty has also played an important role in determining many of the city's simple meatless dishes and stews, such as ''saliq wa adas'' ("chard and lentils") and ''bisara'' (skinless fava beans mashed with dried mulukhiya leaves and chilies).

Seafood is a key aspect of Gaza life and a local staple, but in recent years, due to Israeli restrictions on Palestinian fishing zones off Gaza’s coast, the industry has been in decline, and seafood prices have skyrocketed. Some well-known seafood dishes include ''zibdiyit gambari'', literally, "shrimps in a clay pot", and ''shatta'' which are crabs stuffed with red hot chili pepper dip, then baked in the oven. Fish is either fried or grilled after being stuffed with cilantro, garlic, chillies and cumin, and marinated with various spices. It is also a key ingredient in ''sayyadiya'', rice cooked with caramelized onions, a generous amount of whole garlic cloves, large chunks of well-marinated fried fish, and spices such as turmeric, cinnamon, and cumin.

Many of the 1948-era refugees were ''fellahin'' ("peasants") who would rely on eating seasonally, based on what they grew and these refugees highly influenced the basic cuisine of Gaza. Due to its geographic isolation from the rest of Palestine, as a result of decades of occupation, many of its dishes have not been heard of outside of Gaza. One of the most popular dishes is called ''sumaghiyyeh''.

Gaza has several restaurants, most of the well-known located in the posh Rimal district. Al-Andalus, which specializes in fish and seafood, is particularly popular with tourists, as are al-Sammak and the upscale Roots Club. Throughout the Old City there are street stalls that sell cooked beans, hummus, roasted sweet potatoes, falafel, and kebabs. Coffeehouses (''qahwa'') regularly accommodate locals with hookah (''sheesha''), Arabic coffee, and tea. Gaza's well-known sweet shops, Saqqala and Arafat, sell common Arab sweet products and are located off Wehda Street. Alcohol is a rarity, found only in the United Nations Beach Club.

Costumes and embroidery

Gauze is reputed to have originated in Gaza. Cloth for the Gaza ''thob'' was often woven at nearby Majdal (Ascalon). Black or blue cottons or striped pink and green fabric that had been made in Majdal continued to be woven throughout the Gaza Strip by refugees from the coastal plain villages until the 1960s. ''Thobs'' here had narrow, tight, straight sleeves. Embroidery was much less dense than that applied in Hebron. The most popular motifs included: scissors (''muqass''), combs (''mushut'') and triangles (''hijab'') often arranged in clusters of fives, sevens and threes, as the use of odd numbers is considered in Arab folklore to be effective against the evil eye.

In recent decades, Hamas and other Islamic movements sought to increase the use of the ''hijab'' ("headscarf") among Gazan women, especially urban and educated women, and the ''hijab'' styles since introduced have varied according to class and group identity.

Sports

Palestine Stadium, the Palestinian national stadium, is located in Gaza and has a capacity for 10,000 people. It serves as the home of the Palestine national football team, but after an Israeli air strike that severely damaged the stadium's field, home games have been played in Doha, Qatar. Gaza has several local football teams that participate in the Gaza Strip League. They include Khidmat al-Shatia (al-Shati Camp), Ittihad al-Shuja'iyya (Shuja'iyya neighborhood), Gaza Sports Club, and al-Zeitoun (Zeitoun neighborhood).

Government

Today, Gaza serves as the administrative capital of the Gaza Governorate. It contains the Palestinian Legislative Council building, as well as the headquarters of most of the Palestinian Authority ministries.

The first municipal council of Gaza was formed in 1893 under the chairmanship of Ali Khalil Shawa. Modern mayorship, however, began in 1906 with his son Said al-Shawa, who was appointed mayor by the Ottoman Authorities. Al-Shawa oversaw the construction of Gaza's first hospital, several new mosques and schools, the restoration of the Great Mosque, and the introduction of the modern plow to the city.

On July 24, 1994, the PNA proclaimed Gaza the first city council in the Palestinian territories. The 2005 Palestinian municipal elections were not held in Gaza, nor in Khan Yunis or Rafah. Instead, Fatah party officials selected the smaller cities, towns, and villages to hold elections, assuming they would do better in less urban areas. The rival Hamas party, however, won the majority of seats in seven of the ten municipalities selected for the first round with voter turnout being around 80%. 2007 saw violent clashes between the two parties that left over 100 dead, ultimately resulting in Hamas taking over the city. Normally, Palestinian municipalities with populations over 20,000 and that serve as administrative centers have municipal councils consisting of fifteen members, including the mayor. The current municipal council of Gaza, however, consists of fourteen members, including the mayor, Rafiq al-Makki.

Mayors

Said al-Shawa (1906–1916)

Mahmoud Abu Khadra (1918–1924)

Omar Sourani (1924–1928)

Fahmi al-Husseini (1928–1939)

Rushdi al-Shawa (1939–1952)

Omar Suwan (1952–1955)

Munir al-Rayyes (1955–1965)

Ragheb al-Alami (1965)

Rashad al-Shawa (1971–1982)

Hamza al-Turkmani (1982–1994)

Aoun al-Shawa (1994–2001)

Nasri Khayal (2001–2005)

Majed Abu Ramadan (2005–2008)

Rafiq al-Makki (2008–present)

Education

According to the PCBS, in 1997, approximately over 90% of Gaza's population over the age of 10 was literate. Of the city's population, 140,848 were enrolled in schools (39.8% in elementary school, 33.8% in secondary school, and 26.4% in high school). About 11,134 people received bachelor diplomas or higher diplomas.

In 2006, there were 210 schools in Gaza; 151 were run by the Education Ministry of the Palestinian National Authority, 46 were run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, and 13 were private schools. A total of 154,251 students were enrolled and 5,877 teachers were employed. The currently downtrodden economy has affected education in the Gaza Strip severely. In September 2007, a UNRWA survey in the Gaza Strip revealed that there was a nearly 80% failure rate in schools grades four to nine, with up to 90% failure rates in mathematics. In January 2008, the United Nations Children's Fund reported that schools in Gaza had been canceling classes that were high on energy consumption, such as information technology, science labs and extra curricular activities.

Gaza has four universities: al-Azhar University – Gaza, al-Quds Open University, al-Aqsa University and the Islamic University of Gaza. The Islamic University, consisting of ten facilities, was founded by Ahmed Yassin and a group of businessmen in 1978, making it the first institution of higher education in Gaza. In 2006–07, it had an enrollment of 20,021 students. Al-Azhar is generally secular and was founded in 1992. Al-Aqsa University was established in 1991. Al-Quds Open University established its Gaza Educational Region campus in 1992 in a rented building in the center of the city originally with 730 students. Because of the rapid increase of the number of students, it constructed the first university owned building in the Nasser District. In 2006–07, it had an enrollment of 3,778 students.

