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BEYOND CHUTZPAH Beyond Chutzpah On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History UPDATED EDITION WITH A NEW PREFACE NORMAN G. FINKELSTEIN UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley Los Angeles University of California Press, one of the most distin- guished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California © 2005, 2008 by Norman G. Finkelstein First Paperback edition, 2008 isbn 978-0-520-24989-9 The Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier edition of this book as follows: Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Finkelstein, Norman G. Beyond chutzpah : on the misuse of anti-semitism and the abuse of history / Norman G. Finkelstein. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn: 0-520-24598-9 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Arab-Israeli conflict. 2. Palestinian Arabs— Crimes against. 3. Dershowitz, Alan M. Case for Israel. 4. Zionism. 5. Human rights—Palestine. I. Title. ds119.7.f544 2005 323.1192'7405694—dc22 2005000117 Manufactured in the United States of America 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 10987654321 This book is printed on New Leaf EcoBook 50, a 100% recycled fiber of which 50% is de-inked post- consumer waste, processed chlorine-free. EcoBook 50 is acid-free and meets the minimum requirements of ansi/astm d5634-01 (Permanence of Paper). To Musa Abu Hashhash and his fellow human rights workers, Palestinian and Israeli, preserving the truth from falsifiers The world is full of evil people and it is important to stand up to evil. Alan M. Dershowitz, Letters to a Young Lawyer Contents Preface to the First Paperback Edition / xi Acknowledgments / lxxi Introduction / 1 PART ONE THE NOT-SO-NEW “NEW ANTI-SEMITISM” 1 From Jesus Christ Superstar to The Passion of the Christ / 21 2 Israel: The “Jew among Nations” / 32 3 Crying Wolf / 66 PART TWO THE GREATEST TALE EVER SOLD Introduction / 89 4 Impurity of Arms / 96 5 Three in the Back of the Head / 131 6 Israel’s Abu Ghraib / 142 7 Return of the Vandals / 168 8 Blight unto the Nations / 190 9 High Court Takes the Low Road / 207 Conclusion / 221 Postscript: Reconciling Irreconcilables: How Israel’s High Court of Justice Proved the Wall Was Legal / 227 Appendix I: Of Crimes and Misdemeanors / 273 Appendix II: History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict / 299 Appendix III: Peace Process / 323 Epilogue: Dershowitz v. Finkelstein: Who’s Right and Who’s Wrong, by Frank J. Menetrez / 363 Index / 395 Preface to the First Paperback Edition This book posed and attempted to resolve a paradox: How is one to account for so much controversy swirling around a conflict that, judging by the past (historical record), present (human rights record), and desir- able future (legal-diplomatic record), is remarkably uncontroversial? The answer I proposed is that the vast preponderance of controversy surrounding the Israel-Palestine conflict is a contrivance to divert atten- tion from, and sow confusion about, the documentary record. In this new preface I will illustrate these points with material that has become available since publication of the original hardback edition in 2005. 1. UNCONTROVERSIAL RECORD HISTORICAL RECORD No aspect of the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict used to arouse more passion than the origin of the Palestinian refugee problem. The Apart from those already acknowledged in the first hardback edition of this book, I wish to thank George Bisharat, Alfred de Zahas, Ray Dolphin, Stephanie Koury, Yehezkel Lein, Jennifer Loewenstein, Abid Qureshi, and Joe Torchedlo for their assistance. xi xii PREFACE mainstream interpretation, put forth by Israeli officials and echoed in the scholarly literature, was that Palestinians left during the 1948 war after Arab leaders, primarily via radio broadcasts, ordered them to clear the field for invading Arab armies. Beginning in the late 1980s Israeli academics, notably Benny Morris, concluded after examining newly opened Israeli archives that this standard interpretation was false. Today there is broad consensus among scholars that Palestinians suffered an ethnic cleansing in 1948, although debate continues on the secondary question of whether or not this ethnic cleansing was premed- itated.1 Just how much narrower the controversy has become is vividly illustrated by the publication of former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami’s study Scars of War, Wounds of Peace.2 Ben-Ami, who is also a respected historian, provides this capsule summary of the “reality on the ground” during the 1948 war: “an Arab community in a state of terror facing a ruthless Israeli army whose path to victory was paved not only by its exploits against the regular Arab armies, but also by the intimidation, and at times atrocities and massacres, it perpetrated against the civilian Arab community.” Sifting the evidence, he con- cludes that in fact Israel premeditatedly expelled Palestinians in accor- dance with the Zionist “philosophy of transfer,” which “had a long pedigree in Zionist thought,” framed Zionist leader David Ben- Gurion’s “strategic-ideological” vision, and “provided a legitimate environment for commanders in the field actively to encourage the evic- tion of the local population.” Thus, on what was once the most hotly contested question regarding the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, a former Israeli foreign minister situates himself at the pole of the (much narrower) spectrum most critical of past Israeli policy.3 1. See pp. 2–3, 53n29 of this volume. 