التمادي في المعرفة: لماذا تشارف العلاقة الحميمة بين اليهود الأميركيين واسرائيل على نهايتها

by Norman G. Finkelstein, نورمان فنكلستاين, سعيد محمد الحسنية (Translator)

يوضح أن الصهاينة الأميركيين الليبراليين، أقوى مؤيدي أميركا منذ 1967، يصبحون محرجين بهذه الدولة التي تتطرف يمينيًّا أكثر فأكثر وتصبح جرائمها في العالم أكثر وضوحًا.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, Middle East, Israel

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Norman Gary Finkelstein, is an American political scientist and activist. His primary fields of research are the politics of the Holocaust and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Son of a holocaust survivor, Finkelstein is a fierce critic of Israeli policy, especially toward Palestinians. He has had a tense rivalry with his pro-Israel counterpart, Alan Dershowitz. In 2007 DePaul University denied his tenure, a decision for which Dershowitz lobbied. For his views and suspected connections to anti-Zionist groups, Israel has denied Finkelstein entry and banned him from the country for a decade.

Reviews

[Fatma Al Zahraa Yehia · Rating 3 out of 5]

لازال في العالم بقية من ضميرٍ يقظ، وذلك يُثبته تلك الكتاب الذي يعلن بكل صدق ووضوح أن الكيان الصهيوني هو كيان أبعد ما يكون عن ما يُعلنه للعالم عن أنه واحة الديمقراطية وجنة الحرية في الشرق الأوسط.

في البداية يقر المؤلف بأن الدعم المعنوي الأعمى الذي كانت تتلقاه إسرائيل من يهود أمريكا قد تدنى. وذلك لأن اسرائيل بانتهاكاتها الإجرامية مع الفلسطنيين والعرب قد دمرت تلك الصورة الوردية التي كان يهود الولايات المتحدة يرونها بها. كما أن الوضع الداخلي بإسرائيل الذي قد أصبح نموذجاً للفساد المالي وعدم المساواة بين طوائف اليهود ذوي الأصول الأوروبية واليهود من الأصول الأخرى، جعل الكثير ينظرون بعين الشك تجاه تلك الديمقراطية التي تتغنى بها.

نعرف أيضاً أن إسرائيل كانت هى ذراع أمريكا اليمنى في الشرق الأوسط لوقف صعود القوى المهددة للنفوذ الأمريكي مثل نظام عبدالناصر وبعده صعود الدولة الإسلامية في إيران وانتهاءاً بإعلان الحرب على العراق.

في النصف الثانى من الكتاب يتعرض المؤلف لعدة مؤلفات تصدرت للدفاع عن دولة إسرائيل بكل ما اقترفته من جرائم على مدى تاريخها. ورده على تلك المزاعم مستعيناً بالتقارير والإحصائيات التي تثبت مدى كذب وتحيز تلك المؤلفات. ومن خلال هذا العرض، يعرج المؤلف على حرب لبنان عام ٢٠٠٦ وانتهاكات الحكومة الإسرائيلية الإجرامية في حق المعتقلين في سجونها.

يُخصص الكاتب فصلاً كاملاً عن حرب ١٩٦٧ ويعرض تفاصيل تبين أن عبدالناصر-حسب ما أورده الكاتب-لم يكن ساعيا لتلك الحرب التي كان يعلم جيدا بنتائجها الكارثية. وأن ذلك كان تخطيطاً إسرائيلياً لاحتلال المزيد من الأراضي في ظل الدعم الأعمى التي تتلقاه من الولايات المتحدة.

الكتاب ذو محتوى كبير ومتشعب، وقد يكون مرهقاً في قراءته خاصة لغير المتعمقين في الكتابات السياسية والتاريخية من أمثالي. ولكنه إضافة حقيقية لمن يريد أن يفهم الكثير عن تاريخ الصراع العربي الصهيوني، وعن تاريخ الإحتضان الحميم من الولايات المتحدة لذلك الكيان الغاشم.

