regarding Mira
Voegl's post on exactly this point,
that Finkelstein did not say
what she claims he said (and
"repeatedly" even), and that the
video she linked to provides no
support for this. I've never had
a comment I sent not posted, so
hopefully this will be up there
soon.
I tried a comment on the Martin in the Margins blog late last night, well early this morning and it hasn't appeared. It doesn't get many comments so it could be he doesn't want the only one to be a detractor. It could be that it was so late he hasn't checked his comments yet but this is a concerted zionist campaign to smear and undermine Finkelstein. David t (Toube) can be expected to lie for Israel at every turn but you would at least expect Hirsh to pretend to support the academic rather than host a post that irrelevantly and falsely accuses Finkelstein of "hoping" for a Hizbullah attack.
David Toube ("t" at Harry's Place), the lying lawyer and now JC hack, wants people to harass the Guardian readers' editor. See if the guy (woops, the woman) buckles. My guess is she will but let's see. I think I'll write with the basic facts, ie, that Israel is citing security, not consorting with an enemy and so the Guardian report is accurate.
Thanks for your comment.
UPDATE: dammit, I didn't save the comment I put on Martin in the margins.
"Or else, like Toni O'Loughlin in The Guardian, you could divine that it's simply his 'criticism' of Israel which got him into trouble."
Except that even in the Guardian piece itself, we have a statement by The Association for Civil Rights in Israel calling it an assault on freedom of speech, and "typical of a totalitarian regime". And there's more...
"Officials said that the decision to deport Finkelstein was connected to his anti-Zionist opinions and fierce public criticism of Israel around the world."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/
Sat...d=1211434094376
"It's hard to make sense of this. Was he deported because he was considered a security threat? That would imply that the Israelis were nervous that he could report on Israel to Hizbollah in such a way as to compromise Israeli security. That is the most charitable explanation of Israel's actions. If that is the correct one, then the Israel Secret Services are simply crazy.
Another explanation is that Israel was upset with Finkelstein because he had openly consorted with and supported an enemy, and that there is no obligation of any county to let in foreign nationals who do this. The security business was just a pretext. If that is the correct explanation, then Israel is acting as we Israelis have come to expect of it -- as an authoritarian regime that picks on the weak, in this case, foreign nationals.
A third explanation is that Finkelstein was barred because he is a high-profile critic of Israel, even without the Hizbollah business. Israel regularly bars the entry of pro-Palestinian academics who come to show support for activists. I really hope that Israel hasn't stooped that low in Finkelsteins's case, but I wouldn't be surprised."
http://themagneszionist.blogspot...d-
reaction.html
The hope, as happens so often, is that concerted action by the hasbara machine will render Finkelstein a non-person and that truth will be irrelevant on any report about him.
I think we can assume that Ben's and Seth's comments won't be seeing the light of day. They effectively accuse Engage of dishonesty and that can't be allowed. They have allowed a comment by a mild critic called Fred but all that does is link to an editorial in Ha'aretz that ironically takes the stated Engage and Harry's Place line that people should be allowed to express views that others may not want to hear.
I was going to say it is must be easier being an anti-Zionist getting into Israel than an anti-Zionist getting on to the Engage pages but...
And of course everyone from Engage onwards is going to back the ban, because in reality they're banning NF from their brains. They think, 'he's a bad Jew, ban him' It's that lovely cosy jewish thing again.
Diasporist - I think Engage likes to maintain a certain, how you say, "demographic balance" of 80% people like them to 20% people not like them. They prefer a trollesque feed frenzy by their own but 80/20's the minimum.
Well, whether he's surprised or not isn't really the issue. Finkelstein was (afaik) attempting to visit his best friend, who is a Palestinian human rights activist living in the West Bank. Israel blocked him from doing so using the farcical excuse that he somehow represented a "security" threat.
