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Jerusalem Post analysis: Finkelstein’s Germany tour sparks protest

BY BENJAMIN WEINTHAL – 21/02/2010 – Excerpts

The controversial American Jewish political scientist Norman Finkelstein’s attempt to secure locations last week in Munich and Berlin to deliver anti-Israel lectures

Finkelstein, whose scheduled talk – “One year after the invasion of the Israeli army in Gaza and the responsibility of the German government in the starvation of the Palestinian population” – generated protests and cancellations last week…

Initially, he was scheduled to speak in the Trinitatis evangelical church in Berlin, with organizational and financial support from the political foundations of the Green Party, Left Party, German-Palestinian organizations, and a fringe group of anti-Zionist Jews.

Finkelstein was denied entry to Israel in 2008 because of his pro-Hizbullah solidarity activity in Lebanon. According to a February New York Times review of a documentary on Finkelstein, he waved a banner during a protest against the First Lebanon War in 1982, “urging ‘Israeli Nazis’ to ‘stop the Holocaust in Lebanon.’”

The Heinrich Böll Foundation, affiliated with the Green Party, pulled the plug on its involvement and said in a statement: “We regret our decision… and because of careless, insufficient research we made a fiercely bad decision. Finkelstein’s behavior and his theses take place, in our view, not within the framework of justified criticism.”

There has always been an insatiable market, particularly among the Left, for Finkelstein’s views in Germany, largely because he allows many Germans to air anti-Israel sentiments in a politically and socially correct way. A spokeswoman from the respectable Piper publishing house in Munich, which publishes his books, told The Jerusalem Post that Finkelstein’s anti-Israel Holocaust Industry sold 150,000 copies in 2001, catapulting it to best-seller status.

It’s not hard to explain the popularity of Finkelstein in Germany: If the son of Holocaust survivors can equate Israel with Nazi Germany and charge American Jewish organizations with exploiting the Holocaust to tap into the guilt and financial chords of Germans, then Germans can breathe more easily and alleviate their sense of guilt and connection to the Shoah.

Finkelstein’s background serves as a social-psychological crutch that allows many Germans to invoke his Jewish biography to insulate themselves from accusations of anti-Semitism.

After the cancellation of the support of the Green Party foundation and the Trinitatis church, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, which is affiliated with the Left Party, offered to provide a venue for Finkelstein. A diverse group of pro-Israel organizations – including the BAK Shalom Working Group within the Left Party – protested the foundation’s decision. Henning Heine, a spokesman from the foundation, issued a statement, saying “we underestimated the political explosiveness of Finkelstein’s lecture” and rescinding its offer.

BAK Shalom is a group of young Left Party members who seek to end their party’s adherence to flourishing anti-Zionist positions within the party.

Rising pressure from the pro-Israel community also prompted the Amerika House in Munich to walk away from its support of Finkelstein’s appearance.

The last refuge for Finkelstein is the headquarters of the notoriously pro-Islamic Republic leftist Junge Welt daily, a leftover from the former communist East Germany. Finkelstein will deliver his talk on Friday in the gallery of the paper’s building in Berlin. – Full article

February 22, 2010 - Posted by aletho | Full Spectrum Dominance