NB:  slightly modified from original letter

From: Sayres Rudy
Sent: Wed 8/17/2005 2:34 PM
To: Frank Kramer
Subject: RE: Finkelstein event

Dear Mr. Kramer

Your prolix but superficial reply is unacceptable, not to mention bewildering.  I would have been more impressed if an economic threat had been the reason for dis-inviting Dr. Finkelstein -- at least fear of economic retaliation would have been rational and honest.  But blaming your action on the "personal feud" between Dershowitz and Finkelstein is a disgraceful surrender to Dershowitz's strategy.  For years Dershowitz has turned debates about Israel into "personal" matters, labeling critics anti-Semites, neo-Nazis, "hard leftists," Holocaust-deniers, even self-hating Jews who hate their own mothers.  He does this (1)  to distract attention from criticisms he wants to censor and (2)  to provoke angry replies useful for discrediting his opponents as irrational personal enemies.  A simple google-study of Dershowitz's interactions with countless writers demonstrates Dershowitz's method:

1.  He lies about what his opponents have said or done, never answering what they have actually said or done.

2.  He insults them personally as to their character, associations, intentions, or leanings.

3.  He threatens them or their backers (with plausible deniability of course) with legal action if they continue their arguments (optional).

4.  Above all else, he makes sure the arguments are buried and the fabricated "personal feud" decided on the basis of credentials, celebrity, or standing in the public domain (which always weigh against radical critics no matter how scrupulous). 

I applaud your fairness in also not hosting Dershowitz, but you should be aware that this is the precise victory he wants.  His purpose is to get his opponents shut out of events like yours, even if he too is shut out, because he himself does not need those events, given his influence.  The one thing he cannot tolerate is that someone like Finkelstein set the record straight, with empirical rigor, and publicly defend himself in open discussion.  Knowing this, Finkelstein has vigorously presented the criticism of Dershowitz's book and strained to avoid any "personal feud."  As usual, Dershowitz made it personal, though in no way did Finkelstein ever respond in kind to Dershowitz's scurrilous calumnies. 

In canceling the Finkelstein appearance, in other words, you have been played -- you have rewarded Dershowitz for his unconscionable strategy.  Dershowitz diverts real arguments into "personal feuds" because he cannot win those arguments.  When you accept and promote the notion that the disagreement is "personal" and that "it" just occurred -- rather than being manipulated by Dershowitz --  you become complicit in Dershowitz's strategy.  The arguments carefully made against him are snuffed out when you, however unwittingly, do Dershowitz's bidding. 

I don't blame you for falling for Dershowitz's gambit, he's a pro.  But in full recognition of the power dynamics and mendacity behind his choreography, you should refuse the dance.  Finkelstein's presentation is and has always been about Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and the current discourse on anti-Semitism, controversies with devastating social consequences in which Dershowitz is a pivotal voice.  His research must not be silenced by the tactics of the very partisan he opposes in addressing those matters. 

If your decision stands, I will carry on with my promise to advocate a boycott against HBS because of your gutless and credulous reaction to a feud which is political, not personal.  Do not let Dershowitz, or any author, effectively decide when their opponents' ideas are too personal to be heard by your community.  If you do, what will be the difference between you and Amazon.com in the end?

Thank you for your time and (re)consideration.

Sayres Rudy
Visiting Scholar 2005-2006
Political Science
Amherst College



Dear Sir or Madam,

It has come to my attention that your bookstore has rescinded an invitation to hold an event for the new book by Norman Finklestein entitled "Beyond Chutzpah". This is an outrage! I should be able to come to your bookstore and purchase whatever book I desire no matter how controversial. Although it is understandable that you may fear "economic retaliation" from certain individuals and institutions, the "marketplace of ideas" is just as important as the "market". This is the essence of free speech. This is what I was taught to believe in journalism school when we completed a course on the First Amendment. This is supposedly what our country stands for in the world. I cannot think of a more McCarthyesque action than to withdraw an invitation for a book event that may draw strong reactions from the public. This is what any bookstore worthy of its name should do during public events: provoke debate, encourage thought, and bring controversial issues to the forefront of public consciousness. I fear that your action will create an atmosphere where only "permissible" thoughts and therefore "permissible books" are allowed. I hope you strongly reconsider this decision. Nothing of value can be gained by censoring our selves.

Respectfully,

Despina Moutsouris
Brookline, MA 02445



RE: Norman Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah
From: Maren Hackmann
To:
Date: 18 Aug 2005, 4:10

Dear Mr. Kramer,

Last month, Associated Press quoted Norman Finkelstein as saying that "There are few individuals on earth who interest me less" than Alan Dershowitz.

Indeed, right at the very first opportunity, Finkelstein had told Dershowitz to his face: "I have no interest in you, Mr. Dershowitz. None at all. I'm interested in the scholarship, I'm interested in the facts, I'm interested in your book" (Democracy Now, 24 September 2003).

Dershowitz knows full well that this is not a personal feud, and so do you. You have no reason not to host an event for Beyond Chutzpah.

Maren Hackmann



From: Clayton C. Denman
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2005 6:33 PM
Subject: Your latest posting of AD's comments on Beyond Chutzpah

Dear Norman,

While reading the latest comments from Dershowitz on your website, I finally realized that I'm not reading an academic analysis, but rather a courtroom brief. Dershowitz is a lawyer, and lawyers all have formal "academic" training in how to lie, how to weave false stories that are designed to convince the reader of the "truth" of their scenario regardless of empirical facts. Politicians and others have learned how to do this too.

Most citizens think of the courtroom as the place where ultimate truth is sought. In fact, it is just the opposite. While the person on the witness stand is under oath to tell the truth, attorneys for both the defense and prosecution are free to lie and otherwise distort the truth in order to convince the jury to vote their way. Police officers investigate crimes by making up stories to intimidate suspects. The legal system is not a place where justice is sought, but a competition among liars to see who can tell the most believable story.

Thus Dershowitz sees nothing wrong with making up totally false stories about you personally, as well as about your book. He is a trained professional liar. ALL of the reviews of your book could exude praise for your scholarship, and Dershowitz would still say that there was not a single accurate reference in it.

D. says your book is about the past, and now Israelis and Palestinians are on the road to peace. All one has to know about Palestine is who controls the water, the deplorable condition of the Jordan R. and a few other material conditions to project that a sustainable "peace" in not even on the horizon!

I'm looking forward to reading Beyond Chutzpah as soon as it becomes available. I know that this is an especially busy and trying time for you, but I know that the book will influence a growing number of people who have been blinded by the false writings of Dershowitz, Peters, and others.

Sincerely,

Clay Denman
Emeritus/ Central Wash. Univ.



From: Rohit Goel
To: MLamphier[at]harvard.com ; CHorne[at]harvard.com ; ADarling[at]harvard.com
Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2005 12:28 PM
Subject: Cancelled Finkelstein Event

Dear Harvard Bookstore,

I am writing to express surprise at your decision to cancel your previously scheduled book event with Norman Finkelstein. As an undergraduate at Harvard, I valued and supported HBS, not only for its remarkably intelligent book collection, but also for its admirable efforts to continue as an independent bookstore in Harvard Square--a space that has been compromised by the near exclusive presence of large commercial banks and the Harvard Coop.

To date, I have read two competing explanations for your decision to cancel the book event. First, it has been suggested that Alan Dershowitz threatened to organize a boycott of Harvard Bookstore if Finkelstein were allowed to speak there. For this reason, the owners of HBS were forced to cancel the event. I am sympathetic to this explanation. An independent bookstore struggling to exist in Harvard Square ought to be concerned about boycott threats, particularly those issued by popular Harvard professors. If this is the case, Harvard Bookstore ought to tell its customers that it does not have the financial resources to endure such a boycott, and thus must cancel the event. I do think most would understand.

The second explanation, provided by the owner of HBS, Frank Kramer, is that Harvard Bookstore autonomously decided to cancel the event. Mr. Kramer wrote that he did not want to appear to be taking "sides" in a "personal" battle between Professors Finkelstein and Dershowitz. I am taken aback by this explanation for the event cancellation.

In "Beyond Chutzpah," Finkelstein rigorously documents Israel's human rights record (based solely on the findings of mainstream, Western human rights organizations). He then compares these findings with Alan Dershowitz's understanding of Israel's human rights record, which Dershowitz elaborated two years ago in a book entitled, "The Case for Israel." In his book, Finkelstein discovers that Dershowitz systematically distorts Israel's human rights record and covers over many of the state's crimes. Finkesltein then shows how and why similar distortions and denials pervade much of the existing literature and journalism on Palestine/Israel. He finds that flawed research methods, specifically with regards to use of sources, help sustain this mass of shoddy "scholarship" on Palestine/Israel. Dershowitz's book, "The Case for Israel," is exemplary in this regard.

Over the past year, Dershowitz has written scores of attacks against Finkelstein and his publishers, none of which engage the substantive, rigorously researched claims presented in "Beyond Chutzpah." Instead, Dershowitz deflects attention away from Finkelstein's substantive arguments by personalizing the debate, through paranoid fits or ad hominem attacks. At times, he screams that he is the latest victim of some "leftist" conspiracy (led by Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, and Norman Finkelstein). At other times, he dismisses Finkelstein's book entirely, as "trash" written by a "Holocaust denier" (Finkelstein's parents were both survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto).

In reducing Finkelstein's book to a personal squabble with Dershowitz, Harvard Bookstore has taken Dershowitz's side. HBS has helped Dershowitz deflect attention away from the substance of "Beyond Chutzpah." I urge HBS to reconsider its partisan support for Dershowitz. Until then, I plan to join my colleague Sayres Rudy in boycotting your store.

Sincerely,

Rohit Goel
Harvard College '02



From: Adam Jones
To: frank[at]harvard.com
Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2005 8:34 AM
Subject: Re: "Beyond Chutzpah"

Dear Frank,

Thank you very much for taking the time to respond to my email, and explain the Harvard Bookstore's position in this matter. However, with respect, I do not find the Bookstore's reasons for cancelling the event planned for Norman Finkelstein's book-release to be very convincing.

It is wholly predictable that a book intended as a systematic riposte to a given author's work will arouse the ire and angst of the author in question (i.e., Prof. Dershowitz). The fact that a public controversy (or a "personal feud," if you prefer) ensues between the two authors is likewise predictable, and no reason, in my view, to cancel an event planned with full foreknowledge of the nature of Mr. Finkelstein's work.

While you state that Prof. Dershowitz did not contact the Bookstore, it seems clear from your comments that the Bookstore was amply aware of his public protests. Did these create a "chill" that led directly to the Bookstore's decision to cancel the event? There must remain a suspicion that this was indeed the case. If so, it is a real cause for concern about Mr. Finkelstein's right and ability to air his critical views, in my opinion.

I do again appreciate your email.

Sincerely,

Adam Jones



From: Corey Robin
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2005 11:46 PM
To: 'Frank Kramer'
Subject: RE: Norman Finkelstein Invitation

Dear Frank Kramer:

Thank you for your note of explanation regarding your decision to disinvite Finkelstein to speak. As I understand you, it is the excessively personal nature of the dispute between Finkelstein and Dershowitz that has prompted you to reverse your previous decision to have him speak at your bookstore. One wonders if you've thought through the full implications of your decision. Surely you're aware of the often acidic feuds between intellectuals, where ideas and political differences can assume a personal nastiness so intense it threatens to eclipse the original disagreement. Karl Popper and Ludwig Wittgenstein famously loathed each other, leading to a legendary confrontation at Cambridge in 1946 where the latter allegedly threatened the former with an iron poker. By your logic, the Harvard Bookstore would invite neither Popper nor Wittgenstein to speak for fear of indulging or participating in an overly personal conflict. Or consider Mary McCarthy's bitter dispute with Lillian Hellman ca. 1980, which resulted in a libel suit. Would you have not invited either of these two literary lions to speak about their disagreement, which began as political and ended up as almost entirely personal? Or, to bring things a bit further up to date, Christopher Hitchens and his brother Peter did not speak to each other -- quite publicly -- for several years over a political disagreement that instantly became (or was from the beginning) completely personal. Would neither of them be welcome to speak on the topic or other topics of disagreement between them? Incidentally, I noticed that the Haye-on-Wye literary festival in Britain chose earlier this summer to sponsor a public forum between the two brothers, which seems a far more grown-up way to deal with conflict than just to cancel an invitation to speak.

Given the above, I don't see how your statement below -- "Harvard Book Store's devotion to an exchange of ideas is undiluted" -- can be reconciled with the stated principle that underlies your decision. Or perhaps that principle is not really the underlying basis of your decision at all? I'd be curious to hear your response.

Best,

Corey Robin

-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Kramer [mailto:frank[at]harvard.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2005 10:31 PM
Subject: Re: Norman Finkelstein Invitation

Dear Corey,

Thank you for your note relating to Professor Norman Finkelstein and his book Beyond Chutzpah. Our intention here is to clarify the situation to which Professor Finkelstein refers on his website and clear up what we believe are mistaken assumptions stemming from that posting.

Harvard Book Store was contacted by University of California Press in late April and asked to host an event with Professor Finkelstein. We corresponded with the Press regarding the book, and discussed holding an event on September 29th. However, by late May, the controversy between Professor Finkelstein and Professor Alan Dershowitz had taken on a distinctly personal cast. After seeing via the press that both men's books had become inseparable from the charges each was making about the other, and reluctant to put Harvard Book Store in the middle of a personal feud, we informed University of California Press that we had decided not to sponsor an event. We then worked with them to find another Boston-area venue, without success.

Harvard Book Store supports Professor Finkelstein's right to free speech. Over the years, we have carried seven of his books. Our order for Beyond Chutzpah was placed in January 2005, when the University of California Press announced its publication. That order stands and we will continue to carry Professor Finkelstein's books.

The decision not to host Professor Finkelstein was made solely by the staff at Harvard Book Store. We have not been contacted by Professor Dershowitz, by anyone acting on his behalf, or by Harvard University, in any way relating to Professor Finkelstein. Harvard Book Store is an independent bookseller, unaffiliated with Harvard University.

Harvard Book Store's devotion to an exchange of ideas is undiluted. We choose not to hold an event with either of these two scholars at this time, because we feel that the personal nature of their feud has overshadowed the real intellectual and political debate at the heart of their books. This fall, we will feature a display of books on the breadth of dialogue about the relationship between Israel and Palestine-both Beyond Chutzpah and The Case for Peace will be included in this display.

If you are from an organization that is interested in sponsoring an event with Professor Finkelstein, please contact Alexandra Dahne, Publicity Director of the University of California Press at alex.dahne[at]ucpress.edu.

Thank you again for contacting us. We hope we've answered some of your concernsand questions about this difficult decision. We regret that we are not able to respond individually to each of you.
Frank Kramer, Owner
Harvard Book Store

-----Original Message-----

From: "Corey Robin"
To:
Cc: ,
Subject: Norman Finkelstein Invitation
Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2005 13:16:41 -0400

To Whom It May Concern:

As an author who has spoken -- at your invitation -- at your bookstore (October 29, 2004), I am writing to register my concern over the cancellation of your invitation to Norman Finkelstein to speak. I don't know the specifics of this cancellation -- indeed, I would welcome to hear your version of the story -- but from afar, I can say that it does not look good. I am aware of the controversial nature of Mr. Finkelstein's book -- and of the close proximity of Mr. Dershowitz's office to your store. All the more reason, it would seem to me, for you to bring Mr. Finkelstein to speak. I'm sure you don't need to hear a lecture from me on the virtues of free speech or the free circulation of ideas. But, my gosh, if bringing Finkelstein to Cambridge to air seldom-heard ideas is not part of your mission, well, I'm not really sure what you're there for.

