Noam Chomsky Accuses Alan Dershowitz of Launching a "Jihad" to Block Norman Finkelstein From Getting Tenure at Depaul University

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

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We play Part II of our conversation with two of the country's leading dissidents, Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn on U.S. wars from Iraq to Vietnam, resistance and academia. We also ask Chomsky about Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz who is lobbying DePaul faculty members to oppose Norman Finkelstein's bid to receive tenure. Chomsky says, "[Dershowitz] launched a jihad against Norman Finkelstein simply to try and vilify and defame in the hope that maybe what he is writing will disappear."

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We turn to Part II of our conversation with two of the country's leading dissidents, Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky. We spoke with them yesterday in a rare joint interview.

Howard Zinn is one of America's most widely-read historians. His classic work "A People's History of the United States" has sold over 1.5 million copies and it has altered how many teach the nation's history. His latest book is "A Power Governments Cannot Suppress."

Noam Chomsky began teaching linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge over 50 years ago. He is the author of dozens of books on linguistics and U.S. foreign policy. His most recent book is titled "Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy."

In a wide-ranging interview, we spoke about US wars from Iraq to Vietnam, about resistance and about academia. I asked Chomsky about political science professor Norman Finkelstein - one of the country's foremost critics of Israeli policy - and his battle to receive tenure at Depaul University where has taught for six years. Finkelstein's tenure has been approved at the departmental and college level but the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has opposed it. A final decision is expected to be made by May. Finkelstein has accused Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz of being responsible for leading the effort to deny him tenure. In an interview with the Harvard Crimson, Dershowitz admitted that he had sent a letter to DePaul faculty members lobbying against Finkelstein's tenure. I asked Noam Chomsky about the dispute.

• Noam Chomsky. Professor Emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of dozens of books on linguistics and U.S. foreign policy. His latest book is "Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy."

• Howard Zinn. Professor emeritus at Boston University. His classic work "A People's History of the United States" has sold over 1.5 million copies. His latest book is "A Power Governments Cannot Suppress."

Harvard Law Professor Works to Disrupt Tenure Bid of Longtime Nemesis at DePaul U.

Thursday, April 5, 2007

The highly public feud between Norman G. Finkelstein of DePaul University and Harvard Law School's Alan M. Dershowitz has taken an unusual procedural twist, with Mr. Dershowitz attempting to weigh in on Mr. Finkelstein's bid for tenure at DePaul.

How Mr. Dershowitz's move will play out remains to be seen. Mr. Finkelstein's department supported his tenure bid, but the dean of his college has refused to support him. A final decision is expected next month.

There's no love lost between Mr. Finkelstein, an assistant professor of political science, and Mr. Dershowitz, a law professor. The two scholars have attacked each other repeatedly in the past few years, hurling accusations of plagiarism and polemicism at one another.

They've taken adversarial stances on such issues as the Israel lobby, anti-Semitism, and what Mr. Finkelstein terms "the Holocaust industry." Mr. Dershowitz threatened to take legal action against the University of California Press if Mr. Finkelstein's Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (2005) went to print with allegations that Mr. Dershowitz plagiarized portions of his 2003 book The Case for Israel (The Chronicle, July 22, 2005).

Last fall, with Mr. Finkelstein up for tenure, Mr. Dershowitz sent the DePaul law school faculty and members of the political-science department what he described, in a letter dated October 3, as a "dossier of Norman Finkelstein's most egregious academic sins, and especially his outright lies, misquotations, and distortions."

"I hope that this will serve as an introduction and primer to the so-called scholarship that Finkelstein will present this term as he is considered for tenure," Mr. Dershowitz wrote.

Mr. Finkelstein said in an interview on Monday that Mr. Dershowitz had embarked on "this frenetic and relentless campaign to deny me tenure."

"He sent to every member of the law school ... a dossier which came, I think, to about 50 pages, leveling or, I should say, recycling all of the allegations he's been putting forth for the past couple of years. And he sent a copy of that dossier to every member of my department."

