I'm
sure you've seen one of those TV lawyer shows in which the lawyer for the good
guy has a star witness who is going to demolish the bad guy's story, but when
the witness gets on the witness stand and actually starts testifying, the
testimony, to the surprise of the good guy's lawyer, helps the bad guy. At
that point the good guy's lawyer says to the judge something like, "Request
permission to treat the witness as hostile, your honor."
I think it's time we considered treating the witness, Norman Finkelstein, and
his accomplice, Amy Goodman, as hostile to the Palestinian struggle against
apartheid Israel. Here's why.
Below is the latest so-called
debate between Norman Finkelstein and an overt
Zionist (Josh Block in this case), hosted by Amy Goodman. This debate is
similar to other ones Finkelstein has engaged in. Read this "debate"
carefully, and you will see that it boils down to four basic assertions by
Block and three basic counter-assertions by Finkelstein:
Block:
1. Israelis are defending themselves against unprovoked terrorist attacks on
their population.
2. "Hamas is an organization that fundamentally believes, deep in its core,
that Israel does not have the right to exist."
3. The values on which Israel is based, "liberal fundamental values, which are
celebrated in Israel -- freedom of the press, women's rights, gay rights,
freedom of assembly, freedom of religion -- are denied to those living in
Palestinian areas and throughout the rest of the Arab world."
4. When Israel kills non-combatants it regrets it and says so; when Hamas
kills non-combatants it does not express regret.
Finkelstein:
1. Israel uses disproportionately more terror against Palestinians than Hamas
does against Israelis.
2. Israel deliberately kills Palestinian combatants but Hamas intends only to
take them as prisoners. (Then, undercutting his own position, he accuses
Israel of being the first to take hostages; he says this in order to make the
point that it's ok if Hamas takes hostages now.)
3. Israel has taken far more hostages (prisoners) than Hamas.
Nowhere (and this is true of Finkelstein in general, not just this debate)
does Finkelstein state clearly that 1) Israel is fundamentally the aggressor
against the Palestinians because it is a Jews-only (hence
anti-democratic) state based on ethnic
cleansing, 2) that Israel therefore has no right to exist, and 3) that Israel
is thus the aggressor and Palestinians the defender no matter who kills more
of the other, no matter who uses more (or any) terrorism, no matter who takes
more hostages, no matter who regrets the killing of non-combatants more, and
so forth. Even David Ben-Gurion was more honest on this score than
Finkelstein, when Ben-Gurion told the Political Committee of his party, Mapai,
in 1938,
"When we say that the Arabs are the aggressors and we defend ourselves -- that is only half the truth. As regards our security and life we defend ourselves...But the fighting is only one aspect of the conflict, which is in its essence a political one. And politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves." [Flapan, Simha, Zionism and the Palestinians, London, Croom Helm, 1979, p. 141, cited by Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001, Vintage Books, New York, 2001, p. 676]
Finkelstein in this debate even agreed with Block when
Block resorted to what is perhaps the most fundamental lie of all Zionist
lies, the lie that they care about the well-being of ordinary Jewish people.
Here's how "our" witness, Finklestein, responds to that lie: "Now, Josh says
Israel has a responsibility to protect its citizens. I totally agree with
that." (To read about how Zionists are anti-Jewish-people and have been from
the days of the Holocaust to the present, see
The
Anti-Semitism of Zionism's Leaders.)
The unfortunate fact is that the manner in which Finkelstein "debates" overt
Zionists does not help us; it hurts us. By never stating the fundamental
reason why Israel is wrong--i.e. that what it is
defending should
not be defended because it is a state
based on ethnic cleansing and apartheid--and by merely criticizing the MEANS
by which Israel defends itself, or by merely saying that "both sides do bad
things but Israel does them disproportionately," or that Israel doesn't play
by the rules of international law, Finkelstein is about as persuasive as
somebody arguing against the old apartheid South African government with
arguments that NEVER mentioned apartheid but only asserted that the South
African government, in defending itself, did more bad things to black South
Africans than black South Africans did bad things to whites.
