Alan Dershowitz Denounces DePaul Neo-Nazi Finkelstein

DePaul University has been in the news recently because on the one hand it employs crackpot pseudo-historian and neonazi Holocaust Denier Norman Finkelstein, a man who could not get any academic job at any other institution, yet at the same time it fired Prof. Thomas Klocek because he defended Israel to some campus student radicals. Finkelstein is retained by DePaul, supposedly in the name of academic free speech, in spite of his not having any scholarly credentials that any real academic would take seriously, while Klocek was fired by the same DePaul for making politically incorrect comments.

Now Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz has issued yet another devastating denunciation of Finkelstein, evidently in response to the new anti-Semitic new book that Finkelstein has crayoned. (In the past Dershowitz has creamed Finkelstein in debates.) The book is coming out next month, called "Beyond Chutzpah : On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History." The title is a backhanded slap at Alan Dershowitz's "Chutzpah." Finkelstein's theme is that just because someone hates Jews and wants to see all Jews killed is no reason to accuse that person of being an anti-Semite. Finkelstein is a regular Jew-basher for neonazi Holocaust Denier web sites on the lunatic Right (including Rense.com and Holocaust "Revisionism" web sites) as well as on fanatically anti-Semitic web sites from the Left like Counterpunch.

Dershowitz wrote the following about Finkelstein:

'Finkelstein has said that he “can’t imagine why Israel’s apologists would be offended by a comparison with the Gestapo” and asserted that Israel’s human rights record is “interchangeable with Iraq’s” when it was ruled by Saddam Hussein. He has said that most alleged Holocaust survivors - including Elie Wiesel - have fabricated their past, are “bogus,” and that those seeking reparations are “cheats” and “greedy.” Because of my support of Israel, he has compared me to “Adolf Eichman [sic],” and accused me of expressing “Nazi moral judgments.” When challenged to defend his frequent comparison between Jews and Nazis, he has responded, “Nazis never like to hear they’re being Nazis.” He is a popular speaker among German neo-Nazis; one, Ingrid Rimland, whose husband, the notorious Ernst Zundel, wrote The Hitler We Loved And Why, even referred to him admiringly as the “Jewish David Irving” (“Jüdischer David Irving”) - a reference to the British Holocaust denier and Hitler admirer. The comparison is apt because Finkelstein has reportedly praised the Holocaust-denying Irving as “a good historian!” and as having “made an indispensable” contribution to our knowledge of World War II.”'

Commentary Magazine's Gabriel Schoenfeld has labeled Finkelstein's views as “crackpot ideas, some of them mirrored almost verbatim in the propaganda put out by neo-Nazis around the world.” His books do not sell in America, but they are best-sellers among the growing number of neo-Nazis in Germany. Finkelstein has been endorsed by anti-Semites of all stripes, including Israeli Jewish anti-Semites like Neve Gordon from Ben Gurion University, who compared Finkelstein ethically to the Prophets of the Bible.

Finkelstein's retention at DePaul shows that DePaul has junked all attempts at pretending to maintain academic standards. We leave it to the reader to decide what Neve Gordon's retention by Ben Gurion University signifies.