Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom

During the massive demonstrations in London against Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, the question was often asked by Israel’s apologists: why was Israel singled out? Why didn’t people come out in such numbers to protest against the actions of the Syrian government or Islamic State that have killed far more people? For Israel’s apologists, the answer was simple: anti-Semitism. But the real answer must surely lie in the reaction by Western governments to Operation Protective Edge. Israel was indeed singled out, as the one state in the world that could massacre defenceless civilians – as Norman Finkelstein conclusively proves in this book-- and yet be described by Western governments as acting in “self-defence”. During the onslaught, then-President Obama (as Finkelstein writes) “reaffirmed Israel’s ‘right to defend itself’ day in, day out”. In July 2014, the European Union called on Hamas to “renounce violence” and recognised “Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself against any attacks”. It was left to civil society to express its outrage. Similarly, as Finkelstein points out, Western governments only evinced some concern about Israel’s strangulating and illegal blockade over Gaza after the murder of activists on the Mavi Marmara (the civilian aid ship to Gaza)– a concern that led to some easing of the siege (even though in practice this relaxation amounted to very little). Gaza’s only potentially effective answer to high-tech Israeli military attacks (in contrast to Hamas’s ineffective token resistance of improvised, home-made rockets) is the resilience of its people, the activism of international civil society and the reports put out by human rights organisations. These reports, Finkelstein writes in his preface, “even if mostly underutilised…are the most potent weapon in the arsenal of those who hope against hope to mobilize public opinion so as to salvage a modicum of justice”. Finkelstein concentrates on the two most devastating recent onslaughts on Gaza: Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9 and Operation Protective Edge in 2014, together with the attack on the Mavi Marmara that occurred between these two massacres. He demonstrates that Israel’s alleged aims – to stop Hamas rockets and (in Protective Edge) to destroy Hamas tunnels – were only pretexts; Israel’s real goals were a) to restore its “deterrence capacity”, after its humiliation in Lebanon in 2006 and (before Operation Protective Edge) the 2010 Mavi Mamara debacle and what was widely perceived as the failed 2012 Operation Pillar of Defence; and b) to destroy the “peace offensives” of Hamas that threatened to force Israel to the negotiating table to give up land for peace. Israel’s twisted rationale was exposed by Finkelstein in his previous book Method and Madness. Parts of that book (and of Finkelstein’s previous book about Gaza, “This Time We Went Too Far”) – updated, expanded and (in the case of the chapter about Operation Protective Edge) almost completely rewritten --are included in Gaza as a necessary historical and political background. But, as Finkelstein writes in the preface, “the primary subject-matter” of Gaza is the myriad but largely unread human rights reports. His objective, he writes, is to refute the ”Big Lie” -ie the “official consensus” that Israel acts in “self-defence” -- by “exposing each of the little lies”. “In the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead” Finkelstein writes, “as many as three hundred human rights reports were issued”. These overwhelmingly gave the lie to Israeli hasbara (propaganda). For instance, in a chapter examining the often unthinkingly-accepted Israeli claim that Hamas used civilians as “human shields”, Finkelstein quotes Amnesty International’s categorical exoneration of Hamas and other Palestinian fighters on this charge: “In the cases investigated by Amnesty International of civilians killed in Israeli attacks, the deaths could not be explained as resulting from the presence of fighters shielding among civilians, as the Israeli Army generally contends. In all of the cases investigated by Amnesty International of families killed when their homes were bombed from the air by Israeli forces, for example, none of the houses struck was being used by armed groups for military activities.” Amnesty did, however, find ample evidence of the use of human shields by Israeli troops. But the highest point reached by the international human rights community in relation to Operation Cast Lead was the Goldstone Report, the findings of the Fact-Finding Mission appointed by the UN Human Rights Council. This Report presented the stark, unvarnished truth in its conclusion that Operation Cast Lead was “designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population”. As Finkelstein stresses, Judge Richard Goldstone is a Zionist Jew who was forced to choose between tribal loyalty to