The Public Library of Gaza is located off al-Wahda Street and has a collection of nearly 10,000 books in Arabic, English and French. A total area of about , the building consists of two floors and a basement. The library was opened in 1999 after cooperation dating from 1996 by Gaza under mayor Aoun Shawa, the municipality of Dunkerque, and the World Bank. The library's primary objectives are to provide sources of information that meets the needs of beneficiaries, provide necessary facilities for access to available information sources, and organizing various cultural programs such as, cultural events, seminars, lectures, film presentations, videos, art and book exhibitions.

Local infrastructure

Landmarks

Landmarks in Gaza include the Great Mosque in the Old City. Originally a pagan temple, it was consecrated a Greek Orthodox church by the Byzantines, then a mosque in the 8th century by the Arabs. The Crusaders transformed it into a church, but it was reestablished as a mosque soon after Gaza's reconquest by the Muslims. It is the oldest and largest in the Gaza Strip and was identified as the "only structure of historical importance" in the city by some 19th century Western travelers.

Other mosques in the Old City include the Mamluk-era Sayed Hashem Mosque that believed to house the tomb of Hashem ibn Abd al-Manaf in its dome. There is also the nearby Welayat Mosque that dates back to 1334. In Shuja'iyya, the Ibn Uthman Mosque was built by Nablus native Ahmad ibn Uthman in 1402 and the Ibn Marwan Mosque, housing the tomb of a holy man, was built in 1324.

The Unknown Soldier's Square, located in Rimal, is a monument dedicated to an unknown Palestinian fighter who died in the 1948 War. In 1967, the monument was torn down by Israeli forces and remained a patch of sand, until a public garden was built there with funding from Norway. Qasr al-Basha, originally a Mamluk-era villa that was used by Napoleon during his brief sojourn in Gaza, is located in the Old City and is today a girl's school. The Commonwealth Gaza War Cemetery, often referred to as the British War Cemetery, that contains the graves of fallen Allied soldiers in World War I is in the Tuffah neighborhood.

Utilities

According to the 1997 census by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 98.1% of Gaza's residents were connected to the public water supply while the remainder used a private system. About 87.6% were connected to a public sewage system and 11.8% used a cesspit.

The blockade on Gaza has severely restricted the water supply to the city and its sewage system. The six main wells for drinking water no longer function, and roughly 50% of the population is without access to water on a regular basis. The municipality claims it is forced to pump water to the citizens through "salty wells" because of the unavailability of electricity in some of the wells fails to meet the needs of the citizens. Most sewage plants struggle to work, and more than 75% of the untended sewage in the city, has periodically led to a rash of waste water to the homes of residents. About 20 million liters of raw sewage and 40 million liters of partially treated water per day leak to the Mediterranean Sea due to the lack of electricity, fuel and spare parts at Gaza's treatment plants. The municipality claims that accumulation of garbage in the streets, roads, wells, and sewage overflow cause the risk of disease outbreaks and insect epidemics, as well as mice and in residential areas.

Health care

One of the first hospitals in Gaza was al-Shifa ("the Cure") founded in the Rimal District by the British Mandate government in the 1940s. Housed in an army barracks, it originally provided quarantine and treatment for febrile diseases. When Egypt administered Gaza, this original department was relocated and al-Shifa became the city's central hospital. When Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip after occupying it in the 1956 Suez Crisis, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser had al-Shifa hospital expanded and improved. He also ordered the establishment of a second hospital in the Nasser District with the same name. In 1957, the quarantine and febrile disease hospital was rebuilt and named Nasser Hospital. Today, al-Shifa remains Gaza's largest medical complex.

Throughout the late 1950s, a new health administration, Bandar Gaza ("Gaza Region"), was established and headed by Haidar Abdel-Shafi. Bandar Gaza rented several rooms throughout the city to set up government clinics, but they were fairly basic, just providing essential curative care.

The Ahli Arab Hospital, originally founded in 1907 by the Church Missionary Society (CMS), was destroyed in World War I. It was rebuilt as the Southern Baptist Hospital in the 1950s. In 1982, the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem took leadership and the original name was restored. Al-Quds Hospital, located in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood and managed by the Palestine Red Crescent Society, is the second largest hospital in Gaza.

As a result of fuel and electricity restrictions, hospitals currently experience power cuts lasting for 8–12 hours daily. There is currently a 60-70 percent shortage reported in the diesel required for power generators. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the proportion of patients given permits to exit Gaza for medical care decreased from 89.3% in January 2007 to 64.3% in December 2007, an unprecedented low.

Transportation

The Rasheed Coastal Road runs along Gaza's coastline and connects it with the rest of Gaza Strip's coastline north and south. The main road of the Gaza Strip, Salah ad-Din Street (the modern Via Maris) runs through the middle of Gaza City, connecting it with Deir al-Balah, Khan Yunis, and Rafah in the south and Jabalia and Beit Hanoun in the north. The northern crossing of Salah ad-Din Street into Israel is the Erez Crossing and the crossing into Egypt is the Rafah Crossing. The crossings have been closed by Israel and Egypt since 2007.

Omar Mukhtar Street is the main road in the city of Gaza running north-south, branching off Salah ad-Din Street, stretching from the Rimal coastline and the Old City where it ends at the Gold Market. Prior to the Blockade of the Gaza Strip, there existed regular lines of collective taxis to Ramallah and Hebron in the West Bank.

The Yasser Arafat International Airport near Rafah opened in 1998 and is south of Gaza. Its runways and facilities became significantly damaged during the Second Intifada. The Ben Gurion International Airport in Israel is located roughly northeast of the city.

International relations

Twin towns and sister cities

Gaza is twinned with:

	* Dunkerque, France (1996)	* Tel Aviv, Israel (1998) Note: Reaffirmed by Tel Aviv in 2008	* Turin, Italy (1997)	* Tabriz, Iran		* Tromsø, Norway (2001)	* Cascais, Portugal	* Barcelona, Spain (1998)	Cáceres, Spain>Cáceres, Spain (2010)

See also

List of cities in Palestinian National Authority areas

Little Gaza

Gaza War

References

Mozgovaya, Natasha (5 June 2011). "Gaza, the most Facebook friendly place on earth." Haaretz

Bibliography

External links

WebGaza.net: Gaza, Palestine

GAZA Museum "Al Mat'haf"

Municipality of Gaza

Gaza at Google Maps

Rashdan, Abdelrahman (2008-04-29), Myths and Facts about Gaza (FAQs)''IslamOnline.net''

Gaza Strip and Jews in Gaza until 1929 (history) – highest density of population worldwide since 1949 (from Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971)

