September 18, 2006
Dear Professor Callahan,
You asked for some examples of outright lies that Norman Finkelstein has
told or written.
I would like to point out from the outset that the ugly and false
assertions that I will discuss below are not incidental to Finkelstein's
purported scholarship; they are his purported scholarship. Finklestein's
entire literary catalogue is one preposterous and discredited ad hominem
attack after another. By his own admission, he has conducted no original
research, has never been published in a reputable, scientific journal, and
has made no contributions to our collective historical knowledge. He is a
defamer of individuals -- selected for their ideology -- and a spreader of
false quotations, assertions, and propaganda. There is nothing scholarly
about his writings. Although he claims to be a "forensic scholar," he
limits his defamations to one ideological group and never applies his
so-called "forensic" tools to his own work or to those who share his
ideological perspective. One does not deserve the title of "forensic
scholar" unless he is prepared to apply that science equally across the
board. Finkelstein merely uses forensic tools available to any first-year
college student to defame his ideological enemies. That is not forensic
scholarship; it is propaganda. And he uses the imprimatur of whatever
university affiliation he currently enjoys in order to try to bestow a
seemingly-academic pedigree on his demonstrable lies. Unlike some other
academics, who try to distinguish their scholarly work from their
polemical writing, Finkelstein always uses his academic title, even in his
most extreme polemical writing, such as the one accompanying the cartoon,
attached and discussed below. Clearly he is trying to use the fine
reputation of DePaul University to lend credibility to his otherwise
discredited work.
Of course I am not in a position to refute much of what Finkelstein has
said (for example, about Holocaust reparations, or about what is found in
German archives). That work has been comprehensively done by others, such
as Peter Novick, whose book The Holocaust in American Life Finkelstein has
characterized as “the initial stimulus for [his] book." Novick has
assessed Finkelstein's "scholarship" in the following terms: “As concerns
particular assertions made by Finkelstein concerning reparations and
restitution, and on other matters as well, 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.)” I
suggest that you solicit a detailed letter from Professor Novick, or
request that he appear in person before the appropriate faculty groups.
(Novick's article is enclosed.) Another distinguished scholar, Omer
Bartov of Brown University, characterized The Holocaust Industry as
“irrational and insidious,” a “conspiracy theory,” “verg[ing] on
paranoia,” full of “dubious rhetoric and faulty logic,” “indifference to
historical facts,” and “sensational ‘revelations’ and outrageous accusations.”
Most of the writing I have done concerning Finkelstein has been aimed at
exposing his hateful remarks about "American Jewish elites" ("all
opinion-leaders, from the left to the right, are Jews"), the Middle East
("My chief regret is that I wasn't more forceful in defending Hezbollah
..."); his conspiracy theories (Schindler's List was filmed in order to
advance the interests of American Jews and Israel); and, of course, his
slanders against me. Because of my support of Israel, he has compared me
to “Adolf Eichman [sic],” accused me of expressing “Nazi moral judgments”
and calling me a “raving maniac,” “hoodlum,” and “one of the world’s great
charlatans and frauds.” He even accused me of “constitutionally incapable
of saying anything that is true. I think that if a true word actually
came out of [Dershowitz], he would probably implode.” In his most recent
article about me ("Should Alan Dershowitz Target Himself for
Assassination"), Finkelstein collaborated with a cartoonist he regularly
features on his website. The cartoon portrayed me as masturbating in
rapturous joy while viewing images of dead Lebanese civilians on a TV set
labeled "Israel peep show," with a Jewish Star of David prominently
featured. It can be seen here: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/08/10/18296109.php.
The cartoon aptly represents the content of Finkelstein's piece, which
accuses me of being a "moral pervert" who "missed the climatic scene of
his little peep show." This is simply disgusting, more suitable for a
writer for Hustler than for an assistant professor writing under the
imprimatur of a major research university. Finkelstein also claims quite
absurdly that I "sanction mass murder" and "the extermination of the
Lebanese people." And he calls me a Nazi not once, but twice, first
saying that I subscribe to "Nazi ideology" and then comparing me to Nazi
propagandist Julius Streicher, who was prosecuted at Nuremberg by my
mentor Telford Taylor. This is consistent with his oft-maid claim, found
on page 176 of Beyond Chutzpah, that "It is hard to make out any
difference between the policy Dershowitz advocates and the Nazi
destruction of Lidice, for which he expresses abhorrence-except that Jews,
not Germans, would be implementing it." The trouble is that the policy
and passage Finkelstein quotes actually says, "[Israel] would then
publicly declare precisely how it will respond in the event of another
terrorist act, such as by destroying empty houses in a particular village
that has been used as a base for terrorists, and naming that village in
advance." In Finkelstein's world, "destroying empty houses" in order to
deter terrorism is the equivalent of genocide.
Here, though, are a few of some of the lies that I am absolutely confident
the Finkelstein told.*
1. Burt Neuborne
Finkelstein actually tried to get Burt Neuborne, a professor of law at NYU
and one of the country's top civil liberties and Supreme Court advocates,
disbarred. The supposed grounds for disbarment were Neuborne's role in
the Holocaust reparations cases against Swiss banks. He claims that
Neuborne lied and blackmailed Swiss banks in the process of securing a
$1.25 billion settlement for survivors. His evidence was the "fact" that
the Volcker report, an investigation into European banks' theft from
survivors, found that “no evidence of systematic destruction of account
records for the purpose of concealing past behavior has been found.”
Neuborne's answered this false charge in a letter-to-the-editor of The
Nation, dated December 25, 2006:
(New York City) Norman Finkelstein calls my work on the Swiss bank
Holocaust case an exercise in blackmail. But the $1.25 billion Swiss bank
settlement on behalf of Holocaust victims cannot possibly be
characterized as blackmail unless that term is distorted to include any
payment made by a defendant who is afraid to go to trial. Did the lawyers
put pressure on the Swiss banks? You bet we did. We threatened them with
justice.
Finkelstein's principal claim is that I misstated the documentary record
when I charged that Swiss banks systematically destroyed records of
Holocaust deposits. Let's look at the document Finkelstein cites-the
report of the Volcker committee, which conducted an intensive audit of
the banks. The Volcker report finds that records for 2.8 million accounts
opened during the Holocaust era had been completely destroyed by the
Swiss banks (Volcker report, para. 20). The Volcker report calls the
destruction of those records an "unfillable gap." Moreover, the Volcker
report finds that almost all of the transaction records for the remaining
4.1 million accounts were also destroyed, leaving a record of an
account's opening and closing, but no information about the account's
size, or whether it had been plundered (Volcker report, para. 21). I call
that a pretty good job of systematically destroying records, especially
since, in the absence of records, the banks get to keep the money because
Switzerland has no escheat law. It is true that under Swiss law, the
banks were required to keep records for only ten ears. But, having
accepted deposits from Holocaust victims, and knowing that most Jewish
depositors had failed to survive the Nazis, how can anyone defend the
Swiss banks' widespread destruction of the records needed to trace the
true ownership of the Holocaust funds?
