Phew! I just checked and it took me ten weeks to finish reading it. I don’t know exactly what is this, at least, it’s Norman Finkelstein’s latest book. One user over at reddit, when seeing the announced book cover a year ago, uttered, “[He] goes full joker [now.]” Well said. This can’t be serious.

The book was long announced on Finkelstein’s newly designed web page (unfortunately most of his more interesting blog posts had been deleted). After his publisher, Verso, had quickly rejected the draft of the manuscript, Finkelstein finally found a, possibly convenience, publisher, Sublation Media (so far unknown and not important). His new editor had evidently huge problems to redact the convoluted and incoherent text (footnotes over footnotes, containing sometimes pages (!) of quotes from books; I’m not sure whether the author had asked the original publisher for permission when inflating his own text with overlong borrowed texts which may amuse or outrage just himself). Amazon further delayed marketing this book, and I got my copy only on March 22.

When Norman Finkelstein exposed former friend Tariq Ali’s advice on his largely redone blog, I was rather turned down to buy another rant of a failed academic who did not age in dignity but was about to explain why he “burn[s] the bridge when [he] get[s] to it,” something about wokeness, identity politics and cancel culture, I assumed.

Dear Norm:

Our three senior editors in London and NY, having read the book, are all in agreement that as written its incoherent and unpublishable. As a critique, it’s ineffective. Having read half of it, that is also my own view. It’s too ad hominem and too zany even for you. To be published it would have to be heavily edited or completely re-written. I don’t like writing this, but it is for your own good. We have been proud to publish you and have defended you strongly as has Colin both during his Verso days and later at OR Books. Please don’t throw a tantrum and get tempted by self-publishing. That would be very sad and ineffective. I would just re-think the project (whatever it is) and start afresh.

Many of your books are so methodical and precise—forensic in explaining an opponent’s thought and a devastating deconstruction– that we were all a bit taken aback by this one. It’s almost as if you’ve paralysed yourself. This does sometimes happen. Some successful authors once feted and acclaimed allow these vapours to lodge permanently in the brain and imagine that henceforth anything they write is automatically good. This is never the case. Please think again.

Tariq

As an academic, Finkelstein is certainly familiar with having some of his manuscripts rejected. At the very end of “I’ll Burn that Bridge” he elaborates on two occasions when he had sent pieces of his scientific work (articles) to ordinary periodicals. One (IBTB, p. 500) about the “legal controversy surrounding the wall Israel has constructed in the occupied West Bank,” had first been sent, in 2006, to Israel Yearbook on Human Rights and provisionally [sic] accepted” upon a favorable review of the manuscript by the “Oxford University law professor who argued the wall case before the International Court of Justice” (“beautifully clear”, “exceptionally clear”). When having noticed that it would take, as the periodical was a yearbook, 20 months to be published (note that nowadays it would probably be online upon acceptance), Finkelstein “decided instead to go with the Georgetown Journal of International Law, which had a shorter timeline to publication date.” It is in fact distressing to learn that editors of GJIL first considered the article publishable, but then the editor-in-chief, Shawn M. Bates, rejected it. Shit happens, as we might say in academics: move on and strive for becoming better. But Finkelstein’s suspicion, “Did Bates belately realize – or was he made to realize – who had written it?” may actually be nothing but a conspiracy. “Georgetown Law Center [sic] unconditionally backed Bates: ‘We see no basis for questioning the editor’s judgment’,” litigious Finkelstein writes. But isn’t that how it is? Maybe every academic have had such a (or even several) frustrating experience(s), especially in the beginning of their career.

The other instance when a paper by Finkelstein was rejected is even more revealing (IBTB, pp. 500, 501).

