Items related to The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account...
Book by Finkelstein, Norman G.
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From Kirkus Reviews:
Another contribution to the vast body of propagandistic literature (produced by both sides) that has helped to block a balanced discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Finkelstein (Political Theory/New York Univ.) largely bases his history of the Intifada (198891), the revolt by Palestinians against Israeli occupation, on several visits to, and teaching experience in, the West Bank. He does provide some vivid, moving anecdotal material about the very real socioeconomic suffering and violence the Palestinians have endured during the 29 years of Israeli occupation. But this book is fatally compromised by a radical anti-Israel animus. In the service of his bias, Finkelstein sometimes distorts history, as in his ludicrous claim that ``Israel's founding father, David Ben-Gurion, envisioned that the future state would incorporate the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan, the Golan Heights, and Lebanon,'' and his assertion that ``it was Yasir Arafat's acceptance of the two-state solution that triggered Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982.'' There is no evidence for the latter argument. As to the former, it should be noted that shortly after the UN voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, in 1947, Ben-Gurion convinced a reluctant Israeli Labor Party Executive Committee to accept the plan, which most of the Palestinian leadership and all of the surrounding Arab states rejected. In support of his positions, Finkelstein sometimes cites himself, sometimes such extreme critics of Israeli policies as Noam Chomsky and Alexander Cockburn, and almost never a meticulous scholar at home in both Hebrew and Arabic sources, such as Benny Morris. This work may interest those who are already convinced that Israel is a kind of neocolonialist state. Those who want to gain a more balanced and substantial view of the roots of the current conflict and its implications for the future would do well to look elsewhere. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
From Publishers Weekly:
The Palestinian friends Finkelstein made during his numerous visits to the occupied territories are not the terrorists and stone-throwing thugs of news stories, but hardworking, sensitive family men and women who want only to live in freedom and with respect. "History will not forgive what was done to the innocent people of Palestine," his friend Moussa tells him after the 1993 Oslo agreement. "We lost everything because everyone was against us. Even our leadership." Finkelstein can be sententious, especially when he compares the Palestinians to the Cherokee Nation, and when he explores the double standard with which the international community views Israel and the Palestinians. But as the son of Holocaust survivors, he brings a unique perspective to his subject; he sees the intifada as analogous to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, and Yitzhak Shamir's reaction to the death of civilians on a bus overturned by a vengeful Gazan as similar to that of Josef Goebbels's to the incident that provoked Kristallnacht. Taken out of context, it's appalling, but Finkelstein is trying to show the Palestinians as victims of an arbitrary, senseless and cruel Israeli government whose actions are designed to "reduce them to despair and force them to go away."
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherUniv of Minnesota Pr
- Publication date1996
- ISBN 10 0816628599
- ISBN 13 9780816628599
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages232
- Rating
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