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Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, Third Edition
"The most revealing study of the historical background of the conflict."—Noam Chomsky
A new, third edition of this classic polemical study challenging generally accepted truths of the Israel-Palestine conflict, as well as much of the revisionist literature surrounding it. Fully updated, it includes a forensic examination of the failure of the peace process.
A new, third edition of this classic polemical study challenging generally accepted truths of the Israel-Palestine conflict, as well as much of the revisionist literature surrounding it. Fully updated, it includes a forensic examination of the failure of the peace process.
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First published November 17, 1995
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About the author
Norman G. Finkelstein
25 books1,685 followersNorman 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
December 10, 2014
This is by far the best political-science book I have ever read, and especially considering that is on such a controversial topic and one on which so much has already been written. What surprised, and pleased, me most about the book was Finkelstein’s style to use another author’s book as a foil to discuss aspects that he thinks they got wrong. This was absolutely fascinating to me because it accomplished two aims at once: it introduces the reader to what the opposing side has to say and it also shows on what crucial facts it is that the author disagrees with them. Similarly, Finkelstein goes deep into the history and mythos of Zionist to show just how deplorable it was to modern sensibilities and yet, how, similar it was to the mythos of the US’ formative years. Lastly, because US-policies have so closely aligned with Israel’s, it was incredibly new to hear what the opposition has to say and I have to admit that Finkelstein makes a great argument and makes the reader question the myth of the “outrageous” hatred that Palestinians have against Israel.
April 1, 2016
Similar in nature to other works by Chomsky (he helped with this book a bit) this book seems well documented and logically presented. True Israel has had many problems since it's birth and concordant with those problems has been the issue of admitting actions and dealing with fall out from the international community. This day and age is much more like living under a microscope then any other time in history. Other peoples similar issues with culpability are discussed briefly and it is clear that this book is more about a human issue then one of Israel or any other nation for that matter. I would pose that right now the whole of humanity is in a situation where we are avoiding the issue of Global Warming. For years we (most of us anyway) has realized the ludicrous nature of a healthy economy (the faster you burn up natural resources and pollute the healthier your economy is). Like a smoker who is avoiding the obvious conclusion of his continued activity we humans are hiding our heads in the sand. Israel is using force and so is the United States and others who wield power. That might be just human nature; the beast within which must have a voice. If so we will probably perish or at least be left wallowing in our own filth as our planet heats up to a point of not being able to grow our crops which sustain us. This book is enlightening and informative and a significant read for anyone connected to the Israeli/Arab conflict (I raised two Jewish boys from my first Jewish wife). The kind of obfuscation of rhetoric that garnered a long shelf life in the past will not fly under today's scrutiny of bytes. All peoples must find a more open and honest way of dealing with each other in many arenas or I fear we are doomed to an early death much like that of the chain smoker (yea, I quit about 16 months ago).
March 18, 2010
This is an absolutely essential book for anyone even vaguely interested in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Though Finkelstein's tone can often be unnecessarily strident, his research is impeccable.
January 20, 2020
Full disclosure: I only read Chapters 1 and 3 of the 1995 edition.
The bulk of the book consists of cherry picking sources and facts that fit an anti-Israel agenda, while ignoring anything that complicates that narrative. Finkelstein is correct in saying that official Zionist documents must be evaluated with a critical eye, but Finkelstein's method is uncritical in the opposite direction. He takes the stance that anything that a Zionist has ever said cannot be trusted unless, of course, that Zionist leader or publication is saying something damning to the pro-Israel argument.
Finkelstein appears ill-fitted for the task of separating image from reality. All of his arguments are from selected secondary sources. He never quotes primary sources unless he found them quoted in a secondary source. This leads me to think that Finkelstein never examined any primary sources for himself and almost certainly does not know Arabic or Hebrew.
Other oddities of the book include false dichotomies, putting words into other scholars' mouths, comparisons of the Palestinian exodus to the Holocaust, conclusions that do not follow from stated premises, retrofitting events that happened in the 1920s and 1930s into the context of the 1948 Palestinian exodus, treating Zionists as though they were a homogeneous group of fascists, and fabricating false information.
The bulk of the book consists of cherry picking sources and facts that fit an anti-Israel agenda, while ignoring anything that complicates that narrative. Finkelstein is correct in saying that official Zionist documents must be evaluated with a critical eye, but Finkelstein's method is uncritical in the opposite direction. He takes the stance that anything that a Zionist has ever said cannot be trusted unless, of course, that Zionist leader or publication is saying something damning to the pro-Israel argument.
Finkelstein appears ill-fitted for the task of separating image from reality. All of his arguments are from selected secondary sources. He never quotes primary sources unless he found them quoted in a secondary source. This leads me to think that Finkelstein never examined any primary sources for himself and almost certainly does not know Arabic or Hebrew.
Other oddities of the book include false dichotomies, putting words into other scholars' mouths, comparisons of the Palestinian exodus to the Holocaust, conclusions that do not follow from stated premises, retrofitting events that happened in the 1920s and 1930s into the context of the 1948 Palestinian exodus, treating Zionists as though they were a homogeneous group of fascists, and fabricating false information.
dnf
January 15, 2024I hate DNF’ing a book, especially when it’s one as important and scholarly as this, but I just don’t feel I know nearly enough to get the final two chapters. The first 3 are great, the middle 2 lost me a little, and the final 2 were about events I know almost nothing about. Otherwise a great book, but I can’t review it knowing that I’ve not finished it. I’ll pick back up once I learn some more
July 12, 2024
Zionist Support for Culture and Arts: Haaretz reported that “Israeli soldiers occupying Ramallah ‘destroyed children’s paintings’ in the Palestinian Ministry of Culture, and urinated and defecated everywhere’ in the building, even ‘managing to defecate into the photocopiers’” “This has become an IDF rite of passage: during Israel’s occupation of Beirut in 1982, soldiers similarly defecated in Palestinian cultural and medical institutions.” Wouldn’t it be fun to hear Netanyahu defend IDF scatological actions for each of these acts, “First off, the copier in question had run out of toner…” Funny, but I don’t recall the Torah validating any of these IDF disgusting wanton acts.
Zionism Imitates Nazism’s Settler-Colonial Fantasies: Jabotinsky said he learned from Hitler the idea of “mass migrations” and “bloody deportations of recalcitrant minorities.” According to John Toland, Hitler “often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination – by starvation and uneven combat – of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity.” “Indeed, Hitler knew full well that, far from being wilderness, the East was ‘notoriously overpopulated’ (Weinberg).” “To resolve this problem, Hitler’s grand design called for the Slavs to be in part exterminated, in part expelled (“transfers of population’)”. Hitler’s plan for the rest was “we will isolate them in their own pig-sties.” Pause and ask yourself, what is the difference between Hitler’s settler-colonial plan and Israel’s present plan for Gaza? Then ask yourself, why is Israel hell bent on boldly imitating Hitler’s plans? Let’s make it more obvious – Hitler said, “England did not acquire India in a lawful and legitimate manner, but rather without regard to the natives’ wishes, views, or declarations of rights (JUST like Israel)”. Hitler said his plan was that millions of ethnic Germans would be relocated to the East until “our settlers are numerically superior to the natives (JUST like Israel)”. Take a close look, Zionist History has been a carbon copy of Hitler’s Lebensraum Fantasy. Why would Zionists consciously do that? First, choose the worst feature of their worst historical enemy, and not only to adopt it, but just as shamelessly convey their military offenses are 100% defensive. Israel has long been acting as Hitler, Cortes and Pizarro once did – with the same Trumpian certainty that led to that earlier trio’s downfall (p.94). As proof, in 1905, Hillel Zeitlin wrote that Palestine was “totally settled.” Lebensraum achieved only via settler-colonialism.