So a) this is another example showing how far removed Israel's use of the term "security" is from the conventional understanding of the term, and b) it is another instance of Israel abusing its control over the occupied Palestinian territories by blocking people from visiting there without any good reason for doing so. No?
does engage believe NF is a security risk to Israel?
does it believe he should have been deported?
if it believe Israel does not ban its critics (ever?) then why was he deported exactly?
and finally - if they believe he should have been deported, why are they not campaigning for a ban on his entry to the uk? is Israel somehow... UNIQUE... while, if they believe he should not have been deported, why are they not campaigning for his right to travel freely?
well - we know if i really wanted to get posted in the comments box i'd surely have been better off with some of the standard back-slapping followed by a dubious link to a tangential essay on a Jewish victims of the Burma cyclone and a footnote on a Palestinian journalist whose al-ayyam article doesn't give this pertinent issue the prominence it would so clearly receive in a world ridded once and for all of antisemites!
That'll be my next comment then...
To tell the truth, I think the left keeps getting itself tied in knots over issues like this. The harder any of us push a nation state, the more agitated we get when that state pushes back. Well, yeah. Because that's what states do and that's how states justify their existence. 'We defend the mass of people, by locking up or silencing those who criticize the state'. The state substitutes itself for 'the people' and at that moment any kind of action against itself is legitimate. It's of course no surprise that Israel substitutes itself for the people because that's what zionism does. Zionism is 'the jews' by its own account, so more of the same there.
Demanding that "the only democracy in the Middle East" live up to its supposed ideals is useful precisely because it can't possibly happen - it's sort of a political kind of a "transitional programme."
What kicked off the campaign was the Holocaust Industry. Some time after Finkelstein published his indictment of the "hucksters" who are exploiting the pain and suffering of holocaust survivors, inflating their numbers to do so and thereby giving succour to holocaust deniers, the JC published a report and an editorial expressing disquiet at how much the administrators were paying themselves and the fact that they spend a bit too much on memorials and not enough on US and Israel's holocaust survivors. For Finkelstein's efforts he gets called a holocaust "revisionist" (hint hint) who has accused the survivors themselves of fraud.
Finkelstein has had to fight for his own academic freedom and it turns out that the main campaigners against the academic boycott support the ban, are colluding in the lie behind the ban and are willing to smear anyone honestly reporting on the ban. They also seem to be speaking with one voice.
Anyway, I've been doing another post on it sporadically through the day so I'll get back to that.
follows. Since then I see they've posted one more comment, but not mine. I agree with some of the comments above regarding what's important and what's not, but it really bothers me when they make outright falsehoods about Finkelstein and refuse, apparenty, to allow discussion. This is just not reasonable behavior. Does anybody have David Hirsh's direct email? If so, please send it to me. I would like to let him know directly what I think of Mira Vogel's behavior. I have had my own run-ins in the past with Hirsh, but he has never refused to post my comments during a discussion.
comment sent this morning:
=====================================
I submitted the following comment yesterday, and while two new
comments have appeared in the meantime, mine has not. While
I have my disagreements with Engage, I have in the past
appreciated the fact that all comments I submitted were posted.
I would like to assume that there has been some sort of "hiccup"
in the processing of the comments rather, and so I am now
submitting this again. If in fact you do not wish to publish
this comment, you have my yahoo email (seth235@yahoo.com),
and I would appreciate a comment as to why not. But I look
forward to it appearing and having a discussion as to what
Finkelstein actually said. Thank you.
My earlier comment:
------------------------
Where does Finkelstein say that he "expressed hope that Hesbollah
will attack in Israel in earnest"? "Repeatedly", no less. I
watched again the video link you gave for that and he does not
say that.
Incidentally, it is somewhat amazing that for all the
references on here to Lebanon and the crimes of Hezbollah,
there has never, as far as I know, been a link made to the
Human Rights Watch report on Israel's use of cluster munitions
during the last war
http://hrw.org/reports/2008/leba...8/lebanon/0208/
Indeed no more fitting tribute could be paid to Norman, and to the Israel regime itself, than quoting from Norman's own estimable work
Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict
(2003 2nd Ed.)
"The Zionist movement did not heed the reporvals of its dissidents [Brit Shalom, Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem], with consequences which are all too painfully familiar today. Indeed, the scope of the Zionist enterprise has, by now, been reduced to its modus operandi. Israel has not resolved the Jewish Question; if anything, the enthrallment of the self-described 'Jewish state' Western imperialism and its local satraps has exacerbated it. Israel has not become the spiritial beacon for world Jewry; indeed, it is arguably less fecund culturally than the Jewish communities in the so-called Galut. Israel has not remade the Jewish people into a 'working nation'; if anything, it is transforming Israeli Jews into a parasatic calss - 'pied noirs battening off cheap Arab labour and massive foreign subventions.
