Customer Reviews

Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, New and Revised Edition

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Norman Finkelstein is a brave man who has received a lot of flak for writing this book. One response that authors who criticise Israel always have to contend with is the accusation that they are motivated by anti-Semitism or anti-Zionism. Jewish authors (Finkelstein is the son of Holocaust survivors)are additionally accused of being 'self hating' Jews. It's almost as if, in the eyes of Israel's unquestioning supporters, there can be no legitimate reason to criticise anything that Israel does. Maybe Israel, unlike any other country which has ever existed on Earth, is a perfect society which is completely above criticism - or is it?

The aim of this brilliant book is to ask questions about the view of Israel's history that Zionists would like the rest of us to believe. Many aspects of this history are hotly disputed so it's a perfectly legitimate area of study. Reading the book will probably challenge your preconceptions of the Arab-Israeli conflict and will make some people feel distinctly uncomfortable. But like nasty tasting medicine that ultimately does you good, it's essential reading for anyone who really wants to understand what's going on in that tragic part of the world. And the fact that all Finkelstein's opponents can do to counter his arguments is come out with the same old knee-jerk reactions says it all. Buy it!

This work is very important for people to read as it provides a worthwhile alternative view to Israeli history.

I can't determine from my own research whether the author is totally right or wrong in his thesis, but the one thing that I can say is that like all history, it is important to hear all sides of a story.

Anyone who believes (as portrayed in the mainstream media) that Israel is the font of reason and love in the middle east and simply wants to be left alone to exist, and that it is the Arab States (and Palestinians) which cause all the problems in the area must read this book simply to inform themselves of other perspectives. To believe what is said in the media these days, you would never know about the history of land encroachment etc by Israel. The settlements which are still expanding to this day were going on since 1948! These things came as news to me, and simply points to the need to inform oneself about history from both sides, including the Arab side. You very rarely (never?) see or hear this side of the argument in the US. It is that very fact which should indicate that reading this version of history is important - ignorance is the foundation of an unfair world.

Read this book!

Dr. Norman Finkelstein has written a brilliant and scholarly expose of
the Israel-Palestine conflict. He is not a dispassionate historian/scholar
nor does he pretend to be. He dedicates the book to his parents,
survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Nazi extermination camps:
"May I never forget or forgive what was done to them."

Finkelstein's keen intellect is breathtaking. His painstaking research
which supports the evidence how the "reality" of the causes of the
conflict is vastly different than the "image" presented to us by the media
is a marvel to behold.

My favorite chapters in the book are chapters 2 and 4.

In Chapter 2, he discusses Joan Peters book "From Time Immemorial"
and masterfully exposes it as a hoax. The crux of Peters' thesis was
that "Palestine was, literally, 'uninhabited' on the eve of the Zionist
colonization; and that if the Arab population did not materialize, literally,
ex nihilo in Palestine, it did surreptitiously enter to exploit the economic
opportunities that the Jews created when they made the 'desert bloom'." By that logic, most Palestinians were not even there in 1948 to be expelled from their homes.
The fact that such a threadbare hoax can be published in this country
is not surprising. But the fact that this book received accolades from
journalists and scholars alike, from such luminaries as Daniel Pipes,
Sidney Zion, Holocaust historian Lucy Dawidowicz, and Nobel
peace prize laureate Elie Wiesel, speaks volumes about the American
commissar culture. After the book went through several printings and
was exposed as an utter fraud in Britain, it finally prompted Anthony
Lewis to write a column for The New York Times aptly entitled "There
Were No Indians."

Perhaps the most illuminating part of the book is Chapter 4 entitled
"Settlement, Not Conquest." Finkelstein's dissection of how the
historical rhetoric and justifications for conquest are strikingly
similar -- "from the British in North America to the Dutch in South Africa,
from the Nazis in Eastern Europe, to the Zionists in Palestine" --
is both enlightening and comical.

