Dershowitz-Finkelstein affair

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Shortly after the publication of the book The Case for Israel, by Alan Dershowitz, Norman Finkelstein complained that it was "a collection of fraud, falsification, plagiarism and nonsense".[1] Finkelstein charged that Dershowitz had engaged in plagiarism in his use of Joan Peters's controversial book From Time Immemorial.[2] Finkelstein expanded his claims in a book entitled Beyond Chutzpah and has received support from some other academics. Dershowitz has denied the charges. Former Harvard president Derek Bok, following a review that Dershowitz requested, exonerated Dershowitz of Finkelstein's charges of plagiarism.[3]

In Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Misuse of History, which was initially to be published by New Press and ultimately published by University of California Press on August 28, 2005, Norman Finkelstein attempts to debunk The Case for Israel. Dershowitz had written letters to New Press to prevent its publication and he responded to the imminent publication of Finkelstein's book by writing letters to the University of California Press as well, claiming it contained massive libel and stating that the book should not be published.[4] Dershowitz also asked California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to intervene in order to prevent the University of California Press from publishing the book.[5] Schwarzenegger's legal advisor responded, however, that the governor would not intervene in issues of academic freedom.[4] 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.[6]

Contents

Finkelstein's criticisms of Dershowitz

In Beyond Chutzpah, Finkelstein provides what he claims is 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, a claim that Dershowitz adamantly denies. 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.[7]

Finkelstein notes that in twenty instances that all occur within about as many pages, Dershowitz's uses some of the same words from the same sources that Joan Peters used, largely in the same order. Several paragraph-long quotations that the two books share have ellipses in the same position, Finkelstein points out; in one instance, he claims, Dershowitz refers to the same page number as Peters, although he is citing a different (1996) edition of the same source, in which the words appear on a different page.[8]

Finkelstein states: "It is left to readers to decide whether Dershowitz committed plagiarism as defined by Harvard University -- "passing off a source's information, ideas, or words as your own by omitting to cite them."[9] According to a book review of Beyond Chutzpah]], written by Michael C. Desch, Profesor and Robet M. Gates Chair in Intelligence and National SAecurity Decision-making at the George Bush School of Government and Public Service, at Texas A&M University, and published in The American Conservative (5 Dec. 2005), "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."[10]

Noting his perception of Dershowitz's lack of knowledge about specific contents of his own book during an interview of the two men by Amy Goodman broadcast on Democracy Now!, Finkelstein also charges that Dershowitz could not have written the book and may not have even read it.[1] Later, he cited such allegedly "unserious" references as the website for Kevin Macdonald's document film One Day in September [11] and an online syllabus from "Teaching the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Unit for High School Students," by Ronald Stockton, Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan-Dearborn[12] as additional evidence that the book appeared to him to be the work of an unattributed ghostwriter.[citation needed]

The bulk of Beyond Chutzpah 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 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.[citations needed]

Dershowitz's response

See main article: Alan Dershowitz#Alan Dershowitz and Norman Finkelstein

Dershowitz asked Harvard University to investigate the charges of plagiarism, resulting in his being exonerated by a committee formed by then University President Derek Bok.[3]

He threatened to bring a legal action for libel against the University of California Press in responses to the charges in Finkelstein's book.[citation needed]. He produced his handwritten book manuscript to debunk the claim that The Case for Israel was ghostwritten.[citation needed]

As a result, in the edition of the book eventually published, Finkelstein removed all uses of the word "plagiarism."[citations needed] 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."[13]

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.[14]

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 such presentation "plagiarism."[citations needed]

James O. Freedman, the former president of Dartmouth, University of Iowa, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has defended Dershowitz: "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."[15]

Dershowitz says that Finkelstein has invented 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," noting that Finkelstein has leveled the same kind of charges against many others, calling at least 10 "distinguished Jews 'hucksters,' 'hoaxters,' 'thieves,' 'extortionists, and worse."[15]

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.[16]

Additional responses by Finkelstein and Dershowitz

Finkelstein argues in an letter to the Harvard Crimson published on October 3, 2003, that Dershowitz reproduced exactly two of Peters' mistakes, and made one relevant mistake of his own.[17] In quoting Mark Twain, Finkelstein argues, "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."[17] While still quoting Twain, although Dershowitz cites a different edition of Twain's Innocents Abroad than Joan Peters cites, Finkelstein continues, "the relevant quotes do not appear on these pages in the edition of Twain’s book that Dershowitz cites." Finkelstein points out that these quotations do, however, appear on the pages that Joan Peters cites for her edition of Innocents Abroad. Finkelstein asserts: "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." He concludes: "It would be impossible for anyone who checked the original source[s] to make th[ese] error[s]."[17]

In response to the general charge of "plagiarism", Dershowitz has characterized the excerpts as quotations that historians and scholars of the region cite routinely, such as Mark Twain and the reports of government commissions.