Gaza in Ottoman Times

Category:Cities in the Gaza Strip Category:Populated coastal places * Category:Gaza Governorate Category:Hebrew Bible cities Category:Philistine cities Category:Cities and towns of the Byzantine Empire

af:Gasa ang:Gaza ar:غزة bn:গাজা সিটি bs:Gaza (grad) br:Gaza bg:Газа ca:Gaza ceb:Dakbayan sa Gaza cs:Gaza cy:Gaza da:Gaza pdc:Gaesa de:Gaza (Stadt) et:Gaza es:Gaza eo:Gaza-urbo eu:Gaza (hiria) fa:غزه (شهر) fr:Gaza gd:Gaza gl:Gaza, Palestina ko:가자 hy:Ղազա hi:ग़ज़ा hr:Gaza (grad) id:Gaza os:Газæ it:Gaza he:עזה sw:Gaza la:Gaza lt:Gaza mr:गाझा ms:Gaza nl:Gaza ja:ガザ no:Gaza (by) nov:Gaza pnb:غزہ pl:Gaza (Palestyna) pt:Gaza ru:Газа sco:Gaza scn:Gaza simple:Gaza sk:Gaza (mesto) ckb:غەززە sr:Газа sh:Gaza fi:Gaza (kaupunki) sv:Gaza kab:Gaza tt:Газзә tr:Gazze uk:Газа ur:غزہ vi:Gaza yi:עזה zh:加薩

Coordinates	15°48′00″N47°54′00″N
name	Rizwan Khan
birth date
birth place	Aden, South Yemen
education	University of Wales Medical Physiology (B.Sc.) University of Portsmouth Radio Journalism (B.A.)
occupation	Reporter and Anchor at Al Jazeera
years active
website	}}

Rizwan "Riz" Khan (born April 1962) is a British television news reporter and interviewer who until April 2011 hosted his own eponymous television show on Al Jazeera English. He first rose to prominence while working for the BBC and CNN.

Life and career

Khan was born in Aden, South Yemen, to a Punjabi father and Gujarati mother. His father's roots hail from Pakistan-administered Kashmir while his mother's roots go back to Kutch, Gujarat. He considers himself as a British Pakistani. Khan moved with his family to London, at the age of four. He attended both Springwell Junior and Hounslow Manor Comprehensive Schools and joined the Air Training Corps, and graduated with a Bachelor of Science with Honours in Medical Physiology from the University of Wales, and then completed a postgraduate course in Radio Journalism at the University of Portsmouth.

In 1987 he was selected for the BBC News Trainee scheme - a two-year BBC training system, usually taking only 6 people per course. Khan progressed to jobs as a BBC reporter, producer, and writer, working in both television and radio, and would later become one of the founding News Presenters on BBC World Service Television News. He hosted the news bulletin that launched BBC World Service Television News in 1991. In 1993, he moved to CNN International, where he became a senior anchor for the network's global news shows. Events he covered included the 1996 and 1999 coverage of elections in India; the 1997 historic election in Britain; and in April 1998 the unprecedented live coverage from the Muslim pilgrimage, the Hajj.

In 1996 he launched his interactive interview show ''CNN: Q&A; with Riz Khan'', and he has conducted interviews with guests including former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, former US Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela, and genomic scientist J. Craig Venter. Khan also secured the world exclusive with Pakistan's General Pervez Musharraf following his coup in October 1999. Khan also hosted ''Q&A-Asia; with Riz Khan''. These interactive shows put world newsmakers and celebrities up for viewer questions live by phone, e-mail, video-mail and fax, along with questions and comments taken from the real-time chatroom that opens half-an-hour before each show.

Khan hosted his show, ''Riz Khan'', on Al Jazeera English, interviewing analysts and policy makers and allows viewers to interact with them via phone, email, SMS messages or fax. The show came to an end in April 2011.

Khan speaks Urdu and Hindi and also understands other South Asian languages such as Punjabi and Kutchi. He has studied French, and can understand some other European languages, including Swedish.

In 2005 he authored his first book, ''Al-Waleed: Businessman Billionaire Prince'', published by Harper Collins.

In 2011 he authored a preface for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) annual report "Attacks on the Press 2010", which examined working conditions for journalists in more than 100 countries.

References

"Why I'm Joining Al Jazeera", op-ed by Riz Khan, ''The Wall Street Journal'', 13 June 2005, p. A1

"Q&A; CNN Anchor: Riz Khan". ''India Today''. February 19, 2001.

External links

Riz Khan's official website

Profile at Al Jazeera English

MySpace Profile

Interview with Baron Dave Romm of KFAI-FM at the Republican National Convention Sept. 2, 2008 and picture

Category:1962 births Category:Al Jazeera people Category:Alumni of Cardiff University Category:Alumni of the University of Portsmouth Category:British Muslims Category:British people of Indian descent Category:English people of Pakistani descent Category:British journalists Category:British television presenters Category:Living people Category:Punjabi people Category:Gujarati people Category:People from Aden

ar:ريز خان he:ריז ח'אן sw:Riz Khan no:Riz Khan

Coordinates	15°48′00″N47°54′00″N
Name	Norman Finkelstein
Birth date	December 08, 1953
Education	Binghamton University (B.A.)Princeton University (M.A.) Princeton University (Ph.D.)
Parents	Mother: Maryla Husyt Finkelstein Father: Zacharias Finkelstein
Nationality	American
Influences	Mohandas Gandhi, Noam Chomsky, John Stuart Mill
Website	normanfinkelstein.com }}

Norman Gary Finkelstein (born December 8, 1953) is an American political scientist, and author. His primary fields of research are the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust. He is a graduate of Binghamton University and received his Ph.D in Political Science from Princeton University. He has held faculty positions at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Hunter College, New York University, and, most recently, DePaul University, where he was an assistant professor from 2001 to 2007.

In 2007, after a highly publicized row between Finkelstein and a notable opponent of his, Alan Dershowitz, Finkelstein's tenure bid at DePaul was denied. Finkelstein was placed on administrative leave for the 2007-2008 academic year, and on September 5, 2007, he announced his resignation after coming to a settlement with the university on generally undisclosed terms. An official statement from DePaul strongly defended the decision to deny Finkelstein tenure, stated that outside influence played no role in the decision, and praised Finkelstein "as a prolific scholar and outstanding teacher."

Personal background and education

Finkelstein has written of his parents' experiences during World War II. His mother, Maryla Husyt Finkelstein, grew up in Warsaw, Poland, survived the Warsaw Ghetto, the Majdanek concentration camp, and two slave labor camps. Her first husband died in the war. She considered the day of her liberation as the most horrible day of her life, as she realized that she was alone, her parents and siblings gone. Norman's father, Zacharias Finkelstein, was a survivor of both the Warsaw Ghetto and the Auschwitz concentration camp. After immigrating to the United States, his father became a factory worker, while his mother was a homemaker. Finkelstein's mother was an ardent pacifist. Both his parents died in 1995.

