- Jubilee offer: spend £10 or more on any product sold by Amazon.co.uk on or before June 6 and you can buy The Diamond Jubilee A Classical Celebration Album for just £2.50 Here's how (terms and conditions apply)
| ||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £2.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the explotation of Jewish Suffering for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £2.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
In this study, the author interrogates the conventional accounts of the place the Holocaust has come to occupy in American culture. 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 at the beginning of the 21st century. Leaders of America's Jewish community were delighted that Israel was now deemed a major strategic asset and, the author contends, explotied the Holocaust to enhance this new-found status. Their subsequent interpretation 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 Binyamin Wilkomirski, as well as the demogogic constructions of writers like Daniel Goldenhagen, the author contends that the main danger posed to the memory of Nazism's victims comes not from the rubbish the Holocaust deniers promulgate but from prominent, self-proclaimed guardians of Holocaust memory.
About the Author
Norman Finkelstein teaches at the City University of New York and contributes to the London Review of Books, He is the author of Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict and (with Bettina Birn) A Nation on Trial, named a notable book for 1998 by the New York Times Book Review.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
154 of 161 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Until comparatively recently, I implicitly accepted the image of the holocaust and its victims that was presented by the mass media. Then, a year ago, I read the Penguin Book of Twentieth-century Speeches, in particular some of what Elie Weisel had to say about the holocaust.
It was clearly exaggerated, sentimentalist nonsense. I began to think a little more independently about the issue, but had nowhere to turn for a more balanced view.
One day, Amazon's recommendations system suggested this book to me, and I bought it at once. Having read it, I'm delighted to be able to recommend it unreservedly as exactly the book I needed.
Finkelstein does not deny the Nazi holocaust, nor the suffering it inflicted on both those it killed, and on those who survived. His contention - persuasively argued - is that their genuine suffering is being debased and abused by the Holocaust "industry" in order to bring political power and huge sums of money to an élite minority.
He also points out that by labelling the Holocaust with false superlatives, one belittles the plight of others who have suffered comparably awful genocide and victimisation, both in World War II and throughout history.
The book is well written. Finkelstein occasionally personalises the debate, or becomes less than dispassionate, but I never once felt this damaged his objectivity. He quotes sources throughout the book - in many cases his opponents are condemned by their own tongues.
It is time the media stopped pandering to the abusive interests of the Holocaust Industry, time they took a more balanced, more critical and less sensationalist view. Billions of dollars are being extorted from governments (even those that can hardly afford it, such as Poland's) by the playing of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism cards. This is unjust.
Buy this book. Read it. Tell your friends about it.
66 of 69 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The thrust of Professor Finkelstein's unsettling book is that powerful interests (Israel and Jewish organizations in America) have hijacked what has become known as the holocaust. And while Israel has exploited the holocaust as a weapon to deflect criticism, regardless how justified, American Jewish organizations have used the plight of supposedly needy survivors to extort staggering sums of money from the rest of the world. This was done not for the benefit of survivors, but for the financial advantage of these organizations.
There are no conclusions reached in Professor Finkelstein's book that a careful reader of daily newspapers could not have reached, assuming the reader could read between the lines and base his judgment on evidence and common sense rather than the politically correct slant of the media reporting...
The bottom line of Finkelstein's book is that it says what was very long overdue to be said. But few academics have the courage or intellectual fortitude to weather the defamation campaign that will predictably descend on anyone who challenges this multi-billion dollar industry...
I recommend the advice Nietzsche gave his readers 130 years ago: "If you want to know something about a book or its author, read what HE wrote rather than what his critics or enemies have to say about him."...