The packet included what Mr. Dershowitz's letter called "some of the lies I am absolutely confident that Finkelstein told" on such points as Israeli torture and whether or not Mr. Dershowitz writes his own books.

In a telephone interview on Wednesday with The Chronicle, Mr. Dershowitz confirmed that he had sent the information to "everybody who would read it." He said he had compiled the material at the request of some two dozen DePaul students, alumni, and faculty members who were alarmed at the prospect of Mr. Finkelstein's receiving tenure.

Asked what he hoped to accomplish, he said, "Revealing the truth -- all I'm doing is disclosing the truth."

Mr. Dershowitz continued, "It would be a disgrace to DePaul University if they were to grant tenure. It would make them the laughing stock of American universities. ... His scholarship is no more than ad hominem attacks on his ideological enemies."

He added, "I think, by every standard, he's worse than Ward Churchill. ... He's a propagandist, not a scholar."

Given Mr. Dershowitz's history of clashes with Mr. Finkelstein, some might conclude that the matter had by now become more personal than professional. Mr. Dershowitz denied that. "For me, it's not personal. It's institutional." He said that Mr. Finkelstein sent "a message to other pro-Israel writers: If you dare write anything scholarly in favor of Israel, I will call you names, I will call you a plagiarist."

Mr. Dershowitz's involvement has stirred serious concern among the DePaul faculty.

Gil Gott, a professor of international studies at DePaul who is chairman of its Liberal Arts and Sciences' Faculty Governance Council, said in an e-mail message on Wednesday that the council had taken up the matter at its November 17, 2006, meeting. (Mr. Gott was not then chair of the council.)

According to the minutes of the session, the council voted unanimously to authorize a letter to DePaul's president, Dennis H. Holtschneider, and the university's provost, Helmut P. Epp, along with the president of Harvard University and the dean of Harvard Law school. The letter was to express "the council's dismay at Professor Dershowitz's interference in Finkelstein's tenure and promotion case" and also to explain "that the sanctity of the tenure and promotion process is violated by Professor Dershowitz's emails."

The minutes add: "A discussion followed in which members expressed their views that this was a very disturbing intrusion which attacked the sovereignty of an academic institution to govern its own affairs."

Asked whether it was unusual for a scholar to weigh in on tenure deliberations at another university, Mr. Dershowitz responded, "What's so unusual about a concerned academic's objecting to his receiving tenure? He would be the first person in history ever to receive tenure based on no scholarship other than personal attacks."

Mr. Finkelstein contacted The Chronicle last weekend to discuss his concerns about the status of his case. He said that his department had investigated Mr. Dershowitz's claims and "concluded that none of the scholarly allegations that Dershowitz leveled against me had any merit."

But he added: "DePaul is in a growth mode, and they see me as an albatross because they’re getting all this negative publicity because of me. And they want to get rid of me. And now the question is, what's going to prevail? The principles of fairness, the principles of academic freedom, or power and money in the form of a mailed fist?"

According to Mr. Finkelstein and to departmental reports sent to The Chronicle, his department voted 9 to 3 in favor of granting him tenure, with the majority voicing strong support for his scholarship and giving him high marks for his pedagogy. One of the reports described him as "an outstanding teacher whose contributions to student learning and transformation are impressive." It concluded that "while not all members of the department share a love of polemic and inflammatory rhetoric as practiced by Norman and his adversaries, there is clearly a substantial and serious record of scholarly production and achievement."

The College Personnel Committee subsequently voted 5 to 0 in favor of tenure for Mr. Finkelstein. But Charles S. Suchar, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, shot down the recommendation in a March 22, 2007, memo, a copy of which was also obtained by The Chronicle.

In language similar to that used by Mr. Dershowitz, the dean wrote, "I find the personal attacks in many of Dr. Finkelstein's published books to border on character assassination and, in my opinion, they embody a strategy clearly aimed at destroying the reputation of many who oppose his views."

Because the process is not yet complete, the DePaul administration has not made a public statement about Mr. Finkelstein's case.

