Norman Finkelstein
speaker
305 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2024
last heard Mar 2024
Norman Finkelstein’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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In the 1944 resolution of the Labor Party, And at the time, even Bertrand Russell was a member of the Labor Party. It endorsed transfer of Arabs out of Palestine. As Muinz pointed out, that was a deeply entrenched idea in Western thinking that there was nothing, it doesn't in any way contradict or violate or breach any moral values to displace the Palestinian population.
Now, I do believe there's a legitimate question Had it been the case, as you said, Professor Morris, that the Zionists wanted to create a happy state with a Jewish majority, but a large Jewish minority. And if by virtue of immigration, like in our own country, in our own country, given the current trajectories, non-whites will become the majority population in the United States quite soon.
And according to democratic principles, we have to accept that. So if that were the case, I would say maybe there's an argument that had there been mass Jewish immigration, changed the demographic balance in Palestine, and therefore,
Jews became the majority, it can make an argument in the abstract that the indigenous Arab population should have been accepting of that, just as whites in the United States, quote unquote whites, have to be accepting of the fact that the demographic majority is shifting to non-whites in our own country. But that's not what Zionism was about. I did write my doctoral dissertation on Zionism.
And I don't want to get now bogged down in abstract ideas. But as I suspect you know, most theorists of nationalism say there are two kinds of nationalism. One is a nationalism based on citizenship. You become a citizen, you're integral to the country. That's sometimes called political nationalism.
And then there's another kind of nationalism, and that says the state should not belong to its citizens, it should belong to an ethnic group. Each ethnic group should have its own state. It's usually called the German Romantic idea of nationalism. Zionism is squarely in the German Romantic idea. That was the whole point of Zionism.
We don't want to be Bundists and be one more ethnic minority in Russia. We don't want to become citizens and just become a Jewish people in England or France. We want our own state. Like the Arabs in the 23 states. No, wait, before we get to the Arabs, let's stick to the Jews for a moment, or the Zionists. We want our own state. And in that concept...
of wanting your own state, the minority at best lives on sufferance and at worst gets expelled. That's the logic of the German Romantic Zionist idea of a state. That's why they're Zionists. Now, I personally have shied away from using the word Zionism ever since I finished my doctoral dissertation, because as I said, I don't believe it's the operative ideology today.
It's like talking about Bolshevism and referring to Khrushchev. I doubt Khrushchev could have spelled Bolshevik. But for the period we're talking about, they were Zionists. They were committed to their exclusive state with a minority living on sufferance or, at worst, expelled. That was their ideology. And I really feel
There's a problem with your happy vision of these Western Democrats like Weizmann, and they wanted to live peacefully with the Arabs. Weizmann described the explosion in 1948 as, quote, the miraculous clearing of the land. That doesn't sound like somebody shedding too many tears at the loss of the indigenous population. Let me just respond to the word unsufferance.
Then why did you say... Professor Morris, then why did you say without a population expulsion, a Jewish state would not have been established?
I don't think you understand politics. Did I just say that there is a chasm that separates your ideology from the limits and constraints imposed by politics and reality? Professor Morris, I suspect would agree that the Zionist movement from fairly early on was committed to the idea of a Jewish state.
I am aware of only one major study, probably written 40 years ago, the binational idea in mandatory Palestine by a woman, I forgot her name now, you remember her, I'm trying to. Yeah. OK. Would you know the book? I think so. Yeah. She is the only one who tried to persuasively argue that the Zionist movement was actually, not formally, actually committed to the binational idea.
But most historians of the subject agree the Zionist movement was committed to the idea of a Jewish state. having written my doctoral dissertation on the topic, I was confirmed in that idea because Professor Chomsky, who was my closest friend for about 40 years, was very committed to the idea that binationalism was the dominant trend in Zionism.
I could not agree with, I couldn't go with him there. But Professor Morris, you are aware that until the Biltmore Resolution in 1942, the Zionist movement never declared it was for a Jewish state. Why? Because it was politically impossible at the moment until 1942. There is your ideology. There are your convictions. There are your operative plans.
And there's also separately what you say in public. The Zionist movement couldn't say in public, we're expelling all the Arabs. They can't say that. And they couldn't even say we support a Jewish state until 1942. You're conflating two things.
20% of the population in 49 was Arab. They ended up for about five minutes before they were expelled. They agreed to it until 47, and then they were gone by March 1949.
The Arabs launched the war.
Like there is a potential that it wasn't random. There was totally agree with that. It was by design.
Anything could have been. That's not what history is about.
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