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The Case for Israel
The Case for Israel is an ardent defense of Israel's rights, supported by indisputable evidence. Presents a passionate look at what Israel's accusers and detractors are saying about this war-torn country. Dershowitz accuses those who attack Israel of international bigotry and backs up his argument with hard facts.
Widely respected as a civil libertarian, legal educator, and defense attorney extraordinaire, Alan Dershowitz has also been a passionate though not uncritical supporter of Israel.
Widely respected as a civil libertarian, legal educator, and defense attorney extraordinaire, Alan Dershowitz has also been a passionate though not uncritical supporter of Israel.
265 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2003
423 people are currently reading
3668 people want to read
About the author
Alan M. Dershowitz
146 books318 followersAlan Morton Dershowitz is an American lawyer, jurist, and political commentator. He is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He is known for his career as an attorney in several high-profile law cases and commentary on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
He has spent most of his career at Harvard, where, at the age of 28, he became the youngest full professor in its history, until Noam Elkies took the record. Dershowitz still holds the record as the youngest person to become a professor of law there.
As a criminal appellate lawyer, Dershowitz has won thirteen out of the fifteen murder and attempted murder cases he has handled. He successfully argued to overturn the conviction of Claus von Bülow for the attempted murder of Bülow's wife, Sunny. Dershowitz was the appellate advisor for the defense in the criminal trial of O.J. Simpson for the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.
He has spent most of his career at Harvard, where, at the age of 28, he became the youngest full professor in its history, until Noam Elkies took the record. Dershowitz still holds the record as the youngest person to become a professor of law there.
As a criminal appellate lawyer, Dershowitz has won thirteen out of the fifteen murder and attempted murder cases he has handled. He successfully argued to overturn the conviction of Claus von Bülow for the attempted murder of Bülow's wife, Sunny. Dershowitz was the appellate advisor for the defense in the criminal trial of O.J. Simpson for the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 257 reviews
August 9, 2018
As someone who had spent time in Palestine and Israel (mostly Palestine), I received this book with an open mind, interested to learn more about the "other side" and find out more about the thought processes of people who had different opinions and experiences than I did.
Unfortunately this book was worse than useless. We can all have our own opinions. We can't just make up our own facts. Sadly, this book is incredibly mendacious, based on little more than lies, distortions, and racism. It is an embarrassment that it got published, much less widely distributed. (It was handed out for free on the Stanford campus by a "pro-Israel" student organization -- that's how I got a copy.)
John Wiley & Sons might have made money off it, but it is a poorer world for having this book in it. It serves only to propagandize people who are too uninformed to know any better.
If you want to know more about Israel, or Palestine, or the situation in the region, please look elsewhere. This is a waste of time.
Edited to add: It's pretty clear by now that Alan Dershowitz is a pathological liar, so the quality of this book isn't all that surprising.
Unfortunately this book was worse than useless. We can all have our own opinions. We can't just make up our own facts. Sadly, this book is incredibly mendacious, based on little more than lies, distortions, and racism. It is an embarrassment that it got published, much less widely distributed. (It was handed out for free on the Stanford campus by a "pro-Israel" student organization -- that's how I got a copy.)
John Wiley & Sons might have made money off it, but it is a poorer world for having this book in it. It serves only to propagandize people who are too uninformed to know any better.
If you want to know more about Israel, or Palestine, or the situation in the region, please look elsewhere. This is a waste of time.
Edited to add: It's pretty clear by now that Alan Dershowitz is a pathological liar, so the quality of this book isn't all that surprising.
March 10, 2008
Some of these reviews inaccurately call this book "biased", which confuses me. Dershowitz quotes from historical documents...mostly from the essential British Mandate period. Just because history happens to be in Israel's favor, and not in the favor of the Palestinian Arabs (the word used to refer to one of many ethnicities who lived there, and Jews were actually the first Palestinians - by about 700 years) or some of the 59 Muslim nations that cannot tolerate a tiny Jewish nation does not make the book "biased" by any means.
I question people who would say "They're both wrong" without holding both sides to a previously-agreed-upon set of standards and deciding from there. To just say something is biased, or that "they're both wrong" without offering a reasonable argument as to why, just sounds rather elementary and doesn't really benefit anyone. Most people do not realize for example that Jordan (originally called Trans-Jordan) made up 80% of the British Mandate (which a small amount of world history knowledge can tell you happened to be the orginal Jewish homeland for over a thousand years) and that this 80% was literally HANDED to Palestinians Muslim Arabs for the sole purpose of establishing a Palestinians Muslim State - Jewish families who had lived on that piece of land for centuries (according to the Peel Report about 320,000 families lived there) were kicked off. Look at Jordan's laws...to this day, Jews are the ONLY people barred from owning land in Jordan. Is this fair or just? The REMAINING 20% of the British Mandate is what the Arabs continue to kill Jews over...violent killing that no human should ever be subjected to, and it's been going on since LONG BEFORE 1948.
This is a must-read for anyone who wants to learn more about the historical origins and facts behind the Arab-Israeli conflict. Plus, I love a good book that exposes essential facts that certain groups would do *anything* to cover up. As history has shown time and time again, hate crimes and racism have never been solved by ignoring them or pretending they don't exist.
