Finkelstein's list
He's a Jewish author - but his accusation that Zionist groups profit from hijacking the history of the Nazi genocide has made him a hate figure. Tomorrow he's at a conference in Britain
Jay Rayner
Sunday July 16, 2000
The Observer
As Norman Finkelstein's flight from New York touches down tomorrow morning in London, it lands the Brooklyn-born writer and Holocaust academic in the middle of a major storm.
As he arrives, one of Finkelstein's many enemies in the Jewish Establishment, and one of many targets in his latest book, will be addressing a major international Holocaust conference in Oxford.
Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, the Nobel-prize winning author whose book Night is held as one of the most important of Holocaust texts, is one of the major speakers at the Remembering for the Future conference. So is Finkelstein, who says Wiesel is a hypocrite, responsible for the 'sacralisation of the Holocaust ... for his standard fee of $25,000 (plus chauffeured limousine)'.
It is believed the fierce foes are unlikely to come face to face in Oxford, but Finkelstein will sail into a storm of controversy there as his new book The Holocaust Industry is published in the UK.
Last week, it was condemned here as 'nauseous'. Some columnists branded him 'extreme' and a 'conspiracy theorist'. Others damned him for giving succour to anti-Semites and manipulating the facts.
Norman Finkelstein, the son of concentration camp survivors, has launched a personal pogrom with The Holocaust Industry, attacking almost every orthodox tenet of the study of the genocide of the Jews by the Nazis.
And an awful lot of people now hate him for it.
'His approach is totally destructive,' says Greville Janner, chairman of the Holocaust Educational Trust. 'I find it revolting.' Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress in New York, agrees. 'I believe he is pathetic. I simply don't accept him as a researcher.' That his arrival coincides with the beginning of the Remembering for the Future conference, one of the largest gatherings of international Holocaust scholars ever held, will only add a searing heat to the argument.
His incendiary book, published in the US last Thursday and here this week, argues that interest in the Holocaust arose after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war not because survivors found a voice but because an all-powerful American Jewish lobby realised it could now be used to lend a kind of moral victimhood to an Israeli state engaged in criminal acts against the Palestinians. Further, he says efforts have been made to stress the 'uniqueness' of the genocide of the Jews, not for any moral reason, but simply to protect its power as a symbol.
Most recently, he says, it has been used to extort money from Germany, Switzerland and others in the name of Holocaust survivors who do not need it, the funds staying with Jewish institutions and not those very few living survivors who might need it. He adds the number of Holocaust survivors has been grossly inflated, and that there are now more survivors than at the end of the war.
'The current campaign of the Holocaust industry to extort money from Europe in the name of "needy Holocaust victims" has,' he writes, 'shrunk the moral stature of their martyrdom to that of a Monte Carlo casino.'
What really defines the short, footnoted text is its style. Intoning the memory of his Holocaust survivor parents, and raging about the paltry $3,500 compensation that his mother received, Finkelstein lashes out in all directions with a torrent of invective. He has many targets: the World Jewish Congress, the Claims Commission, the Israeli government and almost every other academic in the field of Holocaust study.
Intriguingly, the day Finkelstein lands in London, Wiesel will be in Oxford for the opening session of the Remembering for the Future conference. Although Finkelstein will later be part of a debate at the conference, there is, according to the organisers, no likelihood of the two meeting.
The Holocaust Industry began its turbulent life as a review in the London Review of Books of a highly regarded work by Peter Novick, an academic at Chicago university, called The Holocaust in American Life . Novick was trying to explain why the Holocaust suddenly became a subject for discussion and study in the late Sixties after so many years of silence. He concluded that the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 had led to concerns that a second Holocaust could occur and that there was a duty to remember the events of the Second World War to stop such an atrocity occurring again. In his review, Finkelstein argued his entirely opposing thesis that it was a reaction to Israeli strength.
