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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

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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
Experience
Shocking
Power
Revelations
Things
Motivated
Life
Desires
People
Privilege
Profit
Anyone
Desire

More quotes by 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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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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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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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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State terrorism - and yet the Israeli invasion Goldstone investigated is still commonly referred to as the Gaza War.
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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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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Why should these Palestinians, who have lived in Jerusalem for hundreds of years, be evicted from their homes so that Jews from Brooklyn can live in them?
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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They used to say Palestinians fight like heroes, now they say heroes fight like Palestinians
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
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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
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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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Public opinion in the United States has shifted significantly, not just outside but also within the Jewish community.
Norman Finkelstein
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Israel has come out of the boils of the hell, a satanic state.
Norman Finkelstein
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Every victory of Hezbollah, I celebrate.
Norman Finkelstein
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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.
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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I'm politically on the left, no question about it. I oppose sweatshops, I oppose exploitation of labour in the third world.
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