This book takes a major step in the right direction by talking about the facts in a realistic way, and in their proper context. Plus, he de-bunks many of the myths put forward by the usual agenda-driven propagandists whose bibliographies and references are typically suspiciously skimpy (Said, Chomsky, etc). Just because many Palestinian propagandists do not care for historical facts, does not mean peaceful world citizens have to resign themselves to ignorance, as many propagandists wish they would.
Dershowitz's books (there is a follow-up to this one) provide a good place to start for scholars who are new to the subject, or anyone just curious about learning more about this pivotal region. Apparently anticipating reader skepticism on this highly-sensitive subject, Dershowitz footnotes everything he writes, directing readers to government, British Mandate, and UN documents, maps, and historical compilations by world-renowned historians. If you are a scientific-minded person who prefers verifiable facts to proaganda, this book is worth your time.
Peace can only be achived once more world citizens begin to understand the reality of what is (and has been) going on in the Middle East for centuries.
I question people who would say "They're both wrong" without holding both sides to a previously-agreed-upon set of standards and deciding from there. To just say something is biased, or that "they're both wrong" without offering a reasonable argument as to why, just sounds rather elementary and doesn't really benefit anyone. Most people do not realize for example that Jordan (originally called Trans-Jordan) made up 80% of the British Mandate (which a small amount of world history knowledge can tell you happened to be the orginal Jewish homeland for over a thousand years) and that this 80% was literally HANDED to Palestinians Muslim Arabs for the sole purpose of establishing a Palestinians Muslim State - Jewish families who had lived on that piece of land for centuries (according to the Peel Report about 320,000 families lived there) were kicked off. Look at Jordan's laws...to this day, Jews are the ONLY people barred from owning land in Jordan. Is this fair or just? The REMAINING 20% of the British Mandate is what the Arabs continue to kill Jews over...violent killing that no human should ever be subjected to, and it's been going on since LONG BEFORE 1948.
This is a must-read for anyone who wants to learn more about the historical origins and facts behind the Arab-Israeli conflict. Plus, I love a good book that exposes essential facts that certain groups would do *anything* to cover up. As history has shown time and time again, hate crimes and racism have never been solved by ignoring them or pretending they don't exist.
This book takes a major step in the right direction by talking about the facts in a realistic way, and in their proper context. Plus, he de-bunks many of the myths put forward by the usual agenda-driven propagandists whose bibliographies and references are typically suspiciously skimpy (Said, Chomsky, etc). Just because many Palestinian propagandists do not care for historical facts, does not mean peaceful world citizens have to resign themselves to ignorance, as many propagandists wish they would.
Dershowitz's books (there is a follow-up to this one) provide a good place to start for scholars who are new to the subject, or anyone just curious about learning more about this pivotal region. Apparently anticipating reader skepticism on this highly-sensitive subject, Dershowitz footnotes everything he writes, directing readers to government, British Mandate, and UN documents, maps, and historical compilations by world-renowned historians. If you are a scientific-minded person who prefers verifiable facts to proaganda, this book is worth your time.
Peace can only be achived once more world citizens begin to understand the reality of what is (and has been) going on in the Middle East for centuries.
December 1, 2013
A laughably bad book.
Instead of this pile of tosh (of afterwards if you've already had the misfortune to read it) try Norman Finkelstein's "Beyond Chutzpah" which exposes Dershowitz's cynical distortion of the truth, wholesale misrepresentations and unacknowledged reliance on the work of others.
Michael Desch (Chair of Political Science at Notre Dame University) reviews Dershowitz's book in "The American Conservative" and sums it up well as:
"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 government bought bulk orders of the book to use as part of their efforts to advance Israel's case.) Nothing could be better 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."
Hear, hear.
Instead of this pile of tosh (of afterwards if you've already had the misfortune to read it) try Norman Finkelstein's "Beyond Chutzpah" which exposes Dershowitz's cynical distortion of the truth, wholesale misrepresentations and unacknowledged reliance on the work of others.
Michael Desch (Chair of Political Science at Notre Dame University) reviews Dershowitz's book in "The American Conservative" and sums it up well as:
"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 government bought bulk orders of the book to use as part of their efforts to advance Israel's case.) Nothing could be better 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."
Hear, hear.
September 6, 2014
This is an abysmally bad book and complete waste of paper. Dershowitz says that it's a book written for “someone who is interested but not an expert”. He preys on the ignorance of well-meaning people who simply want to be better informed on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and who, sadly, will probably read nothing else on the subject. From the beginning, one ought to know to read with caution when Dershowitz readily discounts sources when convenient and then cites them as authoritative at other points. For example, he notes that 19th Century population statistics are unreliable in order to argue that commonly given statistics for Arab residents of Palestine are grossly inflated, but then cites those same statistics as authoritative in order to make his own inflated claims regarding the Jewish population of the same period. The book is full of footnotes and citations and thus it's a shame that Dershowitz's average reader probably doesn't have easy access to the books he quotes from. In particular, he quotes liberally from Benny Morris (mainly "Righteous Victims" and "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem"). Morris is rightly cited as an authority, but in very nearly every instance, Dershowitz twists, misquotes, or misrepresents Morris as saying exactly the opposite of what Morris actually said, sometimes pulling together into one quote passages spread over many pages and sometimes even without ellipses. In discussing atrocities, Dershowitz shows his bias by writing that Deir Yassin was an isolated incident and not normal for Jewish forces (while also underplaying the details of the event itself) despite Deir Yassin being typical of a list of such atrocities, while stating that Kfar Etzion was "typical" of Arab actions, which it most definitely was not.