In fact, if I were in charge of Zionist propaganda in the United States, I
would make sure to donate lots of money to the Amy Goodman show, because it
frames the "debate" about Israel/Palestine in exactly the manner that Zionist
propaganda requires. The Zionist side says: "The conflict is one between a
peace-loving democratic Israeli society that is, unfortunately, required to do
unpleasant things in defense of itself against terrorists. But just because
Israel is fortunate enough (due to the admirable traits of Jews) to be the
stronger power with a real army, capable of inflicting more damage to
terrorists than vice-versa, does not
mean that it is not deserving of support from Americans who value democracy
and freedom of speech. To condemn Israel for being strong makes no more sense
than to condemn the Allies in World War II for being stronger than the Axis
nations." Finkelstein then "counters" with what seems like a deliberately
unpersuasive reply: "Israel is more powerful than Hamas, and in its legitimate
effort to protect the Israeli people it does more bad things to Palestinians
than Hamas does to Israelis."
I request permission to treat Norman Finkelstein and Amy Goodman as hostile
witnesses, your honor.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
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AMY GOODMAN: As we continue our coverage, we're joined now by two
guests. Here in our Firehouse studio, Norman Finkelstein, Professor of
Political Science at DePaul University in Chicago. His latest book is called
Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History. And
on the telephone, we're joined by Josh Block, Director of Media Affairs for
AIPAC -- that's the American Israel Public Affairs Committee -- speaking to us
on the line from Connecticut. Josh Block, let's begin with you. Your response
and the latest, the last thing that Chris McGreal said, saying human rights
groups, the Palestinian leadership, Mahmoud Abbas talking about this as
collective punishment and a crime against humanity.
JOSH BLOCK: Well, clearly the concern is the reaction from those same
folks when it comes to the murder and kidnap of Israeli citizens. From many
perspective, American or otherwise, an attack inside Israel, unprovoked, that
resulted in the murder of two Israelis and not the capture, Amy, but the
kidnapping of an Israeli soldier is, in and of itself, an act of war.
And clearly the Israelis tried for several days, 48 hours, 36 hours, of
intense diplomacy with the aid of the United States, the French -- and I
should add that this young man who has been kidnapped is also a French citizen
-- to secure the release from Hamas, the terrorist group that has him. And by
the way, in high irony, the government of the Palestinian Authority, run by
the same terrorist group, so a government that's charged with fighting
terrorism is itself a terrorist group that's responsible for his kidnapping.
So after 48 hours and 36 hours of difficult and unproductive diplomacy,
clearly the Israelis felt that they needed to act in their own defense.
And I think the question is what is the reaction from these same human rights
groups when it comes to the condemnation of terrorism or other acts? And
clearly -- and I don't speak for the Israelis, but they must have felt that
this was an important thing to do to help isolate and prevent the movement of
this terrorist groups from moving the captive or kidnapped Israeli soldier
around the Gaza Strip.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Finkelstein?
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: I think it is useful to begin with what the human
rights groups have to say about this. Let's leave aside the background for a
moment and look narrowly at the incident that triggered the Israeli invasion.
Let's see what Hamas did not do, what the Palestinian militants did not do.
Number one, they did not liquidate the corporal, which Israel routinely does,
namely its political assassinations. That's a war crime under international
law. Israel routinely does that. Hamas did not do that to the corporal.
Number two, they didn't kill the corporal while trying to arrest him. Israel
routinely does that. If you look at July 2005, B'Tselem, the Israeli
Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, they put out
a very hefty report entitled "Take No Prisoners." And the report shows Israel
routinely, during so-called arrest operations, kills Palestinians, documents a
case of a Palestinian who was wounded, on the ground, no weapon. Israel killed
him. Hamas didn't do that to the corporal.
