[1][2] While still a graduate student at Princeton, Finkestein had published a critique of a book by Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial (1984), which claimed that Palestine had been largely empty in the early 20th century, and that both Jewish and Arab ethnic groups were immigrants.

[3] Some scholarly debate now focuses on much narrower questions such as whether what in Finkelstein's view was "ethnic cleansing" was the intentional consequence of Zionist policy or the unintentional by-product of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

[5] In his cover blurb for the publisher, Baruch Kimmerling, professor of sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote that Beyond Chutzpah is "the most comprehensive, systematic, and well-documented work of its kind.

[7] Stephanie Farmer writing for Arab Studies Quarterly in 2006 echoed Bishara, arguing that "Finkelstein' s examination reveals more than the dubious scholarship of Dershowitz", raising "important questions on the general lack of academic standards for Zionist scholars" and gets "the human rights record of the abuse of Palestinians to penetrate the bulwark of Zionism in the academy".

[8] In 2007, As'ad AbuKhalil in his review for Journal of Palestine Studies, wrote that "This is a book that should be recommended to all", as it successfully and carefully rebuts "the crude (and not-so-crude) elements of Israeli propaganda in the West".

[11] Summarising the second edition in The Guardian in 2008, Ian Pindar said "It's an academic spat of epic proportions, but while Finkelstein wins the moral argument, his combative tone, born of exasperation, is unlikely to calm the debate.