Avi Shlaim FBA (born October 31, 1945) is a British/Israeli historian. He is a professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford and a fellow of the British Academy.

Shlaim is especially well known as a historian of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is considered one of the leading New Historians,^[1] a group of Israeli scholars who put forward critical interpretations of the history of Zionism and Israel.^[2]

Early life and education[link]

Shlaim was born to Jewish parents in Baghdad, Iraq. His family moved to Israel, but he left Israel for England at the age of 16 to study at a Jewish school.^[3][4] He returned to Israel in the mid-60s to serve in the Israel Defence Forces, then moved back to England in 1966 to read history at Jesus College, Cambridge. He obtained his MA and married the great-granddaughter of David Lloyd George, who was the British prime minister at the time of the Balfour Declaration. He has lived in England ever since, and holds dual British and Israeli nationality.^[5]

He obtained an MSc (Econ.) in International Relations in 1970 from the London School of Economics, and his PhD from the University of Reading.^[6] He was a Lecturer, then Reader, in politics at the University of Reading from 1970-87.^[7]

Career[link]

Shlaim taught International Relations at Reading University, specializing in European issues. His academic interest in the history of Israel began in 1982, when Israeli government archives about the 1948 Arab-Israeli War were opened, an interest that deepened when he became a fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford in 1987.^[4] He was the Alastair Buchan Reader in International Relations at Oxford from 1987 to 1996, and the Director of Graduate Studies in that subject in 1993-1995 and 1998-2001. In 1995-97, he held a British Academy Research Readership in 1995-97, a Research Professorship in 2003-6. In 2006, he was elected Fellow of the British Academy.^[7]

Shlaim served as an outside examiner on the doctoral thesis of Ilan Pappe, another notable New Historian. Shlaim's approach to the study of history is informed by his belief that, "[t]he job of the historian is to judge."^[4]

He is a regular contributor to The Guardian newspaper, and signed an open letter to that paper in January 2009 condemning Israel's military intervention in Gaza.^[8]

Criticism[link]

Josef Heller and Yehoshua Porath have stated that Shlaim "misleads his readers with arguments that Israel had missed the opportunity for peace whilst the Arabs are strictly peace seekers".^[9]

Books[link]

• Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement and the Partition of Palestine (winner of the 1988 Political Studies Association's W. J. M. Mackenzie Prize)
• The Politics of Partition (1990 and 1998)
• War and Peace in the Middle East: A Concise History (1995)
• The Cold War and the Middle East (co-editor, 1997)
• The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2001)
• Lion of Jordan: The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace (2007)
• Israel and Palestine (2009)

See also[link]

• Ilan Pappe
• Benny Morris

References[link]

External links[link]

• Oxford home page
• Interview. The Nation, June 28, 2004.
• 2009 Interview on Israli-Palestinian conflict inc. video, audio and text transcript.
• Video of discussion between Avi Shlaim and Shlomo Sand. Chaired by Jacqueline Rose at the Frontline Club, London, November 12, 2009
• The Balfour Declaration And its Consequences. By Avi Shlaim, in Wm. Roger Louis, ed., Yet More Adventures with Britannia: Personalities, Politics and Culture in Britain, London, I. B. Tauris, 2005, pp. 251-270.

Shlomo Sand (pronounced Zand; Hebrew: שלמה זנד‎) (born 10 September 1946 in Linz, Austria) is professor of history at Tel Aviv University and author of the controversial book The Invention of the Jewish People (Verso Books, 2009). His main areas of interest are nationalism, film as history, and French intellectual history.^[1]

Biography[link]

Sand was born in Linz, Austria, to Polish Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. His parents had Communist and anti-imperialist views and refused to receive compensations from Germany for their suffering during the Second World War. Sand spent his early years in a displaced persons camp, and moved with the family to Jaffa in 1948. He was expelled from high school at the age of sixteen, and only completed his bagrut following his military service.^[2] He eventually left the Union of Israeli Communist Youth (Banki) and joined the more radical, and anti-Zionist, Matzpen in 1968. Sand resigned from Matzpen in 1970 due to his disillusionment with the organisation.^[3][4]

He declined an offer by the Israeli Communist Party Rakah to be sent to do cinema studies in Poland, and in 1975 Sand graduated with a BA in History from Tel Aviv University. From 1975 to 1985, after winning a scholarship, he studied and later taught in Paris, receiving an MA in French History and a PhD for his thesis^[5] on "Georges Sorel and Marxism". Since 1982, Sand has taught at Tel Aviv University as well as at the University of California, Berkeley and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris.^[1]

