Prevailing in This Epic Struggle: A Finkelstein Collage

Regarding [Israel’s] methodical breaking of Palestinian bones, Wiesel courageously chose silence:  ‘I refuse to see myself in the role of judge over Israel.  The role of the Jew is to bear witness; not pass judgment.’  At any rate, on Jews.  Wiesel does not miss a beat when it comes to passing judgment on Arabs, Russians, Germans, Poles.
—Norman Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Israel won sympathy and masked its systematic violations of human rights in no small part by exploiting the memory of the Jewish people’s martyrdom.  To mute criticism, it claimed to be acting in our name and in the name of our tragedy.  Many decent people, Jews and non-Jews, deferred to that claim, turning a blind eye to the suffering of the Palestinians.  Jews who chose silence therefore passively collaborated in Israel’s crimes, for their silence left Israel unchallenged and unimpeached.
—Norman Finkelstein, The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years

Indeed, fixating as it does on the pathologically criminal, Hitler’s Willing Executioners  fails to even grasp, let alone resolve, the central mystery of the Nazi holocaust: how, under particular historical circumstances, ordinary men and women, as well as the “civilized gentlemen” who lead nations, can commit history’s greatest crimes.
—Norman Finkelstein and Ruth Bettina Birn, A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth

The current campaign of the Holocaust industry to extort money from Europe in the name of ‘needy Holocaust victims’ has shrunk the moral stature of their martyrdom to that of a Monte Carlo casino.
—Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering

Yet the biggest fraud  is the title itself. [Alan] Dershowitz hasn’t written a case for Israel. How could anyone genuinely concerned about the Israeli people counsel policies certain to sow seeds of hatred abroad and moral corruption within? What he has in fact written is the case for the destruction of Israel. Letting others—Palestinians as well as Jews—pay the price while he plays the “tough Jew”: isn’t this what Dershowitz’s chutzpah really comes down to?
—Norman Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah:  On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History 

In other words, Israel was able to pinpoint its targets on the ground and, by its own admission, could and did hit these designated targets with pinpoint accuracy. It thus cannot be said that the criminal wreckage resulted from mishap or from a break in the chain of command. What happened in Gaza was meant to happen—by everyone from the soldiers in the field who executed the orders to the officers who gave the orders to the politicians who approved the orders. “The wholesale destruction was to a large extent deliberate,” Amnesty similarly concluded, “and an integral part of a strategy at different levels of the command chain, from high-ranking officials to soldiers in the field.”
—Norman Finkelstein, ’This Time We Went Too Far:’ Truth & Consequences of the Gaza Invasion

Finkelstein/Chomsky

The Caribbean poet Aimé Césaire once wrote, “There’s room for everyone at the rendezvous of victory.” Late in life, when his political horizons broadened out, Edward Said would often quote this line. We should make it our credo as well. We want to nurture a movement, not hatch a cult. The victory to which we aspire is inclusive, not exclusive; it is not at anyone’s expense. It is to be victorious without vanquishing. No one is a loser, and we all are gainers if together we stand by truth and justice. “I am not anti-English; I am not anti-British; I am not anti-any government,” Gandhi insisted, “but I am anti-untruth—anti-humbug, and anti-injustice.”(188) Shouldn’t we also say that we are not anti-Jewish, anti-Israel or, for that matter, anti-Zionist? The prize on which our eyes should be riveted is human rights, human dignity, human equality. What, really, is the point of ideological litmus tests such as, Are you now or have you ever been a Zionist? Indeed, it is Israel’s apologists who thrive on and cling to them, bogging down interlocutors in distracting and endless intellectual sideshows—What is a Jew? Are the Jews a nation? Don’t Jews have a right to national liberation? Shouldn’t we use a vocabulary that registers and resonates with the public conscience and the Jewish conscience, winning over the decent many while isolating the diehard few? Shouldn’t we instead be asking, Are you for or against ethnic cleansing, for or against torture, for or against house demolitions, for or against Jews-only roads and Jews-only settlements, for or against discriminatory laws? And if the answer comes, against, against and against, shouldn’t we then say, Keep your ideology, whatever it might be—there’s room for everyone at the rendezvous of victory?
—Norman Finkelstein, “Resolving the Israel-Palestine Conflict: What We Can Learn from Gandhi”  

 