The means have become the ends. What is the raison d'etre of Zionism in the contemporary world save as an outpost of 'reactionary and imperialist forces against the resurgent East'?"
(Chapter 1 Zionist Orientations p20)
all the best JSF!
ps
Isn't it the case that any Jewish-Israeli who speaks to, or tries to have any dealings with occupied Palestinians and suchlike regarding peace, are considered a 'security risk' by the Israeli regime?
The Israeli apartheid regime uses the excuse of 'security risk' to ruthlessly seal off Palestinians from Jewish-Israelis.
Don't miss the comments. I know I will.
It is of course no surprise that Finkelstein was deported, but I think it is nevertheless important that we make a big deal out of it, for the reasons suggested by Mark and christian above. If nothing else, it might make Israel think twice before blocking an academic from travelling to the OPT in the future. Plus I think there's something intrinsically worthwhile in showing solidarity with Finkelstein over this, particularly given what he's been through recently as a result of his political activism.
The point of emphasising the hypocrisy and mendacity of the Shin Bet and the Eustonites is to attempt to drive another little wedge between the hasbara establishment and those who accept their propaganda in lieu of fact and argument. Unfortunately, hasbara by its very nature does not rely on rational reflection, critical weighing of evidence, and the like, protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. It appeals instead to some mysterious visceral proclivity they've discovered to ignore any crime committed in the name of the racial group among whom were the principal victims of the Holocaust, even those committed against those vicitms themselves. What's perhaps most striking about this is that they can demand special dispensation for Zionism on grounds that most of the people who accept their arguments would reject in any other case, and then turn around and excoriate their critics precisely for singling Israel out for special treatment. Under the circumstances, I don't know how fruitful an endeavour it's likely to turn out to be to go on refuting the same tired hasbara bullshit. But one does what one can.
Olmert 'took cash in envelopes'
BBC
"A US businessman has testified he gave envelopes full of cash to Israel's prime minister but said he did not seek or receive any favours in return.
Mr Talansky told the hearing that the bulk of the money was raised in New York "parlour meetings", where Mr Olmert would address US donors who would then leave contributions on their chairs."
A good news story, typical of US-Israeli relations and of American hospitality and the generous way our American sisters and brothers have of expressing their appreciation of others - especially all those nice people who always seem be either Israeli or end up having to live their 'cause the local Plod are after them for fraud, embezzlement and corruption.
Is it only Jewish people who aren't on the run from the Old Bill who get thrown out of Israel, or what?
I seem to remember only just recently, an Israeli escaping back to Israel after an encounter with Her Majesty's Constabulary at a London airport.
with the greatest respect you completely miss the point. Yes we expect states and similar bodies to react when they are under attack.
But does that mean that when we challenge the capitalists or those with power or the State itself that we should say nothing about their reaction? Should we have said nothing when the Miners blocked coke depots because, and this is in essence your argument, they were asking for it? No we expose the hypocrisy of those who support 'individual rights' at the expense of the collective interests of the mass of individuals.
Israel claims to be the only democracy in the Middle East. It claims to be fighting a 'war against terrorism', yet it locks up and deports someone whose only weapon in his pen. Therein lies the hypocrisy of the Israeli state.
Likewise the hypocrisy of Engage and Hirsh is not an academic point. I think it's going to be something that haunts Engage the fact that they talk about academic freedom when what they really mean is the academic freedom of settler colonial academics.
And no I don't think we should conceded anything to the 'security threat' argument. I'm surprised that you do because it is an acceptance of the idea that any political opposition to a Jewish state is itself a security threat to the 'existential being' of the Jewish people.
Methinks Michael that you are becoming too cynical and detached.
My take on the issue can be found at
http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2008/
...nkelsteins.html
Tony G
Is it? Finkelstein has always advocated, and continues to advocate, a two-state settlement based on the pre-June 1967 borders. So while one could argue his work to be a threat to Israel's occupation, it doesn't follow that it is a threat to "Israeli security", unless you buy Israel's argument that the occupation is actually a defensive security measure.
