An interview with Norman Finkelstein

ES: Do Hamas use women and children as human shields? This is the perennial justification for civilian deaths after IDF assaults in Palestine. Are you prepared to admit that this goes on, and what evidence is there for it?

NF: None of the human rights organizations that investigated what happened during the Israeli invasion of Gaza–Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Goldstone Report–could find evidence that Hamas engaged in human shielding.

ES: In the documentary "American Radical" your friend and co-thinker, Noam Chomsky, reveals that he advised you to try to focus less on exposing Alan Dershowitz in your book "Beyond Chutzpah", and to attempt to concentrate on a more general attack on the propaganda and deceit peddled by the many apologists for the Israeli establishment's crimes. Taking on Dershowitz has lead to him trying to sabotage your career, and to him famously accusing your mother of being a capo, amongst many other repulsive actions. What is your response to the idea, if I take the position of the Devil's advocate, that this has drawn attention away from the Palestinians in a way that has aided Dershowitz and his crew – and has diverted focus from the facts that need to be aired about Palestinian suffering?

NF: I devote approximately 200 pages of Beyond Chutzpah to Israel's human rights record. The personal issue of Dershowitz's plagiarism occupies some 20 pages in an appendix.

ES: In "Beyond Chutzpah", you document how the ban on torture passed by Israeli courts around the turn of the century, that torture and gross mistreatment of Palestinians (including minors) still goes on. Do you still see this as the case?

NF: Israel continues to torture Palestinian detainees but on a reduced scale. They have farmed out most of the torture to their collaborators in the "Palestinian" "Authority." The "P" "A's" human rights record is quite horrendous, which is why it enjoys so much support in Israel and the West.

ES: Changing topic, to what degree do you perceive Israel's attacks against neighbours and the Palestinians (I'm thinking about the '82 and 2006 Lebanon wars, the crushing of both Intifadas, especially Operation Cast Lead and so on) as being intentionally disproportionate [cf. Shock and Awe]?

NF: In past wars Israel set itself two goals: to inflict a battlefield defeat on its enemies and simultaneously to terrorize the civilian population in order to accelerate the victory. The Gaza invasion of 2008-9 was different. Hamas was not a significant fighting force so defeating it wouldn't impress anyone. The invasion of Gaza had no battlefield component. The central fact about the Gaza invasion was that it was not a war: it was an outright massacre.

ES: Is Israel more or less a large-scale US military base?

NF: It's highly dependent on the U.S. but it's still a nation-state like any other member of the international system and the United Nations, and therefore has the same rights and obligations as any other state.

ES: What is the best case senario for a peaceful settlement between Palestinians and Israelis? How can activists bring this about?

NF: The most important challenge is to keep clarifying the documentary record on what's really happening there and which side is blocking a diplomatic settlement. Each of the various tactics that have been tried to get Israel to budge–nonviolent resistance, legal accountability, BDS–has had some measure of success.

ES: Why do you think that you are still labelled a radical, "far-left" or "fringe" voice in Israeli-Palestinian conflict discourse? You, after all, promote the 'International Consensus' on the conflict's resolution?

NF: I suspect it's because I have become pretty effective so I must be marginalized.