Norman Finkelstein Quotes

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

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

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

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

The moment you have massive social and political commentary trying to explain a phenomenon, then you know we are no longer dealing with a strictly psychiatric question.

- 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 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

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

People are motivated by the desires for privilege, for power, for profit. Those are not shocking revelations. Anyone who's had any experience in life knows these things.

- 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

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

I earn - I'm not - I don't want to claim I'm a scholar of great stature, but I have made a certain reputation for myself, I've published several books, I've never been able to get a permanent teaching job.

- 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

Personal convictions are not politics. Personal convictions, if they become the subject of a group conviction, they become a cult.

- Norman Finkelstein

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

- 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

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

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

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

- 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

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

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

- 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

I don't want to pretend to be a prophet or a saint. I'm very conscious of my limitations. I know my flaws. But I don't like lying.

- 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- 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 conditions justify torture.

- 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 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

My books don't sell anymore. There are many reasons why they don't sell, but one of the reasons is because people don't read anymore. Forget about reading books of detail - they don't read at all.

- Norman Finkelstein

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

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 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

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

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

- Norman Finkelstein

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

- 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

Teaching is in my bones. I love to teach.

- 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

I am opposed to any state with an ethnic character, not only to Israel.

- Norman Finkelstein

Every victory of Hezbollah, I celebrate.

- Norman Finkelstein