Finkelstein's conclusion from the passages that he cites is that Dershowitz did not research his sources directly, but instead in twenty instances had used Peters' book without crediting her.[citations needed]

Finkelstein argues that he has found a mis-attribution that he says supports his conclusion. He asserts that, in his book Dershowitz attributes an Orwellian neologism to Orwell himself, when actually Peters coins it in her book in an allusion to Orwell, in which she mentioned him by name: her neologism "turnspeak" alludes to Orwell's famous Newspeak in his novel 1984. This alleged "mistake" by Dershowitz, Finkelstein argues, fits a pattern of cribbing from Peters while not crediting her. Academic propriety demands that she be credited, he argues.

In "Statement of Alan M. Dershowitz" featured on a faculty webpage at Harvard Law School, Dershowitz writes:

I will no longer participate in this transparent ploy to gather media attention for Finkelstein and his publisher. I answer all of his charges fully in Chapter 16 of my forthcoming book The Case For Peace, to be published by Wiley in August. My book deals with important and current issues, such as the prospects for peace in the immediate future. Finkelstein’s deals with the irrelevant past that both Israelis and Palestinians are trying to put behind them. Let the marketplace judge our books. As far as I’m concerned, the public controversy is over and I will comment no further on the false charges leveled by Finkelstein and the UCP. Let them henceforth pay for their own publicity, instead of trying to get it on the cheap by launching phony attacks against me.

I will not debate Finkelstein. I have a longstanding policy against debating Holocaust deniers, revisionists, trivializers or minimizers. Nor is a serious debate about Israel possible with someone who acknowledges that he knows “very little” about that country. I will be happy to debate any legitimate experts from Amnesty International or any other human rights organization. Indeed, I have a debate scheduled with Noam Chomsky about these issues in the fall [2005].[18]

Dershowitz has strenuously denied that he did not credit Peters' book adequately in his own book, and Harvard University supported him in that position in exonerating him against Finkelstein's charges that he committed "plagiarism" ("Statement of Alan M. Dershowitz"). [19][20]

In their joint interview aired on Amy Goodman's radio program Democracy Now!, which Finkelstein and others call a "debate," Dershowitz responded to Finkelstein's various arguments.[1]

Others on the plagiarism controversy

Support for Finkelstein

In his book review of Beyond Chutzpah, echoing Finkelstein's criticisms, Desch observes:

"Not only did Dershowitz improperly present Peters's [sic] ideas, he may not even have bothered to read the original sources she used to come up with them. Finkelstein somehow managed to get uncorrected page proofs of The Case for Israel in which Dershowitz appears to direct his research assistant to go to certain pages and notes in Peters's [sic] book and place them in his footnotes directly" (32, col. 3).[10] Desch concludes with an important caveat then qualifies it by emphasizing his own point of view:

Even if Finkelstein's most serious charges are not true, it is nonetheless a scandal that Dershowitz's sloppy book was widely and favorably reviewed in many prominent places, including the New York Times, and became a national bestseller. (Its bestseller status probably should include an asterisk because, as Finkelstein notes, some American Jewish organizations and the Israeli govenment bought bulk orders of the book to use as part of their efforts to advance Israel's case.) Nothing could be beter evidence, in my opinion, of the corrosive influence of the Israel lobby on the intellectual climate of our country than how the nation's leading university allowed such a book to pollute our national discourse on one of the most important issues facing American foreign policy."
This is not to say that Finkelstein is always the best advocate for his case. As with his previous books, it is celar that his muse is his spleen. Outrage drips from nearly every page of Beyond Chutzpah when facts alone would have made a more effective case. Indeed, I had a similar reaction when I heard Finkelstein speak at Harvard about the Goldhagen book [Hitler's Willing Executioners]: the facts were clearly in his corner but his strident presentation undermined his case.
Still, I hesitate to be too critical of Finkelstein. Much of his outrage is justified. Moreover, he has been on the frontline of a brutal war with the Israel lobby, which gives no quarter to its enemies, and so it may be unreasonable to...expect him to write on this topic with clinical detachment.
The story Finkelstein tells in Beyond Chutzpah is hard to believe, but it needs to be told. My hat is off to him for having the courage to tell it.[10]

On the basis of Finkelstein's comparisons of Dershowitz's sources, Alexander Cockburn supported Finkestein's conclusions that Dershowitz had drawn his excerpts directly from Peters' book, characterizing Dershowitz's presentation as unscholarly.[citations needed] Noting a footnote in which Dershowitz refers to the controversial status of Peters' book and states that he did not "rely" on it for "conclusions or data," Cockburn charges that Dershowitz is in effect if not intention lying. In echoing Finkelstein's charge of plagiarism, Cockburn calls on Harvard to fire Dershowitz as a professor.[citations needed]

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."[citations needed][21]

Support for Dershowitz

As Desch acknowledges in his book review of Beyond Chutzpah, "In the wake of a number of similar complaints against Dershowitz and two of his Harvard Law School colleagues Laurence Tribe and Charles Ogletree, former Harvard President Derek Bok conducted an investigation—the details of which were not made public—that predictably vindicated Dershowitz" (32, col. 3).[10]

Several student research assistants who worked for Dershowitz at Harvard University have criticized Jon Wiener's review, supporting their professor:

For as long as any of us can remember, the standard operating procedure in Professor Dershowitz's office has always been for us to check out or request the original sources from the Harvard libraries.

