“Nasrallah is the only Arab leader, who is intelligent and has the political awareness – and courage to understand Israel’s evil agenda and challenges it,” – Dr. Finkelstein, January 15, 2009.
“I don’t care what Torah or Qur’an or the Old Testament or the New Testament says about Palestine. The truth is Palestine is an occupied land,” – Dr. Finkelstein, January 15, 2009.
Norman Finkelstein PhD, is an American Jewish academic, po;itical thinker and author of several books. He was the key-speaker at a function held at University of Toronto’s Mississauga Campus (UTM), last evening. The function was attended by more than 1,500 people including myself – while several hundreds people missed the speech due to the limited capacity of the hall.
The evening, in additional to Dr. Finkelstein’s speech, followed by Q/A – had a fundraising for the latest victims of the Zionazi state in Gaza Strip. Following are some of comments Dr. Finkelstein made in his speech:
1. Several apologetic voices portray Israel’s current genocide of people in Gaza in which one-third of victims happen to be children – as a political stunt to get popularity among the Jewish voters for the coming election next month. However, the fact of the matter is that when in comes to the affairs of the State – none of the major parties care for the voters, because they all have a common agenda. Even Israeli military actions in the past have proven that Israeli military invasions have very little to do with the elections. For example, there was no election around Israeli war of June 1967, which was created based on Israel’s propaganda lies. Same is true for Israel’s unprovoked bombing of Iraq’s Osirak nuclear facility in construction under IAEA supervision.
2. Israel’s policy towards its neighbours has always based on ‘the fear of Israel’ as the detrrent. Every time Arabs have made gesture of accomodation – Israel has provoked them to become radicals. The invasion of Lebano in 1982 was for the same reason. Yasser Arafat showed his willingness to accept a “two-state solution” based on pre-1967 borders in 1981 – which was against the Israeli deterrent of “fear”. The current Israeli brutal attack on Gaza Strip, the world’s most over-populated (1.5 million) area – is to inflict fear among the civilian people – in order to turn them against their elected government of Hamas.
3. Hizb’Allah fighter put the first dent in Israeli deterrent (Fear) in 2000 – when Israel was forced to withdraw from Southern Lebanon. For the next six years, Israel prepared its forces and anti-Arab propaganda to put that “fear” back into its Arab neighbours. In Summer 2006, Israel coined an excuse to support its killing of more Lebanese. However, Israelis were utterly shocked to witness the shear inability of an army laced with the best of modern arms to disarm less than 3,000 Hizb’Allah fighters. This second humiliation of Israel was hailed by Arabs all over the world and anti-war groups in the West.
4. In 2006, when Hamas won PA elections – it posesd no threat to Israel. It was its non-corrupt leadership, its dedication toward raising the living standards of Gazzan and to stop endless military clashes with Israel – which feared Israeli government the most. Hamas accepted the UN and other international organizations’ solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Hamas even signed a ceasefire with Israel last year in good faith. However, Israel used this lull in Palestinian rocket attacks – to prepare its armed forces and world opinion for its new genocide of Palestinian – because it found Hamas becoming “a moderate resistance”, which had to be turned into a “radical group” in order to put more “fear” among young Palestinians and boost the 2006 Israeli wounded ego.
5. Israel being failed, so far, to create a tangible excuse to push the US to attack Iran – has to find an easy target to inflict that “fear” into the hearts of Arabs – and who could be a better target than the civilian in Gaza Strip.
6. Dr. Finkelstein, answering a question, said: “People who are propagating the ‘one state solution’, are in fact providing Zionist regime another excuse to ignore the UN resolutions and the 1969975International Court of Justice ruling. In fact Israel will never agree to a “two state solution”, as that would be the begining of the end of Israel, as it has been in the last 60 years.
7. Replying a question regarding the coming new US administration’s policy toward Palestinian conflict – Dr. finkelstein was of the opinion that Obama’s selection of some of the pro-Israel neo-cons in Clinton and Bush administrations – proves that Obama’s foreign policy in the Middle East would not be much different than the two previous administrations.
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