أيضا أعطاني الكتاب نوعا من الأمل بأن هناك-كما قلت في البداية-مفكرون غربيون بل ويهود ذوي ضمير يبحث عن الحقيقة بكل إخلاص ولا يهدأ حتى يحاول أن يُسمع هذا العالم الظالم الأصم صوت هذه الحقيقة.

[John Gaynard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I only came across Norman Finkelstein's books a couple of years ago. Since then I have been astounded not only by his courage, but by his scrupulous scholarship.

The premise of this book is that there is a growing divide between American Jews who, like Jews in most other Western democracies, tend to be more liberal than their fellow citizens, and the right-wing extremism and warmongering of a succession of Israeli governments which has led to tremendous human rights abuses and lack of respect for international law. Those Israeli governments are supported by some American organisations which claim to be representative of their fellow Jews, in their "my country, right or wrong" attitude to Israel. But, as Peter Beinart has also pointed out in his book, The Crisis of Zionism, far from representing their fellow Jews, they actively misrepresent them.

In showing how young American Jews have become disenchanted with Israel, Finkelstein, in this book and his previous one, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, reveals the intellectual dishonesty of people like Alan Dershowitz (a person to whom I'd never really paid a lot of attention until I came across articles of his, justifying torture, after September 11). It's no surprise that Dershowitz was the prime, intellectually dishonest, mover behind the refusal of academic tenure to Norman Finkelstein at DePaul university.

In reading Finkelstein's descriptions of American organisations and intellectuals, I was reminded of the situation in France, where, in some quarters, there is a similar level of intellectual dishonesty and disregard for Palestinian human rights. The CRIF, which justifies Israeli extremists in ways reminiscent of the U.S. Anti-Defamation League, has extreme right-wing opinions. It claims to represent French Jews, but articles by liberal Jews in Le Monde Diplomatique, Médiapart and other center-left publications virulently dispute this claim and condemn the CRIF's stance on Israel.

I am one of the people who once thought Israel could do no wrong. The turning point for me was the Sabra and Chatila massacre in 1982. Like many people who will read this book, it has taken me three painful decades to move from not knowing enough to now knowing too much.

[Randall Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Today’s Israeli Paranoia: “One in two Israeli Jews feels ‘fear’ when hearing Arabic spoken in the street.” “Three in four Israeli Jews said they would not agree to live in the same building as Arabs, six in ten were not willing to have Arab friends visit their homes and more than half supported separate recreational facilities for Arabs and Jews.” “One-third of Israeli Jews supported the incarceration of the Arab population in wartime.” This easily explains why Islamophobe Bill Maher is such a Zionist; he feels a kindred spirit in contempt for those he doesn’t know with those he comically also doesn’t know. “In the past two decades fully 50-70 percent of Israeli Jews have supported the use of State inducements to rid the Jewish state of its Palestinians”, a.k.a they supported settler-colonialism. Israeli “Social Affairs Minister Isaac Herzog explicitly compared Israeli racism to ‘Alabama in the 1940’s’ – but with Israeli Jews figuratively on the opposite side of the barricade from American Jewish liberals (Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, etc.) who went down South to join the desegregation struggle.”

“A pair of polls in 2011 found that more Europeans believed ‘Israel’s oppression of Palestinians’ was a bigger obstacle to peace than ‘Palestinian terror attacks’, and 40 percent and more of European respondents believed that ‘Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians’.” “The central argument of this (2012) book is that American Jews can no longer reconcile their liberalism with what they have come to know about the Israel-Palestine conflict.” “Amnesty International currently acknowledges that Israel ‘routinely’ ill-treated and tortured Palestinian detainees since 1967.”

Most of this book is Norman debunking books by Zionist apologists like Dennis Ross’s “The Missing Piece”, Michael Oren’s “Six Days of War”, Jeffrey Goldberg’s Prisoners (2006), and historian Benny Morris who went from cool analysis to racism apologist during his career. And Chapter Six is about how Human Rights Watch has often ignored Israeli crimes in order to placate Israel; HRW covering for power, instead of covering power. In his book “Beyond Chutzpah”, Norman also spent a long chapter fact checking the over-the-top writings of Alan Dershowitz.