The whole book is full of this sort of nonsense. Dershowitz is downright dishonest. It's sad to think that that most of the readers of this best-seller aren't equipped to fact-check his details and to look up his citations. As I read it I couldn't help thinking of the O.J. Simpson trial. Dershowitz is attempting to acquit Israel the same way he got O.J. acquitted.
The whole book is full of this sort of nonsense. Dershowitz is downright dishonest. It's sad to think that that most of the readers of this best-seller aren't equipped to fact-check his details and to look up his citations. As I read it I couldn't help thinking of the O.J. Simpson trial. Dershowitz is attempting to acquit Israel the same way he got O.J. acquitted.
May 21, 2012
Terrible book that rationalizes or ignores Israel's egregious behavior.
June 3, 2008
Im about 7 chapters into and none have been slightly convincing. The line of reasoning is basically that since Jewish people lived in parts of Palestine pre-turn of the 20th century, the state is their right. There has been no addressing of the war crimes committed by Sharon, nor the flagrant violations of UN mandate that have made Israel one of the top three international violators of UN mandate, with the other two being the US and Iraq pre-March 2003. To say nothing of the fact that among his ideological adversaries throughout the book are Robert Fisk and Noam Chomsky, two people who, if anything, are well read and exponentially more informed about the subject matter than Dersowitz...worth reading anyway because its the other sides' perspective.
August 11, 2023
Alan Dershowitz explains in this succinct and blanced work, the situation involving Israel's decades long struggle for survival, against an Arab campaign to annihilate every Jewish man, woman and child in the Land of Israel, or as the anti-Israel hatemongers call it "Palestine."
He objectively go's through the history of the region and explains why the Jews have a right to be there. Indeed, despite the cold-blooded deceptions by the left (especially in academia and the media) the struggle is simply of 5 million Israeli men, women and children just to survive in the little strip of land, which one can barely see on a world map-the ancient homeland of the Jewish people. The right, which the world granted in 1948 through the United Nations, and are now, through the United Nations, academia, the Media, the totalitarian Third world Lobby etc, are now attempting to withdraw.
Dershowitz go's through each canard against the tiny Jewish State one by one , summarizing the spurious charges , and then demolishes them with clear and balanced facts.
He thereby deals with the lies that 'Israel is a Colnialist Imperialist State' , that 'European Jews displaced Palestinians' , that 'The Zionist Movement was a Plot to colnize all of Palestine' that 'Israel Strated the Six Day War' , that 'Israel is a Racist , Aparthied State', that 'More Palestinians Have Been Killed Than Israelis' , and many others demolishing them with clear reasonable argument-so that no reasonable person of goodwill can ever disseminate or accept these dishonest libels.
For example , he outlines how the Palestinian strategy of deliberately targeting Israeli women , children and the elderly cannot be compared to the Israeli policy of strictly targeting combatants , even though Arab civillians may sometimes be killed in the crossfire, often because they are deliberately used as human shields by the Palestinian terrorists. How spurious is the repetition of statistics that more Palestinians than Israelis have been killed in the recent war , when an analysis of the facts reveals that the majority of Arabs killed and injured have been armed combatants and the number of Israeli women and children killed and injured is well in excess of the number of Palestinian women and children killed and injured-as many as three times more according to one study.
With regard to the ridiculous charge that Israel is a racist state , Dershowitz points out : "With regard to support for people of color , Israel is truly a nation of color. It has one of the most diverse populations in the world , including black Africans from Ethiopia , brown Africans and Asians from North Africa , Yemen , Egypt , Iraq and Morocco;Jews from Central Asia , Russia and the Caucuses ; and families from Romania , Latin America and the former Yugoslavia. Nelson Mandela was simply wrong when he described Israel as a 'white' nation as contrasted to Iraq , which he called a 'black' nation.
He also deals with the fallacy that people support the Palestinians against Israel , because the Palestinians are percieved as the 'underdog': " Viewed from a global perspective , Israel is clearly the underdog. The Palestinians have the widespread support of a billion Muslims. Add to that the United Nations , , the European community, the third world, the Vatican , many influential academics , the international left , the far right and many Protestant churches. The Palestinians have far more support than the Tibetans , the Kurds , the Armenians , the Chechens and many real underdogs. Moroever the nations that are opressing these other underdog groups-China , Turkey and Russia , are far more powerful than tiny tiny Israel , with the population of approximately 5.37 million Jews and 1.26 million Arabs. Yet these other 'underdogs' recieve little support from those who champion the Palestinians"
The 'Palestinian' terrorist onslaught against the Jewish people in Israel, is every bit as cruel and relentless as that of the Nazis against the Jewish people in Europe 60 years ago. The monstrous and inhumane Arabs that call themselves 'Palestinians' usually target women and children, and are supported today in their unfathomable cruelty, by those who claim to be 'progressive' and 'humane'. It is simply nauseating and frightening to realize that the world has come to this.