Israel on the one hand and his universalist liberal conscience and international law on the other; his choice (which was not really a choice, because to have supported Israeli lies would have been to destroy his reputation) represented a sea-change among liberal Diaspora Jews. The Goldstone Report also, Finkelstein points out, put the findings of human rights organisations, including Israeli organisations such as B’Tselem, centre-stage; their reports became “charged…. with political consequences”. Then came the bombshell of Goldstone’s recantation, which Finkelstein dissects in a devastating chapter that forms the turning-point of this book. Precisely because Goldstone is a Zionist Jew, the Israeli hasbara machine attacked him with particularly venomous force – though Finkelstein speculates that Goldstone’s capitulation could have been the result of blackmail. Finkelstein cites his own prophetic words written in an earlier version of this chapter, published in 2011: the recantation “most unforgivably.…increased the risk of another merciless IDF assault”. Finkelstein also, however, points out where he got it wrong in 2011; in his book “’This Time We Went Too Far’”, he considered Lebanon the most likely next target. However “in the end, defenceless Gaza remained Israel’s preferred punching-bag”. Even before Goldstone’s recantation on April 1 2011, there had been backpedalling among the human rights community (including Goldstone himself) in relation to Cast Lead and the Goldstone Report. The first casualties of this reversal were the murdered activists on the Mavi Marmara in May 2010. Israel set up its own inquiry, the Turkel Commission, which completely exonerated the Israeli commandos. Finkelstein tears its Report to pieces, concluding by pointing to “an odd paradox lodged in its conclusions: the shaheeds plotted and armed themselves to kill Israelis but didn’t even manage to kill those in their custody, whereas the Israelis took every precaution and exercised every restraint not to kill anyone, but ended up killing nine people”. The then Secretary-General of the UN, Ban Ki-Moon, taking his cue from the US, set up a UN Panel Report, which Finkelstein eviscerates with even greater force, demonstrating, in a complex logical unravelling of its hidden premises, that the UN Panel's dilemma between placating both the Israeli government and international opinion causes the Report’s authors to tie themselves up in knots, whereas the Israeli Turkel Report is more honest, because its writers don't have any concerns in relation to international opinion. But, despite Goldstone’s recantation and the UN Panel Report, a UN Human Rights Council Fact-Finding Mission produced an unbiased report, upon which Finkelstein bases many of his arguments in this chapter. Yet, as Finkelstein points out, the pressure of Israeli hasbara and its Diaspora supporters – a pressure particularly virulent precisely because the Israeli government knows it has lost the battle for international public opinion – has continued to take its toll on the human rights community. Operation Protective Edge was the most terrible result of Goldstone’s recantation and the backpedalling of the human rights community. In Cast Lead, up to 1,200 Gazan civilians were killed, including 350 children, and 6,000 homes were destroyed. In Protective Edge, 1,600 Gazan civilians were killed, including 550 children; 18,000 homes were destroyed. Yet there was a stark difference between the response of the international human rights groups to Cast Lead and their reaction to Protective Edge. Finkelstein points out that after Protective Edge there was “a muted response from human rights organizations”. Human Rights Watch, which had supported Amnesty after Cast Lead, was almost silent. An exception was Amnesty, which produced five reports. Finkelstein devotes the first of his three final chapters to a complex, detailed, case-by -case analysis of Amnesty’s reports that brings out the full horror of the human suffering behind the statistics. Finkelstein demonstrates that Amnesty’s findings are at odds with its legal analysis, which whitewashes Israel’s actions in order to avoid making the charge that Israel had a deliberate policy of targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure. To take just one example: the case of four Gazan children killed while playing hide-and-seek on a beach. Finkelstein writes: “Amnesty noted that an Israeli investigation absolving the military of responsibility for the killings ‘did not explain why the army had not identified’ the children ‘as such’”. As Finkelstein points out, this begs the question: had the army indeed failed to identify the children “as such”? Amnesty, he writes, “couldn’t even conceive, or wouldn’t let itself conceive, that the IDF HAD identified the four children ‘as such’ – and then proceeded to murder them”. (Emphasis in original) Finkelstein does not accuse Israel of a policy of systematic murder of Gazan civilians –ie genocide. His charge is the same as that set out in the Goldstone Report. The “strategic goal” of Protective Edge, as Finkelstein writes in the penultimate chapter, was the same as that of Cast Lead but on a larger scale: “to punish, humiliate and terrorize Gaza’s civilian population, part and parcel of which was the infliction of massive civilian casualties”. The book reaches its climax in the penultimate chapter, which analyses the report on Protective Edge that was put out by the UN Human Rights Council, which had produced the Goldstone Report and a report on the Mavi Marmara that was based on the facts. In the book’s most searing indictment, Finkelstein makes it clear in case-by-case detail that after Operation Protective Edge the UN Human Rights Council "succumbed to the Israeli Juggernaut". As in the Amnesty report, the UNHRC’s legal analysis contradicts its findings, in order to avoid accusing Israel of the deliberate targeting of civilians. In the case of the four children murdered on the beach, the UNHRC Report “found strong indications that the IDF failed in its obligations to take all feasible measures to avoid or at least minimise incidental harm to civilians”. Finkelstein sums up the UNHRC's betrayal of Gaza: “The Report itself copiously documented that Israel fired tens of thousands of high-explosive artillery shells into, and dropped hundreds of one-ton bombs over, densely populated civilian neighborhoods, targeted hospitals, ambulances, rescue teams, civilian vehicles and ‘groups of citizens’ and pursued a shoot-to-kill anything that moves policy in pacified areas that still contained civilians. But nonetheless it was the finding of this cynical, craven document that of the 1,600 Gazan civilians killed by Israel during the 51-day terror onslaught, only two were killed deliberately.” The book’s Conclusion is realistically pessimistic about Gaza’s chances: on the brink of collapse, betrayed by the human rights organisations, its devastation dwarfed by other human rights catastrophes, particularly in Syria, with the international public becoming inured to the brutality of the Israeli army. Yet the Conclusion also puts forward the possibility of action to effect change. As well as a legal indictment, Gaza is a monument to the massacred people of Gaza that ensures that their agony will never be forgotten. But it is also an urgent wake-up call for the prevention of a still greater onslaught upon Gaza – a prevention that can only be achieved by ending Israel’s Occupation. Israel, Finkelstein writes in his penultimate chapter, has reached a state of moral collapse and “will not reform itself because it cannot reform itself”. So the Occupation can only be ended from without. An Appendix that answers, in a complex, difficult but clear legal discussion, the question “Is the Occupation Legal?” also puts forward – in tandem with the Conclusion -- a concrete and achievable plan. The US will always exercise its Security Council veto with regard to Israel. But a UN General Assembly resolution and ICJ advisory opinion that would unequivocally declare the Occupation over could mobilise Palestinians into mass non-violent action that would be supported by international public opinion, galvanised and led by pro-Palestinian activists. To conclude: this is not an easy book to read. Finkelstein writes in his Preface: “The reader’s forbearance must in advance be begged, as perusing this book will require infinite patience”. The reader who embarks on this demanding, often harrowing voyage is required to work his or her passage. Nonetheless, this is definitely a book for the general reader, who will bring back great rewards. No other scholar could make these reams of human rights reports so accessible to the general public or render complex logical and legal arguments so clear. Indeed, the book’s exposé of contradictions and absurdities would be entertaining if the subject-matter were not so appalling. The sub-title of Gaza points to its two most striking qualities. As the word “inquest” indicates, the book is a meticulously detailed, logically-argued legal inquiry into the facts in order to come as close as possible to the truth. But the highly emotive word “martyrdom” points to Gaza’s other aspect: an impassioned anger at injustice and lies – a searing indignation reminiscent of the Hebrew Prophets. The unusual synthesis of these two qualities has always characterised Finkelstein’s work; but in Gaza each aspect reaches a higher level than ever before, because Palestinian martyrdom has never before reached such a peak of desperation nor has Israel ever before sunk into such an abyss of barbarism. Never before has Finkelstein deployed logical analysis and international law to such devastating effect; never before has his writing reached such heights of impassioned outrage. The combination means that the book is itself a precision-guided missile– brilliant, white-hot and accurately annihilating its intended targets.

