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Review :: Israel / Palestine |
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N-G Letter "Fair and balanced"? |
Current rating: 0 |
by Moderators work not known for accuracy!
(No verified email address) |
17 Aug 2006
Modified: 10:09:06 PM |
I find it disturbing that a moderator of this IMC website seems to have an agenda that calls facts "distortions" and makes an effort to selectively mislead. As a IMC moderator this should earn him an exceptionally negative reputation.
As a member of this community I an concerned that an IMC moderator with stong prejudices may compromised this site. What issues have been deleated or disappeared from view? Who gets to decide what we see? Moderator write: |
Academic's work not known for accuracy
Thursday August 17, 2006
A recent letter in your paper attacked DePaul University Professor Norman Finkelstein – not that there's anything wrong with that; there are plenty of good reasons to attack him. However, it's important to distinguish distortions from truth here.
When Finkelstein praises Holocaust denier David Irving, for example, he's actually praising Irving's earlier pop histories, the stuff from before Irving went off the deep end. Of course, Irving's early work turns out to be unsupportably slapdash when examined closely. Finkelstein's limited praise for Irving doesn't mean he's a Holocaust denier, just that he's a bad judge of others' scholarship.
Similarly, Finkelstein claims that only 5.1 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. He chooses this number from one particular study – Raul Hilberg's, the study with the most conservative demographic methodology and therefore the lowest figure – without any indication that many other studies have independently confirmed 6 million dead, as did the Nazis themselves at Nuremburg.
It's exactly that kind of misleading selectivity that has earned him the exceptionally negative reputation he bears among the large majority of the tiny minority who've ever even heard of him.
He is to Jewish-American academia what Ward Churchill is to American Indian academia: a blown-gasket polemicist. Show him a picture of a Palestinian sneezing on an Israeli, and he'll shout, "Look, the consequence of inequitable racist Zionist health care policies!" Show him a picture of an Israeli sneezing on a Palestinian, and he'll shout, "Look! The genocidal Zionists have turned to germ warfare!"
DAVID GEHRIG
Urbana
Find this article at:
http://www.news-gazette.com/news/opinions/letters/2006/08/17/academics_work_not__known_for_accuracy
Comments |
This work is in the public domain |
Comments
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Re: N-G Letter "Fair and balanced"? |
by ?
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
17 Aug 2006
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Maybe more facts and less innuendo on your part would explain to the audience what the heck you're talking about. I've seen some Indymedia conspiracy theories in my time, but at least those spinning such webs go to the trouble of connecting the dots for the reader. |
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Re: N-G Letter "Fair and balanced"? |
by gehrig
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
17 Aug 2006
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To answer your question, I do not delete any -- repeat, ANY -- posts that aren't outright spam. Neither do I hide any posts simply because I disagree with them.
And the "distortions" I was referring to in my N-G letter were not those of Finkelstein but of this person:
http://www.news-gazette.com/news/opinions/letters/2006/08/13/author_just_another_jewish_selfhater
Some of the reasons Finkelstein is attacked are bogus, as displayed in that letter, and _my_ letter called those bogosities out. Some are legitimate. I don't think it's wrong to alert people to the distinction between the two.
@%< |
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Point of Order |
by hmmm
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
18 Aug 2006
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I thought editorial policy here required that concerns about editing be sent to imc-web (at) ucimc.org ?
This has a decidedly "off-topic" air about it. |
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Re: N-G Letter "Fair and balanced"? |
by A Jewish voice for peace
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
18 Aug 2006
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Please, click on the Arabic writing and watch (surpisingly its a fox news video!).
Subject: the video, "Blame Israel?"
Click under this to view the video, "Blame Israel?"
áãÔÇåÏÉ ÇáãÞÇÈáÉ ÇÖÛØ åäÇ. |
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Re: N-G Letter "Fair and balanced"? |
by David Green
davegreen84 (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
18 Aug 2006
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Here's the letter, comments follow:
Academic's work not known for accuracy
Thursday August 17, 2006
A recent letter in your paper attacked DePaul University Professor Norman Finkelstein – not that there's anything wrong with that; there are plenty of good reasons to attack him. However, it's important to distinguish distortions from truth here.
When Finkelstein praises Holocaust denier David Irving, for example, he's actually praising Irving's earlier pop histories, the stuff from before Irving went off the deep end. Of course, Irving's early work turns out to be unsupportably slapdash when examined closely. Finkelstein's limited praise for Irving doesn't mean he's a Holocaust denier, just that he's a bad judge of others' scholarship.
Similarly, Finkelstein claims that only 5.1 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. He chooses this number from one particular study – Raul Hilberg's, the study with the most conservative demographic methodology and therefore the lowest figure – without any indication that many other studies have independently confirmed 6 million dead, as did the Nazis themselves at Nuremburg.
It's exactly that kind of misleading selectivity that has earned him the exceptionally negative reputation he bears among the large majority of the tiny minority who've ever even heard of him.
He is to Jewish-American academia what Ward Churchill is to American Indian academia: a blown-gasket polemicist. Show him a picture of a Palestinian sneezing on an Israeli, and he'll shout, "Look, the consequence of inequitable racist Zionist health care policies!" Show him a picture of an Israeli sneezing on a Palestinian, and he'll shout, "Look! The genocidal Zionists have turned to germ warfare!"
DAVID GEHRIG
Urbana
________________
I'm glad I'm not the first to comment on this. As I've said before, it does seem odd that someone who has thrown his lot in with an apartheid and murderous regime (both within Israel and the occupied territories, as well as an avid ally of apartheid South Africa) is given any official role whatsoever by the IMC community. I doubt if a homophobe or more "traditional" anti-African-American racist would be allowed to assume any role at the IMC (even spam-checking, which appears to be Gehrig's only useful talent). Gehrig's attituldes about Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims are clearly racist and bigoted in their ignorance and insensitivity to human suffering, especially that caused by his own governfment and tax dollars.
I doubt that Gehrig has ever read any of Finkelstein's books, and if he has, I would like to see him offer a cogent, logical, factual critique of any of the arguments made--just one--whether regarding the history of the conflict, the debates over the Holocaust and its uses, or the current sparring with Dershowitz. Let him endow us with insightful and informed critiques, rather than banal assertions and ad hominem attacks.
