Finkelstein’s work provides voluminous detail, fastidious cross-referencing of sources, exhaustive footnoting, and precision which is at times excruciating.
This is the first, and maybe only time, I am posting a comment ...
Despite many hours of reading and listening to just about everything I can find on the appalling death and destruction Israel has been inflicting on Gaza for over two years, I do not understand why this is happening. We have documented history of many thousands of years of human societies, and prominent in that history is the plethora of books, documentaries, movies etc. of the Second World War and the accompanying genocide of Jews and gypsies. Much of that information is tainted with, if not blatant, propaganda, but there are still a lot of accurate accounts of what happened before, during and after the horrors. But, here we are with a prolonged genocide being live streamed and (mostly the West) the world is not stopping it... the so-called educated, advanced, civilized world. What is the point of learning if we cannot apply that learning to do better?
The genocide of the Palestinian people is not the first since the Great War. The Rwandan genocide is notable as it was so clear what was happening, yet the world refused to acknowledge it as such or stop it.
Are human societies destined to be murderous destructive savages in their own interests forever?
Lastly, I have a plea to the world. Stop the violence of destruction and killing and torture immediately. No amount of talking is going to change anyone's mind. The arguments can be heard later; the discussions and reflections can happen later; the CYA and blame games can be played later. The ONLY thing required right now is to stop the genocide immediately. It is the right thing tu do, the civilized thing to do, the human thing to do. (And gosh I am rooting for Iran to be the country that does the right thing, because right now Iran looks like the only hope for me, even though they were not pushed into a ghastly war to save the Palestinians.)
The more I watch the escalating sponsored $£aught€r of the innocents, the more I think our only hope for humanity to survive, as other than the residual memory of Palestinian resilience, lies with the BRICS sending in the cavalry...the ethical human lead, as you point out, is being given by Tehran.
Don't you realise by now .Brics aren't coming to rescue china .India .Brazil .all still aid isrehell.with weapons parts or weapons ect .Whils they still trading. aiding in arms parts or arms .and ot sanctioning them .Just like UN and all.thd other countries still aiding isrehell.each and all are complicit in this
I'm well aware of that..which is the source of my own pessimism. But I also think they know the empire is coming for them also, do not want to provoke nuclear sterilisation of the planet from these nutjobs, and are playing the patient game of letting the Nato cartels exhaust themselves while they cover Iran's back quietly.
Russia and China know their history, and are more rational actors. India is just as fascistic as the sanctimonious 'West': Brazil is walking a tightrope.
Well, that’s a non sequitur. Assuming you might really want to know though, I get tired of hearing blather from armchair experts. I’m particularly troubled by the seeming universal failure to focus on this Israeli occupation that if starved might reduce if not stop this genocide cold. BDS, our legal obligation so many seem to think is others’ responsibility. I’m pretty divested, I boycott as I can, and I write legislators about our illegal sanctions that omit the legally obligated Israel sanctions.
I share information and encouragement with others and I’m enthused that more real people seem to know law and use proper terms like occupation and resistance.
So in a way you asked and I answered but you didn’t follow your own advice to first state what you’re doing. What are you doing - now - to stop the genocide?
I have talked to my family, friends, work colleagues, neighbours. Gone on marches, written letters to newspapers, ombudsmen and members of parliament. Signed petitions and am boycotting. And will vote for the Green Party. Eventually it will stop and there will be some form of reckoning.
IJewish people are 0.2% of the global population. So how did they gain so much control over the Western World?
Ghislaine Maxwell's father was a Mossad spy. Epstein & Ghislaine were funded by Mossad to use the rape of underage girls and boys to collect kompromat on powerful, morally compromised men.
Mossad uses financial bribes (big money payments), blackmail (child rape/snuff tapes), or threats (on the lives of family) to get it's way.
That is why it's "Israel First!" as it owns US, UK & European politicians. Trump & the others take orders from Netenyahu. And this is why genocide and Israeli war crimes are perfectly OK.
