Dershowitz comments regularly on issues related to Judaism, Israel, civil liberties, the War on Terror, and the First Amendment, and appears frequently in the mainstream media as a guest commentator. Dershowitz is an outspoken commentator on the history and politics of Israel. He has engaged in highly publicized media confrontations regarding torture and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict with Rabbi Meir Kahane, Norman Finkelstein, and former President Jimmy Carter, among others. Dershowitz's frequently positive comments on Israel's actions have earned him a reputation as a vocal supporter of that nation. What is anti-Semitism? (Los Angeles Times, May 12, 2009) ("vehemently pro-Israel") Legal giants take on Israel boycotters (The Times, June 14, 2007) ("vocal supporter of Israel")
2002 Harvard-MIT divestment petition
In spring 2002, as reported later by the
Harvard Crimson, a "petition, which calls for Harvard and MIT to divest from Israel and from American companies that sell arms to Israel, [and which] also calls for the U.S. government to stop supplying weapons until four specific conditions are met by the Israeli government," gathered over 600 signatures, including 74 from the Harvard faculty and 56 from MIT faculty members. Among the signatures was that of Harvard's Winthrop House Master Paul D. Hanson, who "signed the petition as a professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations" and whom Dershowitz "publicly challenged...to a debate over the Israel divestment petition." But "saying Hanson had turned down his offer, Dershowitz staged a solo debate in the Winthrop Junior Common Room [at Harvard]. Standing beside a chair with a copy of the petition taped to it, he said students and professors who had signed the petition were antisemitic and knew 'basically nothing about the Middle East.'" According to Adams, "'Your House master is a bigot and you ought to know that,' he told the crowd of about 200 students. 'Everyone else who signed that petition is also a bigot.'" In his presentation to the students,
Dershowitz reviewed the four conditions demanded by the petition and argued Israel was already in compliance," saying "It’s a little bit strange that there should be such a huge debate about four issues which have already been resolved".... He said he personally supports a Palestinian state but argued that, compared with other groups seeking statehood, Palestinians hold a lower "moral priority" because they rejected a U.N. proposal for dividing the Middle East after the Second World War that included the creation of a Palestinian state. Dershowitz also said Israel should not be singled out as a violator of human rights. He said Israel stands among the top ten most rights-conscious nations in the world.... "By any criteria, Israel’s record on human rights is better than any country in the Middle East," he said....He cited examples of human rights violations in countries that the U.S. supports, such as the execution of homosexuals in Egypt and the repression of women in Saudi Arabia.... Dershowitz said he distinguishes between criticizing the Israeli government and signing the divestment petition. He said criticism of the government, which he said he participates in, is not inherently anti-semitic, while signing the petition is.... He also threatened to sue any professor who votes against the tenure of another based on the candidate’s ties to Israel, calling them "ignoramuses with Ph.D.’s."
According to Adams, "Many members of the audience, which generally supported Dershowitz and applauded for him several times, said they appreciated the presentation.... 'I thought it was great,' said Rachel S. Weinerman ’03, a student in Dunster House. 'This type of honest sentiment about the divestment petition has long been warranted.'" However, many other students thought the attacks were simply offensive and without academic merit, 'It’s an offensive thing for a professor to say about a House master for a large number of Harvard students,' ... adding Dershowitz's agenda 'clearly overstepped his bounds as a professor."
Dershowitz's 2002 article "New Response to Palestinian Terrorism"
On March 11, 2002 Dershowitz published an article in
The Jerusalem Post entitled "New Response to Palestinian Terrorism." In it, he says that "to succeed [in deterrence and retaliation], Israel must turn the Palestinian leadership and people against the use of terrorism and the terrorists themselves." He proposed that "Israel should announce an immediate unilateral cessation in retaliation," which would be a short moratorium "to give the Palestinian leadership an opportunity to respond to the new policy." Further:
Following the end of the moratorium, Israel would institute the following new policy if Palestinian terrorism were to resume. It will announce precisely what it will do in response to the next act of terrorism. For example, it could announce the first act of terrorism following the moratorium will result in the destruction of a small village which has been used as a base for terrorist operations. The residents would be given 24 hours to leave, and then troops will come in and bulldoze all of the buildings.The response will be automatic. The order will have been given in advance of the terrorist attacks and there will be no discretion. The point is to make the automatic destruction of the village the fault of the Palestinian terrorists who had advance warnings of the specific consequences of their action.