Sincerely,

Corey Robin
Author, *Fear: The History of a Political Idea*
Associate Professor of Political Science
Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center
City University of New York



-----Original Message-----
From: "Curtis Michael Brown"
To: frank[at]Harvard.com
Date: Wednesday, 17 Aug 2005

Dear Mr. Kramer,

Thank you for your thoughtful response. I must say it does cast the matter in a different light. One part of your letter, however, puzzles me. You say that between April (when you accepted to do an author event) and late May (when you reversed your decision), "both men's books had become inseparable from the charges each was making about the other." What does "inseparable" mean here? However bitter the personal dispute gets, how does this change the book itself? The only significant change Finkelstein has made to his book in recent months is to *tone down* the plagiarism charge.

I think one has to be careful not to dismiss the significance of their debate on the grounds that it has gotten personal. Both men are loudly calling each other liars, yes, and the tone and volume of the name-calling is an embarassment to both. But it is a different level of "getting personal" to petition a state governor to suppress publication of a book that criticizes your scholarship. UC Press has been remarkably courageous in this matter, and deserves the support of any organization devoted to the free exchange of ideas.

It should also be noted that Professor Dershowitz has since October of 2003, at the very outset of his debate with Finkelstein - long before May of this year and long before Finkelstein was calling him names - described any critique by Finkelstein regarding the accuracy of his work as "personal" and "ad hominem." The motivation to say this when one is losing an argument is obvious: well-intentioned people will wash their hands of what seems to be a purely personal dispute, forgetting that in this case it is a debate about historical truth that is driving the personal animus, not the other way around.

Yours,
Curtis Brown

-------------------------------

On Tue, 16 Aug 2005, Frank Kramer wrote:

Dear Curtis,

Thank you for your note relating to Professor Norman Finkelstein and his book Beyond Chutzpah. Our intention here is to clarify the situation to which Professor Finkelstein refers on his website and clear up what we believe are mistaken assumptions stemming from that posting.

Harvard Book Store was contacted by University of California Press in late April and asked to host an event with Professor Finkelstein. We corresponded with the Press regarding the book, and discussed holding an event on September 29th. However, by late May, the controversy between Professor Finkelstein and Professor Alan Dershowitz had taken on a distinctly personal cast. After seeing via the press that both men's books had become inseparable from the charges each was making about the other, and reluctant to put Harvard Book Store in the middle of a personal feud, we informed University of California Press that we had decided not to sponsor an event. We then worked with them to find another Boston-area venue, without success.

Harvard Book Store supports Professor Finkelstein's right to free speech. Over the years, we have carried seven of his books. Our order for Beyond Chutzpah was placed in January 2005, when the University of California Press announced its publication. That order stands and we will continue to carry Professor Finkelstein's books.

The decision not to host Professor Finkelstein was made solely by the staff at Harvard Book Store. We have not been contacted by Professor Dershowitz, by anyone acting on his behalf, or by Harvard University, in any way relating to Professor Finkelstein. Harvard Book Store is an independent bookseller, unaffiliated with Harvard University.

Harvard Book Store's devotion to an exchange of ideas is undiluted. We choose not to hold an event with either of these two scholars at this time, because we feel that the personal nature of their feud has overshadowed the real intellectual and political debate at the heart of their books. This fall, we will feature a display of books on the breadth of dialogue about the relationship between Israel and Palestine-both Beyond Chutzpah and The Case for Peace will be included in this display.

If you are from an organization that is interested in sponsoring an event with Professor Finkelstein, please contact Alexandra Dahne, Publicity Director of the University of California Press at alex.dahne[at]ucpress.edu.

Thank you again for contacting us. We hope we've answered some of your concerns and questions about this difficult decision. We regret that we are not able to respond individually to each of you.

Frank Kramer, Owner
Harvard Book Store

-----Original Message----- From: "Curtis Michael Brown" To: frank[at]Harvard.com
Cc: MLamphier[at]Harvard.com, ADarling[at]Harvard.com, CHorne[at]Harvard.com
Subject: Finkelstein event
Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2005 14:44:54 -0400

Dear Mr. Kramer,

I am writing because I understand that you have rescinded an invitation to the author of "Beyond Chutzpah" to introduce his book at the Harvard Bookstore on September 29.

I'm sure you're receiving a great deal of correspondence right now, but I'm hoping that you can explain to me what sort of pressure was put on the bookstore and by whom, and how you arrived at your decision to respond to it as you did.

If you were anxious to appear not to be "taking sides," then you have squandered that appearance by disinviting Mr. Finkelstein. Mr. Dershowitz has a book of his own coming out this month; you could have invited him to present it. That course of action would have headed off any serious charge of bias, while avoiding sending out the very unfortunate message that your decision has created.

Barnes and Noble, you may have heard, has arrived at a decision similar to yours. In their case the decision is transparently cynical, as they still have plans to host an event for Dershowitz's new book. Business is business, the bottom line the bottom line. But the Harvard Bookstore has always seemed more than a business; it is also something of a community space, like a public forum. In an age where anyone can order any book in your stock from Amazon and thereby save themselves a few dollars, people continue to patronize bookstores like yours because they associate them - albeit vaguely - with a commitment to "community," meaning a commitment to books and public discourse that transcends political and corporate pressures. Your decision is unworthy of the bookstore's history and its reputation. It will prompt many people to revisit their assumptions about differences of mission and ethics between your store and mega-corporate entities like B & N. I know I have.

Yours truly,
Curtis Brown



-----Original Message-----
From: "Tanweer Akram"
To: Frank Kramer
Subject: Prof. Finkelstein's book

Dear Frank,

Thank you for your email in reply to my earlier email. Every time that Ivisit Cambridge, MA, I visit Havard Bookstore. I am deeply disappointed to learn that the bookstore has "decided not to sponsor an event" with Prof. Norman Finkelstein after intially thinking of holding "an event on September 29th" because you claim that "controversy between Professor Finkelstein and Mr. Alan Dershowitz had taken on a distinctly personal cast."

The "pesonsal cast" or personality issues are completely irrelevant to the merits of Professor Finkelstein's scholarly research and findings, which happens to show that Mr. Dershowitz has engaged in heavy lifting of material from Joan Peters' hoax, and is a apologist for Israeli notorious human rights records. Dershowitz's claims about Israel human rights records is in complete discordance with the pubished findings of human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, various Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations and internationally respected observers.

Finkelstein's research is important because it exposes fraudulent scholarship, gross violation of academic and moral standards. Bookstores associated with seats of learning ought to provide space for dissident scholars to tell the truth and shame the plagarists and liars. By canceling the invitation to Professor Finkelstein, Havard Bookstore has done a real disservice to the cause of open discussion and the diffusion of critical scholarship. This is particularly important in Cambridge, MA and for a bookstore that is known as Havard Bookstore since Mr. Dershowitz is a pillar of Cambridge high society and occupies a respectable chair at a law school that is also has enjoys a similar brand name as that of your bookstore.

The claims of estabishment figures, including Havard professors, and spurious tactics of professor who fail to adhere to elementary standard of decency and academic practices should be subject to critical scrutiny. That's why your bookstore should invite Prof. Finkelstein even if it upsets Larry Summers, Alan Dershowitz, Ariel Sharon and other Harvard icons. Let me also emphasize, that authors should not be barred from speaking or presenting because of personal clashes. The honorable thing for the bookstore is stick to its invitation and enhance open discussion of ideas so that readers, include those in the Harvard community who have been subject to Mr. Dershowitz's heavily borrowing from a fraudulent work, can evaluate the merits of Prof. Finkelstein's latest book and decide if the book is worth adding to thier library.

Sincerely,

Tanweer Akram
=============
Tanweer Akram, PhD

----Original Message Follows----
From: Frank Kramer
To: tanweer akram
Subject: Re: Prof. Finkelstein's book
Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 22:23:03 -0400

Dear Tanweer,

Thank you for your note relating to Professor Norman Finkelstein and his book Beyond Chutzpah. Our intention here is to clarify the situation to which Professor Finkelstein refers on his website and clear up what we believe are mistaken assumptions stemming from that posting.

Harvard Book Store was contacted by University of California Press in late April and asked to host an event with Professor Finkelstein. We corresponded with the Press regarding the book, and discussed holding an event on September 29th. However, by late May, the controversy between Professor Finkelstein and Professor Alan Dershowitz had taken on a distinctly personal cast. After seeing via the press that both men's books had become inseparable from the charges each was making about the other, and reluctant to put Harvard Book Store in the middle of a personal feud, we informed University of California Press that we had decided not to sponsor an event. We then worked with them to find another Boston-area venue, without success.

Harvard Book Store supports Professor Finkelstein's right to free speech. Over the years, we have carried seven of his books. Our order for Beyond Chutzpah was placed in January 2005, when the University of California Press announced its publication. That order stands and we will continue to carry Professor Finkelstein's books.

The decision not to host Professor Finkelstein was made solely by the staff at Harvard Book Store. We have not been contacted by Professor Dershowitz, by anyone acting on his behalf, or by Harvard University, in any way relating to Professor Finkelstein. Harvard Book Store is an independent bookseller, unaffiliated with Harvard University.

Harvard Book Store's devotion to an exchange of ideas is undiluted. We choose not to hold an event with either of these two scholars at this time, because we feel that the personal nature of their feud has overshadowed the real intellectual and political debate at the heart of their books. This fall, we will feature a display of books on the breadth of dialogue about the relationship between Israel and Palestine-both Beyond Chutzpah and The Case for Peace will be included in this display.

If you are from an organization that is interested in sponsoring an event with Professor Finkelstein, please contact Alexandra Dahne, Publicity Director of the University of California Press at alexdahne[at]ucpress.edu.

Thank you again for contacting us. We hope we've answered some of your concerns and questions about this difficult decision. We regret that we are not able to respond individually to each of you.

Frank Kramer, Owner Harvard Book Store

-----Original Message-----
From: "Tanweer Akram"
To: ,, ADarling[at]Harvard.com
Subject: Prof. Finkelstein's book
Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2005 10:52:10 -0400

Dear sir or madam:

Whenever I go to visit Cambridge, MA, I visit the Harvard Bookstore. That's why I am deeply disappointed to learn that you have canceled an invitation to Prof. Finkelstein to speak about his new book, Beyond Chutzpah. It is important that Prof. Finkelstein should be allowed to tear apart the shallow claims and lies of Alan Dershowitz and company.

I hope that Harvard Bookstore will soon invite him.

Sincerely,
Tanweer Akram
=============
Tanweer Akram, PhD



From: Peter Thomas
To: normangf[at]hotmail.com
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2005 6:43 PM
Subject: Noam Chomsky

If Noam Chomsky asked you to jump off a bridge, how long would it take you to jump?



Dear Professor Finkelstein,

I have just ordered your forthcoming book, as well as your last one, from Amazon.

I was, however, concerned about your job. Have you found new employment? It must be pretty wearying fighting what seems to be an uphill battle to make your voice heard!

Good luck, in any case.

I look forward to reading your two books.

CO'S

Christina O'Shaughnessy (English Editor)
International Civil Service
Geneva, Switzerland



From: Harry Clark
To: DCobb[at]bn.com ; JPenque[at]bncollege.com
Sent: Monday, August 15, 2005 7:50 PM
Subject: Finkelstein & Dershowitz

TO: Donna Cobb, B&N
Jeff Penque, B&N College

Dear Ms Cobb and Mr Penque:

The Barnes and Noble bookstore on the DePaul University campus in Chicago has cancelled plans for an appearance by the author of "Beyond Chutzpah," Norman Finkelstein, who is on the faculty at DePaul. According to media reports the "controversial" nature of the book was cited; it criticizes the pro-Israel polemics of Alan Dershowitz. Yet B&N is holding an event for Dershowitz to sign his new book, "The Case for Peace", which carries an endorsement by Ariel Sharon, present prime minister of Israel. That is apparently not "controversial." Yet Finkelstein's is the work praised by leading scholars of the Holocaust such as Raul Hilberg, and of the Israel-Palestine conflict, such as Avi Shlaim.

Clearly free speech, fair play and good business require B&N to publicize the works of both authors; controversy, after all, is what sells books. B&N does college students especially a great injustice, interfering with their educations by its partisanship. Let them decide between Dershowitz and Finkelstein; do not presume to decide for them. I will not patronize B&N again unless I hear that the DePaul store followed through on its initial invitation to Professor Finkelstein and hosted him for a talk and book-signing as for Dershowitz.

Best regards,
Harry Clark



To: frank[at]harvard.com

Sent: Monday, August 15, 2005 10:52 PM

Subject: Beyond Chutzpah

Dear Mr. Kramer:

I was dismayed to learn of Harvard Bookstore's decision to rescind a scheduled event featuring Professor Norman Finkelstein.

I understand that your decision was based on the belief that by holding the event it would appear as if Harvard Bookstore was choosing sides. It seems to me that this rationale would apply to any author who has written a book reflecting strong political convictions that others vehemently disagree with.

Harvard Bookstore should reschedule the event, just as Harvard Bookstore should schedule a similar event when Professor Dershowitz's upcoming book "The Case for Peace" is released.

A free exchange of ideas and lively debate is something a bookstore should welcome and promote, not shy away from. I urge you to reconsider.

Jamal Aruri
Lowell, MA



From: Walter Broner
To: DCobb[at]bn.com
Sent: Sunday, August 14, 2005 9:45 PM
Subject: Re: Professor Finkelstein's book "Beyond Chutzpah"

Dear Ms. Cobb

I have seen news reports that Barnes and Noble has rescinded an invitation to Professor Finkelstein to promote his new book. (It was supposed to happen at the new Barnes and Noble superstore at DePaul University in Chicago in September 2005).

Are these reports true? If so, what was the reason? Can you tell us if there were any pressure groups that contacted BN and shaped its decision? BTW, what is the corporate policy on sales of books on current events/political science and author events? Are there any books about current controversial subjects written by academics that you refuse to sell and/or promote?

Hey, don't you guys want to sell more books? Especially ones that are receiving much praise for their scholarship? Is this happening in America? What's going on?

Say it ain't so...

Concerned Citizen, who is considering boycott of BN if the allegations of corporate cowardice are substantiated,

Walter Broner



From: Hubert Murray
Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2005 16:13:47 -0700 (PDT)
To:
Subject: Norman Finkelstein's Book

Dear Mr. Kramer,

I am sorry if you are being deluged with e-mails but feel I have to add my own voice to the torrent.

I understand that the Harvard Bookstore has cancelled a proposed reading and talk by Dr Finkelstein on his new book Beyond Chutzpah. While it is evidently no-one's 'right' to talk on your premises, it does seem to be an interesting book and we know from other events that Dr Finkelstein himself is an erudite and interesting person. Regrettably, in the United States his views are considered controversial. In itself this should not disqualify him from speaking, particularly in view of the extraordinarily close legal scrutiny to which the text has been subjected by its publishers.

The Harvard Bookstore is one of the reasons I so enjoy living and working in Cambridge. One would be hard put to find such a good stock of books served by such an excellent staff. Blackwell's may compete on stock but your staff are in my experience beyond compare.

It seems to me that there are two very important reasons for resisting Amazon.com and for supporting the Harvard Bookstore. The first is the obvious one that your institution serves as a pillar of our community and your financial well-being is important to all of us. The second is that as a pillar of the intellectual community you serve the broad exchange of ideas, a purpose of inestimable importance, particularly in the constrained debate on the middle east. It is this second principle that in this instance I feel you are not serving as perhaps you might. I do hope you reconsider your position.