The Zionist Rothschild's banking family through their central banking they have central banks in all countries 6 countries gave up using central bank and stopped paying in petro dollar in early 2.000 Syria. Libya.iran. cuba. iraq.forgot last one . but now today Iran . Cuba. Is only two still not bowing to the Zionists .And like rest are being attacked
The elephant in the room is the depths of corruption and greed in Western society that gives bad actors the opportunity to blackmail politicians for obscene behaviour or in happily accepting bungs of money as enough to turn a blind eye to genocide. The moral high ground is sinking into the sewers.
If Israel is legally deprived of the lifeblood it unlawfully withholds from Occupied Palestine, would that not force its withdrawal and grind this genocide to a halt?
What does Norman Finkelstein write of the ICJ Case 186 antidote to Israel's unlawful occupation being an absolute shunning Israel cannot ignore? This case determination is so little remarked as to be nonexistent except by Ralph Wilde who presented the law, Francesca Albanese pursuing the law, and precious few others exhorting us to comply with the law. Including ourselves apparently so ready to point the finger at others.
What happened in the Nazi koncentration camps is what my old professor called a civilizational collapse in Germany. And that is exactely what we are witnessing in the western world today. The live streamed genocide in Palestine and the acceptance of that in all western countries is exactly the collapse of western civilazation. Our civilization is over. There is nothing more. That is all there is to say. That is all.
Yes. There are several important problems with this review, even if one accepts its broad moral and political premises. The biggest issue is that it often presents Finkelstein's interpretation as established fact without distinguishing between documented facts, legal judgments, inference, and allegation.
1. The review is much more polemical than analytical
The headline calls the book an examination of “the enablers of genocide,” and the reviewer repeatedly adopts Finkelstein's terminology as though the legal question were already settled:
“during the carnage”
“Israel’s ongoing genocide”
“the genocide”
“the Israeli version of events”
That is particularly important because “genocide” is simultaneously a legal classification, a factual allegation, and a political/moral description. The ICJ's January 2024 order did not determine that genocide was occurring. It found that some of the rights claimed by South Africa under the Genocide Convention were plausible and ordered provisional measures while the case proceeded.
The review therefore compresses a complicated legal position into a much more categorical proposition.
2. The description of the ICJ ruling is misleading
The reviewer writes:
“Only one of 17 judges who determined that Israel was plausibly committing genocide submitted a dissenting opinion.”
That is not an accurate description of what the ICJ judges decided.
The ICJ did not rule that Israel was “plausibly committing genocide.” It found that the Court had jurisdiction to hear the dispute and that at least some of the rights claimed by South Africa were plausible, warranting provisional measures.
That distinction matters enormously.
The review's formulation makes it sound as though 16 judges affirmatively concluded that genocide was plausibly being committed and Sebutinde alone disagreed. That's considerably stronger than what the Court actually decided.
3. The treatment of Judge Sebutinde is particularly problematic
The review says:
“producing an opinion that took everything Israel claimed at face value and devalued everything submitted by the South African legal team.”
That is advocacy, not a neutral description of her judgment.
A serious review should actually explain why Finkelstein thinks her reasoning is defective:
What evidence did she reject?
What evidentiary standard did she apply?
Where did she misinterpret the Genocide Convention?
Did she make an evidentiary error, a legal error, or both?
How does Finkelstein answer her strongest arguments?
Instead, the reviewer largely asks the reader to accept Finkelstein's characterization.
And the allegation that Sebutinde's opinion was “mostly plagiarised” is extremely serious. If the book makes that allegation, the review should tell the reader what was allegedly copied, from whom, and whether the accusation has been independently established. Calling it “lazy” is rhetoric rather than analysis.
4. The Donahue paragraph contains a major conceptual problem
The review says:
“Judge Joan Donahue, president of the ICJ, delivered the judgement that Israel was plausibly committing genocide and must stop.”
Again, that's not quite what happened.
The Court ordered provisional measures, including measures concerning prevention and punishment of genocidal acts and humanitarian conditions. It did not issue a final judgment that Israel was committing genocide.
Then the reviewer says Donahue subsequently claimed:
“the judgement did not really mean the claim was plausible.”
This is potentially an interesting criticism, but it needs much more careful treatment.