He goes on to add that "[f]urther acts of terrorism would trigger further destruction of specifically named locations. The 'waiting list' targets would be made public and circulated throughout the Palestinian-controlled areas."
Dershowitz's proposal stimulated much criticism at Harvard University and beyond. James Bamford, a columnist with
The Washington Post, argued that "demolishing the homes of innocent relatives of those involved in suicide bombing," which Dershowitz "analyzed" in that book, is "a practice outlawed under international law." Norman Finkelstein, in his book
Beyond Chutzpah, went even further, commenting that "it is hard to make out any difference between the policy Dershowitz advocates and the Nazi destruction of Lidice, for which he expresses abhorrence-except that Jews, not Germans, would be implementing it."
Noam Chomsky (1972—)
In 1972, according to his critics, Dershowitz attempted to discredit Israel Shahak (1933—2001), then president of the Israel League for Human and Civil Rights, who was an Israeli citizen and a Holocaust survivor who had sharply criticized Israeli treatment of Palestinians. Shahak was in the process of challenging contested election results for the chairmanship of the Israel League in a legal civil action. Dershowitz claimed that Judge Lovenburg, the judge presiding in Shahak's civil suit, had ruled that Shahak was properly unseated, and Dershowitz challenged anyone to provide evidence to the contrary. In response, Noam Chomsky argued that the court had opined that the elections had not been held properly, that no conclusions or actions were to be drawn from it, and that Shahak and his colleagues were to continue to function as "those who now direct" the Israel League for Human and Civil Rights. The controversy initiated by this dispute has fuelled ongoing personal animosity between Dershowitz and Chomsky, both known as outspoken academics holding opposite positions on issues pertaining to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, for over 35 years.See Robert F. Barsky, "Provoking Ire," in
Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997). (Searchable electronic version):
As he already knew the details of the Shahak affair, Chomsky wasted no time in replying to Dershowitz's letter to the Globe, which, in turn, incited Dershowitz to denounce Chomsky and ask for proof in the form of court records. Chomsky happened to be in possession of these:
- :I . . . wrote a letter quoting them, which showed that he was a complete liar, as well as a Stalinist-style thug (that was implicit; I didn't bother saying it). He continued to try to brazen his way out, and was finally told by the Globe ombudsman that they would publish no more of his lies on the matter (that was after I'd sent the original Court records and a translation to English to the Globe, who had requested documentation so they could assess Dershowitz's increasingly hysterical charges). Ever since then, Dershowitz has been on a crazed jihad, dedicating much of his life to trying to destroy my reputation. (March 31, 1995)
An exchange concerning a letter about the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon signed by Chomsky and others was published in
Z Magazine on September 6, 2006. (See Alan Dershowitz and Noam Chomsky.)
Norman Finkelstein (2003—)
Shortly after the publication of Dershowitz's 2003 book
The Case for Israel a debate was broadcast by Democracy Now!, a news radio and television program, where Norman Finkelstein, in what he called a "scholarly judgment," said that the book is "a collection of fraud, falsification, plagiarism and nonsense." To demonstrate his point, Finkelstein gave series of examples throughout the show, one of which was pointing out a long quote from Mark Twain appearing on pages 23—24 of
The Case for Israel which was "an identical quote...With the ellipsis at the same places" directly taken from pages 159—160 of
From Time Immemorial written by Joan Peters without making any reference to Joan Peters. Dershowitz argued that the quote was a correct quote by Mark Twain to whom he gave credit.