Hubert Murray



Barnes and Noble Booksellers
122 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10011
Re: Cancellation of Norman Finkelstein event

Dear Ms. Cobb and Mr. Penque:

I am writing to strongly protest Barnes & Noble's decision to cancel the promotional event that had been scheduled for September at the DePaul University store in connection with Professor Norman Finkelstein's forthcoming book about the Israel-Palestine conflict, Beyond Chutzpah. It should be the mission of booksellers, no less than writers and publishers, to pursue and support all avenues of responsible intellectual inquiry and _expression, regardless of whatever pressures may be brought to suppress them. Professor Finkelstein's new book is certain to spark intense debate and unsettle more than a few prejudices, and it is the job of good bookstores to provide the public with access to all such endeavors and points of view, from those of entrenched political interests to those that dissent from them. This mission takes on particular urgency when the subject of a book is the fate of a people living literally under the gun, as is the case with Beyond Chutzpah.

Barnes & Noble abandoned that principle -- at the very least in tacit sympathy with Mr. Dershowitz, whose gambit to quash the book's publication backfired spectacularly but whose connections and influence remain formidable. Coupled with its scheduling of an event to promote Mr. Dershowitz's new book about Israel, this not only smacks of rank hypocrisy but also suggests something far worse: a willingness to sell freedom of _expression to the highest bidder.

Barnes & Noble should restore the promotional event for Beyond Chutzpah to its fall schedule without delay. If this does not happen, I will cease to be a Barnes & Noble customer and will encourage everyone I know to boycott your stores in the future.

Truly,

Joanna Tinker
Buffalo, New York



From: Sayres Rudy
Sent: Sat 8/13/2005 7:51 PM
To: MLamphier[at]harvard.com
Cc: CHorne[at]harvard.com; ADarling[at]harvard.com
Subject: Finkelstein event

Dear HBS:

I just received word** that you have dis-invited Norman Finkelstein from presenting his new book, Beyond Chutzpah, a critique of the new discourse on anti-Semitism and on the paradigmatic "defense of Israel" by Alan Dershowitz. I retain some hope that this is a misunderstanding. But if it is true, please know that I will boycott your store until he is re-invited. Over the past decade I have spent thousands of dollars at HBS, and have sent countless students to you for books and inquiries. I will do everything I can to persuade others to boycott HBS until you come to your principled senses. I and many others who are stunned by your decision and prepared to use Amazon know you will change your minds. Finkelstein's book is an extremely important, accurate, and conscientious work that merits public hearing and debate.

Sayres Rudy
Dept. of Political Science
Amherst College

** From Finkelstein's website:

"Harvard Bookstore contacted University of California Press and scheduled an event for September 29, 2005.

The bookstore has now rescinded the invitation. You might want to express your opinion of this courageous defense of free speech and the marketplace of ideas."



----- Original Message -----
From: Adam Jones
To: info[at]harvard.com
Sent: Sunday, August 14, 2005 8:43 AM
Subject: Re: "Beyond Chutzpah"

Dear Harvard Bookstore,

I have recently been made aware of the Bookstore's decision to rescind an invitation to an event planned for the release of Norman Finkelstein's book, "Beyond Chutzpah." Apparently, this decision was taken for fear of "economic retaliation" against the Bookstore.

Please, people, refrain from kowtowing to irate Harvard professors and the zionist constituency more generally. It is unseemly for an institution that should be promoting the widest possible freedom of speech and discussion, come what may.

Sincerely,

Adam Jones. Ph.D.
New Haven, CT



Read from the bottom: the letter at the top is a response to his response to my first letter

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Frank:

I know you're not affiliated with Harvard. I mentioned my own Harvard affiliation simply to tell you something about my own background and my – till now – high esteem for your bookstore, located as it is right in front of Harvard Yard, where I used to come and go and enjoy countless trips to buy books.

I'm afraid I disagree about your “taking sides” rationale. Mr. Dershowitz's book is long out. Dr. Finkelstein’s book was just published. When a book just published is as high-profile as this, the usual bookstore procedure is a visit by the author, a discussion, and a signing. Instead, the nature of the topic has caused you and other book stores to retreat.

The intimidation of US bookstore owners/managers about this book owes to the terrible period of repression North America is experiencing, one that the heavy hands of the Israel lobby and its intellectuals – Alan Dershowitz, Daniel Pipes and others – are potently shaping. If you were Shakespeare & Company in Paris or Feltrinelli in Rome I wonder if you would care about the “appearance of taking sides.” The annihilation of the Palestinians as a society is one of the monstrous injustices of the post-World War II period. Begun in 1948 with the forced expulsion of 750,000 Palestinian Arabs from historic Palestine via Plan Dalet (engineered by the highest officials of the pre-state Jewish leadership, as the books lining your own shelves demonstrate – Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi’s ORIGINAL SINS; Baruch Kimmerling’s Policide; Avi Schlaim’s THE IRON WALL and many more), it is proceeding apace even as I write this e-mail to you. Given this, were you Shakespeare & Co or Feltrinelli, you might be proud to take sides. Standing up against the perpetrators of great injustice on behalf of the victim is a proud human tradition. Not an easy one to fulfill, but don’t threats from one’s opponents, and consequently fear of economic reprisal, go with the territory?

The following are among the injustices perpetrated by Israel, vociferously denied of course by the claque that applauds Israel’s every action as a “response to terrorism:” the grotesque apartheid wall, the strangulation of the Palestinian economy by the Sharon regime, the consignment of 3.5 million people to imprisonment within the ghetto walls of cities like Kalkilya, mile upon mile of barbed-wire “separation barriers,” and the entire region of Gaza; the decimation of the Palestinian health care and education systems, the destruction of hundreds of thousands of dunams of formerly rich farm land with its fruit and olive trees; thousands of deaths, tens of thousands of injuries of which many permanent, a large proportion of the deaths and injuries incurred to children.

I speak as one who has witnessed all of this “on the ground.” But for those who haven’t, it’s all out there on the B’tselem. Physicians for Human Rights, Israel, Electronic Intifada and other websites. And it is all calculated to consolidate Israel’s hold on the rich aquifers and land of the West Bank and East Jerusalem to make permanent “The Greater Israel.” The settlements that sprawl, like gigantic, faceless American suburban enclaves, over the once-gorgeous, terraced Mediterranean landscape I used to know in the West Bank in the 1980s continue being expanded, thanks to the blessings our President has given them, thus green-lighting Sharon’s ceaseless aggression. As for the famed “Gaza withdrawal,” the highest authorities in Israel have confirmed it’s meant to consolidate Israel’s hold over all the settlements on the far richer West Bank. (See the statement last year in HA ARETZ by Mr. Sharon’s close adviser, the lawyer Dov Weisglas, that the Gaza pullout was meant to forever “embalm” the “peace process” in “formaldehyde.”) As in regard to South Africa during high apartheid, all of this demands that we who know and see what is taking place take a stand. In the case of your bookstore, taking the right stand means not retracting your invitation to Dr. Finkelstein. I would respectfully ask you again, Frank, to reconsider, and do the right thing.

Ellen Cantarow, Harvard, 1971

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-----Original Message-----
From: frank[at]harvard.com
Sent: Friday, August 12, 2005 3:55 PM
To: Ellen Cantarow
Subject: Re: Finkelstein and your invitation retraction

Dear Ellen,

Thank you for your note.

Please read below my email to Professor Finkelstein regarding the cancellation of the event for Beyond Chutzpah. Harvard Book Store is a privately owned bookstore and it is not affiliated with either the Harvard Coop or Harvard University. We have no plans to host an event with Professor Dershowitz.

Sincerely,

Frank Kramer, Owner
Harvard Book Store, Inc.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: frank[at]harvard.com
Sent: Friday, August 12, 2005 12:28 PM
To: 'NormanGF[at]hotmail.com'
Subject: Beyond Chutzpah

Dear Norman Finkelstein,

Thank you for your emails received yesterday and this morning.

We understand your dismay upon learning of our difficult decision not to host an event for Beyond Chutzpah and we regret that we had to be the cause. Our decision to do so was completely our own and not due to any outside pressure. We believe that what started as a disagreement about history and politics has taken on a personal nature and we do not want to appear to be taking sides by hosting an event.

Let me assure you that we have gladly carried and sold your prior books and we have already ordered copies of Beyond Chutzpah for display and sale.

Sincerely,

Frank Kramer, Owner
Harvard Book Store, Inc.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Ellen Cantarow
Sent: Friday, August 12, 2005 10:44 AM
To: info[at]harvard.com
Subject: Finkelstein and your invitation retraction

To whom it may concern:

I was a graduate student at Harvard in the late 60s and early 70s, and have a great affection for your bookstore where I still go to purchase books. I was appalled by your decision to retract an invitation to have Dr. Finkelstein speak at your bookstore (I assume this is what was involved?) In any case the e-mail I received about your invitation retraction involves BEYOND CHUTZPAH, and Alan Dershowitz is literally in your front yard. I was a child during the McCarthy period, and the American climate, especially around the issue of Israel and its critics, is seeing McCarthyism reborn. Your intimidation (the bland catchword is “too controversial”) is something people during the McCarthy period caved in to time and time again: it is symptomatic of a climate in which fear is in the driver’s seat. Freedom of speech and the free circulation of ideas are literally being killed, nowhere more clearly than in writing about the facts of Israel’s occupation of and war against the Palestinian people, as well as its policies, which are the bedrock of America’s neo-con drive to exert “full-spectrum dominance” throughout the Middle East and thence, the globe.

As for Dr. Finkelstein, we are not talking about a loony who has written garbage that “deserves to be heard because it’s his right to speak.” This is a scholar whose meticulously documented book reveals historical facts about Israel, most particularly in its policies against the Palestinian people. These facts are undoubtedly unpleasant for the Alan Dershowitzes of our world, but it is the responsibility of all of us – particularly book stores and publishers – to stand up for freedom of _expression. I cannot express my distress at your decision, and urge you to rescind it.

ELLEN CANTAROW, PhD, Harvard University, 1971



RE: Norman Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah
From: Maren Hackmann
To: MLamphier[at]harvard.com>; CHorne[at]harvard.com; ADarling[at]harvard.com
Date: 12 Aug 2005, 22:19
To: DCobb[at]bn.com; JPenque[at]bncollege.com
Date: 12 Aug 2005, 22:22

Dear Sir/Madam,

In Germany, too, Prof. Norman Finkelstein is typically labeled "controversial." Yet, not only have several mainstream venues hosted big events, but Germany's most sober TV Channel (known for broadcasting, among other things, German parliamentary debates) saw fit to broadcast a live debate with Norman Finkelstein on the very day his previous book The Holocaust Industry came out in German translation. Prof. Finkelstein has also been invited to Germany's major political talk show where he discussed the issue of Anti-Semitism with the likes of Federal Interior Minister Otto Schily, Israeli Ambassador to Germany Shimon Stein, and Protestant Bishop Wolfgang Huber.

Since, thanks to Prof. Dershowitz, you seem to be having second thoughts about the quality of Norman Finkelstein's new book Beyond Chutzpah, I strongly urge you to (a) treat yourself to the galleys, (b) take a look at the blurbs*, (c) check out the media coverage in places like The New York Times**, and (d) judge for yourself.

Publishers Weekly calls Beyond Chutzpah "a formidable challenge to the conventional wisdom on the Middle East." In fact, as the book's proud and happy German translator, I can assure you that Beyond Chutzpah is a real gem.

Finally, not only is Norman Finkelstein an excellent scholar and most gifted writer, he also happens to be an exceptionally talented speaker. Check out his Vancouver talk of May 2004***, and you'll know what you'll be missing if you stick by your decision of not hosting an event for Beyond Chutzpah.

Sincerely,
Maren Hackmann

*See jacket at www.normanfinkelstein.com.
**See media links at www.normanfinkelstein.com.
***See "Is Criticism of Israel Anti-Semitic?" at www.normanfinkelstein.com.



From: Corey Robin 
Sent: Saturday, August 13, 2005 1:17 PM
To: 'MLamphier[at]harvard.com'
Cc: 'CHorne[at]harvard.com'; 'ADarling[at]Harvard.com'
Subject: Norman Finkelstein Invitation

To Whom It May Concern:

As an author who has spoken -- at your invitation -- at your bookstore (October 29, 2004), I am writing to register my concern over the cancellation of your invitation to Norman Finkelstein to speak.  I don't know the specifics of this cancellation -- indeed, I would welcome to hear your version of the story -- but from afar, I can say that it does not look good.  I am aware of the controversial nature of Mr. Finkelstein's book -- and of the close proximity of Mr. Dershowitz's office to your store.  All the more reason, it would seem to me, for you to bring Mr. Finkelstein to speak.  I'm sure you don't need to hear a lecture from me on the virtues of free speech or the free circulation of ideas.  But, my gosh, if bringing Finkelstein to Cambridge to air seldom-heard ideas is not part of your mission, well, I'm not really sure what you're there for.

Sincerely,

Corey Robin
Author, *Fear:  The History of a Political Idea*
Associate Professor of Political Science
Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center
City University of New York



From: Sanjeev Mahajan
Sent: Thursday, August 11, 2005 5:35 PM
To: info[at]harvard.com; customerservice[at]bn.com
Subject: Beyond Chutzpah

Sir/Madam,

It has come to my attention that Harvard Bookstore and Barnes and Noble have rescinded invitations to host an event for Norman Finkelstein's book "Beyond Chutzpah". This action sets a chilling precedent for censorship in this country, and I exhort you to reconsider your decision.

Sanjeev Mahajan



From: Tanweer Akram
To: customerservice[at]bn.com
Sent: Thursday, August 11, 2005 7:51 PM
Subject: B&N's invitation to Professor Finkelstein

Dear sir or madam:

Why have your rescinded your invitation to Professor Finkelstein to speak at Barnes and Noble Bookstore?  Prof. Finkelstein is a distinguished scholar and an excellent researcher.  His new book, Beyond Chutzpah, is an important contribution to debate. It exposes the fraud and hoax of Alan Dershowitz and various others.

I would urge you to invite Prof. Finkelstein to speak at Barnes and Nobles, 122 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011, particularly since you have invited Mr. Dershowitz.  Finkelstein exposes the fraudulent nature of Mr. Dershowitz's book which is based on lifting material from another hoax. 

Let me point out that I have read Professor Finkelstein.  I know good quality research.  I have published numerous papers in peer-reviewed academic journals.  I have taught at Columbia Univeristy, Barnard College, and elsewhere.

If you have any standards and adherecence to free speech, you will invite Prof. Finkelstein to refute the lies of Dershowitz.

Sincerely,
Tanweer Akram, PhD



Dear Ms.Cobb:

I'm writing to express my profound disagreement with the decision to cancel the appearance of Norman Finkelstein originally scheduled for September at your new store on the DePaul campus in Chicago.

The decision to cancel is especially cowardly given that the reason is that Dr. Finkelstein's new book is "too controversial".

I am a frequent visitor to the United States and have been an avid customer of Barnes & Nobles. You will not see any more business from me, and I will encourage those I know to shop elsewhere for books as well.

Yours sincerely,

Mark Klein



From: charles kiddell
Date: Aug 12, 2005 11:47 AM
Subject: Is my book order controversial?
To: JPenque[at]bncollege.com
Cc: Norman Finkelstein

Dear Mr. Penque,

Here is my most recent ordering history from bn.com (my many previous orders were mostly through my work e-mail address).

Date of Order	Order Number	Total Cost	Status	Details
August 12, 2005, 12:12 AM EST	BN71142001	$34.83	Not Yet Shipped	Check status or modify order
August 5, 2005, 4:34 PM EST	BN71012105	$402.99	Not Yet Shipped	Check status or modify order
February 16, 2005, 6:37 PM EST	BN67199385	$723.02	Shipped	Check status or modify order

You will learn from an examination of these and preceding orders that I requested uncontroversial children's books, books by leading American scientists, undeniably mainstream works of literature including books by Chinua Achebe, Jane Austen, V.S. Naipaul, and Erich Maria Remarque, and many volumes on computer programming and the history of computer science.

