Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
 Exception - Lucid, hard-hitting. An essential read January 29, 1997
14 out of 15 found this review helpful
This book is a meticulous exposition of the multitude ofpropaganda theories that have been peddled as truth, and are now accepted as the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is concise and very well researched. An essential read for anyone who is interested in the history of this conflict.
A brilliantly written, thought provoking scholarly book. February 23, 1997
25 out of 28 found this review helpful
Dr. Norman Finkelstein has written a brilliant and scholarly expose of the Israel-Palestine conflict. He is not a dispassionate historian/scholar nor does he pretend to be. He dedicates the book to his parents, survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Nazi extermination camps: "May I never forget or forgive what was done to them." Finkelstein's keen intellect is breathtaking. His painstaking research which supports the evidence how the "reality" of the causes of the conflict is vastly different than the "image" presented to us by the media is a marvel to behold. My favorite chapters in the book are chapters 2 and 4. In Chapter 2, he discusses Joan Peters book "From Time Immemorial" and masterfully exposes it as a hoax. The crux of Peters' thesis was that "Palestine was, literally, 'uninhabited' on the eve of the Zionist colonization; and that if the Arab population did not materialize, literally, ex nihilo in Palestine, it did surreptitiously enter to exploit the economic opportunities that the Jews created when they made the 'desert bloom'." By that logic, most Palestinians were not even there in 1948 to be expelled from their homes. The fact that such a threadbare hoax can be published in this country is not surprising. But the fact that this book received accolades from journalists and scholars alike, from such luminaries as Daniel Pipes, Sidney Zion, Holocaust historian Lucy Dawidowicz, and Nobel peace prize laureate Elie Wiesel, speaks volumes about the American commissar culture. After the book went through several printings and was exposed as an utter fraud in Britain, it finally prompted Anthony Lewis to write a column for The New York Times aptly entitled "There Were No Indians." Perhaps the most illuminating part of the book is Chapter 4 entitled "Settlement, Not Conquest." Finkelstein's dissection of how the historical rhetoric and justifications for conquest are strikingly similar -- "from the British in North America to the Dutch in South Africa, from the Nazis in Eastern Europe, to the Zionists in Palestine" -- is both enlightening and comical. Finally, it is noteworthy to mention Finkelstein's poignant observation for those of us who want to see justice done to the Palestinians and to all people who are suffering as a direct result of America's diplomatic and military support to the darkest and most oppressive regimes around the globe: "The plea of 'not knowing' cannot in good faith be entered at history's bar. Those who want to know can know the truth; at all events, enough of it to draw the just conclusions." To buttress his point, he quotes Albert Speer's mea culpa at Nuremberg: "Whether I knew or did not know, or how much or little I knew, is totally unimportant when I consider the horrors I OUGHT to have known about and what conclusions would have been natural ones to draw from the little I did know . . ." Thus, Finkelstein concludes: "Indeed, the [ordinary] Germans could point in extenuation to the severity of penalties for speaking out against the crimes of state. What excuse do we have?" Perhaps, we may want to do some genuine soul-searching as we ponder that question.
Zionism begone! April 5, 2007
Zero
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
This isn't a five star book. It isn't a one star book either. I'm voting it this high because of the rabid zionists that have voted it so low. These people support illegal occupation, house demolitions, torture, genocide, and much more. This book exposes their lies and hatred, which is why they rated it as they did. The fact that they're so disturbed by it is all the more reason to buy this and learn from it.
incredible, hard-hitting, truthful August 3, 1997
26 out of 37 found this review helpful
Finally someone not afraid to tell it like it really is. Since the Arabs are not allowed to speak for themselves in this country, Finklestein steps in to take up the mantle. If you want to know the unvarnished truth about what's happening in Palestine, read THIS!
Its point of view is nothing but respect for the truth December 3, 2008
lexo1941 (Dublin, Ireland)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Somebody, I forget exactly who, pointed out that Norman Finkelstein's books about the Arab-Israeli conflict are not actually works of Middle Eastern history but books about American history. This is essentially true, in that Finkelstein does not write narrative history or even critical history; he is essentially a scholarly critic of American opinion on the conflict, and the general tendency of his work is to point out the gap between what American writers have tended to say about the conflict and what the historical record actually shows. So, the meat of this book is his relentless, meticulous and devastating demolition job on Joan Peters' book "From Time Immemorial", a work that no professional historian is now willing to cite but which still has a loyal and uncritical readership out there among people who think that the Israeli government can do no wrong.
It can be seen, therefore, that criticising Finkelstein for having an "agenda" is beside the point. It's never very to the point anyway, since everybody who writes a book about anything whatever has an agenda, in that they have something that they want to say about the subject. Finkelstein's agenda is simply open for anyone to see. This book also contains his relatively brief and offhand dismissal of Michael Oren's "Six Days of June", which is interesting partly because that book is often cited as an "objective" history of the Six Day War, and Finkelstein doesn't find it difficult to prove that it is nothing of the sort, being heavily biased in favour of the Israeli side.
He performs an essential public service, and has been vilified and slandered for doing so. Finkelstein remains one of those fiercely independent thinkers who are the backbone of any secular culture; when there are no more guys like him, who are prepared to insist on telling the plain truth no matter how much it costs to him personally (and it has cost him a great deal, in terms of advancement in his actual career as an academic), then you live in a society where there are no effectively more public intellectuals, merely timeservers and lickspittles. My own country, Ireland, has reached that condition.
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