First of all, anyone familiar with contemporary Zionism should be able to figure out that Finkelstein could never publish as he has, or speak as he has, or get the publicity that he has, without the implicit support of the various Jewish lobbies around the world. If he were truly the threat that is portrayed, we can be sure that he would be stopped cold—censored, sanctioned, sued, or imprisoned. Anyone doubting this need only consider the treatment given to Muslim 'extremists' and Holocaust skeptics.
So he must be 'acceptable' in some sense; perhaps even 'useful.' That use is not hard to discern. Every power structure in the world has a need to control and mitigate its opponents. In the good ol' days, a bullet to the head or a trip to the Gulag did the trick. Today one needs to be more subtle. The modern approach is to stake out the opposition's turf, or to plant a 'soft' opponent. I doubt that Norman is a plant, but he serves the same purpose: a nice, safe, credible 'critic' of Zionism who knows his limits, and doesn't go too far.
What do I mean by this? Two things. First of all, deep down, I have little doubt that Finkelstein is himself a closet Zionist—a true Zionist, meaning, a Jewish supremacist. This is the case with the vast majority of American Jews, and virtually all Israeli Jews. They firmly believe that Israel has a right to exist as an exclusively (or at least predominantly) Jewish state. This is a racist notion on any reading, and would be utterly unacceptable for any nation other than Israel. Certainly this is the case in Israel itself; it was recently reported in Al-Quds Al-Arabi (Feb. 15) that 75% of Israeli Jews are in favor of some form of ethnic cleansing, to achieve a purified Jewish state. American Jews are similarly inclined. No matter whether right or left, Republican or Democrat, pro-war or anti-war, nearly all Jews support the idea of Jewish-only state; the only disagreement is about the means of achieving it.
Finkelstein never questions this core of Zionism. It's true that he, like any thinking person with a shred of decency, is appalled at what Israel is doing in the occupied territories, but this doesn't make him anti-Zionist (in the deeper sense). He does not question Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. He does not endorse the right of return for all Palestinians, or financial compensation for them. He does not call for full and equal rights of Israeli Arabs. Finkelstein is still, at heart, a Jewish supremacist.
Even worse is his stance on the Holocaust. He made his name in 2000, with his 'radical' book The Holocaust Industry. As before, we can be sure that neither his English publisher Verso, nor the printer of his German translation (Piper Verlag), nor any of the other 15 foreign-language publishers would have produced the book if it really got to the heart of the Holocaust story. Finkelstein's main concern is the hype surrounding the event, and the misuse of the money—chiefly, that it's not going to the 'right people.' But he implicitly accepts virtually all of the traditional story.
I have seen Finkelstein speak in person three times. Never once did he indicate any real knowledge about the Holocaust. In fact, at one event he was directly asked about this, and he replied, "I'm not an expert on the Holocaust"—which is a fairly astonishing admission from a man whose claim to fame rests on that event. When a questioner challenged him about the unreliability of the numbers—that the '6 million' has no factual basis, that Hilberg claimed 5.1 million, that Reitlinger claimed 4.2 million, that Yad Vashem has less than 3 million names, that revisionists argue for 1 million or less—he waived off the whole point: "I just follow the experts."
Finkelstein unquestioningly accepts the 6 million figure, without knowing anything of the massive difficulties behind that symbolic figure. He has no awareness of the physical impossibilities involved with the alleged mass murder and incineration; of the utter lack of forensic evidence, despite knowing where to look; of wartime air photos showing no evidence of mass murder; of 20 years of diary entries by Joseph Goebbels indicating a consistent process of evacuation and deportation rather than mass murder; and so on. At one time he apparently expressed doubt that gas chambers were used for mass murder, but no more; now he toes the line. In this sense, he is a champion of traditionalism, and thus poses no real threat.
In truth the Holocaust story is fraught with difficulties, as I tried to show in my book Debating the Holocaust. Normally one would expect a person like Finkelstein to pick up on this point, since it actually serves his purpose of arguing that emphasis on Jewish suffering was over-blown and exploited for financial gain. But faithful Norman knows that, should he start raising these issues, or take seriously the ideas of Rudolf, Mattogno, Graf, or Faurisson, that he, like they, would be totally shut down. Bad for book sales, eh Norm?
