Finkelstein is not just a public intellectual, however: there is something too explosive about the subjects he writes about for that category to completely contain him. He acts out a role that is Grecian in its cosmopolitanism, Abrahamic in its prophetic intensity. It is a role all Christians, Jews and Muslims instinctively – if subliminally – recognize. He is the archetypical Prophet who warns the people in his tribe to stop dancing around the Golden Calf, and tells of their impending doom if they do not. He is Cassandra, who foresees the downfall of her nation; he is the Abrahamic prophets Isaiah, Daniel, and Jeremiah, as well as the heroic figure of Joseph, who astounds the Pharaoh by telling him what his dreams are really about. He is a figure Americans recognize, although they do not want to. He is the Puritan preacher, hurling bolts of rhetorical fury in modern Jeremiads; he is Daniel in the lion’s den; he is tormented and selfish and at times uncouth, but he is also unexpectedly Christ-like, refusing to Abandon his message despite scourging by critics.
What Lawrence Swaim writes on page 174 of his collection of eulogies on several individuals’ “traumatic memory and the struggle against systemic evil” [1] is a culmination of a very subjective narrative about the American political scientist Norman Finkelstein who has paid a high price for challenging Israel and members of the so-called Israel Lobby in the U.S when painstakingly exposing, in his numerous books, Israel’s not-so-favorable conduct in the decades-long war with the Palestinians.
