Why I Took Down Norman Finkelstein on “Piers Morgan Uncensored” (2025)

• By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
• Published February 20, 2024

Norman Finkelstein has a decent claim to be regarded as the foremost ÖÐÎÄ×ÖÄ» antisemite in America. His 2000 Book, The Holocaust Industry, argued that the world ÖÐÎÄ×ÖÄ» community uses the murder of six million Jews to shake down governments like Germany and Switzerland for cash, as well as to protect Israel from its repeated attempts at genocide of the Palestinians.

Finkelstein believes that the principal reason for Israel’s existence is the elimination of the entire Palestinian population. He first accused Israel of genocide in 1982 during the first Lebanon War. This would become a recurring theme, with him accusing Israel of attempted genocide in 2009, 2012, 2014, and now, of course, after October 7.

When I debated him on Piers Morgan this week, I remarked that we Jews seem to really suck at genocide. Having been engaged in its attempt, according to Finkelstein, for the last 40 years, the Palestinian population in the Gaza has grown by 1.5 million residents and Judea and Samaria by at least one million. When Bashar Al Assad attempted his genocide of Arabs fighting his regime, he was able to efficiently murder some 600,000 Arabs in just three years, using bombs, mustard gas, and biological agents.

Like sports and public relations, clearly, we Jews must add genocide to the list of things at which we truly fail.

Finkelstein had no response.

But something he did have a response to was the savage murder of 1,200 on October 7. Within hours of the first reports of the barbaric atrocities, Finkelstein penned these words: “It warms every fiber of my soul—the scenes of Gaza’s smiling children as their arrogant ÖÐÎÄ×ÖÄ» supremacist oppressors have, finally, been humbled. The stars above in heaven are looking kindly down. Glory, glory, hallelujah. The souls of Gaza go marching on!”

I’ve been in the business of defending Israel and fighting antisemites for more than three decades. These are easily the most vile, grotesque, and monstrous words I have encountered written by a Jew. Period.

Between me and Piers Morgan, we challenged “Professor” Finkelstein on his vomit-inducing celebration of women being shot in the vagina, many gang-raped, children beheaded, and whole families burned to death. Finkelstein’s response was that this was written early on October 7,Ìýwhen he thought that only 50 Jews had been murdered. Had he known that 1,200 had died, he might not use the same language today. When Morgan challenged him as to why, then, he had never removed the celebratory words, he said they were now part of the historical record, suggesting a man like him never lies.

Hmmm.

Now, it was my turn.

“So Professor Finkelstein. We’ve now established that the number of Jews that needs to die in order to provoke your ire is 51 or more. So when millions of people the world over marched after the murder of George Floyd, no doubt you refused to march because another 50 black men or women, at the very least, needed to die gruesomely before it could be condemned.

“Second, you now admit that, amid your fabricated protestations that you are a real scholar and someone who values fact, you actually wrote about how the angels in heaven are singing about murdered Jews before you even knew the facts! A great historian like you decided to just blabber on how wonderful it was that ÖÐÎÄ×ÖÄ» women were found burned to death with their legs open, their underwear removed, and their legs spread apart, before you knew anything else about the attacks. And when you later discovered the full horrors of what happened, you refused to correct your celebratory pronouncement because your false history was to be treated as fact.

“Third, and finally, you admit that Arab/Palestinian children are being indoctrinated to hate Jews and celebrate their decapitation and incineration, just as you wrote: innocent Arab children were smiling as the Jews were exterminated. Sounds a lot like Hitler youth to me.”

Again, Finkelstein had no response. He blabbered on, as is his wont, in a coma-inducing monotone, trying his best, like a befuddled prize fighter, to run out the clock in the hope that the sixty-minute show would end before the knockout punch.

But I wasn’t finished with this cretin yet.

Norman Finkelstein is to Hamas what Tucker Carlson is to Vladimir Putin, just infinitely more so. Not just a useful idiot, but someone who has become virtually complicit in their crimes.

Finkelstein, the Holocaust “scholar,” calls universally reviledÌýÌýÌý“a very good historian”. The reason Finkelstein gets away with constantly cheering the murder of Jews is because he has always invoked his own family’s Holocaust history, including his parents who are Holocaust survivors.

But if the Holocaust is a hoax, what then is Finkelstein hiding behind?

