To: normangf[at]hotmail.com
Subject: Re: Debate
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 20:38:31 +0100
Dear Dr Finkelstein,
I hope that you are well, I’m so sorry for the confusion about the debate. There was an organisational difficulty at my end and my secretary hadn’t seen your emails.
I would appreciate it if you could keep this bit between you and I. Many people expressed concern that the debate as it stood was imbalanced and people felt that as someone who had apparently expressed anti-zionist sentiments that you might not be appropriate for this debate. I tried to convince them otherwise but was accused of putting forward an imbalanced debate and various groups put pressure on me. I received numerous emails attacking the debate and Alan Dershowitz threatened to write an Oped attacking the Union. What is more he apparently attacked me personally in a televised lecture to Yale.
I hope that you understand my position, this is not ideal and I would be happy to welcome you as an individual speaker to the Union in a forthcoming term. I know that the President-Elect Emily Partington would be keen to host you in Hilary. I just did not want to see the debate compromised and given the Irving Griffin Controversy I couldn’t fight a battle on all fronts.
Best wishes
Luke.
From: Norman Finkelstein
To: president[at]oxford-union.org
Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2007 12:25 AM
Subject: Debate
No one has contacted me about the debate. Is it still on? Unless I hear from you tomorrow morning , I will assume the debate has been cancelled. I leave for Japan and will not be reachable. You left me no time to prepare for the debate. I have repeatedly emailed you but received no response.
Reader letters
Dear Professor Finkelstein,
I found it strange when reading the exchanged between Mr. Stannard and Dr. Simms that the main reasons for disinviting you from the event at the Oxford Union seemed to be based on your apparent, ‘repugnant’ anti-semitism.
I found it stranger still that according to the BBC ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/oxfordshire/7110758.stm ) that the Oxford Union has just voted to extend an invitation to Nick Griffin (of the BNP, a notorious anti-semite and all-round racist) and will, on top of that, be inviting David Irving to speak.
Nick Griffin was jailed for inciting racial hatred (involving Holocaust Denial) and Irving, of course, was jailed in Austria for Holocaust denial.
I don’t quite understand why a man whose family suffered the Nazi Holocaust and who has never denied the existance of such a genocide should be refused an invitation on the most ridiculous of pretexts, while clear anti-semites should be invited to speak.
I think you might find Mr. Tryl’s opinion on this amusing:
‘Luke Tryl, president of the society, said: “The men were not being given a platform to extol their views, but were coming to talk about the limits for free speech.’
Please keep up the good work!
Regards,
Hamid Sirhan
It is well known that the position of president of the Oxford Union is often a stepping stone to a political career. By caving in to Dershowitz and co., I am afraid you have revealed yourself as the right sort of political trimmer. A glittering career awaits you, therefore, as a politician in either the Conservative Party, or in “New Labour”. You have the appropriate spinelessness for this.
Good Luck with it!
P.J.
Devon,
England.
Dear Mr. Tryl,
I have read your letter to Dr. Finkelstein today, where you state that “Alan Dershowitz threatened to write an Oped attacking the Union”.
Did you really believe you could escape bullies like D by caving in?
Wrong idea.
D did write a piece in his favourite press “frontpage magazine” titled Oxford Union Is Dead and ending “The Oxford Union: may it rest in peace…”
So you have proof that to cave in to such bullies does not spare your person and neither the institution.
And of course noone can believe that any other discussion with Dr. Finkelstein or any other critic of neocons/militarism at any other time will spare you the next attack.
The only way is to stand up to bullies and warmongers.
As of his own admission in the same piece you did invite Alan Dershowitz to take part in this discussion and speak for his side– and HE declined.
This should be the utmost stretch of fairness, from now on you should ignore D and his ilk.
I trust you are intelligent enough to learn from this experience.
The problem is: do you also have the courage to do this?
I have followed the socalled “Dershowitz-Finkelstein-affair for a long time, using the videos for testing technical network functions, and cannot stop myself from giving you a hint: Dershowitz is so afraid that Dr Finkelstein will make him look very bad again that D will NEVER agree to debating Finkelstein again – no matter how much spectators would like some more!
But without kidding: Middle-east-situation merits serious discussion of several aspects of solutions; to discuss whether Israel and the Occupied Palestinensian Territories should be formed into one or two states and with exactly the people scheduled in the first place was a good idea.
To allow warmongers/Dershowitzes silence dissent and stifle debate is not.
Yours sincerely
Rune C. Olwen
P.S.: And please do not mix up the scholar Dr. Norman Finkelstein with the likes of David Irving, David Horowitz etc.
I personally would find it ironic to put each of the one-idea-in-a-sea-of-warmongering Davids against one-half-truth-in-each-book Alan, because all three deserve the right of free speech just because all three are so adverse to it, and as characters they also deserve each other, but that´s the personal taste of an old cynic, voiced on All Hallows´ Eve.