[edit] The Invention of the Jewish People

Book's topic[link]

Sand’s best-known book in English is The Invention of the Jewish People, originally published in Hebrew (Resling, 2008) as Matai ve’eich humtsa ha‘am hayehudi? (When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?) and subsequently translated into English the following year (Verso, 2009). As reviewed by Ofri Ilani for the left-of-center Israeli newspaper HaAretz, the book attempts "to prove that the Jewish people never existed as a ‘nation-race’ with a common origin, but rather is a colorful mix of groups that at various stages in history adopted the Jewish religion. He argues that for a number of Zionist ideologues, the mythical perception of the Jews as an ancient people led to truly racist thinking."^[6]M

One component of Sand's argument is that the people who were the original Jews living in Israel, were not exiled following the Bar Kokhba revolt. He has suggested that much of the present day world Jewish population are individuals, and groups, who converted to Judaism at later periods. Additionally, he suggests that the story of the exile was a myth promoted by early Christians to recruit Jews to the new faith. Sand writes that "Christians wanted later generations of Jews to believe that their ancestors had been exiled as a punishment from God."^[7] Sand argues that most of the Jews were not exiled by the Romans, and were permitted to remain in the country. He puts the number of those exiled at tens of thousands at most. He further argues that many of the Jews converted to Islam following the Arab conquest, and were assimilated among the conquerors. He concludes that the progenitors of the Palestinian Arabs were Jews.^[8]

Sand's explanation of the birth of the myth of a Jewish people as a group with a common, ethnic origin has been summarized as follows: "[a]t a certain stage in the 19th century intellectuals of Jewish origin in Germany, influenced by the folk character of German nationalism, took upon themselves the task of inventing a people "retrospectively," out of a thirst to create a modern Jewish people. From historian Heinrich Graetz on, Jewish historians began to draw the history of Judaism as the history of a nation that had been a kingdom, became a wandering people and ultimately turned around and went back to its birthplace."^[6]

He also comments that: "It is true that I am an historian of France and Europe, and not of the ancient period. (...)",^[6] and that: "I’ve been criticised in Israel for writing about Jewish history when European history is my specialty. But a book like this needed a historian who is familiar with the standard concepts of historical inquiry used by academia in the rest of the world."^[7]

Analysis[link]

Tom Segev wrote that Sand's book "is intended to promote the idea that Israel should be a 'state of all its citizens' - Jews, Arabs and others - in contrast to its declared identity as a 'Jewish and democratic' state" and that the book is generally "well-written" and includes "numerous facts and insights that many Israelis will be astonished to read for the first time".^[8]

For Ofri Ilani, "(...) most of [the] book does not deal with the invention of the Jewish people by modern Jewish nationalism, but rather with the question of where the Jews come from."^[6]

Criticisms[link]

Israel Bartal, dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the Hebrew University, in a commentary published in Haaretz, writes that Sand's basic thesis and statements about Jewish historiography are "baseless". Bartal answers to "Sand's arguments (...) that no historian of the Jewish national movement has ever really believed that the origins of the Jews are ethnically and biologically "pure" [and that] Sand applies marginal positions to the entire body of Jewish historiography and, in doing so, denies the existence of the central positions in Jewish historical scholarship." Bartal refers to Sand's overall treatment of Jewish sources as "embarrassing and humiliating." He adds that "The kind of political intervention Sand is talking about, namely, a deliberate program designed to make Israelis forget the true biological origins of the Jews of Poland and Russia or a directive for the promotion of the story of the Jews' exile from their homeland is pure fantasy." Bartel summarizes his critique of Sand's characterization of Jewish historiography as follows: "as far as I can discern, the book contains not even one idea that has not been presented earlier in their books and articles by what he insists on defining as "authorized historians" suspected of "concealing historical truth,"" and calls the overall work "bizarre and incoherent."^[9] For a full updated version of Bartal's review see now Zion 76 (2011), pp. 509-521.