'I saw the piece in the LRB ,' says Colin Robertson, managing director of Verso books, publisher of the Finkelstein volume, 'and I thought there could be a book in it.' Did he not think it might cause a row? 'We're an unashamedly radical publisher. It's our stock in trade. But our main thing was that, as a left-wing publisher, we should not be seen as anti-Semitic. With Norman's background as the son of Holocaust survivors, we could refute any such allegations.'
Finkelstein is more than used to taking on the Holocaust establishment. In the mid-Nineties he published a scathing critique of Hitler's Willing Executioners, a book by Daniel Goldhagen, Harvard Professor of Jewish History, which claimed the entire German nation had, through ingrained anti-Semitism, been eager accomplices in the genocide of the Jews.
As Finkelstein gleefully recounts, he became the target of abuse and hate mail. At one point in The Holocaust Industry he even quotes a letter from Leon Wieseltier, influential literary editor of the US magazine New Republic, to his publisher. 'You don't know who Finkelstein is,' Wieseltier wrote. 'He's poison, he's a disgusting self-hating Jew, he's something you find under a rock.'
While Finkelstein's style is unique, the arguments in his book are not. This newspaper echoed his views on the problems of over-stating the uniqueness of the Holocaust when the Imperial War Museum opened its permanent Holocaust Exhibition a few weeks ago. Likewise journalist Tom Bower, who has written extensively on attempts to get compensation from the Swiss over the Holocaust, says some of what Finkelstein claims about the machinations of the international compensation process are correct.
The idea of a Holocaust racket surfaced years ago when Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban quipped: 'There's no business like Shoah business' ('Shoah' is Hebrew for 'Holocaust').
Rabbi Julia Neuberger says: 'There is a sort of industry going on around the Holocaust which grows on itself. Elie Wiesel does charge a fortune and do the wide, sad eyes thing. But because Finkelstein does it as a rant, the validity of those points get lost.
'He's so angry with the American Jewish establishment that he doesn't listen to real people. You can't just think in terms of systems with the Holocaust.'
Others are more vicious. 'The language he is using is anti-Semitic,' says Steinberg of the World Jewish Congress. 'His facts are wrong. His language is intemperate. He quotes me but he never spoke to me.'
Deborah Lipstadt, the US expert on Holocaust denial and a defendant in David Irving's recent failed libel trial has similar complaints. 'In the book he says that by writing about Holocaust deniers I give them credence. That's ridiculous. I didn't create them.' At one point he accuses Lipstadt - also in the UK for the Oxford conference - of saying that doubting the testimony of survivors is a form of Holocaust denial. 'I never said that,' she said. 'It's ridiculous. It makes me wonder how accurate he is on other things.'
It is certainly true that Finkelstein only emphasises that which suits his case. He mentions repeatedly that his mother received only $3,500 by way of compensation, but buries in a footnote the fact that his father received a monthly pension of around $600 for years.
Indeed, gripes about money, and the Byzantine compensation claims that procured it, appear to lie at the very heart of Finkelstein's argument. In 1998, Swiss banks agreed to pay $1.25 billion in settlement of a class action brought by Jewish claimants.
Finkelstein complains that no money reached the victims. Tom Bower, who has written extensively on Swiss compensation to the Jews, disagrees. 'None of the Swiss's $1.25bn has been transferred to any Jewish organisation,' he says. 'So far, the American courts have not approved a system for distributing the money and no money has been transferred from Switzerland.' Finkelstein claims that the World Jewish Congress now has a fund of $7bn. 'The $7bn fund is a myth,' says Bower. Finally Finkelstein states that half a $200 million fund set up for immediate distribution to victims has not been handed out and will end up going to Jewish groups and lawyers. Elan Steinberg of the WJC says this is rubbish. Only on one claim, that there are tens of millions of dollars in German compensation funds languishing in bank accounts, does Bower say that Finkelstein's account come anywhere near the truth. Even so he says Finkelstein's interpretation of those events is 'flawed'.
Finkelstein is unrepentant. 'When I want to invoke the memory of my parents I am accused of using it. There is something plainly revolting going on. There are people claiming to be working in the name of Holocaust victims, getting money on false pretences and then not distributing it.
