From: 
Subject: Anti-zionist Prof. Finkelstein Banned in Berlin

 


Any friends in Munchen, Germany??  Please forward to them this email so that 
they can support the "self-hating" Jews like Norman Finkelstein in their stand 
against Israeli policy..

  

Feb. 19, 2010

Finkelstein Banned in Berlin: A Democracy that isn’t a 
<http://www.anis-online.de/1/essays/24.htm>  Democracy 

by Anis Hamadeh

19/02/2010 - Dr. Norman Finkelstein wrote several books in the field 
Israel/Palestine/ Holocaust and is one of the most sagacious analysts of our 
time. Similar to Professor Ilan Pappe, he formulates sharp criticism in respect 
to past and presence of the State of Israel, and both use very rational 
argumentations and are reliable researchers. Especially since the mass murders 
in Jenin and in Gaza, these two men and many other Jews (also in Germany) speak 
out, because they do not want to be taken in for violent purposes by a state 
that arrogates to speak and act in the name of all Jews. 

As is known now, both the Heinrich Boell Foundation and the Rosa Luxemburg 
Foundation have canceled Finkelstein talks that were already scheduled in 
Berlin. While the foundation close to the Green party did not even bother to 
explain its behavior, the board of the foundation close to the Left party 
explained its drawback in a media info with the empty statement that such a 
talk would be “explosive” (“brisant”). 

What is going on there, one wonders. Does Finkelstein call for violence? Are 
his views outside legal norms, does he disesteem the human rights? Nothing of 
all this. On the contrary. The reason for banning him is the veto of groups 
that seek to avert criticism of Israel, connecting this issue with the reproach 
of anti-Semitism. This is an old chestnut and not specifically interesting. 
What is interesting, though, is that the German public buys this nonsense and 
denies a man, who lost his family in German concentration camps, to talk on 
German soil, tolerating that he is labeled an anti-Semite for his reflections 
on violence in Israel. The same thing actually happened only some months ago to 
the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in Munich, when the city’s Lord Mayor canceled 
a scheduled talk. Pappe then wrote in an open letter that his father “was 
silenced in a similar way as a German Jew in the early 1930s”.

The German Self-Conception

So let us revisit the German self-conception and then take a short look at the 
historical background to understand this apparantly great fear that is going 
around in Germany. Recently, when the Israeli politician Shimon Peres talked on 
the occasion of the Holocaust Memorial Day in the German Bundestag, he received 
standing ovations. The few, who did not stand up for their refusal of Peres’ 
and Israel’s violent policies, were publically attacked. There is, for example, 
the quote of a member of the Bundestag: “The Nazi crimes, the Shoa, and the war 
of annihilation are the original crime of humanity. (...) The Jewish victims of 
National Socialism are memorized on January 27 in the Bundestag memorial. On 
this occasion, only they and the reminder of ‘Never again!’ can be the topic. 
Everything else in this context is a relativization of the Nazi crimes.” It is 
a quote typical for Germany and reveals the German angst as well as the great 
danger that goes with it.

The genocide of the Jews in this quote is taken out of any historical context 
and declared a unique event. Firstly, this reveals a “We (We!) are the 
greatest” narcissism. Secondly, it reveals a pro-Jewish racism, as if one 
racism could make up for another one. Not the victims are important, no, the 
Jewish victims are. The Nazi killing of Sinti and Roma thus is kind of OK. And 
how much then will the killing of Palestinains be OK if conducted by Jews. Put 
in a more general way: while calling the genocide of the Jews the “original 
crime”, the unique and incomparable act, every other crime is relativized and 
thus not so important. Finkelstein and Pappe do not fit in here, they disturb 
the celebration by entering the historical framework, which is all the more 
embarrassing as they are Jews with family ties to Nazi victims. Banning them 
shows that in the end even Jewish Nazi victims are not what the whole circus is 
about, despite all the pathetic oaths and solemn declarations. This is what 
Germany fears, that people realize that public “Remembering the Holocaust” is a 
fake and that Finkelstein and Pappe are eloquent and powerful enough to unmask 
this pharce. 

Germany has decided to do penance for the Nazi crimes by means of supporting 
the State of Israel. When it stands in solidarity with the Zionist state, then 
Germany would fulfil its historical responsibility. This dogma is not 
questioned, although it is beyond any logic to support Zionism of all things in 
order to do penance. Beyond logic not in the first place because there had been 
fruitful cooperations between Nazis and Zionists. (It was in the interest of 
both ideologies to bring Jews out of Germany.) What is much worse is that 
violence is not recognized as the problem. Thus Hitler has won in the end, for 
the violence that made this criminal a criminal in the first place, this 
violence has not stopped. On the contrary: the compulsive “Never again!” serves 
as a justification of violence and killing. This works only because the 
genocide of the Jews was taken out of its historical context and floats around 
freely.

 

The Israeli Self-Conception

Both Finkelstein and Pappe write about the missing historical context and this 
is what people are afraid of, for both use their arguments brilliantly, even 
compelling, and they are concerned as Jews whose families have Nazi 
experiences. Like Goldstone, Chomsky, and some others, the two academics are 
subject to hate and rejection of the ruling Zionism and its strenuous friends. 
Finkelstein lives in the USA, where Zionism is even stronger than in Israel, 
and he does not lead an easy life. Pappe needed to go to exile in England, 
because life in Israel became unbearable for him. He wrote the book “The Ethnic 
Cleansing of Palestine” in which he clearly shows how the Israeli state was 
built on heavy violence. Considering that both authors face bans in Germany it 
is no wonder that there is not much heard of the events around 1948 other than 
flat stereotypes. 