Now I find that one of the books that I have ordered, Beyond Chutzpah, by Norman Finkelstein (in order number BN71012105), has been declared too controversial by Barnes & Noble. Yet this book, like all the books I have ordered, is mainstream, in this case published by the University of California Press.

I learned this today from the author's website:

The new Barnes and Noble superstore at DePaul University in Chicago contacted University of California Press and scheduled an event for September 2005. Then it rescinded the invitation on the orders of the corporate headquarters because the book was "too controversial."

So what is going on here? The controversy, apparently, is that Alan Dershowitz, holder of a respected position at Harvard Law School, does not like the book's content. So what is that to B&N's corporate office? Beyond Chutzpah is an academic book, written by a university professor, peer reviewed by other scholars, and published by one of the most respected presses in the world. Why would your great American brick and mortar bookstore call that controversial?

If it is nothing to you it is something to me, as a loyal customer. I have haunted B&N stores in Manhattan, Chicago, and Santa Barbara, spending a great deal of money over the past decade. I like real bookstores, and so when I don't have time to visit one I order from one. ...

If you think you shouldn't upset a few loud supporters of Professor Dershowitz who oppose free speech when it suits them, I think you shouldn't lose the respect of a lot of money paying, avid readers who favour free speech. We can shop elsewhere. I don't want to, but you see that if I am willing to pay more on principle I am also willing to permanently take my business elsewhere on principle.

Incidentally, Norman Finkelstein is on the political left, and I am on the right of center. Maybe once I read the book I won't accept his arguments or conclusions, but perhaps others like me would have appreciated discovering the book through the event you have cancelled, if only to criticise it.

Finally, how will you hold your heads up when Beyond Chutzpah is reviewed in the U.K.? when The Guardian, The T.L.S., or The Spectator mention (as one or more across that spectrum surely will) that B&N did not have the courage to host the cancelled event because of pressure from O.J.'s lawyer.

Sincerely,
Charles Kiddell,
Montreal, Canada



From: Matthew Abraham
To: ADarling@harvard.com ; CHorne@harvard.com ; MLamphier@harvard.com
Sent: Friday, August 12, 2005 9:55 AM
Subject: Blacklisting _Beyond Chutzpah_

Dear Sir or Madam:

I'm greatly distressed that Harvard University bookstore had decided to cancel its September 29th event featuring Norman G. Finkelstein's new book, _Beyond Chutzpah: The Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History_. Is it true that the bookstore has made this decision because of fears that, if the bookstore goes forward with the event, it will face economic retaliation? Please do not capitulate to the demands of a few Harvard faculty, who are apparently more interested in conducted a hasbara campaign instead of fostering intellectual inquiry.

Thanks, Matthew Abraham

Matthew Abraham
Assistant Professor of English (Rhetoric, Writing, and Linguistics)
University of Tennessee at Knoxville
Department of English
318 McClung Tower
Knoxville, TN 37996
(865)-974-6942 (Office)
(865)-974-6926 (Fax)



From: charles kiddell
To: info@harvard.com
Cc: Norman Finkelstein
Sent: Thursday, August 11, 2005 7:47 PM
Subject: Harvard Bookstore rescinded invitations to host an event for Beyond Chutzpah

Re: Harvard Bookstore, 1256 Mass Ave, Cambridge MA 021 rescinded invitations to host an event for Beyond Chutzpah

Harvard Bookstore contacted University of California Press and scheduled an event for September 29, 2005. The bookstore rescinded the invitation on the grounds that it feared "economic retaliation."

You can't be serious! A bookstore is about more than making money. You might as well turn it into a shoe store if money is all the owners and staff want out of life.

Hang your heads in shame.

Charles Kiddell



Dear Norman,

Over the past few weeks, I have read with great interest the journalistic pieces and statement from the University of California Press regarding the publication of "Beyond Chutzpah." I am pleased that so many have chosen to support the publication of the book, despite Alan Dershowitz's unusually colossal efforts to suppress it.

Having said this, I cannot understand why the word "controversial" is being used so freely to characterize the substance of your book, particularly by your own publisher. From a scholarly perspective, there is nothing controversial about the book. You simply use the findings of mainstream, almost official, Western and Israeli human rights organizations (i.e. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, B'Tselem) to challenge Professor Dershowitz's and others' peculiar and truly controversial understanding of Israel's human rights record. If anything, I found the book's exclusive reliance on human rights reports issued by Western NGO's to be disappointingly conservative. As you know, the investigative and reporting practices of organizations like Human Rights Watch, specifically with regards to Palestine/Israel, are more often than not tailored to appease Israel and its American supporters.

I urge your publisher to stop characterizing YOUR book as "controversial." To do so is to fulfill the desires of Dershowitz and the other members of the "new anti-Semitism" club. They want to depict YOU as some madman who must struggle to get a teaching job and to publish a book because there is something intrinsically wrong with YOU and YOUR work. When in fact, as your book systematically challenges with uncommon rigour, care, and accuracy, the real controversy lies in Dershowitz's fantastical characterization of Israel's human rights record in "The Case for Israel."

Warmly,

Rohit



Dear Mr. Finkelstein,

I write to you as a sincere gesture of admiration and respect sir. I write to you because you are what Edward Said refers to as the intellectual unafraid to take the unpopular stand. You are not a victim of the professional and academic establishment.

I must admit sir I have, until recently, never read any of your work. And at the moment of writing this small letter, I have only read a few of your articles and some excerpts from your book 'The Holocaust Industry'. I have also listened to your debates with the 'Harvard law professor', who visited my alma mater, University of Toronto, and lectured the uncritical masses on the 'victim hood' of all Jews and all Israeli nationals.

In any case, I have a brief story for you, which would explain how I discovered your name and my recent gravitation to your studies and research. My girlfriend, a high school world religions teacher in Ontario, Canada, just came back from Jerusalem after completing a course on the Holocaust. The International School for Holocaust Studies (Yad Vashem) conducted the course. Prior to her departure we had many debates and discussions (keep in mind sir, till now, and to my embarrassment, I had no idea who you were!) on various issues concerning the visit. We debated how one could reconcile the Holocaust as a universal human tragedy and the monopoly by the Jewish establishment on the term. We debated if one can approach this visit to Jerusalem in the abstract, detached of any historical context and detached of any sense of human rights violations committed by the State of Israel. Many interesting conversation I must admit. Then a few days ago I read from Mr. Chomsky's book 'Understanding Power' a story about 'The Fate of an Honest Intellectual'. The story was about you and Joan Peters' book 'From Time Immemorial'. So I decided to look you up on the Internet which lead to your website and getting to read fractions of your work. To my great pleasure your work deals with the 'Holocaust Industry' and its corporate flavor. How one could pick and choose to memorialize some and disregard others. The very same conversation I had with my girlfriend!

Thank you for being an honest intellectual sir.



Hello Professor Finkelstein!

  I just wanted to say how much I appreciate the fact, that you tell the truth and fight for justice.  I´m so sorry that you are attacked by so many people, because the truth collides with their interests.   It must be very hard for you that so many Jews are against you, but I want  you to know that so many Muslims and non-Muslims as well, appreciate your  work so much. I think the world is better because of people like you, Noam Chomsky, Arundathi Roy, etc.   But I think if Allah gives a human being a good intellect as well as a good  heart, he has to use it in the right way, as people like you do.

  Being a Muslim, it is very important for me to see that there are Jews, who  also try to get justice for Palestinians and critizice israeli state terrorism.  Because of your work, you face a lot of disadvantages, but inshallah you  will get your reward from Allah. I will pray that Allah may give you the best in the hereafter and in the thereafter (I hope you believe in God).  If you should ever come to Berlin, I want you to know that you have got friends here.  

     I don´t know if you will read this mail, but I felt like telling you this  for quite a long time.

  Please go on with your really brave and important work.

  Peace be upon you!!!

  Lale



Dear Prof. Finkelstein:

You are a Jewish patriot! A hero!
I am a German Jewish refugee to the states and we are of like mind.

Dershowitz is among a group of Jews, including Abe Foxman and Marvin Hier (among others) that I call "Professional Jews". The group that yells "Holocaust" every time someone says a legitimate word against Jews or Israel and that makes a living off of anti-Semite disclosures. Elie Weisel is another. When he was in Germany to speak at the start of building the Holocaust Monument he complained it was not big enough, grand enough and that the Germans should feel more guilt..a real schmuck.

Anti-Semitism is at an all-time high since WWII because of what Israel is doing to the Arabs. As long as they keep treating them as "untermenchen" and killing their kids and stealing their land and as long as the U.S. closes its eyes and is in bed with them, no Jew or American will be safe!

Foxman and Hier made Mel Gibson a rich man and I wrote both of them that Gibson owes them a LearJet each. By yelling anti-Semitism about the movie, they turned a mediocre movie into a billion dollar blockbuster. (Thanks guys! Love, Mel.)

Dershowitz is an evil little shit and I have written him in the past and told him so. Guys like this are poster children for anti-Semites!

They will call you an anti-Semite and/or a self-hating Jew.

Don't back off. You are on the money!

Sincerely and with warmest regards,

Ernie Salomon
ERNIE SALOMON-LIVE
KCTV-17
The Voice of Santa Barbara County
SANTA BARBARA



From: Karim K
Sent: Friday, June 24, 2005 4:21 PM
Subject: The letter

Dear Mr. Finkelstein,

I am a little bit disappointed that due to the wasta(connections) of Dershowitz, the release date of your new book keeps on postponing. But do we expect backbone and courage from the likes of Dershowitz? Had he been born earlier and had he been born as a German nonjew, there is no doubt that he would be oiling the bureaucracy of the German killing machine. I think his character is alien to any particular culture, nationality, religion or time. He is completely empty, a human being with no morale. Dershowitz is simply a sad fact of humanity.

Yesterday I was reading Counterpunch, particularly the articles concerning Israel and it made me see the obviously changing tide of scholarly dispute toward Israel. In Germany for example, the work available on Israel almost without exception, nowadays, says the obvious. As far as the TV media is concerned and high profile publishing in magazines like " Der Spiegel" Germany is still lagging behind. It was of course a necessity for Bundespräsident Horst Köhler to pledge his allegiance and unity to Israel in the Knesset. Who said politicians can't act? It was so real I almost vomited.

My mother is German and my father is a Palestinian, who migrated from Gaza to Germany at age eighteen, to study Electrical engineering. I currently live in Germany and I am going to study political science. I have lived some years in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and even a year in Gaza. It suffices to say that I feel rather homeless. I feel particular alien to the modern German hedonism and fashionable Idiocracy. The rootless ness and the exile of the Palestinian people even affects me, a rather privileged young man. I sometimes long to live in Palestine and finally find a home to recognize. Beautiful dreams with a grain of self pity.

Another issue that plaques me is the big possibility that the Palestinian people will outnumber the Jewish population in a couple of decades. My concerns are that the Palestinians barely have a living ground as it is, water being barely available to a great majority. How will the Jewish state keep its identity, seeing that a Jewish majority is a key element of Zionism? Will Israel have to make certain concessions to the Palestinians, or will it turn into a complete Sparta? I personally do not believe that Transfer will be a big option, seeing that Israel despite best efforts never achieved the Zionist dream of a Palestine without Arabs to its maximum level.

I wish you the best of luck and I wanted to tell you that on the scholarly and popular level of the dispute, there is no doubt that you are the winner. Keep up the honesty and the good work.

Your friend, Karim Khayal



From: Pablo Stafforini
To: dholtsch[at]depaul.edu
Sent: Friday, June 17, 2005 9:28 AM
Subject: Norman Finkelstein

Dear Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider,

I write to express my sincere admiration for the person who presides over an institution that can count Dr. Norman Finkelstein in its faculty and to support his continuation as a member of that distinguished body. Dr. Finkelstein is a first-rate academic whose works have been praised by scholars of the highest calibre, such as Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor at MIT, Avi Shlaim, Professor of International Relations at Oxford University, and the late Edward Said, former Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He is also the son of Jewish Holocaust survivors, and the grandson of Jewish Holocaust victims. It is, then, with the greatest indignation that I recently saw the publication of a few newspaper pieces challenging his credentials as an academic and his integrity as a human being. So transparently politically-motivated, these virulent attacks are both intellectually baseless and morally depraved. I strongly urge you to resist these attempts to intimidate DePaul University and stand by the side of one of its most valuable academics.

Yours,

Pablo Stafforini



From: Chad H.
Sent: Monday, June 13, 2005 11:12 PM
Subject: On Beyond Chutzpah

Good day sir. I was eagerly anticipating the release of you new book, slated for a 6/5 release. I see the date has been pushed back to 8/15. That vile propagandist Dershowitz will pay dearly when your book is published. Like a man on death row trying to put off the inevitable....

He will finaly be refuted and discredited and the pro-Israel lobby will go nuts. Let them scream and yell about your book. It will only make more people aware of it. Keep up the great work you're doing. Good day sir.

Chad H.



From: Tanweer Akram
Subject: In support of Professor Finkelstein
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2005 20:43:33 +0000

Dear Dr. Holtschneider:

I am writing to express my support for Professor Norman Finkelstein. I have had the pleasure to attend Prof. Finkelstein's public lectures at George Washington University and American University in Washington DC in the past couple of years.

His lectures are models of clarity. His arguments are based on careful examination of facts and made on the basis of impeccable logic and international law and morality. He speaks eloquently about the issues of peace and justice in the Middle East and Israel/Palestine.

His scholarship is widely recognized as ground breaking. His books on Israel-Palestine conflict is widely read and has made an important contribution to the scholarship. His book on the abuse of the memory of the Nazi holocaust is a profound work of serious moral investigation of various frauds. He has done a valuable service to the victims of the Nazi holocaust, including his parents. Prof. Finkelstein has also exposed a number of academic frauds.

It is not accidental that those who have no respect or understanding of free speech, social justice, and peace and human rights and scholarship often attacked Prof. Norm Finkelstein. It is the responsibility of a university to allow dissidents and independent thinkers to teach and publish without being harassed by a thought police.

I hope DePaul university will recognize Prof. Finkelstein's scholarship and excellent intellectual service to the community and the nations of the world. He is truly an outstanding intellectual in the tradition of Spinoza, Bertrand Russell, and Noam Chomsky. It is indeed a priviledge that DePaul university has him on the faculty. I hope that you shall keep him in the faculty and enable him to publish more outstanding books, essays, and reviews.

Sincerely,

Tanweer Akram, PhD



From: Mr. Shanahan
Subject: A letter from a Mr Josh Marcus on your website.
Date: Fri, 27 May 2005 15:47:11 +0000

Dear Norman,

I thought you might want to read this letter that I sent to Mr Joshua Marcus. I make a particular point of going through the letters to you, noting that you publish ALL you are given permission to publish whether or not they are supportive. I therefore could not resist writing to Mr Marcus and my letter should be printed out below. Above it, on my system, is one of his replies. I should say that he in fact sent two responses ( no idea why). The other one said. "the souls of the departed cry out...open your ears and you will hear them." I have written it exactly as I got it!

Do hope you are keeping well.

Mr. Shanahan
London, UK.


From: Josh Marcus
To: Mr. Shanahan
Subject: Re: Your letter published on the website of Norman Finkelstein
Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 19:23:11 -0700 (PDT)

come now Sir Shanahan ... poor Norman wont post the follow-up email i have sent him ... he must be off my friend to watch another Cary Grant picture ... yes, I do enjoy his laziness ...


