Political scientist Norman Finkelstein to Wisconsin: “There was no war in Gaza. There was genocide.”

Photos by Cherrie Hanson

Prominent political scientist and fierce critic of Israel, Norman Finkelstein, Ph.D., visited the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for a public conversation with Students for Justice in Palestine.

“The biggest falsehood about Gaza in the past 16 months is that Israel was at war with Hamas,” said political scientist and activist Norman Finkelstein, Ph.D., Feb. 6, to an audience of about 250 at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “It wasn’t a war and it wasn’t with Hamas. The goal Israel made absolutely clear was to destroy Gaza … to make it uninhabitable.”

Finkelstein made two appearances in Wisconsin last week at the invitation of Students for Justice in Palestine. He spoke at UWM Thursday afternoon and at UW-Madison that evening. Finkelstein also spoke in late January to Yale Political Union at Yale University, making the case that “the state of Israel is responsible for genocide.”

In the two-hour conversation at UWM, he provided detailed accounts of the history of Zionism, peace negotiations, the occupation of the Palestinian territories and the siege of Gaza. 

Finkelstein has re-emerged “as a prominent voice in the current protests and discussions” about the Israeli military’s destruction of Gaza, The Guardian reported in 2024. “Despite his vast knowledge of the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, his formal academic career was effectively destroyed by ideological adversaries due to his critiques of Israel.”

Photo courtesy HGA

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Student Union’s third floor resembled airport security Feb. 6, with metal detectors, police officers and dogs, due to threats received before a talk on the situation in Gaza by Norman Finkelstein, Ph.D.

The son of Jewish Holocaust survivors, Finkelstein, who has a doctorate from Princeton University, compared the plight of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation with Jews living under the Nazis in his 1996 book The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years. In it, he wrote about his visits to the West Bank during the First Intifada. He is the author of many books, including The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (2000); Gaza: An Inquest into its Martyrdom (2018); I Accuse! Herewith a Proof Beyond Reasonable Doubt that ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda Whitewashed Israel (2019); I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It: Politically Incorrect Thoughts on Cancel Culture and Academic Freedom (2022) and many others.

Heavy security

Finkelstein’s talk at UWM had heavy police protection, including metal detectors at the entrance, officers from the City of Milwaukee and the Milwaukee County Sherriff’s Department with bomb-sniffing dogs, and university security present due to “threats to UWM students’ safety,” an SJP press release reported on WisPolitics explained. Betar, a Zionist youth organization, made threats on X to disrupt the event.

“Betar Milwaukee has a history of targeting pro-Palestine students, including past intimidation campaigns against SJP members, such as distributing threatening flyers on campus and threatening to ‘give beepers’ to students in October 2024—a term linked to Israeli attacks in Lebanon,” the press release said. “Betar has also expressed that they will be ‘hand[ing] out beepers’ during their disruption of the (Finkelstein) event.”

The reference to beepers refers to simultaneous mass explosions across Lebanon and Syria in September that targeted electronic devices, killing 37 people and injuring 2,931, according to Amnesty International, which called for an international investigation. Israel is widely thought to be behind the attacks aimed at Hezbollah, CNN reported.

SJP hosts and organizers of the program requested not to be named. “The struggle for free speech and the struggle for Palestine are deeply connected, the SJP president said to the UWM audience.

“The repression of speech, the silencing of the word ‘genocide’ and crackdowns on campus activism are not just random acts. They are calculated efforts to suppress the truth. 

“This event was close to being shut down because of a variety of threats from pro-Israel groups who are scared of Dr. Finkelstein’s words … SJP, along with many other student orgs., are either on probation, at risk of suspension or are currently suspended due to the suppression of the Palestinian movement.

“We refuse to stop working for a free Palestine,” she said.

Despite the threats, Finkelstein’s audience at UWM appeared to be largely sympathetic to his message. They listened quietly, occasionally applauding.

While Finkelstein outlined Hamas’ efforts to cooperate with peace negotiations, the only heckler shouted, “What about suicide bombers?” then quickly darted out of the hall. 

Highlights from Dr. Finkelstein’s remarks

In a moderated discussion at UWM, Finkelstein shared observations, opinions and history with a multi-generational audience that included members of the Milwaukee community and UWM students. Below are abbreviated highlights of his remarks.

Intentional destruction of Gaza

Finkelstein discussed reading “a large number of compilations of statements from Israel’s senior officials down to the lowest level across the political spectrum. What comes across is mind-numbing, that the goal was to destroy Gaza.”

About military operations in Gaza, “They used to call them ‘mowings of the lawn.’ This time they said, “We are going to extricate every blade of grass by the roots.’” 

He highlighted a repeated pattern in Israel’s negotiations with Hamas since 2006, when Hamas won the parliamentary elections and, in effect, became the government. The phases of negotiation were: ceasefire, hostage exchange and “an easing of the brutal, criminal medieval blockade on Gaza. Every time, ceasefires happened; the lifting of the blockade did not.”

He recalled the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, a humanitarian flotilla on route to Gaza May 31, 2010. It carried materials, including cement because Israel did not allow it in, he said. Israeli commandos attacked, killing nine passengers aboard the flagship vessel. A tenth died later. “It evoked an international outcry and, with it, the promise to ease the blockade of Gaza. That never happened.

