Dershowitz-Finkelstein affair

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Shortly after the publication of the book The Case for Israel, Norman Finkelstein accused its author, Alan Dershowitz of "fraud, falsification, plagiarism and nonsense", claiming that Dershowitz had plagiarized Joan Peters's controversial book From Time Immemorial. Finkelstein expanded his findings in a book entitled Beyond Chutzpah. Dershowitz has denied the charges. Former Harvard president Derek Bok exonerated Dershowitz of the plagiarism charges,[1] while Amherst professor Sayres Rudy claimed that the charges were justified.[2]

Contents

[edit] Finkelstein's Criticisms of Dershowitz

In Beyond Chutzpah, Finkelstein provides evidence that in at least two instances, Dershowitz reproduces errors in Peters' citiation of original sources, and claims Dershowitz did not check the original sources he cited. The book was published by the University of California Press (UCP) on June 1, 2005 despite threats of legal action and an appeal to the Governor of California by Alan Dershowitz [1].

Finkelstein noted that in twenty instances that all occur within about as many pages, Dershowitz's book excerpts the same words from the same sources that Joan Peters used, largely in the same order. Several paragraph-long quotes that the two books share have ellipses in the same position, Finkelstein pointed out; and in one instance Dershowitz referenced the same page number as Peters, although he was citing a different edition(a 1996 edition) of the source, in which the words appear on a different page.[2].

Finkelstein suggests that this copying of quotations amounts to copying ideas, and plagiarism is defined as "passing off a source's information, ideas, or words as your own by omitting to cite them." [3]. "Finkelstein does not accuse Dershowitz of the wholesale lifting of someone else's words, but he does make a very strong case that Dershowitz has violated the spirit, if not the exact letter, of Harvard's prohibitions of the first three forms of plagiarism." (Michael C. Desch, The American Conservative, December 5, 2005) [4].

Noting Dershowitz's lack of knowledge about specific contents of his own book during a debate,[5] Finkelstein also claimed that Dershowitz could not have written the book, and may not have even read it. He later cited the presence of "unserious" references, including the web site for a documentary film [6] and an online high school syllabus [7], as further evidence that the book was ghostwritten.[8]

Despite the attention garnered by Finkelstein's accusation, the bulk of Beyond Chutzpah actually consists of an essay critiquing the "new anti-semitism" and longer chapters contrasting Dershowitz's arguments in The Case for Israel with the findings of mainstream human rights organisations, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, asserting proof that Dershowitz has lied, misrepresented and fabricated many of his points in order to protect Israel and hide its abundant record of human rights violations.

[edit] Dershowitz's Response

Dershowitz asked Harvard to investigate the charge of plagiarism and was exonerated. [9] Dershowitz threatened libel action over the charges in Finkelstein's book, and produced his handwritten book manuscript to debunk the claim that The Case for Israel was ghostwritten. As a result, Finkelstein was forced to switch publishers and remove all uses of the word "plagiarism." The charge that Dershowitz was not the true author of The Case for Israel was also removed, the publisher said, because "he couldn’t document that."[10]

Dershowitz says that Finkelstein is simply accusing him of good scholarly practice: citing references he learned of in Peters' book after having first consulted the original sources. Dershowitz also denies that he used any of Peters ideas without citation, noting that he cited Peters numerous times. If Dershowitz's claim that he always consulted the original sources is false, this would be contrary to the practice recommended in the Chicago Manual of Style as well as Harvard's student writing manual, but neither of these sources calls it "plagiarism."

James O. Freedman, the former president of Dartmouth, University of Iowa, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, defended Dershowitz, saying "I do not understand [Finkelstein’s] charge of plagiarism against Alan Dershowitz. There is no claim that Dershowitz used the words of others without attribution. When he uses the words of others, he quotes them properly and generally cites them to the original sources." He noted that this practice is recommended by the authoritative Chicago Manual of Style, (rule 17.274), and "is simply not plagiarism, under any reasonable definition of that word." [11]

Dershowitz says that Finkelstein's invents false charges in order to discredit supporters of Israel. "The mode of attack is consistent. Chomsky selects the target and directs Finkelstein to probe the writings in minute detail and conclude that the writer didn’t actually write the work, that it is plagiarized, that it is a hoax and a fraud." The fact that Dershowtiz states Noam Chomsky's involvement in Finkelstein's charges is consistent with his remark during the "Democracy Now" debate in which he states that Chomsky miseducates readers through his political books, to which Norman Finkelstein responded that "Dershowitz seemingly has a fascination with Mr.Chomsky and should concentrate on his present debate partner without directing comments at people who are not present and otherwise unable to defend themselves". He notes that Finkelstein has leveled the same kind of charges against many others, calling at least 10 "distinguished Jews 'hucksters,' 'hoaxters,' 'thieves,' 'extortionists, and worse."[12]