Obviously, he has not done so in this letter, but merely slandered and defamed. The issue of numbers of Jewish dead is a canard, not salient to Finkelstein's arguments, and not a central issue in any of the debates over historiography that have swirled around both Goldhagen and the reparations (extortion) issue. If you are interested in the numbers game, you can look up the informative entry on Wikipedia. Finkelstein's central point, in any event, is that an exaggeration of the number of survivors can only lead to a deflation of the number murdered, thus supporting a kind of denial.
Irving's research has been approved by reputable historians beyond Finkelstein, none of whom support Irving's denial, as Finkelstein clearly does not. Again, Gehrig offers not one example to support his conclusion about Irving's research contributions, apart from Irving's faulty conclusions.
The comparison with Ward Churchill is hardly relevlant, whatever Churchill's alleged sins, most likely over-rated and motivated by McCarthyism in any event--as is Gehrig's attack on Finkelstein. Finkelstein has never been accused of any form of misconduct, and in fact has nailed Dershowitz in such ethical matters, showing him to be an incredibly dishonest "liberal" supporter of Israel. I would like to see Gehrig defend Dershowitz in the matter of torture, targeted killing, collective punishment, and the like. Let Gehrig be as honest as AD about his contempt for international law, that Israel is a "special case" and should be allowed to violate it at will. Let Gehrig become the local advocate for legalized torture, and let's see how the IMC responds to that.
The end of Gehrig's letter is pure hyperbole, designed to avoid the real suffering that is caused every day by Israelis and their policies in the lives of millions of Palestinians. It is ugly, inane, and unclever. Gehrig clearly does not have a shred of decency in confronting our support for Israeli atrocities. I would challenge him to read any of the vivid accounts of the sadistic Israeli treatment of Palestinians by eyewitnesses such as Wendy Pearlman and Anna Baltzer. I have never heard him condemn even the most ruthless settler fanatics, in spite of his claim to be amond the "moderate" supporters of Israel.
Gehrig somehow chose to write this insipid letter after the Israeli-American destruction of Lebanon, which is apparently not relevant to him. But this is was surely a racist war, and Gehrig's avoidance of it only adds to the case against him for the tone-deaf insensitivity that goes along with his racism and bigotry. He clearly has no understanding or compassion for any of Israel's victims. He has hardened himself through a series of denials and rationalizations.
Norman Finkelstein has proved himself as a scholar of utmost integrity. Both "Image and Reality" and "Beyond Chutzpah" are absolutely essential in understanding the history of the conflict and the current human rights abuses that we are now supporting, both in Palestine and Lebanon. They are densely argued, referenced, and footnoted. Unlike Dershowitz, Finkelstein is a serious scholar and writer. Again, I challenge Gehrig to critique any of the arguments or contradict any of the facts presented. I suspect he won't crack a book, and I suspect that he is neither interested nor capable of doing so.
The rest of the world is shocked by the crassness of the American public in its passive acceptance of these outrages in Palestine and Lebanon, including "liberals" like Gehrig.
It's time that those who consider themselves to be a part of the "human rights community" in organizations such as the IMC draw a line between themselves and Gehrig's ilk, whatever his ideological pose. He should not be involved in any official capacity in any organization that purports to respect the rights of all human beings. He has consistently and avidly devalued the lives of those who were unlucky enough not to be born into the religion which he has adopted for reasons that other Jews should be ashamed of--that is, apparently to identify with the use of violence by the powerful over the powerless, and all of the racist ideological rationalizations that go along with the use of such power.
Shame on the IMC for indulging this venal and despicable man in the name of of a quite degraded undersanding of "tolerance." In respect for those whose lives Gehrig so casually devalues and degrades, he should be immediately stripped of any "official" duties at the IMC.
David Green |
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Re: N-G Letter "Fair and balanced"? |
by gehrig
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
18 Aug 2006
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I read the comment down to your nessie-esque ritual libel that I'm a "racist," rolled my eyes, and then quit reading.
I've given the same challenge, again and again, for as long as I've been on the IMCs. If you're going to call me a racist, then please simply point to any post I've made that says anything more "racist" than this: "The Palestinians have the right to an independent, economically viable state side by side with Israel."
I have specifically challenged you several times, Green, to provide a URL to back up your bullshit charge of "racism." You have gone yammity-weasel-flabbity-jello every time. And no URL, never once, nosiree, not once.
To drive that point home again -- that your charge that I'm a "racist" is both a baseless slander and simply a cynical political ploy on your part -- I'll repeat the challenge. If I'm a "racist" you should have no trouble pointing to a post in which I say "racist" things. Do so now.
See, you now have two choices. You can post a URL that documents my alleged "racism," or you can once more go yammity-weasel-flabbity-jello. Were you intellectually and morally honest, you'd also have a third option, which would be to recognize the baselessness of your charge and to retract it. But I simply don't think you've got the moral and intellectual integrity to do that. Surprise me.
@%< |
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Yes, This Is Off-Topic |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
19 Aug 2006
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As far as I can see, this is a rather off-topic thread.
First, neither the original article nor Mr. Green's comments offered any evidence that the N-G letter to the editor has any relevant tie to any editing decision here. As someone has already helpfully noted, you should send such concerns to imc-web (at) ucimc.org
Second, as one of the longest serving editors here, it is important to point out that we do not make decisions under our editorial policy based on politics. Mr. Gehrig has been an editor here for more than a year and I've seen no evidence in any of the relatively few editorial decisions he has made of a political agenda.
Finally and most importantly, we have no political tests for being a member or an editor at UC IMC. A few people find that troubling at times, I suppose, but this seems more to be because of their fundamental misunderstanding of the principles of Indymedia or the way our particular IMC operates. We're here to empower people to "become the media" by providing democratic access to available technologies and information. It would seem to me that the sort of litmus test of political acceptablilty that is implicit in Mr. Green's comments directly conflicts with this goal, but he's welcome to differ.
Mr. Green is also welcome to make a proposal to change our present policy to begin imposing a vetting for political opinion on anyone who is an editor here, but I can't see such a fundamentally distasteful proposal gaining the consensus it would need to be enacted. Furthermore, in my opinion if it was adopted, it would place our IMC outside the bounds of Indymedia principles. Unfortunately, there are a few IMCs that have started acting like that. Mr. Green is welcome to use their resources instead, if he is uncomfortable using the resources here.
