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" I would not have stayed at a university if it told me upfront that a condition for me getting tenure. my views have to be filtered through Catholic values. I would consider it a betrayal of my parents' legacy. "

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" I was bashing Israel in the past because nobody else was exposing its true record. Many people are doing it now, so I switched hats from a critic of Israel to a diplomat who wants to resolve the conflict. I have not changed, but I think the spectrum has moved. "

Norman Finkelstein

Conflict

Past

Think

" Teaching is in my bones. I love to teach. "

" Israel has been a stage on which American Jews have played out their fantasies of toughness - often from Martha's Vineyard. "

" People are motivated by the desires for privilege, for power, for profit. Those are not shocking revelations. Anyone who's had any experience in life knows these things. "

" No conditions justify torture. "

" I'm not a good writer, and I don't care. Unfortunately, after I left college, I didn't have time much for literature. I wish I did. Most of the time I read documents, and that's not going to help your writing. But I'm a very logical writer, and you can't get out of me. Once I've nailed you, you're finished. "

" My parents often wondered why I would grow so indignant at the falsification and exploitation of the Nazi genocide. The most obvious answer is that it has been used to justify criminal policies of the Israeli state and U.S. support for these policies. "

" Everybody wants peace. That's a truism. There is no point in accomplishing through war what you can accomplish through peace. "

" I had been a Maoist, and then when the Gang of Four was overthrown, I was completely distraught. I was bedridden for three weeks; it was a very painful experience for me. Not only because I had been wrong, but because I felt really embarrassed that I had been lecturing and pontificating with such self-confidence. "

Norman Finkelstein

Self-Confidence

Three

" I don't want to pretend to be a prophet or a saint. I'm very conscious of my limitations. I know my flaws. But I don't like lying. "

" DePaul's plot to deny me tenure had nothing to do with my faults. In fact, and ironically, it viciously attacked me and destroyed my career because of my virtues. Which, although few in number, they still found threatening. "

Norman Finkelstein

Plot

Nothing

" The real goal of politics has to be getting people to act on what they already know was wrong. "

" The Holocaust only emerged in American life after Israel's victory in the 1967 Six Day war against its Arab neighbours. "

" People have the right to defend their country from foreign occupiers, and people have the right to defend their country from invaders who are destroying their country. "

" My original interest in the Nazi holocaust was personal. Both my father and mother were survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Nazi concentration camps. Apart from my parents, every family member on both sides was exterminated by the Nazis. "

" There is no way a non-Jew could say what I did in 'The Holocaust Industry' without being labelled a Holocaust denier. I am labelled a Holocaust denier, too. "

" I think one of the problems when we discuss the Israel-Palestine conflict is people talk too much in terms of, 'What's your preference?,' like politics is a Chinese menu - I'll take one from column A and two from column B. That's not what politics is about. "

" The Zionists indeed learnt well from the Nazis. So well that it seems that their morally repugnant treatment of the Palestinians, and their attempts to destroy Palestinian society within Israel and the occupied territories, reveals them as basically Nazis with beards and black hats. "

" Conversion and zealotry, just like revelation and apostasy, are flip sides of the same coin, the currency of a political culture having more in common with religion than rational discourse. "

" Indeed, the field of Holocaust studies is replete with nonsense if not sheer fraud. "

" Mainstream Jewish intellectuals became 'pro'-Israel after the June 1967 war when Israel became the U.S.A.' s strategic asset in the Middle East, i.e., when it was safe and reaped benefits. To credit them with ideological conviction is, in my opinion, very naive. "

" When I was a young man, my mother said to me, 'You can't be a communist without being a militant atheist.' So I had to be a militant atheist because I wanted to be a communist. "

Norman Finkelstein

Young

Mother

" I think that people like Bloomberg, they're complete thugs. No question about it. But on the other hand, it must be said that they are politically savvy. They don't get into those positions of power - in the case of Bloomberg, both economic and political power - by being anybody's fool. "

" I am opposed to any state with an ethnic character, not only to Israel. "

" I don't think it's a good thing to have Christian states, Muslim states, or any kind of ethnic states. "

" The whole purpose of annual reviews is to keep you abreast of whether or not you are fulfilling the requirements of tenure. "

" I voted for Nader, and I have no doubts at all that it was the right thing to do because the Nader candidacy was extremely energising and a terrific phenomenon in American life, and I hope he continues. "

" Why should Americans go on with their lives as normal, worrying about calories and hair loss, while other people are worrying about where they are going to get their next piece of bread? "

" I think sometimes we underestimate just how vulnerable Israel is on the public-relations front. That's why they spend so much money on propaganda. And that's why they panic every time they feel like they're losing the propaganda war. "

" Personal convictions are not politics. Personal convictions, if they become the subject of a group conviction, they become a cult. "