“B’Tselem exhaustively documented Israeli torture of Palestinian detainees.” Jimmy Carter was attacked big time for saying Israel was practicing apartheid yet we must remember that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon himself believed in apartheid saying “The Bantustan model was the most appropriate solution for the [Israel/Palestine] conflict.” Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld said the IDF was “comparable, if at all, only to the status the armed forces held in Germany from 1871 until 1945.” He said Israel’s founders were into “creating a race of warrior settlers.” The goal of Himmler.

And now a delightful story of IDF compassion: In 2004 an Israeli captain “fired two bullets at point blank range into the head of a 13-year-old Palestinian schoolgirl while she was lying on the ground already injured, and then, after starting to walk away, turned back to riddle her body with many more bullets, including seven to the head.” Here’s the punchline: “The officer was subsequently acquitted of all charges, received hefty monetary compensation from the state and a PROMOTION in his rank – clearly because, for God’s sake, he did not try to kill her.” Such self-restraint. Human Rights Watch discusses the IDF using Palestinians as human shields, e.g. “chivalrously ordering Palestinian civilians to ‘walk in front of soldiers to shield them from gunfire, while the soldiers hold a gun behind their backs and sometimes shoot over their shoulders.” That’s evidently something Jesus or Gandhi would have done in a Galilee minute.

Cluster Bombs on Civilians War Crime: A Senior UN demining official said Israel bombing civilians with cluster munitions was deliberate as “these cluster bombs were dropped in the middle of these villages.” Unexploded bomblets look like toys to children who pick them up and – kablooey! Look Ma! No hands!” Israeli soldiers were well aware of the large numbers of duds their cluster strikes were producing. A soldier said that his… commander gave a ‘pep talk’ after a period of heavy fire, saying ‘just wait until Hezbollah finds the little presents that we had left them’.”

The 1967 war by Israel was unprovoked: Menachem Begin (a member of the Israeli cabinet in 1967) himself later publicly admitted, “The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nassar was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.” All this endless dependence of violence as Israel’s only solution means to Norman that “liberal Israeli intellectuals seeking to keep pace with Israel’s rightward lurch have been forced to abandon their liberal values and, in order to defend policies that are indefensible on the factual record, to reject their own past scholarship.”

Benny Morris: Norman says when historian Benny Morris suddenly went Zionist apologist, he did “not adduce new evidence to support his return to the old orthodoxy, but rather whites (whited) out the findings of his original pioneering research.” Ben-Gurion said in 1938 that the Zionist conflict with the Arabs “is in essence a political one. And politically we are the aggressors, and they defend themselves.” To that, Benny Morris had written, “Ben-Gurion, of course, was right. Zionism was a colonizing and expansionist ideology and movement… Zionist ideology and practice were necessarily and elementally expansionist.” He wrote that Zionism could not but be “intent on… dispossessing and supplanting the Arabs.” To achieve this, “transfer” became a Zionist euphemism for “brutal expulsion.” The NEW Benny Morris made Islamophobe Bill Maher proud by saying this “transfer” was a result of Islamic Judeophobia, blaming the Arabs who were suddenly the innocent victims “of a lethal intolerance towards Jews.” All those Instagram videos of Zionists hating on Arabs and demanding the “leveling of Gaza” including targeting Gazan children were to be ignored because the illegally occupied (for 75-years) were the real haters and the brutal occupiers were ONCE AGAIN comically only the victims. Benny Morris wanted to be Israel’s chief storyteller, replacing his butt-buddy Alan Dershowitz for the honor. Israel’s defenders today require “a mishmash of lies and lunacies, deceits and delusions.” No wonder Trump is such a fan.