Finally, it is noteworthy to mention Finkelstein's poignant observation
for those of us who want to see justice done to the Palestinians and
to all people who are suffering as a direct result of America's
diplomatic and military support to the darkest and most oppressive
regimes around the globe: "The plea of 'not knowing' cannot in
good faith be entered at history's bar. Those who want to know can
know the truth; at all events, enough of it to draw the just conclusions."
To buttress his point, he quotes Albert Speer's mea culpa at
Nuremberg: "Whether I knew or did not know, or how much or little I
knew, is totally unimportant when I consider the horrors I OUGHT to
have known about and what conclusions would have been natural
ones to draw from the little I did know . . ."

Thus, Finkelstein concludes: "Indeed, the [ordinary] Germans could
point in extenuation to the severity of penalties for speaking out
against the crimes of state. What excuse do we have?"
Perhaps, we may want to do some genuine soul-searching
as we ponder that question.

If you want to understand the origins of the on-going tragedy of the Intifada, read this book. But it will take nerves of steel. You will be confronted with facts that will upset every one of your preconceived notions about Israel and the Palestinian conflict. If that prospect sacres you, don't read this book. Otherwise, reading this work is a great, liberating experience.

Norman Finkelstein (Princeton University PhD & Professor at De Paul University) wows his reader with his scholarship but also his integrity. One can only admire his intellectual courage and probity for having painstakingly analysed the complex array of social, political and ideological forces that shaped the rise of the Zionist movement and which led simultaneously to the creation of Israel and the tragic displacement of the indigenous Palestinian population. And he accomplishes this remarkable feat in 240 pages.

As a scrupulous historian, his most important contribution is the courage to debunk so many of the myths that surround the rise of the Israeli state and that pass as common currency in America. Finkelstein is loathe to advance a fact without detailed argumentation, backed up by very thorough research and abundant footnotes. 27% of his book is made up of very carefully crafted notes, each drilling down further his searh for historical veracity. He chases down the truth/falsehood of every fact, exposing the fraudulent work of so-called "experts" (Joan Peters), challenges the political bias of some of today's leading Israeli historians (Benny Morris), and punches holes through the inconsistencies of respected Zionist apologists (Anita Shapira), letting the historical cards fall where they may, without allowing Nationalist ideology to warp or intimidate his findings.

Finkelstein's book renders a very considerable public service in enlightening our minds to the many inherited falsehoods that masquerade as truth regarding the reality of the Israel-Palestine conflict. For this, we all, Israelis, Palestinians, and Americans owe him a great debt.

So far the book is structured in a sound manner and delves into the oft neglected portions of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Finkelstein references a plethora of sources, Israeli and otherwise that lend credence to his thesis. I recommend this to anyone that wants a more cogent and coherent view of the dilemma taking place in Middle East.

This book is a welcome relief from the pro-Israeli propaganda that one is forced to endure time and time again. This is a brave, honest, and remarkably knowledgeable author. I recommend reading his book titled The Holocaust Industry as well. Of course, as expected, the Israel apologists relinquishing any sense of moral responsibility or decency, attack and malign the author for honestly dealing with the ugliness of the Israeli occupation and its racist policies in the Middle East. But these types of Israeli apologists have as much credibility and moral integrity as the defenders of the apartheid regime of South Africa. For them, the suffering of Palestinians counts for nothing. When I was in Israel I was shocked by how people talked about Arabs as if they are subhuman, and worth nothing. It was then that this book became a personal and gruesome reality. I read the response published in the Commentary, which is a journal dedicated to absolving Israel of all its sins, and it was sickening. Read this book!

This book seems to be really a set of five or six papers on the Arab-Israeli conflict cobbled together into one volume so it kind of lacks a common thread of argument, but it's still quite good.

