Of Palestine
and prostitutes

>>Author Norman Finkelstein on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the vacuity of Barack
Obama and Canadian political whores

IRAQ NOW LIKE HUMPTY DUMPTY, THANKS TO U.S.: Finkelstein

by MATTHEW HAYS

In the universe of Middle East punditry, it would be difficult to imagine a figure more contentious than author Norman Finkelstein. The Princeton University graduate has offered a consistently scathing critique of Israeli policies, in particular of their treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. But he drew the sharpest fire for his 2000 book, The Holocaust Industry, in which he argued that the WWII genocide of Jews was being exploited by many for cynical economic and ideological reasons. Some argued Finkelstein was simply appealing to anti-Semites, but one of his defenders was historian Raul Hilberg, widely regarded as one of the founding historians of Holocaust scholarship. Finkelstein granted the Mirror a phone interview in advance of his speaking engagement this week at the Université de Montréal.

Mirror: Jimmy Carter’s book, in which he uses the word “apartheid” in the title, has created a great deal of controversy. Do you think all the attention the ideas in his book are getting is a breakthrough?

Norman Finkelstein: I think that Carter is a case of cause and effect. There has been a significant amount of alienation of American Jews from Israel. The Carter phenomenon is part of the effect of the distancing of Americans in general, and American Jews specifically, from Israel. It’s also a cause, so much that any individual can have an impact. I would take issue with the idea that he’s controversial. Last week in Haaretz, there was an editorial thanking Carter, and saying that the situation in Israel begs for a comparison to apartheid. The list is quite long of people who identify this as apartheid—many have made the comparison. It just seems surprising in the Never-Neverland of U.S. and Canadian media.

Dim Dems

M: The Democrats appear poised to take back the White House in November. Do you have any hope that—

NF: No. Barack Obama has no idea of what the word principle means. He’s a shameless opportunist. His politics are pretty much vacuous. It’s hard to detect a concrete position in anything he says. When he does take a concrete position, it’s mainstream. Clinton, of course, is a lost cause. Look at her husband. I assume they’ll be running the White House together, if they don’t rent it out for money.

M: What’s the biggest obstacle to peace right now?

NF: The United States. It’s very simple. Look at the voting record of the [UN] General Assembly. Every December, there’s a resolution called Peaceful Settlement of the Palestine Question, the whole world on one side, the U.S. on the other. I don’t think the U.S. is opposed, it’s the effect of the Israel lobby.

At rock bottom

M: Addiction therapists will say that some addicts can only recover once they’ve bottomed out. Couldn’t it be argued that the U.S. has bottomed out with the Bush presidency? Can something be gained now, in recovery?

NF: No. The Bush presidency has been a disaster. They’ve squandered trillions of dollars on the war in Iraq. Damage has been done to America’s position in the world. In that respect, it’s bottomed out. In terms of the actual damage done, it’s meaningless to talk about crimes against humanity, because the magnitude is so great. But his predecessor, Clinton, wasn’t that much better. The estimates are that between a half million and a million Iraqis perished during the Clinton years due to sanctions. The high estimate is 1.2 million Iraqis have been killed due to the invasion. So they’re roughly in the same ballpark. I don’t think there’s much distinction: I mean, if you’re going to die of starvation or from shrapnel, I don’t know what you’d prefer or how you make that kind of moral judgment. The sanctions didn’t quite shatter Iraqi society the way the invasion has though. It could be irreparable. Hard to know if the country can be put back together again. It’s like Humpty Dumpty.

M: There’s been a lot of talk about Tibet lately. Why is it that Palestinians can’t be seen in the same light?

NF: Because the Palestinians aren’t a potential adversary, so it’s easier to starve them and throttle them. China is a potential adversary. On a legal level, to the extent that law has any meaning in the world, Israel’s occupation doesn’t compare to what China is doing. According to international law, Tibet is part of China. It’s hard to compare the occupation, and I don’t know how much value it has. But we can speak of influence. We have influence in Israel. Americans could end the occupation tomorrow if we had the will. What influence do we have in China? Very little. In terms of moral responsibility, of course our responsibility is Palestine. You determine moral responsibility by the degree to which you’re responsible for and/or have the capacity to end a particular injustice. You wouldn’t call a Chinese intellectual very courageous for denouncing American involvement in Vietnam, because they had no control over it. You’d be expecting a Chinese intellectual to be denouncing oppression in Tibet.

Shut up, Canada!

M: Is there anything specific that Canada can do to aid the peace process?

NF: I think they should shut up. Everything they say is so awful. Harper or Ignatieff, I don’t know who fills me with more loathing. The most disgusting wretches on Earth. Ignatieff is the pious prostitute. I wonder how these people can wake up and look in the mirror in the morning. Such shameless whores. No disparagement meant to whores, most of them do it because they have no choice. Ignatieff has a choice.

M: You’ve made the claim that there are more Holocaust museums than Burger Kings in North America.

NF: I think people don’t understand the use of hyperbole to make a point. I didn’t know that Canadians, beyond being humourless, are tone deaf.

M: But when you make a statement like that, doesn’t it just allow your detractors to dismiss everything that you’re saying?

NF: If you want to find an excuse to dismiss what someone’s saying, you’ll find one.

M: You may get a laugh with that line, but it detracts from your larger arguments.

NF: It’s not meant to get a laugh. It’s meant to make the point that this is just a franchise of an industry. There’s no moral content to any of this, any more than there’s any moral content to the world of politics. Every enemy of Israel is Hitler. Every enemy of Israel is threatening the Holocaust. In the ’50s, Nasser was Hitler, in 1991, Saddam was Hitler, in 2003 Saddam was Hitler again, then Hezbollah was Hitler…. This has nothing to do with any moral or political or historical content. It’s an industry, just like Burger King or McDonald’s. They have as much moral content as Burger King or McDonald’s has nutritional content. You give it the title it deserves. It’s a franchise of an industry.

Canadians for Justice and Peace
in the Middle East (CJPME)
presents a talk by Norman
Finkelstein Saturday, May 3, 1:30
p.m., Université de Montréal’s
Pavillon Claire McNicoll (2900
la tour, rm. Z-110), $15/$10 for
students. For more info, see
www.cjpme.ca.