Norman Finkelstein, son of holocaust survivors, calls Netanyahu a maniac

Norman Finkelstein is a son of Jewish survivors who had survived the Holocaust. He is also a professor, a political scientist, an activist, a professor and an author. His chosen focus in his research has always been related to Israel and the Palestinian conflict, drawing from his parents’ suffering to empathize with those who face similarly harsh oppression; no, not the Israelis as you might expect, but the Palestinians.

In an RT interview, Finkelstein speaks about an ICC probe into the summer war on Palestine, a Human Rights Council (HRC) report on Israeli violation of human rights and his new book “Method of Madness”.

According to his book, an Israeli politician had gone so far as to cancel a trip to Britain for fear of being arrested because of the HRC report.

Known as the Goldstone report, written by Jewish Judge Richard Goldstone, it states that Israel was trying to humiliate, punish and terrorize a civilian population and was probably guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. (It should be noted that after severe threats of repercussions by his own Jewish community, including being barred from his own grandson’s bar mitzvah, being called “an evil, evil man”, “a traitor to the Jewish people”, the UN’s “token court Jew”, Mengele the angel of death of Auschwitz, the report itself deemed by the Israeli community as worse than Mein Kampf, and apparently the sudden consideration of new evidence that had previously been unavailable to him, Goldstone has retracted some of his statements.)

Often, UK and US politicians justify the massacre with reference to Palestinian rocket attacks; “Gandhi” principles would have solved all their problems. However, Finkelstein has a memory that lasts longer than the average politician (a period that is always less than the average election cycle) and points out in his book that Palestinians have long attempted non-violent resistance.

Finkelstein had himself been witness to the first Palestinian intifada in 1987, which was in fact non-violent, for a period of two years. There was great displays of empathy by the rest of the world, but Israel defeated the movement with brutal repression that continue to this day against non-violent protestors. In fact, Palestine has a fairly long history of non-violent resistance beyond even this example he had quoted. As far back as 1933, Palestinian non-violent resistance was met with repression from the British, with a protest leader beaten by beaten by mounted calvalry. One instance of non-violent protest had even left at least a thousand Palestinians dead,  In the words of Yitzhak Rabin, then the Israeli defense minister, the policy used against non-violent protestors was “might, power, and beatings” — what became known as the “break the bones” strategy, depicted in this gruesome video.(unfortunately the video I had linked to was taken down for “copyright” reasons. Nonetheless, I have linked a new video here)

He also says that Amnesty International , being a grassroots organization, has been somewhat more impartial on covering atrocities than Human Rights Watch had, which had often covered up these for Israel. On the other hand, he also points out that without the recent support from these organizations, public opinion would not have shifted as it has. Unfortunately, although Israel is now seen in a worse light, the public would still often choose Israel as the more decent of the parties involved in the conflict.

On the topic of rising anti-Semitism, he mentions that there has been no real increase in anti-Semitic behavior. Instead, he attributes this so-called spike in anti-sematic incidents to a reaction of people to Israel’s brutal campaigns, as well as Netanyahu’s false claims to represent all Jews in the world. The result is that Netanyahu’s actions are transposed onto all Jews in the world, and the reaction of people to his actions might be directed against the innocent Jewish people that he claims to represent. Finkelstein states that the real problem is Israel’s brutal campaigns and continuous push for war against rivals in the Middle East, rather than anti-Semitism; Israel and Netanyahu should thus take ownership of their actions instead of off-shoring it to all Jews.