Norman Finkelstein Again Slams BDSHoles

Anti-Israel professor Norman Finkelstein has once again slammed the BDSHoles.

A panel dis­cus­sion held dur­ing last weekend’s Left Forum, an annual gath­er­ing of left-wing activists in New York, revealed some star­tling frac­tures and points of dis­sent within the domes­tic anti-Israel move­ment. The con­fer­ence, which typ­i­cally fea­tures a vari­ety of anti-Israel ses­sions and speak­ers, included a panel this year called “How to Solve the Israel-Palestine Con­flict: 0, 1, or 2 State Solution.”

Three of the pan­elists expressed sup­port for a one-state solu­tion as one that is more “just.”

The most sur­pris­ing pre­sen­ta­tion, how­ever, came from Nor­man Finkel­stein, a for­mer pro­fes­sor at DePaul Uni­ver­sity and noted critic of Israeli policy.

Finkel­stein, who caused quite a stir in anti-Israel cir­cles last year when he claimed that the BDS (Boy­cott, Divest­ment and Sanc­tions) move­ment has char­ac­ter­is­tics of a “cult” and seeks to destroy Israel, began the dis­cus­sion by argu­ing that Israel is a state rec­og­nized under inter­na­tional law with respon­si­bil­i­ties, oblig­a­tions AND rights. He chal­lenged the latent hypocrisy within the anti-Israel move­ment (and his co-panelists), which con­stantly points to inter­na­tional law to jus­tify its agenda while ignor­ing the fact that inter­na­tional law estab­lished Israel as a Jew­ish state. “How does one pro­pose to win sup­port for the Pales­tin­ian cause based on inter­na­tional law yet not sup­port two states? That just doesn’t make any sense to me,” he said.

He con­tin­ued to assault com­mon objec­tives of anti-Israel activists. He specif­i­cally took issue with the BDS movement’s claim of being “rights-based” while again not rec­og­niz­ing Israel’s right to exist, say­ing, “That’s pure unadul­ter­ated hypocrisy. And, speak­ing per­son­ally, I don’t want to have any­thing to do with it. And speak­ing polit­i­cally, it won’t go anywhere.”

If Finkel­stein was a pro-Israel advo­cate, his views would per­haps come as no sur­prise. But Finkel­stein has made a career out of demo­niz­ing Israel. He has described Israel as a “satanic state,” accused Israel of caging Pales­tini­ans “into a ghetto” and exalted Hezbollah’s mil­i­tary achieve­ments against Israel as a “vic­tory of lib­erty and a vic­tory for freedom.”

Mem­bers of the audi­ence reacted hos­tilely to Finkelstein’s pre­sen­ta­tion, talk­ing and shout­ing over him and even yelling at him dur­ing the ques­tion and answer period. While he spoke, two of the other pan­elists – Lamis Deek, a founder of Al-Awda; and Sherry Wolf, an avid BDS activist – who both later expressed sup­port for a one-state solu­tion, fre­quently rolled their eyes and put their heads down, dis­play­ing vis­i­ble dis­com­fort with his positions.

At one point, Deek and Finkel­stein engaged in a hos­tile back-and-forth exchange. After acknowl­edg­ing that she could never “rec­og­nize the right of the entity known as Israel” to exist, Finkel­stein chal­lenged Deek’s use of the term “entity,” stat­ing, “Israel is a state. It has the same rights and the same oblig­a­tions as the 190 other states.” Deek coun­tered that she has “no oblig­a­tion to oper­ate strictly under the aus­pices or within the frame­work of inter­na­tional law despite the fact that Pro­fes­sor Finkel­stein or other pro­fes­sors would like me to do so because they don’t make that require­ment of the Israeli entity.”

It says a lot about these people that someone like Norman Finkelstein comes across as the reasonable one.