Mr. Shanahan wrote:
==================

Dear Mr Marcus,

Your letter to Dr Finkelstein dated 23 rd May 2005 was, I regret to say, in serious error. The tenor of your comment was of the form that NGF published only those letters that were favourable to him. You even claim that ...."you have been reading ALL the letters that you (NGF) rec'd (sic)". Come along now Marcus, YOU can do better than that. Had you bothered to make a proper study you would have found the contrary to be true. Simply laziness on your part.

The letter pages of the NGF website are divided up into years.Turn to year 2004 and you will come across some gems WHOSE INCLUSION FLATLY CONTRADICTS YOUR FOOLISH CLAIMS. On 12th April 2004 there is a letter from poor Mr Irwin Graulic. The man was clearly sick but therapy could possibly help. Mr Max Kuperman hardly covered himself with glory in his letter dated 30th May 2004.The poor fellow required prayers, in his suffering. Then a Mr Robert Cherniak pitched in on 5th June 2004. Such poor scholarship I fear, from you.

You are certainly not the first to make such an ignorant claim against NGF. I want you to place in Google the two names Norman G Finkelstein and Froma Zeitlin. Ms Zeitlin wrote a rather similar letter to NGF claiming that he only published flattering letters. Dr Finkelstein rose to the challenge and poor Froma suffered the indignity of being proved an idiot and frankly a charlatan . She had only herself to blame. If you have any problems in finding out about Ms Zeitlin please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Best wishes

Mr. Shanahan
London, UK.

P S Sorry I cannot spare you any more of my time.



From: joshuasmarcus[at]yahoo.com
Subject: really courageous
Date: Mon, 23 May 2005 22:06:03 -0700 (PDT)
Dear Mr. Finkelstein:

You know what would be really courageous? If you printed all the letters you received, not just the ones from people who admire you .... Ive been reading all the letters you rec'd ... and .... you must be kidding.... there is more syrup in those things than on a Sunday morning at IHOP. You, and the people that write you those puffy letters, obviously have too much time on you hands.

Joshua Marcus
WO, NJ



From: John
Subject: Beyond Chutzpah
Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 12:55:46 -0700 (PDT)

Three ways that Dershowitz is helping you:

(1) The more that Dersh attacks you, the more books you will sell. Controversy helps you.

(2) The closer that Dershowitz ties you to Noam Chomsky and Alexander Cockburn, the better it is for for you. Chomsky and Cockburn are more famous than you (with all due respect to you - Chomsky was speaking at antiwar rallies when you were still in junior high school).

(3) The more Dershowitz mentioned the Joan Peters book, the worse it is for him, and the better for you. Most people have forgotten about the Peters book.

One way that Dersh is shooting himself in the foot:
claiming that he really REALLY **DID** write the book, The Case for Israel. It would be in his interest to plead that "my ghostwriter screwed up."

Cheers,

John



Subject: From an American in Paris
Date: Thu, 12 May 2005 15:11:52 -0700

Dear Norman Finkelstein,

I'm the blonde writer-type who approached you after your talk yesterday at Cal State Fullerton. I just wanted to reiterate here how very much I admire and appreciate your boldness and clearsightedness in countering the American consensus on anti-Semitism, Israel-Palestine, and related matters. It is so rare--and so necessary--that someone puncture the prevailing national pieties; most of academic "discourse" is about reiterating them (with varying flourishes) ad nauseam.

And this is such a vital subject. I suppose it is odd that I--a cultural critic--am so "exercised" about the Middle East; I became that way after September 11 and the launching of the so-called war on terrorism"(which coincided, I might add, with my moving to France and noting the wildly different coverage of matters Palestinian there). I have yet to publish a word on the subject--and perhaps never will: being of German descent, I am without doubt worst positioned to weigh in--but I am that much MORE grateful that someone of your eloquence, precision, toughness and (if I may callously say so) "well-placedness" does so in my stead. I know--I saw yesterday again--how much you are attacked for articulating the views you do--"self-hating Jew," "traitor to the Jewish cause" etc--whirl about you, but at least...they let you stand. It would be different if an Arab or a German--or indeed ANY non-Jew--made your arguments with any force. Just as men cannot make the claim that sex harrassment is overstated, first-generation Germans cannot make the point that anti-Semitism is overstated. We each rely on responsible members of the OTHER group to make those necessary points for us. So I want to thank you for fighting the good fight-- and for fighting it with such humor, class, and style as well.

Might I just add an anecdote about which you may or may not be aware? Living in Paris for the past several years, I have been especially resentful of the (in my view) totally wrongheaded accusations of anti-semitism leveled at France (it is in France, by the way--and in French that I discovered your wonderfully acute book, The Holocaust Industry!) I live inthe Marais and move in almost exclusively Jewish circles in Paris, and let me tell you: those circles are not, and do not feel, discriminated against in the least. Every French Jew I know personally will tell you what is the apparent truth about France: that is is the North-African immigrants who are the object of terrible prejudice and discrimination--not, by any stretch, the Jews. These same North African immigrants, however (themselves ghettoized, impoverished, and resented) are the ones--the only ones--on whom France's whole reputation for anti-semitism is based: THEY have sided with the Palestinians since the second intifada and their younger, more rebellious members have occasionally addended an act of vandalism against a Jewish cemetery to the other petty and not-so-petty crimes with which they are routinely associated. North-Africans commit the vast majority of crimes in France--and they are consequently prohibited on a regular basis from renting aptmts, taking jobs; they are mistreated, ostracized and sometimes murdered for sport (I can provide "documentation" on this!): so far from being representative of the French population: they are in many ways its scapegoat and nemesis.

But of course the French have become terrifically sensitive to Israelo-american accusations of anti-semitism--so much so, that anti-semitism now lends itself to almost farcical exploitation. Take last summer. I had just arrived with my Jewish New Yorker fiance in Paris when we saw that all five major papers in France were filled with front-page news of an anti-semitic outrage in the metro. A girl--"Marie"--had been accosted by someArab kids who took her for a Jew and had called her "dirty Jew," pushed her and her baby around, torn her hair, and drawn a swastika on her stomach. She reported this to police and set off--literally--a month of intensive front-page-covered investigation, editorializing, and fury. President Chirac, the mayor Delanoe, and all major political figures in France issued impassioned and calls to arms. My fiance pointed out that being roughed up in the metro didn't seem to merit THAT much attention; in the same period several Arab youths were murdered in Paris; they got mentioned and forgotten on page 34. To cut to the chase: After a month of intensive investigation and examination of metro video cameras none of which turned up any evidence of the incident, the girl, whose mother had previously called her schizophrenic, emerged to say that she had made up the whole story to win the attention of her boyfriend who was neglecting her. She'd drawn the swastika on her own stomach because, as she said, "it was the easiest way to get attention."

Indeed. Far from being a haven of anti-semitism, France is the opposite--a hypersensitized place where even a girl named MARY (!) can dominate the media for a month by casually claiming to be victimized by anti-semitism....and get away with it. Because of course, the ensuing editorials in the Monde and Figaro largely claimed that "oh well, THAT one was invented, but maybe it was GOOD because now we are sensitized to the things that COULD happen in our culture..."

Sorry if I have protested too much. I just thought it was a story that might possibly provide an international counterpart to your Columbia University story--one that was not, as far as I know, at all publicized in the US, even though it dominated the news media in France for the whole month of July 2004.

Thank you so much for renewing my faith in truth-telling.

Warmly,

An American in Paris



From: Frank R.

Dear Norman,

I recently watched the documentary "Quand le soldat Volodia filme la guerre (When soldier Volodia films war)" and was so horrorized by it that I decided to write to you about it.

Let us imagine a place that has relentlessly been bombed for the last six years. A place where its inhabitants are terrorized that a rocket may fall on their houses day and night. A place where its residents cannot even go out for fear of being shot at by snipers. A place surrounded, encircled and closed off by one of the most powerful armies in the world. Let us guess what place we are referring to. No, it is not Tulkarem, Gaza or Jenin. It is not Stalingrad in 1941 either. Welcome to Grozny, Chechnya, Russia's current gulag in the XXIst century.

The big difference between Tulkarem, Stalingrad and Grozny is that whatever occurred in the first two cities was reported to some extent. Grozny has not been as fortunate. Russia's authorities have closed off the city and its outskirts and have forbidden foreign and even Russian journalists from entering Chechnya. It is the images that count, they have learnt. It is therefore not surprising that some of the most execrable human rights violations are being committed on a daily basis without capturing the world's attention.

Started in 1999 after a series of bombings in Moscow that have been widely attributed to the FSB, Russia's secret service, the second war of Chechnya would be for Russia's authorities nothing more that an unpleasant souvenir. The situation in Chechnya would find itself now in a "process of normalization". The operations of the Russian army would be justified by the fight against "radical Islamic terrorism", an enemy that Putin wants to combat by all means like his counterpart in the White House. But this is where official propaganda starts and finishes. The events of Beslan and the killing of Aslan Maskhadov remind us that the situation in the Caucusus is not only not placid, but that it risks to spread to neighboring republics like Ingushetia or Daghestan.

By stressing "international terrorism" as the mantra behind the conflict, Putin has tried to strike a cord with Western democracies and find a common ground that would justify any violation of human rights without having to explain anything or offer any type of excuses. Because the catch word of "Islamism" or "Islamic terrorism" catalyses the Judeo-Christian fear of Islam and its modern day radical "bomb-making barbars", thus eliminating any superfluous ethical consideration from the picture. Because "terrorism" has no cause whatsoever other than the intrinsic evil nature of its perpetrators. Therefore no country would ever speak to "terrorists" and even democracies would submit them to conditions of detention reminiscent of the most murderous dictatorial regimes ever. So-called democracies would thus indulge in such practices like the cases of Guantanamo Bay, Abou Ghraib or Israel's Khiam prison in Southern Lebanon would suggest. Naming an enemy "terrorist" serves to eliminate any hint of humanity and to justify the most obscene excesses. The massacre may start.

Because when it comes to Chechnya we may debate whether the often devalued word of genocide would apply. But when it comes to massacres, the reports and investigations carried out by NGOs and the few international observers that have witnessed the destruction of an entire people portray a devastating picture of the conflict that has yet to reach international media outlets for the most part. We may refer here to the Russian Human Rights Organization Memorial and the French courageous journalist Sophie Shihab, from Le Monde, who has managed to enter Chechnya several times avoiding checkpoints or sneaking by them disguised as a Chechen woman. Or to American photographer Stanley Green, who published "Open Wound, Chechnya 1994-2003", a collection of pictures of life and death in the ghost town of Grozny as its citizens were being slaughtered pitifully on a daily basis. Another brave journalist is Russian Anna Politovskaya, who has published books like "A dirty war, a Russian reporter in Chechnya" or "A small corner of hell, dispatches from Chechnya" in which she describes the horrors being carried out. She was "mysteriously" poisoned on the plane carrying her to Beslan, site of last September’s murderous siege, for long opposing Russian policy in this area of the Caucusus. It is obvious that the Russian authorities did not want any "unpleasant" and "uninvited" guests. Much less journalists that have witnessed the scale of the massacres and deviate from the Kremlin’s official stance. Politovskaya later disagreed with the Kremlin’s version of events and claimed that the Russian intelligence services had decided to attack the school from the beginning thus eliminating any possibility of negotiation, as the siege takers wanted. She would know, as she had already been part of the negotiating team in the Moscow theater siege of October 2002. Do not worry about her, she recovered and hopefully will continue to enlighten us as to what is occurring in this small republic in the Caucusus. She most recently received the 2004 Antonio Russo Prize, a prize dedicated to a war correspondent killed in Georgia because he "discovered" things that he had not to discover on the responsibilities of the Russian army in Chechnya.

Every once in a while, however, some images surface, some pictures of a murderous raid, of tortured relatives, or some graphic material showing the true extent of bestiality practiced there. "When the soldier Volodia films war (Quand le soldat Volodia filme la guerre)" by French director Mylène Sauloy constitutes a precious albeit unbearable testimony of the repulsiveness of the situation in Chechnya and the silence it surely does not deserve. A Russian soldier, Volodia, films the war in Chechnya, his war, and the destruction of the village of Komsomolskoye, south of Grozny. With all innocence. "When the soldier Volodia films war" shows original footage of the soldier's video and pretends to enquire into what exactly happened in Komsomolskoye. Survivors of the massacre are traced in Belgium, France and Turkey and offer their comments while they watch the images, often to recognize relatives or neighbors executed or killed under torture.

Besides the daily bombardment of Grozny, the destruction of the village of Komsomolskoye in March 2000 attested to the brutality of the methods used by the Russian forces. In the video that the soldier himself later sold to Chechens (hence the fact that it became public), Volodia shows how the Russian army uses the civilian population as human shields and then offers images of the capitulation of 200 Chechen fighters. Here is how Human Rights Watch reported the incident, which left according to the accounts 600 to 1,000 people dead civilians for the most part. Most of the city of Komsomolskoye was razed to the ground.

" Nazran, (March 23, 2000) -- Russian forces trapped more than 2,000 civilians during a bombardment in Chechnya earlier this month, Human Rights Watch said today. The civilians were detained for four days in the besieged village of Komsomolskoye, some thirty kilometers south of Grozny.

Russian forces began to shell Komsomolskoye on March 4 to dislodge Chechen fighters who were trying to break through to the Chechen lowlands. On March 5, without warning, Russian warplanes, helicopters, tanks, artillery and mortar units unleashed a ferocious assault on Komsomolskoye, aimed at fighters present in the village. More than 2,000 civilians fled as far as a Russian checkpoint about 500 meters from the village, along the main exit route, where they were trapped en masse in the open air.

Russian forces did not permit males between the ages of ten and sixty to pass the checkpoint. The vast majority of female civilians also did not leave, fearing their absence would invite the beating and/or detention of their male relatives (continues)".

In the video 200 fighters are promised "amnesty" if they submit their guns and capitulate. They are tricked by the Russian generals who negotiate with the leaders of Chechnyan resistance by using the bait that President Putin has passed a decree announcing an amnesty to boivicks or Chechen fighters who abandon their weapons. They accordingly do so. First those with severe injuries, then others. Then in an "unexpected" turn of events they are ordered to get naked and put into wagons or trucks in conditions in which cattle would not even endure. While being kicked by the Russian soldiers. When they get to the army base, the soldiers open the trucks and corpses start falling. Others, few, not more than twenty, manage to survive. Out of the 200 fighters approximately 130 would be executed instantly or would die under torture, 50 others would perish while in the trucks and only 20 managed to survive. Those survivors exiled in Europe confirm these facts and what is even more troubling, the images prove these assertions to the point that no doubts remain.

The images are totally terryfying. Two of the survivors who surrendered, now in Europe, show the wounds they received as the soldiers started shooting around just to have fun. Particularly disgusting was one of the pastimes of Russian soldiers, which consisted of cutting the ears of the prisoners. One is shown getting into a truck with one of the soldiers shouting and laughing, « look his ear is dangling out » and in fact it is possible to observe a former fighter with a mangled ear that barely remains attached to his head. Another combatant is shown while being captured. He is taken out of a hole with gangrene in his leg. The soldiers joke, « should we kill him now or later » and pose for pictures branding their guns or pointing them to the fighter's face, who's lying on the ground. One of the survivors in Europe recalls that he saw the body of this particular fighter when the Russian soldiers brought trucks with corpses to the village so that their relatives could recognize them and, after paying a bribe, the normal procedure, take them in order to bury them. His throat had been slit and one of his ears was missing.

