From right to left: Norman Finkelstein, Max Blumenthal, Miko Peled, Gideon Levy, and David Sheen. (Al Jazeera)
“The only right that Israelis have is the right to pack up and leave Palestine.”
Norman Finkelstein
We think it doesn't need much introduction. There are many voices around the world that have criticized Zionism and its replacement political and social project in different ways and angles, but this criticism gains special importance when it comes from Jewish influencers, those whom Zionism claims to represent and speak on their behalf. Many of these influential people were not satisfied with criticizing Israel's policies and its bloody crimes against the Palestinians, but they went further by dismantling the roots of the Zionist project itself, and refuting the pretexts under which the Zionists usurped the land of Palestine (1).
Norman Finkelstein
Finkelstein may be the most prominent face in this report, as you must have seen him more than once in clips circulating on social media platforms, perhaps the most important of which is his famous sermon about “Crocodile Tears” at Case Western University in the US state of Ohio in 2008, which gained him his relative fame. In the Arab world, it explained the inability of the Zionists to argue with him for the simple reason that he is immune from traditional accusations of anti-Semitism, since he is Jewish, and comes from a family whose members survived the Holocaust and Nazi concentration camps, from which his father escaped from the most famous of them, Auschwitz (1) (2) ( 3).
This leads you to the second reason why Finkelstein's media lectures and interventions are so important despite their scarcity and the algorithmic restrictions on them over the years. It is the fact that the man, unlike many of the Arab theorists on this issue, is not burdened with the usual legacy of cultural persecution. He cannot be blackmailed with charges of terrorism or historical fallacy or claiming that he has some interest in championing the Palestinian right, and this is what makes him a difficult figure in debates and discussions. Regarding issue (4)(5)(6).
Finkelstein considers Noam Chomsky, the American Jewish thinker and the fiercest critic of US foreign policies, especially its policies towards the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, as his moral compass. Finkelstein has written several important books about the Palestinian issue, including “The Rise & Fall of Palestine,” which contains his personal memoirs about his visits to the West Bank during the first intifada, in addition to several other books about “Gaza” specifically, which are devoted to He studied it in the last decades of his career, perhaps the most famous of which is “Gaza: An Inquest into its Martyrdom.” (3)
In the same year that Finkelstein delivered his famous “Crocodile Tears” speech, he was arrested as he landed at Ben Gurion Airport to visit a friend, and the Israeli internal security service known as Shin Bet interrogated him for twelve hours, without a lawyer or legal representative of any kind, regarding what They called him “his connections to Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda,” after which a decision was issued to deport him and prevent him from entering the country for ten years (7) (8) (9).
The Peled brothers (Miko & Nurit Peled)
“I am very surprised when I hear people demanding a ceasefire. I feel as if we have become programmed to lower our standards to the point that prevents us from achieving any progress in the long term. A ceasefire must be self-evident. The real demand is the dismantling of the Israeli apartheid state.”
Miko Peled in a lengthy interview with American broadcaster Brianna Joy-Gray
Like Finkelstein, both Miko Peled and Nurit Peled have a biography that gives them almost absolute immunity in the matter. They are Jewish brother and sister to a Zionist father who was one of the first Zionist war generals, Matti Peled, who later defected to defend the rights of The Palestinians, although his defense was not with the same ferocity and ferocity as his sons (10) (11).
Perhaps you already know “Nurit” because we devoted a long special report to her before, and you know that she lost her daughter, “Smadar,” in an attack carried out by members of the Hamas movement in 1997. As for “Miko,” he is an activist, one of the usual faces in video clips as well, and the author of several books, most notably "The General's Son: A Journey of an Israeli in Palestine", in which he explains the journey of his transformation from an Israeli extremist who grew up on the propaganda of the Zionist entity and his false vision of the world, to a man who believes that the only solution to the current situation is to dismantle That irrevocably occupied entity (12) (13).
Gideon Levy
The most famous Israeli journalist outside Israel, and writer for the newspaper "Haaretz", almost the only left-wing platform remaining in the Israeli media, and the one who most highlighted the evils of the occupation and its violations, and she had several important contributions in the context of the current aggression, when she documented the official Israeli lies regarding the number of deaths. From the occupation army, or when it revealed the low standards of investigation and accuracy during what it called “the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza” (14) (15) (16).