More Obvious Nazi/Zionist Similarities: This book explains why Hitler was hell-bent on exterminating the Slavs and taking their land: Germans lived in Slavic land in “primeval times” and it was “Germanic for many centuries and long before a Slav set foot there” for 3,000 years as far as the Vistula. In the 6th or 7th century after Christ the Slavs moved in and was seen by Hitler as squatters. See how, once again Zionists have got their settler-colonial ideas directly from Hitler’s play book? And a Nazi historian said Nazis saw Germany’s role as “bulwark against the East”, just as Zionist Herzl saw the proposed Jewish state as Europe’s “wall of defense against Asia.” Never mind that neither Nazis nor Zionists EVER protected Europe from the East. Nazis & Zionist show that psychopathic settler-colonial minds think alike. Both Nazi and Zionist publications have frequently lied to readers saying, “the war was forced on us”. Hitler said, “If Jewry should plot another World War in order to exterminate the Aryan peoples of Europe, it would not be the Aryan people which would be exterminated but Jewry.” Zionists turned Hitler’s classic Freudian projection into “Palestinians want us dead from the river to the sea so, as Nikki Haley says, we’ll HAVE to finish them first.” Himmler added during the Holocaust this pearl of projection also repurposed by Zionists, that Germany has the right to “destroy this people which wanted to destroy us.” Himmler even approved (like Israel) of targeting and killing children on the grounds that because these children have seen what you did to their parents in front of them, they learned to resist, and so are just walking timebombs.
Note that the Cherokee Indians “were dispossessed of their land even though they had fully adopted as their own the sedentary, agricultural way of life of the white settlers.”
“The landmark Fourth Geneva Convention, ratified in 1949, for the first time ‘unequivocally prohibited deportation’ of civilians under occupation (Articles 49, 147).” Palestinian resistance to Zionism has had nothing to do with anti-Semitism or hatred of Jews but is first and foremost a constant fear of dispossession or expulsion (Palestinian resistance to settler-colonialism or apartheid or ethnic cleansing or being deprived of rights or freedom of movement or self-determination).
Normally Bertrand Russell was a cool dude but never forget he also shamelessly felt Arabs should be forced out of Palestine to make way for Zionists. In this book I learned even my own grandfather Henry Wallace (page XV) also fell for this Zionist crap and took their side. Shameful that both Bertrand Russell and my grandpa spoke publicly w/o considering both sides or that they were advocating for unalloyed settler-colonialism. Wow.
Israel’s ’67 War was Unprovoked: Menachem Begin, a member of the Israeli Cabinet in June 1967, 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.” General Peled (one of the 67 War’s architects) said that “since 1949” no country could mortally threaten Israel – translation Israel ad nauseum playing the victim card (a.k.a. the non-chosen somehow want us dead) is intentionally PR posturing to gain undeserved sympathy. Never forget that Israel’s Abba Eban wrote, “Propaganda is the art of persuading others of what you do not necessarily believe yourself.” Apparently, Hasbara is an acronym for Homicidal Arrogant Savage Belligerent Assholes Requiring Amnesty.
Think of the Palestinians as living for many centuries in the same place and having “never considered leaving it.” Zionists basically have three claims: 1. We are perfect.
2. You are not. 3. If you question us for any reason, you’re a Jew hater. Finkelstein’s three Zionist claims in this book are 1. Divine Right (an imaginary God granted us immunity from mortal laws) 2. Historical Right (comically w/o evidence provided) and 3. Compelling Need (yes, Gazans are starving but we are low on foie gras and napkins). Funny how “historical right” meant you returning a place everyone knows you left two thousand years ago somehow entitles you to VIP access – it’s clearly advantageous to be PERSONALLY chosen by God.
Norman says to look cynically at modern Western History as, “every war is carefully justified as a defensive war by the government involved, and by all political parties, in their official utterances.” Norman tells us Ben Gurion eloquently and bluntly said in 1918, “I do not know what Arab will agree that Palestine should belong to the Jews.” Then Ben Gurion in 1938 reaffirmed that belief saying, “Politically we are the aggressors, and they defend themselves.” Norman says from beginning to end, Zionism was a conquest movement, just like Hitler’s plan for the Slavs.
This was a great book, just like everything Norman has written (except for strangely opposing the Palestinian call for BDS w/o a valid reason) and I strongly recommend it but would suggest you read his better Gaza book first. Kudos to the author.
Zionism Imitates Nazism’s Settler-Colonial Fantasies: Jabotinsky said he learned from Hitler the idea of “mass migrations” and “bloody deportations of recalcitrant minorities.” According to John Toland, Hitler “often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination – by starvation and uneven combat – of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity.” “Indeed, Hitler knew full well that, far from being wilderness, the East was ‘notoriously overpopulated’ (Weinberg).” “To resolve this problem, Hitler’s grand design called for the Slavs to be in part exterminated, in part expelled (“transfers of population’)”. Hitler’s plan for the rest was “we will isolate them in their own pig-sties.” Pause and ask yourself, what is the difference between Hitler’s settler-colonial plan and Israel’s present plan for Gaza? Then ask yourself, why is Israel hell bent on boldly imitating Hitler’s plans? Let’s make it more obvious – Hitler said, “England did not acquire India in a lawful and legitimate manner, but rather without regard to the natives’ wishes, views, or declarations of rights (JUST like Israel)”. Hitler said his plan was that millions of ethnic Germans would be relocated to the East until “our settlers are numerically superior to the natives (JUST like Israel)”. Take a close look, Zionist History has been a carbon copy of Hitler’s Lebensraum Fantasy. Why would Zionists consciously do that? First, choose the worst feature of their worst historical enemy, and not only to adopt it, but just as shamelessly convey their military offenses are 100% defensive. Israel has long been acting as Hitler, Cortes and Pizarro once did – with the same Trumpian certainty that led to that earlier trio’s downfall (p.94). As proof, in 1905, Hillel Zeitlin wrote that Palestine was “totally settled.” Lebensraum achieved only via settler-colonialism.
More Obvious Nazi/Zionist Similarities: This book explains why Hitler was hell-bent on exterminating the Slavs and taking their land: Germans lived in Slavic land in “primeval times” and it was “Germanic for many centuries and long before a Slav set foot there” for 3,000 years as far as the Vistula. In the 6th or 7th century after Christ the Slavs moved in and was seen by Hitler as squatters. See how, once again Zionists have got their settler-colonial ideas directly from Hitler’s play book? And a Nazi historian said Nazis saw Germany’s role as “bulwark against the East”, just as Zionist Herzl saw the proposed Jewish state as Europe’s “wall of defense against Asia.” Never mind that neither Nazis nor Zionists EVER protected Europe from the East. Nazis & Zionist show that psychopathic settler-colonial minds think alike. Both Nazi and Zionist publications have frequently lied to readers saying, “the war was forced on us”. Hitler said, “If Jewry should plot another World War in order to exterminate the Aryan peoples of Europe, it would not be the Aryan people which would be exterminated but Jewry.” Zionists turned Hitler’s classic Freudian projection into “Palestinians want us dead from the river to the sea so, as Nikki Haley says, we’ll HAVE to finish them first.” Himmler added during the Holocaust this pearl of projection also repurposed by Zionists, that Germany has the right to “destroy this people which wanted to destroy us.” Himmler even approved (like Israel) of targeting and killing children on the grounds that because these children have seen what you did to their parents in front of them, they learned to resist, and so are just walking timebombs.
