(Here's what I sent the assholes --)
Could you please provide specific evidence of Norman Finkelstein's "Holocaust denial"? Steven Plaut liberally throws the term around in his piece sliming Finkelstein, but having read several of Finkelstein's books, I've never come across a sentence where he denies what happened to European Jews. He does, however, attack those who use the Final Solution to justify Israeli violence against Palestinians, among others. And he's been critical of what he calls "The Holocaust Industry" which, again, uses the Nazi-engineered genocide as an excuse to further dubious political and military campaigns.
I don't agree with everything Finkelstein says or writes, but to call him a "Holocaust denier" without any hard evidence is simply a Stalinist-like slander. (And thinking that David Irving is a "serious historian" hardly counts as "anti-Semitism," unless you wish to count neocon war supporter Christopher Hitchens "anti-Semitic" as well, since he also takes Irving seriously.) In fact, I seriously doubt that Plaut has read more than 3 pages of Finkelstein's work. If he reached page 6 of "The Holocaust Industry," he'd see that Finkelstein, in talking about his parents, does indeed recognize the Nazi holocaust. It's how that holocaust has been subsequently exploited that he has problems with.
Dennis Perrin