Norman Finkelstein on Hamas

23 Nov

Stern of face and stupid with it, a CNN anchorman in Washington holds forth on the evil Hamas. How,  he fulminates, can this abominable organisation justify its expenditure on violence while the Gazans it purports to represent live in poverty?

This is what happens, you see, once an organisation is designated terrorist. Even the pretence of balance goes out the window. Likewise elementary reasoning skills.

This anchorman, when all is said and done, is citizen and richly rewarded mouthpiece for a state which spends $1tn a year on violence while 30 million of its citizens live below the poverty line.

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A month ago I’d never heard of the man. When I first encountered his name, in a pro Palestinian article whose source escapes me, its author had written Jake Tapeworm Tapper …”

How juvenile, I thought.

Now I think he was praising the man with – I say this as one who bears tapeworms no ill will – faint damnation.

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By contrast I’ve known about Norman Finkelstein, a relentless critic of Israel who lost almost his entire family on both sides in the Nazi death camps, for years. Though  I haven’t read any of his books – The Holocaust Industry … Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and Abuse of History … Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict and others – I’ve seen him in many videos and read many shorter writings, including those which first brought him to my attention. I speak of the McCarthyesque smearing of Jeremy Corbyn as anti-Semitic, prior to his ouster as leader of the British Labour Party to make way for a lawyer acceptable to a ruling class but weirdly unable to distinguish between a nation’s “right to defend itself” – which does not, legally speaking, apply to an unlawfully occupying power – and mass murder.

Which brings us back to Gaza. Fortunately for the smugly idiotic Mr Tapper, Norman doesn’t go head to head with him; let alone with an uncrowned queen who by rights should be in the dock at The Hague but here has a walk-on part to remind her dim-wittedly deplorable subjects that peace is war, and war peace.

So this interactive take-down will have to do.

2 Replies to “Norman Finkelstein on Hamas

  1. I know who Jake Tapper is. Think he used to be on Fox but was fired.

    I watched about half way along this video but couldn’t stomach looking at his stupid face any more, or listen to what was coming out of his mouth. As Norman Finkestein says, what do these people expect gazans to do? Well obviously they’re expected to lie down and die quietly without causing the Israelis any bother. The analogy with the Warsaw ghetto and other acts of resistance is a perfect demonstration of the ludicrous and pathetic nature of what this moron is saying.

    I see this video was made about 8 days ago, but I’m sick of hearing people say Hamas murdered however many Israelis that died, when it is now clearly established that the IDF killed many of their own. Don’t know how many people are familiar with the Hannibal doctrine, but I’ve become aware of it in recent days.

    You and others who read your stuff will know.

    Great work again.

    • Hey Margaret. I think we can safely say the Hannibal Directive has become somewhat better known to a good many of us these past few weeks!

      Times like this bring home to us, or should do, the murderous contributions made – by journos who doubtless tell themselves they’re just doing their job – to empire narratives.

      I’d still recommend a full viewing for NF’s splendid takedowns of common tropes from the defenders, most of them clueless rather than despicably mendacious, of the rogue regime in Tel Aviv and the bigger rogue regime in DC.

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