Dershowitz's recent book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, The Case for Peace, contains a chapter rebutting Finkelstein's charges, which Dershowitz has made available on his web site.[13]

[edit] Responses and opinions

Finkelstein argues in an October 3, 2003 letter to the Harvard Crimson that Dershowitz reproduced exactly two of Peters' mistakes, and made one relevant mistake of his own. In quoting Mark Twain, "Dershowitz cites two paragraphs from Twain as continuous text, just as Peters cites them as continuous text, but in Twain’s book the two paragraphs are separated by 87 pages." Furthermore, still quoting Twain, although Dershowitz cites a different edition of Twain's Innocents Abroad than Joan Peters cites, "the relevant quotes do not appear on these pages in the edition of Twain’s book that Dershowitz cites." The quotes do, however, appear on the pages Joan Peters cites for her edition of Innocents Abroad. Finally, Finkelstein notes that "Quoting a statement depicting the miserable fate of Jews in mid-19th century Jerusalem, Peters cites a British consular letter from 'Wm. T. Young to Viscount Canning.' Dershowitz cites the same statement as Peters, reporting that Young 'attributed the plight of the Jew in Jerusalem' to pervasive anti-Semitism. Turning to the original, however, we find that the relevant statement did not come from Young but, as is unmistakably clear to anyone who actually consulted the original, from an enclosed memorandum written by an 'A. Benisch' that Young was forwarding to Canning." Finkelstein concludes that "It would be impossible for anyone who checked the original source[s] to make th[ese] error[s]." Dershowitz has not responded to these charges, but characterized the excerpts as quotations that historians and scholars of the region cite routinely, such as Mark Twain and the reports of government commissions.

The conclusion Finkelstein drew from the similarities was that Dershowitz had not researched his sources directly, but instead in twenty instances had used Peters' book and without crediting her. Finkelstein found a mis-attribution that he said supported this conclusion. In writing his book, Dershowitz had attributed an Orwellian neologism to Orwell himself, when actually Peters had coined it in her book in an allusion to Orwell, in which she mentioned him by name (her neologism "turnspeak" resembles the 1984 author's "Newspeak"). The mistake by Dershowitz, Finkelstein said, fit a pattern of cribbing from Peters while not crediting her. Academic propriety demanded that she be credited, he said.

Norman Finkelstein attempts to debunk The Case for Israel in his book Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Misuse of History, which was published by University of California Press on August 28, 2005. Dershowitz responded to the imminent publication of Finkelstein's book by threatening the publisher[14], claiming it contained massive libel and stating that the book should not be published. Additionally, Dershowitz asked California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in a letter to quash the book[15], but Schwarzenegger's legal advisor replied that the governor will not intervene in issues of academic freedom. Dershowitz responded in his book The Case for Peace, and alleges a politically motivated campaign of vilification spearheaded by Chomsky, Finkelstein and Cockburn against several pro-Israel academics.

[edit] Others on the Controversy

On the basis of Finkelstein's comparisons, political commentator Alexander Cockburn joined him in concluding that Dershowitz had drawn his excerpts directly from Peters' book. This he characterized as unscholarly. Noting a footnote in which Dershowitz referred to the controversial status of Peters' book and said that he did not "rely" on it for "conclusions or data," Cockburn assessed Dershowitz furthermore as having more or less lied about what Cockburn and Finkelstein concluded he had done. Echoing Finkelstein's charge of plagiarism, Cockburn called on Harvard to fire Dershowitz as a professor.

Oxford academic Avi Shlaim has also been critical of Dershowitz, saying he believes that the charge of plagiarism "is proved in a manner that would stand up in court" (Times Higher Education Supplement, 16 December, 2005).

[edit] The $10,000 challenge

In an appearance on MSNBC's Scarborough Country, Dershowitz made the following challenge to Sam Husseini:

I will give 10,000 to the PLO in your name if you can find historical fact in my book that you can prove to be false. I issue that challenge, I issue it to you, I issue it to the Palestinian Authority, I issue it to Noam Chomsky to Edward Said [16].

Finkelstein replied to the challenge on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now!. He first started with "concrete facts which are not particularly controversial". Finkelstein cites Dershowitz as attributing to Israeli historian Benny Morris the figure of between 2,000 and 3,000 Palestinian Arabs who fled their homes from April to June, 1948, when the figures used by Morris actually give the range as 200,000 to 300,000. Dershowitz replied that the mistake could not have been intentional on his part, because he had used these numbers to counter a claim that no Arabs at all had left their homes on the orders of Arab officials during the interval he had been addressing, and because it would only have served his argument to have gotten the numbers right. "Obviously, the phrase '2,000 to 3,000 Arabs' refers either to a sub-phase [of the flight] or is a typographical error," Dershowitz said. It should be noted that Morris attributed nearly all of the flight of Palestinians which occurred during that phase of the 1948 war to fear of Jewish military actions, not to any orders from Arab leaders.