Finkelstein grew up in New York City, where he attended James Madison High School and was a childhood friend of U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who was two years ahead of him. In his forthcoming memoir, Finkelstein recalls his strong youthful identification with the outrage that his mother, witness to the genocidal atrocities of World War II, felt at the carnage wrought by the United States in Vietnam. One childhood friend recalls his mother's "emotional investment in left-wing humanitarian causes as bordering on hysteria." He had 'internalized (her) indignation', a trait which he admits rendered him 'insufferable' when talking of the Vietnam War, and which imbued him with a 'holier-than-thou' attitude at the time which he now regrets. But Finkelstein regards his absorption of his mother's outlook — the refusal to put aside a sense of moral outrage in order to get on with one's life — as a virtue. Subsequently, his reading of Noam Chomsky played a seminal role in tailoring the passion bequeathed to him by his mother to the necessity of maintaining intellectual rigor in the pursuit of the truth.

He completed his undergraduate studies at Binghamton University in New York in 1974, after which he studied at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. He went on to earn his Master's degree in political science from Princeton University in 1980, and later his PhD in political studies, also from Princeton. Finkelstein wrote his doctoral thesis on Zionism, and it was through this work that he first attracted controversy. Before gaining academic employment, Finkelstein was a part-time social worker with teenage dropouts in New York. He then taught successively at Rutgers University, New York University, Brooklyn College, and Hunter College and, until recently, taught at DePaul University in Chicago. According to ''The New York Times'' he left Hunter College in 2001 "after his teaching load and salary were reduced" by the college administration.

Beginning with his doctoral thesis at Princeton, Finkelstein's career has been marked by controversy. A self-described "forensic scholar," he has written sharply critical academic reviews of several prominent writers and scholars whom he accuses of misrepresenting the documentary record in order to defend Israel's policies and practices. His writings, noted for their support of the Palestinian cause, have dealt with politically charged topics such as Zionism, the demographic history of Palestine and his allegations of the existence of a "Holocaust Industry" that exploits the memory of the Holocaust to further Israeli and financial interests. Citing linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky as an example, Finkelstein notes that it is "possible to unite exacting scholarly rigor with scathing moral outrage," and supporters and detractors alike have remarked on the polemical style of Finkelstein's work. Its content has been praised by eminent historians such as Raul Hilberg and Avi Shlaim, as well as Chomsky.

Finkelstein has described himself as "an old-fashioned communist," in the sense that he "see(s) no value whatsoever in states."

Academic career

On ''From Time Immemorial''

In Finkelstein's doctoral thesis, he examined the claims made in Joan Peters's ''From Time Immemorial'', a best-selling book at the time.

Peters's "history and defense" of Israel deals with the demographic history of Palestine. Demographic studies had tended to assert that the Arab population of Ottoman-controlled Palestine, a 94% majority at the turn of the century, had dwindled towards parity due to massive Zionist immigration. Peters radically challenged this picture by arguing that a substantial part of the Palestinian people were descended from emigrants from other Arab countries from the early 19th century onwards. It followed, for Peters and many of her readers, that the picture of a native Palestinian population overwhelmed by Jewish immigration was little more than propaganda, and that in actuality two almost simultaneous waves of immigration met in what had been a relatively unpopulated land.

''From Time Immemorial'' had been effusively praised in mainstream United States media sources by figures as varied as Barbara Tuchman, Theodore H. White, Elie Wiesel, and Lucy Dawidowicz. Saul Bellow, for one, wrote in a jacket endorsement that: :"Millions of people the world over, smothered by false history and propaganda, will be grateful for this clear account of the origins of the Palestinians."

Finkelstein asserted that the book was nothing more than what he now calls a "monumental hoax". He later opined that, while Peters's book received widespread interest and approval in the United States, a scholarly demonstration of its fraudulence and unreliability aroused little attention:

:"By the end of 1984, ''From Time Immemorial'' had...received some two hundred [favorable] notices ... in the United States. The only 'false' notes in this crescendoing chorus of praise were the ''Journal of Palestine Studies'', which ran a highly critical review by Bill Farrell; the small Chicago-based newsweekly ''In These Times'', which published a condensed version of this writer's findings; and Alexander Cockburn, who devoted a series of columns in ''The Nation'' exposing the hoax. ... The periodicals in which ''From Time Immemorial'' had already been favorably reviewed refused to run any critical correspondence (e.g. ''The New Republic'', ''The Atlantic Monthly'', ''Commentary''). Periodicals that had yet to review the book rejected a manuscript on the subject as of little or no consequence (e.g. ''The Village Voice'', ''Dissent'', ''The New York Review of Books''). Not a single national newspaper or columnist contacted found newsworthy that a best-selling, effusively praised 'study' of the Middle East conflict was a threadbare hoax."

Noam Chomsky later reminisced:

:"I warned him, if you follow this, you're going to get in trouble—because you're going to expose the American intellectual community as a gang of frauds, and they are not going to like it, and they're going to destroy you."

In 1986, the ''New York Review of Books'' published Yehoshua Porath's review and an exchange with critics of the review in which he criticized the assumptions and evidence on which Peters's thesis relied, thus lending independent support from an expert in Palestinian demographics to Finkelstein's doctoral critique. In the house journal of the American Council on Foreign Relations, ''Foreign Affairs'', William B. Quandt, the Edward Stettinius professor of Politics at the University of Virginia and authority on Middle Eastern politics, later described Finkelstein's critique of ''From Time Immemorial'' as a "landmark essay" and a "victory to his credit", in its "demonstration" of the "shoddy scholarship" of Peters's book.

According to Noam Chomsky, the controversy that surrounded Finkelstein's research caused a delay in his earning his Ph.D. at Princeton University. Chomsky wrote in ''Understanding Power'' that Finkelstein "literally could not get the faculty to read [his dissertation]" and that Princeton eventually granted Finkelstein his doctorate only "out of embarrassment [for Princeton]" but refused to give him any further professional backing.

Finkelstein published portions of his thesis in the following publications:

"Disinformation and the Palestine Question: The Not-So-Strange Case of Joan Peters's ''From Time Immemorial''." Chapter 2 of ''Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question'' (1988); and

"A Land Without a People (Joan Peters' "Wilderness" Image)." Chapter 2 of ''Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict'' (1995).

''The Holocaust Industry''

''The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering'' was published in 2000. Here, Finkelstein argues that Elie Wiesel and others exploit the memory of the Holocaust as an "ideological weapon." This is so the state of Israel, "one of the world's most formidable military powers, with a horrendous human rights record, [can] cast itself as a victim state" in order to garner "immunity to criticism." He also alleges what he calls a "double shakedown" by "a repellent gang of plutocrats, hoodlums and hucksters" seeking enormous legal damages and financial settlements from Germany and Switzerland, moneys which then go to the lawyers and institutional actors involved in procuring them, rather than actual Holocaust survivors.

