[Peace-discuss] Finkelstein vs. Salaita

[C. G. Estabrook]

‘Charm’ has been described as that quality that makes people want to agree with you even before you’ve presented your position; in that sense, most to the participants in this discussion are something less than charming. (Perhaps even you and I?) 

Not the least virtue of Chomsky’s low-key approach is that it helps to focus attention on the content of the argument rather than its manner of presentation.

Of course it helps to be right as often as Chomsky is. 


> On Nov 18, 2015, at 6:31 PM, David Green <davegreen84 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> This was bound to come up sooner or later; I had read Salaita's original article on EI equating Finkelstein with Dershowitz, and found it appalling. It was only sometime after the Salaita affair broke that I re-connected him to that article. Nevertheless, I'm more patient than Finkelstein with Salaita's academic prose, and feel that he makes some original and incisive analyses, especially of campus multicultural politics, in his essays (http://mondoweiss.net/2014/10/scholarship-dismissal-university). Regarding Finkelstein/Chomsky's criticisms of BDS, I basically agree with them, and Salaita shows no indication of challenging what I consider to be the conventional wisdom among SJP/JVP/BDS movements. The antipathy that Finkelstein and Ali Abunimah of EI have for each other is "no secret." In this context, Finkelstein's harsh judgment of Salaita seems arrogant and probably is, but also based in some pretty fundamental disagreements about practical and movement strategies and tactics.
> 
> DG
> 
> 
> 
> On Wednesday, November 18, 2015 5:01 PM, C. G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/11/finkelstein-weighs-in-on-salaita-settlement/
> 
> I think Norman Finkelstein is probably correct on his rejection of
> 
> (1) the full BDS program (more carefully set out by Noam Chomsky: <http://chomsky.info/20140722/>);
> 
> (2) the Mearsheimer-Walt argument (again, Chomsky is clearer: <http://chomsky.info/20060328/>); and
> 
> (3) the 'one-state solution' (the right of return will have have to be transferred into reparations).
> 
> (These views are characterized by Ira Glunts as "incompatible with pro-Palestinian activism and solidarity … [Finkelstein’s] characterization of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) advocates as cultists, his view that the pro-Israel lobby does not influence U.S foreign policy, and his deriding of advocates of a one-state solution for Israel/Palestine, as hopelessly politically naïve.”)
> 
> And Steven Salita's “Dershowitz and Finkelstein: comrades at heart?” is at best uncivil, to coin a phrase: 
> <https://electronicintifada.net/content/dershowitz-and-finkelstein-comrades-heart/12574>.
> 
> —CGE
> 
> 
> 
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