“So now we come to the present. There’s this three-stage agreement. As some of you’ll know, stages two and three are not even part of the public record. Just stage one has been published … Why was it signed? 

“In my opinion, a month before President Trump was inaugurated, he said all hell would break out if the hostages weren’t released. Well, he had two problems: One, it was a bit late in the day to threaten all hell because all hell had broken out under President Biden. 

“And, Number Two, as everybody knows, the Israeli genocide in Gaza gradually became unpopular even in the United States. President Trump didn’t want to begin his term of office like a monster. He doesn’t want the Gaza albatross on his watch. He’s not going to unleash even more firepower on the defenseless refugee child population.

On the other hand, he threatened all hell would break loose if the hostages weren’t released … He conveyed to Prime Minister Netanyahu that he had to have a hostage exchange.

“After the hostage exchange, it will all be forgotten,” Finkelstein said. “Israel did not spend 16 months to reduce Gaza to rubble to suddenly decide, along with John Lennon, let’s give peace a chance and rebuild Gaza. That’s not plausible. That’s not believable. One has to be honest about these things.”

Facing reality

“We have to have a firm handle on reality as we figure out how to go forward. Everybody in this room knows the picture is very grim,” Finkelstein said.

“It’s not grim because President Trump announced he is going to build a golf course and casino in Gaza. The grim part is a physical reality. The physical reality is Gaza is no more. Ninety-two percent of the homes in Gaza have either been destroyed or seriously damaged.”

He described previous Israeli operations in Gaza, each leaving more rubble than the one before. “In 2008, it was horror on a scale not seen before, with estimates of 600,000 tons of rubble. I wrote a little book on the topic. I took the title from an Israeli journalist named Gideon Levy, This Time We Went Too Far. 

In July and August 2014, “Operation Protective Edge was such a monstrosity that the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Peter Morrow, whose job was to tour war zones, said, ‘In all my professional life, I’ve never seen the level of destruction I saw in Gaza.’ The estimate was there was 2.5 million tons of rubble … and now we come to 50 million tons today.

“Mixed in are unexploded ordinance and toxic substances … The infrastructure was destroyed—the waste, sanitation, electricity—all systematically destroyed.”

Finkelstein described U.S. efforts to convince Egypt to allow a mass expulsion of Palestinians to be driven into the Sinai. 

When that didn’t work, “they tried an outright genocide, an outright mass killing,” Finkelstein said. “By any comparative reckoning, it was remarkably successful. If you look at standard indices, the number of civilians to combatants killed, number of children to total number killed, the number of women and children versus adult males killed, if you look at all the standard indices—number of journalists killed, number of medics killed, number of UN workers killed—by every measure, Gaza is in a class so completely its own.”

Gaza’s future

“From Day One, and I did a thousand interviews, you will see in everyone I said Israel’s goal was to make Gaza uninhabitable so the population has nothing to go back to. They were remarkably successful.

“I don’t know what will happen but does anyone seriously believe President Trump is going to insist the Israelis allow in humanitarian aid? Does anyone believe President Trump is going to insist Israel allows for the reconstruction of Gaza with the people remaining? It’s a very grim picture. How do we go forward?”

Speaking up for the Palestinians in Gaza is also about “seizing back your own freedom of speech,” he said.

Today, “when a small billionaire class can silence voices and curb academic freedom,” Finkelstein said he encourages students to “rely on themselves. Sometimes those with wisdom and experience are too pessimistic.” 

He advised students to learn lessons from the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. “I have no doubt (seizing your right to free speech) will put you on a collision course, not just with your college administrations, but with the Trump administration. And it’s going to be a very tough battle. 

“I’m old enough to remember what a battle it was to try to end the system of segregation in our own country, in the American South. It took courage beyond human comprehension. We are talking about people who had no protections. They found the courage.

“The other side has the money. They have the power. But we have the numbers. If we can organize those numbers, I believe we can leverage them.”

After hearing Finkelstein, “I had dueling feelings,” said Marquette University Professor Emeritus Jean Grow, who went to the West Bank in 2018 as a Palestinian American Research Center (PARC) scholar. “One was just very heavy. I knew in a general sense about the (Israeli military’s) three incursions into Gaza. To hear they called it, ‘Mowing the lawns’ and to hear it was part of a systematic effort was horrifying.

“On the other hand, it felt so freeing to hear what I had always suspected and seen glimpses of, said in a public forum by a scholar who’s clearly been looking into this issue for decades—there’s something empowering and freeing about that.”

 Norman Finkelstein, Ph.D., has been praised by prominent academics for his research.

“Having been in Israel and Palestine, it was horrible to see people caged in, standing in lines to go out,” Grow recalled. “I remember going to Bethlehem. We traveled on roads, often but not always dirt, that barely had two lanes, next to a parallel four-lane highway with lights for the Israelis. How is that okay?

“And you’d see with your own eyes, a village of living, breathing Palestinian families with a little school and farm, and realize they would be forced to move (for new Israeli settlements).

“And that was nothing compared to Gaza.”