74 of 79 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
With the exception of Noam Chomsky it has been a long time since anyone attempted a deconstruction of an American power elite along the lines of C. Wright Mill's famous study. The present author attempts to step into the breach. Finkelstein is concerned with the relationship between the collective American Jewish self image and how that image is mediated and bolstered through a plethora of devices (from compensation claims to educational trips)originating from the impact of the Nazi Holocaust. Many readers will wince at phrases such as 'organised American Jewry'and one from another source that 'Jews are better', as they have uncomfortable connotations in European life - on occasion I had to check myself from saying only a Jewish academic could make these points. Finkelstein's main arguments are (a) that American Jewry (or that aspect he portrays)has used the tragedy of the Holocaust as a means of morally, and on occasion even financially, terrorising critics into silence, (b) the 'uniqueness' of the Holocaust is to the contrary purely historically relative, and (c) that the suffering of nonJewsish victims of the Nazis has largely been set aside, especially when financial settlements are being pursued. His castigation of various Holocaust organisations as a cynical self serving 'industry' is unstinting, and his contrasting of the reception given to Jewish concerns by successive Administrations, in contrast to Black America's treatment, is grim reading. Finkelstein furnishes copious notes throughout the book, which are very useful. Two subcurrents emerge in the book which are never fully debated (and weaken its central theses to an extent). Firstly Finkelstein argues that 'organised American Jewry' has used the ethnicity of the Holocaust to put itself beyond criticism and inter alia Israel. All criticism of Jewish ideology is therefore antisemitic and one can never ask if antisemitism was/is in any way influenced by Jewish practices, i.e. antisemitism is really another expression of economic conflicts of interests. Finkelstein leaves this very contentious issue undeveloped and it is a definite weakness in the text. Secondly, he dismisses the uniqueness of the Holocaust, citing other exterminations that have occurred through history, yet he leaves unanalysed the motive for the Nazi extermination campaign deferring to Raul Hilburg's work instead. If the book is reprinted it would be helpful to have these issues examined clearly.
In conclusion I found this a very arresting book. Perhaps unnecessarily polemical in parts, but passionately argued. Confrontational and courageous yes, but arguably it needs more detail on the points above to substantiate its many charges. Essential reading for those on the Left and Right who really believe in a family of mankind where ethnicity has no role, except an accidental one.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Moral Courage...
At a certain level this had to be a very difficult book to write. Professor Finkelstein had to know that he would be pilloried as a "self-hating Jew" for daring to question one of... Read more
Published 12 months ago by John P. Jones III
Eye Opener
This book I ordered initially with a hope that it would help me balance my views. Firstly, I must state for the record, I am
disgusted by the suffering caused during the... Read more
disgusted by the suffering caused during the... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Tortuga
A true son of Israel speaking truth to power- I wish there were many...
In 1934 my family moved house in South Manchester to a large but cheap-rent villa in a crumbling area of Edwardian houses, large enough for Mum Dad and five kids. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Kevin Donnelly
Unusually revealing
Having just seen the eye-opening movie about Finkelstein (American Radical), I had very high hopes for this book, and they were certainly met. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Marcus Aurelius
EXCELLENT
Finklestien says in print what everyone is thinking, the content is daring, fresh and a must-read!
Published 20 months ago by aya
Excellent Book
Nobody is better qualified to write this book than Norman Finkelstein. Both his parents were `authentic' survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto and associated concentration camps. Read more
Published on 16 Feb 2010 by Alan Holman
Excellent content, poorly written
The content makes for interesting reading; my interpretation of the author's thesis is that the human tragedy of WWII was hijacked during the mid-sixties by certain factions in the... Read more
Published on 3 Jan 2010 by Local Field
Time to fight back
The zionists have been using dubious claims about the events of World War 2 to justify their own holocaust against the unfortunate Palestinians. Read more
Published on 2 Oct 2007 by Hadrian
A brave book and a thought provoking read
I have read many books on the Nazi Holocaust and had a growing personal discomfort about the manner in which the non-Jewish element was increasingly marginalised (I must admit that... Read more
Published on 22 Sep 2007 by Siriam
Eye opener
A very interesting book with lots of facts and figures that really cause one to reflect. Unlike many books that I have read, it is not fiction pretending to be fact. Read more
Published on 3 Sep 2007 by Da Vazquez Paluch
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
