The Most Despicable Things Finkelstein Has Said 


…on Elie Wiesel

“Elie Wiesel [is] resident clown of the Holocaust circus.”(Irish Times, “‘I Won’t Lie Down and Take the Insults.’”)

“Elie Wiesel is such a ridiculous character… The expression ‘There’s no business like Shoah-business’ is literally coined for him…He’s turned it into a business, where he casts himself as a person who’s doing all this from anguish and pain and personal sacrifice, while he has made a fortune out of it.” (Victor Frkle, ‘Shoa Business.’ Interview with Norman Finkelstein)

“Elie Wiesel…is such a wimp.” (Norman Finkelstein, “The Holocaust Industry” (March 10, 2004)

“Thanks to Elie Wiesel we have a distorted and disfigured and frankly meaningless version of the Nazi Holocaust and we only know about those genocides that serve the interest of the U.S. and Israel, and we forget the ones that don't.” (Victor Frkle, ‘Shoa Business.’ Interview with Norman Finkelstein)

…on Edgar Bronfman

“Edgar Bronfman is the Jewish Ribbentrop. He is a liquor salesman and then he decides he is going to represent the World Jewry. Where he got the idea to represent the world Jewry. That is really the megalomania of money and power.” ( Norman Finkelstein, interview “The Holocaust Industry” (March 10, 2004)

…on Rabbi Singer

“[Bronfman’s] crooked sidekicks, like Rabbi Singer … belongs in jail. He is a blackmailer, an extortionist. He belongs behind bars.” (Norman Finkelstein, interview, “The Holocaust Industry” (March 10, 2004)

 …on Alan Dershowitz

“If [Dershowitz] is [one of the main archetypes of evil in America], then he is a representation of Hannah Arendt's banality of evil. You want to believe that there is something profound in evil. But evil has no depth. Look at Adolf Eichman; he could have been a vacuum salesman. Yes Dershowitz is evil, a vacuum salesman at Harvard.” (Y.M.D. Fremes, “Interview with Professor Norman G. Finkelstein,” Palestine Chronicle, November 24, 2003, http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story.php?sid=20031124204126866)

“One of the world’s greatest charlatans and frauds.” (Catalyst Radio Interview With Dr. Finkelstein.)

“Dershowitz is “constitutionally incapable of saying anything that is true. I think that if a true word actually came out of [Dershowitz], he would probably implode.” (Catalyst Radio Interview With Dr. Finkelstein.)

“[Dershowitz] has come to the point where he’s had so many people write somany of his books. You know, he just churns them out… [I]t’s sort of like a Hallmark line for Nazis… [T]hey churn them out so fast that he has now reached a point where he doesn’t even read them.)” (Norman Finkelstein, New York, Oct. 4, 2003 http://theexperiment.org/articles.php?news_id=1991)

…on the ADL

“[The] Anti-Defamation League. Its main purpose is to defame the character of anyone who criticizes Israel. Its current National Director, or I prefer to say, its grand wizard is Abraham Foxman.”

…on the Simon Wiesenthal Centre

“The Centre is renowned for its ‘Dachau-meets-Disneyland’ museum exhibitions and ‘the successful use of sensationalistic scare tactics for fund-raising.”

The 10 Stupidest Things Finkelstein Has Said


…on a Jewish Conspiracy

“All opinion-leader, from the left to the right, are Jews…The Silence around my book in the US – if this is not a conspiracy, then what is one?” (NRC Handelsblad, August 5, 2000)

“[Some people [who support the thesis of a new anti-Semitism think the musical] Cats is a codeword for K-A-T-Z, Katz.” (Catalyst Radio Interview With Dr. Finkelstein.)

“The name of the character is Ari Ben Canaan because Ari is the diminutive for Aryan. It is the whole admiration for this blond haired, blue eyed type.” (Norman Finkelstein, “The Holocaust Industry,” March 10, 2004)

“Give me a better reason!…Who profits [from the movie]? Basically, there are two beneficiaries from the dogmas [of Schindler’s List]: American Jews and the American administration…” (NRC Handelsblad)

“In 1978, NBC produced the series Holocaust. Do you believe, it was a coincidence, 1978? Just at this time, when peace negotiations between Israel and Egypt took place in Camp David?” (NRC Handelsblad)

…on ‘scholarship’

“[David] Irving …[the notorious Holocaust denier who____] made an ‘indispensable’ contribution to our knowledge of World War II.” (“The Holocaust Industry,” p. 71)

“I don’t know about Judaism, but [Israel Shahak, who wrote that Jews are worshipping Satan] did. He knew it well. He took an interest in it and I have no doubt that what he wrote is accurate.”