Even worse some ultra-left Jews in the Diaspora, have also turned on their fellow Jews in Israel, throwing their influence behind the Arab campaign for a holocaust of Israeli Jewry.
The writer of this book explains that is deception to claim that anti-Israel hatred is not anti-Semitism. After all the people singled out for genocide by the pro-Palestinian lobby are Jews. The fact that they live in Israel does not make them any less so than the victims of the Nazis , because they happened to live in Europe!
Dershowitz, in this work, makes clear the facts that have been obscured and twisted around 180 degrees. Is it too much to hope that if enough of us try to outline the truth, another great and callous injustice against the Jews can be prevented, 60 years after Hitler's holocaust?
I particularly thought the message by Dershowitz to the growing number of students and young people who are joining the cruel and bigoted campaign against Israel is timeous and relevant.
My sentiments exactly:
" You are on the wrong side of history. You are on the wrong side of morality and justice. You have , perhaps inadvertently , joined hands with the forces of evil that have for millenia imposed a double standard against everything Jewish.
You are on the side of those who supported Hitler's Holocaust , and now deny that it occured. You are assisting those who are once again targeting babies, children , women and the elderly just because they are Jewish. You are in very bad company. Nor can yopu continue to hide behind claims of ignorance , because the facts are so easily available to anyone who wants to think for himself or herself.
If tragedy where once again to befall the Jewish people , or the Jewish nation in which more than 5 million mmake their home. history will judge you harshly , as it has your ideological predecessors. Think for yourself. Learn the facts. Listen to all sides. And if you are a person of goodwill , I am confident that you will no longer see this complex issue as one sidedly anti-Israel. You owe it to yourself and to history , not to remain complicit with a new variant of the world's oldest prejudice."
Merged review:
Interestingly the viciousness spat out by Isreal-haters about this book , in the reviews here that are against the book, simply strenghthen the case about just how murderous in their hate , the loathsome enemies of Israel are.
Alan Dershowitz explains in this succinct and balanced work, the situation involving Israel's decades long struggle for survival, against an Arab campaign to annihilate every Jewish man, woman and child in the Land of Israel, or as the anti-Israel hatemongers call it "Palestine."
He objectively go's through the history of the region and explains why the Jews have a right to be there. Indeed, despite the cold-blooded deceptions by the left (especially in academia and the media) the struggle is simply of 5 million Israeli men, women and children just to survive in the little strip of land, which one can barely see on a world map-the ancient homeland of the Jewish people. The right, which the world granted in 1948 through the United Nations, and are now, through the United Nations, academia, the Media, the totalitarian Third world Lobby etc, are now attempting to withdraw.
Dershowitz go's through each canard against the tiny Jewish State one by one , summarizing the spurious charges , and then demolishes them with clear and balanced facts.
He thereby deals with the lies that 'Israel is a Colonialist Imperialist State' , that 'European Jews displaced Palestinians' , that 'The Zionist Movement was a Plot to colonize all of Palestine' that 'Israel Started the Six Day War' , that 'Israel is a Racist , Apartheid State', that 'More Palestinians Have Been Killed Than Israelis' , and many others , debunking them with clear reasonable argument-so that no reasonable person of goodwill can ever disseminate or accept these dishonest libels.
For example , he outlines how the Palestinian strategy of deliberately targeting Israeli women , children and the elderly cannot be compared to the Israeli policy of strictly targeting combatants , even though Arab civillians may sometimes be killed in the crossfire, often because they are deliberately used as human shields by the Palestinian terrorists. How spurious is the repetition of statistics that more Palestinians than Israelis have been killed in the recent war , when an analysis of the facts reveals that the majority of Arabs killed and injured have been armed combatants and the number of Israeli women and children killed and injured is well in excess of the number of Palestinian women and children killed and injured-as many as three times more according to one study.
With regard to the ridiculous charge that Israel is a racist state , Dershowitz points out : "With regard to support for people of color , Israel is truly a nation of color. It has one of the most diverse populations in the world , including black Africans from Ethiopia , brown Africans and Asians from North Africa , Yemen , Egypt , Iraq and Morocco;Jews from Central Asia , Russia and the Caucuses ; and families from Romania , Latin America and the former Yugoslavia. Nelson Mandela was simply wrong when he described Israel as a 'white' nation as contrasted to Iraq , which he called a 'black' nation.
He also deals with the fallacy that people support the Palestinians against Israel , because the Palestinians are percieved as the 'underdog': " Viewed from a global perspective , Israel is clearly the underdog. The Palestinians have the widespread support of a billion Muslims. Add to that the United Nations , , the European community, the third world, the Vatican , many influential academics , the international left , the far right and many Protestant churches. The Palestinians have far more support than the Tibetans , the Kurds , the Armenians , the Chechens and many real underdogs. Moroever the nations that are opressing these other underdog groups-China , Turkey and Russia , are far more powerful than tiny tiny Israel , with the population of approximately 5.37 million Jews and 1.26 million Arabs. Yet these other 'underdogs' recieve little support from those who champion the Palestinians"
The 'Palestinian' terrorist onslaught against the Jewish people in Israel, is every bit as cruel and relentless as that of the Nazis against the Jewish people in Europe 60 years ago. The monstrous and inhumane Arabs that call themselves 'Palestinians' usually target women and children, and are supported today in their unfathomable cruelty, by those who claim to be 'progressive' and 'humane'. It is simply nauseating and frightening to realize that the world has come to this.
