Norman Finkelstein (1953 - )

Tue Dec 08, 1953

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Norman Finkelstein, born on this day in 1953, is a political scientist, activist, and author whose works include The Rise and Fall of Palestine (1996). Finkelstein was denied tenure at DePaul University after a public feud with Alan Dershowitz.

As a young man, Finkelstein identified as a Maoist and worked for The Guardian, a Maoist newsweekly. After the 1981 trial of the Gang of Four, Finkelstein had a falling out with Maoist politics.

Following this experience, Finkelstein decided to develop his worldview with meticulous scholarship. Finkelstein recounts spending an entire summer in the New York Public Library comparing historical population records of Palestine to the claims made in the Joan Peters Zionist text “From Time Immemorial”.

Finkelstein’s work largely debunked the text, which was well-regarded at the time, winning the National Jewish Book Award in 1985. Finkelstein’s skepticism of scholarship regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict would continue to characterize his academic career.

In 2003, Alan Dershowitz published “The Case for Israel”, which Finkelstein called “a collection of fraud, falsification, plagiarism, and nonsense”. Dershowitz began campaigning to block Finkelstein’s tenure bid at DePaul University. In 2007, Finkelstein was denied tenure at DePaul University. In response, Finkelstein resigned, and students staged a sit-in and hunger strike in protest.

In 2008, Finkelstein was denied entry to Israel. In 2009, a documentary film about Finkelstein’s life and career was published, titled “American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein”.

“My parents often wondered why I would grow so indignant at the falsification and exploitation of the Nazi genocide. The most obvious answer is that it has been used to justify criminal policies of the Israeli state and US support for these policies.”

- Norman Finkelstein

  • jimmy90@lemmy.world
    120·
    18 days ago

    certainly one of the worlds greatest idiots and racists

    some of the greatest works of low accuracy historical record ever written

    quite the life time achievements

      • GeneralTzaRok@leminal.space
        5·
        18 days ago

        He made this comment a few days ago: “who can we blame for arab terrorist groups literally having israeli genocide written into their constitution and arabs starting genocidal wars against israel?”

        Jimmy90 is a Zionist, and therefor a terrorist worse than Hamas or Hezbollah. Hamas and Hezbollah are made up with the children whose innocent parents were unjustly killed by Israel years ago. Now, after what they did on Gaza, they created even more terrorists, and 10 years down the line this whole thing will repeat, these Zionist pigs will call those children whose lives they ruined “terrorists, terrorists, waaah waaah, Israel #1!!! Remember the holocaust! We deserve to do this!”

        It’s over for me. People like Jimmy90 are not human to me anymore. My family in Lebanon were killed because of Israel back in the first Israeli-Lebanon war in 1948. All because of the Nakba, an historical event that shows how fucking intolerant and evil Zionists are. They cannot tolerate Arabs as fellow neighbors, they want them dead.