It said by this – by [inaudible], it said that they took him hostage, they
kidnapped him. Okay. Israel routinely takes Palestinians, Lebanese hostage. In
fact, Israel was the only country in the world, in 1997, which legalized
hostage-taking. The liberal head of the Israeli High Court, Aharon Barak, he
said it's legal, legitimate, under international law to take what he called
bargaining chips in order to get prisoners, Israeli prisoners being held by
the Lebanese. The decision was reversed in 2000, but Israel continued to hold
Lebanese hostages until 2004. So, at worst, Hamas is being accused of what
Israel legalized and routinely does.
And finally, let's talk about those 9,000 Palestinians who are effectively
hostages being held by Israel. 1,000 of them are administrative detainees.
AMY GOODMAN: You're talking about prisoners.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Yes. Administrative detainees who are being held
without any charges or trial. And the other 8,000 are being held after
military courts have convicted them, almost always on the basis of confessions
which were extracted by torture. So if we're going to look simply at the
numbers, we have one hostage on the Palestinian side, and effectively we have
about 9,000 on the Israeli side.
AMY GOODMAN: We're going to break, and then we'll get a response from
Josh Block of AIPAC. Dr. Norman Finkelstein is Professor at DePaul University
in Chicago.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking about the siege in Gaza. Our guests are Josh
Block, a spokesperson for AIPAC, which is the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee, speaking to us from Connecticut; and Professor Norman Finkelstein,
teaches political science at DePaul University in Chicago, is in our Firehouse
studio. Juan?
JUAN GONZALEZ:Josh Block, before break, Norman Finkelstein was talking
about the lack of proportionality in looking at the issue of prisoners and
hostages on both sides. Your response to that?
JOSH BLOCK: Well, I think the first thing that he said was that we
should ignore the context in which this attack took place, and I think that's
a major flaw with his commentary over time. I'm not surprised to hear him talk
about things in those terms, considering he's called Hezbollah, which is the
number one killer of Americans outside of al-Qaeda, a heroic organization.
You know, ultimately, the question for Israel is, what is its responsibility
as a government? And any government, whether it's our or theirs, has the duty
to protect its citizens. Hamas and Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, other
terrorists groups, have been conducting an unremitting campaign of terrorism
against Israeli citizens. Hamas is an organization that fundamentally
believes, deep in its core, that Israel does not have the right to exist. When
they talk about an occupation, they're talking about Tel Aviv. That's why when
this terrorist attack took place, it took place not in the Gaza Strip or in
the West Bank, but inside Israel itself.
They infiltrated Israel, digging a tunnel from underneath a home into the
country of Israel, where they attacked soldiers who were not engaged in an
offensive operation against any Palestinian. They murdered two of them, and
they kidnapped one of them. And they're holding him captive, hostage. That is
an act of war. It's a provocation. And it comes as a culmination of months and
months of terrorist attacks and rocket attacks against Israeli citizens, who
were not engaged in any offensive effort, who are simply going ahead and
living their lives. And that kind of terrorism is unacceptable, and forces a
response from any responsible government.
The Palestinian Authority has the responsibility to secure the release of this
individual, this soldier. And failing that, the international community has to
continue to put pressure on the Palestinian Authority to fulfill those
obligations. Again, Hamas is the government of the Palestinian Authority, and
it is sanctioning and conducting terrorism. That's not an acceptable
situation, and it cuts against the entire grain of fundamental international
conduct.
AMY GOODMAN: Norman Finkelstein, I'd like to you respond to that and
also the timing of this operation, coming hours after Fatah and Hamas
announced that they had agreed on a document that implicitly recognized Israel
within its 1967 borders.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, I want to first take note that Josh didn't
respond to any of my claims about Israel taking hostages, about 9,000 –
JOSH BLOCK: That's because they're ludicrous claims. They don't merit a
response.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: I respected your time, Josh. I respected your time.