Even worse some ultra-left Jews in the Diaspora, have also turned on their fellow Jews in Israel, throwing their influence behind the Arab campaign for a holocaust of Israeli Jewry.
The writer of this book explains that is deception to claim that anti-Israel hatred is not anti-Semitism. After all the people singled out for genocide by the pro-Palestinian lobby are Jews. The fact that they live in Israel does not make them any less so than the victims of the Nazis , because they happened to live in Europe!
Dershowitz, in this work, makes clear the facts that have been obscured and twisted around 180 degrees. Is it too much to hope that if enough of us try to outline the truth, another great and callous injustice against the Jews can be prevented, 60 years after Hitler's Holocaust?
He objectively go's through the history of the region and explains why the Jews have a right to be there. Indeed, despite the cold-blooded deceptions by the left (especially in academia and the media) the struggle is simply of 5 million Israeli men, women and children just to survive in the little strip of land, which one can barely see on a world map-the ancient homeland of the Jewish people. The right, which the world granted in 1948 through the United Nations, and are now, through the United Nations, academia, the Media, the totalitarian Third world Lobby etc, are now attempting to withdraw.
Dershowitz go's through each canard against the tiny Jewish State one by one , summarizing the spurious charges , and then demolishes them with clear and balanced facts.
He thereby deals with the lies that 'Israel is a Colnialist Imperialist State' , that 'European Jews displaced Palestinians' , that 'The Zionist Movement was a Plot to colnize all of Palestine' that 'Israel Strated the Six Day War' , that 'Israel is a Racist , Aparthied State', that 'More Palestinians Have Been Killed Than Israelis' , and many others demolishing them with clear reasonable argument-so that no reasonable person of goodwill can ever disseminate or accept these dishonest libels.
For example , he outlines how the Palestinian strategy of deliberately targeting Israeli women , children and the elderly cannot be compared to the Israeli policy of strictly targeting combatants , even though Arab civillians may sometimes be killed in the crossfire, often because they are deliberately used as human shields by the Palestinian terrorists. How spurious is the repetition of statistics that more Palestinians than Israelis have been killed in the recent war , when an analysis of the facts reveals that the majority of Arabs killed and injured have been armed combatants and the number of Israeli women and children killed and injured is well in excess of the number of Palestinian women and children killed and injured-as many as three times more according to one study.
With regard to the ridiculous charge that Israel is a racist state , Dershowitz points out : "With regard to support for people of color , Israel is truly a nation of color. It has one of the most diverse populations in the world , including black Africans from Ethiopia , brown Africans and Asians from North Africa , Yemen , Egypt , Iraq and Morocco;Jews from Central Asia , Russia and the Caucuses ; and families from Romania , Latin America and the former Yugoslavia. Nelson Mandela was simply wrong when he described Israel as a 'white' nation as contrasted to Iraq , which he called a 'black' nation.
He also deals with the fallacy that people support the Palestinians against Israel , because the Palestinians are percieved as the 'underdog': " Viewed from a global perspective , Israel is clearly the underdog. The Palestinians have the widespread support of a billion Muslims. Add to that the United Nations , , the European community, the third world, the Vatican , many influential academics , the international left , the far right and many Protestant churches. The Palestinians have far more support than the Tibetans , the Kurds , the Armenians , the Chechens and many real underdogs. Moroever the nations that are opressing these other underdog groups-China , Turkey and Russia , are far more powerful than tiny tiny Israel , with the population of approximately 5.37 million Jews and 1.26 million Arabs. Yet these other 'underdogs' recieve little support from those who champion the Palestinians"
The 'Palestinian' terrorist onslaught against the Jewish people in Israel, is every bit as cruel and relentless as that of the Nazis against the Jewish people in Europe 60 years ago. The monstrous and inhumane Arabs that call themselves 'Palestinians' usually target women and children, and are supported today in their unfathomable cruelty, by those who claim to be 'progressive' and 'humane'. It is simply nauseating and frightening to realize that the world has come to this.
Even worse some ultra-left Jews in the Diaspora, have also turned on their fellow Jews in Israel, throwing their influence behind the Arab campaign for a holocaust of Israeli Jewry.
The writer of this book explains that is deception to claim that anti-Israel hatred is not anti-Semitism. After all the people singled out for genocide by the pro-Palestinian lobby are Jews. The fact that they live in Israel does not make them any less so than the victims of the Nazis , because they happened to live in Europe!
Dershowitz, in this work, makes clear the facts that have been obscured and twisted around 180 degrees. Is it too much to hope that if enough of us try to outline the truth, another great and callous injustice against the Jews can be prevented, 60 years after Hitler's holocaust?
I particularly thought the message by Dershowitz to the growing number of students and young people who are joining the cruel and bigoted campaign against Israel is timeous and relevant.
My sentiments exactly:
" You are on the wrong side of history. You are on the wrong side of morality and justice. You have , perhaps inadvertently , joined hands with the forces of evil that have for millenia imposed a double standard against everything Jewish.
