U.S. academic and author Norman Finkelstein met with Hezbollah’s top official on a visit to Lebanon.
Finkelstein, author of “The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering,” is on a weeklong visit to Lebanon. On Monday he met with Hezbollah’s commander in southern Lebanon, Nabil Kaouk, The Associated Press reported.
A vociferous critic of Israel, Finkelstein resigned as a political science professor at Chicago’s DePaul University last year when he was denied tenure after his views and scholarship came under fire.
“After the horror and after the shame and after the anger there still remains a hope, and I know that I can get in a lot of trouble for what I am about to say, but I think that the Hezbollah represents the hope. They are fighting to defend their homeland,” Finkelstein told reporters, according to AP.
Finkelstein toured the sites of some of the heaviest fighting during the Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006 as well as Palestinian refugee camps, including Sabra and Shatila.
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