Dershowitz-Finkelstein affair

Shortly after the publication of the book The Case for Israel, Norman Finkelstein accused its author, Alan Dershowitz, of "fraud, falsification, plagiarism and nonsense." Specifically, 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 in her book From Time Immemorial, a book about the history of Israel that several critics have accused of distortion, and which Finkelstein had labeled a "monumental hoax." 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 of the source, in which the words appear on a different page.

Responses and opinions

Dershowitz has responded that all of the excerpts were at least compared to, if not directly drawn from, authoritative texts, and that they are accurate; a claim that Finkelstein has chosen not to dispute. Dershowitz has also 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.

On the basis of Finkelstein's comparisons, acerbic left-wing 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.

Dershowitz replied to the various charges of academic impropriety at length (see [1]). Among various points of contention, he wrote that in fact he had not been reticent to credit Peters. "I cited her eight times in the first eighty-nine pages (Ch. 2, fn 31, 35; Ch. 5, fn 8; Ch. 12, fn 34, 37, 38, 44, 47)." He also disputed that in the twenty instances identified by Finkelstein the proper practice would have been to credit Peters, instead of the original source as he had done.

It appears that Harvard intends to take no action.

The $10,000 challenge

In an appearance on 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 [2].

Finkelstein rose to the challenge on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now!, showing that a reference Deshowitz had cited for a count of between 2,000 and 3,000 emigrant Arabs actually gave the range as between 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 emigrated during the interval he had been addressing, and because it would only 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 emigration] or is a typographical error," Dershowitz said. Finkelstein was not persuaded.

Other accusations and replies

Dershowitz has asserted that Finkelstein's and others' accusations of plagiarism are insincere and that the real motivation is a dislike for his political advocacy for Israel. He linked the attacks on his reputation to accusations against Elie Wiesel and others, saying they represented an organized and well-funded effort. He also characterized them generally as baseless.

In particular he cited Finkelstein's accusation against Wiesel in the book The Holocaust Industry. Finkelstein had called Wiesel a liar for claiming to have read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in Yiddish and had asserted that no translation of the work existed in Yiddish at the time. Dershowitz responded that this was not so, asserting that one had been published in Warsaw in 1929. "The Harvard Library has a copy and Wiesel did read it," Dershowitz wrote.

Finkelstein describes this latter claim as false and inept...writing that the only Yiddish Kant text the library owns is a single-chapter of the Critique of Practical Reason--a different and far less renowned work than the one referred to by Wiesel and Dershowitz.

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.

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.)

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.)

Dershowitz's History with Chomsky

Here are excerpts from interviews with Noam Chomsky, who talks about Dershowitz's many attempts to smear him:

1) http://www.chomsky.info/books/dissent02.htm

CHOMSKY: Turning to Dershowitz, there's partly the same story. Again, he knows that he can't respond to what I say. He doesn't have the knowledge or the competence to deal with the issues. Therefore, the idea is to try to shut it up by throwing as much slime as you can. There's a famous story attributed to Sam Ervin, a conservative Senator, who once said that as a young lawyer he had learned that if the law is against you, concentrate on the facts. If the facts are against you, concentrate on the law. And if both the facts and the law are against you, denounce your opposing counsel. Dershowitz is not very bright, but he understands that much. If you can't answer on the facts and if you can't answer on the principles, you better throw dirt. In his case there happens to also be a personal reason.

He's been on a personal jihad for the last twenty years, ever since I exposed him for lying outright in a vicious personal attack on a leading Israeli civil libertarian. Despite pretenses, he's strongly opposed to civil liberties. Using his position as a Harvard law professor, he referred to what the Israeli courts had determined. But he was just lying flat outright. This was in the Boston Globe (April 29, 1973). I wrote a short letter refuting it (May 17). He then came back (on May 25,) accusing everybody of lying and challenging me to quote from the court records. He never believed I had them, but of course I did. I quoted the court records in response (June 5). He then tried to brazen it out again. It finally ended up with my sending the transcript of the court records to the Globe ombudsman, who didn't know what to do any more with people just taking opposite positions. I translated them for him, and suggested that he pick his own expert to check the translations. The ombudsman finally told Dershowitz they wouldn't publish any more letters of his because he had been caught flat out lying about it.