“I’m a person of the left, and when you get a call from Professor Chomsky, his wish is your command. (Norman Finkelstein, Vancouver, May 15, 2004)

“Question: [Mr. Finkelstein] If you are a historian, why didn't you write a serious study about the subject? Why didn't you do research yourself? Interview people, etc.?  Finkelstein’s response: Why should I interview people?”  (Victor Frkle, ‘Shoa Business.’ Interview with Norman Finkelstein)

…on Holocaust survivors

“I am not exaggerating when I say that one out of three Jews you stop in the street in New York will claim to be a survivor.” (Sunday Times of London, June 11, 2000)

"'If everyone who claims to be a survivor actually is one,' my mother used to exclaim, 'who did Hitler kill then?'" (“The Holocaust Industry,” p. 81)

“Finkelstein says…that most 'survivors' are bogus.” (Guardian, Wednesday July 12, 2000)

…On Israel

“[I] can’t imagine why Israel’s apologists would be offended by a comparison with the Gestapo.” (Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, “Canadian Jewish Organizations Charged With Stifling Campus Debate.”)

“Israel’s human rights record is “interchangeable with Iraq’s” when it was ruled by Saddam Hussein.” (Link, “A Reply to Henry Kissinger and Fouad Ajami.”)

…On Terrorism

“[T]he honorable thing now is to show solidarity with Hezbollah as the US and Israel target it for liquidation. Indeed, looking back my chief regret is that I wasn’t even more forceful in publicly defending Hezbollah against terrorist intimidation and attack.” (Norman Finkelstein, “A Reply to Michael Young”)

“Frankly, part of me says…'you know what, we deserve the problem on our hands because some things Bin Laden says are true'. One of the things he said on that last tape was that 'until we live in security, you're not going to live in security', and there is a certain amount of rightness in that.”

The 10 Most Devastating Things People Have Said About Finkelstein

“You don't know who Finkelstein is. He's poison, he's a disgusting self-hating Jew, he's something you find under a rock.” Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic, accessible at http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=3&ar=41

“Mr. Finkelstein is full of shit.” Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress

“Finkelstein’s book is trash.” Peter Novick, who was Finkelstein’s inspiration for writing The Holocaust Industry, Tagesspiegel, Feb 6, 2001

“[C]rackpot ideas, some of them mirrored almost verbatim in the propaganda put out by neo-Nazis around the world.” Gabriel Schoenfeld’s response to critics, “Holocaust Reparations,” Commentary, January 2001, p. 20

“Finkelstein is a Jew…who supports anti-Semitism. He is grist to [Germany’s] extreme right’s mill... [S]eldom has a Jew been more celebrated by brown propaganda than Finkelstein.”  Eds. Martin Dietzsch and Alfred Schobert, Ein, jüdischer David Irving?, p. 6

“As concerns particular assertions made by Finkelstein…, the appropriate response is not (exhilarating) “debate” but (tedious) examination of his footnotes. Such an examination reveals that many of those assertions are pure invention… No facts alleged by Finkelstein should be assumed to be really facts, no quotation in his book should be assumed to be accurate, without taking the time to carefully compare his claims with the sources he cites.” Peter Novick, ‘Offene Fenster und Tueren,’ Sueddeutsche Zeitung, February 7, 2001

“[Because of Finkelstein’s The Holocaust Industry] I feel like a kid in a candy store… Finkelstein is a Jewish David Irving.” Ingrid Rimland, wife of neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier Ernst Zuendel, Eds. Martin Dietzsch and Alfred Schobert, Ein, jüdischer David Irving?, p. 11

“This book is, in a word, an ideological fanatic's view…by a writer so reckless and ruthless in his attacks... [His theory is] both irrational and insidious…an international Jewish conspiracy verges on paranoia and would serve anti-Semites.” Omer Bartov, “A Tale of Two Holocausts,” New York Times, August 6, 2000, p. 8

“I had not thought that (apart from the disreputable fringe) there were Germans who would take seriously this twenty-first century updating of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." I was mistaken.” Peter Novick, ‘Offene Fenster und Tueren,’Sueddeutsche Zeitung, February 7, 2001