There is a legitimate question here about what exactly the ICJ meant by “plausible rights” and how that should be understood. But the review reduces the issue to:
Court says genocide plausible → Donahue later says it wasn't plausible → therefore she contradicted herself.
That's too crude. The distinction between plausible rights under the Convention and a finding that genocide itself is plausible is precisely what needs to be examined.
5. The Nat Turner analogy is one of the weakest parts
The review says:
“No option remained for the besieged and blockaded Palestinian population.”
That is an extraordinarily sweeping proposition.
It is one thing to argue that Gaza's political and economic circumstances severely constrained Palestinian choices. It is another to say that no option remained.
More importantly, the reviewer immediately invokes Nat Turner:
“Turner and his confederates put 55 whites to the sword…”
The analogy raises an obvious question the review never addresses:
Does describing the October 7 attack as a rebellion against oppression risk morally or historically legitimising the deliberate killing of civilians?
The reviewer needs to confront that question rather than simply using Nat Turner to contextualise October 7.
There is also a category problem: Nat Turner's revolt occurred within an explicitly slave-owning society, whereas the Israeli-Palestinian conflict involves occupation, blockade, national movements, armed organisations, states, civilians, international law and competing national claims. The analogy may illuminate some aspects while badly distorting others.
6. “No option remained” also obscures Hamas's agency
The sentence:
“No option remained for the besieged and blockaded Palestinian population.”
moves from the circumstances facing Gaza's population to an implicit justification of the conduct of Hamas.
Those aren't the same thing.
A rigorous account should be able to maintain all of these propositions simultaneously:
Hamas's deliberate attacks on civilians cannot simply be inferred to be morally permissible because Palestinians were oppressed.
Israeli military actions must independently be judged under international humanitarian law.
The review doesn't make those distinctions sufficiently clearly.
7. The Bensouda discussion is especially speculative
This is perhaps the most serious methodological weakness.
The reviewer says:
“Finkelstein can only guess whether bribery or blackmail was at play.”
That sentence should immediately make a critical reader stop.
If there is no evidence for bribery or blackmail, why introduce those possibilities?
The review does not provide evidence of either. It merely reports that Finkelstein speculates.
That's a huge difference between:
“Finkelstein demonstrates that Bensouda's decision was inconsistent with the evidence”
and
“Finkelstein suspects corruption may explain her decision.”
The former is an argument. The latter is speculation.
Given that the book's subtitle is An Inquiry into Corruption in High Places, the distinction is particularly important. Evidence of an institution behaving badly is not automatically evidence of corruption.
8. The Mavi Marmara argument needs considerably more nuance
The reviewer says Bensouda:
“stuck to the Israeli version of events and refused to prosecute.”
That's an extraordinarily compressed characterization of a complicated prosecutorial decision.
A serious review should explain:
what the alleged crimes were;
what evidence the ICC prosecutor considered;
what jurisdictional issues existed;
what legal threshold applied;
what Bensouda actually concluded;
why Finkelstein considers that conclusion irrational or corrupt.
Instead, “stuck to the Israeli version” essentially prejudges the issue.
It is necessary to credit the courage of Francesca Albanese...more spine than the sickeningly gloating genocidal IDF.
well said mr flinter. Ms. Albanese's courage and conviction are truly inspiring
Absolutely!
This is the first, and maybe only time, I am posting a comment ...
Despite many hours of reading and listening to just about everything I can find on the appalling death and destruction Israel has been inflicting on Gaza for over two years, I do not understand why this is happening. We have documented history of many thousands of years of human societies, and prominent in that history is the plethora of books, documentaries, movies etc. of the Second World War and the accompanying genocide of Jews and gypsies. Much of that information is tainted with, if not blatant, propaganda, but there are still a lot of accurate accounts of what happened before, during and after the horrors. But, here we are with a prolonged genocide being live streamed and (mostly the West) the world is not stopping it... the so-called educated, advanced, civilized world. What is the point of learning if we cannot apply that learning to do better?
The genocide of the Palestinian people is not the first since the Great War. The Rwandan genocide is notable as it was so clear what was happening, yet the world refused to acknowledge it as such or stop it.
