Finkelstein is not "controversial". He is the most benign researcher and has always said that Israel should exist as the Jewish State, opposed BDS and overall always had Chomskyite views, until very recently. He refuses to call Zionism colonialism. There is nothing controversial in his views, nothing even radical. Unlike Thomas Suarez or Miko Peled, he has never called for the dismantlement of Zionism and has never condemned Zionism as an ideology. Until recently, when he started to say things that suggest that he might have realized that this is not a project of national liberation, after all.