One more thing to keep in mind, if you want to know why we operate the way we do, is that several of our founding members were either purged from or had the disquieting experience of seeing their friends purged from some of the few local organizations that choose to spend significant time ensuring the ideological purity of their group through engaging in such petty Stalinist purges. I think the success of UC IMC and the support the community has given it is largely due to our rejection of such dead-end and ultimately unproductive praxis.
That said, it is time to take any further concerns about editing decisions at UC IMC to where they are appropriate, at the email address I noted above. |
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Re: N-G Letter "Fair and balanced"? |
by David Green
davegreen84 (nospam) yahoo.com (verified) |
Current rating: 0
19 Aug 2006
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Naturally, Gehrig avoids my challenge to make even one convincing challenge to Finkelstein's facts or argument, as a means of supporting his assertion that he has earned an "exceptionally negative reputation." That's because he simply cannot. Gehrig has nothing to offer but the most slanderous and evasive weasel words. He claims to support Palestinian rights. What finger has he ever lifted to inform anyone on how those rights are violated, and what can be done about it. Instead, he continues to accuse anyone who criticizes Israel as being one-sided. You don't have to say blatantly racist things to be a racist. You just have to be systematically ignorant and insensitive about the suffering of an entire people at the hands of those you identify with. Sorry, Gehrig, it won't work to parade yourself as a moderate. Anyone who understands this problem knows that you evoke moderation while you attack only those who criticize Israel. It's also interesting to me that ML isn't the least bit interested in racism at the IMC. This is not about "ideological purity." It is about basic human decency. |
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Re: N-G Letter "Fair and balanced"? |
by Paul Mueth
paulmueth (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
19 Aug 2006
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DG, how about producing a URl for Finkelstein praising Holocaust denier David Irving? I have seen and heard NF give speeches more than several times, I doubt whether you can produce same .. . |
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Re: N-G Letter "Fair and balanced"? |
by David Gehrig
zemblan (nospam) earthlink.net (verified) |
Current rating: 0
19 Aug 2006
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PM: "I doubt whether you can produce same .. . "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Finkelstein#Finkelstein_on_David_Irving_and_on_numbers_of_Holocaust_victims
Thanks for asking. There's an excerpt from "Industry" there. Since there's room here, I can expand my letter's point a little bit.
As part of the Irving v. Lipstadt/Penguin trial of 2000, they took a look at some of Irving's pop histories, such as his book on the firebombing of Dresden. They discovered that he'd used highly irregular evidentiary practice -- such as relying on a single letter of very uncertain provenance to claim that the number of civilians killed in the firebombing of Dresden was somewhere between four and ten times higher than it actually was. This is the sort of scholarship Finkelstein praises when he praises Irving.
The N-G letter _I_ was reacting to pointed to Finkelstein's praise of Irving and implied that Finkelstein is also a Holocaust denier. I wrote that this wasn't fair to Finkelstein or the facts, the facts being that Finkelstein isn't a Holocaust denier but was apparently deeply impressed with the scholarship of an deeply unimpressive scholar.
@%< |
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Re: N-G Letter "Fair and balanced"? |
by Thoughtful Balance in N-G
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
19 Aug 2006
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DG & DG Please comment :
Where is the outrage over Israel's actions?
Saturday August 19, 2006
In July, when open warfare erupted in Lebanon and I heard that Israel was bombing power plants, bridges, apartment buildings and airports, I thought that President Bush would tell Israel to stop or face the elimination of military aid.
Instead I was stunned that the Bush administration (and the Congress) backed Israel. What about the "Cedar Revolution?" What about Lebanon as the great success story of the Bush plans for the Middle East? All Lebanon's progress was being destroyed over the claim that Hezbollah's militia had killed three and captured two Israeli soldiers inside Israel.
If Hezbollah did initiate the attack, it was wrong. But there were many limited actions that Israel could have taken with some justification. Instead, Israel launched an all-out assault on Lebanon – committing the grave crime of collective punishment by targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure.
Hezbollah then responded with its own war crimes by targeting Israeli cities with hundreds of rocket assaults per day. Under international law, a war crime is a war crime – one side's violations do not justify the other's.
I've since looked in The News-Gazette for letters from our local religious leaders denouncing the extreme violence of the U.S.-Israeli assault on Lebanon. But there's been nothing. I believe that there is a real spiritual death in our country where the worship of military violence trumps a commitment to peace and the complicated work of diplomacy and compromise. That is a shame.
MATTHEW MURREY
Urbana
Find this article at:
http://www.news-gazette.com/news/opinions/letters/2006/08/19/where_is_the_outrage_over_israels
Comments |
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The "Cure" for Being Off-Topic |
by hmmm
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
19 Aug 2006
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Is getting even further off-topic? Seems par for the course when it comes to character assassination.
Probably a strategic move, since the thesis of the original article proved unsupportable. |
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I must have forgotten to be "racist" that day |
by gehrig
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
20 Aug 2006
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Don't tar all Muslims with the same brush
Saturday March 25, 2006
Once again, the letters column of The News-Gazette has carried a long, direct attack on Muslims and the Islamic religion, and I – as a Jew – can't keep silent on it anymore.
This should be blindingly obvious, but I'm going to spell it out anyway.
It is no more fair to blame all Muslims for the crimes of their most extreme elements than it is to blame every German who ever lived for the crimes of the Nazis.
It is no more acceptable to scour Muslim history in search of signs of some supposedly inborn tendency to murder than it is to use the existence of the Mafia as an excuse to condemn all Italians.
It is no more fitting to blame all of Muslim society for having created Islamist terrorists than it is to blame a cancer victim's brain for having grown and housed a tumor.
I am acutely aware of the danger that Islamist extremism poses to the world. (I wrote my masters thesis on author Salman Rushdie at a time when he was still in hiding from the infamous fatwa.) But I've seen far too much bigotry disguised as patriotism to stand in silence while an entire ethnicity is slandered.
DAVID GEHRIG
Urbana
http://www.news-gazette.com/news/opinions/letters/2006/03/25/dont_tar_all_muslims_with_the_same_brush
@%< |
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Re: N-G Letter "Fair and balanced"? |
by David Green
davegreen84 (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
21 Aug 2006
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"When Finkelstein praises Holocaust denier David Irving, for example, he's actually praising Irving's earlier pop histories, the stuff from before Irving went off the deep end. Of course, Irving's early work turns out to be unsupportably slapdash when examined closely. Finkelstein's limited praise for Irving doesn't mean he's a Holocaust denier, just that he's a bad judge of others' scholarship."
