Norman Finkelstein - Statements On Israel and Israelis

Statements On Israel and Israelis

Finkelstein is a sharp critic of Israel. Discussing Finkelstein's book Beyond Chutzpah, Israeli Historian Avi Shlaim stated that Finkelstein's critique of Israel "is based on an amazing amount of research. He seems to have read everything. He has gone through the reports of Israeli groups, of human rights groups, Human Rights Watch and Peace Now and B'Tselem, all of the reports of Amnesty International. And he deploys all this evidence from Israeli and other sources in order to sustain his critique of Israeli practices, Israeli violations of human rights of the Palestinians, Israeli house demolitions, the targeted assassinations of Palestinian militants, the cutting down of trees, the building of the wall — the security barrier on the West Bank, which is illegal — the restrictions imposed on the Palestinians in the West Bank, and so on and so forth. I find his critique extremely detailed, well-documented and accurate."

In a telephone interview with Today's Zaman, in 2009, Finkelstein stated:

I think Israel, as a number of commentators pointed out, is becoming an insane state. And we have to be honest about that. While the rest of the world wants peace, Europe wants peace, the US wants peace, but this state wants war, war and war. In the first week of the massacres, there were reports in the Israeli press that Israel did not want to put all its ground forces in Gaza because it was preparing attacks on Iran. Then there were reports it was planning attacks on Lebanon. It is a lunatic state.

When asked how he, as the son of Holocaust survivors, felt about Israel’s operation in Gaza, Finkelstein replied:

It has been a long time since I felt any emotional connection with the state of Israel, which relentlessly and brutally and inhumanly keeps these vicious, murderous wars. It is a vandal state. There is a Russian writer who once described vandal states as Genghis Khan with a telegraph. Israel is Genghis Khan with a computer. I feel no emotion of affinity with that state. I have some good friends and their families there, and of course I would not want any of them to be hurt. That said, sometimes I feel that Israel has come out of the boils of the hell, a satanic state

The Anti-Defamation League has described Finkelstein as an "obsessive anti-Zionist" filled with "vitriolic hatred of Zionism and Israel." On being called an anti-Zionist Finkelstein has said: "It's a superficial term. I am opposed to any state with an ethnic character, not only to Israel."

Finkelstein is an advocate of a two state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.