According to the Israeli self-conception the Zionist state emerged out of a 
“War of Independence” . In this view, the Jewish victims of National Socialism 
have created a state to protect themselves and were immediately attacked by 
their evil Arab neighbors. This version of the story is sacrosanct and is 
defended with great hysteria, be it in Israel or in Germany, because it does 
not bear with a neutral analysis. For when Israel was founded in May 1948, the 
ethnic cleansing of Palestine had already been going on for half a year. This 
was called “Plan Dalet/Plan D” and everybody can read about it. Hundreds of 
indigenous Palestinians were killed and hundreds of thousands were expelled 
from their villages by Zionist militias. According to the Israeli 
self-conception many Palestinians went away voluntarily, as if anybody would 
voluntarily leave their home and property just like that. 

International pressure led to the UN partition plan which deprived the native 
population of a little more than half of Palestine which was to be given to the 
Zionists. Yet the Zionists were not content with that. They received weapons 
and took more of the land by force. When they then built a state on this land, 
they did not do it in agreement with anybody, but unilaterally and 
surprisingly. The dogma of the “right of existence” was invented so that people 
would not talk about these events anymore. Here is the seed of the problems we 
are confronted with until today. It is possible to begin earlier, with the 
Sykes Picot Treaty or the first settlers from abroad who for the most part did 
not integrate, but appeared aggessively. One can talk about the British and 
about Zionist and Arab terrorism, about Jabotinsky and other pioneers. But it 
is the founding of the state and Plan D which show most clearly why history is 
escalating until today. 

The massacre of Deir Yassin happened in the framework of this plan, it was 
covered in the world press. Nobody was ever held responsible for this 
blood-spree and thus a precedence was created which is working until today. 
Nobody has been taken to account for the mass murder in Gaza, neither, and all 
the other massacres that Israel habitually commits. The Plan D land theft is 
another precedence, for up to this day the Israeli territory gets wider while 
the Palestinian territory shrinks. All this is inherent in the biased concept 
of “right of existence”, as are the race laws from 1950 which guarantee all 
Jews in the world a “right of return” to Israel while the expelled native 
population had to keep out, an unprecedented act in the long history of the 
country. Their land and property was confiscated by the new masters who clinged 
to a blood-and-soil ideology. A lot of this reminds one of the Nazis, which by 
no means is a wonder, when you consider the victim/perpetrator dynamics. It is 
known that victims, because of their traumas, are prone to become perpetrators 
and it is so obvious that it takes a whole lot of energy to suppress the 
respective discourse. It is suppressed, in militarized Israel just like in 
Germany, it is taboo. For this reason, a government of right-wing extremists in 
Israel is not a problem. Right-wing extremism is not right-wing extremism, when 
it comes to Israel. 

 

The Tip of the Iceberg

The cancelation of Finkelstein’s talks are but the tip of a huge iceberg. While 
these lines are written, Palestinian houses in Barta’a Ash-Sharqiya are being 
demolished and in Sheikh Jarrah/Jerusalem new land thefts are scheduled. A big 
historic Arab graveyard is to be confiscated to build a “Museum of Tolerance” 
on it while in Bil’in the nonviolent resistance against the wall enters its 
sixth year. The protesters are injured by the army on a regular basis, and also 
killed. The world press says almost nothing about the heroes of nonviolent 
resistance, because it does not fit the image. Russian Jews in Be’er Sheva in 
the Negev have just killed a bedouin boy and heavily injured another, while a 
group of fundamentalist settlers have injured a Palestinian child in Hebron. 
About 11.000 Palestinians are kept in Israeli prisons. The “checkpoints” to 
Nablus have been closed down recently so that nobody can enter. The Gaza 
fishermen are being shot at by the Israeli navy and Gaza is still under siege. 
The head of the Dubai police just confirmed that according to police 
investigations there is a very high probability that the Mossad is behind the 
murder of a Hamas politician in the Emirates. Every day you can read on 
http://www.theheadl ines.org 
<http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theheadlines.org>
  what happens in the country and that since 1948 there has been no change of 
the routine. In Germany, the Palästina Portal is one of the sources one can 
turn to. 

Most of what happens remains unknown to us, our media skips most of it, in fear 
of an increasing “anti-Semitism” . It is for the same reason that we are not to 
listen to Finkelstein and Pappe, for they verify the terrible events and the 
historical development sketched above. Instead, we are fed with “information” 
on “terrorism”. It is well-known to some of the leading politicians and 
opinion-leaders that the Israeli policy can only lead to the self-destruction 
of the State of Israel. Call it a culture of death. Maybe self-hatred is 
another reason for this behavior, something human rights advocates like 
Finkelstein and Pappe are labeled by exactly those who display it themselves. 
But even according to our mainstream dogmas we have a big problem here, for 
this development is bad for the Jews, too, the Zionists among them and the 
anti-Zionists.

Norman Finkelstein ( 
<http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.normanfinkelstein.com>
 http://www.normanfi nkelstein. com) will talk about Gaza in Munich on Feb. 24, 
7 p.m. Amerikahaus, Karolinenplatz 3, and on Feb. 25, 7 p.m., Kulturhaus 
Milbertshofen, Curt-Mezger- Platz 1 

SOURCE  <http://www.anis-online.de/1/essays/24.htm> http://www.anis- online.de/ 
1/essays/ 24.htm

Link: http://www.theameri canmuslim. org/tam.php/ features/ 
<http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/>  articles/


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