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

Norman Finkelstein

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Norman Finkelstein
Age: 70
Born: 1953
Born: December 8
Historian
Human Rights Activist
Political Scientist
University Teacher
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Norman Gary Finkelstein
Work
Insulting
Distracted
Insult
Criticism
Wouldn
Slanders
Focus
Substantive
Anything
Insults
Done
Slander

More quotes by Norman Finkelstein

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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
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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
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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.
Norman Finkelstein
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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.
Norman Finkelstein
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War is not a means to an end, it is the end, whereas politics is merely the hiatus between wars.
Norman Finkelstein
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Everybody wants peace. That's a truism. There is no point in accomplishing through war what you can accomplish through peace.
Norman Finkelstein
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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.
Norman Finkelstein
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The Holocaust has proven to be an indispensable ideological weapon. Through its deployment, one of the world's most formidable military powers, with a horrendous human rights record, has cast itself as a victim state, and the most successful ethnic group in the US has likewise acquired victim status.
Norman Finkelstein
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They used to say Palestinians fight like heroes, now they say heroes fight like Palestinians
Norman Finkelstein
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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
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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.
Norman Finkelstein
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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.
Norman Finkelstein
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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.
Norman Finkelstein
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Every victory of Hezbollah, I celebrate.
Norman Finkelstein
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Indeed, the field of Holocaust studies is replete with nonsense if not sheer fraud.
Norman Finkelstein
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It's utterly hypocritical for Israelis to wonder aloud why Palestinians don't pursue a non-violent strategy. One obvious reason is that, whenever they have, Israel brutally represses it.
Norman Finkelstein
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As Israel becomes like South Africa, it's increasingly becoming a pariah state, being excluded from culture at large.
Norman Finkelstein
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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.
Norman Finkelstein
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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.
Norman Finkelstein
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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.
Norman Finkelstein