So exactly how does Finkelstein's support for esteemed historian Gordon Craig's praise of Irving's research on the German military support the above conclusion. Gehrig's assertion is a non sequitur and a distortion--as Finkelstein so often points out in the work of others, his conclusion does not support the evidence. But again, Gehrig asserts his identity as a "moderate" defender of Muslims. But he never lifts a finger--never--and accuses anyone who criticizes Israel of being anti-Semitic. Gehrig is a nit-picker and an indymedia harasser and bully, using ridicule in taking upon himself to bring discourse to the lowest level possible, such as when he recently posted pictures of Hezbollah marching in formation after the beginning of Israel's destruction of Lebanon. How about sticking up for those Arabs? How about criticizing Israel? No way, Gehrig. You might displease those who you serve, who want to wreak destruction while relying on the support of liberal racists like you. These pictures that you posted were in fact a racist provocation, as if Israeli troops don't march in formation, as if both sides don't display their militarism. Perhaps it's the masks they wear which make them evil, instead of the nice Jewish boys with their green uniforms, who bomb children from well above. |
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Re: N-G Letter "Fair and balanced"? |
by gehrig
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
21 Aug 2006
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In a way, it's good that Green has posted so many times in this thread, even when his posts start getting scattershot and nutty, because he directly refutes the anony-innuendo that I'm exercising some kind of censorship on this board.
I suspect most readers of this thread recognize by now that if I _were_ to vanish posts from UCIMC simply because I have no use for them, Green's bullshit accusations of "racism" would be the first to go.
Norman Finkelstein makes a living by saying "Zionists run around spuriously shouting 'racism' for purely political purposes." Well, here you see Green running around spuriously spreading false accusations of "racism" for purely political purposes, and it doesn't stink any less when he does it.
That Green can't see this, let alone the irony of this, is just another reflection of his general detachment from Reality World. But you'll notice that never once have I interfered with his ability to have his say here, for however long a segment he chooses to extrude from his rhetoric-making machine.
@%< |
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Re: N-G Letter "Fair and balanced"? |
by Paul Mueth
paulmueth (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
21 Aug 2006
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DGe wrote "This is the sort of scholarship Finkelstein praises when he praises Irving."
Point not taken from your wikipedia citation
No, this just isn't true, the scholarship he referred to was specificly some detail of military history. that seemed to be rather conventional .. .
you point out yourself that NF distinguishes himself from Irving mad theses ..
You seem to invoke his name just to be able to tar NF without having to substaniate any of your other accusations.
as far as " Finkelstein makes a living by saying "Zionists run around spuriously shouting 'racism' for purely political purposes."
Actually, he makes a living as a prof at DePaul, and puts a lot of effort into his political work because of his commitment
to justice and peace.
Perhaps you like to go after Alexander Cockburn (or Jeffrey Blankfort) both in The Politics of Anti-Semitism if you don't seem to acknowledge accusations of same < racism> are widely used to stifle debate about Israel's role in the Mideast.
Jewish voice for peace, your link didn't come thru to my screen, if you're still around, please repost..
"hmmm",,= handle of anonymous poster I'm not understanding your posts, you want the discussion to go where???
I agree with Mike Lehman's general point about no ideological test and hope the system is transparent enough
that there will be no abuse .. .
Do all the posts that don't go up, still go to a "viewable to anyone" file?
PS I sent the link for this discussion to Finklestein |
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Re: N-G Letter "Fair and balanced"? |
by gehrig
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
21 Aug 2006
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Paul, maybe it would help if you got the timeline right. Goes like this:
1) Finkelstein invoked Irving in "Holocaust Industry" a while back.
2) Rich Hagen invoked Finkelstein in the News-Gazette on August 5th. I'd provide the link, but Google apparently didn't catch it before it flowed off the N-G page.
3) Shannon Cope invoked Finkelstein invoking Irving in the News-Gazette on August 13. The letter implied that Finkelstein was a Holocaust denier.
http://www.news-gazette.com/news/opinions/letters/2006/08/13/author_just_another_jewish_selfhater
In other words, I wasn't the one who brought up Irving.
4) My letter replying to Cope appeared in the News-Gazette on August 17, defending Finkelstein from the implicit charge of Holocaust denial but unwilling -- being very familiar with the Lipstadt case, which included as part of the evidence phase detailed examinations of Irving's work by several professional historians, all of whom were appalled at what they found -- to go along with the okey-doke that Irving's pre-flame-out work was any great gift to history.
http://www.news-gazette.com/news/opinions/letters/2006/08/17/academics_work_not__known_for_accuracy
5) Various horseshit -- including the bogus accusation of "racism" -- was flung at me here in this thread by the small but scrappy Finkelstein Irregulars Brigade for having dared disrespect *gasp!* The Great Man Himself.
6) You asked me for a URL of Finkelstein praising Irving.
7) I gave you one showing exactly that, doing exactly what I said it did: praising Irving's earlier work while repudiating his later work. The problem is that this distinction is not as useful as you might want to think it is. His early work was very unprofessional in its handling of materials, as industrious as he was in collecting them; his later work added antisemitism to the mix. Even before the Lipstadt case destroyed him, he already had a reputation for diligent acquisition of primary materials combined with serious methodological failings in his interpretation of those materials. Being unimpressed by the later swastika-kissing Irving doesn't make it okay to be impressed by his not-yet-swastika-kissing work.
@%< |
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Re: N-G Letter "Fair and balanced"? |
by Paul Mueth
paulmueth (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
21 Aug 2006
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"1) Finkelstein invoked Irving in "Holocaust Industry" a while back."
Scholars don't invoke authors, they cite them on specific issues. What you copied from wikipedia was actually NF citing another author on Irving on an incidental aspect of German nilitary history. One can't condemn a scholar's entire work on such a basis.
Is there anything else you disagree in NF's prolific work?
Frankly the only other thing you referenced in your letter was the use of Hilberg's figure on deaths in the holocaust.
We will never know the exact number, such a massive crime against various categories of non-aryans can never be summed by quantifying .. it seems to me .. .