Despite the immense hurdles created by the destruction of records, the
Volcker report identified 46,000 Swiss bank accounts with a "probable or
possible" connection with Holocaust victims. The names of 26,000 of the
accounts are about to be published, and the federal court has set aside
$800 million to pay the owners of those funds. Neve Gordon, in his review
of Finkelstein's book, suggests that the sum is exaggerated, but his
figures dovetail closely with mine. The $800 million for bank deposits
includes an interest/inflation factor of 10 that the Volcker committee
found was necessary to permit payment of current value. Everyone,
including Raul Hilberg, agrees that Jewish deposits into Swiss banks on
the eve of the Holocaust were at least $80 million. Surely, the Swiss
banks should not have the use of that money for sixty years without
paying interest to the accounts' true owners. $800 million is, therefore,
a very conservative estimate of what the banks really owe. Finally, in a
characteristically venomous charge, Finkelstein accuses me of "making a
mockery of Jewish suffering during World War II," because I have
estimated that 1 million victims of the Holocaust are still alive. In
order to reach such a figure, Finkelstein argues that I must be diluting
what it meant to suffer during the Holocaust. But, as usual,
Finkelstein's obsession with criticizing anyone who acts on behalf of
Holocaust survivors blinds him to the facts. My figure of 1 million
victims was intended to include all surviving victims, not merely Jewish
survivors. The German foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and the
Future estimates that more than 1 million former slave and forced
laborers are still alive and qualify for compensation. The fact is that
the Holocaust did not affect only Jews. The Swiss settlement includes
Sinti-Roma, Jehovah's Witnesses, the disabled and gays. The German
foundation will distribute most of the slave/forced labor funds to
non-Jews. About 130,000 Jewish survivors and about 900,000 non-Jewish
victims are still alive. Norman Finkelstein accuses me of being a "main
party" to seeking compensation for them. Thank you, Norman. I could not
be prouder.
Burt Neuborne
(Enclosed please find Omer Bartov's New York Times review of The Holocaust
Industry.)
2. Israeli Torture
Finkelstein repeatedly claims that Israel, despite outlawing any sort of
coercive interrogation in 1999, systematically tortures and kills in cold
blood Palestinian detainees. His favorite -- and indeed, often his sole
-- evidence is an Israeli Supreme Court decision. Here is what he said in
Chicago on March 18, 2004: “There was a famous case in 1995 of a
Palestinian who was shaken to death while in detention. And nobody
disputed the facts the Israeli pathologist’s office, the forensic
pathologists who were brought into the case, eventually it went to the
Israeli High Court of Justice they all agreed. And I’m quoting now from
the High Court of Justice Judgment : 'All agree that Harizad died from the
shaking.” If you go to Dershowitz’s book, he discusses the case and says,
quote, 'An independent inquiry found that he didn’t die from the shaking,
but from a previous illness.' That was just made up.” (Emphasis added.)
It was Finkelstein who made up the quotation. The Supreme Court actually
said that “the suspect expired after being shaken.” The difference
between “died from the shaking” and “expired after being shaken” is
considerable, especially since the sentence that follows in the decision
attributes the death to an extremely rare complication, and the sentence
before summarizes the literature as having no examples of anyone dying
from shaking. This is not a translation error. It is an example of a
made-up quotation. Remember, Finkelstein said he was "quoting," not
paraphrasing, yet the words he purports to quote simply do not
exist. Finkelstein has never, to my knowledge, responded to this serious
charge of fabricating a quotation from the Israeli Supreme Court.
Finkelstein's pattern of making up quotations, a pattern identified first
by Professor Novick, should alone disqualify him from any tenured academic
position.
3. Jews Lie About Being Holocaust Survivors
“I am not exaggerating when I say that 1 out of 3 Jews you stop in the
street in New York will claim to be a survivor [of the Nazi Holocaust].”
I would ordinarily include this in a list of Finkelstein's wild and
hysterical hyperboles. But he uses this figure often, and, as you see, he
prefaces it be specifically saying that it is not an exaggeration.
Of course not even one in three Jews in New York is old enough to be a
survivor. His statistic is not an exaggeration. It is an outright
fabrication. Moreover, only a tiny percentage of those old enough claim
to be survivors, and Finkelstein provides no proof that they are not being
truthful. Imagine the reaction if he had said that one of three women
falsely claim to be a survivor of rape.
4. Israel -- As A Matter of Policy -- Fetishizes Aryan-Looking People
In a interview published on Alexander Cockburn’s Counterpunch, Finkelstein
claimed that a number of non-Jewish Russians had been able to immigrate to
Israel because “the Israeli establishment likes the blue eyed, blonde
haired Aryan types as a racial group.” It goes without saying that this
is absolutely untrue. It's characteristic, though, of
Finkelstein's drop-of-a-hat willingness to associate Israel with the Nazi
racist ideology bizarre as it is from someone whose parents were Holocaust
survivors is simply not justifiable on any rational basis. And it gets
even stranger. Finkelstein then tried to substantiate his claim about the
Israeli government’s preference for “Aryans” by claiming that Leon Uris
gave his blond-haired and blue-eyed protagonist in his book Exodus the
name “Ari” because it was short for “Aryan.” Ari which means lion in
Hebrew is about as classic as Hebrew names get, short for names that
appear in the Bible many thousands of years before the word “Aryan” even
found its way into the English language. Again, Finkelstein simply made
it up.
5. Daniel Goldhagen
Among the dozen or so Jewish writers whose careers Finkelstein has tried
to destroy with the same accusations -- "fraud," "huxter," "shake-down
artist," "plagiarist" -- he has only ever written a full book about one
other: Daniel Goldhagen. Goldhagen did a masterful job of going
point-by-point on Finkelstein's many lies and distortions. I'm attaching,
below, a copy of Goldhagen's essay, "The New Discourse of Avoidance."
6. I Don't Write My Own Books
Finkelstein asserts, and has said on many, many occasions, that my books
are written for me by others. Here are some of the remarks Finkelstein
has made about my supposed ghostwriters:
“I don’t think he wrote the book [The Case for Israel]"; “I very much
doubt he had read the book"; “There is no way he wrote the book”;
“[Dershowitz] has come to the point where he’s had so many people write so
many of his books. You know, he just churns them out… [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."
He characterized our single on-air interaction like this:
“So I kept saying to him, "Mr. Dershowitz I don’t think you wrote the
book." Now, if somebody really wrote the book you would expect a
ferocious answer. Like the guy is going to go at you and want to throttle
you. But he really didn’t answer that way, because Alan knew he didn’t
write the book. And then I figure which I honestly believe don’t
believe he read the book. People think that I’m speaking
cavalierly occasionally I do, but mostly in private. In public I want to
be responsible for my words. And I said to him at one point, "Look Mr.
Dershowitz, if you have any sense of self respect you would just say, ‘I
didn’t write the book and I had no time to read it. I’m sorry.’"
But I’m serious. There is no way he wrote the book…”
Here is the actual transcript of the conversation in which Finkelstein
claims that I essentially acknowledge his absurd charge that I didn't
write The Case for Israel by not vigorously answering it:
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: I read your book. Or the book you purport to have
written.
ALAN DERSHOWITZ: Now you claim somebody else wrote it?
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: I hope so. For your sake I truly hope you did not
write this book.
ALAN DERSHOWITZ: I proudly wrote it.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: I think the honorable thing for you to do would be to
say I didn't write the book, I had no time to read it. I'm sorry.
ALAN DERSHOWITZ: I wrote every word of it.
He repeated the above false remarks even after I sent his publisher my
handwritten manuscript. I write all of my books *by hand* and have the
manuscripts. I stand ready to send them to you for your
perusal. Finkelstein knows full well that I write my books by hand and
that I wrote The Case for Israel. Yet he continues to state the opposite
because it draws reactions from his skewed college audiences.
It should also be noted that I did not have a preexisting feud with
Finkelstein prior to his claims that I don't write my books. I'd quoted
him a few times in The Case for Israel, but had never met him and
certainly had no prior interaction with him.
