Norman Finkelstein: The Anti-Semites' Favorite Jew

The documentary film American Radical is a sympathetic look at Norman Finkelstein, the former DePaul University professor who was denied tenure after a very public spat with renowned Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz.

The whole film is now available to be viewed online at Al Jazeera English.

Finkelstein is notorious as a vociferously anti-Israel Jew who published The Holocaust Industry, which accused Jews of not being interested in Holocaust remembrance so much as manipulating the Holocaust to extort money and support for Israel from Europe. That work solidified Finkelstein as the favorite Jew of the neo-Nazi movement. His shameless, ongoing use of his family's suffering in the Holocaust as validation of his one-sided critiques of Israel earned Finkelstein contempt and discredit as a propagandist.

The documentary is a fascinating look at a fanatic who was raised in an environment of activist extremism. The product of a hysterical mother was a dogged researcher who is less an academic than a polemicist. His  presented facts frequently lack context, but there is an indication that Finkelstein is well aware of that. His work is to serve a cause, and that cause is Palestinian activism, not the truth of the complexities of the Israeli/Palestinian and Israeli/Arab conflict.

One of the ironies of Finkelstein's life, which the film demonstrates, is that Finkelstein was both made and undone by his obsession with one particular book: From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine.

That book, by Joan Peters, was intended to bolster the Jewish claim to both Historical Palestine and modern Israel by denigrating the Palestinian claim to that land. Finkelstein's doctoral thesis was able to establish that this popular best seller was based in part on shoddy, if not fraudulent scholarship. That exposé propelled Finkelstein to prominence as a critic of Israel. It was also his undoing, when he accused Alan Dershowitz of plagiarizing from Peters' book by using the same Mark Twain contained in From Time Immemorial. Dershowitz was cleared of plagiarism, but the spruious accusation and the acrimony that Finkelstein incurred  from making it irreparably damaged his reputation and made him persona non grata to university administrators across America.

At about 90 minutes, American Radical is a worthwhile glimpse at one of the stranger personalities in the world of grievance politics. You can see it here.