Both NF's parents survived concentration camps, I think he knows the nature and quality of the crime very personally. |
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Re: N-G Letter "Fair and balanced"? |
by David Green
davegreen84 (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
22 Aug 2006
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Let's face it, Gehrig hasn't read a page of Finkelstein's meticulous scholarship. If he did, he would have to admit that he has no clue whatsoever as to how to critique it. I've asked, he does not tell. Gehrig's participation on IMC lists is purely to annoy, to nit-pick, to ridicule, to stand up for the holier-than-thou anti-anti-Semites, even if his target happens to be someone whose parents survived death camps. Meanwhile, Lebanon is destroyed, and Gehrig distorts Finkelstein. A real paragon of "liberal and moderate" virtue, liberal and moderate meaning about the same as "fair and balanced" on Fox News. Gehrig, perhaps you would like to comment on Lebanon. Do you support its destruction by America-Israel? Was it justified? |
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stop lying, Green |
by gehrig
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
22 Aug 2006
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* rolling eyes *
Green, until you withdraw your politically motivated and calculatedly cynical claim that I'm "racist," I haven't got a goddamned thing to say to you except "stop lying."
@%< |
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Re: N-G Letter "Fair and balanced"? |
by David Green
davegreen84 (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
22 Aug 2006
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"It's exactly that kind of misleading selectivity that has earned him the exceptionally negative reputation he bears among the large majority of the tiny minority who've ever even heard of him."
So let's see: the author of the above statement, based on no evidence, is not a "liar." And someone who nit-picks about serious scholars who claim that from 5 to 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust while watching Israel kill 1,000 civilians (http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2006/08/22/lebano14061.htm) with no evidence of Hezbollah presence, and sees fit to write a letter to the N-G about the former, while omitting mention of the latter, is not a "racist."
All liars are not racist, but Gehrig proves that racism leads to lying. Stop lying, and you might be able to begin to take a look at what you stand for--Israel uber alles--although I have my doubts about both your intellectual and moral capacities. |
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Let's Try to be Civil |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
22 Aug 2006
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OK, everyone knows where they can take any substantive complaints about editing to the imc-web (at) ucimc.org list. The mail server is down right now, but we have yet to receive anything from anyone about editing concerns there.
On the other hand, this seems to be degenerating into the kind of personal attacks that are prohibited under our web policy. You are free to attack ideas, but when you're sinking to attacking someone at the purely personal level, then that's out of bounds per our policy on flaming other users. I'd prefer not to have to start invoking that policy, but I will if I have to.
BTW, Paul asked about editing screens here. We haven't had a public access screen that covers all articles since we updated the software 3 or 4 years ago, since Dada does not provide this. We'd be glad to consider adding editors or putting your skills to use updating the software with all the bells and whistles. You can apply to help at the email address cited above. But this would be because you're really interested in the long-term work of being an editor on the website, not simply because you're fishing for ammo for a sludge fest. To be an editor here takes a real commitment to open publishing and the ability to put one's personal opinions aside in the interest of editing according to policy. |
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Re: N-G Letter "Fair and balanced"? |
by th0rn
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
22 Aug 2006
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====
as far as " Finkelstein makes a living by saying "Zionists run around spuriously shouting 'racism' for purely political purposes."
Actually, he makes a living as a prof at DePaul, and puts a lot of effort into his political work because of his commitment
to justice and peace.
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Thanks; read my mind. A terribly biased and shallow statement by Gehrig, which weakens everything else he says. That's the kind of thing I'd expect to spill out Rush Limbaugh's orifice.
I haven't made up my mind on Gehrig yet, for what little it's worth. If he's nothing else, he's very careful, or shrewd, even.
Not really impressed with Green either, but in general I tend to more naturally side with the underdogs, and condemn the bullies. Trivial words for the way Israel treats all it's Muslim neighbors. |
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Re: N-G Letter "Fair and balanced"? |
by David Green
davegreen84 (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
24 Aug 2006
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"I haven't made up my mind on Gehrig yet, for what little it's worth. If he's nothing else, he's very careful, or shrewd, even."
Gehrig uses trivialization, distortion, and ridicule in order to establish a "moderate" position, which is simply posturing. He is unwilling to take serious issues seriously. He does no serious reading. He sides unquestioningly with everything Israel does, and accuses anyone who criticizes Israel of being an anti-semite, or catering to them.
I gues this is what is called being "careful" and "shrewd." I call it being evasive and hypocritical. This man brings nothing of value to the table. Nothing. What Israel brings to the table are thousands of dead Arabs, many of them children. Ultimately, this is what Gehrig's "moderation" gets us. |
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This Will Be the Third Warning |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
24 Aug 2006
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Mr. Green,
Surely there are enough substantiated facts about abusive Israeli practices that you do not have to be stuck in the rather pointless mode of personal attacks on Mr. Gehrig. After I posted my previous request in this thread to avoid personal flaming, I recalled that we've been through this before in another, older thread. I hope it is clear at this point that you need to refrain from such behavior here.
You have also been advised where to take any substantive concerns about the situation. So it is my expectation that comment above will be the last such one. |
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Re: N-G Letter "Fair and balanced"? |
by gehrig
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
24 Aug 2006
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green: "He does no serious reading."
That one makes my day. "Book"? What means "book"? :)
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Ooof! |
by historian
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
24 Aug 2006
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Yeah, that's what you get for being a lit major -- no respect! Afterall, it's all fiction, so it can't be a _serious_ book.
:) |
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Re: N-G Letter "Fair and balanced"? |
by gehrig
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
24 Aug 2006
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Well, I don't actually _read_ them. I just buy them and carry them around as part of my disguise as a "liberal" "anti-racist" "moderate" "intellectual" -- a disguise so well crafted and meticulously maintained that only those stunning intellects of the Knights of St. Norman have managed to pierce it.
Anyway, there it is, all out in the open. If you're not sufficiently worshipful of Stormin' Norman Finkelstein, expect to have a bucket of scattershot smears dumped on you, including the particularly offensive allegation of "racism."
I figure this thread is over.
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Re: N-G Letter "Fair and balanced"? |
by David Green
davegreen84 (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
24 Aug 2006
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Dershowitz's example is followed, albeit in sophomoric fashion, by David Gehrig:
A TERRIFYING RECORD OF LIES AND DECEIT (Chomsky on Dershowitz)
Comments on Dershowitz
08.17.2006 | chomsky.info
By Noam Chomsky
Alan Dershowitz's regular little performances are eminently ignorable, including the one reproduced below. But since I've been asked several times for comments on this one, a few follow.
Dershowitz's opens by writing that "Chomsky is circulating a letter which he got two naïve Nobel Prize winners--the playwright Harold Pinter and the poet José Saramago--to sign." The rest goes on with "Chomsky claims," etc., and ends with a warning to those who "sign a Chomsky letter without checking its contents. If they don't, it tells us how little they value truth."