"No comment at this time," Mr. Suchar wrote in an e-mail message. "The promotion and tenure review process is still under way, and final decisions are not expected until mid- to late May." The final decision on whether Mr. Finkelstein receives tenure rests with the provost and president of the university.

By JENNIFER HOWARD

Also online are both Mr. Dershowitz's Web site and Mr. Finkelstein's.

Professor Whose Works on Israel Stirred Controversy Is in Tenure Fight With DePaul U.

April 2, 2007

Reports are circulating that Norman G. Finkelstein, the author of controversial works on Israel, anti-Semitism, and what he has called “the Holocaust industry,” will be denied tenure at DePaul University despite strong departmental support. Mr. Finkelstein, an assistant professor of political science, told The Chronicle in an e-mail message that he had been the target of “external intrusion in the tenure process — including a relentless campaign of character assassination directed at the faculty and administration” by his critics.

He said that his department had voted 9-to-3 in his favor and that the College Personnel Committee had unanimously recommended tenure, but that the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences had overridden those recommendations. The dean, Charles S. Suchar, declined to comment on Mr. Finkelstein’s allegations. “The promotion and tenure review process is still under way and final decisions are not expected until mid- to late May,” he wrote in an e-mail message.

Michael L. Budde, chairman of the political-science department at DePaul, confirmed that Mr. Finkelstein’s colleagues had voted in favor of tenure. According to Mr. Budde, the case now will go to a universitywide promotion board, which will recommend a course of action to the provost and the president. That board is scheduled to meet on April 13. The university’s final decision is expected in mid-May.

Mr. Finkelstein has long been a controversial figure in academe. His most recent book, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (University of California Press, 2005), stirred up pre-publication threats of legal action by one of its subjects, the Harvard Law School professor Alan M. Dershowitz. —Jennifer Howard

Posted on Monday April 2, 2007 | Permalink |

Furor Over Norm Finkelstein

April 3

Norman G. Finkelstein has been more controversial off his campus than on it. On his frequent speaking tours to colleges, where he typically discusses Israel in highly critical ways, Finkelstein draws protests and debates. When the University of California Press published Finkelstein’s critique of Alan Dershowitz and other defenders of Israel in 2005, a huge uproar ensued — with charges and countercharges about hypocrisy, tolerance, fairness and censorship. But at DePaul University, Finkelstein has taught political science largely without controversy, gaining a reputation as a popular teacher.

But the debate over Finkelstein is now hitting his home campus — and in a way sure to create more national controversy. Finkelstein is up for tenure. So far, his department has voted, 9-3, in favor of tenure and a collegewide faculty panel voted 5-0 to back the bid. But Finkelstein’s dean has just weighed in against Finkelstein.

In a memo leaked to some supporters of Finkelstein and obtained by Inside Higher Ed, Chuck Suchar writes that he finds “the personal attacks in many of Dr. Finkelstein’s published books to border on character assassination” and that Finkelstein’s tone and approach threaten “some basic tenets of discourse within an academic community.” Suchar says that Finkelstein’s record is “inconsistent with DePaul’s Vincentian values, most particularly our institutional commitment to respect the dignity of the individual and to respect the rights of others to hold and express different intellectual positions.”

While the leaked memo led to some false online reports that Finkelstein had been denied tenure, his case is very much alive and no final decision will be made until June, according to a university spokeswoman, who added that the dean’s memo was not meant for public consumption and that no administrators could comment.

Debates over scholars who take controversial views on the Middle East are, of course, nothing new to academe. But Finkelstein’s case may be in a category all its own. He portrays himself as a courageous scholar, bringing rationality to discussions of the Holocaust and Israel — all the more bold for being Jewish and doing so. While criticizing people who invoke the Holocaust to justify political positions, he constantly identifies his parents as Holocaust survivors.

His supporters tend to characterize Finkelstein as the victim of right-wing, pro-Israel forces — and there are plenty of conservative supporters of Israel who despise Finkelstein. But among the groups he’s currently sparring with is Progressive magazine, a decidedly left-of-center publication that regularly publishes pieces that are highly critical of Israel’s government. Finkelstein and his supporters also say that criticisms of his tone are an excuse for attacks on his political views — and that issue appears to be key to the DePaul dean’s review.

