Norman Finkelstein - "The Israel-Palestine Conflict: What we van learn from Gandhi" - Part 2

This was the Maastricht University Tans Lecture given on 13 November 2008. It was recorded by Bernd Kapeller for the European Journalism Centre and Studium Generale. Norman Finkelstein is an independent academic of political science, specifically the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Shoah (the Holocaust). He argues that the Israel-Palestine conflict is among the least controversial in the contemporary world. He argues that a consensus exists among historians on the past, among human rights organizations in the present and among the legal-diplomatic community on the future of how to resolve the conflict. Among other ideas, he has posited the existence of a 'Holocaust Industry', and had a very public dispute with Alan Dershowitz which may have cost him tenure at DePaul University. In the second part of the lecture Finkelstein looks at aspects of Gandhi's philosophy of non-violent resistance. His focus lies on three key questions: Whom does Gandhi want to reach: the oppressors or the bystanders? How does he want to reach them: through the mind or through the heart? What needs to be done to reach them: to display suffering or to display dignity?