Book Review

THE HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY

REFLECTIONS ON THE EXPLOITATION OF JEWISH SUFFERING by Norman G. Finkelstein. Pub: Verso Press, London and New York, 2000. Pp: 150. Hbk: £16/$23.

A Jewish critique of the excesses and manipulations of the zionist propaganda industry

Muslims have often said that the greatest promoters of ?Holocaust denial? in the world are the zionists, because of their exploitation of the ?holocaust? for their political goals. Establishing historical truths, through the dislocations of time, and out of the partial memories and records of contemporary actors, is always difficult; in the case of the Nazi persecution of the Jews, the sheer volume of misinformation and disinformation generated by both sides of the debate have made any impartial and informed discussion of the issue virtually impossible.

Did 6 million Jews die, or 5 million, or 4 million, or 1 million? To what extent was there a deliberate plan to exterminate them, or were they largely victims of murderous brutality and callous negligence? These are questions that will always be asked - not because a few apologists for Hitler insist that he was not an evil monster, but because the massive and wealthy zionist lobby has produced so much transparent and self-interested propaganda on the subject, and worked so hard to ensure that anyone even asking these questions should be marginalised and disparaged. The result is that many open-minded people wonder what the zionists are trying to hide.

These opening paragraphs alone are sufficient to have both this writer and Crescent International condemned as ?Holocaust deniers? and ?anti-semites?. No matter: we are used to the accusations, because of our regular comments on Israel. As far as the holocaust is concerned: does it really matter whether 6 million died (a figure which even scholarly Jewish sources discount), or 1 million? Is the degree of evil demonstrated by the killing of 1 million people any less than that shown by the killing of 6 million? The lessons of the Nazis? persecution of the Jews (and the Romany and the blacks and the disabled and the handicapped...) does not depend on numbers, and is not specific to the Jews; it is simply man?s capacity for evil and brutality towards other humans, once they are removed from a moral framework. The lesson is not that the world owes the Jews a living, and must allow them to do what they like because they are an eternally persecuted people, nor that Israel must be given a free hand to do as it likes in the world.

Norman G. Finkelstein, himself a Jew and a child of survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto (a Jewish area of Warsaw besieged and destroyed by the Nazis), is an established Jewish critic of Israel?s aggression and an authority on contemporary Jewish affairs. In this book, he turns his attention to the ?holocaust industry?, arguing that the present high-profile presentation of the holocaust was a deliberate strategy on the part of some sectors of the Jewish community, and some Jewish institutions and organizations, designed to rally support for the zionist state, and otherwiseto promote their own interests, on the basis of the suffering of some of their co-religionists fifty years ago. Finkelstein in blunt: the authors of the holocaust industry, he says, are interested not in remembering the dead but in exploiting them, and their actions are not a tribute to them but an abuse of them.

The book is divided into three sections, each exploring one particular aspect of the industry. The first section, "Capitalizing the Holocaust", explores changing attitudes to the holocaust in America in particular, and why the holocaust has come to be such a dominant feature in American cultural life. Finkelstein is clear that this has little to do with traditional Jewish explanations that its lessons must not be forgotten, or that there is a continued risk of repetition. Instead, he points out, the awareness of the holocaust in the west - and that effectively means in the world - has depended on the interests of US Jewry and Israel. During the first two decades after the end of the second world war there was no great awareness of the holocaust, even among Jews. It was only after Israel?s 1967 victory, and the increasingly open alliance between the US and Israel, that the holocaust was suddenly trumpeted, and the spectre of anti-semitism raised to enable both American Jews and Israel to promote and defend their burgeoning interests with impunity.

The second section, "Hoaxers, Hucksters and History", explores the way in which this holocaust myth has been created and is used. It opens with a quote from an Israeli writer, Boas Evron, that "holocaust awareness is an official, propagandist indoctrination, a churning out of slogans and a false view of the world, the real aim of which is not at all an understanding of the past, but a manipulation of the present."

