.






"Earlier this week, strange emails began arriving. They were tight, hate-filled, sarcastic, insulting, and very “wordy.” I could not understand why they started arriving now, instead of last week, for example. Then, all became clear when I found out that Norman Finkelstein, the infamous darling of the Hate Israel crowd had reprinted my piece Our Eternal Struggle which you may read HERE. However, Finkelstein, titled the piece: Who Would Ever Have Thought That a Cow Could Write the Alphabet?



Long ago, I had been told that Finkelstein had also attacked me in his book Beyond Chutzpah (which, I must admit, I have not read). But I did read some of the offending passages. And, as I quickly scanned the book, I realized that Finkelstein was mimicking an academic book, not actually writing one. Like many in the postmodern academy, the work had a huge and requisite number of footnotes and specialized in very long, often incomprehensible paragraphs—none of which advanced knowledge or was often true. Ersatz knowledge for an Orwellian time. I chose not to respond to Finkelstein because my friend and colleague, Alan Dershowitz, was doing just fine on that score.



Thus, ‘tis courtesy of Finkelstein that I received a few rather twisted letters. Here are three, just so my readers will know what’s “out there.” I dunno. Methinks that Finkelstein himself might have penned these miserable missives—or that his style of pseudo-academic sarcasm and utter lack of brevity is like an infectious disease; his followers, those who are attracted by him, seem to have caught the bug. Two of these three letter writers identify themselves as Jews. Perhaps these are faux-email addresses. But maybe these are real people with very real problems. If we don’t stand up to them, their problems become our problems."







.