After claiming that I didn't write The Case for Israel, Finkelstein hedged
his accusation by saying that if I *did* write the book, I plagiarized
it. Of course I was completely cleared of that charge by an independent
Harvard University investigation. I am not answering that charge here,
because much of it turns on the definition of plagiarism: whether it is
proper to find a quotation in one source, check it against the original
source, and cite to the original, rather than the secondary, source. The
Chicago Manual of Style says that that is the preferred method of
citation; Finkelstein calls that plagiarism. Indeed, many academics whom
Finkelstein admires -- including Noam Chomsky -- use precisely this method
of citation. Of course Finkelstein would never apply his forensic
scholarship to question their citation methodology. As he himself
admitted, his first foray into forensic scholarship occurred when he and
Noam Chomsky agreed to "expose" Joan Peters for writing a book about whose
substantive conclusions the two disagreed.
There are also issues of fact involved in Finkelstein's accusation. Some
of the sources he claimed that I found in Joan Peters's book were
quotations I had been using for decades before Peters even wrote her book,
including a quotation by Mark Twain and the British Peel Commission. For
a full response to Finkelstein's plagiarism accusation, you can read
Chapter 16 of The Case for Peace, accessible here:
6. I Support Ethnic Cleansing
Finkelstein also likes to say that I support ethnic cleansing, or in the
alternative, that I “If you open up [Dershowitz’s] book, Chutzpah, he says
that, well as far as I’m concerned, he says, ethnic cleansings are, quote,
a fifth-rate moral issue, and no different – he says, and they’re
analogous I’m now quoting him they’re now, ethnic cleansings are
analogous to massive urban renewal.”
(Vancouver, May 15, 2004) (emphasis added).
This quotation is totally made up. I never said that ethnic cleansing is
"analogous to massive urban renewal." He misquotes something I said about
an entirely different matter: the movement of people as part of a
post-conflict “political solution,” such as what occurred after World War
II when “approximately fifteen million ethnic Germans” were moved from
Czechoslovakia and other Eastern European nations to Germany as part of an
international effort to produce increased stability. This is not ethnic
cleansing, but, as I wrote, it “may constitute a human rights violation”
as may the movement of Palestinians following the Arab attack on Israel in
1947-48. (See Chutzpah, p. 215.)
---------
The above are just a few representative examples of Finkelstein's
disqualifying academic dishonestly. There are of course many, many more
examples of simple historical absurdities -- for example, he claims that
Israel started the 1973 Yom Kippur War -- that are Finkelstein's bread and
butter. But the above are some of the more verifiably false.
I am also attaching the "speaking packet" that my office has sent to
schools requesting information from me about Norman Finkelstein. It
includes a list of preposterous quotations, lies, and damning comments
about Finkelstein from mainstream, reputable sources. It also includes my
response to Finklestein’s most recent book, Beyond Chutzpah.
And finally, here are two student opinion pieces about Finkelstein, the
first from the Harvard Law Record ("Justice for Palestine or
Jew-Baiting"), the second from the Yale Daily News ("Finkelstein and the
YCIAS: Misusing Yale, Abusing Students"):
A school should also take into account the fact that Finkelstein is a
classic anti-Semite who has invoked anti-Jewish stereotypes.** He says in
his book Beyond Chutzpah, “Should people like Abraham Foxman, Edgar
Bronfman, and Rabbi Israel Singer [who are prominent Jewish leaders] get a
free ride because they resemble stereotypes straight out of Der
Stürmer?” Can you imagine a professor issuing a similar description of a
woman or a Muslim, or describe the Pope according to an anti-Catholic
stereotype? In fact, just a quick check of his website today, Monday,
shows that in his blog headlines alone, Finkelstein has compared Israel to
Nazi Germany twice, American Jews to the mafia twice and to the KKK once,
and has called Elie Wiesel, "[p]ersona summa creepa." And those are just
the headlines of his most recent posts! Perhaps most notably, Finkelstein
has called American Jews "parasites" and blamed Jews themselves for
anti-Semitism. "Alongside Israel [“American Jewish elites”] are the main
fomenters of anti-Semitism in the world today… They need to be
stopped.” Were he not Jewish, these statements would clearly disqualify him
from tenure. If he made comparable statements about Muslims or Catholics,
he would be disqualified. The fact that he is a Jew making anti-Semitic
statements does not mitigate his bigotry. For purposes of scholarship,
the important point is that, because of his bigotry, he has forever
disqualified himself from being taken seriously on issues of Jews, the
Jewish State, Jewish leaders, or the Jewish religion.
In the end, there is no Finkelstein "scholarship"; there are only false
attacks.
Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.
Sincerely,
Alan Dershowitz
* Sometimes there are differences involving interpretation of words, where
reasonable people might disagree on the meanings of words used. I am not
speaking of those sorts of disagreements such as Finkelstein's statement
concerning his mother:
Still, if she didn't cross fundamental moral boundaries, I glimpsed from
her manner of pushing and shoving in order to get to the head of a queue,
which mortified me, how my mother must have fought Hobbes's war of all
against all many a time in the camps. Really, how else would she have
survived?
I interpreted that question -- If she did not "cross fundamental moral
boundaries ... how else would she have survived?" -- as Finkelstein
questioning whether his mother had crossed such boundaries, that is,
whether she might well have collaborated or violated other moral norms in
the camps. When I pointed out that Finkelstein even questioned his own
mother's survival story, Finkelstein savagely attacked me for claiming
that his mother might have been a Nazi collaborator (when of course he was
the one who raised that question, not me). Finkelstein disputes that he
was raising such suspicion about his mother. Perhaps. It is a matter of
interpretation upon which reasonable people could disagree. I leave these
issues out of the present letter.
** I do not think that harsh criticism of Israel, or even strident
anti-Zionism, is tantamount to anti-Semitism. Nor do I think, though,
that harsh criticism of Israel exempts one from being an anti-Semite if
that charge can be independently established. In my book The Case for
Peace, 139 - 41, I outline thirty factors that can be used to distinguish
anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism.
---------
The New Discourse of Avoidance
by
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen
Before my book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, was published in Germany
last year, many launched attacks on it that have since been shown to be
gross misrepresentations of its contents. Der Spiegel was at the forefront
of the initial assault, publishing a lengthy cover story, "A People of
Demons?" Its central theme was the fictitious charge that I had revived
the notion of "collective guilt," in which Der Spiegel tried to blacken my
character, among other ways, by likening me to an American who during the
war wrote that Germans should all be sterilized.(1) Der Spiegel then
published another fictitious story claiming that the German translation of
my book was cooked, which was such obvious nonsense that it was ignored in
Germany.(2) These stories did, however, give a hint as to the depths of
dishonesty to which some would sink in order to impugn a book that told
long neglected truths that many desperately wished not to hear.
When my book was finally published in German, several things became clear
to the German public. The initial attacks constituted a discourse of
avoidance that deflected attention from the real issues, the new
materials, and the conclusions that my book brings forth. It was also
obvious that many of the critics simply did not want to discuss these
central issues that had hitherto never been forcefully put before the
public: Why did so many ordinary Germans (however many did) support and
even participate in the persecution of the Jews and how did long existing
anti-Semitism (however widespread it was) contribute to their actions?
