Editor’s Note: Follow the link above to watch the clip.
Terrorism expert Steve Emerson duked it out with Alan Colmes last night over Norman Finkelstein, a clearly anti-Israel professor who wrote his own version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and who is about to receive tenure at DePaul University. Colmes, who is Jewish himself, once again took the anti-Jew side and stood up for the professor by taking the legalistic view that because Finkelstein hasn’t uttered the magic words “the Holocaust never happened” in print or in public he isn’t a Holocaust denier, even though the man’s books, scholarship and associations make it pretty clear where his thinking is on the subject.
In other news, Alan Colmes fails to recognize that a bird that quacks and waddles on webbed feet is in fact a duck. Hey, did you hear the duck say it was a duck? Exactly.
So here’s the evidence against Finkelstein. As Emerson pointed out, Finkelstein hangs out with Holocaust deniers like David Irving. He is often praised in Holocaust denial “scholarship.” He cheers for Hezbollah terrorists anytime they kill Israelis. He’s called Elie Wiesel a “clown” for his life’s work making sure that we never forget the Holocaust. And he wrote that book, The Holocaust Industry, which according to CAMERA even the NYT slammed for its naked anti-Semitism while calling Finkelstein “juvenile,” “arrogant” and “stupid.” The man also doesn’t know his history from a hole in the ground, if the CAMERA article is even close to accurate. He’s been fired in the past by different universities for all sorts of things and once publicly advocated assassinating Alan Dershowitz. I’m no fan of Dershowitz, but that’s over the top. But evidently all of that is good enough to earn tenure at DePaul.
Anyway, here’s a transcript of the Emerson-Colmes argument. If you’re scoring on the narrow point of whether Finkelstein has ever uttered the magic words “the Holocaust never happened,” then you have to score the match for Colmes. If logic and facts are your guide, then Emerson has the better and more substantive argument by far. Either way, DePaul ought to think twice about granting Finkelstein tenure.
Transcript:
COLMES: Steve, you’re absolutely wrong about this. This is a guy who has actually been praised by two scholars of the Holocaust …. and he is not a Holocaust denier as people have suggested. He is actually someone who believes people are using anti-Semitism to silence critical discussion in this country.
EMERSON: Alan, you can cherry-pick all you want. The fact is he hangs out with Holocaust deniers –
COLMES: Guilt by association –
EMERSON: No, no, it’s his association.
COLMES: He’s never denied the Holocaust.
EMERSON: Listen to me Alan, he associates with Holocaust deniers. They are his friends, David Irving and others.
COLMES: Why does [unintelligible] praise him?
EMERSON: You can cherry-pick all you want, but you just made a statement that it’s guilt by association. It’s his deliberate guilt by association. He wants to association with Holocaust deniers.
COLMES: abide by his statements and his scholar [unintelligible] which is praised –
EMERSON: He’s an absolute liar. –
COLMES: He was praised by the political science department at Depaul —
EMERSON: MMHMM.
[crosstalk]
COLMES: — and praised by the faculty in general and was offered tenure until somebody got in the way and that somebody is Alan Dershowitz and wrote a critical book and Dershowitz is trying to deny [unintelligible].
EMERSON: Alan, I will take Alan Dershowitz’s credentials over this guy, Norman Finkelstein anytime of the day, anytime of the year, anytime of the century. Alan Dershowitz’ being compared to Norman Finkelstein is like comparing a grand scholar to –
[crosstalk]
COLMES: He has a personal vendetta and that’s why this is happening.
EMERSON: The personal vendetta was started by Norman Finkelstein because he wanted to get some kind of attention.