Even the alleged resistance he gets at his various speaking engagements is, at least in part, bogus. On more than one occasion, where his talks were supposedly cancelled by "local Jewish opposition," it was he himself who cancelled out. He is in regular contact with Jewish leaders everywhere he goes, and if he gets a whiff that the crowd might be 'uncooperative,' or might raise uncomfortable issues (e.g. Holocaust revisionism)
Readers out there are invited to ask Norman a couple pointed questions at his next local speaking engagement: (1) Do you repudiate the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state? If not, how can you deny being a racist? (2) On what basis do you accept the symbolic '6 million' Jewish Holocaust deaths, without knowledge of the many serious difficulties with that figure?
These would make for an interesting response; be prepared for some fancy footwork.
Perhaps I am wrong about Norm Finkelstein; I hope I am. In fact, I would like nothing better than for him to prove me wrong, in public, by clearly exposing Jewish supremacism and racism within Israel itself, and by exposing, or at least acknowledging, the many holes in the Holocaust story. But don't hold your breath.
Peace.
Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
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Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came home with sweaty palms from his mid-February visit to Israel. He has been worrying aloud that Israel will mousetrap the U.S. into war with Iran. This is of particular concern because Mullen has had considerable experience in putting the brakes on such Israeli plans in the past. This time, he appears convinced that the Israeli leaders did not take his warnings seriously --notwithstanding the unusually strong language he put into play. Upon arrival in Jerusalem on February 14, Mullen wasted no time in making clear why he had come. He insisted publicly that an attack on Iran would be "a big, big, big problem for all of us, and I worry a great deal about the unintended consequences." 
For weeks, the U.S. public followed the biggest offensive of the Afghanistan War against what it was told was a "city of 80,000 people" as well as the logistical hub of the Taliban in that part of Helmand. That idea was a central element in the overall impression built up in February that Marja was a major strategic objective, more important than other district centres in Helmand. It turns out, however, that the picture of Marja presented by military officials and obediently reported by major news media is one of the clearest and most dramatic pieces of misinformation of the entire war, apparently aimed at hyping the offensive as a historic turning point in the conflict. 
The government ran up the largest monthly deficit in history in February, keeping the flood of red ink on track to top last year's record for the full year. The Treasury Department said Wednesday that the February deficit totaled $220.9 billion, 14 percent higher than the previous record set in February of last year. The deficit through the first five months of this budget year totals $651.6 billion, 10.5 percent higher than a year ago. The Obama administration is projecting that the deficit for the 2010 budget year will hit an all-time high of $1.56 trillion, surpassing last year's $1.4 trillion total. 
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is bracing for a new wave of bank failures that could cost the agency many billions of dollars and further strain its finances. With bank failures running at their highest level in nearly two decades, the F.D.I.C. is racing to keep up with rising losses to its insurance fund, which safeguards savers' deposits. On Tuesday, the agency announced that it had placed 702 lenders on its list of "problem" banks, the highest number since 1993. Not all of those banks are destined to founder, and F.D.I.C. officials said Tuesday that they expected failures to peak this year. 
A far-right candidate for Austria's presidential election has brought the country's dark past to the surface once more, after denouncing a law banning Nazi groups and Holocaust denial. Barbara Rosenkranz, 51, a regional party leader for the Freedom Party (FPOe) who was nominated last week, looks to be the sole candidate to run against incumbent President ... Under the 1947 Verbotsgesetz law, anyone who seeks to set up a Nazi organisation, propagates Nazi ideology or denies Nazi crimes can be jailed for up to 20 years. But Rosenkranz, a mother of ten and the wife of an outspoken figure in Austria's far-right scene, insists the law constitutes "an unnecessary restriction" and that, on the contrary, people should be allowed freedom of opinion. 
A best-selling book about atom bomb survivors in Japan has been pulled from shops following claims sections of it may have been based on false accounts made up by an imposter. Charles Pellegrino's Last Train from Hiroshima has been dropped by its US publisher, Henry Holt and Company, which said it had doubts over facts in the book. After publication in January, it emerged that a source who claimed to have been on the US bombing mission over Hiroshima had invented his story. The publisher has now said it also has doubts relating to two other people named in the work. 
When real history is finally written, mainstream social sciences during most of the twentieth century will be exposed as consisting largely of ethnically motivated disinformation. Much has already been written about the subversion of American anthropology: the shift from legitimate science to ideological pap under the direction of the Jewish immigrant Franz Boas. Much less has been written about how psychology was transformed from a branch of natural science into a section of the Marxist-influenced social sciences. In this paper I will provide information on the subversion of psychology, pointing out the role of Boas and others in the subversion of psychology. 