Having failed with its earlier attempts, Der Spiegel is now resorting to
using a notorious anti-Zionist ideologue, Norman Finkelstein, to launch a
new discourse of avoidance, with its article "Goldhagen -- a Source
Trickster?"(3) Finkelstein’s piece, "Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s ‘Crazy’
Thesis," is a fifty page screed (stretched out over one hundred pages in
the book version to lend it more gravity), which relies systematically on
distortions, misrepresentations, out-of-context quotations, and outright
inventions, to present a fallacious case that I misrepresent the secondary
sources and that my arguments are self-contradictory.(4) Der Spiegel, in
making its case for Finkelstein’s "devastating result," obviously chose to
present what it believes are the strongest examples from Finkelstein’s
piece. So looking at the "best" that Finkelstein has to offer is
sufficient to reveal the general character of his work.
One of Finkelstein’s examples concerns the ritual murder charges (that
Jews killed Christian children for ritual purposes) during the nineteenth
century, and that twelve of the charges eventually led to trials between
1867 and 1914. I bring them up as a small part of a larger discussion of
how widespread, vehement, and hallucinatory the anti-Semitism was in
nineteenth century Germany (and Austria) where such canards had widespread
currency. Ignoring the other voluminous evidence regarding the wide scope
and great intensity of anti-Semitism in Germany during this period,
Finkelstein zooms in on the fact that prosecutors could not prove that
Jews had actually committed these invented crimes (these cases actually
went to trial!) and concludes that this shows that Germans were not
anti-Semitic, and I should have said as much.(5) He writes as if "ritual
murder" trials of Jews had to yield guilty verdicts before one is
permitted to conclude that the widespread currency of such charges in
Germany indicated anything at all about the character of anti-Semitism
among its people. Based on the relevant German secondary sources, which
Finkelstein’s footnotes indicate he has not read, I write: "Even liberal
newspapers took to printing all manner of rumors and accusations against
Jews, including ritual murder charges, as if they had been proven
facts."(6) Finkelstein would have people believe that this is either not
true or irrelevant to the discussion of how widespread and hallucinatory
anti-Semitism was in Germany, and that the only thing that matters about
the routine ritual murder talk and accusations is that a court of law --
where actual evidence must be presented -- could not convict any Jew on
the charge.
Finkelstein also attacks my discussion of the anti-emancipation petition
campaign in Bavaria in 1849.(7) In the original, New Left Review version
of his piece, he uses a qualification that I present in my own endnote,
where I openly discuss the complexity of the events and the contested
nature of some of the evidence, to suggest that what I write in the text
is a misrepresentation! Moreover, in order to make his case, he violates
scholarly practice by presenting another scholar’s words describing the
campaign, "spontaneous, extremely broad-based, and genuine...," as mine,
for which he attacks me as misrepresenting the real nature of the
campaign.(8) This conclusion about the nature of the opposition to Jewish
emancipation is from James Harris’ exhaustive, definitive book on the
subject, The People Speak! Anti-Semitism and Emancipation in
Nineteenth-Century Bavaria. I write: "James Harris’ study of the petition
campaign concludes that, in one region of Bavaria, five to six times more
Germans opposed than favored Jewish emancipation."(9) But Finkelstein --
whose notes indicate that he has not even consulted Harris, the expert on
the subject -- declares not only the opposite to be true but also that I
have misrepresented the record.
After I exposed this example of Finkelstein’s unscholarly legerdemain in
the Frankfurter Rundschau, Finkelstein doctored this section of his piece
for its sanitized publication in A Nation on Trial. Finkelstein’s New Left
Review version on p. 48 reads: "To further document the extent of German
anti-Semitism, Goldhagen recalls a ‘spontaneous, extremely broad-based,
and genuine’ petition campaign in Bavaria opposing the full equality of
Jews. Yet the corresponding note tucked in the book’s back pages reveals
that..." The same passage in A Nation on Trial on p. 21 reads: "Quoting a
scholarly study, Goldhagen recalls a ‘spontaneous, extremely broad-based,
and genuine’ petition campaign in Bavaria opposing the full equality of
Jews. Yet in the corresponding note buried in the book’s back pages,
Goldhagen himself cites credible evidence that..." So Finkelstein, in his
original falsified version, has my note "revealing" that my attempt to
show that my statement about anti-Semitism’s scope is a misrepresentation.
In the revised version -- which was doctored after Finkelstein got caught
-- Finkelstein has me quoting a "scholarly study" and then in my note
"cit[ing] credible evidence" that casts doubt on the general statement.
His now revised section, in which he still leaves out the relevant
evidence, is still a misrepresentation of my book, of Harris’ work, and
the historical record -- though as damning criticism of me, it hardly
makes sense.
Finkelstein has effectively conceded with his surreptitious alteration of
his text after the exposure of his falsehood that he fabricated the
original New Left Review example of my supposed misrepresentation of the
record. He does so without informing the reader. And when one sees the
real text of my book, which follows the conclusions of James Harris, it
becomes clear that Finkelstein’s charge here is just a calumny. If
Finkelstein were, in a similar manner, to change every one of his
misrepresentations of text so that his piece’s contents would accord with
the actual relevant texts, then his "textually" based case would
evaporate. It is worth emphasizing that this is one of Finkelstein’s
strongest, most unassailable examples, which, in so many ways, does
nothing more than reveal that Finkelstein has delegitimized himself and
has himself proven that he has no credibility.
A third example concerns a section in my book on the widespread posting of
signs in German cities and towns declaring "Jews Not Wanted." From that
section, Finkelstein quotes, out of context, three words, "Germans posted
signs," suggesting that I covered up that it was really "Nazis" who did
so.(10) The section in my book begins: "For the next two years, Germans
inside and outside the government succeeded in making life for Jews in
Germany... all but unbearable.... During this period, the society-wide
attack proceeded in an uncoordinated manner. Some of its aspects were
mandated from above, some initiated from below, the latter generally,
though not always, by avowed Nazis. The main, though not sole, initiators
of assaults upon Jews were the men of the SA, the brown shirt shock troops
of the regime." So I make it clear here that they were mainly Nazis,
specifically saying that most of them were SA men. I then write: "During
the 1930s, towns throughout Germany issued official prohibitions on Jews
entering them, and such signs were a near ubiquitous feature of the German
landscape."(11) These passages make it clear that it was principally Nazis
who were responsible (who else was in a position to make "official
prohibitions"?), so Finkelstein’s attack that I cover up that the signs
came from Nazis is a fiction, which he makes by quoting three words out of
context.
The fourth example regards his falsification of evidence concerning my use
of a source. The compiler of Hitler’s public pronouncements, Max Domarus
believed that Hitler’s many public declarations that the war would end in
the extermination of the Jews was put forward within the context of
foreign policy because, in Domarus’ view, Hitler believed that the
extermination would not be approved of in Germany. After Finkelstein
quotes this, he writes: "Yet, Goldhagen writes: ‘Hitler announced many
times, emphatically, that the war would end in the extermination of the
Jews. The killing met with general understanding, if not approval.’ The
endnote refers to Max Domarus."(12) With this Finkelstein, as he does
throughout his article, contends that I appeal to the authority of other
authors when they say the opposite of what I maintain. The texts of my
book and Domarus’ book show that Finkelstein has invented this notion in
order to invent yet another false charge against me.
