The Justice

Norman Finkelstein's willful distortions of fact and inability to present a cogent academic argument were an insult to Brandeis and the academic standard to which its students should hold themselves. Furthermore, his belittling of both University President Jehuda Reinharz and Prof. Shulamit Reinharz (SOC) was out of line. He did not further intellectual discourse, but presented a biased opinion based on misinterpretations. Finkelstein's agenda, as it always is, was to discredit the historical legitimacy for the State of Israel and to attempt to prove that Israel is a despotic regime.

I am appalled that Brandeis, an esteemed academic center, would allow Finkelstein to speak on its premises. This grants him and his un-academic viewpoints, approaches and arguments an air of academic legitimacy. Those students who were somehow convinced by Finkelstein's show should inquire further into his assertions. For the sake of continued academic discourse, it is critical to distinguish valid criticism of Israel and its policies from anti-Israel attacks that border on outright anti-Semitism.

The crux of Finkelstein's argument is that while the actual documents regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are uncontroversial, Israelis have stirred up a whirlwind of controversy precisely in order to submerge this point. Yet, incredulously, Finkelstein's only method of demonstrating the veracity of such a point is to cite scholars who concur with his understanding of the narrative as proof that the record is unequivocal and uncontroversial.

Two specific issues which Finkelstein claims to be uncontroversial are the origin of Palestinian refugees and the legality (or illegality) of the Israeli settlements. As if to prove his point on the first issue, Finkelstein chooses to quote Benny Morris's description of the flight of Arab's during the 1948 War as "ethnic cleansing." By choosing to quote a preeminent scholar on the Middle East, Finkelstein ostensibly tries to further his claim of an unambiguous record. Yet, the alternative side-which Finkelstein claims not to exist-not only shows that there are differing narratives, but also that the record, in fact, seems not to support Finkelstein's. Ephraim Karsh, the chair of Mediterranean Studies at King's College in London, for example, explains that the evidence validate the claim that Arab flight from Haifa began even well before the UN's partition resolution, and that an ad-hoc body, the Arab Emergency Committee, did its best to get the Arabs out of Haifa, usually through scare tactics.

Continued...

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