
To the Editor:
It is difficult to write a rebuttal against a writer whose
own article so readily discredits itself. Matthew Abraham, an
English professor, uses such outlandish and intemperate
language, makes such wild historical fabrications, and parrots
so many verifiably false accusations, that I cannot help but
suspect that he has written his review of Norman Finkelstein’s
Beyond Chutzpah as an example for his students on how
not to write well. His article reads like a cheap agitprop
parody. Before I begin, then, I will let Abraham, the Rachel
Corrie Courage in Teaching Award winner, speak for himself.
Abraham concurs with Finkelstein that “American Jewish
Zionists” are involved in “a lucrative extortion racket”
designed to enrich and shield ourselves “from much-deserved
scrutiny in [our] toadying for special dispensations as
oppressed ‘chosen people.’” Abraham says that the
Anti-Defamation League is a “U.S. Front operations for the
Israeli government” engaged in “a form of ruthless grave
robbery for the glorification of that massive land-based U.S.
aircraft carrier, Israel.” Abraham places full blame on
“America and Israel” for “block[ing] resolution” of the Middle
East conflict. He calls Israel a “crazy state,” concludes that
it is not a democracy, and places the full blame on “America
and Israel” for “block[ing] resolution” of the Middle East
conflict.” The “historical record,” writes Abraham, “confirms
that the PLO and the Arab states have overwhelmingly been in
favor of peace.” He repeats Arafat’s Bantustan accusation –
that Palestine was offered cantons of land, rather than the
contiguous state on over 95% of the occupied territories that
the Camp David maps show – and twice insists that Israel has
ethnically cleansed Palestinians from Israel, as if simply
repeating the accusation were enough to make it true. My
favorite Abraham claim is his wild assertion that “American
Jewish Zionists” (there’s that phrase again) “blocked”
Holocaust survivors from coming to America! I’ve heard of many
“Jewish conspiracies,” but this is the first time I’ve heard
of a Jewish conspiracy to keep Jews out of America.
Then there is Abraham’s breathless praise of Finkelstein “a
well-respected, Princeton trained political scientist with
several internationally recognized books to his credit.”
Hardly. While Finkelstein’s books have found a welcoming
audience in the neo-Nazi demographic, mainstream media sources
have uniformly dismissed Finkelstein as a Jew-hating crank,
and he has been fired from several universities for shoddy
scholarship and abusive treatment of students. In 2000,
Finkelstein published a scandalous screed, called The
Holocaust Industry, in which he railed against American Jewish
leaders who were seeking justice for Holocaust survivors. In
his book and in public lectures, Finkelstein accused Jewish
leaders of being part of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy, whose
members included Elie Wiesel, Leon Uris, Steven Spielberg,
Stuart Eizenstat, Abba Eban, Abraham Foxman, Edgar Bronfman,
and Burt Neuborne. The problem was that Finkelstein simply
made up his alleged facts, his quotations, and his citations.
Moreover, since he cannot read German, and since many of the
most important sources relating to the Holocaust are in
German, he faked his research. This is what University of
Chicago Professor Peter Novick, whose work The Holocaust in
American Life Finkelstein characterized as “the initial
stimulus for [his] book,” said
about Finkelstein:
As concerns particular assertions made by Finkelstein .
. . the appropriate response is not (exhilarating)
"debate" but (tedious) examination of his footnotes.
Such an examination reveals that many of those
assertions are pure invention. . . . No facts alleged by
Finkelstein should be assumed to be really facts, no
quotation in his book should be assumed to be accurate,
without taking the time to carefully compare his claims
with the sources he cites. |
Novick called
The Holocaust Industry “trash” and a “twenty-first century
updating of the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion.’” Omer Bartov, who reviewed
The Holocaust Industry for The New York
Times, called it an “irrational and insidious” “conspiracy
theory,” “verg[ing] on paranoia,” full of “dubious rhetoric
and faulty logic,” “indifference to historical facts,” and
“sensational ‘revelations’ and outrageous accusations.” In
sum, Bartov called the book “a novel variation on the
anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
Marc Fisher, a columnist for the Washington Post, observed
that “Norman Finkelstein [is] a writer celebrated by neo-Nazi
groups for his Holocaust revisionism and comparisons of Israel
to Nazi Germany.”
