To me, two distinct issues predominate consideration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One of course has to do with the merits (whether political or moral) of their respective positions and claims. That is a most thorny issue, perhaps THE political Gordian knot of the...
Ver más
To me, two distinct issues predominate consideration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One of course has to do with the merits (whether political or moral) of their respective positions and claims. That is a most thorny issue, perhaps THE political Gordian knot of the 20th Century. The other has to do with the honesty and integrity of the arguments that are advanced for or against the respective positions. Many intelligent people rightfully feel uneasy about basing their arguments for or against the Jews or the Arabs solely on racial, religious, or ethnic grounds or on brute military power ("might makes right"). So they turn to history. Well and good - provided you get your history right, provided you don't allow your racial, religious, or ethnic identity to influence that history.
This is where Norman Finkelstein and IMAGE AND REALITY come into play. Finkelstein's parents were both survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto and Nazi concentration camps. Yet his mother had, given her background, a somewhat surprising take on the Middle East conflict: her question was, "What crime did the Palestinians commit except to be born in Palestine?" A very trenchant question.
In 1984, Joan Peters published the book "From Time Immemorial" which, essentially, denied that as of 1948 the majority of Palestinians had been born in Palestine. Peters's book was extolled in the United States. Among the members of the chorus were Martin Peretz, Barbara Tuchman, Saul Bellow, and Elie Wiesel. When published in Great Britain, however, the book was sharply criticized, even ridiculed, by scholars, and even in Israel it was dismissed as "sheer rubbish, except maybe as a propaganda weapon". Finkelstein calls it "among the most spectacular frauds ever published on the Arab-Israeli conflict" and as a threadbare hoax compares it to, ironically, the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." One of the chapters in IMAGE AND REALITY is devoted to a painstaking critique of "From Time Immemorial", and it is devastating.
Peters's scholarship and history appear to be so bad that her book might seem to be an easy mark, maybe even a straw man. But that's what makes so lamentable the reaction in the United States to the exposure of the flimflam. With but a few isolated exceptions, there was a massive cover-up among the liberal media. Of Peters's original endorsers, only two publicly acknowledged any lapses in her scholarship, and even they could not admit that her thesis had been discredited. Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief of "The New Republic", alleged that the critical attack on Peters was part of a calculated leftist plot. And then, after the beginning of the Second Intifada in 2000, "From Time Immemorial" was reissued here in the United States and soared to the top of the Amazon list.
In the dichotomy of this book, Peters's thesis - that Palestine before the Zionists was "a land without a people" (and thus the pluperfect place for "a people without a land") - is the "image", whereas Finkelstein, in his chapter on "From Time Immemorial", presents the "reality". In other chapters Finkelstein addresses other "images", usually as presented in other noted publications: for example, that the Palestinian refugee problem of 1947-1949 was an inadvertent by-product of the war for independence and not an intended result; that the Zionist founders of Israel had benign intentions and did not envision or anticipate the use of force; that in both the June 1967 and October 1973 wars Israel was the unprovoked victim of Arab aggression. Finkelstein contrasts these images with what he contends is "reality".
In these other image/reality pairings, Finkelstein is not as convincing to me as he is in exposing "From Time Immemorial". Part of the problem is that each of the subjects probably deserves book-length treatment. (This is also indicated by the copious and detailed footnotes - 82 pages of footnotes for 225 pages of text.) Another part of the problem is that Finkelstein's style is so tendentious. At times I question how fair and balanced he is. On one ancillary issue about which I happen to know a fair amount, he is neither fair nor balanced, and he "cherry picks" quotes to support his position. Furthermore, the book is not easy reading.
No one should look to IMAGE AND REALITY for an overview of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is not intended or structured to be such. Further, it is now somewhat dated. (It was originally published in 1995, and though this second edition contains about fifty pages of new material it is now almost ten years old.) But the book is a valuable counterpoint to some historical propositions often taken for granted by Zionist Israel and its supporters. Before I espoused any of those propositions, I would first want to have read and carefully considered what Norman Finkelstein has written about them.