Frank J. Menetrez has identified twenty errors in Peters' quotation from Twain which are reproduced in Dershowitz's quotation (e.g. Peters and Dershowitz: "Jericho the accursed lies [in] a mouldering ruin today, even as Joshua's miracle left it ...." Twain: "Jericho the accursed, lies a mouldering ruin, to-day, even as Joshua's miracle left it ...." (Dershowitz omits Peters's italics, inserts 'in' not in Peters or Twain)) Menetrez comments: "the only reasonable inference seems to be that he [Dershowitz] copied the quotation from Peters. But Dershowitz does not cite Peters as his source for the quotation. He cites only Twain." Menetrez goes on: "Dershowitz has never, to my knowledge, responded to Finkelstein's argument concerning the identical errors ...."
Since then, there have been number of reactions by various figures, such as Harvard University President Derek Bok who is said to have investigated the charges at the request of the Law School's dean, Elena Kagan. Bok is said to have determined that no plagiarism had occurred.See Marcella Bombardieri, "Academic Fight Heads to Print: Authorship Challenge Dropped from Text,"
The Boston Globe July 9, 2005, accessed September 10, 2006:
Dershowitz sent letters, which he declined to provide to the Globe, to a variety of University of California Press officials, and even to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is an ex officio member of the University of California's board of regents."I told the UC press, 'If you say I didn't write the book or plagiarized it, I will own your company,'" said Dershowitz, who argued that Finkelstein's accusations are a ploy for publicity. "The First Amendment protects mistakes that are inadvertent, but it doesn't prevent willful lies."Finkelstein, who teaches at DePaul University in Chicago, wrote in an e-mail to Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan last year that his book would document that Dershowitz plagiarized The Case for Israel, and that Dershowitz "almost certainly didn't write the book, and perhaps didn't even read it prior to publication."
Last year, Kagan asked former Harvard president Derek Bok to examine Finkelstein's plagiarism allegation. Bok determined no plagiarism had occurred, law school spokesman Michael Armini said yesterday. Dershowitz also said that he refutes Finkelstein's allegations in his own forthcoming book, The Case for Peace.
Frank Menetrez has suggested that the investigation by Harvard could not have taken into account the obvious reproduction of Peters' errors by Dershowitz in the quotation from Twain (what he calls the 'identical errors' argument for Dershowitz's plagiarism)
... I believe the evidence concerning the Twain quote independently establishes that Harvard did not know about the identical errors argument before conducting its investigation, because I take for granted that the Harvard administration is neither hopelessly corrupt nor intellectually incompetent. If the administration had known about the argument, they would have investigated it, because they are not corrupt. If they had investigated it, they would have found the same massive evidence that I found, because they are not incompetent. And if they had found that massive evidence, they would not have cleared Dershowitz, because they are not corrupt.
Dershowitz and some of his prominent supporters assert that what Finkelstein calls plagiarism is in fact standard scholarly practice.One of the disputes involves Dershowitz's quoting what he says are genuine direct quotations accurately from primary sources (such as Mark Twain) without explicitly attributing the secondary sources citing these quotations in which he allegedly first encountered them (such as a 1984 book entitled
From Time Immemorial, by Joan Peters). However, this argument is vitiated by the fact that Dershowitz's quotations are in fact inaccurate (see text). See "Statement of Alan Dershowitz" and another of Dershowitz's replies to Finkelstein et al. hosted on "New Challenge to Columbia and to Chomsky, Finkelstein, and Cockburn,"
FrontPagemag.com July 13, 2005, accessed September 10, 2006:
For more than 20 years the terrible triumvirate of Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, and Alexander Cockburn have been falsely accusing pro-Israel writers of plagiarism and related academic offenses.[(embedded note) 2] I have been the most recent target of the selective vitriol. They have accused me of plagiarism for quoting Mark Twain and other well-known figures whose quotes appear in my book within quotation marks and properly cited to their original source. Their absurd accusation is that I should have cited these quotes not to their original source but rather to the secondary source in which they erroneously claim I first came across them. No one but anti-Israel zealots takes these biased charges seriously, as evidenced by the fact that not only was I cleared of all such charges by Harvard (after I brought them to the attention of the dean and president), but recently the dean awarded me a prize for “exceptional scholarship” for my current book Rights from Wrongs. [Italics added.]
