In my recent Comment is Free column, Shut Out of the Homeland, I implicitly criticized some Jewish progressives for supporting Israel’s decision to deport Norman Finkelstein last week because of his criticisms of Israeli policy. I didn’t name names because these individuals stated their views in a semi-public e mail exchange and I didn’t feel it was right to do so.
Now, Murray Polner informs me that one of them, M.J. Rosenberg has written publicly about his views and I can criticize them explicitly. Though M.J. was far more dismissive and vituperative in the e mail thread than he is publicly, I’ll confine myself to quoting what he’s written:
This column is written in grays, not in black and white. So, while I’m at it, I want to comment on the Israeli government’s decision not to permit Norman Finkelstein, a virulently anti-Israel American Jewish professor, to enter the country. Finkelstein was arrested at the airport and questioned by the Shin Bet security service for several hours on Friday. He was then expelled and told he could not return for ten years. This has become a big issue on the web and has occasioned much criticism of Israel.
Finkelstein is stridently anti-Israel and literally cheers on its enemies. During the 2006 Israeli war with Hezbollah, he addressed a rally in New York to express solidarity with Hassan Nasrallah and to say, “right now, we are all Hezbollah.” This past January, Finkelstein went on Lebanese television to chide his hosts for opposing the destruction Hezbollah helped bring on their country.
Read his words. This is an American Jew, who lives in the comfort of the United States, going on Lebanese television to criticize anti-Hezbollah Lebanese for their reluctance to die in the struggle against Israel!
…I often criticize arm-chair right-wing warriors here who are always ready to fight to the last Israeli. Finkelstein will fight to the last Israeli, Palestinian, Lebanese in his own perverse holy war.
Pretty incredible stuff.
Nonetheless, I don’t much like banning people because their ideas are noxious.
But if Israel does evict the likes of Finkelstein, let it also expel those right-wing fanatics who land at Ben-Gurion airport every day, are welcomed at passport control, and go off to the West Bank settlements to plan attacks on Palestinians and incite against the Israeli government.
The same rule should apply to all hatemongers, right or left. Let ‘em in or send ‘em back. In the meantime let Finkelstein take his vacation elsewhere.
Rosenberg implicitly supports Finkelstein’s deportation (he did so explicitly in the e mail exchange) but pulls his punches a bit publicly.
Several things bother me about Rosenberg’s claims here. But first, let me say that I agree with Rosenberg’s sense that Finkelstein is a bit of a ranter and that some of his views are offensive. I too thought it was outrageous for Finkelstein to claim on the one hand that he had no right to tell Lebanese what to do, and on the other to shame the interviewer for not putting up more of a fight against Israelis.
But Rosenberg is dead wrong about Finkelstein’s overall views about Israel. M.J. has fallen into Finkelstein’s own trap by adopting the sweeping, black and white judgments (I thought you wrote your column in grays, M.J.) the latter uses in his rhetorical arguments. Finkelstein is not “anti-Israel.” He is anti-Israeli policy. He is anti-Lebanon war. In fact, Finkelstein supports a 2-state solution just as M.J. and I do. In calling him “anti-Israel,” M.J. makes precisely the same mistake that right-wingers make when they call people like him and me anti-Israel. We’ve both been victims of these slurs and shouldn’t fall prey to them merely because Finkelstein espouses views somewhat more vehement than our own.
I challenge M.J. to come up with any statements of Finkelstein’s that are truly anti-Israel; that proclaim a one-state solution or are anti-Zionist. He can’t. So M.J., a little more precision is called for especially since you have a public platform and the ears of so many liberal Jews.
In my Comment is Free piece, I conceded that Finkelstein’s formulations can be annoying and offensive at times. He loves to go for the jugular. That’s not how I debate or argue. But unlike M.J., I’m not willing to turn my back on Finkelstein because he’s not a nice, elegant, smooth-talking debater.
If M.J. remembers his Martin Niemoller, he’ll recall that when tyrants come for their enemies they don’t distinguish between who is most and least offensive. They come for us all sooner or later. If we don’t stand together we hang alone as a signer of the Declaration of Independence famously said.