Anita Shapira wrote "Sand bases his arguments on the most esoteric and controversial interpretations, while seeking to undermine the credibility of important scholars by dismissing their conclusions without bringing any evidence to bear."^[10]

Hillel Halkin has cited the book as an example of the notion that there is "no book too foolish to go un-admired by someone."^[11]

Jeffrey Goldberg likened the book to Arthur Koestler's The Thirteenth Tribe, another book with a controversial thesis on the genesis of the Jewish people published in 1976.^[12] "Today", Jeffrey Goldberg said, "The Thirteenth Tribe is a combination of discredited and forgotten." Goldberg also accused Sand of having disingenuous motives:

Sand is not publishing this book at a dignified conference in Bern at which scholars of the Middle East debate the origins of the Jews ... He is dropping manufactured facts into a world that in many cases is ready, willing, and happy to believe the absolute worst conspiracy theories about Jews and to use those conspiracy theories to justify physically hurting Jews. ... It is nothing new ... We [the Jews] survived ... The Thirteenth Tribe; we can survive this.^[12]

DNA analysis[link]

In June 2010, genetic research supervised by geneticist Harry Ostrer of the New York University School of Medicine, and published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, led to a series of journalistic comments on Sand's book.^[13] An article in Newsweek titled "The DNA of Abraham's Children" challenges through genetic analysis Sand's assertion that modern European Jews are descended from Khazars, a Turkic group: "The DNA has spoken: no." This study, Newsweek writes, undermines rather than supports Sand's position, showing instead how modern Jewish genes can be traced back to a common people of Middle East origin.^[14] A New York Times article on the same studies notes they "refute the suggestion made last year by the historian Shlomo Sand in his book The Invention of the Jewish People that Jews have no common origin but are a miscellany of people in Europe and Central Asia who converted to Judaism at various times".^[15] Similarly, an article in Science states that Sand's hypotheses "clash with several recent studies suggesting that Jewishness, including the Ashkenazi version, has deep genetic roots". According to Sarah Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania, Ostrer's study "clearly shows a genetic common ancestry of all Jewish populations." Geneticist Noah Rosenberg of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, states that although Oster's study "does not appear to support" the Khazar hypothesis, it "doesn't entirely eliminate it either."^[16]

In an afterword to the paperback issue of The Invention of the Jewish People in June 2010 Sands wrote "As of today, no study based on anonymous DNA samples has succeeded in identifying a genetic marker specific to Jews, and it is not likely that any study ever will. It is a bitter irony to see the descendants of Holocaust survivors set out to find a biological Jewish identity: Hitler would certainly have been very pleased! And it is all the more repulsive that this kind of research should be conducted in a state that has waged for years a declared policy of 'Judaization of the country' in which even today a Jew is not allowed to marry a non-Jew."^[17]

Publishing history[link]

The book was in the bestseller list in Israel for 19 weeks and quickly went to 3 editions when published in French.^[7] In France it received the "Aujourd'hui Award", a journalists' award for top non-fiction political or historical work.^[18]

In October 2009 it was published in English by Verso.

In March 2010 it was published in Russian by Eksmo.

In April 2010 it was published in German by Propyläen Verlag.

In 2010 a Hungarian translation appeared by Kairosz Kiadó.

In August 2011 it was published in Polish by Wydawnictwo Akademickie Dialog.

In April 2012, a sequel, The Invention of the Land of Israel, was published in Hebrew by Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir. ^[19]

Publications[link]

• L'Illusion du politique: Georges Sorel et le débat intellectuel 1900, Paris, La Découverte, 1984
• Georges Sorel en son temps, with Jacques Julliard (eds), Paris, Seuil, 1985
• Intellectuals, Truth and Power: From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War, Tel Aviv, Am Oved, 2000 (in Hebrew)
• Le XXe siècle à l' écran, Paris, Seuil, 2004 — also as Film as History – Imagining and Screening the Twentieth Century, Tel Aviv, Am Oved & Open University Press, 2002 (in Hebrew)
• Cinema and Memory – A Dangerous Relationship?, with Haim Bresheeth & Moshe Zimmerman (eds), Jerusalem, The Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 2004 (in Hebrew)
• Historians, Time and Imagination, From the “Annales” School to the Postzionist Assassin, Tel Aviv, Am Oved, 2004 (in Hebrew)
• Les Mots et la terre - Les intellectuels en Israël, Paris, Fayard, 2006—Also as The Words and the Land: Israeli Intellectuals and the Nationalist Myth, trans. Ames Hodge, Cambridge, Semiotext(e)/Active Agents, 2011.
• The Invention of the Jewish People, Tel Aviv, Resling, 2008 (in Hebrew) — also as Comment le peuple juif fut inventé - De la Bible au sionisme, Paris, Fayard, 2008, and The Invention of the Jewish People, New York, Verso 2009.
• The Invention of the Land of Israel, Tel Aviv, Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir, 2012 (in Hebrew).

