Finkelstein managed it brilliantly. He knew Piers would take him out of context, and phrased everything very well to avoid getting hit by a ‘gotcha’.
I think he may have made a slight error at the end when Piers asked him what he thought his late parents would think about his statement on the Oct 7 events. He gave that quote and then said that Palestinians have a right to hate their oppressors. While I think that’s true, it’s pretty weak as a response because one could easily reject the idea that every Israeli is an oppressor (just as not every German who was carpet bombed in Dresden was a Nazi or even supported the regime). I appreciate that he probably could have phrased it a little better with more time.
I disagree with the premise of judging his phrasing here, there’s no wording a person in Norman’s position, opposing the main stream talking points, could use that will be immune to deliberate misinterpretation. It seems to me that criticizing him for phrasing something sub-optimally or whatever is kinda ceding a lot of ground to the right, because it sets up a framing where the reason for right backlash is because leftists didn’t do a good enough job, know what I mean?
Edit: clarity
Yeah, that is true. I might be bing out a bit. Our victory or defeat doesn’t rest on the correctness of our rhetoric.