[Why the U.S. resort to propaganda?] There are two basic reasons.  The first is that reality is unpleasant to face, and it is therefore more convenient, both for planners and for the educated classes who are responsible for ideological control, to construct a world of fable and fantasy while they proceed with their necessary chores.  The second is that elite groups are afraid of the population.  They are afraid that people are not gangsters.  They know that the people they address would not steal food from a starving child if they knew that no one was looking and they could get away with it, and that they would not torture and murder in pursuit of personal gain merely on the grounds that they are too powerful to suffer retaliation for their crimes.  If the people they address were to learn the truth abut the actions they support or passively tolerate, they would not permit them to proceed.  Therefore, we must live in a world of lies and fantasies, under the Orwellian principle that Ignorance is Strength.
—Noam Chomsky, Turning the Tide: U.S. Intervention in Central America & The Struggle for Peace 

Victorious without Vanquishing

Norman Finkelstein, What Gandhi Says About Nonviolence, Resistance, and Courage
OR Books, 2012

Norman Finkelstein is working on a new book on the subject of “cancel culture.” Long before the phrase attained recent prominence, Finkelstein himself was “cancelled.”  I was reminded of this when listening earlier today to a lively dialogue with members of This Is Revolution podcast with Norm, and I thought back to his own treatment of Gandhi.   Some might champion cancelling the “Mahatma” because of one or another moral failing. Yet in his book, Norm exemplifies both a healthy critical and appreciative engagement with the Indian proponent of satyagraha.  

From Chiapas to Rafah

The indigenous peoples who support our just cause have decided to resist without surrender, without accepting the alms with which the supreme government hopes to buy them. And they have decided this because they have made theirs a word which is not understood with the head, which cannot be studied or memorized. It is a word which is lived with the heart, a word which is felt deep inside your chest and which makes men and women proud of belonging to the human race. This word is DIGNITY. Respect for ourselves, for our right to be better, or right to struggle for what we believe in, our right to live and die according to our ideals. Dignity cannot be studied, you live it or it dies, it aches inside you and teaches you how to walk. Dignity is that international homeland which we forget many times.
—Subcomandante Marcos, Professionals of Hope  

 

When I am with Palestinian friends I tend to be somewhat less horrified than when I am trying to act in a role of human rights observer, documenter, or direct-action resister. They are a good example of how to be in it for the long haul. I know that the situation gets to them – and may ultimately get them—on all kinds of levels, but I am nevertheless amazed at their strength in being able to defend such a large degree of their humanity—laughter, generosity, family-time—against the incredible horror occurring in their lives and against the constant presence of death. I felt much better after this morning. I spent a lot of time writing about the disappointment of discovering, somewhat first-hand, the degree of evil of which we are still capable. I should at least mention that I am also discovering a degree of strength and of basic ability for humans to remain human in the direst of circumstances —which I also haven’t seen before. I think the word is dignity. I wish you could meet these people. Maybe, hopefully, someday you will.
—Rachel  Corrie, Live from Palestine   

Activists

Diane, Hedy, and friends, 2004

 

Hatred/2
by Hedy Epstein

Throughout the 1960s, I became involved in local civil and human rights activities, as well as anti-Vietnam war protests. In the spring of 1970, it became public knowledge in the United States that, as part of this war, the U.S. Air Force had been carpet bombing Cambodia for several months.

This triggered an entire set of thoughts in my head. In opposition to the war, I had picketed, marched, sent letters and telegrams to the President and to congressional representatives, yet nothing adverse happened to me or to my family. Doing this, I had neither risked my life nor that of my family. I had put neither my life nor that of my family in jeopardy.

Then my thoughts travelled across the years and across the ocean, back to Germany. I realized then, had the German people done what I did, during the Hitler regime, they would have risked their lives and perhaps that of their family. I was fully aware that there was opposition and resistance to Hitler regime by some people and that most of these people unfortunately did not survive because of it. Then I asked myself, how can I condemn an entire people for not risking their lives, when I am not sure if I would be willing to do the same? Fortunately, I have never had to risk my own life.

With that, all the old hatred, which was a part of me for decades, disappeared and has never again raised its ugly head. I would like to believe that I am better person as a result. I know I am a happier person since I no longer hate.

 

An Actor

Sealing the Deal

A couple of months after The Book of Mev came out, I did a reading and signing at at Left Bank Books in Saint Louis’s Central West End. I asked one of my former students, Magan Wiles, to read the very last chapter of the book entitled, “The Gospel according to Mev.” Magan did a riveting reading but I noticed she was weeping as she read Mev’s words. She told me afterwards she would let me know why she had been crying. A week later, she emailed me this explanation:

“I was crying because my heart was broken, and filled up at the same time. I was crying because I knew I could never move to New York and just be a poor bohemian stage actress, which is an old and outdated dream, and it breaks my heart to let it go. I was crying because right then I knew I was going to Palestine, and I knew that after that I will go many places to join the struggle. I was crying because right then I realized that the struggle is my life, and it always will be, it will never be over. I cannot compartmentalize, I cannot just leave it for a little while to go do something else. I have seen, and I cannot look away. I will live my life as Sisyphus, and while this ignites a fire in me, it also makes me ache. My heart is broken and full. I am humbled by your book, and by Mev’s clarity in her life’s mission. It forces me into more focus. Please know that the honor was mine, that speaking those words sealed the deal.”

