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" No conditions justify torture. "

Norman Finkelstein

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" 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

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

Norman Finkelstein

" 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. "

Norman Finkelstein

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

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" Every victory of Hezbollah, I celebrate. "

Norman Finkelstein

" 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. "

Norman Finkelstein

" 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

" 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

" 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

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

Norman Finkelstein

" 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

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

Norman Finkelstein

" 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

" 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

" 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 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? "

Norman Finkelstein

" 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

" Israel's pro-American orientation exists not just among Israeli elites but also among the whole population. Come what may in Israel, it's inconceivable that this fundamental orientation will change. Combined with its overwhelming military power, this makes Israel a unique and irreplaceable American asset in the Middle East. "

Norman Finkelstein

" 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

" 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

" 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

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

Norman Finkelstein

" International law says people fighting for self-determination can use force in order to achieve their independence. "

Norman Finkelstein

" 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

" People have to liberate themselves, because liberation is not a single act. It's a question of eternal vigilance. Otherwise, you'll just become enslaved by someone else. "

Norman Finkelstein

" You know, frankly speaking, money just doesn't figure largely in my world view. "

Norman Finkelstein

" I don't want to become a rhetorical speaker. My effectiveness is mastering all of the data and being able to respond. "

Norman Finkelstein

" 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. "

Norman Finkelstein

" 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

" I'm an old fan of the Negro spirituals. "

Norman Finkelstein