M.J. is applying his political principles selectively and inconsistently and he should know better. Unlike M.J. I don’t believe anyone should be denied entrance to Israel unless they advocate physical harm against specific individuals or groups. If Finkelstein is eligible for Israeli citizenship (as he is since he is not a criminal), then he should be kosher enough to visit the country. In supporting his deportation, M.J. is depriving Israelis of engaging with his views. And those views are ones espoused by Israeli citizens so there’s no reason Finkelstein should’ve have his own opportunity to espouse them too. Not to mention that Finkelstein wasn’t even visiting Israel. He was visiting the Occupied Territories which Israel hasn’t yet annexed. Therefore, it had absolutely no legal right to bar Finkelstein from travel there.
M.J. you didn’t keep your eye on the ball on this one. You allowed your intense dislike for Finkelstein to cloud the bigger issues. It’s not like you to do this since on so many other issues your analysis is superb.
I didn’t name other names from that e-mail exchange, but I thought MJ was high-profile enough, particularly considering the number of folks involved in the exchange and some of the recognizable names who didn’t comment, that I quoted him in this post:
http://www.jewishjournal.com/thegodblog/item/finkelstein_picked_up_at_ben_gurion_and_banned_from_israel/
Richard, I hate to publicly disagree with you but I have to.
I concede that I have no problem with Israel banning Finkelstein. My own country routinely denies entry to people it deems represents a risk to the United States. I would imagine that in very few, if any, of those cases has the denied person publicly expressed solidarity with those who have killed Americans.
Finkelstein, on the other hand, has repeatedly proclaimed solidarity with Hezbollah which is a terrorist organization responsible for the murder of innocent Israelis and diaspora Jews. It planted bombs that killed hundreds of Jews and non-Jews (including many children) in Buenos Aires at the Israeli embassy and the JCC.
Has Finkelstein ever said he hates Jews or Israel? I doubt it. He simply expresses his solidarity with Hezbollah, which has as its goal the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews.
That’s enough.
If someone in 1936 expressed solidarity with Franco, I’d have dismissed him as a fascist. If someone defended Hitler’s right to invade Poland, I’d have called him a Nazi lover.
Using the same yardstick, I consider Finkelstein an enemy of Israel and of Jews. And Israel has every right not to allow someone with such hostility to it, and who regularly meets with those who want to destroy it, free access to the country for security reasons.
I think Israel did the right thing. But, as I wrote, I’d ban right-wing inciters as well.
If the left cannot unambiguously reject all those who defend the murder of innocents or who, at the very least stand in solidarity with them, it has lost its mind.
@mj rosenberg: Here is the problem with your political position once again. Israel said that it deported him because of his critical views of Israel in addition to its visit with Hezbollah. So in effect you’re endorsing excluding people fr. this country & Israel purely because of political views. This is a view that impoverishes free speech and human rights, not to mention closes off political discussion within the excluding country.
For some reason you make a distinction between Hezbollah & Hamas that is inconsistent. I believe you are in favor of Israel negotiating with Hamas. If so, are you in favor of the U.S. barring Hamas representatives from the U.S.? We just had a visit fr. Ahmed Youssef a Hamas representative. Should he have been thrown out like Finkelstein? We also revoked Tariq Ramadan, in part because Daniel Pipes lied about his views and said he favored terror. Were we right to do that?
You make a serious mistake in not distinguishing the reasons for Finkelstein supporting Hezbollah. He did so because he believed Israel waged a war of aggression against Lebanon. He supported Hezbollah’s DEFENSE of Lebanon. Not its attack on Israeli civilians. BTW, I’m sure you feel sympathy for the 1,000 LEbanese killed during that war, over half of whom were civilians. But why such anger at Finkelstein and not so much with Israel itself for what it did?
Hezbollah has denied the Buenos Aires terror attack and no irrefutable evidence has connected it to it. No legal proceeding has ever proven a connection. The Nation recently published a pretty convincing peace slicing & dicing the Hezbollah angle on this. I”m not saying Hezbollah did NOT do it. But unlike you, I like to be careful before I attribute blame to people for such acts. Do you have evidence I haven’t seen on this?
Your understanding of Hezbollah is not complete. Nasrallah has in the past expressed a desire to see the end of Israel. But more recently he has expressed a goal of liberating Lebanese land from Israel and a willingness to curtail the conflict once that happens. You make the same mistake right-wingers make about Hamas. You point to statements which prove yr own pt of view of them & ignore statements that are more recent & more operative that contradict you.