The Prophetic, the Socratic, and the Democratic

Cornel West, Democracy Matters:  Winning the Fight against Imperialism

 

Pat Geier, a dear friend in Louisville, once told me of one of her favorite adages that dated back to the civil right movement: “If you see a good fight, get in it!”  In his latest book, Democracy Matters, Cornel West, a professor of religion and philosophy at Princeton University, is calling on Americans to get in a good fight:  To save democracy in the United States and to resist the empire of the United States.  West may be criticized for preaching to the choir, but there are times like this past week, with the inauguration of George W. Bush, that “the choir” itself may need to be succored, exhorted and challenged.  West offers hopeful reminders, passionate summonses, and critical analysis.

West identifies three grave threats to democracy in the United States.  First is a free-market fundamentalism, in which the market is our reigning idol, before which we must bow, with all other human values and considerations (like that old Catholic teaching of the common good) deemed irrelevant.  It is just such fundamentalism that the global justice movement against corporate globalization seeks to delegitimize. Second, West notes an aggressive militarism that bodes ill for democratic prospects in our country.  Daily, we see the costs of this aggression in the U.S. occupation of Iraq, most recently in the destruction of Fallujah.  But just last week, Seymour Hersh published  an article in the New Yorker reviewing the serious attention the U.S. is giving to going after Iran next.  A third danger to our democratic values is what West terms an escalating authoritarianism, which, in the context of the supposed decades-long war on terrorism, results such perilous measures as the Patriot Act.  

A Gift from Rob in Minnesota

Today I received a book, The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI, from Rob Trousdale, who’s a part of the Catholic Worker community in Minnesota. (Some of Rob’s poems grace this blog.) This generous act was prompted by Rob’s reading of Chip Gibbobn’s Intercept article on the FBI’s investigation of ISM activists like myself a long while back.

 

Conscience Thunders

for Matt Miller

 

Taylor Branch, At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968
Simon and Schuster, 2006

The following are passages from this third volume of a gripping, recent history of the US.

America’s Founders centered political responsibility in the citizens themselves, but, nearly two centuries later, no one expected a largely invisible and dependent racial minority to ignite protests of steadfast courage—boycotts, sit-ins, Freedom Rides, jail marches—dramatized by stunning forbearance and equilibrium into the jaws of hatred. xi

Marchers stand here on the brink of violent suppression in their first attempt to cross Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, after which thousands of ordinary Americans will answer King’s overnight call for a nonviolent pilgrimage to Selma. Three of them will be murdered, but the quest to march beyond Pettus Bridge will release waves of political energy from the nucleus of human freedom. The movement will transform national politics to win the vote. Selma will engage the world’s conscience, strain the embattled civil rights coalition, and embroil King in negotiations with all three branches of the United States government. It will revive the visionary pragmatism of the American Revolution. xiii

MLK: “Well, I’m gonna put out a call for help.” 57

MLK: “I say to you this afternoon that I would rather die on the highways of Alabama than make a butchery of my conscience…. If you can’t accept blows without retaliating, don’t get in the line.” 74-75

Mother Pollard: “My feets is tired, but my soul is rested.” 107

Hope’s Beautiful Daughters: A Spring & Summer Class

 

Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage: anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.
— Saint Augustine

Why repeat the facts—they cover up our feelings. The development of these feelings, the spilling of these feelings past the  facts, is what fascinates me. I try to find them, collect them, protect them.
—Svetlana Alexievich

The truth is that I simply did not understand why anyone would want to violate the rights of others or to ruin the environment. Why would someone destroy the only forest left in the city and give it to friends and political supporters to build expensive houses and golf courses?
—Wangari Maathai

Our strategy should be not only to confront Empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer recklessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.
—Arundhati Roy

Writing is essential to my life, like breathing. I can live without a husband but I cannot live without writing. By writing I become one with the world and with myself.
—Nawal El Saadawi

In this class we will get (re)acquainted with some of the world’s great writers, activists, dissidents, Nobel Laureates, investigators, critics, chroniclers, and healers of our time. We will meet twice a month on Wednesdays via Zoom over six months, reading and reflecting on one book each month. Among the themes we will explore are reverence for life, compassion/accompaniment, questioning authority, dangerous memory, structural violence, and deep listening.