Finkelstein countered Dershowitz's claim on page 206 that "Israel is the only country in the Middle East to have abolished any kind of torture in fact as well as in law" by quoting The B'Tselem Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in Occupied Territories: "Torture. Interrogation by torture is absolutely prohibited by Israeli and international law. Despite this, Israeli security forces breached the prohibition and torture Palestinians during the interrogation." Dershowitz said: "B'Tselem is wrong because they define torture in a way that would include what the United States is doing." Finkelstein showed that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch also reached the same conclusion. Dershowitz said, "They are wrong." Next was Dershowitz's claim on page 126 that "There is no evidence that Israeli soldiers deliberately killed even a single civilian in Jenin." Finkelstein quoted Human Rights Watch as concluding that "there's prima facie evidence that Israel committed war crimes in Jenin. Many of the civilian killings documented by Human Rights Watch are mounted to unlawful or willful killings by the IDF." and "among the civilian deaths were those of Kamal Zgheir, a 57-year-old wheelchair bound man who was shot and run over by a tank on a major road outside the camp on April 10 even though he had a white flag attached to his wheelchair." Dershowitz said the HRW's report was wrong.

[edit] Other accusations and replies

In The Holocaust Industry, Finkelstein called Elie Wiesel a liar for claiming to have read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in Yiddish: according to Finkelstein, no translation of the work existed in Yiddish at the time. Dershowitz responded that this was not so: he alleged that one had been published in Warsaw in 1929, and claimed that he had seen a copy at the Harvard Library.[3]

Finkelstein described this latter claim as false and inept, writing that the only work by Kant in Yiddish owned by the library is a partial translation of the Critique of Practical Reason, a completely different work than the one referred to by Wiesel and Dershowitz.[4]

[edit] Some similarities between Dershowitz's and Peters' references

Here are two similarities between the books as an example. Far more are featured at Norman Finkelstein's webpage on the matter.

[edit] Similarity 1

The Case for Israel p. 17, "In the sixteenth century, according to British reports, 'as many as 15,000 Jews' lived in Safad, which was a 'center of rabbinical learning.'" (Source cited: Palestine Royal Commission Report, pp. 11-12.)

From Time Immemorial p. 178, "Safad at that time, according to the British investigation by Lord Peel's committee, 'contained as many as 15,000 Jews in the 16th century,' and was 'a centre of Rabbinical learning.'" (Source cited: Palestine Royal Commission Report, pp. 11-12.)

Both excerpts are somewhat misleading and commit the same error:

Palestine Royal Commission Report (i.e. the document that both books cite), "Safad, which according to Jewish tradition contained as many as 15,000 Jews in the sixteenth century, became a centre of Rabbinical learning..." [emphasis added] (Occurs on p.11, not pp.11-12 as cited.)

[edit] Similarity 2

The Case for Israel p. 20, "Several years later, the same consul attributed the plight of the Jew in Jerusalem to 'the blind hatred and ignorant prejudice of a fanatical populace,' coupled with an inability of the poverty-stricken Jewish community to defend itself either politically or physically." (Source cited: Wm. T. Young to Viscount Canning, January 13, 1842.)

From Time Immemorial p. 188, "In Palestine, [it] was reported: 'It is a fact that the Jewish Subjects... do not enjoy the privileges granted to them. This Evil may in general be traced...: I. To the absence of an adequate protection whereby they are more exposed to cruel and tyrannical treatment. II. To the blind hatred and ignorant prejudices of a fanatical populace....IV. To the starving state of numerous Jewish population.'" [emphasis in original] (Source cited: Wm. T. Young to Viscount Canning, January 13, 1842.)

[edit] References

  1. ^ Marcella Bombardieri, "Academic Fight Heads to Print", The Boston Globe, July 9, 2005.
  2. ^ Alexander Cockburn, "'Plagiarized!' 'Total Nonsense...'", The Nation, October 27, 2003; reproduced (without subscription barriers) in Norman Finkelstein's website.
  3. ^ Alan Dershowitz, "Letter to the Editor", The Harvard Crimson, October 2, 2003.
  4. ^ Norman Finkelstein, "Dershowitz Exposed Yet Again: The Critique of Pure Cant", Norman Finkelstein's website.

[edit] External links

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