Note that the Cherokee Indians “were dispossessed of their land even though they had fully adopted as their own the sedentary, agricultural way of life of the white settlers.”
“The landmark Fourth Geneva Convention, ratified in 1949, for the first time ‘unequivocally prohibited deportation’ of civilians under occupation (Articles 49, 147).” Palestinian resistance to Zionism has had nothing to do with anti-Semitism or hatred of Jews but is first and foremost a constant fear of dispossession or expulsion (Palestinian resistance to settler-colonialism or apartheid or ethnic cleansing or being deprived of rights or freedom of movement or self-determination).
Normally Bertrand Russell was a cool dude but never forget he also shamelessly felt Arabs should be forced out of Palestine to make way for Zionists. In this book I learned even my own grandfather Henry Wallace (page XV) also fell for this Zionist crap and took their side. Shameful that both Bertrand Russell and my grandpa spoke publicly w/o considering both sides or that they were advocating for unalloyed settler-colonialism. Wow.
Israel’s ’67 War was Unprovoked: Menachem Begin, a member of the Israeli Cabinet in June 1967, 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.” General Peled (one of the 67 War’s architects) said that “since 1949” no country could mortally threaten Israel – translation Israel ad nauseum playing the victim card (a.k.a. the non-chosen somehow want us dead) is intentionally PR posturing to gain undeserved sympathy. Never forget that Israel’s Abba Eban wrote, “Propaganda is the art of persuading others of what you do not necessarily believe yourself.” Apparently, Hasbara is an acronym for Homicidal Arrogant Savage Belligerent Assholes Requiring Amnesty.
Think of the Palestinians as living for many centuries in the same place and having “never considered leaving it.” Zionists basically have three claims: 1. We are perfect.
2. You are not. 3. If you question us for any reason, you’re a Jew hater. Finkelstein’s three Zionist claims in this book are 1. Divine Right (an imaginary God granted us immunity from mortal laws) 2. Historical Right (comically w/o evidence provided) and 3. Compelling Need (yes, Gazans are starving but we are low on foie gras and napkins). Funny how “historical right” meant you returning a place everyone knows you left two thousand years ago somehow entitles you to VIP access – it’s clearly advantageous to be PERSONALLY chosen by God.
Norman says to look cynically at modern Western History as, “every war is carefully justified as a defensive war by the government involved, and by all political parties, in their official utterances.” Norman tells us Ben Gurion eloquently and bluntly said in 1918, “I do not know what Arab will agree that Palestine should belong to the Jews.” Then Ben Gurion in 1938 reaffirmed that belief saying, “Politically we are the aggressors, and they defend themselves.” Norman says from beginning to end, Zionism was a conquest movement, just like Hitler’s plan for the Slavs.
This was a great book, just like everything Norman has written (except for strangely opposing the Palestinian call for BDS w/o a valid reason) and I strongly recommend it but would suggest you read his better Gaza book first. Kudos to the author.
March 16, 2015
"Polemical" is right. And, if I'm being honest, that's why I read Finkelstein's works--something about his scathing sarcasm and his righteous fury is just so much fun for me to read. And he will pull no punches and spare no feelings when it comes to exposing the two things he seems to hate most: hypocrisy and bad scholarship.
So yeah, I enjoyed this book. I particularly enjoyed the analysis of Zionism and the absolute crushing of Joan Peters' From Time Immemorial. If you're interested in the Israel/Palestine conflict, and you don't mind a little scholarly ranting, I would definitely recommend this book.
So yeah, I enjoyed this book. I particularly enjoyed the analysis of Zionism and the absolute crushing of Joan Peters' From Time Immemorial. If you're interested in the Israel/Palestine conflict, and you don't mind a little scholarly ranting, I would definitely recommend this book.
January 9, 2017
"We are beautiful: but we must shoot to kill- but not before we go through an agonizing search of our own tormented soul"
This quote and hundreds more are woven in this book, of understanding the truth and lies that surround the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Perhaps, the most disturbing truth and grand scheme of this conflict and human weakness... is simply that, we are all flesh and blood.... require the same essentials for living and thriving.... and yet, throughout history, there are groups of people who think that they are the divine prince's of fake, invented royalty.... and any means, to obtain and sustain that imaginary kingdom.
This quote and hundreds more are woven in this book, of understanding the truth and lies that surround the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Perhaps, the most disturbing truth and grand scheme of this conflict and human weakness... is simply that, we are all flesh and blood.... require the same essentials for living and thriving.... and yet, throughout history, there are groups of people who think that they are the divine prince's of fake, invented royalty.... and any means, to obtain and sustain that imaginary kingdom.
June 12, 2021
I have only read 6% of the book (Kindle version) but it was enough to see that the author has a personal agenda and clearly lacks objectivity. Reading the book feels like participating in an argument where the author yells his facts on you and tries to persuade you by any means that his position is right. This is not what I expected from this book. I thought it would give me an impartial perspective on the subject but it failed to do so. If you look for an objective analysis of the conflict - look elsewhere.
November 25, 2022
This guy is ruthless. He actually uses facts and logic to destroy ppl’s arguments to a point that it’s sad. In fact, he is so thorough in destroying people that the book got boring at some points. Like straight up pages after pages of him enumerating the errors of other authors. If you want to read a book exposing myths that have been perpetuated by important writing regarding the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, this is the book for you. This guy is a menace I wouldn’t wanna start a fight with him he’d find out my deepest secrets and expose me. Final rating : 4/5
April 3, 2020
Includes the famous and justified trashing of From Time Immemorial, and critical distillation of other such studies dripping with hypocricy. At points, Finkelstein's fury is almost unbearable, the best example being the point after he presents tearful humanist soliloquies of Israeli soldiers after 1967 war, traumatized that Arabs "forced" them to "hate them":
He then proceeds with extensive quotes of repulsive figures such as Hoess, concerning how they abhored what happened in Auschwitz, how Final Solution was forced on them, or how the condemned wanton sadism. The analogy strikes me as far over the top, though it's difficult to dismiss it completely, coming from a child of survivors of Majdanek and Auschwitz.
In any case, the overall feel of Finkelstein's book is that of Israel being a land beyond looking glass, where notions of right and wrong, of victim and oppressor, are inverted. This inverted land is Israel as it exists Western liberal consciousness. To point to the most glaring point - after reading this and other books on Six Day War, it strikes me as utterly incomprehensible how can a blatant war of conquest be such universally (mis)understood as defensive war.
Or how can Golda Meir's famous quote about "being forced to kill Arab children" circulate widely and not be condemned as admission of murder of innocent civilians, but - on contrary - be seen as admission of tragic fate which elicits sympathy for the killer!