The book met with a hostile reception in some quarters, with critics charging that it was poorly researched and/or allowed others to exploit it for antisemitic purposes. For example, German historian Hans Mommsen disparaged the first edition as "a most trivial book, which appeals to easily aroused anti-Semitic prejudices." Israeli holocaust historian Israel Gutman called the book "a lampoon," stating "this is not research; it isn't even political literature... I don't even think it should be reviewed or critiqued as a legitimate book." The book was also harshly criticized by Brown University Professor Omer Bartov and University of Chicago Professor Peter Novick.

Finkelstein also had his supporters however. Raul Hilberg, widely regarded as the founder of Holocaust studies, said the book expressed views Hilberg himself subscribed to in substance, in that he too found the exploitation of the Holocaust, in the manner Finkelstein describes, 'detestable.' Asked on another occasion if Finkelstein's analysis might play into the hands of neo-Nazis for antisemitic purposes, Hilberg replied: 'Well, even if they do use it in that fashion, I'm afraid that when it comes to the truth, it has to be said openly, without regard to any consequences that would be undesirable, embarrassing.'

Criticism of Alan Dershowitz's ''The Case for Israel''

Shortly after the publication of the book ''The Case for Israel'' by Alan Dershowitz, Finkelstein derided it as "a collection of fraud, falsification, plagiarism, and nonsense". During a debate on Democracy Now!, Finkelstein asserted that Dershowitz lacked knowledge about specific contents of his own book, Finkelstein also claimed that Dershowitz did not write the book, and may not have even read it. Finkelstein noted 20 instances, in as many pages, where Dershowitz's book cites the same sources and passages used by Joan Peters in her book, in largely the same sequence, with ellipses in the same places. In two instances, Dershowitz reproduces Peters's errors (see below). From this Finkelstein concluded that Dershowitz had not checked the original sources himself, contrary to the latter's claims. Finkelstein suggests that this copying of quotations amounts to copying ideas. Examining a copy of a proof of Dershowitz's book he managed to obtain, he found evidence that Dershowitz had his secretarial assistant, Holly Beth Billington, check in the Harvard library the sources he had read in Peters's book. Dershowitz answered the charge in a letter to the University of California's Press Director Lynne Withey, arguing that Finkelstein had made up the ''smoking gun'' quotation, in that he had changed its wording (from 'cite' to 'copy') in his book. In public debate he has stated that if "somebody borrowed the quote without going to check back on whether Mark Twain had said that, obviously that would be a serious charge"; however, he insisted emphatically that he himself did not do that, that he had indeed checked the original source by Twain.

Dershowitz threatened libel action over the charges in Finkelstein's book, and, consequently, Finkelstein deleted the word "plagiarism" from the text before publication. Finkelstein also removed the charge that Dershowitz was not the true author of ''The Case for Israel'' because, as the publisher said, "he couldn't document that."

Asserting that he did consult the original sources, Dershowitz says that Finkelstein is simply accusing him of good scholarly practice: citing references he learned of initially from Peters's book. Dershowitz denies that he used any of Peters's ideas without citation. "Plagiarism is taking someone else's words and claiming they're your own. There are no borrowed words from anybody. There are no borrowed ideas from anybody because I fundamentally disagree with the conclusions of Peters's book." In a footnote in ''The Case for Israel'' which cites Peters's book, Dershowitz explicitly denies that he "relies" on Peters for "conclusions or data".

In their joint interview on ''Democracy Now'', however, Finkelstein cited specific passages in Dershowitz's book in which a phrase that he says Peters coined was incorrectly attributed to George Orwell:

"[Peters] coins the phrase, 'turnspeak', she says she's using it as a play off of George Orwell which as all listeners know used the phrase 'Newspeak.' She coined her own phrase, 'turnspeak.' You go to Mr. Dershowitz's book, he got so confused in his massive borrowings from Joan Peters that on two occasions, I'll cite them for those who have a copy of the book, on page 57 and on page 153 he uses the phrase, quote, George Orwell's 'turnspeak.' 'Turnspeak' is not Orwell, Mr. Dershowitz, you're the Felix Frankfurter chair at Harvard, you must know that Orwell would never use such a clunky phrase as 'turnspeak'."

James O. Freedman, the former president of Dartmouth College, the University of Iowa, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has defended Dershowitz:

I do not understand [Finkelstein's] charge of plagiarism against Alan Dershowitz. There is no claim that Dershowitz used the words of others without attribution. When he uses the words of others, he quotes them properly and generally cites them to the original sources (Mark Twain, Palestine Royal Commission, etc.) [Finkelstein's] complaint is that instead he should have cited them to the secondary source, in which Dershowitz may have come upon them. But as ''The Chicago Manual of Style'' emphasizes: 'Importance of attribution. With all reuse of others' materials, it is important to identify the original as the source. This not only bolsters the claims of fair use, it also helps avoid any accusation of plagiarism.' This is precisely what Dershowitz did.

Responding to an article in ''The Nation'' by Alexander Cockburn, Dershowitz also cited ''The Chicago Manual of Style'':

Cockburn's claim is that some of the quotes should not have been cited to their original sources but rather to a secondary source, where he believes I stumbled upon them. Even if he were correct that I found all these quotations in Peters's book, the preferred method of citation is to the original source, as ''The Chicago Manual of Style'' emphasizes: "With all reuse of others' materials, it is important to identify the original as the source. This...helps avoid any accusation of plagiarism...To cite a source from a secondary source ('quoted in...') is generally to be discouraged...."

...to which Cockburn responded:

Quoting ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', Dershowitz artfully implies that he followed the rules by citing "the original" as opposed to the secondary source, Peters. He misrepresents Chicago here, where "the original" means merely the origin of the borrowed material, which is, in this instance, Peters.

Now look at the second bit of the quote from Chicago, chastely separated from the preceding sentence by a demure three-point ellipsis. As my associate Kate Levin has discovered, this passage ("To cite a source from a secondary source...") occurs on page 727, which is no less than 590 pages later than the material before the ellipsis, in a section titled "Citations Taken from Secondary Sources." Here's the full quote, with what Dershowitz left out set in bold: "'Quoted in.' To cite a source from a secondary source ("quoted in") is generally to be discouraged, since authors are expected to have examined the works they cite. If an original source is unavailable, however, both the original and the secondary source must be listed."

So Chicago is clearly insisting that unless Dershowitz went to the originals, he was obliged to cite Peters. Finkelstein has conclusively demonstrated that he didn't go to the originals. Plagiarism, QED, plus added time for willful distortion of the language of Chicago's guidelines, cobbling together two separate discussions.

On behalf of Dershowitz, Harvard Law School dean Elena Kagan asked former Harvard president Derek Bok to investigate the assertion of plagiarism; Bok exonerated Dershowitz of the charge.