Much of the criticism from the dean focuses on Finkelstein’s book The Holocaust Industry. The book argues that supporters of Israel use the Holocaust unreasonably to justify Israel’s policies. While the book does not deny that the Holocaust took place, it labels leading Holocaust scholars “hoaxters and huxters.” A review of the book in The New York Times called it full of contradictions (at one point he rejects the idea that the United States abandoned Europe’s Jews and then he later praises a book for which that idea was the central thesis) and full of “seething hatred” as he implies that Jews needed the Holocaust to justify Israel. The reviewer, Brown University’s Omer Bartov, a leading scholar of the Holocaust, described the book as “a novel variation on the anti-Semitic forgery, ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.’ “

Finkelstein said he could not comment on his tenure case in detail until later in the week, although he confirmed via e-mail that he had been approved at the departmental level and college levels, and that the dean was opposing his tenure. He also questioned the fairness of being judged by whether he adheres to Vincentian values. He said that the issue was never mentioned in his annual reviews and that he had always been told that his research would be judged by “the conventional academic requirements for scholarship.” It is wrong for DePaul to raise these issues now, he said. “You can’t spring new criteria at the second stage of the last year of a tenure-track position,” he said.

In Dean Suchar’s letter, he starts by noting that there has been no dispute at DePaul over the quality of Finkelstein’s teaching. He has received “consistently high” course evaluations, Suchar writes, and many students report that they have had “transformative” experiences in his classes.

The dispute over the tenure review focuses on research. The College Personnel Committee, a faculty-elected body that reviewed Finkelstein’s candidacy and unanimously endorsed it, raised concerns about the “tone” and “frequent personal attacks” in Finkelstein’s work, Suchar writes. That committee, however, concluded that “the scholarship was, on balance, sufficiently noteworthy and praiseworthy to merit their support for the application for promotion and tenure.”

Suchar disagrees. “I find this very characteristic aspect of his scholarship to compromise its value and find it to be reflective of an ideologue and polemicist who has a rather hurtful and mean-spirited sub-text to his critical scholarship — not only to prove his point and others wrong but, also in my opinion, in the process, to impugn their veracity, honor, motives, reputations and/or their dignity,” Suchar writes. “I see this as a very damaging threat to civil discourse in a university and in society in general.”

Finkelstein has also threatened to sue DePaul if he is denied tenure, Suchar writes, adding that this fits into the pattern. “Disagreements over the value of his work seem to prompt immediate threats and personal attacks. This does not augur well for a college and university that has a long-standing culture where respect for the dignity of all members of the community and where values of collegiality are paramount.”

Suchar’s memo was sent to a universitywide committee that will now review the case, which will then work its way to the president.

Supporters of Finkelstein take issue with the dean’s letter. “This is all because of Dershowitz wanting him to be fired. These people play rough,” said Peter N. Kirstein, a professor of history at Saint Xavier University who has blogged about the case and who is on the board of the Illinois conference of the American Association of University Professors. (Via e-mail, Dershowitz — who has previously battled with Finkelstein — said he had no information about the case.)

Kirstein questioned why the dean would mention Finkelstein’s threat of a lawsuit. “Doesn’t this country allow people to do things like suing?” he asked.

It would be appropriate for a dean to question the accuracy or significance of a professor’s work, but not to focus on its tone, Kirstein said.

On the question of the tone of one’s writing, Kirstein said he had plenty of experience. In 2002 he was suspended from his job after he sent an e-mail to a cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy, calling the cadet “a disgrace to this country” and criticizing the “aggressive baby-killing tactics” of the military. Kirstein was reviled by many conservative groups and defended by many civil liberties groups.

“Tonality is usually a red herring to destroy controversial speech that elites don’t like,” Kirstein said.

Anne Clark Bartlett, a professor of English and president of the Faculty Council at DePaul, said that it is “not common” for deans to write letters disagreeing with the views of a department and collegewide panel reviewing a tenure candidate. But she also said that the faculty handbook did give deans that right.

