Michael Pugliese,
I am not sure why you are clipping and splattering this stuff from the internet about Finkelstein. Is everyone who disagree with you worth slagging? Finkelstein has tried to do good work, honestly and self-critically. He may be wrong in his overall point of view but he is scrupulous in gathering his facts and checking the facts and quotes of others. He is not a fraud. Dershowitz is a fraud and so was Joan Peters. As for Goldhagen, he was sloppy but not a fraud. But his book was promoted and ballyhooed in a way to serve an ideological purpose. At nearly the same time Christopher Browning came out with Ordinary Men. I am not an expert on this subject but Ordinary Men, which was well written and used many of the same documents as Hitler's Willing Executioners, was scrupulous and modest and also had the advantage of seeming psychologically true. And yet "Ordinary Men" was not ballyhooed and trumpeted the way the over written Hitler's Willing Executioners was. We owe Finkelstein a debt for doing the work to expose Peters, Dersh, and Goldhagen.
Finkelstein has done good work. And let's just agree in the first place, in order to have a decent conversation. He is not a self-hating Jew, he is not antisemitic simply because he does not agree with you or Dersh or Goldhagen.
This goes for you also Angelus. Your treatment and dismissal of Finkelstein in this way, your slamming him out of complete ignorance, is the sort of piling on that I do not expect from gentle people who are trying to converse in a reasonable manner.
Both of you owe Finkelstein an apology. Also as far as I am concerned there is no good reason to an attempt an actual conversation with either of you until you actually think about the harm you wish to further against a man who at every turn has been slagged and hounded for academic work that should be rewarded. A man such as Dershowitz can make millions for his plagiarism and slanders, his "legal" scholarship, and consulting work, and you get angry with Finkelstein.
Jerry -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20061020/7fe47d31/attachment.htm>