In honor of Burns Night, Jonmikel and I celebrated in the traditional faux-intellectual manner practiced during numberous holidays 'round the world: we went to a lecture. Instead of pouring into a pub, eating innards stewed in sheep’s stomach (also known to wary tourists as haggis), and drowning our haggis sorrows in pints of ale, we poured into a brand-new (and Britishly low-tech and cramped) lecture hall to see a man who, according to various sources within the department of Middle Eastern Studies here at Edinburgh, is as entertaining as Barnum and Bailey and as intellectually stimulating as a MENSA IQ test. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we opted to enjoy a national Scottish holiday by seeing Dr. Norman Finkelstein, one of the foremost experts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and one of the proponents of the Palestinian cause. It also must be noted that he agrees with me on my stance that the Holocaust is exploited by Israel for petty political gains and was sacked from DePaul for saying so, hence the traveling lecturer bit.

In retrospect, it would have been vastly more entertaining to watch the silly college kids get Scottishly drunk, and I may have even learned something in the process.

I guess that is my way of saying that I was immensely disappointed with Dr. Finkelstein’s lecture. He was, regrettably and understandably under the weather that night, and so his charisma was underplayed (read: completely non-existent) and his voice and mannerisms were entirely un-engaging. Content aside, there was much paper-rustling, yawning and general fidgeting in the hall. But on the subject of his content, what he gave was, in effect, a 2 ½ hour-long Political Science 101 lecture on current politics of Israel. He pulled some right-wing and fairly obscure media quotes from the US, which I found interesting (in the sense that he presented them as main stream when, in fact, that couldn’t be further from the truth), but other than that, everything he said could be found in a freshman-year textbook.

Dr. Finkelstein is an expert in oversimplifying the situation in Israel by relying solely on the vague notion of international law to stamp out any opposing viewpoints. He used international law as if it were a concrete and enforceable idea set into motion by a complacent and law-abiding world system. He used international law as if, in reality, countries gave a damn. Most US political scientists have come to the realization that the UN is essentially ineffectual and that international law is more like a vague set of possible guidelines that a country might want to follow someday. Instead, they have a more practical focus: how to get the world to do what you want without the United Nations, the World Court, and all those simply theoretical international organizations. Europeans, on the other hand, have slowly begun to realize that colonization has ended abruptly, and that no European power even comes close to ruling the world or being a super-power; to compensate for their extreme helplessness in the world system, Europeans have an interesting dependence on the idea of international cooperation and cling wildly but (admirably) steadfast in their hope that one day the UN Charter won’t just be a list of sanguine suggestions. Until then, instead of focusing on applicable solutions to international problems, they approach crises as if the UN had real power, which, because it currently does not, lets said crises stagnant, escalate, or go away on their own after brutal and bloody civil wars or genocides. Effective, huh?

Let me interject here to say that I am not anti-UN. In fact, I supremely wish that the UN would have the kind of power it needs to control the world’s vicious conflicts; I will 100% support that kind of international organization. However, I am also a realist in the sense that I know it does not have that power and will not have that power in a very long time; at least until the US and China lose their permanent positions on the UN Security Council, if not even long after that. We have to face reality sometime, especially when it comes to politics. But I digress.

Dr. Finkelstein’s reliance on UN declarations and World Court rulings notwithstanding, I agree with all of his summations concerning the illegality of Israel’s actions regarding the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. In my case, “illegality” is moot; instead, I rely on grounds of immorality and it being just plain wrong, and I am even more incensed at the US administration’s unconditional support for a country that practices apartheid. Unfortunately, the situation in Israel and Palestine is not simple one of what’s right or wrong. Instead, you have 400,000 Israelis living in the Occupied Territories, some for generations now, and to just say that Israel’s occupation of this land is wrong and they need to withdraw is as immoral as kicking the Palestinians out in the first place. Those 400,000 plus Israeli settlers are victims of this war, also, in the sense that their own government is using them, regardless of whatever consequences there may be for them, to piss off the Palestinians and the Arabs at large and to lay claim over land that is not theirs. So what do you do with them? What does Dr. Finkelstein’s precious World Court have to say about them? On that point, the good doctor was (not)surprisingly silent. Because liberal intellectuals of his disposition do not like to think about the chinks their logic. Herein lies my extreme disappointment. I was promised fireworks and mind-numbing displays of vast human intelligence and lateral thinking; I was promised conflict and drama and scandals of global proportions; I was promised stumblingly innovative cutting-edge assessments. I was given, instead, the bare-bones, mainstream, European-textbook account of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Can you understand my despondency? I had heard nothing I hadn’t heard before.

Some advice to Dr. Finkelstein: you’ve recently written some very racy books on the “Holocaust industry.” When you’re in a room full of students who are already fairly well educated on the topics of the Middle East, talk about those findings. That way, when people stand up in applause at the end of the lecture, they won’t be standing just because they are a group of arrogant faux-intellectuals who think it makes them look smart and introspective. Though, probably, you’ll always have that at Uni.