I presume it hasn't changed.
re NF. I totally concede the argument about exposing Israeli hypocrisy over the matter, but, dear me, that's no big deal is it? I note from various zionist sites that they love this kind of attack, because it sets them up to show how non-hypocritical they are. So yet again, we get lulled into an argument on exactly the kind of turf the zionists like - namely whether they are a 'good' state, a 'not very good state' or 'sometimes horrid' state of a 'sometimes horrid but needs-must' state. The only argument worth having is on legitimacy of the Israeli state, and going on about turning NF away at the borders doesn't engage with that, at all. In fact, it deflects from that issue.
I also concede the point that it'll be fun to see how Engage engage (!) with question of boycotts now that they say NF should be boycotted from Israel. But they'll find a way. They'll be preparing the argument even now, involving ad hominem arguments about NF, Israeli 'security', academic freedom, indivisibility of the free flow of information blah blah blah and once again we get lulled into arguments way from the legitimacy question.
Another side of the argument against my view that I'm beginning to concede is that NF was trying to see a Palestinian friend. Surely this is the nub of the matter. What we should be doing is forgetting all the crap about whether NF, (great scholar, not a holoc. denier etc etc) should be allowed in, but why is it that Palestinians can't be visited and/or why Palestinians aren't allowed out to travel. The NF issue is just a window on that, but it's not his fate that is the big deal, it's the fate of Palestinians who can't travel to and fro that counts and it's this that brings us bang up straight to the legitimacy of the state itself. Arguing about NF doesn't do that.
That said, I couldn't agree more that a more useful approach would have been to emphasise the injustice to NF's mate.
The legitmacy of the racist project in Palestine is doubtless the most fundamental argument to have, but surely not the only one worth having? A LOT of people object to house demolitions, extrajudicial executions, etc. but still need to be won to a principled antiracist approach to the question. We will not get to have that argument with them if we start from the position that it's not even worth addressing their concerns, derivative though they be, if that's what you're saying.
Needless to say, you are absolutely right about the hasbarists preparing their lame defences. Indeed, they got a head start when Dershowitz and Julius published their anti UCU diatribe in the Times. Presumably, NF's exclusion exemplifies a 'counterboycott', which, in an orgy of foot shooting, they argue is admissible: http://bureauofcounterpropaganda...witz-
farts.html
I'm sure you'll forgive me when I say that your argument is a very typical SWP one, all or nothing. But if you go back to what Cliff used to emphasise, as opposed to the opportunism dressed up as principle of John Rees et. co. then you'll remember that maximum socialist consciousness isn't reached overnight. We have to get from A to B and that often means incremental steps and homing in on the particular.
You write:
'The only argument worth having is on legitimacy of the Israeli state, and going on about turning NF away at the borders doesn't engage with that, at all. In fact, it deflects from that issue.'
But it doesn't deflect from the issue. It merely demonstrates that the racist, illegitimate state is afraid of its own shadow, deports its critics and is hypocritical into the bargain when it comes to its own definition of a Jewish state, i.e not certain types of Jews.
You also write:
'I also concede the point that it'll be fun to see how Engage engage (!) with question of boycotts now that they say NF should be boycotted from Israel. But they'll find a way. They'll be preparing the argument even now, involving ad hominem arguments about NF' Israeli 'security', academic freedom, indivisibility of the free flow of information blah blah blah and once again we get lulled into arguments way from the legitimacy question.
Again not so. Who is defending Israel's legitimacy? Engage. The fact that they'll find some 'justification' for detaining and deporting NF is neither here nor there because we can expose it for what it is, mere sophistry covering up their real concerns when it comes to 'academic freedom' i.e. freedom for the oppressor. That in my mind means challenging the legitimacy of a state that seeks to suppress support for the Palestinians. It hardly helps it does it?
Seth's experiences of Engage at work censoring demonstrates that they too are afraid of any arguments which contradict their lying assertions. I also had the experience where they were 'quoting' what I had said, viz. that all Zionists are Nazis. I hadn't said that and when they didn't post my replies (twice) I decided to let Hirsh's academic colleagues be the judge of the matter! I mailed them all at Goldsmiths and lo and behold my e-mail became a guest post as Mr Hirsh was a tad embarrassed. So if you want the e-list just mail me and I'll dig it up!