'I was probably unusually close to my parents so I do what I can now to preserve the integrity of their memory. The Holocaust deserves to be remembered.' He just hates the way the remembering is done.
jay.rayner@observer.co.uk
Claim and counter-claim about the Holocaust
Finkelstein's claim: If, as is agreed, there were only 100,000 Jewish survivors of the concentration camps at the end of the war, many of whom died shortly afterwards, there cannot be hundreds of thousands of survivors still living deserving to be compensated by the Swiss and the Germans.
Counter-claim: The definition of a survivor has moved to take in not only those who were in the camps but also those who were forced to flee their homes and their country, those who lived out the war in the forests and, in some cases, victims' descendants who suffered psychological and/ or financial problems.
Finkelstein's claim: Jewish organisations are sitting on $1.25 billion paid over by the Swiss banks, none of which has been distributed to Holocaust victims.
Counter-claim: Although a settlement has been agreed no money has yet left Switzerland because the US courts have still to approve its distribution.
Finkelstein's claim: Most of the money will never go to individuals but to Jewish organisations.
Counter-claim: The division of the funds is yet to be agreed.
Finkelstein's claim: Nobel prize-winning writer Elie Wiesel is a fraud saying that, after liberation from the camps at 18, he read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in Yiddish. Finkelstein says it was never published in Yiddish.
Counter-claim: It was published in Yiddish in Warsaw in 1929.
Finkelstein's claim: US academic Deborah Lipstadt said that to question the testimony of a survivor was Holocaust denial.
Counter-claim: Lipstadt denies having said any such thing.
Finkelstein's claim: Lawrence Eagleburger earns $300,000 a year as chair of the International Commission on Holocaust-Era Insurance claims, money that should be going to Holocaust victims.
Counter-claim: His salary is paid by the insurance companies not from compensation money.
Here's Alexander Cockburn on the Dershowitz plagiarism:
Dershowitz: The Case of the Plagiarist Prof (continued)
For those who care to follow such things, here is Prof Alan Dershowitz's effort at rebuttal of my recent excavation of his plagiarisms in his awful book The Case for Israel. Dershowitz's bluster is followed by my closing speech for the prosecution.
First Dershowitz:
Alexander Cockburn's politically motivated claim that I "plagiarized" from Joan Peters is total nonsense Let's begin with what is undisputed: Every word written by others appears with quotation marks, is cited to their original or secondary sources and is quoted accurately. This means that they are not plagiarized. James Freedman, the former president of Dartmouth and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has concluded, after reviewing the relevant material, that what I did was "simply not plagiarism, under any reasonable definition of that word."
Cockburn's claim is that some of the quotes should not have been cited to their original sources but rather to a secondary source, where he believes I stumbled upon them. Even if he were correct that I found all these quotations in Peters's book, the preferred method of citation is to the original source, as the Chicago Manual of Style emphasizes: "With all reuse of others' materials, it is important to identify the original as the source. This ... helps avoid any accusation of plagiarism...To cite a source from a secondary source ('quoted in ...') is generally to be discouraged..."
It is especially cynical that Cockburn would have me cite the quotes to Peters, since Norman Finkelstein-his source-has alleged that Peters herself originally found these and other quotes in earlier books. Should I have cited those books? That is why citing the original source is preferred.
I came across the quoted material in several secondary sources. They appear frequently in discussions of nineteenth-century Palestine. The Mark Twain quote, highlighted by Cockburn, appears in many books about the subject. I came across it in 1970 while preparing a debate about Israel for The Advocates. Cockburn also points out that I quote some of the same material from the Peel Report that Peters quotes, but he fails to mention that I also use many quotes from the report that do not appear in Peters's book. I read the entire report and decided which parts to quote. I rely heavily on the Peel Report, devoting an entire chapter (six) to its findings. They are quoted directly, with proper attribution.