The Domarus work to which I refer is a multivolume compilation of Hitler’s
speeches and proclamations. It contains an introduction by Domarus, where
he presents a different interpretation from mine of how to understand
Hitler’s not entirely consistent statements. Finkelstein falsely suggests
that I cite Domarus ("the endnote refers readers to Max Domarus") as a
supporter of my interpretation while concealing that he actually has a
different view; yet my book is as clear as can be -- following standard
scholarly practice -- that I am not citing Domarus, the interpreter, but
referring to the materials that he has compiled. The endnote reference
mark in my book is placed after my sentence "Hitler announced many times,
emphatically, that the war would end in the extermination of the
Jews,"(13) which is an undisputed fact. The single page in Domarus’ book
which I cite in this note is vol. 1, p. 41. It contains some of these
announcements and references to others. My sentence subsequent to the
endnote reference mark, "The killings met with general understanding, if
not approval," is clearly my view, which I spend the next four hundred
pages substantiating. There is no reference or appeal to Domarus’ views or
authority. The view of Domarus that Finkelstein cites is not on the page
that I cite but on vol. 1, p. 37. So Finkelstein has taken an endnote
reference -- which indicates exactly and only where readers can find the
relevant quotations from Hitler -- and invented the notion that it comes
after a sentence in my book where I state my own interpretation of the
data. It is on the basis of Finkelstein’s own deception that he then
attacks my integrity. For Finkelstein to make this and his many other
charges seem plausible, he must engage in this sort of falsification,
which he does again and again. Concocting these sorts of falsifications
requires effort and ingenuity.
It is only through such wholesale falsification of evidence that
Finkelstein can give surface plausibility to his attack. His two principal
charges are, on the face of it, absurd. The first is that I have falsified
secondary sources. After hundreds of articles have been written about my
book -- including very critical ones, some by scholars in the field who
are the authors of the secondary sources that Finkelstein cites --
suddenly Finkelstein, a man who is a self-proclaimed amateur in the field,
for the first time, "discovers" my alleged transgression. His second
charge is that my argument falls apart through internal contradiction.
Prior to Finkelstein’s second "discovery," one of the standard criticisms
of the book is that its argument was too tight, too neat, seamless.
Finkelstein can make this second argument seem plausible only through
out-of-context quotation, the manifest twisting of meaning, and blatant
misrepresentation. This is also his standard technique for inventing the
aspersion that I have misused sources.
In addition to misrepresenting the contents of my book and the secondary
literature, Finkelstein relies on a second technique of deception
throughout. He finds an instance where a scholar disagrees with my
interpretation about some point. He then asserts, as if it is uncontested
fact, that such a disagreement shows that I have falsified two things. The
first is my conclusions. It is an assumption of his entire piece that
whenever a disagreement over interpretation exists between any scholar and
me 1) that the other scholar is automatically correct, 2) that I know it,
and 3) that I have willfully hidden it. He typically presents other
scholars’ interpretations of data as facts, which makes it seem as if my
putting forward a different position is to deny uncontested facts.
My second alleged falsification is of the work of others. He writes as if
any time one uses a single fact that is contained in another book, it
creates an obligation to accept its author’s interpretation of that fact
and on seemingly all other matters as well. No scholar does this.(14) (My
book is not a historiography of the scholarship on the Holocaust but a
study of the Holocaust itself which already has 125 pages of endnotes
without the additional endless historiographical discussions that the man
who cannot read most of the sources demands.) That my interpretations and
conclusions, on small and large points, often differ from those of other
scholars is extremely well known -- after all my book is based on new
evidence and new interpretations, and I say at the beginning that it
revises central notions about the Holocaust. That these differences exist,
I also frequently state explicitly in my book and refer readers to
alternative views. Virtually every reviewer of the book has also stated
that my book departs from existing interpretations.
Without these two central techniques of falsification, Finkelstein would
have no critique to write other than one which merely expressed his
ideological aversion for my book. The examples discussed here are,
according to Der Spiegel’s choice, Finkelstein’s strongest, most
scholarly, and presumably most devastating ones. Yet they are so blatant
in their violation of scholarly practice that they show that nothing can
be believed in Finkelstein’s piece without first comparing his text
against my original text and whatever sources are relevant, including, of
course, the enormous number of sources, primary and secondary -- which
Finkelstein pretends do not exist -- which support my conclusions and
which are cited in my book.(15) Undertaking such verification would show
that Finkelstein’s violations of scholarly practice and rectitude, found
in the examples discussed here, are typical of and repeated throughout his
piece. It would also show that his piece is nothing more than the
ideological tract that he all but announced it to be in the last section
of its original publication in New Left Review (discussed below), which
consists of an anti-Zionist diatribe and wild inventions about, and
denunciations of, Holocaust studies.
Finkelstein’s gross misrepresentation of my book is just one indication
that his attack on it has little to do with any knowledge of, and concern
for, scholarship on the Holocaust and everything to do with his burning
political agenda. Here are the facts about the German history and
Holocaust "expert" Finkelstein. None of his previous published books and
articles are on German history or the Holocaust. Even though the primary
material and critical secondary material are in German, he does not cite a
single German source because he does not even read German. Nevertheless,
the neophyte Finkelstein makes a string of pronouncements (and errors)
about what the sources prove, all the while pretending that the enormous
amount of evidence that contradicts his wishful assertions and ideological
pronouncements do not exist.
None of this is surprising, since Finkelstein’s published work has been in
the "field" of anti-Zionism. In an earlier article, Finkelstein argued
that Israel is as criminal as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the state that
decimated Kuwait and systematically slaughtered Kurds and Shiites.(16)
Elsewhere, he has written, "I can’t imagine why Israel’s apologists [those
who defend Israel against such charges] would be offended by a comparison
with the Gestapo," suggesting that those who supported Israel should be
flattered by the comparison.(17)
Finkelstein’s attack on my book flows from his earlier work in a manner
that suggests that, in order to write it, he did not even have to consult
the sketchy source base that he did. His piece about my book in New Left
Review ends with a five page anti-Zionist diatribe in which he argues that
non-German scholars of the Holocaust are Zionist propagandists whose work
legitimizes Israel’s existence "which is celebrated as a bastion of
Western Civilization doing battle on the front lines with and, against,
all odds, smashing the Arab hordes."(18) According to Finkelstein, not
only my book but all of what he terms "Holocaust studies" is "mainly a
propaganda enterprise."(19) Thus, Finkelstein writes: "‘The Holocaust’ is
in effect the Zionist account of the Nazi holocaust."(20) What amounts to
an international Zionist conspiracy even allegedly goes so far as to
silence dissenting voices with something Finkelstein invents, called "the
‘Holocaust Studies’ index," which supposedly proscribes works that diverge
from the alleged Zionist propagandistic position, as the Catholic Church
once did.
Finkelstein fabricates the whopper that I am now at the cutting edge of
this Zionist conspiracy: "Seen through Goldhagen’s effectively
ultra-Zionist lens, in the dialectic of anti-Semitism, not only can
Gentiles do no good but Jews can do no evil." Thus, Finkelstein goes far
beyond the phony "collective guilt" charge with new, invented, monstrous
allegations that I believe that no non-Jew can ever do good, that all
non-Jews are "potential if not actual homicidal anti-Semites," and that
Jews can do no evil. He also writes that "the essence of Goldhagen’s
thesis" is "that only deranged perverts could perpetrate a crime so
heinous as the Final Solution."
Those who are the least bit familiar with my book know that it emphasizes
that we must restore the humanity to the perpetrators of the Holocaust and
recognize that they were ordinary people from all walks of life, who, like
other genocidal killers (e.g., in Turkey and in Rwanda), acted upon their
beliefs. Those who are familiar with my statements about postwar Germany,
including in my book itself, know that I am an admirer of the Federal
Republic of Germany, where anti-Semitism has declined enormously. Anyone
who knows any of my clearly stated views on these and other subjects will
also know that Finkelstein’s allegations, including that I think Germans
are "crazy" and "deranged perverts," are wild inventions.