Let's take it apart, piece by piece.
As Dershowitz knows, the letter was written and circulated by John Berger, who approached the "two naïve Nobel Prize winners," as well as me and several others. In the normal fashion, some of us had suggestions about the text, and then helped him to circulate it.
By Dershowitz standards, this fabrication is very minor, but it is of some interest nonetheless. Dershowitz readers will be aware that whenever his sensitive antennae pick up a phrase that might be critical of Israeli government policies, if my name is even remotely associated, it quickly becomes the "hard left gang of Israel bashers" led by the evil demon Chomsky. Why the consistent fabrications over the past 36 years – which, of course, merit no response? Dershowitz and I know very well, but others may be intrigued, so I might as well make the reason public for the first time. His pathetic behavior traces back to what was probably our first contact. In April 1973, Dershowitz wrote a scurrilous attack in the Boston Globe against Israel's leading human rights activist, Dr. Israel Shahak, the chairman of Israel's League for Human and Civil Rights, in which he even went so far as to support a government effort to destroy the League by methods so outrageous that they were at once declared illegal by the Israeli courts. I responded, correcting his slanders and fabrications – that is, every single substantive statement. He then tried to lie his way out of it, even descending to falsification of Israeli court records. I responded again, citing the actual court records and responding to his new lies and deceit.
The incident demonstrated conclusively that Dershowitz is not only a remarkable liar and slanderer, but also an extreme opponent of elementary civil rights. That is crystal clear from the correspondence, reproduced below. Dershowitz flew into a fury over the exposure, and ever since has produced a series of hysterical tirades and lies concerning some entity in his fantasy world named "Chomsky," who lives on "planet Chomsky." That is his standard style when he is exposed, reaching truly grotesque levels in his efforts to discredit Norman Finkelstein (and even his mother, probably a new low in depravity) after Finkelstein's meticulous documentation of Dershowitz's astonishing lies in his vulgar apologetics for Israeli crimes (Beyond Chutzpah).
Dershowitz's tirade about Berger's letter opens by referring to the first two sentences, which read: "The latest chapter of the conflict between Israel and Palestine began when Israeli forces abducted two civilians, a doctor and his brother, from Gaza. An incident scarcely reported anywhere, except in the Turkish press." Here Dershowitz reveals his amazing discovery that statements in brief letters of protest are not technical monographs, and are necessarily incomplete and imprecise. His counterparts in Teheran, if they sink low enough, would make exactly the same complaints about statements protesting repression of dissidents and other state crimes. The quoted statement in Berger's letter is, in fact, accurate as far as it goes, more than sufficiently so for a brief letter protesting atrocities. And Dershowitz doubtless discovered from his Google search that full details are readily available on the internet, on this very website and on Znet, where he found the following footnote to my account of this incident:
Jonathan Cook, "The British Media and the Invasion of Gaza," Medialens (UK), June 30, 2006, http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060630_kidnapped_by_israel.php; Josh Brannon, "IDF Commandos Enter Gaza, Capture Two Hamas Terrorists," Jerusalem Post, June 25, 2006; Ken Ellingwood, "2 Palestinians Held in Israel's First Arrest Raid in Gaza Since Pullout," Los Angeles Times, June 25, 2006, p. A20. Apart from the Los Angeles Times, there were only a few marginal words in the Baltimore Sun (June 25) and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (June 25). Moreover, no mainstream media source chose to refer to this event when discussing Shalit's capture. The only serious coverage I know of in the English-language press appeared in the Turkish Daily News (June 25). (Database search by David Peterson.)
The opening sentences in Berger's letter are indeed curtailed, in the normal fashion of all protest letters. Though accurate as far as they go, they leave it to the reader to understand the crucial significance of the kidnapping of the two Gaza civilians, the Muamar brothers, on June 24, over and above the fact that it is yet another crime of Dershowitz's favored state. The point is obvious, but since it may require a moment's attention, Dershowitz evidently assumed that it would provide an opening for yet another exercise in deceit. So let me spell it out, apologizing to the reader for stating the obvious.
The obvious point is that the kidnapping of the two Gaza civilians was well-known, but scarcely and dismissively reported, apart from the Turkish press, which had the one serious news report (June 25). In the US media there was no comment nor follow-up, in sharp contrast to the capture of Cpl. Gilad Shalit the following day. While Shalit's name is known to any newspaper reader, the Muamar brothers, as Berger's letter correctly states, are unknown – though their names can be discovered by those who undertake research projects (or read the dissident media). A Google search for "Shalit" and "Muamar" (with several possible spellings) will quickly make brilliantly clear the difference in reaction to the events of June 24 and June 25.
In fact such a search was carried out, by David Peterson, using the several possible spellings for "Muamar." The ratio of mentions of Shalit and Muamar is not far from 100 to 1. Of course that is a vast underestimate of the actual ratio, because the kidnapping of the Muamar brothers was mentioned casually and dismissively, with no comment or follow-up, while the capture of Shalit elicited immense outrage and support for the sharp and brutal Israeli escalation of atrocities. And as Peterson also found, the ratio rises very sharply if we extend the search period beyond the first week, because the capture of Shalit continued to arouse great attention, indignation, and support for the murderous Israeli retaliation, while the Muamar brothers received a few dismissive mentions in news reports the next day, and then virtually disappeared.
Evidently, kidnapping of civilians is a far more serious crime than capture of a soldier. Those who do not understand the terminology used might turn to military historian Caleb Carr, who discusses Israel's escalated attacks on Gaza `to rescue what Israel claimed was a "kidnapped" soldier -- an assertion that was absurd because a uniformed, front-line noncommissioned officer can no more be "kidnapped" by the enemy than an innocent, unarmed child can "die in battle".' (Los Angeles Times, August 12, 2006).
The great significance of these incidents on successive days can hardly be overemphasized: they reveal that the show of outrage over the Shalit kidnapping, and the support for Israel's sharp acceleration of atrocities in Gaza in response, was cynical fraud. That is even more dramatically true in Dershowitz's case, in the light of his desperate efforts to blow smoke to obscure the very clear and critically significant facts. Furthermore, as Gideon Levy accurately wrote in Ha'aretz – as Dershowitz surely discovered in his Google search -- the IDF kidnapping of civilians the day before the capture of Cpl. Shalit strips away any "legitimate basis for the IDF's operation" -- and, we may add, any legitimate basis for support for these operations.