Cockburn refers to Finkelstein's "devastating chart," which compares several quotes from my books with quotes from Peters's book. By juxtaposing these quotes, he makes it appear that I am borrowing words from her. But these are all quotes-properly cited in my book-from third parties. Of course they are similar, or the same. One does not change a quote. And since I did find some of the quotes in Peters's book, as she found them in others, it should come as no surprise that the ellipses are sometimes similar or the same.
It is important to recall that my book is a brief for Israel. It does not purport to be a work of original demographic research, as Peters's does. A few pages are devoted to summarizing the demographic history, and these pages rely heavily on quotes from others to make my points. I found most of my quotes in secondary sources. When I was able to locate the primary source, I quoted it. When I was unable, I cited the secondary source. Contrary to Cockburn's implication that I cited Peters once, I cited her eight times in the first eighty-nine pages (Ch. 2, fn 31, 35; Ch. 5, fn 8; Ch. 12, fn 34, 37, 38, 44, 47). Of my more than 500 references, fewer than a dozen were found in Peters and cited to original sources. Although we use a few of the same sources-and we each use many sources not used by the other-I come to different conclusions from Peters about important issues. As I made clear in my book, "I do not in any way rely on" Peters's conclusions or demographic data for my arguments. Peters's basic conclusion is that only a small number of Palestinians lived in what later became Israel. She provides specific figures, which have been disputed. My very different conclusion is that:
"There have been two competing mythologies about Palestine circa 1880. The extremist Jewish mythology, long since abandoned, was that Palestine was "a land without people, for a people without a land." The extremist Palestinian mythology, which has become more embedded with time, is that in 1880 there was a Palestinian people; some even say a Palestinian nation that was displaced by the Zionist invasion.
The reality, as usual, lies somewhere in between. Palestine was certainly not a land empty of all people. It is impossible to reconstruct the demographics of the area with any degree of precision, since census data for that time period are not reliable, and most attempts at reconstruction-by both Palestinian and Israeli sources-seem to have a political agenda.
I offer very different and rougher estimates, which Cockburn and Finkelstein do not challenge, as they do Peters's. How then can I be accused of plagiarizing ideas or conclusions with which I disagree, from a book that I cite eight times, using the preferred form of citation?
Why then would Cockburn attack me so viciously? The answer is in his sentence bemoaning the fact that a pro-Israel book is "slithering into the upper tier of Amazon's sales charts." He disapproves of my message and of the fact that it is reaching a wide audience. Instead of debating me on the merits, he has tried to destroy my credibility with a false accusation. (This is not the first time he and Finkelstein have gotten together and employed this tactic against people with whom they disagree.)
Let people read The Case for Israel and judge it for themselves against Cockburn's charges. I have sent his attack and my response to President Summers. I have nothing to fear from false charges.
Alan M. Dershowitz
Alexander Cockburn replies
Every time he tries to leap to firmer ground,defending the rotten standards of scholarship in his rotten book Dershowitz simply sinks in deeper. Start with his defiant declaration from the dock that he did not commit plagiarism because "Every word written by others appears with quotation marks, is cited to their original or secondary sources and is quoted accurately." This skates (rather clumsily, I have to say) round the question of what source Dershowitz actually did use for his citation and whether or not he acknowledged it. Often he used Peters and pretended he didn't, which would get him into very hot water at Harvard if he was a student and not the Felix Frankfurter professor.
Here are Harvard's own rules, as set forth in "Writing with Sources A Guide for Harvard Students Copyright 1995 The President and Fellows of Harvard University":
"Plagiarism is passing off a source's information, ideas, or words as your own by omitting to cite them." And also: "When quoting or citing a passage you found quoted or cited by another scholar, and you haven't actually read the original source, cite the passage as 'quoted in' or 'cited in' that scholar both to credit that person for finding the quoted passage or cited text, and to protect yourself in case he or she has misquoted or misrepresented"
I discussed only Dershowitz's first two chapters, as dissected by Norman Finkelstein, Dershowitz's nemesis in this whole affair, who points out that 22 of the 52 footnotes to these chapters are lifted from Peters without attribution. Finkelstein recently laid waste Dershowitz's attempts at self-exculpation in the Harvard Crimson. As Finkelstein points out, One problem for the beleaguered prof comes in the form of ellipses. Dershowitz echoes Peters' ellipses. Another problem identified by Finkelstein: When it comes to Twain, Dershowitz cites from one edition and Peters from another, but the page numbers he cites are from Peters' edition, not his. So Peters' text is where he got the quote from.
