https://disqus.com/home/discussion/fp-mag/norman_finkelstein_blames_internet_for_being_unemployable/#comment-1285253493
The intellectual and moral level on this forum is similar to that which reigned in Maoist China as the comrades robotically denounced a dissident in the 1950s. Nearly every comment here is sneering, vicious, and (worst of all) dishonest. If Finkelstein was really as isolated and friendless as some of you folk pretend he is, there would be no need for you to indulge in this frenzy of hate against him.
Still, he's in good company. You lot have been equally brutal, equally fanatical and equally ignorant in your comments about Professor Noam Chomsky and many others who you call (stupidly) "self-loathing Jews".
As always, Norm Finkelstein has your measure on that desperate smear....
see more
Norman is an honest, friendly, and highly ethical man.
If more men were as conscientous as Dr. Finkelstein the world would be a happier place.
Did you say Dr. Frankenstein or Dr. Finkelstein? I could understand the former but not the latter.
Except for the fact that he's a delusional psychopath. So that integrity is not worth much to others. Unless of course it suits a particular agenda.
So where did he say he wants to go?
Is this what they mean by Ignorance is Bliss?
How do you come to such a conclusion? Certainly not by reading his books.
You seem to be one of the "bad, bad" guys that threw him into his misery,
What a schmock Finkelstein is whining about self inflicted failure to attract readers.
calling him anti-Israel and a Nazi is extremely sophomoric, his entire family was exterminated in the Jewish holocaust. watch any youtube debate with Finkelstein and watch him dismantle his opponent with logic and reason while never resorting to ad hominem like Frontpage. it's dinosaurs like Horowitz who are losing their audience and dying out because they no longer control the narrative with the emergence of alternative media.
This comment was deleted.
If you had half-a-brain, you would know that had his parents not survived he would not have been born... Finkelstein has strong arguments that are not being effectively refuted. You don't even need half-a-brain to recognize the losing side accuses the other side of "hating", regardless of the debate.
Thank you for writing exactly what I was thinking while scrambling to find the comment box on this ridiculous comment stream. All I see are disillusioned, indoctrinated people incapable of freelance research, gobbling up terms like "nazi-apathist" and spitting them out without a second thought to think about what they mean.
"...calling him anti-Israel and a Nazi is extremely sophomoric, his entire family was exterminated in the Jewish holocaust. watch any youtube debate with Finkelstein and watch him dismantle his opponent with logic and reason while never resorting to ad hominem like Frontpage."
He is reasonable and methodical, but he's also a hateful partisan liar.
He can always be self-employed as an Azzhole!
best job in the world :)
Here's my card:
-------------------------------------------------
CaoMoo
Self Proclaimed and Emplyed Azzhole
--------------------------------------------------
Does this gig come with benefits because I mean that Obamacare
Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Let's hope for the same fate for Peter Beinart and Max Blumenthal.
Blumenthal and Beinart are parasites. They'll just glom onto something else.
Beinart used to be neo-connish and Blumenthal used to rant about Republicans.
he can always flip burgers a Mac's
LOL! So happy to hear this, he is such a doche.
OHHHHH BOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOO
You mean to tell me this self-loathing Jew couldn't get a job at any Lib University in their Middle East Studies courses? I read plenty, just not anti-Israel, anti-American drivel from the likes of morally and intellectually bankrupt douche bags.
Despite his academically appealing hatred of Israel, he has some other qualities that academia is not crazy about
This comment was deleted.
You are an idiot. He's a scholar.
So he's Troy McClure in that one Simpsons episode where he had to marry Marge's sister to get work again.
He blamed everyone else not minding their own business and not his odd proclivities for fish for his unemployability
And sometimes a man's more obvious offensive qualities conceal his less obnoxious unemployable qualities
Actually I think he could get a job at an Israeli university, but he hates them too much. And it seems like he doesn't even ever try to play at understanding political correctness. He's useless to the left because he's actually dead serious about his hatred and doesn't really try to mask it very well.
He's a perfect fit for the jihadis if he'll just convert to Islam or fully submit to sharia.