Although the plagiarism allegations by Finkelstein received the most attention and attracted a lot of controversy, Finkelstein has maintained that "the real issue is Israel's human rights record." His book ''Beyond Chutzpah'' counters Dershowitz's claim that Israel's human rights record is "generally superb."

In an April 3, 2007 interview with the ''Harvard Crimson'', "Dershowitz confirmed that he had sent a letter last September to DePaul faculty members lobbying against Finkelstein's tenure."

In April 2007, Dr. Frank Menetrez, a former Editor-in-Chief of the UCLA Law Review, published an analysis of the charges made against Finkelstein by Alan Dershowitz, finding no merit in any single charge, and that, on the contrary, "Dershowitz is deliberately misrepresenting what Finkelstein wrote". In a follow-up analysis he concluded that he could find 'no way of avoiding the inference that Dershowitz copied the quotation from Twain from Peters's ''From Time Immemorial'', and not from the original source', as Dershowitz claimed.

Controversies

Tenure denial and resignation

In early 2007 the DePaul University Political Science department voted nine to three, and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Personnel Committee five to zero, in favor of giving Finkelstein tenure. The three opposing faculty members subsequently filed a minority report opposing tenure, supported by the Dean of the College, Chuck Suchar. Suchar stated he opposed tenure because Finkelstein's "personal and reputation demeaning attacks on Alan Dershowitz, Benny Morris, and the holocaust authors Elie Wiesel and Jerzy Kosinski" were inconsistent with DePaul's "Vincentian" values. Amidst considerable public debate, Alan Dershowitz actively campaigned to block Finkelstein's tenure bid. In June 2007, a 4-3 vote by DePaul University's Board on Promotion and Tenure (a faculty board), affirmed by the university's president, the Rev. Dennis Holtschneider, denied Finkelstein tenure.

The university denied that Dershowitz, who had been criticized for his campaign against Finkelstein's tenure, played any part in this decision. At the same time, the university denied tenure to international studies assistant professor Mehrene Larudee, a strong supporter of Finkelstein, despite unanimous support from her department, the Personnel Committee and the Dean. Finkelstein stated that he would engage in civil disobedience if attempts were made to bar him from teaching his students.

The Faculty Council later affirmed the right of Professors Finkelstein and Larudee to appeal, which a university lawyer said was not possible. Council President Anne Bartlett said she was "'terribly concerned' correct procedure was not followed". DePaul's faculty association considered taking no confidence votes in administrators, including the president, because of the tenure denials. In a statement issued upon Finkelstein's resignation, DePaul called him "a prolific scholar and an outstanding teacher." Dershowitz expressed outrage at the compromise and this statement in particular, saying that the university had "traded truth for peace."

In June 2007, after two weeks of protests, DePaul students staged a sit-in and hunger strike in support of both professors denied tenure. The Illinois Conference of the American Association of University Professors also sent a letter to the university’s president stating: "It is entirely illegitimate for a university to deny tenure to a professor out of fear that his published research … might hurt a college’s reputation" and that the association has "explicitly rejected collegiality as an appropriate criterion for evaluating faculty members".

Denied entry to Israel in 2008

On May 23, 2008 Finkelstein was denied entry to Israel, according to unnamed Shin Bet security officials, because "of suspicions involving hostile elements in Lebanon" and that he "did not give a full accounting to interrogators with regard to these suspicions." Finkelstein had previously visited south Lebanon and met with Lebanese families during the 2006 Lebanon War. He was banned from entering Israel for 10 years.

Finkelstein was questioned after his arrival at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv and detained for 24 hours in a holding cell. After speaking to Israeli attorney Michael Sfard he was placed on a flight back to Amsterdam, his point of origin. In an interview with ''Haaretz'', Finkelstein stated "I did my best to provide absolutely candid and comprehensive answers to all the questions put to me. I am confident that I have nothing to hide... no suicide missions or secret rendezvous with terrorist organizations." He had been travelling to visit friends in the West Bank and stated he had no interest in visiting Israel. Sfard said banning Finkelstein from entering the country "recalls the behavior of the Soviet bloc countries."

Reception

Finkelstein's books are an attempt to examine the works of mainstream scholarship. The authors whose work he has thus targeted, including Daniel Jonah Goldhagen and Alan Dershowitz, along with others such as Benny Morris whose work Finkelstein has also cited approvingly, have in turn accused Finkelstein of grossly misrepresenting their work, and selectively quoting from their books.

Finkelstein's work has attracted a number of supporters and detractors across the political spectrum. Notable supporters include Noam Chomsky, prominent intellectual and political critic; Raul Hilberg, Holocaust historian; Avi Shlaim, New Historian; and Mouin Rabbani, Palestinian jurist and analyst. According to Hilberg, Finkelstein displays "academic courage to speak the truth when no one else is out there to support him... 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."

Criticism

Criticism has been leveled against Finkelstein from several angles. The first sources are responses from those whose work Finkelstein has discussed. Daniel Goldhagen, whose book ''Hitler's Willing Executioners'' Finkelstein criticized, claimed his scholarship has "everything to do with his burning political agenda." Peter Novick, Professor of History at the University of Chicago and a noted Holocaust historian whose work Finkelstein says inspired "The Holocaust Industry," has also strongly criticized the latter's work, describing it as "trash." Similarly, Alan Dershowitz, whose book ''The Case for Israel'' and Finkelstein's response ''Beyond Chutzpah'' sparked an ongoing feud between the two, has claimed Finkelstein's complicity in a conspiracy against pro-Israel scholars: "The mode of attack is consistent. Chomsky selects the target and directs Finkelstein to probe the writings in minute detail and conclude that the writer didn't actually write the work, that it is plagiarized, that it is a hoax and a fraud," arguing that Finkelstein has leveled charges against many academics, calling at least 10 "distinguished Jews 'hucksters', 'hoaxters' (''sic''), 'thieves,' 'extortionists', and worse."

Israeli historian Omer Bartov, writing for ''The New York Times Book Review'', judged ''The Holocaust Industry'' to be marred by the same errors he denounces in those who exploit the Holocaust for profit or politics:

'It is filled with precisely the kind of shrill hyperbole that Finkelstein rightly deplores in much of the current media hype over the Holocaust; it is brimming with the same indifference to historical facts, inner contradictions, strident politics and dubious contextualizations; and it oozes with the same smug sense of moral and intellectual superiority... Like any conspiracy theory, it contains several grains of truth; and like any such theory, it is both irrational and insidious.'

In 2003, Finkelstein published a considerably expanded second edition of this book, focusing especially on the Swiss Banks case. He identifies areas where people have attacked the book, but claims that none of them question his actual findings.