[Finkelstein] combines an old-hat 1960's view of Israel as the outpost of American imperialism with a novel variation on the anti-Semitic forgery, ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,'' which warned of a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world…. [A] series of vague, undocumented and contradictory assertions…. There is something sad in this warping of intelligence, and in this perversion of moral indignation. There is also something indecent about it, something juvenile, self-righteous, arrogant and stupid.  Omer Bartov, “A Tale of Two Holocausts,” New York Times, August 6, 2000, p. 8

“Finkelstein’s work is, from beginning to end, a tendentious series of inventions. …[T]he examples from his article that are deemed to be the strongest are thoroughly misleading and without merit. Finkelstein’s writing is the sort of transparent political polemic that—had others not cynically propped him up as an expert and a champion of truth—would not even merit a response. This is a man who has made a career of attacking Israel’s legitimacy…. His documented inventions about my book, it is worth noting that Finkelstein has never before written anything on the Holocaust or German history and cannot read German…which means that he cannot read many of the sources on which he is passing his ‘expert’ opinion…. [A] man who has arrived overnight to a scholarly field made up of massive scholarly literature, not to mention all the documents, who, to boot, cannot read most of the sources because they are in German.” Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, A Comment by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen on: A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth” (found at www.goldhagen.com/csiz2.html.)

The 10 Cruelest Things Finkelstein Has Said


…on Elie Wiesel

“Elie Wiesel [is] resident clown of the Holocaust circus.”(Irish Times, “‘I Won’t Lie Down and Take the Insults.’”)

“Elie Wiesel is such a ridiculous character… The expression "There's no business like Shoah-business" is literally coined for him…He's turned it into a business, where he casts himself as a person who's doing all this from anguish and pain and personal sacrifice, while he has made a fortune out of it.” (Victor Frkle, ‘Shoa Business.’ Interview with Norman Finkelstein)

“Elie Wiesel…is such a wimp.” (Norman Finkelstein, “The Holocaust Industry” (March 10, 2004)

“Thanks to Elie Wiesel we have a distorted and disfigured and frankly meaningless version of the Nazi Holocaust and we only know about those genocides that serve the interest of the U.S. and Israel, and we forget the ones that don't.” (Victor Frkle, ‘Shoa Business.’ Interview with Norman Finkelstein)

…on Edgar Bronfman

“Edgar Bronfman is the Jewish Ribbentrop. He is a liquor salesman and then he decides he is going to represent the World Jewry. Where he got the idea to represent the world Jewry. That is really the megalomania of money and power.” (Norman Finkelstein, “The Holocaust Industry” (March 10, 2004)

…on Rabbi Singer

“Singer belongs in jail. He is a blackmailer, an extortionist. He belongs behind bars.” (Norman Finkelstein, “The Holocaust Industry” (March 10, 2004)

…on Alan Dershowitz

“If [Dershowitz] is [one of the main archetypes of evil in America], then he is a representation of Hannah Arendt's banality of evil. You want to believe that there is something profound in evil. But evil has no depth. Look at Adolf Eichman; he could have been a vacuum salesman. Yes Dershowitz is evil, a vacuum salesman at Harvard.” (Y.M.D. Fremes, “Interview with Professor Norman G. Finkelstein,” Palestine Chronicle, November 24, 2003 http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story.php?sid=20031124204126866)

“One of the world’s greatest charlatans and frauds.” (Catalyst Radio Interview With Dr. Finkelstein.)

“Dershowitz is “constitutionally incapable of saying anything that is true. I think that if a true word actually came out of [Dershowitz], he would probably implode.” (Catalyst Radio Interview With Dr. Finkelstein.)

“[Dershowitz] has come to the point where he’s had so many people write so many of his books. You know, he just churns them out… [I]t’s sort of like a Hallmark line for Nazis… [T]hey churn them out so fast that he has now reached a point where he doesn’t even read them.)” (Norman Finkelstein, New York, Oct. 4, 2003 http://theexperiment.org/articles.php?news_id=1991)

…on the ADL

“[The] Anti-Defamation League. Its main purpose is to defame the character of anyone who criticizes Israel. Its current National Director, or I prefer to say, its grand wizard is Abraham Foxman.”

…on the Simon Wiesenthal Centre

“The Centre is renowned for its ‘Dachau-meets-Disneyland’ museum exhibitions and ‘the successful use of sensationalistic scare tactics for fund-raising.”