Levy gave several lectures that aimed to dismantle and explain the prevailing mentality and psychology of the citizens of the occupation, how they live with the occupation as a reality, and how they ignore it despite it being at the heart of their lives, and answer questions such as: What are the elements of the political spectrum of the occupying state? How does the audience react to it? Did intellectual fascism and racism control seven million Israelis? In addition to several books, the most famous of which is “The Punishment of Gaza,” published in 2010 (17)(18)(19)(20)(21).
What is interesting about the lectures of Levy and other journalists like him who oppose the occupying power from within is that they give us a completely different outlook with unique motives, and expose us to information that is not usually available, firstly, by virtue of language, and secondly, our isolation from the occupying state, in addition to the most important advantage, which is clarifying the size and extent of internal intellectual conflicts. Which reveals many contradictions among Jews around the world, and even among the Jews of Israel themselves or the Jews who were born and raised in it before they left it or disbelieved in Zionism.
David Sheen
The above also applies strongly to David Shinn, the Canadian-Israeli journalist and researcher, who succeeded, through several international lectures and constant blog posts, in deconstructing the political society of the occupying state in a more detailed and precise way, and in forming a coherent narrative about major questions, such as the purpose of the establishment of the state, its current goals, and the conflict. Between the extremist Orthodox Jews and the so-called “liberal Zionism”, the political ties with the Zionist terrorist groups, the most prominent faces of religious extremism in the occupation society, and their perceptions of what they call the “End Times War” (22).
In one of those lectures, a female audience member asked him a simple question, but at the same time it embodied the internal conflict experienced by Israelis who oppose the occupation: “If Israel were as terrible as you describe... why do you hold its nationality and live in it?” Shin's answer was an expression of the same contradiction. He found no reasons other than the fact that he has friends and family there that are difficult to separate from even if they differ from his views on the matter, and the fact that he loves the atmosphere, the food and the weather, and believes that Palestinians and Jews can live in peace together under one authority that guarantees full rights. For everyone, but the most important thing for him is the need to be close to everything that happens and follow it closely, because it keeps him in touch with the topics of his research and lectures (22).
What also distinguishes Shin is his independence, which allows him to cooperate with several platforms that cover the issue objectively, including joint reports with Ali Abu Nimah, the famous editor of the Electronic Intifada, and intermittent collaborations with platforms such as Grayzone. And the Palestine Chronicle. Among them was the famous denial of the order of the occupation general, Barak Hiram, to fire tank artillery on the occupation prisoners in one of the settlements during the attacks of October 7, and then his lie about the order (23) (24) (25) (26).
Max Blumenthal
“Max” is the founder of the aforementioned “Gray Zone” platform, and he is a Jewish journalist, researcher, and blogger, who specializes in exposing Zionist propaganda and the ongoing violations and crimes against Palestinians on a large scale, and engaging in conflicts with Zionist ideologues and exposing their networks of relationships and interests. He has previously collaborated with newspapers such as “The Nation,” “Los Angeles Times,” and “New York Times” (27)(28).
Over the course of his long career in opposing the occupation and exposing its history, Max branched out into military techniques as well, and you can easily see this in his blog posts about the weapons used to kill Gaza civilians, in addition to being one of the first to be alone in reporting on the “Hannibal Protocol” and its application during the October 7 attacks. /October, which requires “the elimination of potential prisoners to prevent enemies from using them in prisoner exchanges,” an issue that has long caused huge international and political embarrassment to the occupying state.
Max recently conveyed his media battle in order to refute the falsehood of the official American and British narrative about the Houthis, which is used to justify a new round of bombing targeting various cities in Yemen, under the slogan of “securing international shipping lines.”
New Historians: Avi Shlaim and Ilan Pappe
It was Benny Morris, the Zionist historian, who coined the term “new historians” in a research paper in 1988, by which he meant a wave of historians who challenged the official occupation narrative about the events before the Nakba and the establishment of the occupying state (29). According to Morris, the term describes a group that personally includes him, Ilan Pappe, Avi Shlaim, and Simha Flaban. Morris is considered the most biased towards the occupying state in his conclusions, unlike Pappe and Shlaim. It is enough for you to know that he still describes himself as a Zionist, meaning that he believes in the necessity of establishing an inclusive state for the Jews in the land of Palestine according to the definition promoted by the occupying state.
