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" Israel has been a stage on which American Jews have played out their fantasies of toughness - often from Martha's Vineyard. "
Norman Finkelstein
Toughness
American
Israel
Related Quotes:
" If there were an Oscar for best theatrical performance by a country, Israel would win every year. It's a country based on theater. It's a lunatic state - completely insane. "
Norman Finkelstein
Performance
Best
Year
" Personal convictions are not politics. Personal convictions, if they become the subject of a group conviction, they become a cult. "
Norman Finkelstein
Cult
Group
Become
" I was probably unusually close to my parents, so I do what I can now to preserve the integrity of their memory. The Holocaust deserves to be remembered. "
Norman Finkelstein
Integrity
Memory
Now
" 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. "
Norman Finkelstein
Destroy
Hats
Within
" 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. "
Norman Finkelstein
The Right Thing
American
Hope
" Indeed, the field of Holocaust studies is replete with nonsense if not sheer fraud. "
Norman Finkelstein
Field
Nonsense
Sheer
" 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
Me
" 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. "
Norman Finkelstein
Why
Used
Support
" 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
" When you are a people's movement, you have one thing. Your only asset is people. And you have to deal with real people. Not the people of your imagination. Not the people you wish people would be. But people as they exist actually out there in the real world. "
Norman Finkelstein
World
Imagination
You
" I don't want to become a rhetorical speaker. My effectiveness is mastering all of the data and being able to respond. "
Norman Finkelstein
Want
Being
Data
" 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. "
Norman Finkelstein
Experience
Power
Profit
" I don't claim to know Israel. I don't speak Hebrew; my contacts are pretty limited. But I didn't know Vietnam; I didn't know Nicaragua, El Salvador or Honduras. It doesn't mean you can't reach your conclusions. "
Norman Finkelstein
Pretty
Mean
Know
" 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. "
Norman Finkelstein
Want
Flaws
Lying
" 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. "
Norman Finkelstein
People
Power
Political
" I'm politically on the left, no question about it. I oppose sweatshops, I oppose exploitation of labour in the third world. "
Norman Finkelstein
Question
Exploitation
Left
" The Holocaust only emerged in American life after Israel's victory in the 1967 Six Day war against its Arab neighbours. "
Norman Finkelstein
Victory
Only
Life
" 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. "
Norman Finkelstein
Help
Time
Writing
" I don't think it's a good thing to have Christian states, Muslim states, or any kind of ethnic states. "
Norman Finkelstein
Good
Think
Kind
" 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. "
Norman Finkelstein
Family
Parents
Mother
" I don't feel particularly attached to Israel - 'nationalism,' as Noam Chomsky said, 'is not my cup of tea' - but I feel no particular need to demonize it. "
Norman Finkelstein
Need
Said
Tea
" I no longer say I'm unemployed. I say I'm unemployable. It's different. An unemployed suggests at a certain point in the future, you might be employed. That's not the case with me. I'm unemployable, and unfortunately, that's one of the bits of the web, in particular of Google. "
Norman Finkelstein
You
Google
Future
" 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. "
Norman Finkelstein
People
Who
Country
" There are contradictory tendencies in American society. There's a huge range of activities that one can engage in that mark it as a quite free society. It's also true to say that the powers that be have so much control over how people think that there are fewer and fewer people who make use of the rights and information available to them. "
Norman Finkelstein
Society
Control
Think
" 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. "
Norman Finkelstein
Parents
Legacy
Betrayal
" No doubt one can, in light of further study and life experience, come to repudiate past convictions. "
Norman Finkelstein
Doubt
Light
Past
" I'm an old fan of the Negro spirituals. "
Norman Finkelstein
Fan
Old
" The moment you have massive social and political commentary trying to explain a phenomenon, then you know we are no longer dealing with a strictly psychiatric question. "
Norman Finkelstein
Moment
You
Know
" The real goal of politics has to be getting people to act on what they already know was wrong. "
Norman Finkelstein
Goal
Wrong
Politics
" 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. "
Norman Finkelstein
Time
Feel
Losing