Bartlett, who said she does not know Finkelstein, said that she has not taken a stand on his case and wants to see how the process plays out. She said that it was important that administrators respect that the university’s regulations “give the faculty primary responsibility over promotion and personnel matters” for professors.

Robert Kreiser, associate secretary of the American Association of University Professors, said that the national office of the group had recently received the dean’s memo and was paying close attention to the case, but had not been asked to play a formal role. He said that the dean’s involvement and raising the issue of tone were not — in and of themselves — cause for concern with regard to academic freedom. He said that any questions about academic freedom would focus on the fairness of the dean’s comments, the due process afforded to Finkelstein, and how those comments were viewed in the totality of the evidence about Finkelstein’s tenure bid.

However, Kreiser said that the AAUP believes that “ordinarily a dean would defer to the judgment of a faculty member’s peers.” AAUP policy calls for administrators to have “compelling reasons” that they can present before they overrule a faculty recommendation on tenure.

“The dean would have to provide compelling reasons,” Kreiser said. The question going forward will be: “Were the dean’s reasons compelling?”

Related stories

• History vs. Hagiography, Jan. 10
• The Speech That Wasn’t, Sept. 22
• New Analysis of Academic Freedom, Aug. 28
• Shilling for Dictators?, June 5
• War of Words Over Paper on Israel, March 27, 2006

— Scott Jaschik

Q & A: Norman Finkelstein

Related

Norman G. Finkelstein

Sapere Aude! (Dare to think for yourself): Brandeis Student Paper

(Sapere Aude! (Dare to think for yourself):Brandeis Student Paper)

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Q & A: Norman Finkelstein

DePaul University professor

Matthew Chavez

Posted: 2/16/07

by Matthew Chavez

Daily Lobo columnist

In June, 40 years will have passed since Israel began the brutal colonial occupation of the Palestinian territory. Among the longest-running conflicts in the modern era, it has come to define the region itself and U.S. regional policy, which has been a critical factor. To shed some light on the U.S. role in the conflict, I sat down with DePaul University professor Norman Finkelstein, a scholar known for refuting the most pernicious apologetics of U.S.-Israeli war crimes. The Jewish son of Holocaust survivors, Finkelstein is also known for his thesis that elites have industrialized the practice of exploiting the Holocaust for financial and political purposes. We spoke before his sold-out lecture delivered Saturday at Albuquerque's First Unitarian Church.

Daily Lobo: By far the largest recipient of U.S. aid, Israel recieves about $3 billion annually from the U.S., more than $90 billion total since the end of World War II, according to conservative estimates by the Congressional Research Service. More than half of all U.S. vetoes in the U.N. Security Council since its founding were to block resolutions condemning Israeli war crimes. What is the ultimate outcome of this unique support?

Norman Finkelstein: Broadly speaking, there is a common regional interest between the U.S. and Israel: keeping the Arab states in line. For the U.S., it's fundamentally about the oil; for Israel, because it wants to be the dominant power in the region. But they both have a common interest in keeping the Arab states in line, which fundamentally means repressing any tendencies in the Arab world toward independence and real self-determination. So, there's an overlapping of regional interests. I happen to think, on local interests, there's no overlap. The U.S. has no real stake in the (Israeli) occupation. The U.S. has no real reason to oppose the creation of a Palestinian state. So on local issues, I think there is a conflict of interest, and the U.S. supports Israel on those local issues, in my opinion, primarily due to the Israel lobby. When it comes to Iraq or Iran, there's a basic common

interest.

DL: One of the Bush administration's primary requirements for Israel-Palestine negotiations to resume is for Hamas to "recognize Israel." Why has Hamas declined to recognize Israel?

NF: The issue is reciprocity. Israel has never recognized the right of Palestinians to a state on the June 1967 borders. And until Israel makes its reciprocal recognition of the Palestinian right to a state in the internationally recognized borders, the Palestinians have no moral obligation to be first. If you want to gain recognition then you have to give recognition. So the condition of Hamas was that it has to be mutual, and I think that's right.

