Audience members who attended Norman Finkelstein’s talk at the University of Toronto at Missassauga on March 6 no doubt learned what we in the US have known for years. The aging anti-Israel activist is a total crackpot. The disgraced, discredited (and fired) former professor from DePaul University now makes his living traveling from campus to campus bashing Israel-usually on behalf of pro-Palestinian student groups.
And talk about timing. Days after Finkelstein told the enraptured Pals of Palestine that Israel had no right to defend itself, the Jewish state had to do just that when the little rascals of Hamas started firing more rockets into Israel necessitating the proper response.
https://themedium.ca/news/anti-israel-activist-speaks-at-utm/
I also note that Normie has a new title. He is now an “acclaimed political scientist”. The last time he cast his shadow over the campus of UC Irvine, he was advertised as an “independent scholar with a PhD from Princeton”. I guess when you don’t have a real job, you can call yourself whatever you want. Just don’t call him “Norm”. He doesn’t like that. During the aforementioned show at UC Irvine, he blew up when a student questioner (who was actually sympathetic) called him “Norm”. “I am not your friend,” Pal Normie admonished the student. But that’s Norm. He likes to bully kids in the peanut gallery.
Finkelstein and his PhD remind me of the old adage that to get a PhD is to be educated out of the last ounce of common sense you were born with. He proves it.
Finkelstein’s last known teaching gig was somewhere in Turkey (how ironic). That dried up too. He could have stayed and become court jester to Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Now, according to reports, he sits alone in his Brooklyn apartment in between speaking gigs, surrounded by his diplomas and waiting for the phone to ring. The last known time he appeared on TV was when he blew up and “stormed” off the set in 2016.
But lest you think Finkelstein is just a harmless, lovable, well-meaning fool, consider this. Twice I have witnessed this bird deny the (documented) fact of pro-Palestinian protesters shouting for Jews to be sent to the ovens and praising Hitler. It’s all on videotape, but Norm denies it-here in 2009 and here in 2013.
So maybe Finkelstein was simply ignorant of these incidents? Not likely. Following the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is his entire raison d’etre. Even if he didn’t know in 2009, when someone brings it to your attention, you normally check it out. By 2013, the “acclaimed political scientist”, the “independent scholar with a PhD from Princeton” had had four years to “research” the question posed to him. Yet four years later, he was still denying what would have been readily available to him on the Internet.
DePaul University had no idea what they were doing when they hired this character, but they sure knew what they were doing when they fired him.