It was journalistically inappropriate for Wiener not to interview any of Professor Dershowitz's research assistants, who would have firsthand knowledge of what his instructions to "cite" a source actually mean.[22]

Additional points of dispute between Finkelstein and Dershowitz

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Finkelstein also countered Dershowitz's claim on page 206 of his book The Case for Israel 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 the 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."[23][citation needed]

Dershowitz responded: "B'Tselem is wrong because they define torture in a way that would include what the United States is doing." While Finkelstein cited Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as reaching the same conclusion as he has done, Dershowitz replied: "They are wrong."[citations needed]

Finkelstein questioned Dershowitz's claim on page 126 that "There is no evidence that Israeli soldiers deliberately killed even a single civilian in Jenin," quoting the findings of Human Rights Watch (HRW) 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 citing HRW's example that "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."[citations needed]

In response, Dershowitz said the HRW's report is wrong.[citations needed]

In The Holocaust Industry, Finkelstein calls 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.[24]

Finkelstein describes this latter claim as false and inept, arguing 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.[25]

The $10,000 challenge

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During the joint interview of Dershowitz and Finkelstein broadcast on Democracy Now!, the host Amy Goodman alluded to an appearance on MSNBC's Scarborough Country in which Dershowitz made a challenge to "give $10,000 to the PLO," playing a clip from the other program. In the headnote to the transcript, Goodman writes:

On MSNBC’s Scarborough Country on Sept. 8 2003, renowned appellate lawyer, Harvard Law professor and author Alan Dershowitz says: “I will give $10,000 to the PLO…if you can find a historical fact in my book that you can prove to be false.” The book Dershowitz refers to is his latest work The Case For Israel. Today author and professor Norman Finkelstein takes him on and charges that Dershowitz makes numerous factual errors in his book. Dershowitz denies the charges. Finkelstein teaches at DePaul University and is the author of four books including The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering.

The segment of Democracy Now! appears in the included transcript of the program:

AMY GOODMAN: ...we were intrigued on watching Scarborough Country when you debated, the offer that you made[....] just play it for a moment.

ALAN DERSHOWITZ: Tell you what I will give $10,000 to the P.L.O. 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, every word in my book is accurate and you can't just simply say it's false without documenting it. Tell me one thing in the book now that is false?

AMY GOODMAN: Okay. Let's go to the book. The Case for Israel $10,000.[1]

On Democracy Now! Finkelstein replied to that specific challenge for errors found in his book overall, and Dershowitz upped it to $25,000 for another particular "issue" that they disputed.[1]

Finkelstein referred to "concrete facts which are not particularly controversial," stating that in The Case for Israel Dershowitz attributes 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, he said, the range in the figures presented by Morris is 200,000 to 300,000.[1]

Dershowitz responded to Finkelstein's reply by stating that such a mistake could not have been intentional because in the book he is using the figures to counter a claim that no Arabs at all had left their homes on the orders of Arab officials during the relevant time period and because it would have served his argument better 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."[1]

In his book review of Finkelstein's Beyond Chutzpah, summarizing Finkelstein's case against Dershowitz for "torturing the evidence", particularly Finkelstein's argument relating to Dershowitz's citations of Morris, Desch observes:

There are two problems with Dershowitz's heavy reliance on Morris. The first is that Morris is hardly the left-wing peacenik that Dershowitz makes him out to be, which means that calling him as a witness in Israel's defense is not very helpful to the case. The more important problem is that many of the points Dershowitz cites Morris as supporting—that the early Zionists wanted peaceful coexistence with the Arabs, that the Arabs began the 1948 War to destroy Israel, that the Arabs were guilty of many massacres while the Israelis were scrupulous about protecting human rights, and that the Arabs fled at the behest of their leaders rather than being ethnically cleansed by the Israel Defense Forces—turn out to be based on a partial reading or misreading of Morris's [sic] books. Finkelstein documents these charges in exhaustive detail in Appendix II of his book and the preponderance of evidence he provides is conclusive." (30-31)[10][26]