Finkelstein begins by pointing out that the Nazi persecution of the Jews is in fact historically neutral; it can just as well be used to criticise Israel and to support it, and the fact that it is used to support the zionist state is a deliberate strategy. He points to particular dogmas of the "holocaust framework": that the Nazi persecution of the Jews is a categorically unique event, and that "it marks the climax of an irrational, eternal Gentile hatred of Jews". Both of these, he points out, draw on important strands of zionist thought, and do not figure in any holocaust discourse before 1967. Most modern holocaust literature, he shows, is spurious, fraudulent and politically motivated. Among others, he is particularly scathing of Elie Wiesel, the "survivor-priest" of zionism and the holocaust. Finkelstein also goes beyond simply exposing the holocaust industry to discuss its impact on contemporary Jewry, as well as its utility for zionism, for example in its deliberate linking of Nazism and Arab opposition to zionism.

Finkelstein?s final chapter is called "The Double Shakedown". In it, he argues that "in recent years, the Holocaust industry has become an outright extortion racket. Purporting to represent all of world Jewry, living and dead, it is laying claim to Holocaust-era Jewish assets throughout Europe." He particularly examines the recent campaign to extort money from Swiss banks that supposedly took advantage of Jewish victims of the holocaust. He points out that many of the charges were based on deceit, and that the final settlement was based on blackmail rather than justice: the threat being that if the Swiss refused to pay up, the Jewish lobby worldwide would attack them and threaten to bring down their banking system. The settlement was thus extorted even before an objective study of the issue was completed.

Finkelstein also points out that many of those running the campaigns - both Jewish individuals and institutions - are in fact getting rich on the money they are supposedly claiming on behalf of holocaust survivors; his title refers to the fact that both the Swiss and the survivors were "shaken down". Similar campaigns are now being prepared against German banks and other European institutions, though not against Israel?s ally, the US, which - Finkelstein points out - followed broadly similar policies to the Swiss.

All this is material that no non-Jew can hope to say without being viciously attacked by the zionist lobby. Even Finkelstein and others like him are routinely attacked as being ?self-hating? Jews, and the fact that papers such as Crescent quote him will no doubt also be used against him in future. In publishing this book, however, Finkelstein has done a favour not only to fellow anti-zionists, but also to other Jews.

The fact is that zionists today are not only the greatest reason for ?holocaust denial?, but also the greatest promoters of anti-semitism, by committing all their offences in the name of Judaism; it is hardly surprising then that some people should blame all Jews for the zionists? offences. Writers such as Finkelstein, for reminding the world that there are Jews who recognise their co-religionists? sins, may be attacked today; but when Jews look back and recognise zionism as yet another disastrous episode in their history, they will be grateful that they can point also to Jews such as Norman G. Finkelstein.

Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict

By Norman G. Finkelstein. Verso, 1995, 243 pp. List: $18.95 paper; AET: $16.50.

Reviewed by Edna Homa Hunt

August/September 1996, Page 63

Norman Finkelstein is a brave man, In writing Image and Reality, he has challenged important myths underlying the origins of Israel as a state, and many elements of the Israel-Palestine conflict. These myths, of course, are imbedded in Zionist doctrine evolved over a century and already widely documented elsewhere.

This is a particularly significant book for its extensive research and thorough documentation. Notes provided in 67 pages added to 171 pages of text are often as illuminating as the text itself.

These myths still are prominent in some public discussions and private conversations in the U.S., even though scholarship has discredited them. Therefore, the book is especially important for American readers. They are not as likely as Israelis to have access to updated and revised accounts of events that occurred during and after the overt hostilities that have punctuated the course of conflict between Israelis and Arab peoples.

The book?s narrative does not proceed along a continuous historical time line. Rather, Finkelstein chooses to dwell on several critical periods examined in the writings of historians such as the Israelis Benny Morris and Anita Shapira; and American putative scholar Joan Peters. Indeed, the meticulous research that ultimately led to the unequivocal exposure of Peters? fraudulent scholarship was Finkelstein?s doctoral dissertation at Princeton.

The Falsehoods of Abba Eban in his ?finest hour? as Israel?s diplomat par excellence during and after the June 1967 war are the third of Finkelstein?s central challenges.

The course of that very fateful war of 1967 and its aftermath -- the October 1973 war -- and the Camp David Accords as its ultimate denouement prior to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, become another ?group? for Finkelstein?s in-depth object lessons. These deserve utmost attention because from the events in question there arose a web of ?political correctness? that still holds exclusive sway in many circles in the U.S.

