Norman Finkelstein
Norman Finkelstein
Norman Gary Finkelsteinis an American political scientist, activist, professor, and author. His primary fields of research are the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust, an interest motivated by the experiences of his parents who were Jewish Holocaust survivors. He is a graduate of Binghamton University and received his Ph.D in political science at Princeton University. He has held faculty positions at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Hunter College, New York University, and DePaul University where he was an assistant...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEducator
Date of Birth8 December 1953
CountryUnited States of America
If there were an Oscar for best theatrical performance by a country, Israel would win every year. It's a country based on theater. It's a lunatic state - completely insane.
Why should Americans go on with their lives as normal, worrying about calories and hair loss, while other people are worrying about where they are going to get their next piece of bread?
When you are a people's movement, you have one thing. Your only asset is people. And you have to deal with real people. Not the people of your imagination. Not the people you wish people would be. But people as they exist actually out there in the real world.
My books don't sell anymore. There are many reasons why they don't sell, but one of the reasons is because people don't read anymore. Forget about reading books of detail - they don't read at all.
Mainstream Jewish intellectuals became 'pro'-Israel after the June 1967 war when Israel became the U.S.A.' s strategic asset in the Middle East, i.e., when it was safe and reaped benefits. To credit them with ideological conviction is, in my opinion, very naive.
I'm not a good writer, and I don't care. Unfortunately, after I left college, I didn't have time much for literature. I wish I did. Most of the time I read documents, and that's not going to help your writing. But I'm a very logical writer, and you can't get out of me. Once I've nailed you, you're finished.
I don't claim to know Israel. I don't speak Hebrew; my contacts are pretty limited. But I didn't know Vietnam; I didn't know Nicaragua, El Salvador or Honduras. It doesn't mean you can't reach your conclusions.
DePaul's plot to deny me tenure had nothing to do with my faults. In fact, and ironically, it viciously attacked me and destroyed my career because of my virtues. Which, although few in number, they still found threatening.
The real goal of politics has to be getting people to act on what they already know was wrong.
Teaching is in my bones. I love to teach.
Personal convictions are not politics. Personal convictions, if they become the subject of a group conviction, they become a cult.
No doubt one can, in light of further study and life experience, come to repudiate past convictions.
Israel has been a stage on which American Jews have played out their fantasies of toughness - often from Martha's Vineyard.
I'm an old fan of the Negro spirituals.