This is the only authoritative and scholarly history of Gaza. The Israel lobby have elected to play the man, not the ball in their dealings with the author Norman Finkelstein; who has simply been demonised. The vindictiveness of the treatment of Finkelstein is very easy to understand: he tells the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in this brilliant book. It is a truth that a huge, coordinated public relations apparatus works relentlessly to discredit. The mainstream media worldwide are complicit in a massive cover-up. It sounds so unlikely, so unhinged, yet perfectly logical: the vested interests of the world's richest people are invested in Israel. The truth doesn't stand a chance and there is a sense of despair in the book. There is no realistic hope that anything approaching justice will ever be done in Gaza. Be among the tiny minority of people who know what is going on, before the Israel lobby rewrite history.

A quick heads up, this is a devastating but important read. Norman documents the history and atrocities committed by Israel against the people of Gaza. This is such a well researched and written history on the past 25 years of the Gaza Strip.

If all Western politicians and their immoral leaders had taken the time to read this excellent book long before the appalling events of 7 October 2023, then maybe the horror that was visited upon the 2.4 million men, women and children who are illegally confined within the open-air prison south of Ashdod could have been averted. The awful death and destruction was entirely avoidable if Western leaders had behaved decently, and insisted on following international humanitarian law at all times and for all peoples.

Norman Finkelstein has always been driven by what he himself calls "a visceral detestation of falsehood, in particular when it is put in the service of power and human life hangs in the balance". Right from the beginning when Norman first appeared in print I have been in awe of his extraordinary analytical power with its great attention to detail. I will never forget how as a young scholar doing his doctoral dissertation on the theory of Zionism he demolished Joan Peters's "From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine". This book, published in 1983, promising to revolutionize our understanding of the conflict, received glowing praise from the Who's Who of American Arts and Letters (Saul Bellow, Elie Wiesel, Barbara Tuchman, Lucy Dawidowicz, and others). and became a national best seller in the USA. The central thesis of Peters's book, apparently supported by nearly two thousand notes and a recondite demographic study, was that Palestine had been virtually empty on the eve of Zionist colonization and that, after Jews made the deserted parts of Palestine they settled bloom, Arabs from the neighbouring states and other parts of Palestine migrated to the Jewish areas and pretended to be indigenous. Here was the, as it were, scientific proof that Golda Meir had been right after all: there was no such thing as Palestinians. As it happened "From Time Immemorial" was a colossal hoax. Cited sources were mangled, key numbers in the demographic study falsified and large swaths plagiarized from Zionist propaganda tracts. Documenting the hoax and the rather more onerous challenge of publicizing these findings in the media proved to be a turning point in Norman Finkelstein's life. From then on, his life in many ways became centered on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Norman paid the price for his courageous truth seeking, but he has never given up in the face of hostility and petty vindictiveness. His latest book "Gaza: an Inquest into its Martyrdom" is a detailed investigation and analysis of what has been done to the people of Gaza over the last 10 years. "What has befallen Gaza is a human-made human disaster. In its protractedness and in its starkness, in its unfolding not in the fog of war or in the obscurity of remoteness but in broad daylight and in full sight, in the complicity of so many, not just via acts of commission but also, and especially, of omisson it is moreover a distinctively evil crime." The only thing I want to add to the previous 7 reviewers is, that "Gaza: an Inquest Into Its Martyrdom" provides indispensable documentation of the war crimes that have been committed and will be of great help to the prosecutors of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. A few days ago I listened to Normal Finkelstein addressing a Norwegian audience in Oslo as part of the tour publicizing his book. Recounting the horrors of "Cast Lead" and "Protective Edge" obviously affects him emotionally. He is trying to preserve the memories of all those innocent women, children and men in Gaza, whose lives were snuffed out. But emotions are never allowed to cloud the facts, because the facts provide the solid evidence base of this important book. Here is a thoroughly decent human being, a truth seeker, who deserves our respect and admiration.

This book is a highly engaging and insightful read into the atrocious treatment Gaza and the Palestinians endure daily by the racist Israeli occupation. Grounded in factual source material, it is a damming indictment of how Israel, created as a state with the help of Holocaust survivors, attempts to do unto others that which was done unto them. The book shreds the absolutely rampant and completely pathetic Israeli justifications for imposing genocidal practices on Gaza, exposing Israeli occupation as nothing more than brutal colonialism, disgusting racism, and racial superiority. What has been done to Gaza is a disgraceful stain upon the world’s consciousness, and defines the state that Israel has become, which Finkelstein superbly illustrates throughout. It also shatters Israeli attempts at victimhood. Imagine imposing a crushing blockade on Gaza since 2006, denying the population food, water and medical supplies, destroying their airport, closing borders, conducting targeted assassinations, killing tens of thousands of women and children, and then having the gall to cry about being victims of “Arab aggression”! Anyone who wishes to understand the Palestinian plight must read this book, including those who are committed to concepts of international law and human rights who may not have a sympathy to either side.

As the title reads, I haven't finished the book just yet, but I don't need to finish it in order to write this review. The scholarship of Norman Finkelstein is hallmark for what scholarship should be. Norman Finkelstein lives by the motto "facts are stubborn things" and he does not shy away from them. He has also said that "the truth is revolutionary", an old line that has been said for far longer. The facts presented in this book are the truth about Gaza, a military experimental concentration camp for Israel to occasionally "mow the lawn" in to establish a deterrence capacity and what is happening now is nothing new, it is an old tale told again. During Operation Cast Lead, Israel killed some 1,300 Palestinians, during Protective Edge, around 2,300 Palestinians. During the current "operation" (which I have read is titled in IDF circles "Crossed Swords") runs the tally at 30,000+ as of writing. Professor Finkelstein chronicles a great deal of things that have been done to Gaza, and it can be painful and a well of cynicism to read this book but is necessary. If not for what is happening now then for the memories of the many thousands of dead Palestinians of the past. Free Palestine. End apartheid. Great work to you, Professor Norman G. Finkelstein.

Finkelstein may be controversial (because he dares to rock the boat and make waves), but he is NEVER wrong. He always applies a forensic approach to any work or analysis he undertakes and this offering is no different. It’s an important addition to one’s reading if you’re serious about really, truly understanding what is happening in Gaza today, and why. Buy it immediately if not sooner.