Dershowitz's defense here is that the Chicago Manual of Style says that references should be given to original sources, not to secondary sources, "since authors are expected to have examined the works they cite" and that therefore he was correct to cite only Twain. The fact that he repeats typographical errors from Peters, however, suggests that he did not in fact examine Twain, so the argument about citation practice appears to be a
non sequitur.
In an April 3, 2007 interview with the
Harvard Crimson, "Dershowitz confirmed that he had sent a letter last September to DePaul faculty members lobbying against Finkelstein's tenure." The De Paul University Liberal Arts and Sciences' Faculty Governance Council voted unanimously to send a letter to Harvard University expressing "the council's dismay at Professor Dershowitz's interference in Finkelstein's tenure and promotion case." In June 2007, DePaul University denied Finkelstein tenure.
"The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" (2006), by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt
In March 2006, John Mearsheimer, Wendell Harrison Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and author of
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, and Stephen Walt, Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and author of
Taming American Power: The Global Response to US Primacy, co-authored a controversial working paper entitled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," about which an extensive debate was subsequently published in
The London Review of Books. In their working paper, Professors Mearsheimer and Walt criticize what they describe as "the Israel Lobby" for influencing U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East in a direction away from U.S. interests and toward Israel's interests. They refer to Dershowitz specifically as an “apologist” for the Israel lobby. In an interview conducted on March 20, 2006, cited in
The Harvard Crimson, Dershowitz "vehemently disputed the article’s assertions, repeatedly calling it 'one-sided' and its authors 'liars' and 'bigots.'” In an appearance on MSNBC's
Scarborough Country televised the next day, Dershowitz suggested that the working paper was plagiarized from various hate sites: "every paragraph virtually is copied from a neo-Nazi Web site, from a radical Islamic Web site, from David Duke’s Web site." Subsequently, Dershowitz wrote an extensive report challenging the factual basis of their essay, calling into question the motivations of the authors and their scholarship. His report claims that the "paper contains three types of major errors: quotations are wrenched out of context, important facts are misstated or omitted, and embarrassingly weak logic is employed."
In a letter published in the
London Review of Books in May 2006, Mearsheimer and Walt responded to Dershowitz's contention that they used racist sources for their article, stating that "Dershowitz offers no evidence to support this false claim."
2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict
In July 2006, Dershowitz wrote a series of articles defending the conduct of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict against the international outcry regarding escalating Lebanese civilian deaths and the destruction of Lebanese civilian infrastructure resulting from Israel's stated attempt to weaken or to destroy Hezbollah which wields considerable political power and influence in Lebanon. After the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour indicated that Israeli officials might be investigated and indicted for possible war crimes, Dershowitz labeled Arbour's statement "bizarre" in an editorial, calling specifically for her dismissal and inveighing more generally against the "absurdity and counterproductive nature of current international law."
In an editorial published in The Boston Globe several days later, Dershowitz argues that "the international community, the anti-Israel segment of the media, and human rights organizations" should not blame Israel for any dead civilians. "Israel has every self-interest in minimizing civilian casualties, whereas the terrorists have every self-interest in maximizing them— on both sides. Israel should not be condemned for doing what every democracy would and should do: taking every reasonable military step to stop the killing of their own civilians."
Iran and Israel: 2006—2007
In his appearance at the Truth, Light and Freedom Rally at Beth Tzedec Synagogue in Toronto, Canada, "a rally...organized by the UJA [United Jewish Agency] Federation of Greater Toronto, Canadian Jewish Congress Ontario Region and the Holocaust Centre of Toronto," on December 21, 2006, Dershowitz spoke "about the danger Iran poses to Israel and the rest of the world" at this "held at the Beth Tzedec Synogogue in Toronto, Canada, Alan Dershowitz accused "Iran...of incitement to genocide," according to Sheri Shefa, a staff reporter for
The Canadian Jewish News:
Speaking in response to the recent Holocaust denial conference in Iran and Iran’s goal to develop nuclear weapons, Dershowitz, an outspoken defender of Israel, said that although Holocaust denial is about the past, it is used to influence the present and the future.... “The purpose of Holocaust denial is to delegitimate Israel, to demonize Jews and to legitimate attacks on Israel and attacks on Jews,” Dershowitz said.... He added that because of the world’s obsession with Israel, Jews are not the only victims, as other issues in the world, such as the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and the current genocide in Darfur, have been largely ignored by the international community.... “Six million additional people have died since the end of the Second World War because of this obsessive focus on Israel,” Dershowitz said....
Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (2006), by Jimmy Carter
In his 2006 book
Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States and winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, argues that"Israel's continued control and colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land." Carter states in
Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid that Israel's current policies in the Palestinian territories constitute "a system of apartheid, with two peoples occupying the same land but completely separated from each other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving Palestinians of their basic human rights." Carter's self-defined purpose in writing the book is to "present facts about the Middle East that are largely unknown in America, to precipitate discussion and to help restart peace talks (now absent for six years) that can lead to permanent peace for Israel and its neighbors."
In an op-ed, some newspaper articles, media appearances, and blog posts at
The Huffington Post, Dershowitz has taken issue with President Carter's points of view and has challenged him to debate the matters in public at Brandeis University. Carter has publicly declined to visit Brandeis to discuss the book due to the request that he debate Dershowitz as a condition of the visit:
"I don't want to have a conversation even indirectly with Dershowitz," Carter said in Friday's [December 15, 2006] Boston Globe. "There is no need . . . to debate somebody who, in my opinion, knows nothing about the situation in Palestine."The school's debate request, Carter said, is proof that many in the United States are unwilling to hear an alternative view on the nation's most taboo foreign policy issue, Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory. . . . "There is no debate in America about anything that would be critical of Israel," he said."President Carter said he wrote the book because he wanted to encourage more debate; then why won't he debate?" said Dershowitz. . . .
He reiterates:
Carter’s refusal to debate wouldn’t be so strange if it weren’t for the fact that he claims that he wrote the book precisely so as to start debate over the issue of the Israel-Palestine peace process. If that were really true, Carter would be thrilled to have the opportunity to debate.... When Jimmy Carter's ready to speak at Brandeis, or anywhere else, I'll be there. If he refuses to debate, I will still be there——ready and willing to answer falsity with truth in the court of public opinion."
Subsequently, Brandeis University and President Carter came to an agreement about his visit, which they said would have no pre-conditions. The event, which occurred on January 23, 2007, was open only to Brandeis students, faculty, and staff, and the university refused to make an exception allowing Dershowitz to attend the speech, although he was invited to present a response after Carter's speech concluded. The day after the speech, on January 24, 2007,
The New York Times reported on Carter's speech in "At Brandeis, Jimmy Carter Responds to Critics":
Questions were preselected by the committee that invited Mr. Carter, and the questioners included an Israeli student and a Palestinian student... After Mr. Carter left, Mr. Dershowitz spoke in the same gymnasium, saying that the former president oversimplified the situation and that his conciliatory and sensible-sounding speech at Brandeis belied his words in some other interviews.... “There are two different Jimmy Carters,” Mr. Dershowitz said. “You heard the Brandeis Jimmy Carter today, and he was terrific. I support almost everything he said. But if you listen to the Al Jazeera Jimmy Carter, you’ll hear a very different perspective.”
During his response, Dershowitz stated that, "if" he had "been allowed to be in the audience" of Carter's speech to ask a question or offer a rebuttal, he would have asked one question of Carter: "...were you ever asked to give your advice to Arafat as whether to accept or reject an offer [of a separate state for the Palestinians] at Camp David?" Dershowitz went on to assert that, had President Carter done so, and had Arafat rejected such an offer on Carter's advice, Carter himself would have been responsible for the situation of the Palestinians today.
The Doha Debates
In April 2009, Dershowitz participated in the Doha Debates at Georgetown University in Washington DC, where he debated against the motion "this house believes that it is time for the USA to get tough on Israel" with fellow speaker Dore Gold, President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Speakers for the motion were Avraham Burg, former Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel and former Speaker of the Knesset and Michael Scheuer, former Chief of the CIA Bin Laden Issue Station. He lost the debate, with 63% of the audience voting for the motion.