This Time We Went Too Far [Paperback]

Contents: Foreword, 1/Self-Defense, 2/Their Fear, and Ours, 3/Whitewash, 4/Of Human Shields and Hasbara, 5/Inside Gaza, 6/Ever Fewer Hosannas, Epilogue, Appendix and Notes.

"It's not that you are to carry out a massacre, but ......" -- Israeli commander on the eve of the Gaza invasion (quote located just before the Foreword).

The name given to the attack by the IDF, "Operation Cast Lead," says it all. When an army casts lead indiscriminately at a population, the underlying purpose is shock and awe, and the result is massacre. No amount of self-justifying verbiage - and there has been plenty of that - can minimize it. From the testimony provided by eyewitnesses and IDF combat soldiers, a massacre is exactly what happened. Followed by a blizzard of justifications, denial, obfuscation and outright lies, all of which Professor Finkelstein carefully documents. Amnesty International called the attack "22 days of death and destruction." The Israeli government called it justified.

But this time they went too far. Operation Cast Lead was so far over the top and so overwhelming and indiscriminate (they even attacked UN installations) that they caused a tsunami of negative reaction from around the world. Their response? To build a political firewall of propaganda around themselves that had and has a very focused purpose: to seek out, delegitimize and destroy Israel's critics using every means possible, including character assassination, misinformation, intimidation and destruction of their resources and their organizations. This plan is outlined in detail in a report by Israel's Reut Institute published in February 2010 following a tsunami of negative response to the Gaza war. The report, which I have read and own a copy of, can be obtained, in PDF format, from reut-institute.org/data/uploads/PDFVer/20100310%20Delegitimacy%20Eng.pdf It is well worth a careful read. An article by Ali Abunimah in the February 16, 2010 edition of The Electronic Intifada calls it "Israel's new strategy: `sabotage' and `attack' the global justice movement."

Israel made it even more difficult for itself when, several weeks later it attacked the Mavi Marmara, one of the boats in a peace flotilla headed for Gaza, killing a number of the people on board. Again, the Israeli government justified it and launched a massive propaganda campaign of justification. But even the Reut Institute said they had gone too far.

Israel is very good at being its own worst enemy. Instead of trying to partner with Palestine's indigenous Arab population and build a nation together, they set about vigorously uprooting and attacking them, a process that continues in both Gaza, the West Bank and within Israel itself. "Under the guise of what is called the `peace process'," Professor Finkelstein writes, "Israel has effectively annexed wide swaths of the West Bank and shredded the social fabric of life there and in the Gaza Strip." All, of course, justified whilst thumbing its collective nose at world opinion and the UN. Again, all carefully documented by Professor Finkelstein and others ... and justified and denied by the Israeli government.

Israel justifies its behavior on the grounds of "security", but the question that arises in reading this and other books on the subject raises this significant question: Would Israel have any security problems had they treated Palestine's indigenous population as respected partners? Would they have any security problems today if they treated Palestinians with respect instead of contempt? I very much doubt it.

"This Time We Went Too Far" is a book that I recommend and have as part of my library. It is not, however, at all popular with those for whom Israel can do no wrong. Read it with an open mind.

Norman Finkelstein is an exceptional scholar who specializes in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He wrote a meticulously researched book on Israel's invasion of Gaza in 2008.

This new paperback edition is not only a revised but also a vastly expanded version of the hardback.

The book is based on thousands of pages of human rights reports as well as testimonies of Israeli soldiers and statements of Israeli officials.

It includes an analysis of all the official Israeli reports on the Gaza invasion right up until January 2011.

It also contains the only analysis in any language of the Israeli Turkel Commission report on what happened on the Mavi Marmara.

It is the only comprehensive study in any language of what happened in Gaza during and after the invasion.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict

Finkelstein has been unjustly maligned by pro-Israel supporters. He was accused of being a Holocaust denier and of calling for the destruction of the state of Israel. Both accusation are false. And I'll explain why:
Norman Finkelstein never questioned the Holocaust ie the mass extermination of Jews by Nazi Germany. His own parents survived the extermination camps but every member of his family on both sides was exterminated.
He wrote a book titled the Holocaust Industry in which he criticized some Jewish organizations for exploiting the Holocaust to justify Israel's mistreatment of the Palestinians and for extorting Swiss banks and other governments and organizations. The late Raul Hillberg, the dean of Holocaust Studies, shared the the same views. Here's what he said to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now:

"I was also struck by the fact that Finkelstein was being attacked over and over. And granted, his style is a little different from mine, but I was saying the same thing, and I had published my results in that three-volume work, published in 2003 by Yale University Press, and I did not hear from anybody a critical word about what I said, even though it was the same substantive conclusion that Finkelstein had offered."

Also Finkelstein never called for the destruction of Israel. Here's what respected Israeli historian Avi Shlaim says on p 369 of his book Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations:
"Finkelstein is one of the most hard-hitting critics of the official Zionist version of the Arab-Israeli conflict. But while he uncompromisingly rejects the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line, he fully accepts Israel's legitimacy within its pre-1967 borders."

So contrary to what his detractors say Finkelstein is moderate in his conclusions. His style may be questioned but not his scholarship.
For those interested in knowing more about Finkelstein, I recommend the excellent documentary American Radical: Trials of Norman Finkelstein

This book is a detailed and well-researched account of Operation Cast Lead, the 3-week-long massacre of the Gaza Strip which began in December 2008. It is written by Norman Finkelstein, who includes his opinions and recommendations in the text along with his research. Finkelstein is a former professor who was denied tenure at DePaul at the urging of Zionist faculty, even though he was extremely popular with the students and the majority of the faculty. He has been seen as a threat by many Zionist groups and academics who try to destroy his credibility by calling him a self-hating Jew and a Holocaust denier. In reading this book, it becomes abundantly clear that he is neither. It is also evident in this book, as well as his others, why the Zionist community in academia feels threatened by him. He writes with authority, pathos, and research to back up his claims. He also shows that he is proudly Jewish while still criticizing Israel and the current incarnation of Zionism. This book is for you if you are interested in learning new and sometimes disturbing things about the Israel/Palestine dynamic and are willing to acknowledge the true inequality of the situation. You will not enjoy this book if you do not want to question your existing beliefs about Israel/Palestine.