Yes, the above letters are stupefyingly sexist and ridiculous, attributing unknowable motives and pathologies to Chesler even as their authors tout the PC credentials they imagine makes their sexism and invective bullet-proof. They fling assumptions at their recipient like tomatoes at a Vaudeville villain — assumptions so caricatured and sweeping as to be too generalized to apply to homicidal psychopaths. Repetition, hyperbole and cant in the service of a verbal lynching.

I’m also heartbroken that a respected Holocaust writer like Norman Finkelstein would call a female human being a “cow.” He didn’t just lose his temper and say this to a driver who cut him off, but to a person who wrote a piece on anti-Semitism with which he disagreed.

I’d hate to hear what he calls women in the street. I doubt he’s lenient (nor should he be) when prejudiced opponents apply the k-word to him.

Yet, to a lesser extent, Chesler shares two vices with her verbal attackers: hyperbole and ad hominem, neither of which are necessary. Just as those twits from Finklestein’s site should not be vilifying and slandering Chesler simply because they disagree with her, so Chesler shouldn’t be condemning them for a lack of *brevity*, nor should she claim Finklestein writes “incomprehensible” books “mimicking” scholarship. Chesler shouldn’t be making the same veiled charges of pretense and hypocrisy against Finklestein that he and the letter writers have made against her. The idea should be that she is better than that. Besides, those complaints make her sound like an *anti*-intellectual, not an advocate and practitioner of abstract thought.

Finklestein might be many things, but he is neither incomprehensible nor a pseudo-scholar. He is, rather, a cranky off-kilter scholar — one who has grown so obsessed with his topic that his legitimate work is now diluted by unsupported assertions, his analysis of events peppered with character assassination supporting his *idee fixe*. He is not talentless nor is his work devoid of content. He is simply untrustworthy.

His untrustworthiness should give Chesler enough ammo to obliterate his argument. No need to descend to his level and attribute the worst motives possible just because he’s wrong.

He has failed to grasp the incredible difference between disapproving of Israel’s military actions and opposing its very existence. There’s the position to attack, not his style or legitimacy.

====================

PS: Even if his thesis were true, and Israel really was the result of a deal between the U.N. and a handful of militaristic capitalists, how would that be reason enough for the country to be dissolved? Were the origins of North America and Greak Britain somehow less suspect than Israel’s? If not, should they, too, be dissolved in the present because of quesitons about their formation in the past?

Having said all of this. I personally know Norman Finkelstein. I have been greatly supportive of everything he has done as well as his visit to our conference. I have written rebuttals, in his defense, to Front Page Magazine. He can be a kindly and easy going sort, but at the same time he is socially inept and needs to direct his vehement dissent towards the “ideology” in lieu of ad hominem comments towards the gender or sexual orientation of the person. THis sort of behavior will not endear him to women who might be sitting on the fence of the I/P conflict and could become one of his strong supporters.

Another person comes to mind is Irshad Manji. I find her powerfully insipid and idiotic, but to cast a slew of appellations that she is a spike headed semi-Muslim Lesbian–I can agree with the spike headed semi Muslim part as she is on a campaign to stereotype all Muslims, but to add the Lesbian in a pejorative tone as he did is discriminatory.
I am not being a hypocrite here as I have emailed Norman regarding his deplorable habit of attacking the physical attributes of a woman in his dissent. His use of the term “cow” is particularly sexist and degrading as prior to returning to graduate school I was in the corporate world for twenty years and heard repeatedly this term from men that were associated with a conservative political agenda, diametrically opposed to Norman’s.

Norman and I come from the same generational mold–political activists, in solidarity with all groups, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ableism, etc., but Norm, in his middle age crisis,represents many men that are caught up in retaining their youth, and as he lectures to a predominantly young audience with the attendance of a handful of older folk, falls back on sexist terms that apply to the physical state of women advancing in age. Granted, he is in trim and in good shape, but hardly well kept to criticize others.

In essence, if a man uses the term “cow” to refer to one particular woman this is his latent feeling of how he perceives all women, or else he would choose an alternative more appropriate term to express his dissent against their noxious ideology.
I will be glad to continue this conversation if you feel at dahlianassif@yahoo.com as I think out of respect to Phyllis, should dominate this blog.

Even someone who agrees with Norman Finkelstein on the issues should condemn him for being so sophomoric, cowardly, and misogynistic in his new “title” of Dr. Chesler’s article.

I am a supporter of Norman Finkelstein. But you are correct in the above statement and I emailed him on this very point. If you would like to email me on this further you may at the above address.

I thank Fern Sidman for her link to New York Magazine’s hilarious portrait of poor Norman Finkelstein languishing and anguishing in his Brighton diaspora. I forwarded it with glee to several dozen of my best friends.

I don’t really hope for much in intervening here.

I have actually read the Holocaust Industry, and the above is factually wrong.

What Finkelstein documented was how Zionist organizations demanded money from European governments, during the 1990s, on behalf of Holocaust survivors.

Said survivors received none of that money, and they’re pretty mad about it. That, to me, seems a good reason to bitch about Holocaust exploitation, not in the sense that it did not happen, but in the sense that the survivors did not receive the money they were entitled to.

As for Chesler’s article about the eternal struggle, such a pessimism is nothing new. It has been part of Zionism for a long, long time. From Herzl’s time actually:
In Paris, as I have said, I achieved a freer attitude toward anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, I recognized the emptiness and futility of trying to “combat” anti-Semitism.
Marvin Lowenthal (ed.), The Diaries of Theodor Herzl, p.6.

Indeed, eternal struggle, futility. Anti-Semitic, always, forever and ever. No end in sight.

Zeev Maov lays down the tenets of Israel’s security in his book, Defending the Holy Land. Here is one passage where pessimism is also rampant:
The Arab world is fundamentally hostile toward Israel. It would attempt to destroy the Jewish state given the right chance. The Arabs — Palestinians, Egyptians, Syrians, or even more remote peoples such as the Algerians, Libyans, or Iraqis– have never accepted the formation of a Jewish state in Palestine. They might accept it as a (possibly temporary) fact, but they have never internalized the fact that Jews have the right to a national homeland in the Middle East. Therefore, the Arabs harbor a permanent and powerful motivation to annihilate the Jewish state. The only thing that prevents them from doing so is their awareness of the futility of this mission and/or their awareness that the price of such an attempt would be exorbitant. The implication is that Israel is destined to live for a long time under an existential threat. In the short term (the short term being the foreseeable future) its policies and actions can only affect the Arab cost-benefit calculus; they cannot affect Arab motivation. In the long run this motivation may change, but this is not certain, and the long run may be very long indeed.

I would conclude by saying that those who never hope, will also never win. Some here talk about fighting. But that’s not what you do. You only retreat behind a wall. Physical, and spiritual. This is what cowards do.

The correct wording should thus be: “Keep on retreating !”

A teensy strip of land, of a diverse, democratic, free and incredibly productive population – surrounded by truly insane mobs and psychotic dictators – has huge swaths of the world in paroxysms of hatred and screaming for annihilation. This will not end well for some. I know whose side I’m on.

Thank you, Ms. Chesler, for fighting the fight.

On a related note, a radio program up here in Canada earlier this week addressed the question as to whether this generation of university students is the most narcissistic and stupid in history.

The evidence and sources thereof, posted in this debate here and elsewhere, suggest this is a problem that does not stop at borders.