Are human societies destined to be murderous destructive savages in their own interests forever?
Lastly, I have a plea to the world. Stop the violence of destruction and killing and torture immediately. No amount of talking is going to change anyone's mind. The arguments can be heard later; the discussions and reflections can happen later; the CYA and blame games can be played later. The ONLY thing required right now is to stop the genocide immediately. It is the right thing tu do, the civilized thing to do, the human thing to do. (And gosh I am rooting for Iran to be the country that does the right thing, because right now Iran looks like the only hope for me, even though they were not pushed into a ghastly war to save the Palestinians.)
The more I watch the escalating sponsored $£aught€r of the innocents, the more I think our only hope for humanity to survive, as other than the residual memory of Palestinian resilience, lies with the BRICS sending in the cavalry...the ethical human lead, as you point out, is being given by Tehran.
Beside observing and commenting, what are your personal actions to stop it?
For anyone wanting to ask such a question, they should first state what THEY have done to stop it.
See my other answer to Fran for content.
Nobody expects the Zionist inquisition.
My actions have probably predated your birth, given the juvenility of your interrogation.
Don't you realise by now .Brics aren't coming to rescue china .India .Brazil .all still aid isrehell.with weapons parts or weapons ect .Whils they still trading. aiding in arms parts or arms .and ot sanctioning them .Just like UN and all.thd other countries still aiding isrehell.each and all are complicit in this
I'm well aware of that..which is the source of my own pessimism. But I also think they know the empire is coming for them also, do not want to provoke nuclear sterilisation of the planet from these nutjobs, and are playing the patient game of letting the Nato cartels exhaust themselves while they cover Iran's back quietly.
Russia and China know their history, and are more rational actors. India is just as fascistic as the sanctimonious 'West': Brazil is walking a tightrope.
Beside observing and commenting, what are your personal actions to stop it?
For anyone wanting to ask such a question, they should first state what THEY have done to stop it.
Well, that’s a non sequitur. Assuming you might really want to know though, I get tired of hearing blather from armchair experts. I’m particularly troubled by the seeming universal failure to focus on this Israeli occupation that if starved might reduce if not stop this genocide cold. BDS, our legal obligation so many seem to think is others’ responsibility. I’m pretty divested, I boycott as I can, and I write legislators about our illegal sanctions that omit the legally obligated Israel sanctions.
I share information and encouragement with others and I’m enthused that more real people seem to know law and use proper terms like occupation and resistance.
So in a way you asked and I answered but you didn’t follow your own advice to first state what you’re doing. What are you doing - now - to stop the genocide?
If you were a Palestinian it would justify your judgemental questioning.
But any Palestinians I've encountered have displayed more grace.
I suggest you dismount your high-horse and address the thread.
As I wrote, either grow up, or act your age. This is not a pissing contest.
Only I feel like you're getting me wet.
Maybe it's wet brain syndrome.
I have talked to my family, friends, work colleagues, neighbours. Gone on marches, written letters to newspapers, ombudsmen and members of parliament. Signed petitions and am boycotting. And will vote for the Green Party. Eventually it will stop and there will be some form of reckoning.
And you help make it be sooner than later. Thx.
Any grit we can throw into the cogs of the evil machine. We must
Yours in grit - and hats off to committed public figures like the Eisenhower Media Network not too proud to listen, hear, and talk with commoners. Hoping this gets where I want you to go, https://ivanfingraham.substack.com/p/cross-of-iron/comment/302274182?utm_source=activity_item#comment-303492220
IJewish people are 0.2% of the global population. So how did they gain so much control over the Western World?
Ghislaine Maxwell's father was a Mossad spy. Epstein & Ghislaine were funded by Mossad to use the rape of underage girls and boys to collect kompromat on powerful, morally compromised men.
Mossad uses financial bribes (big money payments), blackmail (child rape/snuff tapes), or threats (on the lives of family) to get it's way.
That is why it's "Israel First!" as it owns US, UK & European politicians. Trump & the others take orders from Netenyahu. And this is why genocide and Israeli war crimes are perfectly OK.