Finkelstein has accused Jeffrey Goldberg of "torturing" Palestinian prisoners during his IDF service in the First Intifada. Goldberg referred to the allegation as "ridiculous" and he had "never laid a hand on anybody." Goldberg said his "principal role" was "making sure prisoners had fresh fruit." He characterized Finkelstein as a "ridiculous figure" and accused him of "lying and purposely misreading my book."

2009 film about Finkelstein

''American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein'' is an award-winning documentary film about the life and career of Norman Finkelstein, released in 2009 and directed by David Ridgen and Nicolas Rossier. It has been screened in Amsterdam IDFA, in Toronto Hot Docs and in more than 40 other national and international venues, it received 100% freshness ratings on film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

Statements on Israel and Israelis

Finkelstein is a sharp critic of Israel. In a telephone interview with ''Today's Zaman'', in 2009, Finkelstein stated:

I think Israel, as a number of commentators pointed out, is becoming an insane state. And we have to be honest about that. While the rest of the world wants peace, Europe wants peace, the US wants peace, but this state wants war, war and war. In the first week of the massacres, there were reports in the Israeli press that Israel did not want to put all its ground forces in Gaza because it was preparing attacks on Iran. Then there were reports it was planning attacks on Lebanon. It is a lunatic state.

When asked how he, as the son of Holocaust survivors, felt about Israel’s operation in Gaza, Finkelstein replied:

It has been a long time since I felt any emotional connection with the state of Israel, which relentlessly and brutally and inhumanly keeps these vicious, murderous wars. It is a vandal state. There is a Russian writer who once described vandal states as Genghis Khan with a telegraph. Israel is Genghis Khan with a computer. I feel no emotion of affinity with that state. I have some good friends and their families there, and of course I would not want any of them to be hurt. That said, sometimes I feel that Israel has come out of the boils of the hell, a satanic state

The Anti-Defamation League has described Finkelstein as an "obsessive anti-Zionist" filled with "vitriolic hatred of Zionism and Israel." On being called an anti-Zionist Finkelstein has said: "It's a superficial term. I am opposed to any state with an ethnic character, not only to Israel."

Hezbollah and Hamas

Finkelstein has expressed solidarity with Hezbollah and Hamas with respect to defensive actions, alleging that Israel had invaded Lebanon as a signal of rejection when Hamas was seeking a diplomatic settlement with Israel. He also condemned Israel's refusal "to abide by international law (and) to abide by the opinion of the international community" to settle the conflict".

"I don’t care about Hizbullah as a political organization. I don’t know much about their politics, and anyhow, it’s irrelevant. I don’t live in Lebanon. It’s a choice that the Lebanese have to make: Who they want to be their leaders, who they want to represent them. But there is a fundamental principle. People have the right to defend their country from foreign occupiers, and people have the right to defend their country from invaders who are destroying their country. That to me is a very basic, elementary and uncomplicated question."

While condemning the targeting of civilians to achieve a political goal, Finkelstein has stated he believes Hezbollah has the right to target Israeli civilians if Israel targets civilians.

During the Second Intifada, Finkelstein stated a moral equivalence exists between Hamas and the state of Israel in regards to the military policy of targeted killings. Finkelstein argued one of Israel’s primary motivation for launching the 2008 offensive in Gaza was that Hamas was “signaling that it wanted a diplomatic settlement of the conflict along the June 1967 border.” Finkelstein believes Hamas had joined the international community in “seeking a diplomatic settlement” and describes Hamas's stance towards Israel prior to the war as a “peace offensive.”

Bibliography

Books

2010: ''This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion''. OR Books, New York: 2010.

2005: ''Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History''. U of California P, ISBN 0-520-24598-9. 2nd updated edition, U of Cal. P. June 2008, ISBN 0-520-24989-5, contains an appendix written by Frank J. Menetrez, ''Dershowitz vs Finkelstein. Who's Right and Who's Wrong?, p. 363-394,

2000: ''The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering'', Verso, ISBN 1-85984-488-X.

1998: ''A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth'' (Co-author with Ruth Bettina Birn) Henry Holt and Co., ISBN 0-8050-5872-9.

1996: ''The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years''. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, ISBN 0-8166-2859-9.

1995: ''Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict'', Verso, ISBN 1-85984-442-1

1987: ''From the Jewish Question to the Jewish State: An Essay on the Theory of Zionism'', thesis, Princeton University.

Articles and chapters

”Disinformation and the Palestine Question: The Not-So-Strange Case of Joan Peter's 'From Time Immemorial.'“ in ''Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question''. Ed. Edward W. Said and Christopher Hitchens. Verso Press, 1988. ISBN 0-86091-887-4. Chapter Two, Part One:

”Peace process or peace panic? - The scourge of Palestinian moderation”, ''Middle East Report'', 19 (1989) 3/158, pp. 25–26,28-30,42

”Zionist orientations”, ''Scandinavian Journal of Development Alternatives'' 9 (March 1990) 1. p. 41-69

”Bayt Sahur in year II of the intifada. - A personal account”, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'' 19 (Winter 1990) 2/74.p. 62-74

”Israel and Iraq. - A double standard”, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'' 20 (1991) 2/78. p. 43-56

"Reflections on Palestinian attitudes during the Gulf war", '' Journal of Palestine Studies'', 21 (1992) 3/83, p. 54-70

”Réflexions sur la responsabilité de l´État et du citoyen dans le conflit arabo-israélien” (Reflections on the responsibility of state and citizen in the Arab-Israeli conflict), in ''L' homme et la société'', L'Harmattan 1994, 114, S. 37-50

”Whither the `peace process'?”, ''New Left Review'', (1996) 218, p. 138

”Securing occupation: The real meaning of the Wye River Memorandum”, ''New Left Review'', (1998) 232, p. 128-139

Contributor to ''The Politics of Anti-Semitism''. Ed. Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. AK Press, 2001. ISBN 1-902593-77-4.

”Lessons of Holocaust compensation”, in ''Palestinian Refugees: The Right of Return''. Ed. Naseer Aruri. Pluto Press, 2001, S. 272-275. ISBN 0-7453-1776-6.

”Abba Eban with Footnotes”, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'',, vol 32. (2003), p. 74-89

”Prospects for Ending the Occupation”, ''Antipode'', 35 (2003) 5, p. 839-845

Contributor to ''Radicals, Rabbis and Peacemakers: Conversations with Jewish Critics of Israel'', by Seth Farber. Common Courage Press, 2005. ISBN 1-56751-326-3.

”The Camp David II negotiations. - how Dennis Ross proved the Palestinians aborted the peace process”, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'', vol. 36 (2007), p. 39-53

”Dennis Ross and the peace process: subordinating Palestinian rights to Israeli ‘needs’” Institute for Palestine Studies, 2007 ISBN 0-88728-308-X

Others on Finkelstein and his works

Academic reviews of books by Finkelstein

Massad, Joseph. "Deconstructing Holocaust Consciousness," Review Essay, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'', Vol. 32, No. 1. (Autumn, 2002), pp. 78–89.