Above and beyond Finkelstein?s refutation of Joan Peters? thesis that most of the Palestinians are descendants of very recent arrivals from Syria and elsewhere, and the mountain of ?evidence? she dredges up in support, his chapter ?A Land Without a People? highlights a serious problem: the chorus of enthusiasm, praise and endorsement for the Peters book from such Jewish scholars and literary luminaries as Barbara Tuchman, Bernard Lewis, Saul Bellow and Elie Wiesel, to mention but a few.

Certainly, one of the highlights of Finkelstein?s numerous accomplishments is his expose? of the aftermath of Peters? discrediting. He did a great service to those of us who still care about such things, by bringing to light those who subjugate integrity in the service of ideological propaganda. Sadly, even after Peters? ?evidence? became widely recognized as falsehood, few of the endorserspublicly admitted their mistaken gullibility.

The profound injustice done the Palestinian people has significant roots in the 1948 war, when a massive exodus from their villages, towns and neighborhoods took place, over a short period of months. The chapter ?Born of War, Not by Design? could well be the most instructive for those readers -- especially in the U.S. -- whose memory does not extend back to that time.

In this chapter, focus is on the work of Israeli ?new? historian Benny Morris. His books chronicle the political, military and also - in my view - significant human events of the 1948 war that set the stage for almost half a century of the most vigorous Zionist ?settler colonialism? and expansion. Still ongoing, and entirely at the expense of the Palestinian people, this settler colonialism again has been eloquently described by Israeli Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi in his 1992 book, Original Sins.

Finkelstein focuses on one aspect of Morris? historical scholarship. While Morris reveals political and military leaders, he steadfastly - but according to Finkelstein falsely - maintains that ?the Arab exodus was not the result of a general, premeditated Yishuv (Jewish) policy? (quoted on p.64 of Image and Reality). The Morris thesis is that the mass exodus of Arabs from their major population centers all over present-day Israel was not the result of a well-formulated plan to get rid of as many Arabs as possible, as quickly as possible. Rather, Morris maintains that Arab flight was a by-product of war. As in all wars ?things happen!? Finkelstein shows that Morris? obfuscation of the widely-known Plan D?s real objective is a falsification of the facts, plain and simple.

Indeed, in May 1975 edition of a report on ?Arab villages destroyed in Israel,? Prof. Israel Shahak states that ?the truth about Arab settlements which used to exist in the area of [the present] Israel before 1948 is one of the most guarded secrets of Israeli life?. In the spirit of Palestinian historian and geographer Arif Al-Arif - on whose work the Shahak report on these villages is based - and also in the spirit of Image and Reality, but in contrast to Benny Morris, I am compelled to add, in the words of the Shahak report, that ?falsifying facts in this way is a most grave offense in itself and also one of the most important causes for the prevention of any meaningful peace (i.e. not one based only on force and oppression).?

Of 475 Palestinian villages known to have existed before 1948, 385 have been destroyed, some without so much as a stone to mark their past existence.

?The June 1967 war marked a decisive crossroads in the history of the modern Middle East,? Finkelstein writes on p. 123 of his book. ?It redefined the contours of the Arab-Israeli conflict as well as the terms of its settlement.? Indeed, I am convinced that the June war launched Israel on a path toward the exercise of power almost on a global scale.

With impressive military and diplomatic documentation, Finkelstein thoroughly rebuts Abba Eban?s edifice of falsehoods and linguistic acrobatics. For a long time indeed, Eban successfully diverted the blame for that war away from Israel. Moreover, his version of events served to bring Israel much of the glory and praise that still clings to its military and diplomatic image. But Finkelstein presents sufficient evidence to reverse the credibility of the received truth of Eban?sassessment.

As his finale, Finkelstein takes readers through the labyrinthine ?career? or U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, even as it wound its way through another war, that of October 1973, and the ?neutralization of Egypt? at Camp David. For those who were not around to read the newspapers in the post-October war period, the final chapter, ?Language of Force,? recalls the Jarring mission, its aftermath, and Anwar Sadat?s dramatic opening to Israel which led to Camp David, which in turn opened the way to the 1982 Lebanon invasion.

As for Resolution 242, no one has formally announced its death and internment. But is that not what actually happened in Oslo and Cairo?