See also[link]

• Isaak Markus Jost
• Leopold Zunz

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• The Invention of the Jewish People, English Edition (Verso Books, 2009) Website
• Anita Shapira, Review Essay: The Jewish-people deniers, The Journal of Israeli History, Vol. 28, No. 1, March 2009, 63-72 (in English)
• "Comment le peuple juif fut inventé" ("How the Jewish People was invented") by Shlomo Sand, Le Monde diplomatique, August 2008
• Zionist nationalist myth of enforced exile: Israel deliberately forgets its history by Shlomo Sand, Le Monde diplomatique, September 2008
• Boycott Ariel college by Shlomo Sand, Haaretz
• History in the (almost) making by Yonatan Gur, Ynetnews, November 2007
• Post-Zionism only rings once by Neri Livneh, Haaretz, September 2001
• "Are the Jews an invented people?", Eric Rouleau, Le Monde diplomatique - English edition (May 2008).
• Martin Goodman, The Times Literary Supplement (TLS), February 26, 2010; Shlomo Sand responds^{[dead link]}, TLS, Letters to the Editor, March 10, 2010; Martin Goodman responds^{[dead link]}, TLS, Letters to the Editor, March 24, 2010
• Video of discussion between Avi Shlaim and Shlomo Sand. Chaired by Jacqueline Rose at the Frontline Club, London, November 12, 2009
• Shlomo Sand interview: 'There are Israeli, not Jewish people' on Russia Today. Uploaded to YouTube 4 Aug 2009.

Norman Finkelstein
Finkelstein giving a talk at Suffolk University in 2005
Born	Norman Gary Finkelstein (1953-12-08) December 8, 1953 (age 58)
Nationality	American
Ethnicity	Jewish
Education	Binghamton University (B.A.) Princeton University (M.A.) Princeton University (Ph.D.)
Influenced by	Mohandas Gandhi, Noam Chomsky, John Stuart Mill
Parents	Mother: Maryla Husyt Finkelstein Father: Zacharias Finkelstein
Website
normanfinkelstein.com

Norman Gary Finkelstein (born December 8, 1953) is an American political scientist, activist and author. His primary fields of research are the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust, an interest motivated by the experiences of his parents who are Jewish Holocaust survivors. 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.^[1] 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.^[2][3] 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."^[4]

Personal background and education[link]

Finkelstein has written of his Jewish 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.^[5] 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.^[6]

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.^[7][8] 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."^[9] 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.^[5] 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.^[5]

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.^[9]

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,^[2] 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,"^[5] and supporters and detractors alike have remarked on the polemical style of Finkelstein's work.^[1][10] Its content has been praised by eminent historians such as Raul Hilberg and Avi Shlaim,^[10] 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."^[11]

Academic career[link]

Finkelstein has made a career as a traveling academic and public intellectual. He is seen here at a 2009 talk at the University of Leeds.

[edit] 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."^[12]

Finkelstein asserted that the book was nothing more than what he now calls a "monumental hoax".^[13] 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."^[14]

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."^[15]

In 1986, the New York Review of Books published Yehoshua Porath's review^[16] and an exchange with critics of the review^[17] 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.^[15] 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,^[18] 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.^[19]

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.^[15]

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).

[edit] 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."^[20] 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.^[21][22][23]

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."^[24] The book was also harshly criticized by Brown University Professor Omer Bartov^[25] and University of Chicago Professor Peter Novick.

Based on his criticism of Holocaust exploitation, the Anti-Defamation League and others "smeared" Finkelstein as a Holocaust denier, despite his being the son of two Holocaust survivors, most of whose family died in the Holocaust.^[26][27]. However, preeminent Holocaust scholar^[28][29][30] Raul Hilberg 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."^[31][32]

[edit] Criticism of Alan Dershowitz's The Case for Israel

Finkelstein's public feud with jurist and academic Alan Dershowitz lasted for years and had a negative effect on Finkelstein's academic career

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".^[33] During a debate on Democracy Now!, Finkelstein asserted that Dershowitz lacked knowledge about specific contents of his own book. He also claimed that Dershowitz did not write the book, and may not have even read it.^[33] 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.^[34] Finkelstein suggests that this copying of quotations amounts to copying ideas.^[35] 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.^[36] 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.^[37] 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.^[33]

Dershowitz threatened libel action over the charges in Finkelstein's book, as a consequence of which, the publisher deleted the word "plagiarism" from the text before publication.^[38] Finkelstein also agreed to remove the suggestion that Dershowitz was not the true author of The Case for Israel because, as the publisher said, "he couldn't document that."^[39]

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."^[40] 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".^[41]

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'."^[42]

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.^[43]

Responding to an article in The Nation by Alexander Cockburn,^[41][44] 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.^[44]

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.^[38]

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."^[35]

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."^[45]

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".^[46] 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.^[47][48]

Controversies[link]

Tenure denial and resignation[link]

Finkelstein's tenure at DePaul University ended with a vote against granting him tenure. Weeks of protests ensued on campus in support of granting him a position at the university.