This was a good book, I’m glad to have read it. It was written in 2012, so it’s clearly not current; however, when written the author felt a tipping point in how American Jews view Israel’s conduct. I’d say in 2024 that that tipping point is STILL to be reached. American liberals have a secret weapon that delays the tipping point – if they make ZERO effort to look at the thousands of videos coming out of the genocide in Gaza, then they can easily fill their Facebook pages with light banter about the Oscars, how Trump is evil while Biden has no flaws, and cute posts about meals and vacations they had while a genocide was in full bloom. Most authors I’ve read agreed that Israelis will never stop the carnage, and it will only end when the US pulls its bottle from baby Netanyahu’s mouth and says, we are done financing your shtick (unchecked settler-colonialism). Biden wants to build a pier in Gaza to avoid merely making the aid trucks break through the sociopathic Zionists parked in front of them (in their hopes of starving Gazans to death in order to build beachfront homes for God’s chosen). The best book by Norman to read right now is his book Gaza which I’d recommend much more than this one – because that topic is so hot right now. And if you are progressive and not liberal, immediately go on Instagram and start following these Palestinian sites for a real education: middleeastmonitor, electronicintifada, absorberyt, wissamgaza, mondoweiss, smohyeddin, deenfinity, israelquotes.com, hot_vet, sulalaanimalrescue, pscbrixton, stevendonziger, middleeasteye, celebrities4palestine, alhelou.y, etc… Cheers to everyone right now who takes the time to seek the truth BEYOND mainstream media’s endless hasbara.

[Mirko Kriskovic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finkelstein at his best, his research, academia is second to none. A warning to the right wing - you wont like this book due to Mr Finkelstein's stubborn adherence to the rule of law and International Law - Apply to read only if this are the rule that you use to measure behaviour by UN member countries

[Roshfrosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finkelstein is an analytical genius!  I fell in love with each of his work and can't wait for his newly published book "I'll burn that bridge when I get to it".

Anyway! "Knowing Too Much" gives plentiful lessons in history and insights about the Israel-Palestine conflict from the 6 Day War to the Second Intifada and how the conflict is connected to the Jewish diaspora in the United States.

In a detailed way Finkelstein points out how American Jews find themselves in a situtation where it becomes hard to overlook Israel's brutal policy against Palestinians and accordingly run into conflict with their leftist identity and their support for Israel.
The frames of "old and new Morris" e.g. visualize where such a conflict can result in - when all goes wrong.

Extremely genuine and with the right amount of sarcasm and wit this book is an excellent read for a more critical and based-on-facts view on the protracted conflict and the diaspora connected to it.

[David Kellogg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliant book. Compared to earlier works like The Holocaust Industry, Knowing Too Much seems both reserved and hopeful. Finkelstein tones down, but does not eliminate, the humor that allowed charlatans like Alan Dershowitz to dismiss his work by distorting it. Some years ago, Finkslstein's wholly warranted critique of Dershowitz prompted the latter to go on a witch-hunt that ruined Finkelstein's academic career. But here Finkelstein is, still producing scholarship of a high order indeed.

Here, as usual, Finkelstein pulls no punches in his razor-sharp "forensic" scholarship. His targets include Benny Morris, Daniel Ross, Walt and Mearsheimer, and Human Rights Watch (HRW). As in his previous work, Finkelstein dismantles official narratives and even, in the case of the last two mentioned, the work of people on his "side" in the Israel/Palestine conflict. But this is what people miss about Finkelstein: the only side he's on is the truth as he sees it. He has a touching -- some might say naive -- faith in both universal human rights and in the power of empirical evidence to make a case. Thus, while many of his fellow radicals have abandoned the idea of a two-state solution along the 1967 borders, Finkelstein continues to advocate it as the best hope for both Palestine and Israel. It would be nice if he were right, but it will take a few others with the same faith in humanity and the facts to see it through.

[Ruqia Bashir]

A detailed analysis of Israeli and Palestinian conflict including an account of Israeli human right abuses. I have not read the whole book but I found it worth reading. If you have interest of this never-ending dispute of occupied territories. His remarkable courage to writing this book is a glimmer of hope to hundreds of thousands of palestinians refugees scattered all around the world!