The story began in 1978 when the occupying authority released thousands of official documents relating to the events before and after the Nakba, which Pappé later used to document the terrorist crimes upon which the occupying state was founded in his two famous books, “10 Myths About Israel” and “Ten Myths About Israel.” “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,” which made him the most credible and reliable among the new historians, in addition to giving him a very strong argument because he relied on official documents from the occupation archives, whose authenticity can be traced and proven (30) (31) (32) ).
The list goes on
The list also includes military analysts such as Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector, and John Mearsheimer, a distinguished American professor of international relations and author of the book “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policies” (The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy), American journalist Abbey Martin, English journalists Owen Jones, and Michael Walker, owner of the Novara Media channel on YouTube, And many others who will automatically begin to appear in the nominations as soon as you immerse yourself in this world (35) (36).
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Sources
1- Norman Finkelstein’s post – Facebook
2- “I will not remain silent while Israel commits its crimes against the Palestinians!” -Islam Channel
3- Books by “Norman G. Finkelstein” - Amazon
4- “Piers Morgan” confronts “Norman Finkelstein” on Israel and Palestine – Piers Morgan Uncensored
5- Norman Finkelstein’s must-watch clip about Israel and Palestine - Russel Brand
6- Norman Finkelstein and Eli Lake debate - Comedy Cellar USA
7- An American academic is deported and banned from entering Israel - The Guardian
8- Norman Finkelstein’s long campaign...the feisty critic of Israel takes a new turn - New York Intelligencer
9- Blacklisted academic Norman Finkelstein: “Gaza is the largest concentration camp in the world!” -The Intercept
10- “The General’s Son: An Israeli’s Journey in Palestine” with “Miko Peled” – MIT Center for International Studies
11- “Does Israel have a right to exist?” -Bad Faith
12- Miko Peled’s official account - Youtube
13- Instilling hatred...what do children study in the Oasis of Democracy? - Al Jazeera
14- The Israeli Defense Forces says that there have been 1,593 soldiers injured since October 7, but hospital data say that the number is much higher! - Haaretz
15- “I was there, in Kfar Azza...and the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza is not the solution!” - Haaretz
16- Imposing sanctions on indiscriminate bombing in Gaza would be Israel’s second defeat - Haaretz
17- How do Israelis live with the reality of occupation? "Gideon Levy"
18- Israeli journalist Gideon Levy explains how the Israeli press failed to clarify the truth about the aggression against Gaza – Democracy Now!
19- “Gedgon Levy”: Israeli society and the occupation without end - Abbey Theater
20- Gideon Levy’s official account – X
21- The book “The Punishment of Gaza” by “Gideon Levy” - Amazon
22- Lecture by “David Shin” | Deciphering Israeli Politics – De Balie
23- An Israeli general killed the Israelis on October 7 and then lied about it - John Menadue
24- An Israeli fugitive lives in a luxurious house in Florida that he bought with stolen money - The Grayzone
25- An Israeli who fled to the United States after being accused of extortion listens to the confession of the killer of “Alex Odeh” – The Palestine Chronicle
26- David Sheen’s official account – X
27- Max Blumenthal’s official account – X
28- Reports by Max Blumenthal - Grayzone
29- Rewriting history; New Historians and Societal Criticism – Karolinum
30- Review | "New Historians" | Neil Kaplan - Jstor
31- The new historians in Israel and their political role - Open Edition Journals
32- Fifty years from the lens of the “new historians” in Israel - Middle East Research & Information Project
33- “We need a one-state solution!” Professor Avi Shlaim destroys the myth of Israel – Owen Jones
34- Scott Ritter’s official account – X
35- Books by “John Mearsheimer” - Amazon
36- Abby Martin’s official account – X
37- Owen Jones official channel - Youtube
38- “Novara Media” official channel - Youtube
Source: Al Jazeera