Simply put - once again - Israel is colonial regime. As colonial regime, it's both fascinating since it displays power and ingenuity, and is morally reprehensible as all colonial regimes are. One could argue that the colonization of Palestine is not more reprehensible than colonization of Americas or Australia or - for example - Belgian Congo, which had clearly genocidal consequences. One could also have sympathy for Zionist cause in lights of utter horrors of anti-Semitism - not only its culmination in Holocaust, but its overall prevalence in Europe for centuries. But even though one may admit that the presence of 20th century framework of human rights mitigates potential colonial excesses, it doesn't make it especially enlightened. In post-WWII framework we know that only just solution is decolonization. That doesn't mean uprooting of settlers anywhere - but it does mean eschewing colonial framework and its hierarchies.
Schizophrenia of authors analyzed in this book is easily solved as soon as the matter of Israel and Palestine, too, is approached consistently within this post-WWII axiological configuration. With one's eyes fixed on justice, there'll be no contradiction.
We have seen that, for Shapira, the ethos exemplified in The Seventh Day morally redeemed labor Zionism. Yet (1) its practical moral significance was nil, and (2) the same ethos informed Nazism.
He then proceeds with extensive quotes of repulsive figures such as Hoess, concerning how they abhored what happened in Auschwitz, how Final Solution was forced on them, or how the condemned wanton sadism. The analogy strikes me as far over the top, though it's difficult to dismiss it completely, coming from a child of survivors of Majdanek and Auschwitz.
In any case, the overall feel of Finkelstein's book is that of Israel being a land beyond looking glass, where notions of right and wrong, of victim and oppressor, are inverted. This inverted land is Israel as it exists Western liberal consciousness. To point to the most glaring point - after reading this and other books on Six Day War, it strikes me as utterly incomprehensible how can a blatant war of conquest be such universally (mis)understood as defensive war.
Or how can Golda Meir's famous quote about "being forced to kill Arab children" circulate widely and not be condemned as admission of murder of innocent civilians, but - on contrary - be seen as admission of tragic fate which elicits sympathy for the killer!
Simply put - once again - Israel is colonial regime. As colonial regime, it's both fascinating since it displays power and ingenuity, and is morally reprehensible as all colonial regimes are. One could argue that the colonization of Palestine is not more reprehensible than colonization of Americas or Australia or - for example - Belgian Congo, which had clearly genocidal consequences. One could also have sympathy for Zionist cause in lights of utter horrors of anti-Semitism - not only its culmination in Holocaust, but its overall prevalence in Europe for centuries. But even though one may admit that the presence of 20th century framework of human rights mitigates potential colonial excesses, it doesn't make it especially enlightened. In post-WWII framework we know that only just solution is decolonization. That doesn't mean uprooting of settlers anywhere - but it does mean eschewing colonial framework and its hierarchies.
Schizophrenia of authors analyzed in this book is easily solved as soon as the matter of Israel and Palestine, too, is approached consistently within this post-WWII axiological configuration. With one's eyes fixed on justice, there'll be no contradiction.
July 28, 2009
A devastating rebuttal of the ludicrous notion (still floating around in some quarters of the US) that Palestine was largely unpopulated when confronted with Zionist colonization, and a powerful analysis of the conflict as a whole.
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July 18, 2025I have never read an academic history book with this argumentative style before. As Finkelstein puts it, “My approach throughout is to use, as the foil of my critique, an influential piece, or standard body, of scholarship.” Indeed, this book is more a critique of the extant literature and its “systematic bias” than it is an archivally-based contribution to the historical field. In fact, I don’t believe it is based on archival research at all (see final paragraph for qualification of this claim). His method seems to be to thoroughly examine and analyze each “foil” study’s sources, and cross-reference these with the original claims, leading him to (convincingly) argue that the critiqued study’s argument does not stand up under scrutiny of the sources. In other chapters, he analyzes various discursive edifices of deceit promulgated by Israeli statesmen and apologists, dissolving them in the process and revealing them for the disingenuous legitimations they are. I understand that Finkelstein has training as a historian, but this work, as well as The Holocaust Industry, doesn’t much fit the mold of your typical historical monograph. None of this is meant to be a criticism; it’s just not quite what I expected in works of what I thought were Academic History (although his books are nevertheless academic, and historical). I wonder how much all this owes to the contemporaneity of his primary concerns (the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), or to the fact that he is probably banned from Israeli archives (and I imagine whatever Palestinian archives exist are and have been under Israeli jurisdiction, owing to the fact that their military occupation has lasted the extent of Finkelstein’s academic career). It may also have to do with his aim in breaking down hegemonic legitimating narratives, which he confronts and combats head on, rather than merely revising or complicating regnant academic understandings within the historical field.
If one had to synthesize an overall argument to the book, it might be that the hegemonic narratives concerning the history of the Israeli nation-state–even some of the more recent and even-handed contributions by Israeli historians–all, willfully or otherwise, misappropriate the evidentiary record in order to exonerate the Zionist project. This project, notwithstanding many claims to the contrary, has always been one of conquest, plain and simple.
Finkelstein is a real one, and his books are both noble and rigorous in their scholarship. It should also be said that Finkelstein is an excellent crafter of prose, particularly in the case of understated causticity. Take the following example: “Berl Katznelson…had maintained that ‘there has never been a colonizing enterprise as typified by justice and honesty toward others as our work here in Eretz Israel.’ In…The Winning of the West, Theodore Roosevelt likewise concluded that ‘no other conquering nation has ever treated savage owners of the soil with such generosity as has the United States.’ The recipients of this benefaction would presumably have a different story to tell.”
I met him serendipitously while walking back to my bus after a march in Washington DC a few months ago. He had traveled out and marched in the late-Spring heat at the age of 71. Over the course of our brief conversation, he complained about woke culture and likened it to the Stalinist silencing of dissent. This struck me (a more-or-less woke Zoomer) as bizarre, and I usually laugh about it when I tell the story. If anything, this digression from the consensus of the youthful American left towards a talking point more often associated with right-wing crackpots illustrates his intellectual independence, rooted in the integrity of his moral and truth-seeking conscience.
I should add, to revise some of my earlier statements (which were written about 2/3 of the way through the book), that two of the final chapters do incorporate archival research on diplomacy. These are mostly based in UN archives and the memoirs and internal memorandums of UN actors and diplomatic agents involved in negotiation over the June and October Wars.
If one had to synthesize an overall argument to the book, it might be that the hegemonic narratives concerning the history of the Israeli nation-state–even some of the more recent and even-handed contributions by Israeli historians–all, willfully or otherwise, misappropriate the evidentiary record in order to exonerate the Zionist project. This project, notwithstanding many claims to the contrary, has always been one of conquest, plain and simple.
Finkelstein is a real one, and his books are both noble and rigorous in their scholarship. It should also be said that Finkelstein is an excellent crafter of prose, particularly in the case of understated causticity. Take the following example: “Berl Katznelson…had maintained that ‘there has never been a colonizing enterprise as typified by justice and honesty toward others as our work here in Eretz Israel.’ In…The Winning of the West, Theodore Roosevelt likewise concluded that ‘no other conquering nation has ever treated savage owners of the soil with such generosity as has the United States.’ The recipients of this benefaction would presumably have a different story to tell.”