The Zionist Rothschild's banking family through their central banking they have central banks in all countries 6 countries gave up using central bank and stopped paying in petro dollar in early 2.000 Syria. Libya.iran. cuba. iraq.forgot last one . but now today Iran . Cuba. Is only two still not bowing to the Zionists .And like rest are being attacked
.
The elephant in the room is the depths of corruption and greed in Western society that gives bad actors the opportunity to blackmail politicians for obscene behaviour or in happily accepting bungs of money as enough to turn a blind eye to genocide. The moral high ground is sinking into the sewers.
If Israel is legally deprived of the lifeblood it unlawfully withholds from Occupied Palestine, would that not force its withdrawal and grind this genocide to a halt?
What does Norman Finkelstein write of the ICJ Case 186 antidote to Israel's unlawful occupation being an absolute shunning Israel cannot ignore? This case determination is so little remarked as to be nonexistent except by Ralph Wilde who presented the law, Francesca Albanese pursuing the law, and precious few others exhorting us to comply with the law. Including ourselves apparently so ready to point the finger at others.
What happened in the Nazi koncentration camps is what my old professor called a civilizational collapse in Germany. And that is exactely what we are witnessing in the western world today. The live streamed genocide in Palestine and the acceptance of that in all western countries is exactly the collapse of western civilazation. Our civilization is over. There is nothing more. That is all there is to say. That is all.
No genocide happens without consent, direct, implied or manufactured. All our leaders, institutions and lawmakers are guilty.
I posted my review of Gaza's Gravediggers here: https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com/p/gazas-gravediggers
https://austinsikora.substack.com/p/who-would-have-thought?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=32cg97
Blessed Prof Finkelstein ‘s huge knowledge.
Nothing justifies genocide. Even an Israeli false flag called October 7.
Anyone interested in responding to chatgpt?
Yes. There are several important problems with this review, even if one accepts its broad moral and political premises. The biggest issue is that it often presents Finkelstein's interpretation as established fact without distinguishing between documented facts, legal judgments, inference, and allegation.
1. The review is much more polemical than analytical
The headline calls the book an examination of “the enablers of genocide,” and the reviewer repeatedly adopts Finkelstein's terminology as though the legal question were already settled:
“during the carnage”
“Israel’s ongoing genocide”
“the genocide”
“the Israeli version of events”
That is particularly important because “genocide” is simultaneously a legal classification, a factual allegation, and a political/moral description. The ICJ's January 2024 order did not determine that genocide was occurring. It found that some of the rights claimed by South Africa under the Genocide Convention were plausible and ordered provisional measures while the case proceeded.
The review therefore compresses a complicated legal position into a much more categorical proposition.
2. The description of the ICJ ruling is misleading
The reviewer writes:
“Only one of 17 judges who determined that Israel was plausibly committing genocide submitted a dissenting opinion.”
That is not an accurate description of what the ICJ judges decided.
The ICJ did not rule that Israel was “plausibly committing genocide.” It found that the Court had jurisdiction to hear the dispute and that at least some of the rights claimed by South Africa were plausible, warranting provisional measures.
That distinction matters enormously.
The review's formulation makes it sound as though 16 judges affirmatively concluded that genocide was plausibly being committed and Sebutinde alone disagreed. That's considerably stronger than what the Court actually decided.
3. The treatment of Judge Sebutinde is particularly problematic
The review says:
“producing an opinion that took everything Israel claimed at face value and devalued everything submitted by the South African legal team.”
That is advocacy, not a neutral description of her judgment.
A serious review should actually explain why Finkelstein thinks her reasoning is defective:
What evidence did she reject?
What evidentiary standard did she apply?
Where did she misinterpret the Genocide Convention?
Did she make an evidentiary error, a legal error, or both?
How does Finkelstein answer her strongest arguments?
Instead, the reviewer largely asks the reader to accept Finkelstein's characterization.
And the allegation that Sebutinde's opinion was “mostly plagiarised” is extremely serious. If the book makes that allegation, the review should tell the reader what was allegedly copied, from whom, and whether the accusation has been independently established. Calling it “lazy” is rhetoric rather than analysis.