You are on the side of those who supported Hitler's Holocaust , and now deny that it occured. You are assisting those who are once again targeting babies, children , women and the elderly just because they are Jewish. You are in very bad company. Nor can yopu continue to hide behind claims of ignorance , because the facts are so easily available to anyone who wants to think for himself or herself.
If tragedy where once again to befall the Jewish people , or the Jewish nation in which more than 5 million mmake their home. history will judge you harshly , as it has your ideological predecessors. Think for yourself. Learn the facts. Listen to all sides. And if you are a person of goodwill , I am confident that you will no longer see this complex issue as one sidedly anti-Israel. You owe it to yourself and to history , not to remain complicit with a new variant of the world's oldest prejudice."
Merged review:
Interestingly the viciousness spat out by Isreal-haters about this book , in the reviews here that are against the book, simply strenghthen the case about just how murderous in their hate , the loathsome enemies of Israel are.
Alan Dershowitz explains in this succinct and balanced work, the situation involving Israel's decades long struggle for survival, against an Arab campaign to annihilate every Jewish man, woman and child in the Land of Israel, or as the anti-Israel hatemongers call it "Palestine."
He objectively go's through the history of the region and explains why the Jews have a right to be there. Indeed, despite the cold-blooded deceptions by the left (especially in academia and the media) the struggle is simply of 5 million Israeli men, women and children just to survive in the little strip of land, which one can barely see on a world map-the ancient homeland of the Jewish people. The right, which the world granted in 1948 through the United Nations, and are now, through the United Nations, academia, the Media, the totalitarian Third world Lobby etc, are now attempting to withdraw.
Dershowitz go's through each canard against the tiny Jewish State one by one , summarizing the spurious charges , and then demolishes them with clear and balanced facts.
He thereby deals with the lies that 'Israel is a Colonialist Imperialist State' , that 'European Jews displaced Palestinians' , that 'The Zionist Movement was a Plot to colonize all of Palestine' that 'Israel Started the Six Day War' , that 'Israel is a Racist , Apartheid State', that 'More Palestinians Have Been Killed Than Israelis' , and many others , debunking them with clear reasonable argument-so that no reasonable person of goodwill can ever disseminate or accept these dishonest libels.
For example , he outlines how the Palestinian strategy of deliberately targeting Israeli women , children and the elderly cannot be compared to the Israeli policy of strictly targeting combatants , even though Arab civillians may sometimes be killed in the crossfire, often because they are deliberately used as human shields by the Palestinian terrorists. How spurious is the repetition of statistics that more Palestinians than Israelis have been killed in the recent war , when an analysis of the facts reveals that the majority of Arabs killed and injured have been armed combatants and the number of Israeli women and children killed and injured is well in excess of the number of Palestinian women and children killed and injured-as many as three times more according to one study.
With regard to the ridiculous charge that Israel is a racist state , Dershowitz points out : "With regard to support for people of color , Israel is truly a nation of color. It has one of the most diverse populations in the world , including black Africans from Ethiopia , brown Africans and Asians from North Africa , Yemen , Egypt , Iraq and Morocco;Jews from Central Asia , Russia and the Caucuses ; and families from Romania , Latin America and the former Yugoslavia. Nelson Mandela was simply wrong when he described Israel as a 'white' nation as contrasted to Iraq , which he called a 'black' nation.
He also deals with the fallacy that people support the Palestinians against Israel , because the Palestinians are percieved as the 'underdog': " Viewed from a global perspective , Israel is clearly the underdog. The Palestinians have the widespread support of a billion Muslims. Add to that the United Nations , , the European community, the third world, the Vatican , many influential academics , the international left , the far right and many Protestant churches. The Palestinians have far more support than the Tibetans , the Kurds , the Armenians , the Chechens and many real underdogs. Moroever the nations that are opressing these other underdog groups-China , Turkey and Russia , are far more powerful than tiny tiny Israel , with the population of approximately 5.37 million Jews and 1.26 million Arabs. Yet these other 'underdogs' recieve little support from those who champion the Palestinians"
The 'Palestinian' terrorist onslaught against the Jewish people in Israel, is every bit as cruel and relentless as that of the Nazis against the Jewish people in Europe 60 years ago. The monstrous and inhumane Arabs that call themselves 'Palestinians' usually target women and children, and are supported today in their unfathomable cruelty, by those who claim to be 'progressive' and 'humane'. It is simply nauseating and frightening to realize that the world has come to this.
Even worse some ultra-left Jews in the Diaspora, have also turned on their fellow Jews in Israel, throwing their influence behind the Arab campaign for a holocaust of Israeli Jewry.
The writer of this book explains that is deception to claim that anti-Israel hatred is not anti-Semitism. After all the people singled out for genocide by the pro-Palestinian lobby are Jews. The fact that they live in Israel does not make them any less so than the victims of the Nazis , because they happened to live in Europe!
Dershowitz, in this work, makes clear the facts that have been obscured and twisted around 180 degrees. Is it too much to hope that if enough of us try to outline the truth, another great and callous injustice against the Jews can be prevented, 60 years after Hitler's Holocaust?
August 9, 2019
Dershowitz defended his friend Jeffrey Epstein when Epstein was indicted for running a child prostitution ring. For what is usually a life-in-prison offense, Dershowitz got Epstein's sentence reduced to only thirteen years, and the permission to leave his cell for sixteen hours a day. Basically, he only had to sleep in prison.
