ABSTRACT
Norman G. Finkelstein considers friends of Israel the moral equivalent of Gestapo torturers and mass murderers might be an occasion for surprise among normal people. Finkelstein's opinions on Jewish subjects have not made him popular in respectable academic circles. According to Noam Chomsky, his mentor, the student Finkelstein's professors "stopped talking to him: they wouldn't make appointments with him, they wouldn't read his papers". According to Finkelstein, Israel was certain of "a quick and easy victory regardless of which side initiated hostilities". Thus, according to Finkelstein, "Israel's first policy decision regarding the conquered territories" was taken within days, when the cabinet voted to offer "a settlement on the pre-June 1967 borders with Syria and Egypt, but made no mention of the West Bank". The outbreak of the first Intifada provided another outlet for Finkelstein's anti-Zionist fervor. Finkelstein sees the Holocaust as an "ideological representation" whose "central dogmas serve significant political and class interests".