I met him serendipitously while walking back to my bus after a march in Washington DC a few months ago. He had traveled out and marched in the late-Spring heat at the age of 71. Over the course of our brief conversation, he complained about woke culture and likened it to the Stalinist silencing of dissent. This struck me (a more-or-less woke Zoomer) as bizarre, and I usually laugh about it when I tell the story. If anything, this digression from the consensus of the youthful American left towards a talking point more often associated with right-wing crackpots illustrates his intellectual independence, rooted in the integrity of his moral and truth-seeking conscience.
I should add, to revise some of my earlier statements (which were written about 2/3 of the way through the book), that two of the final chapters do incorporate archival research on diplomacy. These are mostly based in UN archives and the memoirs and internal memorandums of UN actors and diplomatic agents involved in negotiation over the June and October Wars.
November 22, 2023
This is a really ballsy book. Finkelstein spends each chapter unpacking how different historians and political figures have depicted the long conflict in ways that bias perspectives that support the state of Israel. It’s important to remember that the book was published in 1995 and so it systematically goes through with each chapter the universally accepted crucial turning points of the conflict, from the early settlements to 1948 and 1967, ending at the Oslo Accord of 1993. He aims quite high by directly calling out major figures in the academic and political worlds, even those who generally favor his fundamental sympathies, such as the famed Palestinian scholar Edward Said. No one in his sight is left unscathed.
But it’s not an emotional tirade. It’s remarkably grounded in historical facts, with a deep list of citations that take up at least over a hundred pages. There really seems to be a concerted effort by the state of Israel to only allow narratives of their history to be expressed that distort their past in order to justify the actions of their present. And even those whose job it is to depict these events impartially (as much as they can) end up misrepresenting them, intentionally or not. The few brave critics that push back against them are banned.
Overall this is a fantastic primer on how the conflict has been depicted over the last few decades and the gaps in the narratives being popularly portrayed. I highly recommend this, though it may not be sufficient to understand the conflicts that have emerged over the last two decades.
But it’s not an emotional tirade. It’s remarkably grounded in historical facts, with a deep list of citations that take up at least over a hundred pages. There really seems to be a concerted effort by the state of Israel to only allow narratives of their history to be expressed that distort their past in order to justify the actions of their present. And even those whose job it is to depict these events impartially (as much as they can) end up misrepresenting them, intentionally or not. The few brave critics that push back against them are banned.
Overall this is a fantastic primer on how the conflict has been depicted over the last few decades and the gaps in the narratives being popularly portrayed. I highly recommend this, though it may not be sufficient to understand the conflicts that have emerged over the last two decades.
April 16, 2025
Publicado en 1995, profundo análisis y desmontaje de los mitos de la ideología sionista para justificar su criminal expansionismo y opresión salvaje contra el pueblo palestino: la tierra baldía, la autodefensa... Desnuda sus objetivos estratégicos y falsificaciones históricas.
La creación del Estado 'racial' de Israel, en la medida que su objetivo era establecer una mayoría judía siendo este pueblo una minoría en la zona, inevitablemente iba a conllevar el genocidio y apartheid contra la mayoría de la población nativa. El texto explicita el apoyo decisivo del imperialismo norteamericano y presenta la complicidad de la burguesía occidental.
Afiladas comparativas con otras mitologías de conquista como las de Hitler en el este de Europa, EEUU hacia los indios o Vietnam y el imperialismo francés, holandés o británico en territorios como los africanos. Condena implacable a los Acuerdos de Oslo y a la claudicación de la OLP y su plena conversión en cipaya de Israel; muy interesante la analogía con los bantustanes en el sur y suroeste africanos y la aguda previsión de la cristalización de una burguesía palestina ligada a Israel.
Se incluyen referencias que recogen el terrible papel del laborismo y "socialismo" sionistas, así como del estalinismo. También hay descripciones donde se aprecia la traición de las oligarquías árabes a la causa del pueblo palestino. No obstante, están presentadas de forma aislada y no se ofrece una explicación de conjunto.
Lenguaje y formato muy académicos con minuciosos estudios de diversas publicaciones de plumíferos sionistas, con numerosas citas y extensos pies de página. Presupone conocimientos previos sobre la historia de la creación del Estado de Israel y el conflicto palestino-israelí. Pocas referencias a la lucha de clases; por ejemplo, no se aborda la primera intifada.
La creación del Estado 'racial' de Israel, en la medida que su objetivo era establecer una mayoría judía siendo este pueblo una minoría en la zona, inevitablemente iba a conllevar el genocidio y apartheid contra la mayoría de la población nativa. El texto explicita el apoyo decisivo del imperialismo norteamericano y presenta la complicidad de la burguesía occidental.
Afiladas comparativas con otras mitologías de conquista como las de Hitler en el este de Europa, EEUU hacia los indios o Vietnam y el imperialismo francés, holandés o británico en territorios como los africanos. Condena implacable a los Acuerdos de Oslo y a la claudicación de la OLP y su plena conversión en cipaya de Israel; muy interesante la analogía con los bantustanes en el sur y suroeste africanos y la aguda previsión de la cristalización de una burguesía palestina ligada a Israel.
Se incluyen referencias que recogen el terrible papel del laborismo y "socialismo" sionistas, así como del estalinismo. También hay descripciones donde se aprecia la traición de las oligarquías árabes a la causa del pueblo palestino. No obstante, están presentadas de forma aislada y no se ofrece una explicación de conjunto.
Lenguaje y formato muy académicos con minuciosos estudios de diversas publicaciones de plumíferos sionistas, con numerosas citas y extensos pies de página. Presupone conocimientos previos sobre la historia de la creación del Estado de Israel y el conflicto palestino-israelí. Pocas referencias a la lucha de clases; por ejemplo, no se aborda la primera intifada.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 20, 2023
details + debunks the major myths supporting israel + its policies .. could use an update but super good for a historical affirmation of palestine amongst all the propaganda we get
March 24, 2024
Finkelstein is a top tier scholar.
May 15, 2024
A CONTROVERSIAL AUTHOR CRITIQUES SOME PRO-ISRAEL AUTHORS AND POSITIONS
Norman Gary Finkelstein is an American political scientist, activist, former professor, and author. He has taught at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Hunter College, New York University, DePaul University (where he was denied tenure and then resigned), and most recently at Sakarya University Middle East Institute in Turkey in 2014–15.