Ever since then he's been trying to get even, so there's just one hysterical outburst after another. That's not surprising, either. He's basically a clown. In that case there's a personal issue overlaying the political issue, which is much more interesting. This personal stuff is not interesting. But if you look at the Anti-Defamation League or the Berkeley professors, and there are plenty of others, it's the Sam Ervin story. You know you can't deal with the material. Either you ignore it, or if you can't ignore it, then defame the speaker. That's the only way you can deal with it if you don't have the brains or the knowledge or you just know your position can't be defended. I think that's understandable, and in a sense you can appreciate it. That's just the hallmark of the commissar.

---

2) http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/198805--.htm

QUESTION: Speaking of censorship, what about your relations to American Jews? Your Fateful Triangle was an important book about the Middle East. American Jewish journals consciously avoided it. They would not even print negative reviews, hatchet jobs.

CHOMSKY: ...The Anti-Defamation League office in Boston is a pretty leaky place. Many of the people who work there are appalled, so I have received stuff from them. For example, I got my file, a 150-page file.

QUESTION: They keep a file on you?

CHOMSKY: It reads kind of like an FBI file -- half-truth, half-lies. People go to talks and send in what they claim I said, often an inversion of what they heard. Also clippings, inter-office memos, correspondence that they picked up. I got it because I was going to have a debate with Alan Dershowitz. This stuff was being sent to Dershowitz, so that he could cull defamatory material from it -- as he did -- for the debate. Somebody in the office who was appalled sent me a copy. People like Dershowitz, who is just an Israeli hack, a strict party liner, go to the ADL to get defamatory material. People like me, I don't care. But if you are in politics or journalism, you cannot live with this. A temporary secretary at the ADL office told me that after the 1982 war there have been correspondence between the ADL and the Partisan Review in which the editors, William Phillips and Eith Kurzweil, offered the Review to the ADL as a way of defaming critics of Israel, me in particular. I believe that story is true. At the same time these people were inviting me to their cocktail parties. But that is typical of the intellectual community. It's basically Communist Party style.

This vilification apparatus is really effective in shutting people up. It scares a lot of people off, especially people in exposed positions. There is just no way to respond. If you are denounced as being an anti-Semite, what are you going to say, I'm not an anti-Semite? Or if you are denounced as being in favor of the Holocaust, what are you going to say, I'm not in favor of the Holocaust? I mean you cannot win. Stalinist types of the ADL understand the beauty of throwing mud is that nobody can follow the details. You write it. Somebody else quotes it. Then somebody else says something.

Some people are really extreme. Dershowitz has actually written articles in the ADL journals in which he says I told him that I was "an agnostic about the Holocaust". First of all, I would not have a conversation with Alan Dershowitz if I met him in the street. But this is fabrication.

QUESTION: It is actually a quote that comes up a lot attached to your name now.

CHOMSKY: Sure. Why not? Why not say I am in favor of the Holocaust? I think all Jews should be killed. That is the next thing to say. The point is that they can say anything they want. It is a kind of status that the Communist Party had aspired to but never achieved. And they have achieved it. They are totalitarians. There are plenty of others like them.

External links

• The Dershowitz Hoax Finkelstein's website including links to coverage of the controversy.
  • Finkelstein's chart of the similarities between the two books
  • Finkelstein's picture of the only book by Kant in Yiddish at the Harvard library
• Alan Dershowitz, Plagiarist Alexander Cockburn's Counterpunch magazine article on alleged plagiarism
  • Dershowitz's letter of reply and response from Cockburn
• Democracy Now!: Debate between Finkelstein and Dershowitz
• Norman Finkelstein 'Ambushes' Alan Dershowitz (Part I)
• Video record of a speech given by Finkelstein at Vancouver Public Library. Finkelstein's comments on Dershowitz can be found in part 7.
• Public Committee Against Torture in Israel vs. Dershowitz