Take Norman Finklestein, who should be an undesirable numero uno, a social pariah, a complete societal outcast that no decent citizen of earth, or at least of the civilized world, would approach with a ten-foot pole. His pathological Jew self-loathing, Holocaust denialism, and virulent Israel-hatred should bar his atrocious views from the conversation before the conversation even gets started.
Unfortunately, he has recently been given airtime on a number of platforms including Piers Morgan Uncensored, in a debate with Alan Dershowitz. In this stomach-turning debacle, two myopic liberals (are there any other kind?) politely aim arrows at each other’s views on the Israel-Hamas war and the role that Israel plays in the Gaza conundrum. According to Finkelstein, Israel has been perpetuating a genocidal agenda against the Palestinian Arabs for as long as, well, there have been so-called Palestinian Arabs. According to Dershowitz, the Israeli population desperately desires a two-state solution with the Palestinian Arabs if only Hamas wasn’t ruling Gaza.
The arguments put forth by these two pundits are, in a word (or two), simply fallacious. One position is pure evil, the other delusional and trite. How did these two educated enlightened individuals so completely lose the thread?
The data are in and the conclusions clear as day.
Since 1948, Israel has attempted over and over again to live peacefully in the Middle East with its Muslim neighbors, including the Palestinian Arabs.
Since 1948, Israel’s Muslim neighbors have repeatedly tried to wipe Israel off the map, including the Palestinian Arabs, who voted for Hamas, support Hamas, collaborate with Hamas, hide Hamas terrorists, and celebrate the death of Jews at the hand of Hamas. Hamas’s charter calls for the annihilation of Israel.
Other than an old quote that Finkelstein dug up from under a rock, Israel has never called for the annihilation of the Palestinian Arabs. Since 2005, beginning with the Israeli government’s expulsion of all Jews from Gaza, Israel has continuously supported Palestinian Arab sovereignty in Gaza. October 7th was as rude a wake-up call as wake-up calls get. It was a brutal reminder that the Middle East peace game is rigged, and Israel, due to no fault of its own, has yet again been forced into a “kill or be killed” role.
But our two debating academics have yet to wake up to the reality that there can be no peace, no two-state solution, when only one of the two sides desires a peaceful resolution. The most disturbing aspect of this debate, however, was the failure of both Dershowitz and Morgan to expose the nefarious and dangerous lies that Finklestein has been propagating against the Jewish state. I would like to rectify the situation by providing the following list of questions that I believe should have been posed to Finklestein to expose him for the Jew-hater that he is:
- Can you find Israel on the map?
- How many Moslem countries exist?
- How many Jewish countries exist?
- Does Israel have the right to exist?
- Do the Palestinian Arabs have a right to exist alone “from the river to the sea”?
- What evidence exists that the Palestinian Arabs want a two-state solution? (Ask Dershowitz this one, as well).
- Do you believe that Jews should die so that Palestinian Arabs live?
- Do you believe that the unintended killing of Palestinian Arab civilians, assuming there are any who are uninvolved civilians, resulting from an Israeli defensive operation is morally equivalent to the beheading of Jewish babies by supposed freedom fighters?
- Do you know that Israel supplements but a fraction of Gaza’s electrical and water supply, and only because Hamas re-directs resources tagged for aiding Gazans to develop weapons to use against Israeli citizens?
- Do you condemn the October 7th massacre? (I believe he’s answered this one already with a “no” but let’s give him one last chance).
- When you say that Gazans have the right to hate Israel, does that right include raping Israeli women and burning Jewish children alive?
- And finally, as a Jew, do you think your pathological and visceral hatred of Jews and Israel stems from a Stockholm-like syndrome that developed as the result of being the son of holocaust victims? Have you consulted a mental health professional to try to understand where the hatred originated?
Finkelstein should be called out for what he is. And then he should be completely cancelled from any and all further conversation.