Norman Finkelstein is a leading light of the anti-Israel movement, including the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to destroy Israel through commercial, cultural, and legal sanctions imposed through international organizations and governments. Usually, nearly all who seek to destroy Israel and exterminate Jews use pious rhetoric about principles to obscure the raw hatred that is the wellspring of all their energy. But Finkelstein let his hair down recently on YouTube, and blurted out the truth.
Speaking with a friendly, pro-Palestinian advocate, Frank Barat, on YouTube, Finkelstein basically admitted the sham being peddled. Ran Baratz has an excellent article well worth reading at Jewish Ideas Daily:
Finkelstein got into trouble when he said that some people in BDS "don't want Israel." He lectured his BDS colleagues:
Stop trying to be so clever, because you're only clever in your cult. The moment you step out, you have to deal with Israeli propaganda . . . They say, "No, they're not really talking about rights; they're talking about they want to destroy Israel." And in fact I think they're right, I think that's true.
In fact, Finkelstein said, it is "not an accident, an unwitting omission, that BDS does not mention Israel": They "know it will split the movement, because there's a large segment-component-of the movement that wants to eliminate Israel."
You can see why anti-Israel people were offended to hear this from Finkelstein, of all people. Yet Finkelstein was not revealing some deep secret about the motives of those BDS-ers. Anyone who has listened to their leaders, read their papers, seen them at play, or checked out their circle of acquaintances, supporters, and collaborators can hardly be surprised.
Finkelstein let some other cats out of the bag about the true nature of the BDS movement. He calls it a cult, and talks about the NGOs in Ramallah that are "one-person operations" and
claim to represent what they call this thing, "Palestinian civil society." . . . [T]hen why can't they ever organize a demonstration of more than 500 people? . . . [They] represent absolutely nothing.
The truth will out. Norman Finkelstein, the son of Holocaust survivors turned Israel-hater, responded to an impulse he cannot comprehend, and told the truth. On YouTube.
We live in interesting times, don't we?
Hat tip: Clarice Feldman
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