And his "evidence" is no better. Finkelstein’s hollow practice, which
consists of his customary techniques of falsification documented here,
flows from his ideological pronouncements: Finkelstein, in the cause of
anti-Zionism, declares Holocaust studies, and work that shows that the
Jewish people were persecuted because they were hated, to be "propaganda."
Some of these clear statements of Finkelstein’s self-discrediting
ideological views were excised from the version of Finkelstein’s piece
that Henry Holt published in A Nation on Trial. A comparison of the last
section of the versions in New Left Review (pp. 82-87) and in A Nation on
Trial (pp. 87-100) reveals this cover-up. It is not hard to believe that
the publisher would want to conceal Finkelstein’s true views, views of the
sort which, heretofore, had been confined to the publications of fringe
groups. If the publisher had included in the book the views that
Finkelstein has so stridently expressed about "Holocaust studies" being
propaganda and the like, then Finkelstein and the entire publishing
enterprise would have been exposed by Finkelstein’s own ideological
pronouncements to be the unscholarly, dishonest polemic that it is; Henry
Holt would have immediately delegitimized its own publication.
Imagine that someone would write that all or most German scholarship on
the Holocaust is mainly "propaganda" and would attack a German scholar in
the most vicious of terms. Does anyone believe that Der Spiegel would
pretend that such a person is an expert voice of scholarly probity and
reason, and would devote many pages to his attacks on a scholar? Would
Henry Holt? But when Finkelstein, a man with an explicit political agenda
who has never written about the Holocaust, writes the same about the
scholarship of Jews -- which is what he makes clear he means by "Holocaust
studies" (the occasional, in his view, exceptional Jewish scholar of the
Holocaust notwithstanding) -- Der Spiegel and now Henry Holt present him
as the crown witness.
Der Spiegel, in its initial attack on my book, used the irrelevant facts
of my identity to suggest that I have other than scholarly motives. In its
current attack, it uses the exact same irrelevant facts about Finkelstein
(as Finkelstein does himself) but this time to portray Finkelstein, the
anti-Zionist crusader and conspiracy theorist, as a man above suspicion,
who could not possibly have any agenda other than telling the world the
truth about the Holocaust! Henry Holt and those who support the
publication of A Nation on Trial present Finkelstein in the same manner.
With the justification that Finkelstein’s parents are survivors of the
Holocaust, Der Spiegel tells the unwitting reader: "It is certain that
Finkelstein has no ulterior motives in making his attack." Henry Holt has
now tried to foist the same deception on what it hopes remains an
unsuspecting public.
End Notes:
1. Der Spiegel, May 20, 1996, pp. 48-77.
2. "'Riesige Mehrheit,'" Der Spiegel, August 12, 1996, p. 42.
3. "Goldhagen -- ein Quellenstrickser?" Der Spiegel, August 11, 1997, pp.
156-158.
4. Published in A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical
Truth (New York: Owl Books, 1998), pp. 1-100. The earlier version, which
Henry Holt sanitized in order to make it more presentable, is to be found
in New Left Review, July/August, 1997, pp. 39-87.
5. A Nation on Trial, p. 21.
6. Hitler's Willing Executioners, p. 64.
7. A Nation on Trial, p. 21.
8. New Left Review, p. 48.
9. See James F. Harris, The People Speak! Anti-Semitism and Emancipation
in Nineteenth-Century Bavaria (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1994), p. 169.
10. A Nation on Trial, p. 40.
11. Hitler's Willing Executioners, pp. 91-92.
12. A Nation on Trial, p. 30.
13. Hitler's Willing Executioners, p. 8. That Hitler would repeatedly
assert publicly, for the entire nation, that he would annihilate the
Jewish people, immediately casts doubt on Domarus' notion that Hitler was
convinced that the majority of the German people and of the members of the
Nazi Party would "resist" such a program -- if he had believed this, then
why would he keep announcing and emphasizing it both before and while he
was annihilating the Jews?
14. Domarus' view of how widespread anti-Semitism was in Germany prior to
the Nazis' assumption of power is on p. 38: "At the time National
Socialism was beginning to take hold, it was widely held that the Jews
were responsible for every mishap in Germany from the early Middle Ages to
the 20th century." This is a view similar to my own, which Finkelstein,
against overwhelming and voluminous evidence, denies and accuses me of
inventing. According to Finkelstein's own disingenuous accusatory
practice, his reliance on Domarus elsewhere means that he is obliged to
present this view of Domarus and, since Finkelstein has not, he has
therefore falsified a secondary source.
15. So, on anti-Semitism, which Finkelstein would have people believe was
neither very widespread nor particularly virulent, Werner Jochmann, the
leading scholar of anti-Semitism in late nineteenth and early twentieth
century Germany writes: "A wealth of examples shows how, in the [18]90's,
anti-Semitism infiltrated in this way into every last citizens'
association, penetrating folk clubs and cultural societies." After
surveying anti-Semitism in Germany from 1914 to 1924, Jochmann concludes
"that already in the first years of the republic the anti-Semitic flood had
inundated all dams of legality. Still greater was the devastation in the
spiritual realm. Even the democratic parties and the governments of the
republic believed that they could escape the pressure being exerted on
them if they recommended to the Jews restraint in political and social
life, and deported or interned the East European Jews." See Hitler's
Willing Executioners, pp. 72, 84. For Jochmann's devastating documentation
of the ubiquity and virulence of anti-Semitism in Germany, see the original
essays, "Structure and Functions of German Anti-Semitism, 1878-1914," in
Herbert A. Strauss, ed., Hostages of Modernization: Studies on modern
Antisemitism, 1870-1933/39 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1993); "Die
Ausbreitung des Antisemitismus in Deutschland, 1914-1923," in
Gesellschaftskrise und Judenfeinschaft in Deutschland, 1870-1945 (Hamburg:
Hans Christians Verlag, 1988); and the other chapters of
Gesellschaftskrise und Judenfeinschaft in Deutschland, 1870-1945.
16. "Israel and Iraq: A Double Standard in the Application of
International Law," Monthly Review 43, 3 (July-August 1991).
17. Quoted in John Dirlik, "Canadian Jewish Organizations Charged with
Stifling Campus Debate," The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
Finkelstein's "scholarship" in his own area of expertise, The Rise and
Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1996), received the following sobering
evaluation in Kirkus Reviews (September 30, 1996): "Another contribution
to the vast body of propagandistic literature (produced by both sides)
that has helped to block a balanced discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict... this book is fatally compromised by a radical anti-Israel
animus. In the service of his bias, Finkelstein sometimes distorts
history, as in his ludicrous claim that 'Israel's founding father, David
Ben-Gurion, envisioned that the future state would incorporate the West
Bank and Gaza, Jordan, the Golan Heights, and Lebanon,' and his assertion
that 'it was Yasir Arafat's acceptance of the two-state solution that
triggered Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982.' There is no evidence for
the latter argument." The reviewer then informs the reader of the basic
facts that show the falsity of Finkelstein's account of the partition:
Ben-Gurion accepted the UN's 1947 partition plan, which was rejected by
all the surrounding Arab states. The reviewer continues: "In support of
his positions, Finkelstein sometimes cites himself, sometimes such extreme
critics of Israeli policies as Noam Chomsky and Alexander Cockburn, and
almost never a meticulous scholar at home in both Hebrew and Arabic
sources, such as Benny Morris. This work may interest those who are
already convinced that Israel is a kind of neocolonialist state." The
reviewer concludes with the recommendation that those who want to get "a
more balanced and substantial view" of the sources of the conflict should
look elsewhere.