The Russian Army does not maintain the monopoly of bestiality. Of course Americans were at least partially responsible for doing exactly the same in Afghanistan by leaving Taliban prisoners at the hands of the Northern Alliance in Kunduz. And on that occasion not dozens but hundredths of prisoners died either due to the transportation methods or to the Northern Alliance brutality, whose members for instance shot at random through the sealed compartments in order to make some ventilation possible. In total contempt for human life. Hundredths or even thousands of fighters that had surrendered were killed in that episode. Some would be executed and buried in the desert, others would die while being transported and only a handful would remain alive. It is claimed that dozens of American special forces supervised the massacre. No wonder that the Pentagon has no interest in opening an investigation, even members of the Northern Alliance or the truck drivers who were willing to make public what they knew were later murdered. Afghan journalist Najibullah Quarishi, who collaborated with foreign crews inquiring about the massacre, was beaten almost to death and still wonders how he managed to survive. He left the country for fear of reprisals. Maybe by General Dostum’s henchmen, the Afghan warlord who has become American protégée and minister in the current Afghan government, and whose brutality even the Taliban would find difficult to match.

Israeli apologists should be reminded of Sabra and Shatila. One of them being Andre Glücksmann, the big defender of the Chechnyan cause in France – perhaps due to sincerity or possibly, as other Israeli protectors, to stave off criticism of Mother Israel's practices with the familiar mantra of "others commit worse massacres". All these do not constitute incidents worth investigating by international legal bodies I guess.

Regardless of the discussion of the comparison and relativity of this particular crime with other massacres, the clear faces of those young men as they appear on this video about Chechnya while they surrender, thinking that the Russian offer is sincere, who later would be killed, tortured, parts of their bodies missing, those injured dying while being transported, as shown by the video itself, will haunt you if you manage to endure its 40 minutes of content. Because this war crime, committed by the Army of a country member of the Council of Europe, an institution with high regard about human rights, cannot go unpunished and should at least be investigated. Like the massacre in Kunduz. The European Court of Human Rights, often referred to informally as the "Strasbourg Court", was created precisely to systematise the hearing of human rights complaints from Council of Europe member states and Russia has been a member of that institution since February 1996. Because the images of naked corpses falling from the trucks or the wagons, being piled up on the ground, with signs of torture, dehydrated, bony and emaciated due to the torture and the transportation without food or water, were painfully reminiscent of the Holocaust.

Maybe if you have time you could show this documentary to your students if it bears any relation to any topic you deal with. If you do so, I hope your students will have more resilience than the members of the European parliament to whom this video was shown last year. Most could not stand the cruelty of the images and it is not difficult to understand why.

What is equally troubling is not only what we see in "Quand le soldat Volodia filme la guerre" but what we are not able watch. Because let us imagine for a minute what other massacres have been committed in Chechnya without the soldier Volodia capturing them in his home camera. The death squadrons, cleaning operations in small villages, the daily disappearances and kidnappings, the incessant bombings, the summary executions, the "filtration camps" , etc. that have left on the whole around 200,000 deaths according to the most serious accounts. And no, stopping the video or changing the channel will definitely not do.

"Quand le soldat Volodia filme la guerre" ("When soldier Volodia films war"), Mylène Sauloy, France, 40 minutes.



From: burgessak[at]charter.net
To: normangf[at]hotmail.com
Subject: courage and integrity
Date: Tue, 3 May 2005 17:48:51 -0700

Dear Mr. Finkelstein,

I am writing to you today to express my profound admiration for your courage, your humanity, your intelligence and integrity. I confess I only know about your ideas from recorded talks, interviews and your website -- I haven't read your books but am looking forward to reading them. Even so you have become something of a hero to me and my family. I just listened to your BBC interview and it brought tears to my eyes and I couldn't resist writing to tell you how I felt. I hope you don't mind a complete stranger sharing a bit of my family's story with you -- I realize you are a very busy man.

My mother was a holocaust survivor although she never suffered the hell of concentration camp or slave labor. About thirty of her relatives were killed by the Germans. She was born in Amsterdam, was about the same age as Anne Frank, in fact, lived near Anne Frank and probably visited the same ice-cream shop that was popular in that area. She even looked a bit like Anne Frank. But my mother's mom (she and my mom's father had just separated) decided that it was too dangerous to stay in Amsterdam (they had several close calls) and so she made arrangements for my mom and my mom's brother to be "dived" in the countryside of Holland. At first, my mom was shuttled from one family to another because each place became too dangerous where she was but she finally ended up spending most of the war in hiding with a non-jewish Christian family on a farm near the town of Ellecom (near Arnhem). Her younger brother was "dived" with another such non-jewish family consisting of two brothers and their father who were hiding a number of children on their farm. They had a system of alerting the kids in case the Germans came and the kids were supposed to run like hell if the bell was rung. The Germans came, the bell was rung and they all ran (my mom's brother was 7 or 8 years old). Luckily, he hid in the barn of a good, non-jewish family who was willing to take him in and hide him. The Germans sent the brothers and the father off to concentration camps where they died. What unforgettable examples of courage are the ordinary people who risked their lives and lost their lives helping to hide my mom and uncle. Doubtless, there are many such stories of unsung heroes.

My mother came from a middle-class Jewish family: her father was a psychiatrist. She, like your mother, detested Germans -- all Germans. Ironically, she taught German and she loved German music and poetry. Gradually, to her great relief, she gave up teaching German and just taught French and English. She used to tell the story of her war experiences at the college where she taught. She would pin on her yellow star and explain what she and her family had gone through. Her talk was intense, emotional, shocking but made all the more impressive because my mom (a beauty in her day) always exhibited a special reserve and elegance. For a time, she decided to stop giving her talks because she thought that her talks lent support to the brutal, apartheid state of Israel, which she detested. Then she changed her mind, gave her talk a couple more times but also took the time to express her strong opposition to Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. She died two years ago of leukemia. She would have admired your truth-telling, your class and your courage.

With tears in our eyes, we salute you.

Aaron Burgess



From: Michael Bienstein
Subject: Compliments, Jedwabne and questions
Date: Sun, 1 May 2005 09:59:48 -0700

Dear Mr. Finkelstein,

I was recently given a copy of your book "The Holocaust Industry" to read by an Egyptian friend of mine. I found a lot of it to be hard hitting and really said a lot of what I'd thought for a while ("Jews are better" really hit home). Some parts made me reel with shock. After re-reading it and researching the people involved though (believe it or not, I'd never heard of Elie Wiesel!), I think it is a masterpiece.

I have a question to ask you, but before that you should know why I want to know. My name is Michael Bienstein and my grandfather was Yitzkhak/Issac Neumark, who managed to escape from the burning barn at Jedwabne, Poland on 10 July 1941. Even though this pogrom had been written about in the 60's and a book of testimony published in 1980, when Jan T Gross wrote a book in 2000 about this pogrom, all of sudden it became famous and a big debate ensued in Poland. You wrote a scathing review of this book that you have on your web site. In that article you wrote "But the claims on Poland are not tied to individual victims or their heirs coming forward. In fact, the Holocaust industry is laying claim to hundreds of thousands of parcels of Polish land valued in the many tens of billions of dollars. Gross can hardly be unaware of this."

I am unaware of this and if it is the case, and they are using Jedwabne to do it, I want to know about it. I researched this a bit over the past 3 weeks on the internet. I found nothing. On the claims conference web site I saw a Polish man whose family owned a textile factory in Lodz that was taken by the Nazis. This is their big case (See the PS). I got in contact with a man who had corresponded with my grandmother in the mid 90s about the pogrom as he was putting up information on the web about it. He told me "I don't know of any formal claims by survivors/descendants. Most of us weren't interested in money. We wanted the moral judgment." I agree with this.

---

I read some of what you wrote where you describe yourself as having integrity but not courage. I disagree. You are obviously very courageous to say what you do and to go regularly into the path of danger in the occupied territories. I have not been back since 1994 when I went on a youth training program with Hashomer Hatzair. I became a communist there rejecting left wing Zionism for Trotskyism and when I came back to Australia got active. I don't see any future for the Palestinians outside the struggle to reverse capitalism throughout the region. I quit politics in large part because it seems so impossible. It seems bizarrely ironic that Martin Buber is more and more discussed when I broke from this sort of conception. It would be a lot better if activists would look to Jabra Nicola. As for me, I had already been opposed to Oslo because it gave almost nothing and would just make the situation worse. My third cousin was doing his last year of the army at the time and he was loaned out by Military Intelligence to the Education Ministry to write programs to teach high-school kids Arabic. I thought "well at least that's something good about Oslo." He replied "you foreign Jews are so naive. It's for us - we're going to have lots of spies ready to go straight out of high school!"

I am only now discovering how the Holocaust is portrayed to the public. You may not know this, but in Australia there are (were?) a lot of Holocaust survivors. My dad's parents were both in Auschwitz and later Dachau. My mother's side escaped to the Soviet Union. Most of my friends had grandparents who escaped the camps too. It was therefore something of a surprise to me to see how few actually survived the camps as documented in your book. Because I grew up surrounded by survivors, I never really read books about it or for that matter paid too much attention to what non-Jews were being told. The first Holocaust memorial for the wider public that I attended, I left in disgust because it only spoke about 6 million Jews and didn't mention, say the Gypsies.

I wanted to know if you were aware of two things:

1) I think that one of the most despicable aspects of Zionism for Jews is the contempt we are taught for the elderly and especially those who survived the Holocaust. You didn't mention this. I grew up in Jewish day school surrounded by Israelis. We were taught Hebrew and did all our prayers using the modern Hebrew accent. My father learned his biblical Hebrew with the Ashkenazi accent and we were always taught to despise this as representing the old Jew - weak, effeminate and ready to be killed. Counterpoised to this is the strong soldier-Jew able to defend himself, his people and his land. As a result out of 4 grandparents, only one could speak Yiddish without me cringing in disgust. That was because I knew he'd survived at least Auschwitz and Dachau and pogroms a plenty and I knew he was not weak. The only book where I've read this described is Warshawsky's "Sur les Frontiers" that I think only exists in French.

2) There were riots in Jerusalem in the 50s when Ben Gurion proposed asking Germany for reparations money. The riots opposed this proposal on the grounds that money could never repay the lives of relatives. I found this in "Israel and the Arabs" by Maxime Rodinson.

My grandfather who survived the pogrom and the death camps never got one pfennig of reparations money.

---

At the time that Gross's book came out, the Polish nationalists in Melbourne started threatening my grandmother a bit. She just wants to forget it all in order to avoid problems. When I read his book I really didn't like it, but couldn't really say why. I was kind of glad it all came out in Poland. His book read like a bit of a joke with lots of hypotheses that you don't expect in a real historical study. He was also very anti-Communist. Gross left Poland in 1968. Two of my mother's uncles also fled Poland in 1968 with the anti-Semitic campaign, but they're still pro-Communist. And here is a point that I think you missed: The Polish nationalist anti-Semitic types such as Cardinal Glemp say things like "If Poland should apologise to the Jews, then the Jews should apologise for Communism." During those first few months of Operation Barbarossa there were pogroms all around the Bialystock region as there were all along the border areas of the USSR in cities such as Lvov. The arguments made in defense of these pogroms by the most extreme nationalists - including by nationalists who like to praise you! - is that the NKVD was dominated by Jews; the NKVD killed Poles/Ukrainians, therefore the pogroms were legitimate retaliation. Gross has made a big point that ... Jews were also oppressed by the NKVD and there were non-Jews in the NKVD too. In fact this is the main argument back from the Zionist types I've read too. The logic is that if it were true that Jews dominated the NKVD then pogroms would be legitimate.

Think about it for a moment: even if anti-Communism is accepted as a common political point of view and Communism is identified with Nazism - something I obviously oppose - does the fact that the Nazis were German justify anti-German killing sprees? I don't think so. But this understanding as applied to Communists is there in Gross's defensive writings to his Polish nationalist critics.

---

Did you know that in 2002 the official leader of the Jewish community here in France, Roger Cuckierman came extremely close to calling to vote for Le Pen to "fight Muslim anti-Semitism"? He also told Sharon that he needs a "propaganda minister like Goebbels." My old organisation of Hashomer Hatzair has recently made a provocation circulating a petition calling to condemn "anti-white racism" amongst Arabs and blacks. Things are going from bad to worse.

Michael Bienstein (Feel free to use my name and post this on your website.)

PS: My surviving grandfather was active in the Polish Communist Youth in Lodz during the mid to late 30s and most of my mother's family was in the party both before and after the war. My grandfather does not remember the man who is making the claim for property restitution. I told him about your book and he said "I'm sure this sort of thing happens" in disgust. In 1968 he signed a petition for the right of Palestinian return and the Times in London published the list of names, the Zionist movement told his Jewish boss (ex-Bund) who was expected to fire him. He stood his ground and kept his job. He did not get citizenship in Australia until 15 years after arriving. Just to puncture the "Jews as unique victims" argument, he told me that the German bosses in the textile industry in Lodz made sure that their Jewish workers had coal during the winter of 1939/40 and were exterminated by the Third Reich for this. I doubt that the German families who's property was expropriated by the Third Reich will get reparations money.



From: Carl Hayes
To: normangf[at]hotmail.com
Subject: Re: Your Works
Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 21:06:48 -0400 (EDT)
Hello Mr. Finkelstein,

My name is Carl Hayes. I am currently enrolled in my first year at Carleton University working on completing a 4 year Honor's degree in political science. This e-mail is intended to express both my admiration for your written work and you as a person.

My first interaction with your writing came in the year 2002 when I first read "The Holocaust Industry." I had initially discovered the book through an Internet web posting. As someone who is of both German (Christian)-Jewish decent, I believed I would find the work interesting on several levels. Surprisingly, the book was made readily available to me through the local branch of the public library (surprising only because I had assumed that such a work containing what is known as "politically incorrect" sentiment would not make its way to the shelves). After completing the book, I was enthralled at what I had learned and the conclusions you had drawn. I decided to allow my mother (Jewish) to read the text and ask for her opinion. She also became fascinated with its conclusions. Although my mother was raised in a secular family, her connection with Jewish faith and culture is relatively firm. After completing the book she did in fact confess to me that she had shared many of your sentiments for a long time and that my grandparents (who had lived through the war) did as well. The book generated lots of lively debate within our family, which I believe to have been a positive thing. Your book called on me to "think outside the box" and motivated me to conduct my own research into the topic. I am very greatful to you for this. I admire the fact that you had the "Chutzpah" to author and publish this work. While I am sure that it has created a lot of enemies for you, I am also confident that it has strengthened your relationships with countless others. I highly anticipate the release of your next book and hope things are going well for you. I hope that one day you and I have the chance to meet in person and perhaps discuss your works in greater detail. I would love to have you come to my University and lecture my class on your findings. Should you be interested, please let me know and I will see what I can do. I understand you are a busy man and thus if you are unable to reply please know that I will not take offence. I hope that everything is well and would like to thank you once again for authoring a book that changed not only my perspective, but in many ways my life :-)

Sincerely,

Carl Hayes



From: Heinz Bartesch
To: normangf[at]hotmail.com
Subject: Congratulations, keep up the good work!
Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 21:54:46 -0700

Norman: just visited your website and purchased 2 copies of Beyond Chutzpah - I'll likely buy more and give them out as gifts. I know I've told you before how much I admire your courage, but I need to let you know that I can't be more grateful for your courage and willingness to tell the truth. In reading the letters you've received over the years, I'm sorry to know that you have to go through such hateful attacks and slander. To that end, I can only hope my short note of encouragement helps counter all the attacks you most assuredly will continue to receive.

Be assured, I'll support you however I can. Please let me know if your travels ever bring you out to San Francisco.

Sincerely,

Heinz Bartesch



From: Stan Moore
To: normangf[at]hotmail.com
Subject: Alan Dershowitz gives a completely new meaning to the word "Chutzpah"
Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 18:51:18 -0700 (PDT)

Dear Professor Finkelstein --

(Please feel free to post this letter on your website if you wish, including my name).