Dershowitz was also on O.J.'s appellate team.
How did he do in getting Israel off? Based on comments here, he did a spectacular job. Unfortunately, Dershowitz has been known to be full of it, in spite of the confident language he always employs.
Nonetheless, I do agree with him on one thing; people with a virulent hatred for Israel are irrational. I do believe that if you look at the history of Israel in its entirety, the Arabs were on the wrong more often than not.
In the chapters on Israel's founding, Finkelstein, in Beyond Chutzpah (UC Press), demonstrated how Dershowitz lifted wholesale from Joan Peters' In Time Immemorial, which was demonstrated to be a hoax. Beyond Chutzpah, which I'm reading right now, offers a point-by-point dismantling to almost everything Dershowitz claims in this book.
Not a big deal to me for two reasons. First, although Israel did commit ethnic cleansing in order to create a majority Jewish state at its founding, I still believe Israel has the right to exist. Machiavelli said, "With the founding of every city there is injustice." When you create a homeland for refugees who faced near-annihilation in Europe, you have to remove people and create more refugees. It's tragic in the dramatic sense. The US did it. Arabs just don't go down as easily as Native-Americans.
Second, I'm not going to rehash Finkelstein's rebuttals, because I'd rather share my own semi-original thoughts. I'll just point out his major points of B.S. in this book.
I will cite one another Finkelstein rebuttal in regards to AD's claims. AD said that the lopsided ratio in Palestinian civilian deaths to Israeli civilian deaths is due to the fact that a lot of suicide bombing attempts were foiled by Israeli intelligence, and that Israel has better medical care. Finkelstein replied, if you want to play that game, then any time an Israeli soldier shoots at a Palestinian civilian and misses, that also counts as death. One Israeli defense official said during the Second Intifada they had a bullet for every Palestinian child.
"Virtually everyone who played any role in the Camp David-Taba peace process places the entire blame for its failure of Arafat's decision to turn down Barak's offer." p. 118
Complete hogwash. He keeps pounding this theme throughout the book, that Israel keep offering the world to the Palestinians, and they keep rejecting. To the contrary, Israeli diplomat Shlomo ben-Ami said, if he were Arafat, he wouldn't have taken the offer. Watch AD's debate with Peter Beinhart. Beinhart mentions two-or-three people close to the peace process on the Israeli said who said differently. AD merely dismisses those comments as having their own "agenda."
Another of AD's spurious claims is that Israel doesn't torture, by lauding a Supreme Court decision against the practice. He obviously doesn't read human rights reports. According to B'Tselem, the Israeli Organization for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, there were 10,000 cases of Israeli soldiers torturing Palestinians. The number for the CIA is about 40-60.
The regular Israeli army has not responded by targeting Arab population centers, such as Amman, Damascus, and Cairo, even those these cities have been well within the range of Israeli aircraft. p. 75
What a whopper. In the 2006 Lebanon war, Israel bombed Beirut to pieces. They also dropped a one-ton bomb on densely-populated Gaza city. Gaza has been decimated. NOTE: To be fair, these wars happened after this book was published.
Israel, in contrast, avoids targeting cities and civilians and does not seek the destruction of any neighboring state. p. 227
The notion that Israel doesn't target civilians is bogus. Multiple human rights reports, plus testimonies from IDF soldiers indicate that Israel bombs buildings with no military targets. Given that 80% of Palestinians killed in both the 2008 and 2014 Gaza were civilians, utter nonsense.
It should not be surprising that so many human rights advocates have lost faith in Amnesty International's objectivity when it comes to reporting on Israel. p. 137
What laughable statement. First, there are no footnotes, so we have no idea exactly what "so many human rights activists" he is talking about. Second, not only is Amnesty reputable, Dershowitz dismisses every reputable Human Rights organization, like B'Tselem and HRW. Those and Physicians for Human rights, the Big 4, all produce reports that mutually-corroborating. AD claims to be a champion of human rights yet he doesn't like human rights organizations.
Dershowitz was also on O.J.'s appellate team.
How did he do in getting Israel off? Based on comments here, he did a spectacular job. Unfortunately, Dershowitz has been known to be full of it, in spite of the confident language he always employs.
Nonetheless, I do agree with him on one thing; people with a virulent hatred for Israel are irrational. I do believe that if you look at the history of Israel in its entirety, the Arabs were on the wrong more often than not.
In the chapters on Israel's founding, Finkelstein, in Beyond Chutzpah (UC Press), demonstrated how Dershowitz lifted wholesale from Joan Peters' In Time Immemorial, which was demonstrated to be a hoax. Beyond Chutzpah, which I'm reading right now, offers a point-by-point dismantling to almost everything Dershowitz claims in this book.
Not a big deal to me for two reasons. First, although Israel did commit ethnic cleansing in order to create a majority Jewish state at its founding, I still believe Israel has the right to exist. Machiavelli said, "With the founding of every city there is injustice." When you create a homeland for refugees who faced near-annihilation in Europe, you have to remove people and create more refugees. It's tragic in the dramatic sense. The US did it. Arabs just don't go down as easily as Native-Americans.
Second, I'm not going to rehash Finkelstein's rebuttals, because I'd rather share my own semi-original thoughts. I'll just point out his major points of B.S. in this book.