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Amy Goodman, "Scholar Norman Finkelstein Calls Professor Alan Dershowitz's New Book On Israel a 'Hoax'," Democracy Now! 24 September 2003, accessed February 10, 2007. (Incl. links to full transcript and audio clip and MP3 podcast.)
  2. ^ Norman G. Finkelstein, The Dershowitz Hoax, normanfinkelstein.com (passim), accessed 11 February 2007.
  3. ^ a b Marcella Bombardieri, "Academic Fight Heads to Print: Authorship Challenge Dropped from Text," Boston Globe 9 July 2005, accessed 12 February 2007.
  4. ^ a b Gary Younge, "J'accuse," The Guardian 10 August 2005, accessed 11 February 2007.
  5. ^ See the reproduction of four letters from Dershowitz as posted on normanfinkelstein.com with a headnote.
  6. ^ "Statement of Alan M. Dershowitz," n.d., accessed 12 February 2007.
  7. ^ Norman G. Finkelstein, Speech presented at Vancouver Public Library, link to Part 7, webcasts posted at workingtv.com, n.d., accessed 11 February 2007.
  8. ^ Norman G. Finkelstein, "Alan Dershowitz Exposed: What if a Harvard Student Did This?" normanfinkelstein.com n.d., accessed 12 February 2007.
  9. ^ Norman G. Finkelstein, "The Real Issue Is Israel's Human Rights Record: A Statement by Norman G. Finkelstein upon Publication of Beyond Chutzpah, 25 August 2005, accessed 13 February 2007.
  10. ^ a b c d e Michael C. Desch, "The Chutzpah of Alan Dershowitz," The American Conservative 5 December 2005, online posting, normanfinkelstein.com, accessed 10 February 2007.
  11. ^ One Day in September Sony Pictures Classics official website, accessed 13 February 2007.
  12. ^ "Some Key Dates in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," rev. 2nd ed., University of Michigan-Dearborn, Dearborn, Michigan, November 1993, accessed 12 February 2007.
  13. ^ Daniel J. T. Schuker, "Accusations Fly in Academic Feud: Harvard Law Prof Tries to Prevent Publication of Book about Israel," The Harvard Crimson 8 July 2005, accessed 12 February 2007.
  14. ^ Lauren A. E. Schuker, "Dershowitz Accused Of Plagiarism: Law School Professor Denies He Relied on Another’s Work," The Harvard Crimson 29 September 2003, and "Dershowitz Defends Book. Professor Calls Plagiarism Accusation 'funny'." The Harvard Crimson 2 October 2003, both accessed 11 February 2007.
  15. ^ a b Alan M. Dershowitz,"The Hazards of Making The Case for Israel," jbooks.com n.d., accessed 11 February 2007.
  16. ^ "Statement of Alan M. Dershowitz."
  17. ^ a b c Norman Finkelstein, "Finkelstein Proclaims 'The Glove Does Fit'," Letter to the editors, The Harvard Crimson October 3, 2003, accessed February 10, 2007.
  18. ^ "Statement of Alan M. Dershowitz."
  19. ^ Alan M. Dershowitz, "Professor Dershowitz 'Rests His Case'," The Harvard Crimson 3 October 2003, Letter to the Editors (Opinion), accessed 11 February 2007.
  20. ^ Alan Dershowitz, "Plagiarism Accusations Unfairly Characterized," The Harvard Crimson 5 May 2006, Letter to the Editors (Opinion) dated 1 May 2006 (appended correction), accessed 12 February 2007.
  21. ^ Mandy Garner, "The Good Jewish Boys Go into Battle," Times Higher Education Supplement, 16 December 2005, rpt. in normanfinkelstein.com, accessed February 11, 2007.
  22. ^ Alan Dershowitz, "Tsuris Over Chutzpah," The Nation 29 August 2005, rpt. in normanfinkelstein.com n.d., accessed 11 February 2007; incl. this article by Dershowitz, followed by a letter from Dershowitz's research assistants: Holly Beth Billington (2002-2004), Alexander J. Blenkinsopp (2004-2005), Eric Citron (2003-2004), C. Wallace DeWitt (2004-2005), Aaron Voloj Dessauer (2004-2005), and Mitch Webber (2005); a reply by Jon Wiener; followed by comment by Finkelstein.
  23. ^ See B'Tselem webpage on "Torture," accessed February 11, 2007.
  24. ^ Alan M. Dershowitz, ""Professor Dershowitz 'Rests His Case'." The Harvard Crimson 2 October 2003, Letter to the Editors (Opinion), accessed 11 February 2007.
  25. ^ Norman G. Finkelstein, "Dershowitz Exposed Yet Again: The Critique of Pure Cant," online posting in "The Dershowitz Hoax", normanfinkelstein.com Dec. 2003, accessed 11 February 2007.
  26. ^ See Appendix II in Beyond Chutzpah, where Finkelstein says that Morris attributes 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 or expulsion.

References

External links

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