Top 79 Quotes & Sayings by Norman Finkelstein - Page 2

State terrorism - and yet the Israeli invasion Goldstone investigated is still commonly referred to as the Gaza War.

Judging by opinion polls, Israel has bigger problems than me. It is among the most hated countries on the planet. It should stop acting like a lunatic state. Once it carries on like a normal country, I will be happily redirect my energies elsewhere.

I focus on my work. If I let myself get distracted by the insults and slanders I wouldn't get anything substantive done.

Public opinion in the United States has shifted significantly, not just outside but also within the Jewish community.

There are many issues, as everyone knows, in the United States on which public opinion leans very much to the left of elite policy, but that's because public opinion hasn't been turned into a political force.

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 US support for these policies.

There's no question that public opinion is changing, and if you're a person of the left, your goal is presumably to try to mobilize public opinion to affect elite policy; and I think now there are unusual, unprecedented opportunities to do so.

The Holocaust industry has always been bankrupt. What remains is to openly declare it so. The time is long past to put it out of business.

The justice of a war basically refers to the question whether there is a right to attack in the first place. Justice in a war is concerned with whether the fighting happens in accordance with the international laws of war.

They've (Israel) lost the battle for public opinion. They claim it's because American Jews know too little.. I claim it's because they know too much about the conflict, and young liberal Jews have difficulty defending the use of cluster bombs in Lebanon or supporting the Israeli settlements.

American Jews are overwhelmingly liberal. By "liberal," I mean, basically, support for the rule of law, support for human rights, support for peace; and on all those counts - rule of law, human rights, peace - Israel's record has become indefensible.

September 11 was a godsend for Israel. It could now conjoin its merciless persecution of the Palestinians with Bush's War against Terror. But my impression is that it wasn't altogether successful.

Each of the various tactics that have been tried to get Israel to budge.. nonviolent resistance, legal accountability, BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions).. has had some measure of success.

Apart from my parents, every family member on both sides was exterminated by the Nazis.

As Israel becomes like South Africa, it's increasingly becoming a pariah state, being excluded from culture at large.

Given the nonsense that is turned out daily by the Holocaust industry, the wonder is that there are so few skeptics.

As one Israeli said, "It's a big mistake for Israel to say it 'won' the war, when there was no war. There were no battles...no military enemy in the field."

Goldstone has done terrible damage to the cause of truth and justice and the rule of law. He has poisoned Jewish-Palestinian relations, undermined the courageous work of Israeli dissenters and-most unforgivably-increased the risk of another merciless IDF assault.

War is not a means to an end, it is the end, whereas politics is merely the hiatus between wars.