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

Norman Finkelstein

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" 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

" 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

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

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

" 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

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

Norman Finkelstein

" No doubt one can, in light of further study and life experience, come to repudiate past convictions. "

Norman Finkelstein

" 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

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

Norman Finkelstein

" No conditions justify torture. "

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 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

" 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

" 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

" I'm politically on the left, no question about it. I oppose sweatshops, I oppose exploitation of labour in the third 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

" Every victory of Hezbollah, I celebrate. "

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

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

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

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

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

" 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

" 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 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. "

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

" 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

" 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

" 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