A new congressional report released Friday says the United States' long-term fiscal woes are even worse than predicted by President Barack Obama's grim budget submission last month. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts that Obama's budget plans would generate deficits over the upcoming decade that would total $9.8 trillion. That's $1.2 trillion more than predicted by the administration. The agency says its future-year predictions of tax revenues are more pessimistic than the administration's ... Economists say that deficits of that size are unsustainable and could put upward pressure on interest rates, crowd out private investment in the economy and ultimately erode the nation's standard of living. 
The already gloomy conditions of states' economies are set to worsen, according to preliminary survey findings from the National Governors Association released on Saturday. "The situation is fairly poor for a lot of states around the country. In fact, most states," Vermont Governor Jim Douglas, who is chairman of the association, said at a press conference at its annual meeting. "What we're finding out from a fiscal standpoint is that the worst is yet to come," Douglas said. In a survey conducted last week of 45 of the 50 states, the group found that states have $18.8 billion of budget gaps yet to be closed in fiscal 2010 ... In the budgets they are drafting for fiscal 2011, states foresee shortfalls of $53.6 billion and for fiscal 2012 $61.6 billion. 
... If empires are complex systems that sooner or later succumb to sudden and catastrophic malfunctions, what are the implications for the United States today? First, debating the stages of decline may be a waste of time -- it is a precipitous and unexpected fall that should most concern policymakers and citizens. Second, most imperial falls are associated with fiscal crises. Alarm bells should therefore be ringing very loudly indeed as the United States contemplates a deficit for 2010 of more than $1.5 trillion -- about 11% of GDP, the biggest since World War II. 
An 80-year-old German woman has broken an old taboo of silence over the rapes she endured at the hands of Soviet soldiers in the second world war with a searing book about the crimes of the Red Army as it marched towards Berlin. "Why Did I Have To Be A Girl" by Gabriele Koepp is the first book published about the rapes under a victim's real name. Mrs Koepp was one of an estimated two million German girls and women raped by Soviet soldiers, encouraged by their leader Josef Stalin to regard the crime as a spoil of war after Hitler's invasion had left 26 million Russians dead. "Frau. Komm," was a phrase that women dreaded hearing from Red Army soldiers. 
A Barcelona bookshop owner was sentenced to prison for the crime of "honoring and justifying genocide." Pedro Varela, owner of the Europa bookshop, was given a term of two years, nine months for "selling and spreading in a continuous manner books that honor and justify the genocide committed by Hitler against the Jewish people and other minorities." The sentence, which was handed down Monday in a Barcelona court, also accused the bookshop of marketing "books that belittle other races or ethnicities, women, homosexuals and disabled people," as well as organizing neo-Nazi conferences. Varela also was fined nearly $4,000. 
... This beautifully crafted, stirring and inspiring film, Invictus, clearly has a political agenda. It has dangerous distortions of reality and a selective focus ... Nelson Mandela was the head of UmKhonto we Sizwe, (MK), the terrorist wing of the ANC and South African Communist Party. He had pleaded guilty to 156 acts of public violence including mobilizing terrorist bombing campaigns, which planted bombs in public places, including the Johannesburg railway station. Many innocent people, including women and children, were killed by Nelson Mandela's MK terrorists. South African President P.W. Botha had, on a number of occasions, offered Nelson Mandela freedom from prison, if he would only renounce terrorist violence. 
Rights and wrongs in the Israel-Palestine conflict are debated in this heated exchange between Norman Finkelstein, a fierce and articulate Jewish critic of Israel and its policies, and Ranann Gissin, an ardent defender of the Zionist state and for years a prominent Israeli spokesman. Broadcast on Peter Lavelle's "CrossTalk." Runtime: 26 mins. 
Neville Chamberlain read and annotated Hitler's Mein Kampf in its original German before he embarked on his policy of appeasement, says a new biography. The former prime minister, who acquired a 1933 copy of the book, highlighted sections that he thought revealing of the German dictator's mindset, and even added exclamation marks alongside some passages. Chamberlain was struck by sections that underlined Hitler's anti-Semitism, his faith in Aryan superiority and his sense of racial affinity with the British. In one highlighted passage about Anglo-German relations, Hitler states: "The bond of kindred blood and the main features of a common civilisation united us." 