Hezbollah is neither Franco nor the Nazis. It is simply an Islamist movement working within the Lebanese political system where many ethnic groups are doing pretty much the same thing it is. Contrary to Franco, who overthrew a recognized government & became a dictator, Nasrallah has specifically & very carefully said he does NOT want to take over Lebanon and does not want to become the sole ruler of the country. Besides, Nasrallah couldn’t do that even if he wanted to unless Syria agreed & given current circumstances they couldn’t even if THEY wanted to.
You make Hezbollah out to be demons and anyone who expresses any sympathy for them to be demons as well. Right-wingers do that to us all the time because of our views of Israel negotiating with its enemies. I’m surprised that your mind isn’t capacious enough to understand that Hezbollah and groups like Hamas fall into the same category. We don’t like them. But we realize they are part of the political mix & must be dealt with whether we like it or not.
Again, Finkelstein has not “defended the murder of innocents” & you are twisting his record. I’m frankly surprised that your mind shows such brittleness and insularity in confronting an issue like this. I think you’re betraying values I know you hold dear. Perhaps some day you’ll re-evaluate these views. Perhaps not.
No, the left does not reject Norman Finklestein despite the harshness of some of his views. If it did, it would be turning its back of values of human rights & liberty which it holds dear, & which you should too EVEN for someone like Finkelstein.
@ MJ Rosenberg
It doesn’t take more than a rudimentary knowledge of history to see that such parallels are laughable.
Hezbollah is not primary an Islamic movement. If you are addicted to historical analogies, try marquis or partisan. Hezbollah is an illegitimate child of Israel’ warfare, a reaction to occupation in the early 80ies and the war crimes committed by IDF and the phalagists.
Your claim that Norman Finkelstein “hates” Israel is without foundation. Such assertions belongs in the loony bin along with all the anti-Semite labels thrown at people who’s fed up by IDF’s killings and treatment of the Palestinian population.
I admire NF. For his intellect, his courage and his sense of justice. Yes, he can be provocative, but “sotto voce” is not enough to wake up US of Amnesia or people of Israel from their slumber party.
Superb post, Richard.
I agree with your view of Finkelstein. Speaking for myself, I find his books invaluable–“Beyond Chutzpah” was superb, except for the part about Dershowitz’s plagiarism. I think including that issue in a book on a very serious topic trivialized it somewhat.
But Finkelstein does go for the jugular and often expresses himself in vitriolic ways that do harm to his cause. Which is unfortunate, because there still aren’t enough people in the US willing to tell the unvarnished truth about Israel’s human rights violations and when Finkelstein makes inflammatory remarks in favor of Hezbollah, it weakens his credibility. Why can’t people just say that both sides are guilty of terrorism (as, say, Chomsky does?) That’s true, and it’s still an uphill battle getting mainstream American politicians and pundits to admit this.
I am sorry for MJ’s position, which I believe is just a gut reaction. He detests Finkelstein and that’s the core reason for what he writes. Would MJ agree with Israel if it barred Chomsky from entry? Chomsky visited Nasrallah shortly before the second Lebanese war. Read all about his support for Hizbollah at the CAMERA website
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=11&x_article=1151
Finkelstein’s position is no different from Chomsky’s on that one.
As I wrote in my own post on the issue, I just don’t see how you can call yourself progressive and take a position opposed to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which has backed Finkelstein.
But what intriques me most about MJ’s position — and let me for the record say that I am a great admirer of MJ and have been so for several decades — is that it confuses the security thing with the opposition to Israel thing. And that goes to the gut of the issue. A Jerusalem Post article cited sources that were upset about Finkelstein’s views; other sources have talked about his being a threat to security.
Look, Israel may have had a legal right to do what it did — that is a question for the courts to decide, and even then I don’t have to accept their opinion. But it banned Finkelstein simply in order to harrass critics of Israel. By MJ’s logic, anybody meeting with the PLO in the seventies could have been legitimately banned from Israel, even if they didn’t accept its positions. Why were they less a security threat? By MJ’s logic, any one-stater today can be legitimately banned from Israel. Why are they less a security threat? Maybe Israel has a right to do all that? But where does this slippery slope lead to? And what does it say about the character of the Jewish state?