This comment was deleted.
You approve of your own comments. That's hilarious.
This comment was deleted.
"A look at Zohar Zoarets's Facebook page or comments elsewhere on the internet - easily found through Google - might convince you the militant ones among "them" are essentially indistinguishable from the militant ones among "us"."
I've never been a sucker for false equivalence arguments - no matter how poignant.
This comment was deleted.
Give me an example of rule of law in any territory controlled by religious Muslims.
http://data.worldjusticeproject.Org
Where do you suppose the PA or HAMAS would rank in the world index?
Comparing jihadis fighting for the expansion of Islamic imperialism under the phony rubric of "anti-colonialism" are supposedly equal to some factions of Israelis that are "extremely" motivated to keep their sovereignty secure?
I don't need an argument. If you want to bring me something new (good luck), I might respond to that. Don't count your chickens before they hatch.
The closest you could possibly come would be finding some Israeli militants that fight outside of the scope of the nation's legal structures and cite the Bible as they fight to take over territory and purge non-Jews and anyone that won't accept Jewish theocracy. Got any of those? How many have they killed?
"The reference to jihadis is a cheap shot exploiting Islamophobia by framing a national struggle as, more than anything, a consequence of believing scriptures that have a lot in common with Jewish scripture."
You're completely ignorant. Islam co-opts Hebrew prophets and changes the meaning of the texts entirely by having a hyper-violent outlaw "messiah" interpret the texts and act out according to his own selfish will in the name of Allah. Furthermore, pious Muslims are exhorted to do the same. That difference is why you don't have Jewish or Christian suicide bombers running around trying to emulate Moses or Joshua simply because of a violent period of history recorded in the Bible. That's why Israelis have secular rule of law and jihadis chop heads off every time they feel like Mohamed / Allah would approve.
You obviously have NO CLUE what you're talking about. You have stupid neo-Marxist talking points just like the moron you attempted to defend here. In an academic (or other left wing) bubble where there is nobody to challenge you with the facts you must sound like a real genius.
"Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!"Sir Walter Scott,
Serves him right! After years of promoting lies and propaganda about Israel and the Jews, Finkelstein finally got the negative reception he deserves. If there is an appropriate time to say "What goes around comes around", it is this time.
what has he lied about, can you provide a specific example?
Practically everything on politics, especially regarding Israel.
so you cannot provide evidence of a specific example?
He lied about the "Sharon Affair," making presentations to the effect that Sharon went out to provoke poor Muslims in order to justify sending out soldiers to murder the poor angels who happened to look bad just because they felt like throwing rocks at the heads of Jews. He neglects to mention the rocks.
The guy is a font for new and old blood libels.
I'd be interested in how you prove that was an out and out lie rather than a difference between your perception and his.
Because he left out the events that caused the mob in the first place. It was a lie of omission and then a conclusion based on incomplete information. Not too much unlike we hear about Ferguson.
He's pretty careful. That's how he deceives. Lies of omission that lead to articulating mendacious conclusions.
How could he "fail to perceive" that the reason the police gathered at the Temple Mount was because of massive crowds of jihadis throwing rocks on people? Now pretend that rocks are not weapons. Pretend that provocation with rocks and threatening the press is not an established strategy to create mendacious agitprop in the region. That's one way deception happens in the ME. I know that he knows better.
