Finkelstein's background

[Brad DeLong]

>Max Sawicky wrote:
>
>>Also the Wieseltier quotes.  You know Norman's doing
>>something right.
>
>He is. Norman's a thoroughly admirable guy. In the mid-80s, he 
>pretty much destroyed Joan Peters' preposterous book From Time 
>Immemorial, which claimed there weren't any Palestinians in 
>Palestine in the 1940s. A few years ago, he pretty much destroyed 
>Daniel Goldhagen. He did both jobs by, among other things, looking 
>up the original sources both cited and found serious, um, 
>misrepresentations. For this noble work, Norman has earned himself 
>obscurity and poverty. Peters, though, completely disappeared from 
>view, and Goldhagen has turned into an embarrassment for Harvard.
>
>Doug

Details as to Goldhagen's misrepresentations? I ask because I 
concluded on page 13 of _A Nation on Trial_ that Finkelstein had lost 
his mind when he claimed that "Touted as a searing indictment of 
Germans, Goldhagen's thesis is, in fact, their perfect alibi". That 
seemed to me to be just plain weird...

Brad DeLong