Norman Finkelstein vs. Gil Troy (On DemocracyNow!)

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Norman Finkelstein vs. Gil Troy On Jimmy Carter's Controversial Book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid"

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AMY GOODMAN: We're having a debate on Jimmy Carter's book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, with Gil Troy, professor of American history at McGill University in Montreal. Among his books, Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity, and the Challenges of Today. Norman Finkelstein joins us here in our New York firehouse studio. He’s a professor of political science at DePaul University in Chicago. His latest book is Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History.

In Ethan Bronner’s review, long awaited, that came out yesterday in the New York Times Book Review, he says, “This book has something of a Rip van Winkle feel to it, as if little had changed since Carter diagnosed the problem in the 1970s. All would be well today, he suggests, if his advice then had been followed. Forget Al Qaeda (the name does not appear in this book), the nuclear ambitions of Iran and the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan. If Israel had ‘refrained from colonizing the West Bank,’ he asserts, there would have been ‘a comprehensive and lasting peace.’” Bronner is talking about Carter, of course. And he goes on to say, “The debate about the Israeli occupation ‘will shape the future of Israel; it may also determine the prospects for peace in the Middle East — and perhaps the world,’” quoting Jimmy Carter. And Bronner says, “This is an awfully narrow perspective.”

Before I get your response, Professor Finkelstein, I wanted to go for a minute to Brent Scowcroft. He was speaking yesterday on This Week With George Stephanopoulos." Stephanopoulos had asked him about the significance of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Of course, Brent Scowcroft is the former National Security Advisor for President Bush, Sr.

BRENT SCOWCROFT: What it would do is change the psychological climate of the region. What we have is a number of different issues all coming together. And the region is in great turmoil. And there's a great sense in the region of historical injustice on the part of the Muslims. And this would change that. This would see us as participating and helping in a problem which is central to the region, which has been a gnawing sore for Muslims for 50 years.

AMY GOODMAN: That was President Bush, Sr.'s former National Security Advisor, Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft. Professor Finkelstein?

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: I'll get to that point in half a moment. Let me just address the questions that were raised by Professor Troy. On the question of Camp David and the offer, I don't think for Democracy Now! audiences we have to go over that ground, because when Shlomo Ben-Ami was here --

AMY GOODMAN: The former Foreign Minister of Israel.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: The former Foreign Minister of Israel and one of the negotiators at Camp David. He said, “Frankly, were I a Palestinian, I would not have accepted the offer at Camp David,” and exactly for the reasons that Carter outlines in the book, namely, Palestinians were asked to make such monumental concessions that no Palestinian leader could in good conscience, let alone as a representative of the Palestinians, accept such an offer. That was the position of Arafat. It's also the position to which Shlomo Ben-Ami agreed.

On the question of terrorism, as Professor Troy calls it, the big “T-word,” I think there's a certain confusion about what was the sequence of events. The Second Intifada begins September 28, 2000. Between September 28, 2000, and March 2003 , there wasn’t one Palestinian terrorist attack. The suicide bombings began five months after the beginning of the Second Intifada. Why did it begin? Well, on the first month of the Intifada, the ratio of Palestinians to Israelis killed was 20-to-1. And if you read Shlomo Ben-Ami’s book, he states there that had Israel not so overreacted to the Palestinian protests, which were overwhelmingly nonviolent in the first months, the huge explosion that subsequently occurred probably would not have happened. But those first five months, when Israel was killing 20 times as many Palestinians, overwhelmingly nonviolent protesters, to each Israeli killed, that part has been completely effaced from the historical record.

Now, it's true suicide bombings began, and one possible way to avert them -- not the only one, but one possibility -- was to build a wall. Well, but there's an option. If you want to prevent suicide bombings against your country, just like if you want to prevent a neighbor from intruding on your property, you build a fence or a wall, but you build it along the border, the internationally recognized border. Israel didn't do that. It used the suicide bombings as a pretext to confiscate 10% of Palestinian land. If they wanted to build a wall on their border, the International Court said that's not a problem. What they said was -- the International Court of Justice, when it condemned the wall, it said this wall is taking a sinuous path, which is incorporating the Israeli settlements. That's what made the wall illegal.

Now, Professor Troy says he would prefer if coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict by Carter and others would assign responsibility to both sides. But the problem is, if you look at the international consensus for resolving the conflict, the burden of responsibility for the failure to resolve the conflict falls on the side of Israel and the United States. Carter is very clear on that -- in my opinion, entirely accurate. He says the main problem is Israel refuses to recognize international law. The law is absolutely clear. It’s inadmissible to acquire territory by war. Israel acquired the West Bank and Gaza in the course of the 1967 War. The International Court of Justice said, under the UN Charter, Article 2, it's inadmissible to acquire territory by war. Israel has to withdraw to its internationally recognized June ’67 borders. It refuses. That's the obstacle.

A simple illustration. Every year, the United Nations General Assembly votes on a resolution entitled “Peaceful resolution of the Palestine conflict.” Every year, the vote is the same. The whole world on one side -- the whole world on one side -- and on the other side, the United States, Israel, and usually Palau, Nauru, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia. It’s usually six dissenting votes. And that's it. The problem, I think, is not that the world is -- not that the coverage is biased. The problem is, the reality is biased.

I was reading a book today, to get to your last point you mention, by Zeev Maoz, a mainstream Israeli military historian, smart fellow, and it’s a good book and called Defending the Holy State. He says in a hundred years from now people are going to be very perplexed by this conflict, because, he says, compared to other conflicts, this is not a particularly complicated one. And it really isn't. There has been a resolution, a settlement on the table for 30 years. And Israel and the United States have blocked it. That's the problem. And Carter, to his credit, forthrightly says it. One side is blocking the settlement.

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[Tom Joad]

1. That's cool, cool. thanks.

[breakaleg]

2. thanks for posting.

[Douglas Carpenter]

3. thanks for posting ...a good discussion

[Poll_Blind]

4. Thanks, wished it were longer! n/t

PB