March 10, 2006
Jewish students at Columbia University have protested against a speech by Norman Finkelstein, an academic critical of Holocaust restitution groups and Israel. Some of the dozens of protesters at Finkelstein’s speech in New York City on Wednesday evening held up two-sided red signs showing a picture of his face with a red heart, followed by the word “Hezbollah.” Others wore white T-shirts with signs reading “Norman Finkelstein: Your Hatred Is Not Wanted at Columbia.” Finkelstein, who is a professor at DePaul University in Chicago, argues that Israel and Jewish organizations exploited the memory of the Holocaust for financial and political gains. Critics say that Finkelstein, the son of survivors, minimizes the memory of the genocide.