As a Gentile, with no close association with Jewish culture or the Yiddish language, I take it for granted that the word "chutzpah" is supposed to have a positive connotation. I believe the meaning relates to a quality of fearlessness and boldness, combined with integrity and honor.

If my understanding of the word "chutzpah" is correct, then Alan Dershowitz cannot be legitimately connected with that word, unless the qualifying prefix "anti-" or "pseudo-" is added.

If Dershowitz has "chutzpah", then the "chutzpah" must mean "dishonorable shamelessness" or "intrepid beguiling prevarication". Dershowitz clearly has a jaded, Orwellian sense of conscience, which leads him to an agenda of self-righteousness overlaid on shameful thought and behavior. Dershowitz must believe that Jewish genes provide immunity from various levels of accountability and honor and truth. When you combine that sort of sensibility with the legal profession, which intrinsically pursues legal (technical) victory as the equivalent of justice and truth, you get a person who can convince himself that any contrivance of pseudo-fact is justifiable in the name of an allegedly righteous agenda.

Making matters worse, Dershowitz applies nationalistic and racial biases to his own underlying sense of "morality" and then becomes capable of extreme injustice and even tolerance of violence against people based on their nationalities, race, religion, or ethnicity. In short, Dershowitz becomes the very evil force that he claims he is trying to fight!

Professor Finkelstein, thank you and your honest, honorable colleagues such as Noam Chomsky for taking the extreme effort to meticulously expose these matters for those of us who otherwise might be baffled by the seeming brilliance of people like Dershowitz.

You have revealed, not only the error, but the motivation for error and the mechanisms by which error is propagated and often paraded as truth.

I believe that all human society owes you a great debt of gratitude, and I express that for myself and trust that many others feel the same way.

Stan Moore



From: Sajid
Subject: RE: Letter for the website
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 08:46:22 -0800 (PST)

Dear Mr. Finkelstein,

As a non-Palestinian, secular, cultural Muslim, I must thank you from the bottom of my heart for your courage in taking the side of the oppressed Palestinians and for exposing the hypocrisy of their oppressors.

Jews and Muslims have much more in common than the Protestant Evangelicals in whom the Zionists have laid their trust at present. After the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is solved, the Jews and Muslims will go back to their historical norm of peaceful coexistence. Fundamentalist Protestants on the other hand will always harbor the Jesus blood libel against the Jews and yearn for the Second Coming when all Jews (and other non-Christians) will either convert or be killed. Therefore, the Israelis and their American Jewish supporters are short-sighted in their oppression of Palestinians as, in the long term, they will find much more relief with Muslims than in the Western, Christian world.

Wishing you all the success in your career,

Best regards,

Sajid



From: "Rozana Hussin"
Subject: Thank you
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 00:10:05 -0500 (EST)

Dear Mr Filkelstein,

I attended your talk recently at Carnegie Mellon Univeresity. I just want to express my thanks to you. I was moved by your sincerity in championing truth and justice. Thank you, thank you and thank you...

Sincerely,
rozana



Dear Prof Finkelstein,

The programme The Final Insult was shown on TV here in the UK last night and it is difficult to absorb the unpalatable fact that survivors are suffering so much financial hardship due to the inappropriate allocation of funds. Especially as this is being perpertrated by those who launch the holocaust tragedy at any critic of Israel however justified, in order to silence them. I've long been an admirer of your determination that truth and humanity are paramount and not up for manipulation when they happen to clash with the goals of the US/Israeli PR machine.

I can only try to imagine the cost to you of having the courage to stand by your convictions in a country that equates any perceived criticism as anti-Semitism even if the critic is Jewish. Here in the UK we have a stronger and more progressive Jewry who are willing to speak out against wrong-doing and don't see this as being incompatible with support for Israel as a Jewish homeland. I have spent time over the last several years working in Israel and cherish the warmth shown to me by my friends there. The greatest shock for me though, is the blanket culture of denial by all of the people I met, that there was ever any wrong-doing on the part of Israel. The fact that these people were occupying senior positions in medicine somehow made it much worse, since clinical detached observation is such a huge part of their lives. I know there are progressives there but I haven't met any of them in the medical world. In fact it is the Palestinians who are far more ready to criticise acts of violence from their own people and much less into denial. I still feel that this denial ultimately works against the Israeli people and their aspirations. Dehumanising another ethnic group is not worthy and shows no real compassion for those Jewish people who suffered the same fate in the not so distant past.

Anyway I wanted to write to say a big thank you for your courage and humanity, you are a brave soul. I also hope that in all of the pain that you have suffered through your parents' terrible experiences and later from your vehement critics, that your life has joy and love in it to compensate for the tough times.

Please keep up your work, the truth serves everyone and if we don't like it then that should motivate us to change our behaviour.....not to try to change the truth!

Very best wishes to you

J Lovell



From: davincirecebe
Subject: A new fan for you!
Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 01:30:46 -0300

Hello Prof, I have just read your 2001 interview with Counterpunch's Don Atapattu, and WOW!

Frankly, I never knew you existed, and I came across the site by chance (I was researching on war victims)but it is AMAZING how clearly you analyze things, and how deep your perceptions are on world politics!

Congratulations, it is a real (unfortunately very rare) pleasure to read TRULY INTELLIGENT thoughts - and I don´t say this lightly.

I was saddened at the financial problems you mention you were going through at the time (2001) and I really hope you have gotten over them.

Don´t get disheartened, I am a teacher in Brazil and I have very similar problems (only living in the world´s most unequal society, at a teacher´s salary, I guess mine are a bit more permanent...oh well:)), but we have to keep up hope!

I am sure George Bullshit´s government - and Israel´s fascist policies, and the Holocaust swindlustry will eventually be exposed for what they are, and you will get the worldwide recognition - and financial return - you deserve.

I always think of Van Gogh...not that it did him any good, but he was shunned in his time, and look at how revered he is today...keep up thinking and publishing, to be sure you´ll always be making new fans out of thinking people who get to know your ideas.

From your brazilian admirer,

Leonardo



From: "Chris Quick" ( exec_ceo@hotmail.com )
Subject: Hi from Boston
Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2005 19:53:06 +0000

Some of your family and mine died in the holocaust. I can only hope that some of my family members had the chance to kick the shit out of your family members before they died, to make up for being indirectly responsible for creating you.

Have a great day



From: "Julia Atkinson"
Subject: Final Insult
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 13:50:43 +0100

Dear Mr Finkelstein,

British TV has become so dumbed-down over the past few years I rarely watch it, but having read your excellent book "The Holocaust Industry" I decided to make an exception and tune into "The Final Insult" on Channel 4.

I'm glad I did - the programme was one of the best documentaries I've seen for ages. It's high time that the outrageous misuse of money supposedly earmarked for elderly Holocaust victims was brought to the attention of a wider audience.

Viewers not familiar with your work must have been stunned to learn that money extorted from Swiss banks and impoverished Eastern European countries is actually lining the bank accounts of lawyers, supporting the Yiddish Theatre of Tel Aviv and backing some very dubious forms of "Holocaust Education" - much of the latter seems to be blatant PR for Israel.

I couldn't help thinking that the JCC is playing straight into the hands of anti-Semites. I was left with the impression that the organization is engaged in systematic fraud on a huge scale, whilst the few remaining Holocaust survivors spend their last years in poverty. The Holocaust hucksters are nothing more than thieves and parasites - one can only hope that "The Final Insult" will encourage people to be a little more critical about the motives behind Holocaust reparations and memorialization.

I look forward to reading "Beyond Chutzpah"!

Regards,

Julia Atkinson, York, England

(Please feel free to post this letter on your site.)



From: George Simon
To: Norman Finkelstein
Subject: The level of diplomacy you showed in 'The Holocaust Industry' is very impressive
Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 21:35:50 -0400

Dear Mr. Finkelstein,

I was born and grew up in Russia, and I have access to sources in a few languages, so I knew most of the facts, that you present in "The Holocaust Industry" beforehand. But the level of diplomacy, which you showed in your work, truly impressed me. Authors saw their books sabotaged for saying much less. Of course, they thought that truth-speakers need no diplomatic skills, and they found out how wrong they were the hard way. You, on the other hand, touched very dangerous subjects and created very dangerous enemies, yet the book is freely available and sells pretty well, as I understand.

Congratulations on a job well done! I am looking forward to reading your other books. I also wonder, if you are planning to research and analyze some other subjects, not directly related to Zionism, Israel, and Jews in general. (Though I understand, that not too many of such subjects can be found in today's little world...)

Good luck with your projects!

(Please feel free to post this e-mail on your website, including my name.)

George Simon, NJ
georgesimon[at]earthlink.net



From: Mark Wilson
Re: A Reply to James Watson

Oh for Chrissake !!!

Last year we were forced to endure the neurotic Ratso Rizzo-like ravings of the aesthetically-challenged Irwin N Graulich (or "Old Mustard Stains" as I believe he's increasingly being called around New York these days - see "Miscellaneous", bottom of Trevor Mack's message, Letters April 16 2004) and now the site gets soiled all over again by some very ugly hatemail from the suspiciously unattractive James Watson (18 Feb).

The profoundly disturbing thing here is that when James writes about his admiration for "actual scholars" who "actually care about facts" (apparently as opposed to Norman), he appears to be referring specifically to:

(1) Joan Peters - the congenital imbecile whose ludicrous attempt to deny the Palestinians' origins - 'FROM TIME IMMEMORIAL' - pervasively plagiarised long-discredited (and discarded) Israeli propaganda from the 1940s and 50s; was replete with internal contradictions and inconsistencies; and, above all, was proven beyond a doubt (first by Norman Finkelstein's exhaustive, fully-documented detective work, then by a range of other scholars, including various Israeli reviewers) to have seriously and systematically falsified and misrepresented virtually all of the key written and statistical evidence (what one writer accurately called: "an orgy of falsification").

(2) Alan Dershowitz - the outrageously fraudulent "human rights lawyer" who took to the idea of torture like a rat on heat and who sits on an occupying power's "assassination committee" (organising state-sponsored murder). But most shameful of all (indeed, absolutely jaw-dropping), we're talking about a "scholar" whose book - THE CASE FOR ISRAEL - not only (a) depends heavily on the thoroughly worthless and discredited Joan Peters diatribe discussed immediately above, but also (as if predicating key arguments upon one of the most notorious laughingstocks of Middle Eastern "scholarship" isn't shameful enough for the occupant of a supposedly prestigious position at Harvard Law School), (b) does so without ANY ACKNOWLEDGEMENT WHATSOEVER - ie wholesale, systematic plagiarism!!!

As one Professor put it: " I can say unequivocally that...Dershowitz's quotations constitute plagiarism with clear attempt to deceive...Thus, his plagiarism is serious and unambiguous".

Further, those sections of the book not reliant on Peters are themselves replete with demonstrably absurd falsifications, ranging from key claims to sources.

Juxtaposed against this monumental outrage against the most basic canons of academic scholarship, it seems almost churlish to add that Dershowitz's disregard for the truth extends to denying Israel's systematic human rights abuses, including torture (in spite of the copious evidence gathered by all leading Human Rights organisations - both International and Israeli - to the contrary).

(3) Daniel Goldhagen - the highly ambitious yet intellectually dull opportunist whose embarassingly crude attempt to use the nazi holocaust as some sort of platform for rapid career advancement - 'HITLER'S WILLING EXECUTIONERS' - was treated as little more than a practical joke by serious scholars. (egs "Goldhagen's distortion and disregard of the secondary literature". "Goldhagen's simplistic and misleading interpretation of the Holocaust", "...his gravely flawed use and interpretation of archival sources", Goldhagen is "simplistic and (shows) contempt for the reader", His book "contains many contradictions", "simplistic, teleological and monocausal",   "...his blinkered, ahistoric attempt...", As one specialist historian summed it all up: It's simply "bad scholarship".)

[Goldhagen gives the impression of a try-hard undergraduate who has spent a great deal of time learning all the academic jargon off by heart but doesn't have even the remotest clue as to what any of it actually means].

Yes, as bizarre as it seems, these appear to be the intellectual role-models, the "actual scholars" who "actually care about facts", that James looks to for inspiration.

You might notice another thing that links these 3 shills together - apart from the fact that their scandalous abuse of scholarly standards is equalled only by James's unbridled admiration for them - all 3 were brilliantly exposed by Norman Finkelstein. And let's be absolutely crystal clear here. We're not talking about some cynical hack like Goldhagen who simply strings together a whole lot of hyperbolic rhetoric, infused with a sprinkling of academic jargon ( the latter entirely emptied of its meaningful content ) as some sort of desperate substitute for careful scholarly argumentation solidly grounded in evidence. No, we're talking about Finkelstein methodically, painstakingly checking and re-checking every key claim, every subsidiary argument, every source / every reference. We're talking about the kind of close, intricate, precise analysis & deconstruction that few scholars/reviewers are either willing or able to undertake. The result (as shown in A NATION ON TRIAL, BEYOND CHUTZPAH, and chapters in IMAGE AND REALITY / BLAMING THE VICTIM) is an absolutely devastating, thoroughly-documented (and always sharply amusing) demolition of this notorious pseudo-scholarship.

Given, then, that Finkelstein lays bare the distortion/falsification at the very heart of these disingenuous polemics (including by way of a series of 'smoking-gun' comparative tables that lay it all out before the reader's very eyes), the task of trying to disprove what he makes patently obvious would seem near-impossible.

And yet, James Watson believes that he's just the guy to do it !!!.

To demolish Finkelstein's watertight, exhaustively-documented case, Watson employs an ingenious, highly-sophisticated intellectual apparatus consisting of two theoretically-based strategies:  one is to put the words 'discover' and 'hoax' in quotation marks [ie 'Maybe you could "discover" another kind of "hoax" for me...']. The other is to suggest that Norman simply "read the title" of the Peters/Dershowitz/Goldhagen books or, at most, "maybe flipped through (them) accidentally".

All of which raises some fundamental questions about James Watson. The growing medical consensus seems to be that he is either:

(a) INTELLECTUALLY DISHONEST (in letters 10 feet high)

(b) a Zionist ideologue, quite possibly of the loony-tune Christian Right variety

(c) a socially-isolated creature who's grudge-filled existence sees him uncontrollably screaming out violent expletives as he types up his weekly hatemail in his soiled undergarments

(d) Irwin N Graulich under an assumed name

(e) a complete and utter dullard who's about as useful to scholarly discourse as a strategically-shaved orangatang (or, indeed, any of the lesser primates - excepting perhaps the red-arsed gibbon)

or
(f) an extremely unfortunate mix of all of the above

Ultimately, the one thing we should never ever expect from James and his ilk is a specific example - ANY EXAMPLE !!! - to prove, or even lend some remote semblance of credibility, to their assertions / accusations / abuse regarding Finkelstein's brilliantly incisive work. Why ?, because, of course, they don't have a f#&%ing leg to stand on !!! (or, indeed, a fucking leg to stand on).

Which, of course, only leaves me to finish with one of my favourite scenes from one of my favourite US television series of all time: CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM -

Larry is loudly whistling Wagner outside the picture theater where his friend Cliff's film is premiering. Walter, a small, highly-demonstrative, middle-aged Jewish gentleman of strong, self-righteous convictions (who Larry later finds out is one of his neighbors), takes great offence:

Walter (to Larry, who has his back turned): " Excuse me, are you Jewish ?"

Larry and wife Cheryl turn around astonished at the temerity of such a personal question from a complete stranger; Cheryl mutters "oh my god" as Larry looks back at her in disbelief

Walter (taking an assertive stance with hands on hips): "ARE YOU JEWISH ?!!!"

Larry: "You wanna check my penis ?"