Most meticulous (and viscous) is the chapter debunking Joan Peters' book. But the parts I found most convincing were the chapters on the 1973 war and on Benny Morris's theory of the Palestinian refugee problem. It does seem to ring intuitively true that given that there was motive (a Jewish state requires Jews to be in a signficant majority there), it should be followed to its logical conclusion. Very few still believe the canard that masses of Arabs packed up and left either (i) in preparation for war or (ii) in obedient compliance with Arab radio broadcasts. But the notion that the Israelis were largely responsible for the expulsion of the Arabs has been given surprisingly scant treatment. All part of the obloquy attached to casting suspicion on a 'victim' group, I suppose.

What I find interesting is the way that Finkelstein and others are criticised for being 'anti-Zionist', without further comment. It is as though this is enough to discredit them. Given the plain truth that Zionism was effectively the endeavour to steal a country out from under its inhabitants, it's hardly morally odious to be 'anti-Zionist'. Critics of Finkelstein, Chomsky et al would have a lot more credibility if they either qualified their use of this pejorative or dropped it altogether.

A lot of this is not by any means leisure reading - even Chomsky's book is more readable. But if you really want to get to the nitty-gritty of the issues, it's quite scholarly.

This book is an essential corrective to the flood of propaganda which is the only thing that ever reaches most people. I feel fortunate indeed to have the chance to see for myself how we have been misled and what the truth of this pivotal and central issue really is. Once again, Norman Finkelstein provides us with a most compelling account of the enormous discrepancy between what we think we know and what is really going on. This should be required reading for anyone who wants to know the truth of what is going on in the Middle East and what it has to do with us.

Indeed, this book is about "image" and "reality" of Israel-Palestinian conflict. On the "image" side are the books written by well-known scholars: `From Time Immemorial" (Joan Peters), "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem" (Benny Morris) and "Land and Power" (Anita Shapira). N. Finkelstein confronts these scholars with "reality" and successfully demonstrates to the reader that those books, even though written by leading scholars, are only "image," i.e. present distorted facts and theories about Israel-Palestinian conflict.

In analyzing "From Time Immemorial" (Joan Peters), N. Finkelstein not only destroys the main argument of the book (that, among others, Palestinians fabricated their genealogies and that when Jews came to the contested lands, they are "a land without a people"), but also discloses all major facts/arguments that were purposefully falsified or distorted.

Then he focuses on Benny Morris' "near-universally acclaimed classic" book entitled "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949." In this book, B. Morris rejects two previously advocated accounts of the Israeli-Arab conflict that [a] the Zionists did not expel Palestinians with premeditation, and that [b] the invading Arab states did not urge Palestinians to leave their homelands. For B. Morris, "the Palestinian refugee problem was born of war, not by design, Jewish or Arab." N. Finkelstein argues that B. Morris substituted old "images" or myth about Israel-Palestinian conflict with a new one and in doing so he first analyzes the evidence B. Morris refers to/relies, then he focuses on how B. Morris handled "Arab Broadcast" argument, after that he addresses the central thesis of B. Morris' book that the Arab refugee problem was "born of war, not by design" and finally he discusses how B. Morris' explains expulsion of Arabs.

In 4th Chapter, he mainly focuses on "Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881-1948" written by Anita Shapira. He addressed two main theses A. Shapira advocates in her book: that [a] it was lawful self-defense and that [b] Jews resort to violence only when it is necessary.

The rest of the book is largely about how Israel has been screwing up all the major peace initiatives up until now.

All in all, the book is a must for anyone who is interested in obtaining meticulously researched, thoroughly documented and critically analyzed information about Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

One last point - to my knowledge, none of the above-mentioned scholars whom N. Finkelstein criticized in "Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestinian Conflict" responded to the arguments raised in his book.

While the book is highly critical of Israel (and only Israel) and might seem a bit one-sided, I found his analysis of the accepted history of the region as quite refreshing. He provides a wealth of evidence and sources to back himself up and his explanations seem quite genuine. I regret the fact that it only goes up until the Yom Kippur war though, he would be well advised to make some more additions to this otherwise interesting book.