DL: Media outlets refer to the Oslo negotiations that took place between 1993 and 2001 as a "peace process." But during this period, Israeli colonization of the Palestinian territory doubled. According to the Israeli Interior Ministry, the Israeli population occupying Palestinian land grew 6 percent in 2006 - a four-fold increase over 2005. What role has the Bush administration played in this creeping conquest?

NF: The Bush administration has been a disaster. After Sept. 11, 2001, they simply appropriated the Israeli point of view that in order to fight ... Hamas and fight the Palestinians, you have to show them no soft side. It's a very aggressive, belligerent, truculent Israeli mind-set that has seized control of the administration. That's how they think you fight them - the way Israel fights terrorism - by constantly bashing them. So, they've supported all of Israel's expansionist policies in the

occupied territories.

DL: It is now a journalistic convention to define President Bush for his rhetorical advocacy for democratization in the Middle East. But when the Palestinian movement Hamas defeated the dominant Fatah party in democratic elections last year, Washington immediately initiated a more than $60 million campaign to crush Hamas by arming and training its opponents, and by leading an effort to sever Palestinian tax revenues and humanitarian aid. It would seem these actions controvert Bush's presumed "freedom agenda," but his administration describes them as ordinary U.S. support for a "moderate" ally threatened by a terrorist organization.

NF: Right. It supports moderate allies, and it supports the repressive regimes in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt. It supports regimes that support its interests, and the regimes can create a fake election - like in Egypt or in Jordan - where they win 99.9 percent of the vote so they'll have a facade. The notion of U.S. interest in democracy is nothing. Let's take the case of Iraq. They've done surveys and asked the Iraqi people, "Do you believe the U.S. entered Iraq in order to bring democracy?" The last survey showed 2 percent of the Iraqi people believe that. That tells you something. Of course, all the media believe it, but nobody in the real world does.


Matthew Chavez is a political science major with a focus on international relations and a minor in Middle Eastern studies.

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© Copyright 2007 Daily Lobo

Carter's Mideast book and its provocations

December 19, 2006

YOU WRITE that former president Jimmy Carter's use of the word "apartheid" in the title of his new book is "irresponsibly provocative" ("Jimmy Carter vs. Jimmy Carter," editorial, Dec. 16). This would make for a rather puzzling list of "irresponsibly provocative" commentators on the Israel-Palestine conflict. For example, a study by the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem concluded: "Israel has created in the Occupied Territories a regime of separation based on discrimination, applying two separate systems of law in the same area and basing the rights of individuals on their nationality. This regime . . . is reminiscent of . . . the apartheid regime in South Africa." The roster of irresponsible provocateurs would also include the editorial board of Israel's leading newspaper Haaretz, which observed in September that "the apartheid regime in the territories remains intact; millions of Palestinians are living without rights, freedom of movement or a livelihood, under the yoke of ongoing Israeli occupation."

Indeed, the list apparently includes former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. Pointing to his "fixation with Bantustans," Israeli researcher Gershom Gorenberg concluded in 2003 that it is "no accident" that Sharon's plan for the West Bank "bears a striking resemblance to the 'grand apartheid' promoted by the old South African regime." Sharon reportedly stated around that time that "the Bantustan model was the most appropriate solution to the conflict."

NORMAN G. FINKELSTEIN
Chicago

Human Rights Watch Must Retract Its Shameful Press Release

updated Nov. 29, 2006 12:40pm

A comment by Norman G. Finkelstein

11.29.2006

Even by the grim standards of Gaza, the past five months have been cruel ones.

Some four hundred Palestinians, mostly unarmed civilians, have been killed during Israeli attacks. (Four Israeli soldiers and two civilians have been killed.) Israel has sealed off Gaza from the outside world while the international community has imposed brutal sanctions, ravaging Gaza's already impoverished economy.

"Gaza is dying," Patrick Cockburn reported in The Independent, "its people are on the edge of starvation….A whole society is being destroyed….The sound that Palestinians most dread is an unknown voice on their cell phone saying they have half an hour to leave their home before it is hit by bombs or missiles. There is no appeal."