Indeed, Finkelstein believes that “Holocaust denial should be taught in university and preferably by a Holocaust denier” in order “to inoculate students” against it.

Aha. So the best way to teach American high school students about slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation is to bring in David Duke as a professor to teach how Martin Luther King was a shake-down artist who tried to get American multinational corporations to fork up billions of dollars in reparations for fraudulent claims of American slavery that actually never happened.

Professor Peter Novick of Chicago, a renowned scholar of the Holocaust whom Finkelstein attributes as a source his disgusting and revolting bookÌýThe Holocaust Industry, said that Finkelstein’s work is “trash.”

Which all begs a question: Why did I give media oxygen to a man who calls Israel an “insane state,” a state that “has come out of theÌýboilsÌýof theÌý[sic]Ìýhell, a satanic state”? Why would I share a stage with a man who said that he “believes Hezbollah has the right to target Israeli civilians if Israel persists in targeting civilians until Israel ceases its terrorist acts”?

Here is why.

There is a famous axiom that says “Jews are news,” which explains why Israel, a tiny grain of sand on the earth’s surface, is on the front page of The New York Times nearly every day. My own corollary to that saying is this: “If Jews are news, then ÖÐÎÄ×ÖÄ» antisemites always get the brightest headlights.”

Besides George Washington, is there any American general more famous in the American revolution than Benedict Arnold? Is there any American who during World War II never heard of Tokyo Rose?

Traitors in general, and ÖÐÎÄ×ÖÄ» traitors in particular, are huge news and will always be given massive platforms. That’s why w have to expose them.

This is the case with Finkelstein, an academic joke with no tenure who made his name saying that Jews use the Holocaust to get cash.

It’s fairly easy to prove. In 2016 Finkelstein gave an interview where he said, “One BDS leader toldÌýDemocracy Now!, ‘Why debate Finkelstein? He’s not important. We should debate important people.’ I used to give 40 talks a year. Now I give maybe four.’”

Get it? Finkelstein makes money off his hatred of Jews and Israel. And as he became more irrelevant – after all, how many times can you accuse Israel of genocide before it becomes repetitive and tiresome and the media begins to roll its eyes? – he had to up the ante by becoming ever more extreme in his hatred of Jews until… October 7, where he actually sang “Glory Hallelujah” as more than 1200 people were being butchered.

That’s why we have to debate and digitally take down deceptive haters like Norman Finkelstein and his ilk. Because the one thing we Jews have learned about our history is that there isn’t a single lie told about us that the world isn’t prepared to believe.

Two thousand years ago, the world said we murdered God.

Come again? the Jews thought. Murdered God? How can you possibly kill God? God is omnipotent and all-powerful. God is infinite. We Jews couldn’t even defeat the Romans. How would we kill God? No one, we concluded, is going to believe that.

Yet for two thousand years they murdered us for killing Jesus and countless people believed it.

Then they came along and said, “You Jews are vampires. You drink Christian children’s blood. You mix it into your matzos.” We Jews thought: blood? Human sacrifice? For God’s sake. Our Torah doesn’t even allow us to eat an animal’s blood, let alone human. And we were the first religion to outlaw human sacrifice, which was common throughout the ancient world. Nobody will believe it.

Yet the blood libel exists until today.

Not finished yet, the world said, “You Jews caused the Black Death, the Bubonic Plague, claiming one third of the earth’s inhabitants, by poisoning all the wells.”

Our response: You’re kidding, right? We drink the same water as you. There aren’t enough Jews in the world to poison all the wells. What the hell are you talking about?

But none of that stopped Europeans from massacring thousands of Jews in pogroms over the Black Death.

And now, here we are, two thousand years later, with clownish academics and monotonous losers like Norman Finkelstein saying that Israel is a gang of Nazis.

We ignore dangerous men like him at our own peril.

I took no joy in disgracing a fellow Jew on international TV as a farcical liar and ignoramus. But Never Again means Never Again.

Never Again will we be annihilated. Never Again will we be libeled. Never Again will we be homeless. And Never Again will we allow the sacred memory of the six million to be desecrated.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, “America’s Rabbi,” is the author of the best-sellers “The Israel Warrior,” “Kosher Hate”, “The Fed-Up Man of Faith” and “Wrestling with the Divine”, both of which deal with challenging God in the face of human suffering. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @RabbiShmuley.