"The Second Intifada, also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada (Arabic: انتفاضة الأقصى Intifāḍat al-ʾAqṣā; Hebrew: אינתיפאדת אל-אקצה Intifādat El-Aqtzah), was the second Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation – a period of intensified Israeli-Palestinian violence. It started in September 2000, when Ariel Sharon made a visit to the Temple Mount, seen by Palestinians as highly provocative; and Palestinian demonstrators, throwing stones at police, were dispersed by the Israeli army, using tear gas and rubber bullets.[6]"
"On September 28, Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon together with a Likud party delegation surrounded by hundreds of Israeli riot police, visited the Temple Mount. Al-Aqsa Mosque is part of the compound and is widely considered the third holiest site in Islam.[20] Israel declared sovereignty by annexing East Jerusalem in 1980, and the compound is the holiest site in Judaism. Sharon was only permitted to enter the compound after the Israeli Interior Minister had received assurances from the Palestinian Authority's security chief that no problems would arise if he made the visit.[21] Sharon did not actually go into the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and went during normal tourist hours. Colin Shindler writes "Shlomo Ben-Ami, the Minister of Internal security, was told by Israeli intelligence that there was no concerted risk of violence. This was implicitly confirmed by Jibril Rajoub, the Palestinian head of Preventive Security on the West Bank, who told Ben-Shlomo that Sharon could visit the Haram, but not enter a mosque on security grounds."[22]
"Shortly after Sharon left the site, angry demonstrations by Palestinian Jerusalemites outside erupted into rioting. Israeli police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets, while protesters hurled stones and other missiles, injuring 25 policemen, of whom one was seriously injured and had to be taken to hospital. At least three Palestinians were wounded by rubber bullets.[23]"
see more
No, that's not the story he told. I thought we were talking about Finkelstein's version.
I'll add that they didn't just throw stones at the police. They threw stones at just about everyone and the police responded to the riot.
This whole "stone throwing" thing was contrived in the 1980s as a deliberate strategy to provoke the police and military while being perceived as the downtrodden. To a Westerner it seems obvious that only really desperate people would throw little stones at people with guns. They don't understand the whole strategy of leaning on the press and political organizations to be seen as victims of "colonialism" and "asymmetric response." And the press is pressured to show only young kids throwing small seemingly harmless rocks. It's all bullcrap.
The Palestinians are evil geniuses when it comes to mendacious PR and agitation propaganda.
But let me make it clear that I think the behaviour of the Palestinians Muslims in throwing rocks was disgusting. War, prejudice, dispossession, displacement all bring out the worst in people and push moderates to the side. It's happened in Sri Lanka in both the Buddhist Sinhalese and Hindu Tamil populations. It's happened in Northern Ireland in the Protestant and Catholic populations. It's happened in India in the Hindu and Muslim populations. It's happened in China in the battles between Maoists and Confucians. It's happened in America in the Confederate and Unionist camps.
Let me also add that he seems to buy in to this analysis that considers private property to be theft where Jews committed "violence" on poor peasants that were removed from land purchased from absentee landlord. And this all justifies in the minds of the haters the Arab (mostly Muslim) violence on Jews that went on for decades before the Jews organized any form of resistance.
Pretending that the Jews started the violence one way or another is how they convert jihadis in to victims. They must omit relevant facts to do this. And even then, why can't these morons act through the PA? This scam they've been running ever since the Oslo Accords agreement was signed is just complete bullcrap and you have to be willfully ignorant to fail to see what's going on.
This comment was deleted.
Finky needed a calling card. The Holocaust was it.
I don't see him exploiting his parents' past. I see him writing about their experiences in a highly relevant way as well as to establish his bona fides as a pro-Semitic anti-Zionist. He wrote a very beautiful passage about his mother fighting her way to the front of the queues and how what we might see as selfishness and aggression had been a necessary trait in the camps she somehow managed to survive. Alan Dershowitz then took this passage to mean what it quite clearly did not, and suggested Finkelstein wondered aloud whether his mother had gone beyond this minor immorality in order to survive the camps, whether she'd actively collaborated with the Nazis. Others, quite bizarrely and outrageously, have declared Finkelstein to be a Holocaust denier. On this thread, it's been suggested that Finkelstein hates Israel and wouldn't teach there. Again, there's plenty of evidence that Finkelstein accepts the state of Israel (in fact there are several YouTube videos in which he talks about accepting the state's existence in the same way Gandhi accepted Pakistan's existence), but clearly his main sympathies lie with the people who first had little control over migration policy and therefore found themselves displaced by diaspora Jews and then who faced an armed separatist Zionist movement.
If you scream about how happy you are that people believe you're a Nazi you shouldn't be sad or outraged that people actually believe you're a Nazi. Maybe you can double down like Chomsky and just become a full on paid propagandist for any and every psychotic genocidal maniac in the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment