By Anas Tikriti

Anas Tikriti hosts Prof. Norman Finkelstein in Al Hiwar’s weekly English show “Jousor” translated as Bridges. Part 1 of 7.

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Transcript:

Part 1.

Anas Altikriti: Welcome to Jousor, which translates as Bridges, one to one discussions with individuals of prominence and significance in the West that aim to find the common grounds, promote the friendships and affinities, and discover the realities and the facts behind the headlines. Sixty years on from the Nakba, or the Palestinian catastrophe, and at a time when the world’s collective eyes are focused on the events in the Gaza strip, virtually no one amongst the high and mighty can properly identify a way out of the ongoing and escalating crisis that has engulfed not only the entire region of the Middle East, but has had a profound impact and effect far beyond.

Today my guest is one of the most prominent thinkers and speakers on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His sincere, honest, and open assessment of the situation through a number of publications including The Holocaust Industry, Beyond Chutzpah, and The Rise and Fall of Palestine has placed him high amongst the most respected scholars and authors who have put their names, their reputation, and even in some occasions even their safety at risk as a consequence of speaking the truth. Being born and raised in the United States by Jewish parents who survived the concentration camps of Auschwitz during the Nazi holocaust did not spare him from being accused of being a Holocaust denier, a Jewish self-hater, and, laughably, an anti-Semite. Yet among hundreds of millions around the world including Arabs and Muslims, he is seen as a courageous and honourable scholar who is also a great friend. My guest today is Dr. Norman Finkelstein.

Norman Finkelstein, thank you very much for joining us on Jousor today. Let me first of all start by asking you about your own—this line that you are pursuing. When was it that you actually decided that this was going to be, you know, your direction? What affected you, what impacted on you, to drive you towards this particular direction?

Norman Finkelstein: Well, there’s a general cause and there are specific causes. Generally, I grew up in a home which was very hostile to war for obvious reasons, given what my parents endured during the war, a great sensitivity to human suffering. And it was not something which was at an intellectual level known [although] my parents were very smart. It was a very emotionally charged home in which I grew up, in which I could say my mother literally grew hysterical at the sights of the crimes the U.S. was committing in Vietnam. So, every night on television when the news would come on—and my mother was not at all given to self-dramatization—but whenever the scenes came on of the war, she would put her hand up like this, turn her head, and say “Tell me when it’s over.” She literally, physically could not bear to see the sight of people suffering the way she had and the way her family, which was exterminated during the war, had. And so it was impossible to escape that, and it was in some form transmitted to me as well as to my siblings.

On the specific question of Israel-Palestine, I became involved in June 1982 at the time of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, and I was involved in the picketing of the Israeli consulate in New York. And at that time, I belonged to a Jewish group who was opposed to the war in Lebanon, and there were intellectual discussions, and one topic which came up with great frequency was Zionism, about which I had known very little. And I turned that into my doctoral dissertation. So, now I had both a political commitment and a scholarly commitment. And then obviously, I’m Jewish, so I had a personal commitment, and the three came together. And mostly I would say, as I spent several—I went back and forth to the Occupied Territories during the first intifada, and I developed personal attachments, and it became impossible for me, so to speak, to abandon these people mid-struggle, if I ever had those thoughts, which, to be honest, I didn’t. But immediately the images of those people would—I could see them in my mind’s eye, and I’m not going to leave them.

Anas Altikriti: The fact that—who your parents were, what they endured in Auschwitz and the Warsaw ghetto, you know, your being Jewish. Did you find that as being a catalyst, a motivator, a drive in your pursuit, or do you find that as a hindrance?

Norman Finkelstein: No, I didn’t find it as a hindrance at all, and it was plainly the catalyst. It’s inconceivable to me that you can tolerate the kinds of suffering that others have endured, in particular Palestinians, and be insensitive to it if you’re familiar with the background of what Jews suffered during World War II. And, you know, the analogies are obvious: the building a ghetto in Gaza—and I’m sure, I have no doubt what my parents would be saying about that ghetto that they built—and the progressive decrease of rations, fuel. Those are familiar analogies. Maybe not exact. But you know what? It doesn’t have to be exact. It’s close enough to be barbaric.

Anas Altikriti: And do you regard that kind of family, that kind of attitude generally, that kind of feeling of commitment to the suffering of the Palestinians, and humanity in general, wherever they are—do you see that as being—or do you see yourself as being in a minority within the Jewish community, particularly in the United States? Or do you think that it’s more widespread than people are given to believe?

Norman Finkelstein: I think things are changing now. I don’t think it’s for the same reasons as what motivated me. In my case, it was basically, as I said, a peculiar, maybe you could even say eccentric, sensitivity to human suffering. But in the case of Jews generally, I think the picture is: most Jews are liberal. They believe in the rule of law, they believe in these basic liberal Enlightenment values, basically because they’ve benefited enormously from them. They flourished in the United States under a regime of a rule of law and so forth, and now it’s becoming more and more difficult for American Jews to reconcile these basic—these bedrock principles with what Israel is doing. Because there was a time where Israel was fairly successful—in fact, I take that back, very successful—at concealing what it was—at concealing the reality of its policies. But now that’s becoming more and more difficult.

Anas Altikriti: Because of the internet and the satellite TV age? Is that why? Or—

Norman Finkelstein: I don’t know if you can pinpoint it, but you can just register the net effect. The net effect is that severe criticism of Israel has broken into the mainstream. Not marginal people like myself. I’m a marginal person. But it’s no longer people like me, you know, it’s people like Jimmy Carter. And the usual sorts of smear tactics that are used against people on the margins—Holocaust denier, anti-Semite—they seem to have an element of credibility, because who knows me? But they don’t work against Jimmy Carter; he’s the most revered ex-president in our history. And so when you try those tactics against him, they unstick. And so it’s becoming more and more difficult for American Jews, who claim to be wedded to liberal values, to justify what Israel is doing. Not just domestically, but internationally. So, for example, when the National Intelligence Estimate report came out saying that Iran was not involved in a program of—a nuclear weapons program, the whole world breathed a sigh of relief.

Anas Altikriti: That’s right.

Norman Finkelstein: There’s not going to be a war. The whole world except one country, and the one country is Israel. It says the NIE report’s a lie, and we still have to attack Iran. Well, most American Jews are liberal. They grew up in the generation, “Give peace a chance.” And here is this warmongering country, which has frankly become a crazy state, and which says war, war, war. And it’s becoming an embarrassment for American Jews. It’s not only an embarrassment; it’s becoming a problem. Because if the U.S. goes to war, and the war turns into a catastrophe like Iraq, American Jews are going to be blamed. So, for both ideological reasons, and reasons of self-interest, they’re distancing themselves from Israel. Israel is out of control. It’s a lunatic state.

Part 2.

Anas Altikriti: What about the—I mean you described yourself as being on the margins, or at least you were on the margins, maybe now because people are realizing the reality—

Norman Finkelstein: I probably would agree with that.

Anas Altikriti: What about the intellectual circles? What about the, you know, the people who ought to be writing about the truth, who ought not to have any kind of links to any kind of political or economic kind of agenda or interest? Are those circles widening? Are those circles expanding further than they were?

Norman Finkelstein: Yeah. You can see the reaction to the Mearsheimer and Walt book, the book by the University of Chicago professor and the Harvard University professor. You know, giving them all the credit they deserve, I think it’s highly unlikely that they would have gone out on a limb like that were they not aware that there was an audience out there waiting to listen. And they wouldn’t have gotten from the most prestigious publishing house in the United States, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, whose—their list includes the main, the leading American Jewish authors. They wouldn’t have got a seven hundred and fifty thousand dollar advance, which is a huge amount by American standards, were the publishing house not aware that there’s an audience. Same thing with Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter’s a decent individual as far as one can tell from afar, but he’s both a decent individual and a politician. I don’t think he would have gone out on a limb with a book like that unless he knew there’s an audience waiting to hear it. The climate’s changing.

Anas Altikriti: You’re now touring the U.K., and here in the United Kingdom we’ve had [inaudible] union of university lecturers and such really raise the profile of what’s going on in Palestine, vote on boycotting Israeli universities and such until things progress and until Israel realizes its obligation towards the Palestinians and the international community. Would it be fair to say that maybe intellectual and academic circles within the United Kingdom are a little bit further down the line than their American peers, or is that a little bit unfair?

Norman Finkelstein: No, I think that’s true. There are elements of the Mearsheimer and Walt book which I agree with, and there are elements which I don’t, but on the question of there’s a powerful Jewish lobby in the United States—they call it an Israel lobby because they want to be politically correct—there’s a powerful Jewish lobby which stifles dissent and discussion on the question of Israel-Palestine, that’s accurate, and it doesn’t have nearly the kind of power here that it has in the United States. So, there is a difference.

And you can see it in the press coverage. I wish, if you had an opportunity to just read to your listeners the Washington Post editorial yesterday on what happened in Gaza. They write in the editorial, the lead sentence is, “Hamas is obviously trying to destroy the peace process.” That was the meaning of what happened in Gaza. And then they go on to say that “Hosni Mubarak, how dare he allow this illegal break-in in Egypt?” And then they quote Mubarak as stating, well, the reason I did it is because, quote, “the Palestinians are starving.” And the Washington Post—literally!—the Washington Post writes, “What do you mean starving? There’s no starvation. The only reason they went to Egypt is because prices are lower.” And you compare that with coverage here. I mean, the coverage I read at all yesterday, okay, The Times put it on page 39, The Independent puts it on pages 2 and 3, but they would never say things like that. I’ll tell you the truth. I was reading it—the Washington Post—I couldn’t be sure whether it was a joke. Because, you know, sometimes on the web now—

Anas Altikriti: Yes.

Norman Finkelstein: —people do parodies.

Anas Altikriti: That’s right.

Norman Finkelstein: I didn’t know whether it was a joke. I mean, that’s the level of coverage in the media in the U.S. But even they are having trouble because, say what you want. We know ninety-nine point nine percent of humanity identified with those Gazans who are breaking out of jail. You know?

Anas Altikriti: And amongst those, the Americans, you think?

Norman Finkelstein: Yeah, you can’t not see it. You know, there’s that famous song from the sixties by Bob Dylan, “How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see?” There’s a limit, and you see all of those swarms of human beings, and all the Israeli propaganda begins to dissipate, and you see the reality that Israel is caging in these people like rats in a sewer. You know? It’s losing—it’s losing in part because it’s gotten so berserk and reckless. You don’t do something like that, that they tried to do in Gaza.

Anas Altikriti: A number of people commented on what had happened in Gaza over recent weeks and the subsequent kind of outpour of people. And a number of people came up with a few quite interesting remarks: firstly, that what Israel has to come to terms with is the fact that people who are without arms, without weapons, can actually break through borders and barriers, and that’s something—whilst they did this, you know, this time through the Rafah, the passage into Egypt, it could very well happen elsewhere, i.e. people pressure is something to contend with. And secondly, I mean, the question as to why it was, and how is it that seemingly and apparently intelligent people in Israel couldn’t foresee, you know, the kind of end-result of what their policies in Gaza [would be]. You described Israel earlier as being a state in a—in a form of craze. Is that it? Or—

Norman Finkelstein: Well, because they confuse the leadership of the Palestinians—which is completely corrupt and incompetent—they confuse it with the people. And this is the second time they made that error. They made that error through the 1980s, and then the first intifada happened. Each time the Palestinian people seize their destiny into their own hands, it throws Israel into complete confusion, because they’re used to dealing with this very thin layer of corrupt leaders who are fairly easy to manipulate and who aren’t very intelligent. Palestinian people, like all people, in particular people under enormous pressure, they have a capacity for creative thinking and figuring out ways to break free from this nightmare that’s being imposed on them.

And now it’s a second time. Each time the Palestinian people seize their own destiny into their own hands, they make progress. Whenever they invest their hopes and their destinies into these idiot phenomena called “the peace process,” and their Annapolis, and their Oslo, and this and that, the suffering just increases and the dismemberment of their country continues apace. One hopes, one hopes the Palestinians will again seize the lesson that they seized in 1987. I’m not a religious person, but I like that phrase, “God helps those who help themselves.”

Anas Altikriti: Yes.

Norman Finkelstein: You have to act on your own. They detonated the wall in Gaza. The next step should be: they have to break down the wall in the West Bank. They have to do it collectively, because they have the right to do it. It’s not me that says it’s the right, and it’s not even “higher justice” that says it’s the right. They have a legal right.

The World Court ruled in July 2004, the highest judicial body in the world ruled: the wall that Israel is building in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is illegal under international law, the wall has to be dismantled, and Israel has to pay compensation. That’s the law. That’s the highest judicial body in the world. It ruled that 14 to 1. The only dissenting vote was the American vote. The British vote—judge Rosalyn Higgins—she voted with the majority. And that means the Palestinian people have the legal right to take some hammers and picks, one million Palestinian people, and go to that wall and start knocking it down. If they took that initiative, they’d make more progress for their cause than all of these ridiculous theatrics called “the peace process.” And one hopes that that’s going to be the lesson that they got from the last several days.

Anas Altikriti: What do you think the thinking is, or the level of awareness is within Israel?

Norman Finkelstein: They’re probably panicking now.

Anas Altikriti: Because they think that things aren’t as under control as they want? Or, I mean, isn’t there an element within Israeli society that thinks that, you know, we’re digging our own graves here? I mean, isn’t there that kind of element?

Norman Finkelstein: There is an element that thinks that, but the problem is even those who want to extricate themselves from the mess they’re creating, they constantly want to do it on their terms and with them in command. They can’t accept dealing with Arabs as equals, and having to jointly make a decision. They can tell the servant, “You get a day off.” But not to meet them as equals. And that’s their kind of love-hate relationship with Hezbollah.

Part 3.

Norman Finkelstein: They hate Hezbollah, because Hezbollah is treating them like equals. But, on the other hand, they have a huge amount of respect for Hezbollah. Because Israel is a very, you know, it’s a Spartan society, a martial society, and Hezbollah has displayed tremendous military prowess. So, they can’t help but respect them at the same time that they hate them. And that’s a problem for Israel. I’ve said—you know, people don’t like it, but I’ve said: Hezbollah is in many ways not only the hope for the Arab world, but it’s the greatest hope for Israel. Because the moment Israel realizes it doesn’t have a military option, then it’ll begin to negotiate a reasonable settlement. And that’s good for Israel, if it can get a reasonable settlement, and, as you put it, extricate itself from this grave that they’re digging. So I think Hezbollah is good for Israel. It has to stop thinking that for every problem that arises, all it has to do is come in with its artillery and its planes and just blow everything away. That’s Israel.

You know, for the past sixty years, Israel strategy can be summarized in one sentence—which they always use; it’s not my idea—that “Arabs only understand the language of force.” That’s the way you deal with Arabs. Whenever they get out of line, you take out the big club and you break it over their head. Fortunately now with Hezbollah they’re seeing “Well, maybe it’s not working.” They’ll try again. I pity the poor Lebanese, because they’re going to go in a third time, to try to knock them out, the Hezbollah.

Anas Altikriti: You can see that happening.

Norman Finkelstein: Oh, it’s inevitable. Because the Israeli attitude now is “We’re down, but we’re not out.” Give us another crack at it. So they think they can still break them. If Hezbollah manages to prevail yet again, I think you’ll probably begin to see cracks in the Israeli ruling elite. And some of them will begin to think, “Well, you know what? Maybe this strategy is not working.”

The only other time it happened, incidentally, was with Sadat. You have to remember, after the ’67 war, Israelis were very self-confident and they kept saying—their assumption was, “Arabs don’t understand the art of war; they don’t know how to wage war.” And you may know, or you don’t know because perhaps you’re too young, but if you look at the record, they used to call the Arabs “monkeys.” That was their nickname for Arabs, between ’67 and ’73. Well, then comes along the October ’73 war, and the Arabs conducted themselves quite impressively. It was totally unexpected to the Israelis. And then the Israelis began to panic, that the balance was going to start shifting. And so their calculus was—it was famously put by Moshe Dayan, he says, “If you remove one wheel from a car, it can no longer move.” And so if you remove Egypt from the Arab front, there’s no longer any military threat to Israel. So, once they saw there was no longer a military option with Egypt, they negotiated a settlement. A reasonable settlement; at least it was a full withdrawal.

And it’s the same thing now, one hopes they’re going to reach that conclusion with Lebanon. And they’re already beginning to see there’s no military option with Iran.

Anas Altikriti: Yeah.

Norman Finkelstein: And each time they discover no military option, then they start beginning to—then they start to negotiate reasonable settlements. Of course, there are others there who say, you know, “We’re going to give it another try.”

Anas Altikriti: I’m going to come back to the whole region, and the issue of Iran as such. However, before that, you mentioned something in regards with how the world—or particularly Israel, the Israelis perceive the Palestinians, and they see the people and the government all in one bloc. Now—and you identify that, and I would agree, that this is a grave, grave mistake. However, let’s look from the other side. In terms of perceiving or looking at Israel and the Israeli people and the government. Is it also correct to separate the two, the government from the people? Or are they one and the same? I mean, how— how would one from the outside perceive Israel?

Norman Finkelstein: Well, you know, the government in its general posture toward the Arab world, the government does have a lot of support. There’s no question about that, and we shouldn’t fool ourselves about it. On the other hand, Israelis are like most other people: once you begin to show them that the policies being pursued are not in their interests, then they’ll probably start to think otherwise. You saw signs of it during the first intifada. There were shifts in public opinion in Israel. Didn’t go far enough before the intifada was defeated, but you have to show Israelis that there is a reasonable settlement to extricate themselves, and, two, you have to show them that it’s in their interests to do it. Which means you have to give them a hard time. I don’t think personally—I’m not going to—I don’t think you need to advocate violence. In principle, of course, you have the right to use violence so long as you’re targeting combatants and not civilians. I don’t think it’s really necessary in the case of the Occupied Territories. I think it was necessary in the case of Lebanon, to expel the foreign occupiers.

In the case of the Occupied Territories, I think there are other options. For example, once they had that decision on the wall from the World Court, if they had a real leadership—which they don’t—but if they did, they could have organized a million Palestinians with picks, hammers, gone to the wall, started knocking it down. Of course, Israel’s going to start killing them. I know that; I’m not foolish. And I’m not telling anyone—I’m not dispatching anyone to their death. But you have to remember: from September 2000 to the present, already 4,600 Palestinians have been killed. I say, if you’re willing to—you have more courage than me—if you’re willing to give your life, at least do it for a strategy that can win. And I think Israel would have been placed in an impossible situation. It’s going to start killing these people, and these people are going to say, “But wait, we’re just implementing the World Court decision.”

Part 4.

Norman Finkelstein: “The World Court said the wall has to be dismantled. It said it’s the responsibility of the whole international community to see that the wall is dismantled. So we’re just doing what the World Court told us to do.” And then all the attention’s going to turn to the World Court. Well, that is what the World Court said. If you had sufficiently prepared, organizing the people there, and organizing their supporters here to prepare a major public relations campaign: “This is the World Court decision. The General Assembly validated that decision. This is the law of the land now. We have the right to knock down that wall.”

I think Israel would have had a huge problem. At the beginning, it would have killed. But then after killing around one hundred, people are going to start focusing on it, and they’re going to wonder, “What’s going on here?” And then the Palestinians can hold up that decision: “We’re implementing what the World Court said. Rosalyn Higgins said it, this judge said it, that judge said it, that judge said it.” In fact, even the American judge, Thomas Buergenthal, he said in his dissenting opinion, he said, “I agree, all the settlements are illegal.” And if the wall is being built to protect the settlements, he said, quote, “then the wall is ipso facto illegal.”

Anas Altikriti: Yeah.

Norman Finkelstein: Well, Israel has acknowledged that the wall is being built for the settlements. Therefore, all fifteen judges—Buergenthal is a Nazi holocaust survivor. You could have gone to him, “What the Palestinians are doing, is it legal?” He’d have to say yes. Israel would have had a terrible time. There are strategies, which if the Palestinians had a leadership—they don’t need me; there are a lot of very smart people there. But what happened was—and I think a lot of people don’t understand it—the Oslo strategy succeeded. People always talk about the failure of Oslo—

Anas Altikriti: From whose point of view?

Norman Finkelstein: From the point of view of the Americans, why they made the offer. If you read the literature around Oslo, it was constantly said that they were looking to create—as Meron Benvenisti, the former deputy mayor of Jerusalem put it, “trying to maintain the occupation by remote control.” To get a Palestinian class of collaborators to work for us. That was the only reason for what was called that five-year interim period. There was no interim period with Egypt. It signed in ‘79. It begins the withdrawal, it’s over in ’81—in August 1981. It’s over. The whole purpose of that five-year interim period was to gradually create a class of collaborators, namely people who start benefiting from so many of the perquisites of power that they begin to enjoy it. And they don’t want to give it up. And all of those perquisites of power are obviously coming from the United States and Israel: the salaries, the VIP treatments, and all the rest. And they created this class of collaborators, who are basically working for the U.S. and Israel de facto.

But there are a lot of smart people there. They don’t need me to figure these things out. So, I think had they had the leadership, they could have, with non-violence, basically peaceful methods—although I have to emphasize, non-violence on one side; the Israelis are going to be killing, I know that. But at least [the Palestinians would be enduring the] killing with the hope that they can win. And I think they could have won, just like they won on detonating the wall. What’s Israel going to do now? It’s got a huge problem on its hands.

Anas Altikriti: There’s much more we can—we shall talk about in the second part of the program. We’ll be back in a few seconds. Don’t go away.

Part 5.

Anas Altikriti: Welcome back. Norman Finkelstein, I’m curious as to how your situation is in the United States. From checking your website, you still have quite a busy schedule, you’re still touring many university campuses, you’re speaking in many, many forums. A few years back, it was quite a difficult haul, it was quite tough. Halls were quite scarce, or at least filled with people who were there to jeer or to criticize or to attack. Do you see a shift in reception?

Norman Finkelstein: Oh yeah, it’s perfectly obvious. It’s obvious even here. When I—I’ve now been here, I think—I can’t keep track anymore, but I’ve been here I think for seven days. And I was at Manchester, Sussex, Cambridge, Oxford, Birkbeck, LSE, and, for example, the first night, I was going to speak at Manchester. I was warned, the people in the audience, and they have the issue of security guards—

Anas Altikriti: There was a petition demanding that the whole event be scrapped.

Norman Finkelstein: Nothing happens. And I speak at perhaps inordinate length, and I always say, “Now that you’ve been respectful of me, I give the floor over to dissenters.” Who wants to dissent? Nobody dissents. There’s nothing. It’s changed dramatically. And the same thing is pretty much true in the United States. The other side, it’s falling apart. It’s pretty obvious to anyone who watches it. Even at Oxford yesterday, they were debating a resolution whether Israel should have the right to exist. Now, I think the resolution is absurd: of course Israel has the right to exist. It’s a member state of the United Nations, and like every other member state in the United Nations, it has the right to be free from threats or use of force, of course, if we say “Israel within its pre-June ‘67 borders” and all the rest. But even debating the resolution, you know, it means that Israel’s stock is dropping precipitously. I understand—I never stayed around for the vote—I understand [laughing] the vote was quite close.

Things have changed a lot. You know, I ultimately lost the battle for tenure at my university, but I think that was mainly, it was basically for pretty unusual reasons. First of all, Professor Dershowitz went on what Noam Chomsky called a jihad against me, and he created a kind of climate of national hysteria to delegitimize me. A lot of it succeeded, because the university where I taught was a very small university, probably had never encountered the kind of hysteria and hullabaloo that developed around my case, didn’t know what to do. But, in general, when I actually speak and people hear me out, I get very few objections. Even at Oxford, if you’re familiar with the format, people are allowed to interject during the marks: point of information, point of this.

Anas Altikriti: Yes.

Norman Finkelstein: Of the four invited speakers, I was the only one that nobody—and there were many people who were hostile to me as a person—not one said, “point of information.” Because as everyone understands if you listen to me, I’m perfectly reasonable. I just want to end the conflict on terms which will give mutual respect and mutual dignity to all parties to the conflict. And those are the terms which Palestinians and the Arab League have accepted. In March 2002, again March 2007, they put forth the Arab League Initiative; all twenty-two countries in the Arab League agreed to it. And it’s a perfectly reasonable proposal, in line with the entire world community. And that’s all I’m advocating. I have no desire any longer—maybe as a kid I did, but it’s long past—to be a firebrand. People are suffering. If you’re a serious moral actor, your first commitment is not to your ego, but to try to diminish the suffering of those who are suffering, to lessen their torment.

Anas Altikriti: The kind of talk today about whether the solution to the issue of Palestine and Israel is, you know, two-state solution, one-state solution, this, that. What of the proposals being talked about there [do] you find the most realistic, the most reasonable?

Norman Finkelstein: Well, you know, there’s a basic principle of politics. Mao Zedong during the 1970s, he was famously quoted for saying, “A basic principle of politics is: unite the many to defeat the few.” You have to find a broad consensus which is going to isolate your enemies, and expose them as being the main obstacle to reason and justice. There is a consensus in the world how to resolve the conflict. It’s not a speculative matter; we all know it, because there’s a record. Every year, the United Nations General Assembly in November—every single year—it votes on what’s called the “Peaceful Settlement of Palestine Question.” I’m sure none of your listeners has ever heard of it, and you probably haven’t heard of it. Every year, and it’s the two-state settlement: full Israeli withdrawal to its June ‘67 border, a Palestinian state within the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and some sort of resolution of the Palestinian refugee question in accordance with Resolution 194, the compensation or return resolution.

Every year the vote is the same. It just happened this past year: 161 countries on one side, the United States and Israel on the other—including the U.K. on the 161 side. It’s just the U.S. and Israel, and then there are five other countries every year: Nauru, Palau, Tuvalu, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands. That’s literally it. I mean, people like—like yourself, you’re about to laugh. That’s because the whole reality is laughable. Everybody is trying to pretend that this is such a complicated conflict, this is such a controversial conflict, it’s not amenable to simple solutions, we need President Bush’s “vision” in order to help us make our way. This is not complicated. When the World Court had to rule on its issues, it wasn’t a close vote. I told you, it was 14 to 1. And even the one dissenter basically agreed.

Anas Altikriti: Yeah.

Norman Finkelstein: When it comes before the U.N., there’s no controversy. The whole world on one side, the U.S. and Israel on the other side. And that’s the obstacle. So, following Mao Zedong’s precept, “Unite the many to defeat the few,” our burden now is to tell the world what the facts are. It’s not complicated, it’s not controversial. The world has agreed how to solve it. Most people don’t know that. They’re really taken in by the Israeli propaganda, which the press repeats, that “Who knows how to solve it?” No, there is a way to solve it. And everyone agrees on how to solve it.

And so I’m not going to the one-state solution. Because the one-state means uniting the few to defeat the many. I’m going to have to do battle with the whole world community, I’m going to have to do battle with the World Court. I’m not going there; that’s not politics. That’s posturing. I want to win on fair terms: not winning by the simple application of force, but uniting public opinion and isolating the enemies of justice and reason. That’s how we should win. And I think we can do it.

Anas Altikriti: Even if you go back to the statements and rhetoric of Hamas in recent years, the late Ahmed Yassin, Khaled Meshaal, they spoke of—let’s go back to the 1967 borders, and then we’ll declare a ten-year truce—a twenty year truce or whatever, and we’ll talk. And that in a sense falls within that whole premise.

Norman Finkelstein: Yeah, everyone understands that. You open up the newspaper The Financial Times, they have an editorial on the Gaza events. And it says at the end of the editorial—it’s absolutely reasonable—they say it has to be a state, a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Once you give that to the Palestinians, then we’ll talk about mutual recognition and end it. Everyone understands that. The problem is the U.S. and Israel.

Part 6.

Norman Finkelstein: Because Israel has not yet come to terms with the fact that it has to withdraw. It still thinks it can hold on to those territories. And that’s the problem. I think once public opinion is aware of what the real obstacle is—as I said earlier, I think even Jews are going to begin to fall in line, because they’ll be embarrassed. They’ll be embarrassed—Jews believe they’re liberal, they believe in the rule of law. Here’s this World Court, and, you know, there are limits to which you can say everyone’s an anti-Semite. All fifteen members of the World Court? Including Rosalyn Higgins, the British judge, who’s Jewish, including Thomas Buergenthal, the American judge, who’s Jewish. Is that really credible? And at that point, you have a kind of crisis in the conscience, or the self-image—it’s a little different—the conscience or the self-image of American Jews, and Jews elsewhere. “Uh, well, maybe we’d better start rethinking this, because it’s becoming an embarrassment”—or it’s wrong, you know, wrong or embarrassment, either way we have to rethink it. There’s a way to win now.

Anas Altikriti: Let’s go back a little to the region. You mentioned in the first part of the program that you think that now the military option has been taken away, or has been—really, do you think that’s the end of it, the talk of, or the parading, or the posturing regarding force?

Norman Finkelstein: No, it’s not the end; it’s temporary. As I said, I think they’re going to try again with Lebanon. And they’ll be waiting for a new opportunity with Iran. It’s in temporary abeyance. The place where it ended , you know, was with Egypt. That was a serious long-term commitment, because if you read the literature after the ’73 war, they began to panic. The balance was shifting. They’re not yet ready to reconcile themselves with Iran, because there’s a very big difference. It was very clear that Sadat was dying to get into the American camp. So reconciling with him effectively made them a subordinate of the U.S-Israel axis—[i.e.] Egypt. Teheran, Iran wants to enter on its own terms. It doesn’t want to enter on Sadat’s terms. Namely, it wants to be a major regional actor. So, coming to terms with that—

Anas Altikriti: And that’s a no-no, a big no-no.

Norman Finkelstein: Of course it’s a big no-no, because the U.S. and Israel are supposed to be in charge, or so they think. And so, entering into an agreement with Iran would be on very different terms. It will have to recognize: there’s a major regional player which is not going to allow for Israeli hegemony in the region, which is different than what Egypt—you know, Egypt actually became a minor player after the Camp David accords. It was the end of the Nasser era, effectively. And they’re not ready with that with Iran. Neither is the U.S. There’s no military option as far as they can tell now. They’re not yet ready. And as I said, I don’t really—I’m sorry, I have to say it. You know, I’d be totally betraying my parents’ legacy if I suddenly became an advocate of war, and I’m not going to go there. But regrettably I just don’t see any option until Israel becomes convinced there are no military options. And they’re a very tough nut to crack.

Anas Altikriti: So within that kind of idea, if you wish, how do you see the region panning out in the foreseeable future? Let’s say, the medium-term. Let’s not go beyond that, but let’s say within the next two, three years. I mean, we’re talking Lebanon, we’re talking about Iran, we’re talking about the still ongoing crisis in Iraq which doesn’t seem like it’s going to, you know, solve itself within the next few weeks or months. We have Syria there. I mean, it’s quite an odd kind of map. So, how do you see things panning out in the foreseeable future?

Norman Finkelstein: You know, I really think that speculation is pointless. And, you know, it’s like what happened in Gaza. It looked so hopeless, it looked so pitiful, the whole world was looking on with the most—what can you call it?—the most barbaric acquiescence. And suddenly the creative power of people: they find a way to break out. You know? I can’t predict, especially since there are so many variables now, and it’s so volatile.

In Lebanon, where I was just a couple of weeks ago, it’s clear that the society is divided down the middle, which is a problem already. The other problem is, rational, reasonable people—it is a difficulty getting out of that problem. How do you create a democracy in a society based on sectarianism? I don’t think there’s an easy answer to that. And so, the Israel-Palestine conflict, there’s a fairly clear way to break out of the impasse. But in other parts of the world? I don’t think there’s a clear answer in Iraq, you know. I was talking today to a young fellow from Oxford who’s of Iraqi descent, and we were going through—he just was back there, he goes back and forth—and he was giving me a pretty clear picture of what’s going on there, and I said, “Do you want the Americans to leave?” And he said, “No, not in the next couple of years. It’s not yet ready until the Iraqi security forces have been trained.” So even on what we like to think are fairly straightforward matters, like an immediate American withdrawal, I think honest people have to acknowledge, it’s a little more complicated than that. So, we have two problems. We have a complicated, volatile situation (A), but (B) we don’t have any obvious solutions. In Lebanon, in Iraq. There are no obvious solutions. So, I think to try to speculate now is pointless.

The main thing I think we should be struggling for is to try to uphold basic principles of international law, which seem to have good reason behind them. One of those principles was that you’re not supposed to attack a country until and unless an armed attack has occurred against you. The U.S. violated that principle when—

Anas Altikriti: Several times [laughs].

Norman Finkelstein: Several times. But most spectacularly in the case in March 2003, and created a huge catastrophe, which should lead rational people to believe that maybe there was some good sense behind that principle of international law, and, you know, Article 51: unless the U.N. authorizes it, you only have a right of self-defence against armed attack. Maybe there was some good sense behind it. And I think we should try to work on those principles.

Part 7.

Anas Altikriti: We have about three or four minutes left, but I have to ask you, because obviously these days the world is going to be commemorating the Holocaust. What we have come to—in terms of acronyms, HMD, the Holocaust Memorial Day. You have written a book on the Holocaust industry, how it’s become, well, an industry, basically. Tell us a little about that. What’s your take on that? Particularly the fact that every year we have this discussion, this debate within the Muslim communities around Europe as to whether they should go, they shouldn’t go, and such.

Norman Finkelstein: They should definitely not go.

Anas Altikriti: Why?

Norman Finkelstein: Because the Holocaust Memorial Day has nothing to do with the Nazi holocaust. The Holocaust industry has nothing to do with the Nazi holocaust. All it is, is an ideological weapon of Israel and its supporters to immunize Israel and its supporters from criticism. It has nothing to do with the actual event. These people don’t care about the actual event. They don’t care about the survivors. It’s a manipulative public relations device, and I think nobody should have any truck with it. You should stay away from it, you should boycott it, and say that you’re not going to allow the Nazi holocaust to be turned into an ideological club to keep dissenting opinion in line. I would never—I’ve never even gone to the U.S. Holocaust museum in Washington. I’m not going to have anything to do with that. My parents suffered too much, endured too much, for their suffering to be turned into a weapon to justify war.

Just look at what happened, the build-up to the war in Iraq in 2003. Anyone who dissented—anyone who dissented from an illegal war of aggression was accused of being an appeaser of Hitler. Now can you imagine that? The Nazi holocaust has now become the main ideological weapon for justifying wars of aggression. That’s a fact. Every time Israel and the United States want to launch an illegal war of aggression, what do they charge? That their enemy is Hitler. Ahmadinejad, he’s Hitler. Hezbollah’s Hitler. Hamas is Hitler. Every time they want to commit an illegal war of aggression, they use the Nazi holocaust to justify it. Now that’s the ultimate irony. The Nazi holocaust has become the chief, the main ideological weapon for waging illegal wars of aggression. Why should anyone have anything to do with that? Stay away from those memorials. Let the Holocaust-mongers and the warmongers attend those memorials. No self-respecting, decent, peace-loving person, someone who loves justice, would have anything to do with those memorials.

Anas Altikriti: And finally, and within the minute or so that we have, the American elections. Is there any point in pinning any kind of hope on any particular party, any particular candidate?

Norman Finkelstein: No. As I said earlier—of course, most people are going to participate in the election, because probably one will make a marginal difference, one candidate will make a marginal difference as against another. And given the power that the U.S. has, even a marginal difference can mean a difference of millions of lives. Because you have to multiply that margin of difference by the factor of U.S. power.

Anas Altikriti: Of course.

Norman Finkelstein: So, I’m not going to pretend it makes no difference. But, ultimately, as I said earlier, I speak as a person who’s not religious, “God helps those who help themselves.” We can’t look passively for “leaders” to make the world a better place. In order to achieve those positions of power and privilege, you have to have been pretty ruthless, and in order to get to the top, you have to ultimately be serving the interests of those at the top. And the interests of those at the top are not the interests of most of humanity. Most of humanity, regrettably or not, has to fight its own struggles to get its place at the table, and not just be there waiting for a few crumbs.

So if we’re really committed to justice, we really want a better world, I’m not saying ignore the election, but remember: it’s our work, it’s our challenge, it’s in our hands. And if we achieve it, a just world, well, then we will have earned it. And we will have deserved it, because it was our working. And if we don’t achieve it, then maybe we don’t even deserve it, because we weren’t willing to make the kind of investment that a just world requires. And it takes work.

Anas Altikriti: Norman Finkelstein, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you very much for joining us today. We wish you well on the rest of your tour of the U.K., and when you return back home. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for tuning in tonight. Please join us next week when we’ll be hosting another guest in our attempt to build bridges and establish jousor. I’m Anas Altikriti. Goodbye.

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