18. New Left Review, p. 84; A Nation on Trial, p. 92.
19. New Left Review, p. 83; excised from A Nation on Trial.
20. New Left Review, p. 84; A Nation on Trial, p. 94.
21. New Left Review, p. 83; doctored in A Nation on Trial, p. 89.
22. New Left Review, p. 85; excised from A Nation on Trial.
23. New Left Review, p. 86; A Nation on Trial, p. 98.
24. See, for example, my speech "Modell Bundesrepublik: National History,
Democracy, and Internationalization in Germany," available at this website.
25. "Holocaust studies first flourished in the wake of the June 1967
Arab-Israeli war... Jewish intellectuals suddenly discovered the Jewish
state, now celebrated as a bastion of Western Civilization doing battle on
the front lines with and, against, all odds, smashing the Arab hordes.
They also suddenly discovered the Nazi genocide. A tiny cottage industry
before 1967, Holocaust studies began to boom" (New Left Review, p. 84; A
Nation on Trial, p. 92 for the amended version). It should come as no
surprise that the man who would have people believe that the Germans who
tortured, brutalized, and killed Jews were not anti-Semites, that whatever
enmity existed against Jews was partly the Jews' own fault (he derides the
notion that Jews were "innocent" in the Germans' genocidal assault on
them), would also like people to believe that when Jews study the
systematic attempt to annihilate the Jewish people, resulting in the death
of one-third of the world's Jews, they do so not because of any genuine
interest in the world historical catastrophe but because of a desire --
that Finkelstein has himself concocted and imputes to them -- to serve Zionism.
---------
Peter Novick’s review of The Holocaust Industry
‘Offene Fenster und Tueren,’
Sueddeutsche Zeitung, February 7, 2001.[1]
Last summer, after the initial publication of Norman Finkelstein's The
Holocaust Industry in English, there was said to be something called a
"Finkelstein debate" in Germany. Now that the book has appeared in German
translation, we will perhaps see this renewed. But it is hard to know what
there is in The Holocaust Industry, then or now, that is "debatable."
Finkelstein's assertion that in negotiations with Swiss banks and German
industrial corporations inflated numbers were often tossed around by
claimants is hardly "debatable." It is simply a fact that this was the
case--as is the fact that, from the other side, deflated numbers were
presented. Similarly, it is an undebatable fact that heavy-handed pressure
tactics were sometimes employed on behalf of the claimants--a response to
intransigence and delaying tactics on the part of the banks and
corporations. One could certainly wish that the negotiations had been
conducted differently; wish, especially, that all these matters had been
disposed of decades ago. But they weren't: another undebatable fact. In
any case, all of this is widely known, and widely-deplored: what was
there, what is there, to debate?
As concerns particular assertions made by Finkelstein concerning
reparations and restitution, and on other matters as well, 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.
Among his more startling claims is that the treasury of the World Jewish
Congress has "amassed no less than 'roughly $7 billion' in compensation
monies." Finkelstein's source for this startling revelation is an article
in FAZ which reported the very unstartling fact that the WJC was holding
discussions about how such monies might be distributed if and when they
received. This is not just carelessness on Finkelstein's part, since he
knew when he wrote the book that the WJC had not received any such funds:
deliberate deception. (Examples could be multiplied. 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.)
Or is the issue in the "Finkelstein Debate" his overall thesis, of which
the discussion of reparations and restitution is merely an illustration?
That larger thesis is clearly stated in his book and is easily summarized.
"American Jewish elites," Finkelstein argues, have cynically constructed a
"Holocaust Industry" to serve their selfish interests. To anyone familiar
with the author's lifelong crusade against Israel, it will come as no
surprise that first among these interests is to "justify criminal policies
of the Israeli state".
But to credit "American Jewish elites" with sincerity in their concern
for Israel would, in his view, be a mistake. In reality, he says, these
elites are merely sycophantic tools of American imperialism. They came to
support Israel only when it became a compliant tool of US policy-makers;
they would abandon immediately if it ceased to be an American "strategic
asset."
"The Holocaust Industry," Finkelstein tells us, also serves domestic
American purposes. Keeping alive the memory of the Holocaust immunizes
American Jews from "justified criticism" for their shift rightward in
recent years. But here too, we are told, one should not credit "American
Jewish elites" with sincere concern for the well being or reputation of
American Jewry: "If US ruling circles decided to scapegoat Jews, we should
not be surprised if American Jewish leaders acted exactly as their
predecessors did during the Nazi holocaust. . . . 'Jews would lead Jews to
death.'"
The overall argument of Finkelstein's book is that "American Jewish
elites" conspire only in their private interest: to line their own pockets
and to facilitate their "entry into the inner sanctums of American power."
For these elites, he tells us, "the Holocaust performed the same function
as Israel: another invaluable chip in a high-stakes power game." For
Finkelstein, it is only by acknowledging this long-standing conspiracy of
"Jewish elites" that one can really understand what was involved in
reparations and restitution negotiations.
I had not thought that (apart from the disreputable fringe) there were
Germans who would take seriously this twenty-first century updating of the
"Protocols of the Elders of Zion." I was mistaken: last summer the
reviewer for the FAZ compared the book's author to Hannah Arendt; said
that reading the book was "like opening a window for a sudden gust of
fresh air."
Understandably dismayed by this sort of response to Finkelstein's book,
there were those in Germany who said that it was "impermissible" for
Germans to discuss the questions which the book raised. As an outsider, I
hesitate to express an opinion on how Germans conduct their public
discourse, but I must say that I am opposed to their ruling any subject
"impermissible" or "out of bounds." And this applies particularly to
subjects having to do with the memory of the Holocaust.
Germany's relationship to the Holocaust and its memory is not "given"--set
in stone--but, must, like the relationship between any collectivity and
its memories, be the subject of continued rethinking and renegotiation.
Among American Jews, the rethinking and renegotiation of how we handle the
memory of the Holocaust has been underway for some time, and it has been
the occasion of lively debate. Though obviously the two cases are very
dissimilar, many of the same issues arise. As the years pass, what should
change and what should stay the same in our relationship to the memory?
How does one steer a path between forgetfulness and obsession? What should
be the relative weight of this memory compared to other memories of the
collective past? If we've made mistakes in how we've memorialized the
Holocaust, how can we learn from those mistakes and do better in the future?
On neither side of the Atlantic should discussion of any of these issues
be "impermissible." Indeed such discussions are highly desirable. But
Finkelstein's rant is not a contribution to such discussions; it is a
subtraction from them.
[1] Accessible at
http://www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/div/racket/holindustry/novickeng.html ; the
original article that was published in the German newspaper Sueddeutsche
Zeitung can be found in: Petra Steinberger (ed.): Die Finkelstein-Debatte,
(Piper Verlag: Muenchen 2001), pp. 158-162
---------
The New York Times
August 6, 2000
HEADLINE: A Tale of Two Holocausts
BYLINE: By Omer Bartov; Omer Bartov's most recent book is "Mirrors of
Destruction: War, Genocide, and Modern Identity."
BODY:
THE HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY
Reflections on the Exploitation
of Jewish Suffering.
By Norman G. Finkelstein.
150 pp. New York:
Verso. $23.
NORMAN G. FINKELSTEIN first gained a national reputation with his essay,
"Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's 'Crazy' Thesis," included in the book he wrote
with Ruth Bettina Birn, "A Nation on Trial." Much of the essay was a
brilliant dissection of Goldhagen's book, "Hitler's Willing Executioners."