Or consider this lamentable (contemptible?) episode. In 2013, I wrote an article juxtaposing the legal status of apartheid South Africa’s occupation of Namibia with the legal status of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory. A leading legal specialist on the subject opined: “I am deeply impressed with your scholarship and thoroughness. You have certainly attained the highest legal standards. This may all sound a bit corny. But I really mean it. I greatly admire the reasoning and research … In my writings I have not explored the question [you pose]. Now I realize its importance … you have persuaded me … So … full marks!” He encouraged me to submit the article to a distinguished European journal of international law. Breaching professional protocol, the editors peremptorily rejected the article without seeking peer review. The specialist intervened on my behalf on the grounds that I had been denied “due process.” The editors then agreed to send out the article for peer review. Both anonymous reviewers trashed the article because “it is very polemical, too much so for an academic journal” (in other words, how could I compare the two situations?), “the piece is way, way too long,” “it is not divided into identifiable sections,” and “the footnotes are of extraordinary length.” The last criticism¹²⁵ must amuse: a typical law journal article footnotes every word except the definitive and indefinitive articles, while the ratio between main and footnotes text usually stands at 1:100.”

In footnote 125 of p. 501, IBTB, Finkelstein explains the reviewer’s comment in full.

The footnotes are of extraordinary length. As a general rule, I think footnotes are for references. They should only rarely contain substantive materials. Here, the footnotes are perhaps longer than the text itself. If nothing else, it makes the reading of an article very difficult, as one is constantly being bounced back and forth, like a ping pong ball, between text and footnote. Good rule of thumbs: if it is important enough to be included in the article, put it in the main text. If it is not that important, leave it out altogether. The footnote is a very unsatisfactory half-way house for tangents and digressions.

But then (still in footnote 125, p. 501), Finkelstein himself comments on the comment and attacks: “This was the heart of my “peer criticism.” Good rule of thumb: if you aspire to be an overpaid windbag, teach law.”

I assume, the comparison (Namibia – Palestine) was later published (in 2018), in Finkelstein’s (in his own words) magnum opus, Gaza – An Inquest Into Its Martydom, as an Appendix.

That, in “typical law [papers], every word except the definitive and indefinite articles” gets footnotes, isn’t that just a silly exaggeration? Or, “the ratio between main and footnotes text usually stands at 1:100?” Are these not lamentations of a whiny narcissist? In a recent tweet on Twitter, Finkelstein (who claims, in interviews, that he doesn’t use Twitter) asks,

‘Am I just another failed academic whining, “I could’ve been a contender”? Perhaps. But maybe, just maybe, I have been a casualty of cancel culture.”

That brings us to a major topic in this, well, rant of a book: cancel culture. Finkelstein makes the point that his tenure application at DePaul University in 2007 failed because he was a victim of cancel culture. While the official reasons, detailed by the DePaul University Board on Promotion and Tenure and upheld by then President Dennis H. Holtschneider, were “inflammatory style and personal attacks in [Finkelstein’s] writings and intellectual debates” (see IBTB, Conclusion to Part II), Finkelstein himself makes extraordinary claims as regards his inevitable “incivility” in particular as regards his (in my understanding) opus magnum, The Holocaust Industry, and his notorious attack on Havard law professor Alan Dershowitz which may have started at the broadcast debate at Democracy Now!

Many got to know Finkelstein, his background and the whole mess of his academic career only because of Amy Goodman, the host of DN!, and the debate which can still (and should be) watched as Youtube video. Later, the documentary American Radical – The Trials of Norman Finkelstein has largely amplified his case and tragedy as both an ambitious teacher and relentless critic of Israel.

I have to admit my first admiration of this man, son of holocaust survivors who accompanied, at rather young age, his late mother to one of the Majdanek trials in Düsseldorf. She was about to testify against Hildegard Lächert, or blutige Brygida, as she was called among the inmates. The full story may be read here. I was, in particular, impressed by Norman’s brazenness when his mother told him to “get Lächert” in Düsseldorf.

Finkelstein now claims that, of all people, Amy Goodman (!) canceled him as well (IBTB, pp. 58, 59). The entire paragraph is sad and deserves a lengthy quote.