He wrote in the Introduction to this 1995 book, “The origins of this book reach back to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in June 1982. I began then for the first time to read systematically about the Israel-Palestine conflict. The topic that engaged me most was the question of Zionism. Specifically, I was intrigued by the debate … on whether a Je wish state can also be a democratic state. The research proved sufficiently fruitful that I was able to turn it into a doctoral dissertation. My thesis---that Zionism is a kind of romantic nationalism fundamentally at odds with liberal values---is synthesized in the first chapter of this volume.” (Pg. 1)
He states, “the root cause of the Palestine conflict was … the Zionist aspiration ‘to restore full or partial sovereignty over Palestine to the Jewish people.’ The Zionist movement sought to establish a Jewish state in Palestine---that is, a state in which non-Jews would figure, at best, as a superfluous presence. Zionist leaders were fully cognizant that the indigenous Arab population of Palestine would view with alarm any and all efforts to create such an exclusivist state.” (Pg.16)
He strongly criticizes Joan Peters’ book ‘From Time Immemorial’: “[Her book] is among the most spectacular frauds ever published on the Arab-Israeli conflict… The fraud in Peters’s book is so pervasive that it is hard to pluck out a single thread… First, the evidence that Peters adduces to document massive illegal Arab immigration into Palestine is almost entirely falsified. Second, the conclusions that Peters draws from her demographic study of Palestine’s indigenous Arab population are borne out by the data she presents. To confound the reader further, Peters resorts to plagiarism… Peters is reluctant to specify the exact percentage of Palestinian Arabs who were not indigenous… official, mostly British-authored reports concluded that… ‘Arab immigration for the purposes of settlement [in Palestine] is insignificant.’ Yet Peters manages to use these VERY SAME documents to ‘prove’ precisely the contrary… much of the ‘prodigious’ research praised by readers of Peters’s book is an optical illusion… the obscure travelogues and other recondite sources that Peters [used] … to document the state of Palestine on the Zionist colonization … she did not read…” (Pg. 22, 25-26, 42)
He also critiques ‘New Israeli historian’ Benny Morris: “For all the monumental corruption and incompetence of the Arab leaders, one cannot but be impressed by the prescience of their analyses. Curiously, Morris virtually admits as much but… describes these Arab ‘prognoses’ as ‘in the nature of self-fulfilling prophecies.’… If he means that the Arabs, by electing to wage war, facilitated the expulsion, he is no doubt correct. Yet, this in no way belies the fact that it was an expulsion.” (Pg. 61) He continues, “to distinguish between the Palestinian refugees who fled before the attacking … Zionist forces, on the one hand, and the Palestinian refugees who were expelled outright, on the other, is… an exercise in sophistry. Occasionally, Morris comes close to conceding this point, but I do not think he goes nearly far enough. Indeed he could not without abandoning his central thesis…” (Pg. 77)
He asserts, “Zionism’s ‘historical right’ to Palestine was neither historical nor a right. It was not historical inasmuch as it voided the two millennia of non-Jewish settlement in Palestine and the two millennia of Jewish settlement outside it. It was not a right, except in the Romantic ‘mysticism’ of ‘blood and soil’ and the Romantic ‘cult’ of ‘death, heroes, and graves…” (Pg. 101)
He states, “The ‘defensive ethos’ was never the operative ideology of mainstream Zionism. From beginning to end, Zionism was a conquest movement… especially after World War II… Britain’s waning commitment to the Balfour Declaration, the escalation of Arab resistance… caused a consensus to crystallize within the Zionist movement that the time was ripe to return to the original strategy of conquering Palestine ‘by blood and fire.’ Mainstream Zionism adapted its tactics to accommodate new contingencies. But force was a constant throughout… The recourse to force… was ‘inherent’ in the aim of transforming Palestine, with its overwhelmingly Arab population, into a Jewish state.” (Pg. 108-109)
He argues, “The mortal threat that Nassar allegedly posed to Israel in 1967 is as chimerical as his intention to attack it. The CIA estimated … that Israel would win a war against one or all of the Arab countries … in roughly a week.” (Pg. 135) “Israel faced no significant threat, let alone mortal danger, in June 1967. Furthermore, diplomacy seemed---despite Israel---to be working. Why then did Israel attack when it did?,,, l[The] question is not difficult to answer…. First, Israel received a green… light from the United States in early June… On the other hand, there was acute anxiety in Tel Aviv that the Egyptian vice-president’s imminent visit to Washington might produce a diplomatic breakthrough… In sum, Israel struck on June 5 before it could be denied, and confident that it would reap, the ‘fruits of victory.’” (Pg. 141-142)
He points out, “my thesis is that …Egypt (and Jordan) desperately sought a negotiated settlement after the 1967 war. Israel, however, refused to budge from the conquered territories in exchange for peace. With all diplomatic options exhausted, Egypt went to war, displaying impressive---and unexpected—military prowess. Israel accordingly agreed after the war to the same diplomatic settlement Sadat had offered it before the war. In a word, it was Israel, not Egypt, that ultimately bowed to the language of force… I will argue that Egypt, unlike Israel, fully embraced the internation consensus for resolving the conflict… I will argue that the crucial factor was Egypt’s decisive show of force in the October war.” (Pg. 151)
He suggests, “There is… an instructive lesson in Israel’s handling of the Sinai issue. Although formally agreeing to restore Egypt’s sovereignty, Israel haggled to the very end to retain parts of Sinai. Specifically, it sought to maintain control of the settlements, airfields and oil refineries that it had built…. Indeed, Israel bargained to keep the settlements mainly for fear that dismantling would set a bad precedent for the West Bank. It bargained to keep the airfields mainly to force the United States to foot the bill for building new ones within Israel proper… [and] to guarantee its future petroleum supplies.” (Pg. 167)
This book---though controversial---will interest some who are studying the Israel/Palestinian conflicts.
Norman Gary Finkelstein is an American political scientist, activist, former professor, and author. He has taught at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Hunter College, New York University, DePaul University (where he was denied tenure and then resigned), and most recently at Sakarya University Middle East Institute in Turkey in 2014–15.
He wrote in the Introduction to this 1995 book, “The origins of this book reach back to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in June 1982. I began then for the first time to read systematically about the Israel-Palestine conflict. The topic that engaged me most was the question of Zionism. Specifically, I was intrigued by the debate … on whether a Je wish state can also be a democratic state. The research proved sufficiently fruitful that I was able to turn it into a doctoral dissertation. My thesis---that Zionism is a kind of romantic nationalism fundamentally at odds with liberal values---is synthesized in the first chapter of this volume.” (Pg. 1)
He states, “the root cause of the Palestine conflict was … the Zionist aspiration ‘to restore full or partial sovereignty over Palestine to the Jewish people.’ The Zionist movement sought to establish a Jewish state in Palestine---that is, a state in which non-Jews would figure, at best, as a superfluous presence. Zionist leaders were fully cognizant that the indigenous Arab population of Palestine would view with alarm any and all efforts to create such an exclusivist state.” (Pg.16)
He strongly criticizes Joan Peters’ book ‘From Time Immemorial’: “[Her book] is among the most spectacular frauds ever published on the Arab-Israeli conflict… The fraud in Peters’s book is so pervasive that it is hard to pluck out a single thread… First, the evidence that Peters adduces to document massive illegal Arab immigration into Palestine is almost entirely falsified. Second, the conclusions that Peters draws from her demographic study of Palestine’s indigenous Arab population are borne out by the data she presents. To confound the reader further, Peters resorts to plagiarism… Peters is reluctant to specify the exact percentage of Palestinian Arabs who were not indigenous… official, mostly British-authored reports concluded that… ‘Arab immigration for the purposes of settlement [in Palestine] is insignificant.’ Yet Peters manages to use these VERY SAME documents to ‘prove’ precisely the contrary… much of the ‘prodigious’ research praised by readers of Peters’s book is an optical illusion… the obscure travelogues and other recondite sources that Peters [used] … to document the state of Palestine on the Zionist colonization … she did not read…” (Pg. 22, 25-26, 42)