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

Knowing Too Much is a book by Normal Finkelstein that is mostly a series of book reviews, taking aim at Liberal Zionists in the establishment and deconstructing their work.

The exception is the first book reviewed, Mearsheimer and Walt’s The Israel Lobby, in Finkelstein’s chapter 4, which is itself an attack on Zionism. Finkelstein makes the case that Mearshmier and Walt’s thesis of tail-wagging-dog only had resonance because the Iraq war went badly. This is a poor way to make the point. Like Joseph Massad and Noam Chomsky, for Finkelstein, Israel is best understood as a tool of US foreign policy or Imperialism. Which is why it is strange that Finkelstein doesn’t get into how the invasion of Iraq went badly, for whom, or why. The destruction of the country, it’s infrastructure and the death of over a million of its citizens and regional aftershocks are not described by Finkelstein, nor does he take-up their pre-war foreseeability or the possibility that in an imperial dog-wags-tail world such an outcome might have been by design. I also believe the dog wags the tail (cf. the evidence Finkelstein produces of the US vetoing its own avowed policies at the UN) but I disagree with Finkelstein’s weak method of argumentation.

Chapter 5 takes up Jeffrey Goldberg’s 2006 book Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew across the Middle East divide. Finkelstein compares Goldberg to, of all people, Ari Shavit (another LIberal Zionist du jour), to demonstrate Goldberg's dismissal Palestinian suffering. Finkelstein goes into detail to hold Goldberg’s double standard up to the light: cheering “gun Zionism to Jews on one page while singing the praises of Mahatma Gandhi and MLK to Palestinians on another."

Chapter 6 reviews a series of reports, not a book, but the effort is equally important. Finkelstein shows how Human Rights Watch executed a double standard similar to Goldberg - and did so in an act of revisionism. HRW’s first report on the 2006 Lebanon war, Fatal Strikes: Israel’s indiscriminate attacks against civilians in Lebanon, is compared to the its second and third reports, Civilians Under Assault: Hezbollah’s rocket a acks on Israel in the 2006 war, and Why They Died: Civilian casualties in Lebanon during the 2006 war. Finkelstein shows how HRW updated its original findings by using one set of war crimes standards to find Hezbollah guilty of war crimes and another set of standards to let Israel off the hook - and did so in complete inversion of the evidence.

Chapter 7 is primarily a destruction of Michael Oren’s fictional and propagandistic “history,” Six Days of War: June 1967 and the making of the modern Middle East, but also includes a useful table setting Alan Dershowitz’s equally fictitious account against that of Zeev Maoz. In short, “the preponderance of evidence points to the conclusion that Israel did not fear an imminent Arab attack when it launched a first strike. It is accordingly inaccurate to denote Israel’s 1967 blitzkrieg 'preemptive.’” Finkelstein cites Ariel Sharon himself to validate that the 1967 attack was about asserting Israeli deterrence in the face of Nasser’s lack of fear. Along the way, Finkelstein also identifies the techniques Oren uses to reconcile the archival evidence with his apologetic narrative. This is rather useful since it could easily apply to so many other Zionist histories, such as those of Eugene Rogan:
“- attaching equal weight to a public statement (or memoir) and the hard evidence of an internal document contradicting it
- burying in an avalanche of dubious evidence a critical counter-finding
- minimizing, misrepresenting, or suppressing a critical piece of evidence."

Chapter 8 is devastating critique of Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez’s Foxbats over Dimona: The Soviets’ nuclear gamble in the Six-Day War. “The June 1967 war marked, according to them, the climax of a manifold Soviet conspiracy to destroy Israel’s nuclear weapons program. Additionally they allege that not only the Soviets but also the Arabs, Americans and Israelis have participated in a “cover-up” of this conspiracy for the past 40 years, until their own “laborious sleuthing” unearthed nuggets of information and connected the dots.” Finkelstein contacts the Russian Pilot whose alleged actions lie at the heart of Ginor and Remez’s conspiracy, and the pilot refutes all of their claims. The wide embrace of this absurd theory also implicates not only the authors but also the American establishment that supported them.