From: verminlardicle[at]hotmail.com
To: president[at]oxford-union.org
Subject: Norman Finkelstein
Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 18:03:04 +0000
Dear Luke Tryl,
Further to your decision not to allow Professor Finkelstein to speak at the Oxford Union, I must register my abject displeasure at your surrender to the likes of Alan Dershowitz.
Macmillan’s comment that the Union is “the last bastion of free speech in the Western world” is clearly obselete, since all it requires for you to cancel a speaker is strong-arm tactics from Dershowitz, whose own integrity regarding facts and historical analysis is demonstrably lacking. To act in accordance with his wishes is academically surprising, because while Dershowitz is powerful, he is not viewed as a serious commentator with regard to the Middle East. On the other hand, Finkelstein is regarded as an expert.
In your disinvitation to Finkelstein, You said:
“I received numerous emails attacking the debate and Alan Dershowitz threatened to write an Oped attacking the Union. What is more he apparently attacked me personally in a televised lecture to Yale…”
It would be naive to imagine that such attacks are not inevitable: let’s not forget that there are powerful political and economic interests with a vested interest in continuing the condition of apartheid within the State of Israel. With this in mind, to use Mr Dershowitz’ attacks to justify your cancellation is off base. You fell at the first fence.
You then said: “I just did not want to see the debate compromised and given the Irving Griffin Controversy I couldn’t fight a battle on all fronts.”
Your parallels are highly disturbing. The Irving issue was quite different. Using the furore around a pseudo-historian and proven liar such as Irving to justify your censorship of a real Professor with an international reputation is even further off base than bowing down to a mountebank such as Dershowitz.
Can we expect you to apologise to Professor Finkelstein on his website, per Ronen Berelovich’s request of the 24th of this month? Can we expect you to develop some intellectual determination in this matter? Can you rescue the reputation of the Oxford Union by doing the right thing in standing up for freedom of speech?
Please respond;
Yours,
E. Stratton, London UK
Hi, Norman,
Sorry about the debacle over the Oxford Union debate. I read the letters by Luke Tryl and Alan Mendoza at your site. The syntax of the first was barely coherent, and the lies of the second were criminal, and should lead to some kind of criticism from Cambridge, which I believe houses the institution he belongs to.
Tryl is a coward. Understandable, but he should know better. The more that people take a stand against Dershowitz, the less effective his tactics will be. The think tank Mendoza belongs to is named after Scoop Jackson, the senator responsible for giving us Perle and Wolfowitz. That tells you all you need to know about Mendoza. Jackson is probably even more responsible than Leo Strauss for unleashing on the world neoconservatism, which seems to be gaining adherents in Britain.
In the 19th century, Oxford and Cambridge formed the academic model that the US sought to emulate, even to the point of building gothic buildings on her campuses. It could be that they are now following our lead not only into the decline of freedom of thought and the life of the mind but also toward the destruction of civilization.
**
More on the Oxford Union
- The bottomless capacity for falsification at Oxford
(To: Dr B Simms, “RE: Dr. Alan Mendoza - Executive Director HJS”) 11.18.2007 - Haaretz on Oxford and Beyond
(Haaretz: “Are two states still viable?” ) 11.15.2007 - Avi Shlaim on Oxford Farce
(Avi Shlaim: “Israel, Free Speech, and the Oxford Union”) 11.13.2007 - More Oxford Fantasies
(Haaretz: “VIEWPOINT / ‘Israel Lobby’ book may have sinister impact in U.K.; Finkelstein comments at the bottom of this article.” ) 11.12.2007 - What really happened at Oxford
(Finkelstein comments: “Insofar as the lies about what happened at the Oxford Union…;” Reader letters) 11.01.2007 - Rewriting history before the ink has dried
(Dr Alan Mendoza, Executive director, Henry Jackson Society, The Guardian “No pressure put on Oxford Union;” w/ reader letters) 11.03.2007 - More Oxford fantasies
(Haaretz: “High-profile invitees to Oxford Union debate on Israel walk out”) 11.04.2007 - Israeli soldier writes President of Oxford Union
(From Ronen Berelovich (Israel) to Luke Tryl, President of Oxford Union (Oxford University, UK)) 10.24.2007 - Still more on the Oxford Union
(Peter Tatchell: “Free speech threatened by ban on Norman Finkelstein”) 10.25.2007 - More on the Oxford Union
The Guardian: “Intellectual terrorism. For the sake of free speech, British organisations should confront pro-Israel bullies, not appease them.”) 10.25.2007 - Shouldn’t there be a mandatory decent interval before history is rewritten?
(The Jerusalem Post: “Oxford cancels one-state debate;” w/ Finkelstein’s comment) 10.23.2007 - Isn’t it time to seek therapy for his obsession?
(Alan M. Dershowitz, FrontPageMagazine.com: “Oxford Union Is Dead”) 10.20.2007