Cheryl (instantly realising things are getting out of hand and hoping to calm everything down before Larry embarrasses her in public with more loud talk of genitalia):
"...okay...alright...Larry...okay..."

Larry (closing in on Walter): "Huh ?, is that what you wanna do ?"

Walter: " No, no, no, my REAL question is..."

Larry: " Yeah, what was your REAL question ?"

Walter: " What were you whistling ? "

Larry (thinks for a second): " 'Hello Dolly' ? "

Walter: " No it was Wagner !!"

Larry (now with the bit between his teeth): " Oh was it ?!!!, YOU, SIR, WIN A HUNDRED DOLLARS !!! "

Walter (pointing his finger menacingly at Larry): " I want to know what a JEW is whistling Wagner for..."

Larry: " DO you want to know ?!!"

Walter: "...when he was one of the GREAT ANTI-SEMITES OF THE WORLD!!!...You know what you are ? "

Larry: " What am I ? "

Walter: " You are a SELF-LOATHING JEW "

Larry: " Am I ? "

Walter: " Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, yes "

Larry (still hyped up but increasingly enjoying himself): " Well, let me tell you something...I do hate myself, but it has nothing to do with being Jewish, okay ? "

Walter: " No it doesn't have ANYTHING to do with you being Jewish "

Larry: " No it doesn't "

Walter (reaching a peak of moral outrage): " Cos MILLIONS OF JEWS..."

Cheryl (trying to calm things): " alright "

Walter (shouting emotionally): "...WERE TAKEN TO THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS..."

Cheryl: " Okay "

Walter: "...WITH WAGNER BEING PLAYED IN THE BACKGROUND..."

Larry: " You know..."

Walter (almost hysterical): "...YES !!!, AND HE WAS HITLER'S FAVORITE COMPOSER !!!"

Larry: " Really ?"

Walter: " YES !!! "

Larry (pointing down the street in a helpful manner): " You know what ?, they got a Mental Asylum only a couple of blocks away..."

Walter (drawing on Zionist pop-psychology): " YOU'RE in a mental asylum "

Larry: "...I suggest..."

Walter: " No, no, no, no..."

Larry: "...I suggest you go down there..."

Walter: " Where's your Heritage ?!!! "

Larry: "...and check yourself in "

Walter: " Where's your JUDAISM ?!!! "

Larry (looking around theatrically to entertain the growing crowd and calling out as if for a lost pet): "Judaism, where are you ?, where are you Judaism ?"

Walter: " MILLIONS OF THEM you should have learned from !!! How dare you have this, this attitude that you're...'BETTER' !!! "

Larry: " You know, they should put a muzzle on you. You're foaming at the mouth !!! ".

With Ciff's arrival, the argument calms down and Larry goes back to whistling Wagner, only this time much more assertively.

- Regards, Mark Wilson.



From: "james watson" bak2_bay6[at]yahoo.ca
To: normangf[at]hotmail.com
Subject: Put this on your website.
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2005

Dear Norm,

I see you're coming out with yet another book.

Let me guess... it's essay-sized, and blatantly stretched out to appear in book format.  It's puerile, filled with inane attacks on actual scholars, whose books you might have read the title of or maybe flipped through accidentally. It shamelessly advertises the fact that you are Jewish (oh, wait, the title. check.), irrelevant to anyone who actually cares about facts, but indispensible to a hysterical shill such as yourself. It has a fawning review by Noam Chomsky (boy, those are hard to get).

Maybe you could "discover" another kind of "hoax" for me:  how any publisher in their right mind lets you within a mile of a printing press.

Sincerely loathing you,

James W.

P.S.  After you pretty much forced Daniel Goldhagen to destroy your credibility (if indeed you had any in the first place), I'm surprised you haven't just given up! kudos



From: Richard Leveson
To: Norman Finkelstein
Subject: RE: Your Toronto interview with Y.M.D. Fremes
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005

Ref: Your Toronto interview with Y.M.D.Fremes, as posted on your website, in which you say "Yes, Dershowitz is evil, a vacuum salesman at Harvard."

Dear Dr. Finkelstein:

As a retired vacuum salesman I feel I must protest at being compared to Alan Dershowitz. We vacuum salesmen have taken it in the teeth long enough (especially with the advent of Walmart): along with our learned friends in the Encyclopedia industry, we have have had to contend with crushed feet, Dobermans, Jewish housewives and similar life-threatening hazards - being likened to that shameful apology for a human being is the last straw.

Vacuum salesmen perform a necessary task and are responsible for many a clean home - I understand that you, yourself, are a very tidy person; did you ever consider the benefits of owning a really superb dust-disposal appliance?

Yours very truly,
An ex vacuum salesman

(Richard Leveson)

NGF: If he is, then he is a representation of Hannah Arendt's banality of evil. You want to believe that there is something profound in evil. But evil has no depth. Look at Adolf Eichman; he could have been a vacuum salesman. Yes Dershowitz is evil, a vacuum salesman at Harvard.

Norman Finkelstein wrote:
If you can provide the context for this dissent at the top, I'd happily post it, and let the world decide.



From: "James Wild"
Subject: RE: Hitlers Final Victims - The Palestinians
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2005

Dear Mr Finklestein,

I've been thinking about this idea of the Palestinians being Hitler's Final Victims again. If this idea was to be promoted then the phenomenon of pro-Nazi Arabs such as the Mufti Haj Amin el Husseini and others would be shown to have been even more foolhardy and wrong for both Arabs and Jews. It could lead to the Holocaust being seen as the 'first' or 'Jewish' Nakba and the Palestinian Nakba as the second Nakba. Perhaps it would encourage Palestinians to be more understanding of the Holocaust and Israelis to be more understanding of the Nakba. There are many articles on the net and published which claim tha Arabs admired the Nazis but this would be turned on its head by the linking of the plight of the Palestinians with the same plight of Europes Jews. Not entirely original but no-one appears to have said it explicitly except Dr Yair Oron and the late Edward Said.

To quote this website http://www.nswas.com/ "Oron claims that there is a chance for genuine reconciliation between Palestinians and Jews only if the Palestinians will understand the hard and distorting effect of the Shoah trauma, and only if the Jews will understand the significance of the Nakba and take responsibility for their role in its occurrence. The educational system, according to Oron, has been mistaken in its approach to teaching the subject. It should place the Jewish Holocaust in the universal context and develop sensitivity towards the effects of racism on Israeli society – especially with regard to racism against the Palestinians, who live alongside us." Yair Oron seems to be on your wavelength. By "universal context" I presume he means that the Holocaust should be placed in the context of all genocides such as Armenia (1915-1920), Bosnia (esp Srebenica), Rwanda, Darfur and perhaps even Sabra and Shatilla. If this is what he means then yes this would be very helpful. Indeed I am from the UK and I feel that our own Holocaust Memorial Day should be renamed Genocide Memorial Day so that we do indeed 'never forget'. After all if we really are to have a situation where "never again" is possible then we can only do this by remembering ALL genocides including before, during and after the Holocaust.

As Edward Said said (http://www.commondreams.org/) "Like it or not, this is the historical reality," "We must better understand Israelis, and they must better understand us. We must make clear the link between the Shoah (the European Jewish Holocaust) and the Nakba (the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948). Neither experience is equal to the other, and neither should be minimized. We must emphasize this link not for short-term political gains, but because we cannot continue to work apart as two wounded yet incommunicado communities. We have to begin to admit the universality and integrity of each other's experience of suffering. As Arabs, we demand acknowledgement and reparations. We cannot accept that the 'redemption of the Jews' required the dispossession of millions of Palestinian people. We must rethink our common past if we want to have a future, and it is time to honestly state that we are fated to have a common, not a separate, future."

Robert Fisk too has very briefly mentioned Hitlers connection to the Nakba via the Holocaust.

If one wanted to be very controversial one could point out that not only are both Semites (of course uncontroversial) but Palestinian Arab Christians and Muslims may well be descended from Jews from the Biblical era and they may be more closely related to Sephardi Jews than are the Ashkenazi (if one believes Arthur Koestler's The Thirteenth Tribe). And therefore they are the true brothers to the Sephardi Jews and would not have escaped the Holocaust had they lived in Europe. Or is that going too far?

Yours sincerely,
James Wild



From: "James Wild"
Subject: Hitlers Final Victims - The Palestinians
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 22:01:06

Dear Mr Finklestein,

I have just read a collection of essays (of which you contributed) entitled the The Politics of Anti-semitism and I was impressed by your article called 'Counterfeit Courage: reflections on "political correctness" in Germany'. I believe that the German inability to deal with the Palestinian problem clearly stems from their wartime role and that it shows that they still have not come to terms with their fraught history in a mature way. I was thinking that would it not be a good idea to write an essay or book entitled or with the theme of "Hitlers final victims - The Palestinians". What do you think? If we had not had the horror of the Holocaust would we have had the Nakba? Would it not be that all Europe's Jews could live contentedly in the Europe of the 21st century and at the same time a free Palestine could exist by now, if the Holocaust had not occurred? Could not a book show how the Holocaust had not just the Jews, Gypsies, disabled, slavs and homosexuals as victims but also more indirectly the Palestinians? Such a book could look at the psychology of how the cult of victimhood in a nation or a people is unhealthy and may lead to the perpetration of horrific crimes such as has been committed against the Palestinians i.e. how the oppressed can become the oppressor.

It could also mention how some Jewish leaders had distubingly close relations to the far-right i.e. Zionist Collaboration With The Nazis or Dr Rudolf Kastner or just the similarity between Israeli laws of citizenship and Apartheid South Africa and possibly also the fascist states. How dare I say it - a 'greater Israel' (encompassing all the West Bank) for religious purity is similarly distateful as lebensraum for 'racial purity'. Personally I see similarities between some elements of the Occupation and the Jewish Ghettoes. When I saw the movie The Pianist I was immediately struck with the similarity between the German tank firing in the streets of the Ghetto and the modern image of the Israeli tanks or gunships firing on both militants and civilians in the West Bank or Gaza (Israeli snipers firing at children have similarly fascistic overtones). Also the Jewish resistance reminded me of the Palestinian militants (perhaps the more principled militants that eschewed attacks within Israel proper). There is also the fact that the Jewish leadership of the Ghettoes were often corrupt just as many leaders of the Occupation have been called corrupt - strange how we tend to excuse such corruption in the Ghetto when Palestinians under military occupation are not excused so lightly by the Western media. Is it not possible that both situations made an uncorrupt leadership impossible? Such a book or essay could then go on to compare the formation of Israel and the Irgun and 'underground' with the Palestinian independence movement and how similar they are and that the West has been particularly unfair in the conflict by not remembering that Israel too was founded by 'terror'. Thus Palestinians are 'Hitlers final victims' and the Israelis are not unique in suffering terrorism but used it just as the Palestinians have used it, indeed some acts of the Palestinian resistance could not be described as terrorism at all but closer to the actions of the Jewish resistance to the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghettoes. What do you think? Such a book could help Germany come to terms with the problems of the Middle East.

Yours sincerely,
James Wild



Dear Norman Finkelstein,

I am writing to express my admiration and support for your courageous and insightful dissent from the current American orthodoxy that not only smears, as "anti-Semitic," any serious criticism of Israel, but also adds to the "anti-Semitic" equation anti-Americanism abroad and even criticism of Jewish neo-conservatives.  This began in earnest with the Iraq War, when forthright discussion of AIPAC support for the war was denounced in the pages of the New York Times as an anti-Semitic canard.

You are one of the few public voices who confront the sort of nonsensical world-view that portrays America and its aggressive foreign policy as a struggle for freedom, inspired by our high-minded awareness of the Holocaust.  How ironic that a country in which the gullible millions flocked to Gibson's anti-Semitic "Passion" film is supposed to be the positive contrast to Europe (where, to our American horror and chagrin, BOTH pro-Israel AND anti-Israel opinions are given free rein in the mainstream media).   I was reminded of your near-solitary dissent on the recent occasion of Paul Wolfowitz' sordid exploitation of the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz to legitimize the war in Iraq.

Because orthodox opinion, including the chorus of pro-Israel and pro-AIPAC screamers, has so little with which to refute your well-documented arguments, your voice is ignored, even when your views are confirmed independently (as when a recent news report confirmed that Jewish banks in Palestine took advantage of the assets of Jewish victims during World War II).  I am convinced that the disgrace will not be lost on future generations.  The spectacle of our spineless political culture of Holocaust Commemorators and Righteous Gentiles -- lacking civil courage, but nonetheless seizing upon Jewish suffering in order to wallow in self-pity and exult in self-congratulation -- will earn the icy contempt of future generations in America.

Israel and its American friends are of course not solely responsible for the malaise of U.S. foreign policy, which aims at securing American material interests, as well as at making the Middle East safe for Sharon's enlarged Israel, with its restriction of the occupied Palestinians to ghetto-like Bantustans, all in the name of freedom and democracy.  However, more than any other segment of the prevailing coalition of interests, Israel and its friends can claim immunity from criticism by playing the "Holocaust card."  As a result, what used to be called "the last refuge of scoundrels," patriotism, has been extended.  By using logic and evidence to expose the "Holocaust card" as a refuge for scoundrels, you are performing a great service not only to our country and to the cause of truth and humane values, but also, I believe, to the true memory of Jewish suffering, resistance, and protest.

With Best Wishes, Andrew Weeks



Dear Norman, since long i hadn't written to you. but to day is a very special  occasion _ 60th anniversary od liberation of nazi camp Auschwitz- Birkenau. I know perfectly well, who was the main victim of German nazis: they were Jews from the whole European community. But I also know perfectly well that among prisoners were Poles - as the second nation Destinated to the extermination and that Poles - like Jan Karski or Witold Pilecki had told to the free world of America the truth about Auschwitz, Be¿ec. And Russians  and others slavic nations , treated as "underpeople". To day I' am reading the "resolution" of the famous "European Parliament", which omit to call the camps "german nazi concentracions camps"( to not dishonour German nation), which places Poles on the third place - first Jews, Gypsis and Homoseksuals and Poles at the end . Not speeaking at all about Russians prisoners . In  to-days edition of "Corriere della Sera" I didn't at all find  Poles - they added instead "Jehowas". This is terrible performance of poisoned memory of Europe. All these baroness of England, Cohn-Bendits and so on are searching devil where he doesn't exist any more, in the name of the saint "political correctness" . Europe seems to not remember wht's going n o w in the world : in Chechnya par exemple, what's going on in Palestine and Iraq. How to battle against this new lie? I'm very, very troubled.

sincerely yours
Elzbieta Morawiec, Kraków



From: bigmac100[at]sbcglobal.net
To: normangf[at]hotmail.com
Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2005 11:19 PM
Subject: A note of thanks

I want to express my wholehearted gratitude to hear from you what I believe to be the truth about the Palestinian question.  At the ripe age of 54 years, having been through Vietnam and all the rest, never have I witnessed such an overwhelming, completely unforgiveable demonization of a people such as the Palestinians.  Normally, the subjugation and trivialization of Muslims by the imperial West occurs for the usual reasons - natural resources.

The fact that the Palestinians had lived in peace with the indigenous Jews for 2000 years in what was once called Palestine should be the basis for the conclusion that if anyone deserves the right to not be associated with the term "anti-Semitism"  it is they.

To see them stripped of their art, their lives, their water, their farms, their livelihoods, their children, their history, their education, and to be locked away in an archepelago of prisons is most of the time too much for me.  When it gets to be too much I switch on Windows Media to watch and listen to one of your incredible speeches in Vancouver or read one of your articles at CounterPunch.

You truly are a guy swimming upstream tightly holding on to your left credentials all the way.

Thanks from all of us,

a KPFA, Berkeley listener

Ed McManus
Larkspur, Marin County, CA