In the course of a recent debate, moderator Lex Fridman posed the question, “Do you think there is a policy, top down from the IDF to target civilians?” (from the official transcript). Both Mouin Rabbani and I answered in the affirmative. Someone seated next to Professor Morris indignantly retorted that the notion of “a whole apparatus that tries to murder” was a “ridiculous argument.” To settle this matter, leaving not a smidgen of doubt, I recalled Gaza’s Great March of Return that began in March 2018. A distinguished independent international Commission of inquiry afterwards investigated these protests and produced a voluminous report running to fully 250 single-spaced pages (from which I will be quoting). The report states that at its inception the protests “could be characterized as a genuine popular festive event, with tens of thousands of people ... gathering around traditional activities, concerts, barbecues, cultural activities and sports games.” When Israel perpetrated a large scale massacre six weeks later on May 14, “anger over [the] killings and injuries drove groups of youths to engage in more violent actions.”
Like many defenders of Israel, Destiny assumed that nobody would follow up on any of the assertions he made. Finklestein has encountered this tactic before. Alan Dershowitz challenged him to name “one factual mistake” in his book, assuming that this would make him look strong and decisive on camera. Finklestein repeated a figure that his book underreported by a figure of ten times, citing the page number back to a speechless Dershowitz.
This is how Finklestein operates. He made a name for himself in Israel/Palestine studies by debunking Joan Peters’ apologia From Time Immemorial. How did he fundamentally disprove the central thesis of that book? By checking the footnotes.
Like many defenders of Israel, Destiny assumed that nobody would follow up on any of the assertions he made. Finklestein has encountered this tactic before. Alan Dershowitz challenged him to name “one factual mistake” in his book, assuming that this would make him look strong and decisive on camera. Finklestein repeated a figure that his book underreported by a figure of ten times, citing the page number back to a speechless Dershowitz.
This is how Finklestein operates. He made a name for himself in Israel/Palestine studies by debunking Joan Peters’ apologia From Time Immemorial. How did he fundamentally disprove the central thesis of that book? By checking the footnotes.
> Someone seated next to Professor Morris
lol
I re-listened to all 5 hours of the debate, and read the transcript ( probbly something Professor Finkeistein would do. Here are my five conclusions;
1. Humanity has more commonality than difference.
2. People have to live somewhere.
3. Extermination is not legal.
4. Retribution never evens the score.
5. Grandmothers deserve to know and love their offspring.
What are yours?
10k books vs. 2 wikipedi (plural?) Maybe that's a generational comment as well.