The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering
Norman G. Finkelstein
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The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering
Norman G. Finkelstein
Controversial indictment of those who exploit the tragedy of the Holocaust for their own gain. In an iconoclastic and controversial study, Norman G. Finkelstein moves from an interrogation of the place the Holocaust has come to occupy in American culture to a disturbing examination of recent Holocaust compensation agreements. It was not until the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, when Israel's evident strength brought it into line with US foreign policy, that memory of the Holocaust began to acquire the exceptional prominence it enjoys today. Leaders of America's Jewish community were delighted that Israel was now deemed a major strategic asset and, Finkelstein contends, exploited the Holocaust to enhance this newfound status. Their subsequent interpretations of the tragedy are often at variance with actual historical events and are employed to deflect any criticism of Israel and its supporters. Recalling Holocaust fraudsters such as Jerzy Kosinski and Binjamin Wilkomirski, as well as the demagogic constructions of writers like Daniel Goldhagen, Finkelstein contends that the main danger posed to the memory of Nazism's victims comes not from the distortions of Holocaust deniers but from prominent, self-proclaimed guardians of Holocaust memory. Drawing on a wealth of untapped sources, he exposes the double shakedown of European countries as well as legitimate Jewish claimants, and concludes that the Holocaust industry has become an outright extortion racket. Thoroughly researched and closely argued, The Holocaust Industry is all the more disturbing and powerful because the issues it deals with are so rarely discussed. In a devastating new postscript to this best-selling book, Norman G. Finkelstein documents the Holocaust industry's scandalous cover-up of the blackmail of Swiss banks, and in a new appendix demolishes an influential apologia for the Holocaust industry.
"As American Jews enjoyed greater secular success,they moved steadily to the right politically. Although still left-of-center oncultural questions such as sexual morality and abortion, Jews grewincreasingly conservative on politics and the economy. Complementing therightward turn was an inward turn, as Jews, no longer mindful of past alliesamong the have-nots, increasingly earmarked their resources for Jewish656concerns only. This reorientation of American Jewry was clearly evident ingrowing tensions between Jews and Blacks. Traditionally aligned with blackpeople against caste discrimination in the United States, many Jews brokewith the Civil Rights alliance in the late 1960s when, as Jonathan Kaufmanreports, “the goals of the civil rights movement were shifting – from demandsfor political and legal equality to demands for economic equality.”
0"Some argued that Israel’s subordination to US power and occupation of neighboring Arab states were not only wrong in principle but also harmful to its own interests. Israel would become increasingly militarized and alienated from the Arab world. For Israel’s new American Jewish “supporters,”however, such talk bordered on heresy: an independent Israel at peace with its neighbors was worthless; an Israel aligned with currents in the Arab world seeking independence from the United States was a disaster. Only an Israeli Sparta beholden to American power would do, because only then could US Jewish leaders act as the spokesmen for American imperial ambitions. Noam Chomsky has suggested that these “supporters of Israel” should more properly be called “supporters of the moral degeneration and ultimate destruction of Israel.”
0i wish norman finkelstein was on pagebound so i could read his entire bookshelf. what a guy.
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