Yet another problem goes to the concluding sentence from the Harvard guidelines quoted above. Dershowitz echoes Peters' mistakes. From Twain she cites as one continuous paragraph what are in fact two separate paragraphs separated by 87pp. Dershowitz follows suit. He's handcuffed to Peters in a more serious breach of scholarship when he plagiarizes her erroneous citation of a British consular official's supposedly first-person description to Lord Canning of an instance of anti-Semitism in Jerusalem. The description was not Young's, but a memorandum by one A. Benisch, which Young was forwarding.
Another bloodied glove, as it were, comes with Dershowitz's attribution of the admittedly unlovely neologism "turnspeak" to George Orwell. This was a coinage by Peters, who cited Orwell as having inspired it. Glazed with literary pillage, and ever eager to suppress the fact that he was relying heavily on one of the most notorious laughing stocks of Middle Eastern scholarship, Dershowitz seized on Orwell as the source, once again cutting out Peters out.
Quoting the Chicago Manual Dershowitz artfully implies that he followed the rules by citing "the original" as opposed to the secondary source, Peters. Of course we know he didn't but, aside from that, he misrepresents the Manual here, where "the original" means merely the origin of the borrowed material which is, in this instance, Peters.
Now look at the second bit of the quote from the Manual, separated from the preceding sentence by a demure, 3-point ellipse. As my associate Kate Levin has discovered, this passage ("To cite a source from a secondary source...") occurs on page 727 which is no less than 590 pages later than the material before the ellipse, in the section titled "Citations Taken from Secondary Sources." Here's the full quote, with what Dedrshowitz left out set in boldface: "'Quoted in.' To cite a source from a secondary source ("quoted in..") is generally to be discouraged, since authors are expected to have examined the works they cite. If an original source is unavailable, however, both the original and the secondary source must be listed."
So Chicago is clearly insisting that unless Dershowitz went to the originals, he was obliged to cite Peters. Finkelstein has conclusively demonstrated that he didn't go to the originals. Plagiarism, Q.E.D., plus added time for willful distortion of the language of Chicago's guidelines, cobbling together two separate discussions.
Some time ago three judges on a Florida appeals court overturned a $145 million landmark judgment against tobacco companies. In their decision the judges appropriated without acknowledgement extensive swaths of the brief put forward by the tobacco companies' well-paid lawyers. The judges were sued for judicial plagiarism and as so often Dershowitz had a pithy quote: "If a student ever did what this judge did, he'd be tossed out on his rear end from Harvard Law School. We teach our students as a matter of ethics that when you borrow, you attribute."
Professor Sayres Ruby of Amherst, who tells us his credentials are "from the ground up", meaning they are drawn from practices actually used in colleges whose Honor Codes he either enforced (Davidson College) or in that position examined elsewhere (UVA, Citadel) has studied the Dershowitz/Peters case file and writes that "I can say unequivocally that under Davidson College's and other schools' honor codes Dershowitz's quotations constitute plagiarism, with clear attempt to deceive as to (A) his research and (B) his findings. Thus his plagiarism is serious and unambiguous, and if it were a student in question, the debate would regard levels of punishment. Maximum punishments would be considered without any doubt, including at UVA expulsion, at Davidson two-term suspension, and at military schools such as West Point or the Citadel a discharge."
But then, Dershowitz isn't a student. He's the Felix Frankfurter professor at Hasrvard Law School, meaning presumably that he's beyond reform. Two-tier justice for all!