In his many pages of vague invective against “American Zionist
Jews,” Abraham manages to level two substantive charges
against me, both of which are easily disproved. First,
Abraham's claims that I “wag[ed] an astounding campaign to
kill off Finkelstein’s retort [Beyond Chutzpah].” But as I
wrote to the University of California Press: I have no
interest in censoring any publication. But I do insist that a
book, ‘a large part of which is devoted to Alan Dershowitz’
has been checked for accuracy and that all appropriate
measures have been taken to assure that its biased and
defamatory author does not include within it maliciously false
information. Among Finkelstein’s defamations are his
allegations that I “almost certainly didn't write” The Case
for Israel, “and perhaps [he] didn't even read it prior to
publication.” Finkelstein even suggests that all of my books
are written for me by the Israeli Mossad: “[I]t’s sort of like
a Hallmark line for Nazis….[T]hey churn them out so fast that
he has now reached a point where he doesn’t even read them.”
Finkelstein has attempted to frame Beyond Chutzpah’s
publication as a triumph for academic freedom. This dispute,
though, has never been about academic freedom. Nobody ever
tried to prevent Finkelstein from publishing his bigoted
falsehoods. The dispute has always been about academic
standards. In order to deflect attention away from their lack
of academic standards and hard-left anti-Israel bias,
Finkelstein and his publisher have lied about the issue of
academic freedom. Nobody has ever tried to censor
Finkelstein’s drivel. He can always publish it with presses
that acknowledge their anti-Israel bias. The issue is, and has
always been, one of academic standards: how could the
University of California Press publish a work so lacking in
standards, so filled with misquotations, falsifications, and
faked data by a failed academic with a well deserved
reputation for the “pure invention” of his sources? No
objective university press would have published this sequel to
a book the New York Times called a “variation on the
anti-Semitic forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
Second, Abraham writes, “Rarely has anyone committed to
upholding a party line exceeded Dershowitz’ loyalty to one
revered state, and that state is Israel.” Relatedly, he claims
that “pro-Zionist Jews” lie about anti-Semitism because we are
afraid of being “no longer perceived as the world’s greatest
victims.” These charges come straight from Finkelstein, who
alleges that Jews will cry “anti-Semite” at anyone who
criticizes Israel. Finkelstein subtitles his book “On the
Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History,” explaining
his thesis as follows: "Like the Holocaust, 'anti-Semitism' is
an ideological weapon to deflect justified criticism of Israel
and, concomitantly, powerful Jewish interests. In its current
usage, 'anti-Semitism,' alongside the “war against terrorism,”
serves as a cloak for a massive assault on international law
and human rights.
This allegation, though, is belied by a simple scan of the
themes and theses of my own books. Only eight years ago, I
wrote an entire book discussing challenges facing American
Jews now that institutional anti-Semitism is all but
nonexistent and personal anti-Semitism has been relegated to
the marginalized extremes of the political spectrum. As I put
it in The Vanishing American Jew, “The thesis of this book is
that the long epoch of Jewish persecution is finally coming to
an end. . . .” And in both The Case for Israel and The Case
for Peace, I was clear that criticism of Israel and
anti-Semitism are not the same thing. Considering my extensive
and well-documented history of criticizing particular Israeli
policies and politicians, Finkelstein’s obsessive focus on me
and my book ensures that Beyond Chutzpah amounts to nothing
more than an attempt to blow over a straw man of Finkelstein’s
– and Abraham’s – own construction.
Abraham praises as “intrepid” Finkelstein’s underlying
question, “Do American Zionist Jews, qua Jews, use
their ethnic privilege to advance Israel’s morally-bankrupt
agenda toward increasing militarization in its ethnic
cleansing and annexation of the West Bank?” He answers with a
resounding yes. It’s a shame that a professor of rhetoric, who
repeatedly accuses others of “toeing the party line,” would
rely on so many tired and false clichés in the service of his
extremist anti-Jewish (or as Abraham would have it, his
anti-“American Zionist Jew”) agenda.
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