The Books of My Life: Beyond Chutzpah

Norman Finkelstein often goes to places where other academics and intellectuals fear to tread. Finkelstein's The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (Verso) explored the polemical use of the Shoah, the Holocaust, as a political, economic, and cultural weapon in the apologetic and polemical war over Israel and its behaviour toward Palestinians. Finkelstein's Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005) explores, in part one, the rise of a new anti-Semitism in the works of people like Nathan and Ruth Perlmutter (The Real Anti-Semitism), Abraham Foxman (Never Again? The Threat of the New Anti-Semitism), Phyllis Chester (The New Anti-Semitism: The Current Crisis and What We Must Do About It), and, Alan Dershowitz (The Case for Israel). Part two explores, the claims at the heart of Dershowitz's book, their incompatibility with human rights reports, and, in an appendix, Dershowitz's citation failings.

There are a number of things I liked about Beyond Chutzpah. Finkelstein clearly shows that the "new Anti-Semitism" is, in its attempt to link any kind of criticism of Israel to anti-Semitism, a "new" kind of apologetic and polemic aimed at demonising Israel's "enemies" in order to win the discourse war. One has to distinguish anti-Semitism from criticism of Israel. Finkelstein nicely shows how Dershowitz's The Case for Israel is an apologetic and polemic that is generally at odds with the reports of Israeli and international human rights organisations. But then Dershowitz is a lawyer, a "profession" that is inherently apologetic and polemical. Finkelstein nicely shows that Dershowitz's book is full of citation problems. Finkelstein nicely notes that the "empty land" and "primitive inhabitant" discourses of  Israel's apologists and polemicists are the same ones used by European settlers in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to dispossess the First Peoples, the First Nations, the aboriginals, and the Maori.

All this said, I found Beyond Chutzpah somewhat disjointed. Finkelstein's focus on the new anti-Semitism doesn't always sit well with his often devastating take down of Dershowitz's claims that Israel, which seems the saintliest of nations in Dershowitz's apologetics and polemics, is following international law when it demolishes the houses of Palestinians, targets Palestinians for assassination, "tortures" Palestinian prisoners it holds in its gaols and detention centres, and "annexes" Palestinian land.  I also found the book somewhat repetitive. Still Finkelstein's book is definitely worth a read if you have any interest in apologetics and polemics, how ideology constructs reality, conservatism, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the modern and post-modern world.