Chapter 9 usefully provides a history of UN resolution 242 and refutation of the Zionist claim (via Julius Stone) that International law does not forbid the acquisition territory by force when "the force is used to stop an aggressor.” The chapter also centers around a review of Dennis Ross’s account of “peace talks,” The Missing Peace: The inside story of the fight for Middle East peace, in which Palestinian violence is blamed for the collapse of the peace process, and Israeli colonial violence is glossed over. "It is a point d’honneur for Ross that he personally lobbied for the Oslo Accord to 'contain a clear renunciation of terror and violence from Arafat'; that he personally urged Albright to 'come down hard on [Palestinian] terror'; and that he personally ‘confronted' Arafat to 'take action' against terrorism. His passionate sympathy for Israeli victims of criminal violence apparently did not extend to Palestinian victims, however. Judging by his own account Ross never once entreated Israeli leaders to curb their far greater brutality."

Chapter 10 is a review of the works and metamorphisis of Benny Morris from New Historian, challenging the Zionist narrative (Righteous Victims; Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem), to become Zionism’s “court historian” (1948: the first Arab-Israeli war; One State, Two States). TO me, one of the most comparisons of Morris with Morris concerns a core understanding. In the past, Morris agreed with Ben-Gurion that the Zionist-Arab ‘conflict,' “is in its essence a political one. And politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves,” whereas “the root cause of the conflict, according to Morris as he reinvented himself by customizing his history, was and remains to this day 'Islamic Judeophobia.’"

As useful as all these book reviews are, however, it is difficult to see how much they have to do with the way the book is positioned to the reader - not as a series of book reviews, but as an analysis of the end of the Jewish American love affair with Israel. The first three chapters discuss what most potential readers will already know: that a gap is opening up between Liberal Jewish-America and Fascist Jewish-Israel. Indeed, the Electronic Intifada’s review ( https://electronicintifada.net/conten... ) rightfully takes Finkelstein to task for attributing this change to Jewish actors and “airbrushing Palestinians out of their own struggle.” EI also reminds readers - at the beginning of its piece - of Finkelstein’s red-hot rage against the BDS movement. But Finkelstein and his work are not without merit just because he is, himself, a liberal zionist (albeit a critical one). It is just that one needs to dance gingerly to extract that merit.

Much of that dancing is required because, as a liberal Zionist, the one thing Finkelstein refuses to take up is also the only thing that matters: 1948 and the refugees. Finkelstein is obsessed with 1967 - with Michael Oren’s fiction of 1967, with Ginor and Remez’s conspiracy of 1967, with UN resolution 242 from 1967, and with the love affair of Jewish Americans with Israel. Finkelstein not only describes 1967 as the year the latter phenomenon began (as a means of assimilation into American society, once American and Israeli interests were aligned), but also as the year Israel began to go bad: "The ‘new' Israel that emerged after, and was largely a by-product of, the June 1967 war came to bear fainter and fainter resemblance to the Zion of the liberal Jewish imagination. The irony is, the fascination of American Jews with Israel’s socialist utopia began just on the point of its vanishing."

Narratives of transformation and change are important for liberal Zionists because they imply there was something innocent and pure about Israel's creation until things began to go bad - after 1967, after neoliberalism, after Netanyahu, etc. For them, the problem is not the establishment of an ethnonationalist settler-colonial state, but whatever came afterward. It is a way of appearing to be extremely critical, without actually engaging on the question that matters.

This is also why liberal Zionist “solutions” to “the conflict” prescribe more of the very same diseases to cure our infection: segregation & partition. Finkelstein is no different in this book, stumping for “a two-state settlement along the 4 June 1967 border and mutual recognition.” And the refugees from 1948, Norman? Where shall they go? When will you grant them, from your perch in America, the right to return home?