A few years back I was cancelled by a prominent newscaster [sic] I’d known for 30 years after jokingly telling one of her female staff, “You look so young, you could be one of Michael Jackson’s playmates.” Here I naively imagined I was being suave and debonair. Especially in my age-sensitive final act, it’s a high compliment to be told you look young. (The three consecutive words I detest most in the English language are “for your age” – as in, You look great, for your age.) But no, it was sexual harassment, for which I must show repentance or suffer banishment. I was henceforth banned from her program. Never mind it never even occurred to me that I was making a sexual remark: Michael Jackson had a yen for prepubescent boys; she was an adult woman. My “days of white male privilege are over,” this Goddes of Wokeness kept intoning. Privilege? Her father attended Harvard College and was a physician. Her three siblings and she herself attended Harvard. She now presides over a media operation with an annual budget of $10 million. My parents stepped onto these shores after stepping out of concentration camps. Growing up, my home was so cold we put up the steak in the freezer to defrost it. I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Whatever I’ve accomplished, it’s been entirely by dint of hard work; no leg up, no nepotism, no currying favor. For the past 15 years I have not only been unemployed but what’s worse, unemployable, even as I endeavored to volunteer teach. (Ironically, my professional cul-de-sac traced back to a corrupt public figure who exacted revenge after I exposed him on this newscaster’s own program.) But I’m privileged. Or maybe it’s the white male thing she had in mind. In other words, because of that attempt (perhaps abortive) at humor, Finkelstein now fell into the same category as (Harvey) Weinstein and (Jeffrey) Epstein. Lest I entertained any doubts of my sin, this reigning Queen of Political Correctness breathlessly recalled that a shocking documentary on Michael Jackson had been screened at Sundance Film Festival while she was in attendance, and everyone present was appalled. As it happens, I don’t get invited to Sundance, and even if that miracle did come to pass, and even if I were so pathetic a geriatric groupie as to attend, it’s most improbable I’d make a beeline for a Michael Jackson doc. Indeed, who would have guessed that Sundance had superseded Spinoza as the arbiter of ethics? It amazes how a reasonably intelligent person can metamorphose into a woke machine, churning out insipid clichés as her mental faculty degenerates to mush, and can be so lacking in self-awareness as to lecture me from on high about privilege. The only things missing from such woke politics are the reeducation camps and firing squads. It’s true that every cultural revolution passes through a lunatic phase befre a higher, happier point of social equilibrium is reached. This transition is upon us: The Dictatorship of Virtue-Signaling. It doesn’t, however, absolve the sane among us from taking stock of the fact that woke politics is lunacy. (Emphasis in original.)

I suppose the above incident happened after Finkelstein was invited to DN! for a last time. Amy Goodman, the “Goddess of Wokeness and reigning Queen of Political Correctness”! Alan Dershowitz, the corrupt public figure. And Finkelstein is the whining narcissist who cannot reflect on his incivility and won’t repent in any case. Can’t he understand that the above rant is exactly what DePaul’s UBPT meant when advising it’s President to deny promotion and tenure? And as for Amy Goodman, who needs enemies with friends like these?

The book meanders around recent bestselling, even though silly, books by Kimberly Crenshaw, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi (from which he apparently adopted the juvenile middle initial, X.). It devotes more than one hundred pages to former US President Obama’s own writings and memoirs of close collaborators in his administration. Holocaust denial and how it should be taught in classes is another big topic and also the right to use intra and extramural offensive language in academics, hardly ever enlightening, mostly just tedious.

Even the tenure problems such luminaries as Bertrand Russell or Angela Davis had in Academia because of their public opinions, who actually cares in 2023? At least, these strong personalities just went on.

Finkelstein never overcame his personal disasters of the noughties when, after 9/11, the world did actually change. Despite having meticulously described Israel’s war crimes in Gaza his support of the Palestinian cause eventually became unwelcome when he distanced himself from the BDS movement.

A few, well, glowing reviews of I’ll Burn that Bridge have appeared, mainly on personal blogs but not in serious newspapers.

23 May 2023 @ 8:35 am

Last modified May 29, 2023