Tony
I think there is a bit of a worry about polemicists being fucked with wherever they go especially given the current lawlessness of the American and British governments and their pretence that Israel is just another member of their enlightened western club.
I also think that the sheer dishonesty and hypocrisy of Engage on this is a positive delight to see especially in the wake of the thunderous endorsement of the Palestinian cause by the UCU.
So it was certainly worth reporting and discussing.
Mind you, I signed your renunciation document way back when. Now I have a little time on my hands I have considered a trip to Palestine but I do think I am in a genuine quandary as Jew as to whether a visit would be in order. I think not actually. But that's just me.
This language suggests that the bile of Atzmon etc., whereby you become self-conscious about being an anti-Zionist Jew is having an effect.
Now for my main point. There are several quite high profile Palestinians trying to get out of the West Bank and/or Gaza to speak or to travel. If the NF case is going to be raised, then at least raise it as part of this matter, as indeed NF himself has tried to do. Claiming tha the NF case is special or particular, or indeed just making more fuss about it than about these other cases is, to my mind a mistake. If this turns me into Gilad Atzmon, then I'm Gilad Atzmon.
I understand that Finkelstein is on record saying that he supports the two state solution and that one state can be a zionist state since, he says, it's not worth having two states if they are both the same. I find his position a bit dismaying really. That kind of two state solution was tried in Ireland back in the early 1920s. It was horrendous for most people on both sides of the border. But now there are still two states but they are pretty much alike as far as the absence of sectarian rule goes.
Sorry, I digressed but I think I've summed up Norm's position.
I still feel that it is worth publicising this case in particular because this seems to be the latest in a long run of things that have happened to Finkelstein over the past couple of years because of his stance on the holocaust industry and America and Israel's lack of good faith through the various "peace" processes.
Re the anti-Zionist thing and NF. I don't know how NF defines himself, but everything I've written and heard him say tends to the fact that he is anti-Zionist.
I agree with Mark about the historical error in supporting Partition, but Finkelstein is not a socialist and that is his problem.
There are 2 types of 2 staters - there are the open Zionists, be they Labour Zionist who believe that without a Palestinian state they'll have to conceded (god forbid!) equality to the Palestinians or openly declare an apartheid state. Likewise there are those like the AWL who believe a Jewish State is a good thing.
But there are also those like NF and much of the PLO who I wouldn't say are Zionist, and have clear criticisms of Zionism, but say that we are not being practical or realistic and that it's the only thing the Palestinians can achieve. I know because I criticised NF at Sussex recently for this and his reply was, well, less than convincing. But I wouldn't slate him as a Zionist because of this defeatist and fatalistic attitude.
I do think that the deportation and detention of NF marks a new low. This takes nothing away from the restrictions on Palestinians but we should use what happened to NF for different purposes, viz. to show that the Middle East's 'only democracy' is anything but.
The good news is we are slowly winning. The lawlessness of the enemy is not an argument against what we're doing, on the contrary. The more they lose the ideological war, the more brutal and lawless they will become. The bad news however is we are winning too slowly, and time (or more accurately, the time value of money) is all the enemy really cares about.
Finklestein's position on 2 vs 1 state should not be relevant to whether or not he deserves support when he is held for interrogation for 20 hours and prevented from visiting the West Bank. He earned his medals in this war and has the scars to prove it.
NF's deportation is also a good opportunity as any for embarrassing the hacks and exposing their hypocrisy. But two caveats are in order. First, it is important to be mindful of how to frame this exposure so that it brings the attention to where we want attention to be, the illegitimacy of the state rather than NF's middle class innocence. On that, I think Michael is absolutely right.
Second, let's get real about what exposing the hacks means. Cross posting (or attempted cross posting) on a few blogs can be the first step. But in itself this is really nothing, and it can be less than nothing if it works as a substitute or mere release of frustration. Tony's dissemination of Hirsch's hypocrisy to Hirsch's co-workers is an example of making exposure real. Let's see more of that!
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