Dershowitz's interesting effort to lie his way out of this by citing a few of the references to the Muamar kidnapping reveals again his remarkable contempt for his readers. Evidently, the more he finds that the facts were reported, the more he shoots himself in the foot, demonstrating that kidnapping of civilians is considered insignificant when carried out by "our side," and thus eliminating any moral legitimacy for the Israeli escalation of crimes and any support for it, even any tolerance of these crimes. The point is so trivially obvious that Dershowitz cannot possibly fail to understand it, but evidently he hopes that his usual techniques of bluster and tirade will somehow obscure this further illustration of the depths to which he will sink in his apologetics and personal jihads.
Putting aside irrelevant wire service and BBC reports, Dershowitz omits the sources he found in what I had written, but adds the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Boston Globe. The June 25 CT did indeed devote 27 words to the kidnapping of the two Gaza civilians, and the WP the same day devoted 87 words to it, in the closing two paragraphs of an AP report devoted to the same day's Palestinian raid on the IDF base where Gilad Shalit was captured -- thus demonstrating Dershowitz's cynicism even more fully, as noted, as would also be the case if something did appear in the BG. No one has been able to find a report there, though they did have an editorial on these events which demonstrates again the fraudulence of the show of outrage over the Shalit kidnapping and the utter illegitimacy of the Israeli response and the support for it. As is standard, the editorial omits the kidnapping of the Muamar brothers by the IDF, and opens as follows, under the headline "MIDEAST HELD HOSTAGE": "The attack Sunday [June 25] on military targets inside Israel, which led to an Israeli soldier being taken hostage, was not merely an arbitrary reflex within a cycle of vengeance. It was ordered by someone with command responsibility in Hamas, who could not be indifferent to the timing of his action or to its political and military consequences. Because the hostage-taking operation has brought Palestinians and Israelis alike to the brink of a new round of foreseeable disasters, it is crucial that all concerned parties focus their remedial efforts on the right address": Hamas, not the US-backed IDF, which committed a far worse crime the preceding day. Once again, the BG reaction demonstrates very clearly that Dershowitz is not just a cynical fraud, but is so to an unusual extreme.
Dershowitz insists on disgracing himself even further by writing that "the two arrested individuals were alleged Hamas militants, a fact that Chomsky conveniently omits." Since it was not relevant to Berger's letter, he rightly omitted it. But Dershowitz "conveniently omits" that he knows very well the response to his shocking comment. Even in the unlikely event that he could not have figured it out for himself, his Google search surely discovered my interview in Yediot Ahronot (Ynet; the full version is on this site), with the following response to those who might sink to Dershowitz's level: `Apologists for state crimes claim that the kidnapping of the Gaza civilians is justified by IDF claims that they are "Hamas militants" or were planning crimes. By their logic, they should therefore be lauding the capture of Gilad Shalit, a soldier in an army that was (uncontroversially) shelling and bombing Gaza. These performances are truly disgraceful.'
Again, the point is so trivial that Dershowitz could certainly have figured it out for himself even if he had not found it with his Google search, and "conveniently omitted" it.
Dershowitz adds triumphantly: "Nor was the arrest of these Hamas terrorists the origin of the crisis, as Chomsky asserts"; rather, it was the July 12 capture of Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah. Let's take the trouble again to decode the lies and absurdities packed into this sentence. The silliest one is the reference to July 12. The Berger letter did not even mention Lebanon: it was strictly limited to Palestine. And, exactly as the Globe editors and everyone else reported, and as Dershowitz of course knows, the upsurge in violence in Palestine followed the capture of Shalit on June 25.
As Dershowitz also doubtless understands, if Berger's letter had been extended to the events in Lebanon several weeks latter, it could have pointed out that the reaction to the July 12 capture of Israeli soldiers was also cynical fraud, as demonstrated not only by the (null) reaction to the kidnapping of the Muamar brothers, but also by the (null) reaction to the regular Israeli practice for many years of kidnapping Lebanese, many held in prisons, including secret prisons like Israel's prison/torture chamber Camp 1391, exposed three years ago (in Israel and Europe), then apparently forgotten. No one ever suggested that this regular practice, or vastly worse US-backed Israeli crimes in Lebanon, would justify invasion of Israel, murder of hundreds of Israelis, and destruction of much of the country. There should be no need to elaborate.
However, since the Berger letter kept to earlier events, Dershowitz's silly claim is revealed again to be more contempt for his readers.
Turning to another transparent lie, the Berger letter pointedly denied that the kidnapping of the Muamar brothers was the origin of the crisis, contrary to what Dershowitz claims. The crucial point made in the opening sentence of the letter, as Dershowitz surely understands, was that the kidnapping of the two Gaza civilians, though known, was considered insignificant and elicited no criticism or reaction. It was the capture of an Israeli soldier the next day that led to the US-backed Israeli escalation of its attack on Gaza (with Palestinian casualties more than quadrupling from June to July, with over 170 killed, according to UN sources). And we may also add a minor bit of Dershowitz deceit: it is only for strict party liners that unsupported IDF charges about "Hamas terrorists" instantly rise to the level of revealed truths – though as noted, it would be irrelevant even if for once the charges were shown to be true in some credible tribunal.
Among the articles that appeared the day after the June 24 kidnapping of the Muamar brothers was one of Dershowitz's classics, in the Jerusalem Post, June 25, under the headline "Palestinian terrorists want Israel to kill Palestinian civilians." "It may be difficult for some decent people to believe," Dershowitz instructs us, "that Palestinian terrorists are actually trying to increase the number of casualties among their own civilians but the evidence is overwhelming." It may indeed be difficult "for some decent people to believe" that Dershowitz actually exists, and is not simply invented by anti-Semites who want to ridicule supporters of Israel, "but the evidence is overwhelming" that he really does exist.
By "terrorists," Dershowitz means anyone designated by the US and Israel as terrorists, whatever the facts. That apparently includes all of those who committed the crime of voting the wrong way in a free election in Palestine, and in addition, virtually the entire population of Lebanon, as Dershowitz explained in another classic, which also might lead some to wonder whether he even exists:
www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/lebanon-is-not-a-victim_b__26715.html....