"Gaza is in its worst condition ever," Gideon Levy wrote in Haaretz. "The Israel Defense Forces has been rampaging through Gaza – there's no other word to describe it – killing and demolishing, bombing and shelling, indiscriminately....This is disgraceful and shocking collective punishment."

Predictably Gaza teetered on the precipice of civil war. "The experiment was a success: The Palestinians are killing each other," Amira Hass wryly observed in Haaretz, "They are behaving as expected at the end of the extended experiment called ‘what happens when you imprison 1.3 million human beings in an enclosed space like battery hens.'"

It is at times like this that we expect human rights organizations to speak out.

How has Human Rights Watch responded to the challenge?

It criticized Israel for destroying Gaza's only electrical plant, and also called on Israel to "investigate" why its forces were targeting Palestinian medical personnel in Gaza and to "investigate" the Beit Hanoun massacre.

On the other hand, it accused Palestinians of committing a "war crime" after they captured an Israeli soldier and offered to exchange him for Palestinian women and children held in Israeli jails. (Israel was holding 10,000 Palestinians prisoner.) It demanded that Palestinians "bring an immediate end to the lawlessness and vigilante violence" in Gaza. (Compare Amira Hass's words.) It issued a 101-page report chastising the Palestinian Authority for failing to protect women and girls. It called on the Palestinian Authority to take "immediate steps to halt" Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel.

Were this record not shameful enough, HRW crossed a new threshold at the end of November.

After Palestinians spontaneously responded to that "unknown voice on a cell phone" by putting their own bare bodies in harm's way, HRW rushed to issue a press release warning that Palestinians might be committing a "war crime" and might be guilty of "human shielding." ("Civilians Must Not Be Used to Shield Homes Against Military Attacks")

In what must surely be the most shocking statement ever issued by a human rights organization, HRW indicted Palestinian leaders for supporting this nonviolent civil disobedience:

Prime Minister Haniyeh and other Palestinian leaders should be renouncing, not embracing, the tactic of encouraging civilians to place themselves at risk.

The international community has for decades implored Palestinian leaders to forsake armed struggle in favor of nonviolent civil disobedience. Why is a human rights organization now attacking them for adopting this tactic?

Is it a war crime to protect one's home from collective punishment?

Is it human shielding if a desperate and forsaken populace chooses to put itself at deadly risk in order to preserve the last shred of its existence?

Indeed, although Israeli soldiers have frequently used Palestinians as human shields in life-threatening situations, and although HRW has itself documented this egregious Israeli practice, HRW has never once called it a war crime.

It took weeks before HRW finally issued a report condemning Israeli war crimes in Lebanon. Although many reliable journalists were daily documenting these crimes, HRW said it first had to conduct an independent investigation of its own.

But HRW hastened to deplore the nonviolent protests in Gaza based on anonymous press reports which apparently got crucial facts wrong.

Why this headlong rush to judgment?

Was HRW seeking to appease pro-Israel critics after taking the heat for its report documenting Israeli war crimes in Lebanon?

After Martin Luther King delivered his famous speech in 1967 denouncing the war in Vietnam, mainstream Black leaders rebuked him for jeopardizing the financial support of liberal whites. "You might get yourself a foundation grant," King retorted, "but you won't get yourself into the Kingdom of Truth."

HRW now also stands poised at a crossroads: foundation grants or the Kingdom of Truth?

A first step in the right direction would be for it to issue a retraction of its press release and an apology.

HRW executive director Kenneth Roth "commended" Israel during its last invasion for warning people in south Lebanon to flee - before turning it into a moonscape, slaughtering the old, infirm and poor left behind. It would seem that Palestinian leaders and people, too, merit some recognition for embracing the tactics of Gandhi and King in a last desperate bid to save themselves from annihilation.

(Many HRW staffers have reportedly been appalled by the press release. Your letter of protest can make a difference. Email HRW Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson: whitsos@hrw.org - and HRW executive director Kenneth Roth--RothK@hrw.org.)

NEW: Reader letters

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=705