Norman Finkelstein, a professor at DePaul University who argues that Israel shields itself from criticism by invoking the Holocaust, spoke at Stanford last week. Sini Matikainen covered the volatile lecture for The Stanford Daily:

The audience was largely sympathetic to Finkelstein’s position, bursting into frequent applause and laughter and giving a standing ovation at the conclusion of the speech. A small but vocal minority, however, expressed dissent, and Finkelstein engaged in several shouting exchanges with audience members.
[…]
Finkelstein…allege[d] that Israelis have utilized the Holocaust in their efforts to “mystify” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to prevent critics from passing judgment on it or comparing it to what he deemed analogous situations.
“It’s not perfect, but you could make a reasonable analogy between the fate of Native Americans in North America and the fate of Palestinians in the Zionist conquest of Palestine,” he said. “The problem is that Israel comes out on the wrong side of the analogy, so we don’t compare it.”
During the question-and-answer session, audience dissatisfaction was particularly voluble. Several audience members were upset with being forced to write their questions on notecards instead of engaging in an open forum.
Finkelstein himself disagreed with this method of audience participation.
“Had I been asked, I would have done it that way,” Finkelstein replied. “But I had to respect the wish of the organizers. I have faith that the professor will not make this a rigged session.”

On the day of the lecture, the Daily featured an op-ed from Stanford Law School Fellow Amichai Magen. The headline: “Holocaust Denial Comes to Stanford.”

In essence, Finkelstein’s argument is as follows: The Jews, in a fiendish conspiracy, have fabricated a “Holocaust Industry” in order to portray themselves as victims, cynically exploit their suffering and consolidate Israel as a power set on regional domination. If the Holocaust had never happened, the Jews would have invented it themselves, since the Holocaust served their diabolical quest for money and global imperialism.
This thesis is a hodge-podge of pathological paranoia, ignorance, malice and brutal disrespect to the memory of the millions of human beings systematically murdered by the Nazis (Christians, Jews and Muslims). If we applied Finkelstein’s warped logic, we would conclude that Blacks “exploit” the history of slavery to obtain civil rights gains or that in the 20th-century, women have created a “Feminism Industry” in a cruel attempt to gain power and subjugate men. How many Einsteins, how many Kafkas, how many Menuhins, how many lives (born and yet to be born) were lost forever in the furnaces of Auschwitz? The world will never know. But to suggest that the Jewish People, or anyone else on this planet, has “profited” from the extinguishing of so many souls — each of infinite value in its own right — is monstrous beyond belief.

A response came quickly in an op-ed by Tala Al-Ramahi, president of the Coalition for Justice in the Middle East. The headline: “Holocaust Denial Does NOT Come to Stanford.”

What Norman Finkelstein came to address is exactly what Amichai Magen’s Op-ed (January 25, 3007) tried to do: invoking sensationalist rhetoric in order to intimidate anyone who thought of listening to an academic and legitimate argument of how too many people misuse the memory of the Holocaust and exploit Jewish suffering in order to silence the voices that are critical of Israeli policies toward the native Palestinian people.
Finkelstein did not come to deny the Holocaust. The Holocaust did happen, and it is unfortunately one of the greatest tragedies in human history. He was not here to deny that anti-Semitism exists. Unfortunately, it still does. He came here to tell those like Amichai Magen that it is perversely wrong and immoral to accuse people and organizations of anti-Semitism (just as has been done in yesterday’s Op-ed) in order to silence and deligitimize their cause of securing justice and freedom for the Palestinian people.

No doubt the discussion will continue this week…
The above picture from the Daily Web site was taken by Shams Shaikh.