Comments on: DePaul U. Turns Norman Finkelstein Down for Tenure

By: Hue Longer

Hue Longer — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 15:17:18 +0000

submit it here, Lawrence

By: Lawrence Swaim

Lawrence Swaim — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 00:46:11 +0000

We will be very lucky if rightwing Christians and rightwing Jews do not start a world war in the Middle East, or perhaps conduct a genocide with WMDs. When the Prime Minister of Israel off-handedly mentioned his country’s arsenal of nuclear weapons last summer, I’m afraid it was probably intentional rather than a mistake as he said later. And perhaps a bit of a threat.
There are a fair number of Muslims and Arab-Americans at DePaul University–is Michael Kenny to have us believe that they don’t deserve an education? I also believe that DePaul’s interest in the Finkelstein matter is–or should be–the same interest of every institution of higher learning, which is academic freedom. Finally, Israel/Palestine is important to all of us, not just as a matter of debate among Jews, although obviously it is an exceedingly painful issue for them.
Some readers may wish to read my column on Philo-Semitism among Christians in the upcoming July issue of Southern California InFocus, the largest Muslim newspaper in California.

By: Max Shields

Max Shields — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 14:07:07 +0000

I have never read a book by Finkelstein, but have heard him in various venues and debates discuss the birth and subsequent history of Israel. He presents an extremely important view point to the whole issue of Israel and the role of the Holocaust ( I believe he is the son of a surviver of the Holocaust).

His voice, quite apart from De Paul, is that of a Jew. And in that sense he represents an “inside” argument that is both accessible to non-Jews and one that needs to be continued. But the larger question of Israel and the still larger question of US imperialism is the text. Zionism is a subtext requiring a full understanding in order to decispher what sustains the fire in the Middle East, a fire that bleeds outside the region into Africa and else where. But it is a bit player.

I keep coming back to something Chomsky recently concluded, in an analogy (metaphor) he made. He likened the US power brokers with the mob. Power creates creatures which are not “every day” types. There is a “nod”, a “wink” or some other innocuous gesture that starts a massacre, that pays and arms militias to undermine governments, movements or anything that does not meet with the power brokers of Washington’s approval.

By: Boycott DePaul

Boycott DePaul — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 15:53:10 +0000

[...] tenure denial rankles badly those of us determined to keep our visions of activist-scholarship intact in our [...]

By: Hue Longer

Hue Longer — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 13:16:33 +0000

Love the name, Mulga!
Remember when Arafat died? Remember the bizarre front page rhetorical’s in Australia such as, “ARAFAT DEAD…is peace now possible”? Have you too seen the NINEMSN.COM stories about Muslim girls being killed by angry fathers, brothers? Australia is a strange study…..better educated than the US, but suffering from corporate America media lackey propaganda which plays on their Catholic collective selective morality.

By: Mulga Mumblebrain

Mulga Mumblebrain — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 11:29:56 +0000

A similar situation exists in Australia, Rightwing Jews dominate the mass media and the ABC, the national broadcaster. Opinions concerning Israel’s many crimes, of the type freely articulated by decent Israelis and some brave, anti-racist, Jews elsewhere, are anathema. They do not appear in the mass media. Neither do the voices of any but the most acquiescent Arab or Moslem. When a rare, very polite criticism of Israel is voiced, always by a commentator with an explicitly Arabic name, it is inevitably answered immediately by a vitriolic outburst of, increasingly manic, pro-Israeli agit-prop. The vastly greater number of articles articulating the world-view of the Israeli Right, are never followed by a contradicting article. Voices of so-called ‘Jewish moderates’, a mythical species alleged to exist somewhere here, are entirely absent, or appear as one-offs, never to be repeated. The voices of the Jewish Rightists are always arrogantly belligerent, with falsifications of history evident to all but the most ignorant. And always the racist demonisation of Moslems, Arabs and Palestinians in particular. The situation has long ceased to be merely unpleasant. It has now become dangerously provocative. Something appears to have snapped in the Ziocon brain after the failures in Iraq and Lebanon. Not content with destroying Iraq and poisoning Lebanon with nuclear waste and cluster bombs, these Judeofascists are hell-bent on attacking Iran and Syria. They have even, in another sinister and dangerous development, become the flag-bearers of the anti-China crusade, using their wholly fraudulent alleged concern for the Darfurians to attack China, even accusing her of complicity in genocide. In my opinion these people are mad, bad and dangerous to know. Not just dangerous to their many intended victims, but to Israel and Jewry itself. If the Jews are irrevocably tarred with the US’s fascist, racist brush, their security is placed at risk. All they need do is recognise the humanity of their victims and cease brutalising them, but they steadfastly refuse to do so. An unspeakable tragedy looms.

By: Barbara Deutsch

Barbara Deutsch — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 03:04:08 +0000

I wonder how Michael Kenny sees as “a dispute between Jews,” the devolution of the UN-mandated partition of Palestine? This victor’s experiment in (among other things; e.g., international disarmament) out-sourcing a guilty conscience,, was justified in an aura of holiness and promise, but wasn’t what it accomplished another grand theft of land, and dispossession of another indigenous people? And wasn’t the stolen property assigned to a Zionist project recently overtaken by Europaean refugees (dominated by Berliners and led by terrorists whom Einstein and other Jews of conscience named fascist and called upon the UN to repudiate)?

Drawing upon a widely promoted spirit of one “family of man” inhabiting a world overseen by/from the exceptional US, didn’t the “creation” of Israel and its national myth (Einstein: “nationalism is the measles of mankind”) serve a dual use, offering an ingenious solution to the “Jewish problem” in substituting a political identity for what had been a tenaciously stateless religion, one of whose most revered traditions was that of communally examined learning?

By: Canuck Traveler

Canuck Traveler — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 02:04:23 +0000

Prof. Finkelstein is in the best of company: http://www.northstarcompass.org/nsc0504/einstein.htm

By: Michael Kenny

Michael Kenny — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 01:53:51 +0000

Never lose sight of the fact that De Paul is a Catholic university and its mission is to dispense Catholic education. Judging from his name and the subjects which interest him, I would guess that Mr Finkelstein is Jewish. A Catholic university has no interest in appearing to take sides in a dispute between Jews over their respective visions of Israel. That simply creates a useless diversion from the job of providing a Catholic education for its students.

By: Hue Longer

Hue Longer — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 18:37:02 +0000

Great artcicle…
I get tired of seeing “ad hominem” abused. Were I to say that the Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider was a worthless coward and a fucking idiot, therefore he is wrong…well that would be easily decipherable ad hominem. Were I to say the Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider bowed down to outside interests and lied about it, therefiore he is a worthless coward and a fucking idiot…it’s a different matter.