He also critiques ‘New Israeli historian’ Benny Morris: “For all the monumental corruption and incompetence of the Arab leaders, one cannot but be impressed by the prescience of their analyses. Curiously, Morris virtually admits as much but… describes these Arab ‘prognoses’ as ‘in the nature of self-fulfilling prophecies.’… If he means that the Arabs, by electing to wage war, facilitated the expulsion, he is no doubt correct. Yet, this in no way belies the fact that it was an expulsion.” (Pg. 61) He continues, “to distinguish between the Palestinian refugees who fled before the attacking … Zionist forces, on the one hand, and the Palestinian refugees who were expelled outright, on the other, is… an exercise in sophistry. Occasionally, Morris comes close to conceding this point, but I do not think he goes nearly far enough. Indeed he could not without abandoning his central thesis…” (Pg. 77)
He asserts, “Zionism’s ‘historical right’ to Palestine was neither historical nor a right. It was not historical inasmuch as it voided the two millennia of non-Jewish settlement in Palestine and the two millennia of Jewish settlement outside it. It was not a right, except in the Romantic ‘mysticism’ of ‘blood and soil’ and the Romantic ‘cult’ of ‘death, heroes, and graves…” (Pg. 101)
He states, “The ‘defensive ethos’ was never the operative ideology of mainstream Zionism. From beginning to end, Zionism was a conquest movement… especially after World War II… Britain’s waning commitment to the Balfour Declaration, the escalation of Arab resistance… caused a consensus to crystallize within the Zionist movement that the time was ripe to return to the original strategy of conquering Palestine ‘by blood and fire.’ Mainstream Zionism adapted its tactics to accommodate new contingencies. But force was a constant throughout… The recourse to force… was ‘inherent’ in the aim of transforming Palestine, with its overwhelmingly Arab population, into a Jewish state.” (Pg. 108-109)
He argues, “The mortal threat that Nassar allegedly posed to Israel in 1967 is as chimerical as his intention to attack it. The CIA estimated … that Israel would win a war against one or all of the Arab countries … in roughly a week.” (Pg. 135) “Israel faced no significant threat, let alone mortal danger, in June 1967. Furthermore, diplomacy seemed---despite Israel---to be working. Why then did Israel attack when it did?,,, l[The] question is not difficult to answer…. First, Israel received a green… light from the United States in early June… On the other hand, there was acute anxiety in Tel Aviv that the Egyptian vice-president’s imminent visit to Washington might produce a diplomatic breakthrough… In sum, Israel struck on June 5 before it could be denied, and confident that it would reap, the ‘fruits of victory.’” (Pg. 141-142)
He points out, “my thesis is that …Egypt (and Jordan) desperately sought a negotiated settlement after the 1967 war. Israel, however, refused to budge from the conquered territories in exchange for peace. With all diplomatic options exhausted, Egypt went to war, displaying impressive---and unexpected—military prowess. Israel accordingly agreed after the war to the same diplomatic settlement Sadat had offered it before the war. In a word, it was Israel, not Egypt, that ultimately bowed to the language of force… I will argue that Egypt, unlike Israel, fully embraced the internation consensus for resolving the conflict… I will argue that the crucial factor was Egypt’s decisive show of force in the October war.” (Pg. 151)
He suggests, “There is… an instructive lesson in Israel’s handling of the Sinai issue. Although formally agreeing to restore Egypt’s sovereignty, Israel haggled to the very end to retain parts of Sinai. Specifically, it sought to maintain control of the settlements, airfields and oil refineries that it had built…. Indeed, Israel bargained to keep the settlements mainly for fear that dismantling would set a bad precedent for the West Bank. It bargained to keep the airfields mainly to force the United States to foot the bill for building new ones within Israel proper… [and] to guarantee its future petroleum supplies.” (Pg. 167)
This book---though controversial---will interest some who are studying the Israel/Palestinian conflicts.
February 27, 2016
Searing and concise, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict challenges the pro-Israeli narrative of the titular conflict in no uncertain terms. Chapter by chapter it demolishes the basic tenets of Israel's "official" history (I. e., that Palestine was not meaningfully "inhabited" before Jewish migration, that Israel did not "expel" the Palestinians from their homes in 1948, that Israel's aggression towards it's neighbors is essentially defensive, etc) and puts the popular and scholarly accounts of that history, and their methods, under severe scrutiny. Of course, the "critical" or "dissenting" view of the Israel-Palestine conflict is not only espoused by a few isolated voices in the wilderness. (Avi Schlaim's The Iron Wall is a particularly notable example.) Image and Reality shows that Israel from its founding has been a de facto colonizing power, and has never intended to live side-by-side with the indigenous Arab population. As with many accounts of this nature, there's a lot to be angry about here, from Israel's frequent "doubling down" on aggressive measures when offered any kind of compromise with the Palestinians or with neighboring countries, to the US's reflexive siding with Israel regardless of its actions. However, it seems at times here that the tone is a bit too angry, that Finkelstein delights a bit too much in taking down the subjects of his critiques. His analysis is incisive if harsh. As this was originally published in 1995, I found it interesting that Finkelstein held a rather dim view of the Oslo peace process, particularly given today's realities.
April 22, 2025
Norman Finkelstein does what he do; he did it then and he does it now. In this book, he dismantles scholarly, mainstream, and popular histories of the Israel Palestine conflict. No book is too easy a target or beyond critique. From the crass propagandistic scam of “From Time Immemorial” to the well documented and monumental revisionism of Benny Morris, Finkelstein finds logical holes in arguments and tears them wide open. Like his mentor Chomsky, Finkelstein’s main purpose in discussing this topic seems to be unveiling the fact that Israel has been dead set on undermining the peace process from the start.
February 26, 2025
Norman doesn't beat around the bush.
I feel profoundly sad when I think of Norman and others who are the descendants of Holocaust survivors and are fighting against the oppressors. How unbearable must it be to live with the pain of ancestral trauma as descendants of survivors and still fight for justice? How disheartening must it be to bear witness to the continued violence, knowing their parents and grandparents endured similar suffering?
I feel profoundly sad when I think of Norman and others who are the descendants of Holocaust survivors and are fighting against the oppressors. How unbearable must it be to live with the pain of ancestral trauma as descendants of survivors and still fight for justice? How disheartening must it be to bear witness to the continued violence, knowing their parents and grandparents endured similar suffering?
December 15, 2007
If you want to understand the conflict between Israel and her neighbors, you need this book -- it's as simple as that.
February 19, 2010
Rich with scathing polemic, a serious discussion of the conflict from a rigorous scholar who lacks the pretensions which too often stifle any real conversation of this topic.
September 15, 2011
It's a great book and dispels many of the pervading myths and lies about the Israel-Palestine conflict, but it can get a little tedious to read a times due to the amount of details Finkelstein gives.
October 1, 2012
'The most comprehensive book on the Palestine-Israel issue.' - Noam Chomsky
May 2, 2007
essential reading for anyone interested in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
February 21, 2024
Finkelstein is someone I admire who in my opinion takes great care in his scholarship and love for humanity against oppression. I originally started this book nearly two years ago but stopped a third of the way through. I decided to start from the beginning again now last month and finally finished it completely.
His book goes through some of the major events and the revisionist history attempted by major historians. He dissects the "official" zionist narrative and exposes that what the Zionist entity claims is largely false or misleading. Like claiming that the establishment of the zionist state was not designed but just happened due to war. Nothing was further from the truth. It is well documented that the zionists worked very hard to get what they wanted and kill who they needed. The referencing back to history whether the American settlers in manifest destiny, the Boers in South Africa, or the Nazis in Eastern Europe, drives home the fact that the zionists are modern day settler colonists. They share a common narrative about settling and colonizing land that belonged to others. I want to stress that I wanted to read this book in full again to discuss the history that is commonly ignored given the genocide ongoing at this very moment in Gaza. We can see how this was on track to happen given all of the Zionists depraved behavior to maintain their colony. Using this knowledge we must organize to make others see and stop supporting the Zionist entity. It is an uphill battle in the belly of empire but one we must undertake.