[Water Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

When reading this book, it is worth it (in my opinion) to read it alongside another book: "What Gandhi Says." Both books are by the same author (Political Scientist/Theorist/Historian and International Jurist Norman Gary Finkelstein). "What Gandhi Says" is a book that gives a brief Gandhi's protest tactics and when and how they were successful, but also a good account discussing their limits.


While, on face value, that appears to have nothing to do with this book, it's actually quite important because, as I stated in my review of "What Gandhi Says" (which readers are encouraged to read, as well), "'Knowing Too Much' provides an intellectual backing to someone interesting in the specifics of a cause (in this case a cause as it relates the Israel/Palestine Conflict) while also being interesting in the act of activism itself (which this books lends an intellectual backing to). Both books were published the same year and for people interested, they should read this book *alongside* 'What Gandhi Says.'"

With regard to just this book itself, the rest of this review shall be devoted to discussing different parts of this book I found worth highlighting in no particular order:

1) Norman Gary Finkelstein does something interesting in a critical evaluation of the work of preeminent Scholar of the Israel Intelligence Apparatus and Late-New-Yishuv/Early-Israeli Military history Benny Morris in chapter 10 of the book, "History by Subtraction," in the sense that it undoes Benny Morris' obfuscation. Which is to say, Finkelstein, rather than calling Benny Morris out on explicitly on his framing of the concept of transfer in Zionist thinking (and practice), to borrow from Political Scientist and Scholar of Religion and Literature, Nur-Eldeen Masalha's, book "Expulsion of the Palestinians'" subtitle, and instead focusing on what a more reasonable reading of Morris' account would yield given the evidence Morris adduces. Finkelstein does so by arguing the following:

"Morris contended in his groundbreaking study, Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, that, on the contrary, from the mid-1930s “the idea of transferring the Arabs out . . . was seen as the chief means of assuring the stability of the ‘Jewishness’ of the proposed Jewish State,” (16) while in Righteous Victims he wrote that “the transfer idea . . . was one of the main currents in Zionist ideology from the movement’s inception.” (17) In another seminal essay Morris documented that “thinking about the transfer of all or part of Palestine’s Arabs out of the prospective Jewish state was pervasive among Zionist leadership circles long before 1937.” (18)"

Finkelstein concludes, based on "Morris’s temporal-logical sequence of the conflict’s genesis" that "Zionist transfer was cause and Arab resistance effect in an ever-expanding spiral."

Thus, Finkelstein does not distort what Morris says but rather makes it clear what Morris' "temporal-local sequence of the conflict's genesis" allows one to conclude when looked at earnestly (see page 256 of "Knowing Too Much")

The purpose of this is to juxtapose the depths to which Morris goes to absolutely demonizing the Palestinians in (a) newer book(s).

2) Once again in chapter 10 of the book, Finkelstein points out a very strong problem with Morris: he makes very strong about Islam and Muslims and Arabs more broadly, and Palestinians (and note that no one should erase non-muslims) even though Morris, as Finkelstein points out, is not an expert on Arab or Palestinian society or culture, nor is he an expert on Islamic theology.

3) Finkelstein provides a good causal explanation for US-Israeli relations and seems to sufficiently debunk the 'Israeli Lobby' Hypothesis (which at best is a lazy liberal explanation for just about everything, and at worst is a horrid anti-semitic conspiracy theory).

In refuting the Israeli Lobby Hypothesis posited by Political Scientist and defense intellectual John Joseph Mearsheimer, Finkelstein does qualify his rebuttal at one point with the following claim:

" But whereas the broad regional interests of Washington and Tel Aviv overlap, Israeli colonization of Palestinian territories does undermine American interests. And if the U.S. lends Israel near-blanket support on this local issue, it is because of the ruthlessness and efficacy of the Israel lobby" (see page 84 of "Knowing Too Much").

I'll simply provide an alternative explanation by scholar Bashir Abu-Menneh who writes the following:

"To expand, Israel has had to subordinate itself to US imperial imperatives and become dependent on the US" (see page 15 of the peer-reviewed study "Israel in US Empire" as published in the March 2007 edition of 'Monthly Review' or see page 45 of same peer-reviewed study "Israel in US Empire" as published in 'New Formations')

4) Finkelstein expands on a previous essay he published as a peer-reviewed study, and then later appendixes to the second edition to this book "Image and Reality of the Israel–Palestine Conflict," which critically appraises Michael Oren's "Six Days of War."