To me, two distinct issues predominate consideration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One of course has to do with the merits (whether political or moral) of their respective positions and claims. That is a most thorny issue, perhaps THE political Gordian knot of the 20th Century. The other has to do with the honesty and integrity of the arguments that are advanced for or against the respective positions. Many intelligent people rightfully feel uneasy about basing their arguments for or against the Jews or the Arabs solely on racial, religious, or ethnic grounds or on brute military power ("might makes right"). So they turn to history. Well and good - provided you get your history right, provided you don't allow your racial, religious, or ethnic identity to influence that history.
This is where Norman Finkelstein and IMAGE AND REALITY come into play. Finkelstein's parents were both survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto and Nazi concentration camps. Yet his mother had, given her background, a somewhat surprising take on the Middle East conflict: her question was, "What crime did the Palestinians commit except to be born in Palestine?" A very trenchant question.
In 1984, Joan Peters published the book "From Time Immemorial" which, essentially, denied that as of 1948 the majority of Palestinians had been born in Palestine. Peters's book was extolled in the United States. Among the members of the chorus were Martin Peretz, Barbara Tuchman, Saul Bellow, and Elie Wiesel. When published in Great Britain, however, the book was sharply criticized, even ridiculed, by scholars, and even in Israel it was dismissed as "sheer rubbish, except maybe as a propaganda weapon". Finkelstein calls it "among the most spectacular frauds ever published on the Arab-Israeli conflict" and as a threadbare hoax compares it to, ironically, the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." One of the chapters in IMAGE AND REALITY is devoted to a painstaking critique of "From Time Immemorial", and it is devastating.
Peters's scholarship and history appear to be so bad that her book might seem to be an easy mark, maybe even a straw man. But that's what makes so lamentable the reaction in the United States to the exposure of the flimflam. With but a few isolated exceptions, there was a massive cover-up among the liberal media. Of Peters's original endorsers, only two publicly acknowledged any lapses in her scholarship, and even they could not admit that her thesis had been discredited. Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief of "The New Republic", alleged that the critical attack on Peters was part of a calculated leftist plot. And then, after the beginning of the Second Intifada in 2000, "From Time Immemorial" was reissued here in the United States and soared to the top of the Amazon list.
In the dichotomy of this book, Peters's thesis - that Palestine before the Zionists was "a land without a people" (and thus the pluperfect place for "a people without a land") - is the "image", whereas Finkelstein, in his chapter on "From Time Immemorial", presents the "reality". In other chapters Finkelstein addresses other "images", usually as presented in other noted publications: for example, that the Palestinian refugee problem of 1947-1949 was an inadvertent by-product of the war for independence and not an intended result; that the Zionist founders of Israel had benign intentions and did not envision or anticipate the use of force; that in both the June 1967 and October 1973 wars Israel was the unprovoked victim of Arab aggression. Finkelstein contrasts these images with what he contends is "reality".
In these other image/reality pairings, Finkelstein is not as convincing to me as he is in exposing "From Time Immemorial". Part of the problem is that each of the subjects probably deserves book-length treatment. (This is also indicated by the copious and detailed footnotes - 82 pages of footnotes for 225 pages of text.) Another part of the problem is that Finkelstein's style is so tendentious. At times I question how fair and balanced he is. On one ancillary issue about which I happen to know a fair amount, he is neither fair nor balanced, and he "cherry picks" quotes to support his position. Furthermore, the book is not easy reading.
No one should look to IMAGE AND REALITY for an overview of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is not intended or structured to be such. Further, it is now somewhat dated. (It was originally published in 1995, and though this second edition contains about fifty pages of new material it is now almost ten years old.) But the book is a valuable counterpoint to some historical propositions often taken for granted by Zionist Israel and its supporters. Before I espoused any of those propositions, I would first want to have read and carefully considered what Norman Finkelstein has written about them.