Please do the same for me. He didn't respond to any of my claims about Israel
taking hostages, routinely killing Palestinians taken prisoner, and so on and
so forth.
So let's turn to the issue that Josh wants to address, namely the context. I'm
very happy to do so. Let's look at the context. Since Israel withdrew from
Gaza in September 2005 'til today, the estimates run between 7,000 and 9,000
heavy artillery shells have been shot and fired into Gaza. On the Palestinian
side, the estimates are approximately 1,000 Kassam missiles, crude missiles,
have been fired into Israel. So we have a ratio of between seven and nine to
one.
Let's look at casualties. In the last six months, approximately 80
Palestinians have been killed in Gaza due to Israel artillery firing. Now, on
the Israeli side, we hear all of these terrible things about these Kassams.
Even Shlomo Ben-Ami, yesterday on your program, who I respect, he said what's
Israel to do about these Kassams? What does the record show? I mentioned a
moment ago, 80 Palestinians killed in six months. There have been exactly
eight Israelis killed in the last five years from the Kassam missiles. Again,
we have a huge disproportion, a huge discrepancy.
Now, Josh says Israel has a responsibility to protect its citizens. I totally
agree with that. But Hamas is the elected government of the Palestinians. They
have a responsibility to protect their citizens. They have a responsibility to
get back their 9,000 hostages. They have a responsibility to protect their
Palestinian civilians, who are being daily attacked by Israel. Josh says that
the --
JOSH BLOCK: If I might, Amy, I'm ready to respond to that.
AMY GOODMAN: Josh Block of AIPAC.
JOSH BLOCK: Yeah, first of all, the folks that have been arrested for
participating in terrorist activity against innocent Israeli civilians have
been arrested for criminal activity. They were not kidnapped because they were
doing their responsible civic duty and no offensive position against the
Palestinians. In fact, those who, again, are in Israeli jail are there for
conducting terrorist activity. Among the people that he mentions that have
been killed, were killed because they were participating in terrorist
activity, shooting missiles, planning terrorist attacks against Israel. Those
folks were not innocent civilians who were killed in suicide bus bombings or
have had missiles fall on their kindergartens. There's a moral equivalency
that your guest is drawing that is fundamentally out of proportion.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: May I ask Josh a question?
JOSH BLOCK: It's totally disproportionate and fundamentally incorrect.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: May I ask Josh -- I'd like to ask you a question,
Josh. 1,000 of those Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel, according to
B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, 1,000 of them are
administrative detainees. That is, there have been no charges leveled against
them. How do you know what they're being held for?
JOSH BLOCK: Fundamentally --
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: No, answer that question. There have been no
charges and no trials.
JOSH BLOCK: I'm about to, if you would give me a second to answer --
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: How do you know what they're being held for?
JOSH BLOCK: But instead you're trying to filibuster the question.
Fundamentally, the Israeli army and the Israeli government arrest Palestinians
who are engaged in terrorist activity. That's a proven fact.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: No, I don't think that's a proven fact. It would be
a proven fact if there were court trials.
JOSH BLOCK: It is. It is a proven fact.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: How do you know what administrative detainees are
being held for? Israel doesn't say, so how do you know?
JOSH BLOCK: I fundamentally understand the facts, which clearly you do
not, which are that Israel takes fundamental legal action to arrest
individuals who are engaged in terrorist activity directed against its
citizens. There is no moral equivalency to be drawn between a country acting
in defense of its citizens and those engaging in terrorist activity in an
effort to stabilize and destroy that free and peaceful society.
Look, Amy and Juan, as a Liberal Democrat who is a long-time listener of this
program, I fundamentally believe that the audience and you are in a position
to understand that liberal fundamental values, which are celebrated in Israel
-- freedom of the press, women's rights, gay rights, freedom of assembly,
freedom of religion -- are denied to those living in Palestinian areas and
throughout the rest of the Arab world. There's an asymmetry that's involved in
the Middle East, which is a country of Israel that is based on fundamental
free values, that is not replicated in the Arab world, where education systems
inculcate children with hatred and teach them that martyrdom and death is
preferred over science and math and education.