His book goes through some of the major events and the revisionist history attempted by major historians. He dissects the "official" zionist narrative and exposes that what the Zionist entity claims is largely false or misleading. Like claiming that the establishment of the zionist state was not designed but just happened due to war. Nothing was further from the truth. It is well documented that the zionists worked very hard to get what they wanted and kill who they needed. The referencing back to history whether the American settlers in manifest destiny, the Boers in South Africa, or the Nazis in Eastern Europe, drives home the fact that the zionists are modern day settler colonists. They share a common narrative about settling and colonizing land that belonged to others. I want to stress that I wanted to read this book in full again to discuss the history that is commonly ignored given the genocide ongoing at this very moment in Gaza. We can see how this was on track to happen given all of the Zionists depraved behavior to maintain their colony. Using this knowledge we must organize to make others see and stop supporting the Zionist entity. It is an uphill battle in the belly of empire but one we must undertake.
May 21, 2018
It took a while to read it cause life + intense book, but finally finished! This is not your typical handbook about the Palestine-Israel situation that would just throw common knowledge at you, instead the author chooses to critically analyse famous studies on the subject (zionist ones and non-zionist) such as Peter's "From time immemorial" and Benny Morris' "Birth". Finkelstein also takes on Abba Eban's discourse, an Israeli diplomat who is authoritative on foreign affairs.
Every Zionist lie, every fraud, Finkelstein tackles them with facts. For example, Joan Peter's study (saying this one is a fraud is a euphemism) basically states how Palestinians were never on this land before the Jews and how they came from mass immigration. Finkelstein deconstructs such arguments by redirecting the reader towards databases. To add to this, the book is full of side notes that give needed additional information, which is one more reason why this book is intense. It is also intense because it definitely is not for people who just started learning about the situation. Indeed, you will find an acronym for such organization here, an event that is not discussed in details in the book but is necessary to understand the point there. It is much easier to understand the content of this book if one knows more about Palestinian politics for instance, especially when it comes to understanding the Oslo agreements and how Palestine "agreed" upon it though most Palestinians were against it.
Every Zionist lie, every fraud, Finkelstein tackles them with facts. For example, Joan Peter's study (saying this one is a fraud is a euphemism) basically states how Palestinians were never on this land before the Jews and how they came from mass immigration. Finkelstein deconstructs such arguments by redirecting the reader towards databases. To add to this, the book is full of side notes that give needed additional information, which is one more reason why this book is intense. It is also intense because it definitely is not for people who just started learning about the situation. Indeed, you will find an acronym for such organization here, an event that is not discussed in details in the book but is necessary to understand the point there. It is much easier to understand the content of this book if one knows more about Palestinian politics for instance, especially when it comes to understanding the Oslo agreements and how Palestine "agreed" upon it though most Palestinians were against it.
June 15, 2024
Vaguely remember hearing him say somewhere that he is a 'forensic' political scientist or something of that sort - but the word 'forensic' was definitely used. And that is definitely clear from this book. The chapters in this book essentially break down what other writings on the history of Israel and Palestine in that context, got wrong. He goes through all the cited materials - the source materials of each of those books and often it comes down to this question - who could these authors draw these conclusions after looking at that data, or that report? If someone isn't inclined towards history, may even enjoy this book for this point of view.
There are also heartbreaking realisations from the facts you learn from this book. Especially the part how and when the US made a change in it's position from going to being with the rest of the international voices criticising Israel's encroachments to being one that give unequivocal support to it. Magically, that happened when Mr. Kissinger came on the scene, and as someone aware of other places where he convinced US administration to turn a blind eye in 1971, that is no surprise to me.
Trump made the phrase 'fake news' famous and as a quick way to villainise the news media. At this point in 2024 however, it is hard to dispel that and were it not for the social media channels, a lot of people from the ground under severe military attacks would not have a chance to share their stories. In a larger scale, this book shows how this kind of blindness was accepted and helped promote these books with ulterior motives to create a standing for Israel that would be in circulation and at a later time be given due weight when the period of challenges (e.g. From Time Immemorial) has past, helping create the narrative it required in the populace's memory. Taking this into context, the media's one sided stance at this time is not hard to comprehend.
All in all, highly x 3 recommend this book! IT will help you understand the world, and how falsehoods may be created even while maintaining an academic posture. I only hope we have more hard working and honest and forensic academics like Mr. Finkelstein around who may ring a bell when that happens.
There are also heartbreaking realisations from the facts you learn from this book. Especially the part how and when the US made a change in it's position from going to being with the rest of the international voices criticising Israel's encroachments to being one that give unequivocal support to it. Magically, that happened when Mr. Kissinger came on the scene, and as someone aware of other places where he convinced US administration to turn a blind eye in 1971, that is no surprise to me.
Trump made the phrase 'fake news' famous and as a quick way to villainise the news media. At this point in 2024 however, it is hard to dispel that and were it not for the social media channels, a lot of people from the ground under severe military attacks would not have a chance to share their stories. In a larger scale, this book shows how this kind of blindness was accepted and helped promote these books with ulterior motives to create a standing for Israel that would be in circulation and at a later time be given due weight when the period of challenges (e.g. From Time Immemorial) has past, helping create the narrative it required in the populace's memory. Taking this into context, the media's one sided stance at this time is not hard to comprehend.
All in all, highly x 3 recommend this book! IT will help you understand the world, and how falsehoods may be created even while maintaining an academic posture. I only hope we have more hard working and honest and forensic academics like Mr. Finkelstein around who may ring a bell when that happens.
December 2, 2023
i think Norman Finkelstein is the leading American scholar on the history of Israel-Palestine and i’m amazed by the clarity and understanding i feel from his work
the first half Finkelstein analyzes the scholarly myths perpetuated by zionist historians. he tediously and methodically examines popular scholarly works that shape the zionist consciousness and exposes them to be frauds. Finkelstein exposes how the portrayal of the founding of Israel differs from its factual reality
the second half Finkelstein fascinatingly examines how the 1967 Six-Day War and 1973 Yom Kippur War is portrayed by Israel and juxtaposes Israel’s narrative with the historical record.
the title “Image and Reality” succinctly summarizes the books scholarly achievement- demonstrating how the image of the conflict obscures the actual reality.
the book reads as academic scholarship so i recommend for those looking for serious scholarship about Israel. however it may not be as accessible for more casual readers
anyway Finkelstein is a genius and his work makes us all better people
the first half Finkelstein analyzes the scholarly myths perpetuated by zionist historians. he tediously and methodically examines popular scholarly works that shape the zionist consciousness and exposes them to be frauds. Finkelstein exposes how the portrayal of the founding of Israel differs from its factual reality
the second half Finkelstein fascinatingly examines how the 1967 Six-Day War and 1973 Yom Kippur War is portrayed by Israel and juxtaposes Israel’s narrative with the historical record.
the title “Image and Reality” succinctly summarizes the books scholarly achievement- demonstrating how the image of the conflict obscures the actual reality.
the book reads as academic scholarship so i recommend for those looking for serious scholarship about Israel. however it may not be as accessible for more casual readers
anyway Finkelstein is a genius and his work makes us all better people
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