The rest is too depraved to require comment. Perhaps the author of the letter that evoked Dershowitz's intriguing performance, or the other signers, might want to respond. I have documented the actual facts he distorts so extensively in print that there is no need for me to do so, and the the general record of deceit that Dershowitz recycles has been thoroughly refuted by Norman Finkelstein, again eliminating any need to respond.
---------------
If There Were A Nobel Prize For Lies...
By Alan Dershowitz
Noam Chomsky and his hard left gang of Israel bashers are at it again. This time it is about the current crisis in the Middle East, which they blame entirely on Israel.
Chomsky is circulating a letter which he got two naïve Nobel Prize winners--the playwright Harold Pinter and the poet José Saramago--to sign.
It is vintage Chomsky, beginning with its first sentences: "The latest chapter of the conflict between Israel and Palestine began when Israeli forces abducted two civilians, a doctor and his brother, from Gaza. An incident scarcely reported anywhere, except in the Turkish pres." Chomsky typically cites obscure news reports in languages no one can read. This time it's "the Turkish Press." The problem with Chomsky's assertion is that a five minute Google News check reveals that the incident he points to was widely reported by the English language press, including The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, BBC, Reuters, and the Associated Press. (Lie number one).
This is what the associated press reported: "On Saturday, Israeli commandos seized two Palestinians suspected of being Hamas militants in the army's first arrest raid in the Gaza Strip since Israel's withdrawal nearly a year ago. An Israeli army spokesman said the two men, arrested at a house near Rafah in southern Gaza, were in the 'final states of planning a large-scale terror attack' in coming days. The army did not provide details on the nature of the alleged plot. Hamas denied that the men, who were identified by neighbors as brothers, are members." Quite a different account than the one provided by Chomsky et al. (Lie number two). Chomsky has said in interviews that "we don't even know their names," referring to the arrested militants. But a quick check of newspapers reveals that their names are Osama and Mostafa Muamar, whose father is Ali Muamar, a notorious Hamas leader. According to press reports "local Hamas activists said the pair was ... known to be members of Hamas." (Lie Number three).
Nor was the arrest of these Hamas terrorists the origin of the crisis, as Chomsky asserts. Even Kofi Annan acknowledged that "Hezbollah's provocative attack on July 12 was the trigger of this particular crisis"; that Hezbollah is "deliberate[ly] targeting...Israeli population centers with hundreds of indiscriminate weapons"; and that Israel has the "right to defend itself under Article 51 of the U.N. chater." But on Planet Chomsky, Annan and the U.N. are dupes of Israel who suppress the real story that only the Turkish press has the courage and honesty to report. (Lie number four). By the way, even the Turkish Daily News--which simply reprinted a widely distributed international Reuters story, datelined June 25, Gaza--reported that the two arrested individuals were alleged Hamas militants, a fact that Chomsky conveniently omits. (Lie number five).
The lies continue. Chomsky claims that Israeli missiles target areas "where the disinherited and crowded poor live, waiting for what was once called justice." He never mentions that it is Hezbollah and Hamas that select those civilian areas from which they fire their anti-personnel rockets, precisely in order to put Israel to the choice of allowing the missiles to rain down on its own civilians or to try to destroy the rocket launchers by smart bombs designed to minimize civilian casualties. (Lie number six).
Finally, the BIG LIE: "[Israel's] aim is nothing less than the liquidation of the Palestinian nation. This has to be said loud and clear for the practice, only half declared and often covert, is advancing fast these days, and, in our opinion, it must be unceasingly and eternally recognized for what it is and resisted." Again Chomsky ignores the historically indisputable facts that Israel (and the international community) offered the Palestinians a state in 1938, in 1948 and in 2001. The Palestinians responded with terrorism in each instance. The vast majority of Israelis and the Israeli government favor the two-state solution. It is Hamas and Hezbollah whose "aim is nothing less than the liquidation" of Israel. Just ask them. Just read their charter. Just look what they're doing. But not on Planet Chomsky, where everything is the mirror image of reality, and where "facts" are made up, ignored and distorted to serve a predetermined ideological end. (Lie number seven).
Now look at the one truth in the Chomsky letter, the call for Israel's aims to be "resisted." This will surely be read by Hamas and Hezbollah as support for its terrorism against Israel and those who support its existence. I doubt that all who have signed the Chomsky letters were aware that they are disseminating provable falsehoods. The list of signatories, in addition to Chomsky, Pinter and Saramago, now includes Tariq Ali, John Berger, Eduardo Galeano, Naomi Klein, Arundhati Roy, Giuliana Sgrena and Howard Zinn. But now that they are aware of the lies contained in the letter, let's see if they remove their names. If they do, some of them may come to realize how dangerous to their integrity and reputation it is to sign a Chomsky letter without checking its contents. If they don't, it tells us how little they value truth. |
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Observer UK: Finkelstein vs. fact |
by observer via gehrig
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
27 Aug 2006
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Claim and counter-claim about the Holocaust
Finkelstein's claim: If, as is agreed, there were only 100,000 Jewish survivors of the concentration camps at the end of the war, many of whom died shortly afterwards, there cannot be hundreds of thousands of survivors still living deserving to be compensated by the Swiss and the Germans.
Counter-claim: The definition of a survivor has moved to take in not only those who were in the camps but also those who were forced to flee their homes and their country, those who lived out the war in the forests and, in some cases, victims' descendants who suffered psychological and/ or financial problems.
Finkelstein's claim: Jewish organisations are sitting on $1.25 billion paid over by the Swiss banks, none of which has been distributed to Holocaust victims.
Counter-claim: Although a settlement has been agreed no money has yet left Switzerland because the US courts have still to approve its distribution.
Finkelstein's claim: Most of the money will never go to individuals but to Jewish organisations.
Counter-claim: The division of the funds is yet to be agreed.
Finkelstein's claim: Nobel prize-winning writer Elie Wiesel is a fraud saying that, after liberation from the camps at 18, he read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in Yiddish. Finkelstein says it was never published in Yiddish.
Counter-claim: It was published in Yiddish in Warsaw in 1929.
Finkelstein's claim: US academic Deborah Lipstadt said that to question the testimony of a survivor was Holocaust denial.
Counter-claim: Lipstadt denies having said any such thing.
Finkelstein's claim: Lawrence Eagleburger earns $300,000 a year as chair of the International Commission on Holocaust-Era Insurance claims, money that should be going to Holocaust victims.
Counter-claim: His salary is paid by the insurance companies not from compensation money.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,,343931,00.html
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