4. The Donahue paragraph contains a major conceptual problem
The review says:
“Judge Joan Donahue, president of the ICJ, delivered the judgement that Israel was plausibly committing genocide and must stop.”
Again, that's not quite what happened.
The Court ordered provisional measures, including measures concerning prevention and punishment of genocidal acts and humanitarian conditions. It did not issue a final judgment that Israel was committing genocide.
Then the reviewer says Donahue subsequently claimed:
“the judgement did not really mean the claim was plausible.”
This is potentially an interesting criticism, but it needs much more careful treatment.
There is a legitimate question here about what exactly the ICJ meant by “plausible rights” and how that should be understood. But the review reduces the issue to:
Court says genocide plausible → Donahue later says it wasn't plausible → therefore she contradicted herself.
That's too crude. The distinction between plausible rights under the Convention and a finding that genocide itself is plausible is precisely what needs to be examined.
5. The Nat Turner analogy is one of the weakest parts
The review says:
“No option remained for the besieged and blockaded Palestinian population.”
That is an extraordinarily sweeping proposition.
It is one thing to argue that Gaza's political and economic circumstances severely constrained Palestinian choices. It is another to say that no option remained.
More importantly, the reviewer immediately invokes Nat Turner:
“Turner and his confederates put 55 whites to the sword…”
The analogy raises an obvious question the review never addresses:
Does describing the October 7 attack as a rebellion against oppression risk morally or historically legitimising the deliberate killing of civilians?
The reviewer needs to confront that question rather than simply using Nat Turner to contextualise October 7.
There is also a category problem: Nat Turner's revolt occurred within an explicitly slave-owning society, whereas the Israeli-Palestinian conflict involves occupation, blockade, national movements, armed organisations, states, civilians, international law and competing national claims. The analogy may illuminate some aspects while badly distorting others.
6. “No option remained” also obscures Hamas's agency
The sentence:
“No option remained for the besieged and blockaded Palestinian population.”
moves from the circumstances facing Gaza's population to an implicit justification of the conduct of Hamas.
Those aren't the same thing.
A rigorous account should be able to maintain all of these propositions simultaneously:
Gaza was subject to severe restrictions.
Palestinian civilians experienced profound deprivation.
Israel bears responsibility for its own conduct.
Hamas had its own political and military agency.
Hamas's deliberate attacks on civilians cannot simply be inferred to be morally permissible because Palestinians were oppressed.
Israeli military actions must independently be judged under international humanitarian law.
The review doesn't make those distinctions sufficiently clearly.
7. The Bensouda discussion is especially speculative
This is perhaps the most serious methodological weakness.
The reviewer says:
“Finkelstein can only guess whether bribery or blackmail was at play.”
That sentence should immediately make a critical reader stop.
If there is no evidence for bribery or blackmail, why introduce those possibilities?
The review does not provide evidence of either. It merely reports that Finkelstein speculates.
That's a huge difference between:
“Finkelstein demonstrates that Bensouda's decision was inconsistent with the evidence”
and
“Finkelstein suspects corruption may explain her decision.”
The former is an argument. The latter is speculation.
Given that the book's subtitle is An Inquiry into Corruption in High Places, the distinction is particularly important. Evidence of an institution behaving badly is not automatically evidence of corruption.
8. The Mavi Marmara argument needs considerably more nuance
The reviewer says Bensouda:
“stuck to the Israeli version of events and refused to prosecute.”
That's an extraordinarily compressed characterization of a complicated prosecutorial decision.
A serious review should explain:
what the alleged crimes were;
what evidence the ICC prosecutor considered;
what jurisdictional issues existed;
what legal threshold applied;
what Bensouda actually concluded;
why Finkelstein considers that conclusion irrational or corrupt.
Instead, “stuck to the Israeli version” essentially prejudges the issue.
The truth will come out and this will be looked at by historians with a tarnish on this country. Only question is it too late to change.
The internal victims
https://behindthenarrative7.substack.com/p/first-we-take-tehran-then-we-take?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=bpnge