Its last section, however, revealed Finkelstein undergoing a bizarre
metamorphosis, in which he employed the same dubious rhetoric and faulty
logic he had identified in Goldhagen's work in order to propound his own,
even "crazier," thesis on the dark forces lurking, to his mind, behind his
adversary's success.
Now Finkelstein is back, with a vengeance, a lone ranger with a holy
mission -- to unmask an evil Judeo-Zionist conspiracy. The main argument
in "The Holocaust Industry" is based on a simple distinction between two
phenomena: the Nazi Holocaust and "The Holocaust," which he defines as "an
ideological representation of the Nazi holocaust." The author has little
interest in the former, though he readily acknowledges that it happened,
since both his parents survived its horrors and since some of the few
historians he respects, notably Raul Hilberg, have written on it.
But in one of those strange inversions that characterize his book,
Finkelstein speaks of the historical event with the same kind of awe, and
demands the same sort of silent incomprehension, that he ascribes to his
main foe, Elie Wiesel. In order "to truly learn from the Nazi holocaust,"
he asserts, "its physical dimension must be reduced and its moral
dimension expanded." Whatever that might mean, it comes as no surprise
that his views about the origins, nature and implications of the genocide
of the Jews are but a series of vague, undocumented and contradictory
assertions. Thus, for instance, in one place he writes that the
"historical evidence for a murderous gentile impulse is nil," and rejects
the notion that there might have been an "abandonment of the Jews" by the
United States government. But in another place he charges that the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum "mutes the Christian background to
European anti-Semitism" and "downplays the discriminatory U.S. immigration
quotas before the war," and then goes on to cite approvingly David S.
Wyman's book, "The Abandonment of the Jews."
But what really interests Finkelstein is "The Holocaust." The gist of his
argument is simple: Had the Jews and the Zionists not had the Holocaust
already, they would have had to invent it. Indeed, for all intents and
purposes, this is precisely what they have done, in the form of "The
Holocaust," despite the distracting fact that, once upon a time, such an
event actually took place. And why was "The Holocaust" fabricated? Because
it legitimizes "one of the world's most formidable military powers,"
Israel, allowing it to "cast itself as a 'victim' state," and because it
provides "the most successful ethnic group in the United States," the
Jews, with "immunity to criticism," leading to "the moral corruptions that
typically attend" such immunity.
Finkelstein views himself as innocent of any desire to exploit "The
Holocaust" for his own ends, unlike his apparently countless enemies. The
fact that his sensational "revelations" and outrageous accusations draw a
great deal of public and media attention is no fault of his own. Nor is
his vehement anti-Zionism and seething hatred of what he perceives as a
corrupt Jewish leadership in the United States anything but a reflection
of a reality that only he can perceive through the clouds of mystification
and demagogy that have deceived thousands of lay persons, scholars, and
intellectuals. From his Mount Sinai, everything is clear and obvious. It's
just that his voice is too faint to be heard in the valley.
The main culprit, in the world according to Finkelstein, is "the Holocaust
industry," made up of Israeli officials and fat lawyers, Jewish agents
well placed in American political circles and ruthless Zionists determined
to subjugate the Palestinians. Here he combines an old-hat 1960's view of
Israel as the outpost of American imperialism with a novel variation on
the anti-Semitic forgery, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," which
warned of a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. Now, however, the
Jewish conspiracy is intended to "shake down" (his favorite phrase) such
innocent entities as Swiss banks, German corporations and East European
owners of looted Jewish property, all in order to consolidate Jewish power
and influence without giving the real survivors of the genocide anything
but empty rhetoric.
Nowhere does Finkelstein mention that the main beneficiaries of
compensation for forced labor will be elderly gentile men and women living
their last days in poverty in Eastern Europe, or that German scholars like
Ulrich Herbert, hardly an employee of "Jewish interests," have been at the
forefront of the struggle to gain compensation from corporations that for
decades refused to admit their enormous gains from slave and forced labor.
From the author's perspective, this is simply a case of organized
American Jewry "lording it over those least able to defend themselves,"
such as, presumably, the Swiss banks it was "plotting" to boycott, and
"the United States and its allies" from whom it "finagled another $70 million."
Thus have the great powers of the world capitulated to what The Times of
London called the "Holocash" campaign in the United States, according to
Finkelstein. He reserves special contempt for the Claims Conference, an
umbrella of Jewish organizations that distributes reparations funds to
survivors, and quotes approvingly the right-wing Israeli Parliament member
Michael Kleiner, who called the conference "a Judenrat, carrying on the
Nazis' work in different ways." Indeed, as Finkelstein says in another
context, les extrmes se touchent: in denouncing the "shakedown" of German
corporations, this left-wing anti-Zionist uses precisely the kind of
rhetoric that Menachem Begin employed when he spoke out against taking
"blood money" during the right-wing riots against the restitution
agreement with West Germany in the early 1950's, which almost toppled the
Israeli government.
There is something sad in this warping of intelligence, and in this
perversion of moral indignation. There is also something indecent about
it, something juvenile, self-righteous, arrogant and stupid. As was shown
in Peter Novick's far more balanced (though not entirely satisfactory)
book, "The Holocaust in American Life," the changing perception of the
Nazi genocide of the Jews has also opened the way for a variety of
exploiters and small-time opportunists. Yet to make this into an
international Jewish conspiracy verges on paranoia and would serve
anti-Semites around the world much better than any lawyer's exorbitant
fees for "shaking down" a German industrialist.
Finkelstein speaks of the "Holocaust industry" as "cloaking itself in the
sanctimonious mantle of 'needy Holocaust victims.' "Yet he cloaks himself
in that very same mantle, while at the same time showing little sympathy
for the feelings of the survivors and enormous zeal in exposing the
"reckless and ruthless abandon" of the "Holocaust industry," which he
calls "the main fomenter of anti-Semitism in Europe." By its "blackmailing
of Swiss bankers and German industrialists," as well as of "starving
Polish peasants," the "Holocaust industry" seeks endlessly to augment that
pile of gold, or "Holocaust booty," on which Jewish and Zionist leaders
are now allegedly sitting. "The Holocaust," Finkelstein concludes, is
possibly "the greatest robbery in the history of mankind."
What I find so striking about "The Holocaust Industry" is that it is
almost an exact copy of the arguments it seeks to expose. 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.
This book is, in a word, an ideological fanatic's view of other people's
opportunism, by a writer so reckless and ruthless in his attacks that he
is prepared to defend his own enemies, the bastions of Western capitalism,
and to warn that "The Holocaust" will stir up an anti-Semitism whose
significance he otherwise discounts. Like any conspiracy theory, it
contains several grains of truth; and like any such theory, it is both
irrational and insidious. Finkelstein can now be said to have founded a
Holocaust industry of his own.
At 12:02 PM 6/15/2006, you wrote:
Dear Professor Dershowitz:
I hope this note finds you well and enjoying your summer.
I write you about the matter of Norman Finkelstein, who comes up for a
tenure decision this autumn. To prepare myself, I am investigating your
charges that he is guilty of various forms of intellectual dishonesty.
I have contacted Professor Peter Novick to follow up on his indictment
which you quoted in your letter of November 10, 2005, to Father
Holtschneider and in the manuscript titled "Literary McCarthyism" which
you sent me the previous year. I am contacting you, too, to ask your
assistance. Could you point me to the clearest and most egregious
instances of dishonesty on Finkelstein's part?
Thank you for your assistance in this matter. If you care to contact me
via telephone, my office number is 773.325.7338. During the summer I
will be working out of my home most of the time; my number there is
630.264.0773.
Best regards,
Patrick Callahan
Professor
Department of Political Science
DePaul University
Chicago, IL