Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Alan Dershowitz, never one to let facts or truth get in the way of an ideological harangue, has sunk to a new low. One of Big D’s most avid enemies has been Norman Finkelstein, an anti-Zionist professor who has done quite a formidable job of debunking a Dershowitz book. So it was something Dershowitz couldn’t pass up when he discovered that a neo-Nazi website was reporting that Finkelstein would participate in the Iran Holocaust conference:

A neo-Nazi website has published the schedule of speakers at the Iranian Holocaust denial conference. (His name was mysteriously removed from the schedule this morning.) Prominent among the speakers in the schedule was assistant professor Norman Finkelstein of DePaul University…

It is unclear whether Finkelstein actually attended the conference, since the identify of many of the attendees has been kept secret, and the media office at DePaul says it doesn’t know. But Finkelstein certainly fits comfortably into the hate club, since he has allied himself closely with the Holocaust denial movement by trivializing the suffering of its victims and denying that many of them were victims at all. It would be natural for the rulers of Iran to have invited this Jew-hater to their hatefest. I don’t know if they did, or if Finkelstein accepted any such invitation. But the burden is now on him to explain why his name appears in the schedule and to produce all correspondence with the sponsors of the conference. It should make interesting reading

I can almost see the wheels spinning inside his head. He thinks: “Omigod, this could be it. If Finkelstein is stupid enough to attend the conference, then I’ve finally nailed his ass. No one will ever believe another thing he says either about me or anything else.”

There was one small problem. The internet posting was a hoax. Finkelstein never attended the conference. Even Big D noted the site had “mysteriously” removed Finkelstein’s name. Instead of implying it was some sort of conspiracy to conceal Finkelstein’s participation, why didn’t the big lug think that maybe they withdrew the information because they themselves discovered it wasn’t true? I suppose even neo-Nazis might give a few small cares about the truth once in a while.

Instead of proving Finkelstein’s intellectual perfidy, Dershowitz has proven his own. And speaking of the truth, Dershowitz of course lies when he says Finkelstein has “allied himself closely with the Holocaust denial movement by trivializing the suffering of its victims…” A commenter at Huffington Post expressed Finkelstein’s position much more accurately:

Finkelstein is not a Holocaust denier or trivializer. His main point is that the Holocaust has been used as a money-maker for certain organizations and as a “justification” for immoral Israeli policies towards the Palestinians.

In other words, Finkelstein is a critic of what Salo Baron used to call the “lachrymose theory” of Jewish history; the notion that Jewish life revolves around and is defined by suffering. That Jewish groups reduce Jewish identity to a series of historical victimizations. That we are defined by our suffering. This is a wholly legitimate criticism of our Jewish leadership and the organizations they lead (Aipac, ADL, AJC, etc.) The fact that Dershowitz attempts to label this as “Jew-hating” merely proves how odious a person and ‘intellectual’ (I use the term advisedly) he is.

A former student of Finkelstein’s who disagrees with him on some issues, had this telling retort to Dershowitz:

…He is in no way a holocaust denier. How could he be? Both of his parents were in concentration camps. He is a good man and believes in what he preaches, and backs up his point of view in an academic and honorable way, unlike Dershowitz. Disagree with him for the right reasons, don’t make outrageously untrue claims!

Big Al. have you no shame? At long last have you no shame? The man’s parents survived the ovens and you have the chutzpah to call him a Holocaust denier? That is rich.

For anyone wishing to know what Finkelstein was really doing last Tuesday, take a look at this International Herald Tribune article. He was testifying on behalf of alleged Hamas supporters at a federal trial [thanks to Ellen & Seth for pointing out the confusion in a previous wording of this sentence]. Take that, D. And next time, why don’t you shut your trap and do some serious research before you open it?