5) Finkelstein expands on an essay he published as a peer-reviewed study, which itself was purported to be excerpted from his book, in which he thoroughly debunks a ridiculous book titled "Foxbats Over Dimona" which is also on the war of 1967.

6) Finkelstein continues to impress with his thorough dissection of the human rights record, thereby showcasing how the record tends to be condemnatory towards Israel in the factual details it reveals, yet the legal analysis of mainstream human rights organizations tends to be incredibly apologetic towards Israel.

7. For further discussion of Jewish-American perceptions of Israel, see Historian Eric Alterman's book "We Are Not One: A History of America's Fight Over Israel."



Overall, this book is a wonderful scholarly contribution to the conflict, but its utility is likely to be found most in the hands of those who seek to change policy (especially when read with "What Gandhi Says," which it ought to anyway).

[Imaduddin Ahmed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Key takeaways:
- Researchers found no archival evidence from Arab radio stations to suggest that they had told Palestinians to flee from Palestine in order that they could return with victorious Arab armies, suggesting that this was a complete Israeli fabrication
- In the lead up to the 1967 war, it was clear that Israel had both the military upperhand, and that Israel was spoiling for war, provoking attacks on its neighbours so that they could no longer ignore them. The territorial gains however were not preconceived strategy
- Allegiance to both Israel and the USA became acceptable and synonymous after the 1967 war as Israel came to be regarded as a Cold War asset against Russian influence in the Middle East. But since the Cold War, it has increasingly looked like a liability. Kissinger, Wolfowitz etc did not serve Israeli interests but American interests. The second Iraq war was not one propelled by Israel's interests, but USA's interests.
- Territorial gain from the 1967 war is inadmissible under the Fourth Geneva Convention 49(6)
- Cowed by Israeli lobby groups, HRW altered its reports of the 2006 conflict with Hezbollah and reached different standards when assessing whether or not Hezbollah had committed war crimes in 2006 and whether or not Israel had. Every statement made about Israel was in the conditional. Examples: Hezbollah committed war crimes because it used crude weapons which could not ensure targeted bombing, even though it targeted bombed military posts. Israel was not committing war crimes when it was bombing civilian villages with precision bombs because it had forewarned populations to evacuate
- Israel is losing support among American Jews who are becoming disenchanted on moral grounds and who are increasingly fear accusations of having dual allegiances
- Palestinian representatives recognised Israel at Algiers in 1988 and Oslo in 1993 and by 1999 three quarters of Palestinians supported a two state solution along the 1967 borders, whereas only a quarter of Israelis supported a two state solution along the 1967 borders

[Saba Houmani]

Norman’s got jokes

[Faisal Jamal · Rating 5 out of 5]

لا يوجد افضل من نورمان فنكلستين للتصدي لدحض الرواية الصهيونية التاريخية والحديثة وهو اليهودي ابن الناجين من الهولوكوست

[Matthew Webber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting observation on American Jews liberalism and how it inevitably clashes with Israel's monstrous actions against the Palestinians and its Arab neighbours. Free Palestine!

[Kyle Worlitz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yawn. American Jews are much more liberal than most Israeli Jews. The occupation. Etc. Finkelstein is brilliant, and dead on, but you should already know most of this stuff if you have any interest in the topic at all.

[Paula Kirman · Rating 4 out of 5]

An analysis of why more and more contemporary Jews are not unquestioningly supporting Israel. People who adhere to this worldview will find it a quick read. It serves as an excellent introduction to those seeking to learn more.

[Rin]

Not was I was looking for.

[Joel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely well-researched and document, as is Finkelstein's style. Interesting argument with plenty of evidence. Middle section of the book is quite dense and not the easiest to get through.