Norman Finkelstein down by the sea in Brooklyn
Norman Finkelstein has the moral gravity of an Old Testament prophet, the scrupulous attention to detail of a Talmudic scholar, and the mordant sense of humor of a Yiddish novelist. All these attributes are on display in
Gaza: An Inquest into its Martyrdom, an indictment of Israel's crimes in the overcrowded Palestinian territory from 2008 up to the present.
The criminal pattern of Israel's ongoing blockade, punctuated by murderous assaults against the civilian population of the beleaguered territory, will not be news to anyone who follows Israel/Palestine. But the cumulative impact of Finkelstein's meticulously-documented 408-page chronicle is devastating, and it will leave the reader stunned that the worldwide reaction is so muted.
Finkelstein does have one major new finding. He argues that the major international human rights organizations, after effectively denouncing Israel's assault on Gaza in 2008-09, have since quieted down, to the point that Human Rights Watch issued only one feeble report after the biggest Israeli attack of all in 2014. Israel's
hasbara (propaganda), along with other kinds of pressure, is successfully whitewashing Israeli crimes.
Finkelstein deals in turn with Operation
Cast Lead (2008-09; 1400 Gazans dead, including 350 children); the assault on the
Mavi Marmara ship that was bringing medical and other supplies to the territory (9 dead); the less well-known Operation
Pillar of Defense (2012; 100 dead, 35 children); and the most savage attack to date, Operation
Protective Edge (51 days in 2014; 2200 dead, 550 children). He points out that by contrast, a total of 86 Israelis died in all these assaults, and of the 73 Israeli casualties in the 2014 invasion, fully 67 were Israeli combatants.
Comment: Trying to change behavior through penalizing taxes. The land of the free.
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