Norman Finkelstein responds

I don't wish to respond to pure polemics and cliches (I mean, how original and new this line that extreme left is like extreme right? Like, I have not heard that one before? And what is the relevance? I am trying to reserve my fire at Norman because I still believe that he suffered greatly from outspokenness against Israeli propaganda, and because for years I assumed that he and I were in the same trench.  I still don't doubt his motives but think that he is in error, big time)  But I will say this: yes, international law has not bothered Israel one bit and some international legal experts at the US government were able to come up with interpretations that made torture to be consistent with Geneva conventions (and one of those legal experts teaches at UC, Berkeley law school). That is also international law.  And I never thought that the battle against Zionism is purely legal anyway even if "international law" and its sacred texts nullified Zionism in theory.  The institutions and apparatuses of power of Zionism will be eventually dismantled the way they were set up: by force.  If international law can be useful in some cases, that is fine but the notion that we should modify the just cause of the liberation of all of Palestine because we need to fit the goal into the Zionist interpretation of what international law is, is just silly.