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| Authored by: Political Analyst on Tuesday, December 07 2004 @ 03:28 AM CST |
Unfortunately I don't have access to a transcript of his speech at UW, however I'll block quote a couple sections of Colan's post:
In the course of his lecture, Finkelstein associated Jews with Nazis and thus was confronted not surprisingly by Jewish members of the audience in the question and answer period. Dr. Finkelstein neither apologized for, nor qualified, nor retracted his comments; he instead volunteered that the Jewish students were weeping "crocodile's tears", were hiding behind The Holocaust, and were afraid of the truth. WPIRG was, in turn, challenged to explain the lecture in terms of anti-racist respect nurturing dialogue, which WPIRG's sponsorship is supposed to guarantee.
In response, WPIRG released a formal statement. It was another opportunity for WPIRG to refine its distinction between racism, which WPIRG says Jewish audience members provoke, and anti-Jewish sentiment, which is different from and less important than anything resembling racism. WPIRG lists problematic occurrences at the lecture to be, in order, "malicious heckling by the audience", "racism [against Palestinians and by the audience]", "anti-Jewishness", and, finally, "inappropriate comments by the lecturer, Dr. Finkelstein, to audience members (e.g. calling them Nazi-like)".
I would suggest that his actions as listed in the first quoted paragraph (and seemingly confirmed by WPIRG in the second, although marginalized) are missing a certain amount of civility and compassion (don't mind me using the dictionary definition of dehumanize).[ Parent ]
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