2. New York, 2006. 3. Ibid., pp. 25–26, 42–45. To be sure, one still hears echoes of the official Israeli position among diehard academic apologists. In a review of Beyond Chutzpah, Marc Saperstein of George Washington University asserted not only that Palestinians weren’t ethnically cleansed in 1948 but that “the only ethnic cleansing that occurred in 1948 in Palestine was by Arabs of Jews” (his emphasis). See Middle East Journal (Winter 2006), pp. 183–85, as well as my “Communication” and Saperstein’s rejoinder in Middle East Journal (Spring 2006), pp. 407–10; a fuller version of my reply can be found on my web- site (www.normanfinkelstein.com, under “Middle East Journal Enlists a Hatchet Man”). For the party line outside academia, see any Anti-Defamation League (ADL) publication, which typically asserts that “many of the Palestinians who fled did so voluntarily to avoid the ongoing war or at the urging of Arab leaders”—although in a grudging bow to real- ity it will add that “some Palestinians were forced to flee by individuals or groups fighting for Israel” (Israel and the Middle East: A resource for journalists [2005], pp. 3–4, 33; see also David Meir-Levi, Big Lies: Demolishing the myths of the propaganda war against PREFACE xiii In this connection it merits taking note of Ben-Ami’s reflections in Scars of War, Wounds of Peace on the theory and practice of Zionism, Israel’s relations with its Arab neighbors, and the history of the peace process. It is not an exaggeration to say that, although constituting the conventional wisdom among knowledgeable scholars, the former for- eign minister’s statements on these topics would be considered not just controversial but veritable heresies in U.S. media and public life.4 Israel [Los Angeles, 2005], pp. 21–22). Among other propagandistic claims in the ADL “resource for journalists” one might mention these: the “Arab forces were significantly larger” than Israel’s during the 1948 war (p. 2); “by May 1967, Israel believed an Arab attack was imminent” (p. 6); it was “understood by the drafters of the [U.N. 242] resolu- tion” that “Israel may withdraw from areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip consistent with its security needs, but not from all the territories” (p. 9); “Israel has shown the great- est possible restraint and makes a determined effort to limit Palestinian casualties” (p. 27); “Most Palestinian casualties are individuals who are directly engaged in anti-Israel violence and terrorism” (p. 27); “Settlements . do not violate international law” (p. 31); and “Neither international law nor international statute calls for a Palestinian ‘right of return’ to Israel” (p. 32). These assertions have been wholly refuted both by Ben-Ami and by the mainstream scholarship cited in this volume. 4. An inventory of these statements (by no means exhaustive) would include the fol- lowing: Zionism was partly “a movement of conquest, colonization and settlement . that was forced to use the tools of colonial penetration” (p. 3); “building” a Jewish state in Palestine “implicitly meant evicting and expelling” the Arab population (p. 13); in the “inherently Western-orientated inclination of Zionism . Israel could not, some also believed . should not, peacefully integrate within the Arab Middle East” (p. 18); “the endorsement of partition along the lines of Resolution 181 by Ben-Gurion [in 1947] was essentially a tactical move . to gain time until the Jews were strong enough to fight the Arab majority” (p. 34); the Zionists’ failure to conquer the West Bank in 1948 “for years, until 1967, would remain in the minds of generals and politicians as ‘unfinished busi- ness’” (p. 41); “Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 might have looked like the sudden whim of a warmonger Minister of Defense, Ariel Sharon, but it was actually an operation embedded in a concept with a long pedigree and in Israel’s mainstream strategic thinking from the very early years of the State” (pp. 58–59); an “aspiration [Ben-Gurion] always had was to reshape the map of the Middle East in a way that would guarantee Israel’s existence as a hegemonic regional power” (p.

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