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 who was also Jewish. 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.^[49] Amidst considerable public debate, Alan Dershowitz actively campaigned to block Finkelstein's tenure bid.^[1] 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.^[50][51]

The university denied that Dershowitz, who had been criticized for his campaign against Finkelstein's tenure, played any part in this decision.^[51] 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.^[52][53] Finkelstein stated that he would engage in civil disobedience if attempts were made to bar him from teaching his students.^[54][55]

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".^[56] DePaul's faculty association considered taking no confidence votes in administrators, including the president, because of the tenure denials.^[57] In a statement issued upon Finkelstein's resignation, DePaul called him "a prolific scholar and an outstanding teacher."^[4] Dershowitz expressed outrage at the compromise and this statement in particular, saying that the university had "traded truth for peace."^[2][3]

In June 2007, after two weeks of protests, some 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".^[58]

Denied entry to Israel in 2008[link]

Attempting to enter Israel in 2008, Finkelstein was detained at the airport for 24 hours and then sent back to the United States

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.^[59] He was banned from entering Israel for 10 years.^[60][61]

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."^[62] 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."^[62]

Reception[link]

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.^[63][64]

Finkelstein's work has attracted a number of supporters and detractors from around the world. Notable supporters of his work 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."^[10]

Criticism[link]

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."^[65] 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."^{[citation needed]} 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."^[43]

Israeli historian^[66] 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.'^[67]

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, and says 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."^[68]

2009 film about Finkelstein[link]

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 a freshness rating over 90% on film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.^[69]

Statements on Israel and Israelis[link]

Interview of Norman Finkelstein on This Week In Palestine radio.

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.^[70]

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^[70]

The Anti-Defamation League has described Finkelstein as an "obsessive anti-Zionist" filled with "vitriolic hatred of Zionism and Israel."^[71] 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."^[6]

Finkelstein is an advocate of a two state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.^[72]

Hezbollah and Hamas[link]

Finkelstein's comparisons between the State of Israel and armed Arab groups has proven deeply controversial

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".^[73][74]

"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."^[75]

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.^[76]

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.^[77] Finkelstein argued one of Israel’s primary motivations 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.”^[74][78]

Statements on the BDS movement[link]

In February 2012, Finkelstein "launched a blistering attack" of the BDS movement, saying it was a "hypocritical, dishonest cult" that tries to cleverly pose as human rights activists while in reality their goal is to destroy Israel. In addition, he said: "I'm getting a little bit exasperated with what I think is a whole lot of nonsense. I'm not going to tolerate silliness, childishness and a lot of leftist posturing. I loathe the disingenuousness. We will never hear the solidarity movement [back a] two-state solution." Furthermore, Finkelstein stated that the BDS movement has had very few successes, and that just like a cult, the leaders pretend that they are hugely successful when in reality the general public rejects their extreme views.^[79]

Bibliography[link]

Books[link]

• 2012: Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel is Coming to an End, OR Books, New York: 2012.^[80], ISBN 978-1-935928-77-5
• 2012: What Gandhi Says About Nonviolence, Resistance and Courage, OR Books, New York: 2012.^[81], ISBN 978-1-935928-79-9
• 2011: Goldstone Recants. Richard Goldstone renews Israel’s license to kill, OR Books, New York: 2011.^[82], ISBN 978-1-935928-51-5
• 2010: This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion. OR Books, New York: 2010. [4], ISBN 978-1-935928-43-0
• 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,^[83]
• 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[link]

• ”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[link]

Academic reviews of books by Finkelstein[link]

• Massad, Joseph. "Deconstructing Holocaust Consciousness," Review Essay, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 32, No. 1. (Autumn, 2002), pp. 78–89.
• Cole, Tim. "Representing the Holocaust in America: Mixed Motives or Abuse?," The Public Historian, Vol. 24, No. 4. (Fall, 2002), pp. 127–131
• Hooglund, Eric. Reviewed work: Image 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: Image 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[link]

• 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^{[dead link]} 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[link]

• 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[link]

• 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[link]