It seems like the idea in mentioning Finklestein's parents in his bio is to increase Finklestein's "rhetorical unassailability."
The argument runs something like this:
"You can't possibly accuse somebody both of whose parents are Jewish Holocaust survivors of 'Anti-Semitism'!...Or, you could, but most people wouldn't buy it. So, when such a person argues against the current state of affairs in Israel/Palestine, the fact of their parentage makes it harder to just blow off what they say."
Does such an argument make logical sense? Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't. But I personally would think that an academic with two Jewish Holocaust survivors for parents would tend to care genuinely, and care A LOT, about what it means to be Jewish in the aftermath of World War II. |