And fundamentally, after Israel's disengagement from Gaza less than a year
ago, when the Palestinian people and the Authority that leads them had the
chance to build a better life for their citizens, they chose not to do that.
They destroyed the greenhouses, the economic infrastructure that was provided.
They then took the opportunity not to fight terrorism and to provide security
for their people and went the other direction. That's why when these attacks
take place through the very arteries, the crossing points and the cargo points
that benefit the Palestinian people, Hamas is intentionally harming their own
society. That is the fundamental dynamic, none of the other speciousness that
we're hearing from our other guest today.
JUAN GONZALEZ:But, Josh Block, I'd like to ask you, on the targeted
assassinations that Israel has often participated, has often executed in
Palestinian territories, we hear repeatedly of innocent civilians. Putting
aside the fact whether the people who were targeted were actually terrorists
or not, because we have Israel's reporting that they are, but the innocent
civilians that are inevitably killed in these missile attacks, how is that
justified as not terrorism against a civilian population?
JOSH BLOCK: You're absolutely right. Those incidents are deeply
regrettable. I think any one of us would say that. And I think any American,
any Israeli, would say that innocent people who are killed as a result of a
military action unintentionally, that's a tragedy. But there's, again, a moral
difference between an army -- Israel's military goes to great lengths to
prevent those kinds of incidents, and if you look at the number of
preventative attacks that Israel has carried out with the number of those who
have been incidentally and unfortunately killed in those incidents, there's a
tremendous preponderance of occasions when, in fact, Israel has gone to great
lengths not to harm innocent civilians.
AMY GOODMAN: We just have a minute. We gave Josh Block the first word.
Professor Norman Finkelstein, the last.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, the question is whether or not there is a
significant difference between what Israel does and what the Palestinians do,
apart from the fact that Israel does it in a much higher proportion than
Palestinians. If you indiscriminately fire on a civilian population, which
Israel routinely does, under international law -- and here I can quote the
president of Tel Aviv University, Yoram Dinstein, who's one of the leading
international experts on these matters; he says, "There's no difference
whatsoever between intentionally targeting civilians and indiscriminately
firing into a civilian crowd."
JOSH BLOCK: Fair enough.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: He says both of them are terrorism. So if Hamas --
JOSH BLOCK: If terrorist were attacking --
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: So if Hamas blows up a bus, as it used to do in Tel
Aviv, that's terrorism. If Hamas were to say, "We didn't intend to kill the
civilians. We intended to blow up the bus," people would laugh. But if Israel
drops --
JOSH BLOCK: If terrorists attack --
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Allow me to finish. Allow me to finish. If Israel
drops a one-ton bomb on a densely populated neighborhood in Gaza, as it did in
July 2002, and it said, "Oh, we didn't intend to kill the civilians. We can
just intended to kill a Palestinian terrorist --
JOSH BLOCK: And later apologized for the incident.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: It would be considered as preposterous as if Hamas
said "We only intended to blow up the bus."
JOSH BLOCK: I'm sorry. First of all, there has been no apology from
Hamas for those incidents. Israel apologizes when things like that happen.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Israel didn't apologize. As a matter of fact, Ariel
Sharon hailed the bombing of Gaza City --
JOSH BLOCK: That's another specious lie.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: -- that time as one of the greatest acts in Israeli
history.
JOSH BLOCK: Again, a lie.
AMY GOODMAN: We're going to have to leave it there. I want to thank
you, Josh Block, for joining us, spokesperson for AIPAC, American Israel
Public Affairs Committee, in Connecticut; and Professor Norm Finkelstein, here
in New York, teaches at DePaul University in Chicago. His book is called
Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History.