Finkelstein and the Blogs: "Why Bother?"

I recently read a diary at a blog I frequent that gave a hat tip to Norman Finkelstein. I started to write a comment, then thought: Why bother?  The participants were the same as always, the commentary no less the same.  To offer anything besides support would be taken as provocation.  There is no interest in discourse.  So I let them have their party, decrying Israel as they do to no other, as if it should not exist in the international community.

If they celebrate Finkelstein, it just shows how far out these people are! It shows, as well, how far out academia in Europe has become, as he makes the rounds on a UK tour. When so many go gaga over a hatemonger who openly expresses "solidarity" with regimes that call for killing all Jews and destroying Western societies and values, then something is awry in them.

Does Finkelstein really stand for anything besides incitement against Israel and Jews while offering validation to those who openly commit international crimes and call for genocide?

A recent posting at Harry’s Place discussed the lovable Finkelstein, who had this to say in Lebanon:

I was of course happy to meet the Hizbullah people, because it is a point of view that is rarely heard in the United States. I have no problem saying that I do want to express solidarity with them

The posting also sheds light on some of his British anti-Israel buddies, fronting for Hamas and in solidarity with truthers and neo-Nazi politicos.  They are called the Palestinian Return Centre. You see, the requisite for the club, it seems, is hatred of Jewish external self-determination.

Anti-Israel bloggers in America are also gaga over Finkelstein.  Not surprisingly.  It's the boilerplate they are fed, and what they learn at the universities from guys like him, Professor "Death to Israel" Pino, and the admirers of the "Jews control the world" Gilad "Holocaust Denier" Atzmon, such as John Mearsheimer and Richard Falk (also a truther).  Such academics are part of a regular cottage industry, like those many Israeli NGOs that now operate freely in the political realm, funded by foreign governments.  Not to mention the slew of journalists that create moving war stories by day, then party by night in the open society that Israel has to offer.

The reader is commended to a recent article in The New Republic, “Why are John Mearsheimer and Richard Falk Endorsing a Blatantly Anti-Semitic Book?” by Alan Dershowitz, perhaps the strongest advocate in the face of the anti-Israel crowd.  The animus is overwhelming.

Pilar Rahola, recipient of the Morris B. Abram Human Rights Award for 2011, was once among them, until she had to ask: 

“[W]hy when Israel is the only country in the World which is threatened with extinction, it is also the only one that nobody considers a victim?”

She also asks: Why, of all the conflicts in the world, only this one interests them? Why is a tiny country which struggles to survive criminalized? Why does manipulated information triumph so easily? Why is Arafat a hero and Sharon a monster? Why is there no Palestinian guilt?

Bloated from their heroes, the anti-Israeli bloggers regurgitate and preach as if only they are morally in tune.  I suggest, however, that the scope of their anti-Israel reality is so narrow that they cannot even fathom other realities exist.  If others adopted such a narrow approach, these same folks would offer ridicule.

Then again, perhaps the site where I saw Finkelstein praised will come to be better known for tolerance of antisemitism within its ranks. There are now a few handful, at most, that join in the love, so proud of each other, peppering the place each day with volleys of anti-Israel posts and comments, inciting others to bring forth the worst.  More power to as they reveal their intent for others to more easily discover.  I still believe that most people can see through them and that what they promote is extreme and so one-sided as not to be trusted.

So, today, I clicked and moved on to something more productive.