Cole, Tim. the Holocaust in America: Mixed Motives or Abuse?," ''The Public Historian'', Vol. 24, No. 4. (Fall, 2002), pp. 127–131

Hooglund, Eric. Reviewed work: and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict'' by Norman Finkelstein, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'', Vol. 33, No. 3, Special Issue in Honor of Edward W. Said. (Spring, 2004), pp. 123–124.

Pelham, Nicolas. Reviewed Work: and Reality in the Israel-Palestine Conflict''. by Norman G. Finkelstein, ''International Affairs'', Vol. 72, No. 3, Ethnicity and International Relations. (July 1996), pp. 627–628.

Pappe, Ilan. "Valuable New Perspectives," Reviewed Work: ''Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict''. by Norman G. Finkelstein, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'', Vol. 26, No. 4. (Summer, 1997), pp. 113–115.

Beinin, Joel. "The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict after Oslo," Reviewed work: ''Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict'' by Norman G. Finkelstein. ''Middle East Report'', No. 201, Israel and Palestine: Two States, Bantustans or Binationalism?. (Oct. - Dec., 1996), pp. 45–47.

Reviews of books by Finkelstein

Blokker, Bas. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah'' in ''NRC Handelsblad'' 24 February 2006.

Pappe, Ilan. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah''. ''BOOKFORUM'' Feb./March 2006.

De Zayas, Alfred. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah'' in ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung'' 3 February 2006.

Merkley, Paul Charles. These Pigs on the Face of the Earth: Israel's most relentless critic. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah'' in ''Christianity Today'' January/February 2006.

Desch, Michael C.. The Chutzpah of Alan Dershowitz. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah'' in ''The American Conservative'' 5 Dec. 2005

Goldberger, Ernest. English translation of German review Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah''. ''Neue Zürcher Zeitung'' 10 Dec. 2005

Marqusee, Mike. Israel, fraud and chutzpah Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah''. ''Red Pepper (magazine)'' Jan. 2006

Prashad, Vijay. Z magazine reviews Beyond Chutzpah. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah''. ''Z Magazine'' November 2005 Volume 18 Number 11

McCarthy, Conor. The case against Israel Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah''. ''Village Magazine, Ireland'' 17 Nov. 2005

Gordon, Neve. Neve Gordon: Review of Norman Finkelstein's, Beyond Chutzpah. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History'', by Norman G. Finkelstein. ''History News Network'' 12 Oct. 2005

Nicolás, Rubén. El conflicto entre israelíes y palestinos sólo empeorará. Review of ''Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict'', by Norman G. Finkelstein. ''El Mundo'' 23 Oct. 2003

Bogdanor, Paul. The Finkelstein Phenomenon. Review of ''The Holocaust Industry'', by Norman Finkelstein. ''Judaism'', Fall, 2002.

Abse, Tobias. Finkelstein's Follies: The Dangers of Vulgar Anti-Zionism Review of ''The Holocaust Industry'', by Norman Finkelstein. ''New Interventions'', vol. 10, no. 2, 2000.

Bartov, Omer. A Tale of Two Holocausts. Review of ''The Holocaust Industry'', by Norman Finkelstein. ''New York Times Book Review'' 6 Aug. 2000.

Profiles of Finkelstein

Garner, Mandy. "The Good Jewish Boys Go into Battle." ''Times Higher Education Supplement'' 16 December 2005.

Naparstek, Ben. "His Own Worst Enemy." ''The Jerusalem Post'' 12 December 2005.

Rayner, Jay. "Finkelstein's List." ''The Observer'' 16 July 2000.

Sheleg, Yair. "The Finkelstein Polemic." ''Ha'aretz'' 30 March 2001.

Critics of Finkelstein and replies

Daniel Goldhagen, The New Discourse of Avoidance

* Norman Finkelstein, Response to Goldhagen

William Rubinstein et al., Uses of Holocaust, letters to the ''London Review of Books''

Alex Callinicos, Finkelstein and the Holocaust, criticism in ''Socialist Worker''

David Friedman, Anti-Defamation League letter, calling Finkelstein a Holocaust denier

* How the ADL Fights Anti-Semitism

* The Washington Post Publishes a Retraction, Marc Fisher, WP columnist, publishes a retraction of his charge of "holocaust revisionism

References

External links

''American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein'' - official website of the documentary film on Norman Finkelstein (for a shortened online copy see the video section)

Official website of Norman G. Finkelstein, featuring biography, works by Finkelstein, past and upcoming speaking engagements, and other links to information about him and controversies in which he is involved.

Norman Finkelstein Solidarity Campaign Website Norman Finkelstein Solidarity Campaign - Supporters of Norman Finkelstein

"Depaul University -- Against" bibliography at "Norman G. Finkelstein Solidarity Campaign"

'An Interview with Norman Finkelstein' State of Nature interview with Norman Finkelstein (2008)

Video

''American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein'' - Al Jazeera English broadcast of the documentary in two parts (2 video2, each ca 46 mins)

Resolving the Israel-Palestine Conflict: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Jan 21, 2009.

Interview in Aljazeera English: Tear down the walls

Interview Broadcasted on Lebanese TV January 20, 2008

VIDEO: Norman Finkelstein - Israel and Palestine: Roots of Conflict, Prospects for Peace, presentation in Seattle, Washington, May 8, 2008.

VIDEO: Norman Finkelstein - The Coming Breakup of American Zionism, presentation in Olympia, Washington, May 8, 2008.

VIDEO: Norman Finkelstein at Brown University, April 15, 2008

Finkelstein in a dual interview with former US-Israel ambassador Martin Indyk, discussing the US Role in Israel’s 2008-09 Assault on Gaza on Democracy Now, January 8, 2009.

Doha Debate at the Oxford Union Video of debate on whether the "pro-Israeli lobby has successfully stifled Western debate about Israel's actions" with Andrew Cockburn, Martin Indyk, and David Aaronovitch, May 1, 2007

Debate with Shlomo Ben-Ami on Democracy Now!, February 14, 2006

Norman Finkelstein Responds to Clinton, Netanyahu AIPAC Comments March 23, 2010

Category:1953 births Category:American political scientists Category:American political writers Category:Binghamton University alumni Category:DePaul University faculty Category:American people of Polish-Jewish descent Category:Jewish American historians Category:Historians of Jews and Judaism Category:Historians of the Holocaust Category:Historians of the Middle East Category:Hunter College faculty Category:Jewish anti-Zionism Category:Living people Category:New York University faculty Category:Personae non gratae Category:Princeton University alumni Category:Rutgers University faculty Category:Writers on Zionism Category:Jewish peace activists

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