On Thu, 1 Mar 2001, Michael Pollak wrote:
> On Thu, 1 Mar 2001, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> > And, when he was at the New York Times Book Review, [Shatz] assigned
> > the hit job on Norman Finkelstein's book, the nastiest review I ever
> > saw in that mild, largely tedious publication.
>
> I have to disagree, Doug. Bartov's review was not only just, it was
> kind. He at least spent the first few paragraph's praising
> Finkelstein's earlier books on Peters and Goldhagen (at least the
> first half of the latter), which is more good words that Norman got in
> any of the review articles I saw in Salon or Slate or in any of the
> big papers in Germany. Michael
That's ridiculous. "Just and kind," eh? Some examples --
"... a lone ranger with a holy mission -- to unmask an evil Judeo-Zionist conspiracy ... his views about the origins, nature and implications of the genocide of the Jews are but a series of vague, undocumented and contradictory assertions ... The gist of his argument is simple: Had the Jews and the Zionists not had the Holocaust already, they would have had to invent it ... outrageous accusations ... seething hatred of what he perceives as a corrupt Jewish leadership in the United States ... from his Mount Sinai, everything is clear and obvious ... an old-hat 1960's view of Israel as the outpost of American imperialism with a novel variation on the anti-Semitic forgery, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" ... indecent ... juvenile, self-righteous, arrogant and stupid ... [Finkelstein's view of] an international Jewish conspiracy verges on paranoia and would serve anti-Semites around the world ... indifference to historical facts, inner contradictions, strident politics and dubious contextualizations ... an ideological fanatic's view ... a writer ... reckless and ruthless in his attacks ... irrational and insidious ...," etc., etc.