I will cite one another Finkelstein rebuttal in regards to AD's claims. AD said that the lopsided ratio in Palestinian civilian deaths to Israeli civilian deaths is due to the fact that a lot of suicide bombing attempts were foiled by Israeli intelligence, and that Israel has better medical care. Finkelstein replied, if you want to play that game, then any time an Israeli soldier shoots at a Palestinian civilian and misses, that also counts as death. One Israeli defense official said during the Second Intifada they had a bullet for every Palestinian child.
"Virtually everyone who played any role in the Camp David-Taba peace process places the entire blame for its failure of Arafat's decision to turn down Barak's offer." p. 118
Complete hogwash. He keeps pounding this theme throughout the book, that Israel keep offering the world to the Palestinians, and they keep rejecting. To the contrary, Israeli diplomat Shlomo ben-Ami said, if he were Arafat, he wouldn't have taken the offer. Watch AD's debate with Peter Beinhart. Beinhart mentions two-or-three people close to the peace process on the Israeli said who said differently. AD merely dismisses those comments as having their own "agenda."
Another of AD's spurious claims is that Israel doesn't torture, by lauding a Supreme Court decision against the practice. He obviously doesn't read human rights reports. According to B'Tselem, the Israeli Organization for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, there were 10,000 cases of Israeli soldiers torturing Palestinians. The number for the CIA is about 40-60.
The regular Israeli army has not responded by targeting Arab population centers, such as Amman, Damascus, and Cairo, even those these cities have been well within the range of Israeli aircraft. p. 75
What a whopper. In the 2006 Lebanon war, Israel bombed Beirut to pieces. They also dropped a one-ton bomb on densely-populated Gaza city. Gaza has been decimated. NOTE: To be fair, these wars happened after this book was published.
Israel, in contrast, avoids targeting cities and civilians and does not seek the destruction of any neighboring state. p. 227
The notion that Israel doesn't target civilians is bogus. Multiple human rights reports, plus testimonies from IDF soldiers indicate that Israel bombs buildings with no military targets. Given that 80% of Palestinians killed in both the 2008 and 2014 Gaza were civilians, utter nonsense.
It should not be surprising that so many human rights advocates have lost faith in Amnesty International's objectivity when it comes to reporting on Israel. p. 137
What laughable statement. First, there are no footnotes, so we have no idea exactly what "so many human rights activists" he is talking about. Second, not only is Amnesty reputable, Dershowitz dismisses every reputable Human Rights organization, like B'Tselem and HRW. Those and Physicians for Human rights, the Big 4, all produce reports that mutually-corroborating. AD claims to be a champion of human rights yet he doesn't like human rights organizations.
September 18, 2007
I was disappointed by this book's narrow agenda (it proposes primarily to refute arguments rather than establish a more generic dialog) and academic counterpunching. Each chapter purports to be a self-contained presentation of a claim and refution of that claim; unfortunately many chapters fail to form arguments I was able to make sense of. I read it hoping to educate myself on the topic; what I came away feeling was that this book was not intended for people new to the subject and that I should be looking elsewhere.
August 15, 2013
Most of us are familiar with the author who is one of the country's foremost attorneys and defender of individual liberties. He is also one damn good author. In this book, Dershowitz utilizes his legal skills to argue for the existence of the state of Israel through the posing of 32 questions about Israel. He refutes the slurs, slanders, and misrepresentations that have been leveled at Israel in recent years by its venomous critics. The questions (chapters) range from "Has Israel engaged in genocide against Palestinian civilians" to "Have the Jews Exploited the Holocaust".
The book is pro-Palestinian as well as pro-Israel as Dershowitz favors an economically viable Palestinian democratic state although he argues that Palestine has missed many chances to attain this by their desire to destroy the Jewish homeland rather than co-exist.
Granted, the book is biased toward Israel as you would expect but the author is at the top of his game with his arguments. A very thoughtful and well-written book.
The book is pro-Palestinian as well as pro-Israel as Dershowitz favors an economically viable Palestinian democratic state although he argues that Palestine has missed many chances to attain this by their desire to destroy the Jewish homeland rather than co-exist.
Granted, the book is biased toward Israel as you would expect but the author is at the top of his game with his arguments. A very thoughtful and well-written book.
June 3, 2018
Crude, dissimulative* propaganda 'somehow' published by a highly-regarded academic publisher (kind of like how the failed con-man Scofield got his dispie-Zionist study Bible published by Oxford University Press a century after they ceased publication of anything else smelling of 'conservative Christianity' - which thanks to them came to be identified with dispensational judeolatry in the 20th c.).
Read Israel Shahak, MacDonald, Finkelstein, Edward Said (with great discernment), and Alison Weir instead. (MacDonald explains why these books get published at the level they do - this is an Ace paperback at best - whereas, ahem, 'dissenting views' are ignored.)
*Obscuring the facts and redefining truth, appealing to universal values in defense of particularistic group interests (but not for universal application!) and so on are the very definition of dissimulation, obfuscation, and obtuseness. If this was a defense of Israel on honest ethnostatist grounds, I'd be inclined to give it a 4.
Read Israel Shahak, MacDonald, Finkelstein, Edward Said (with great discernment), and Alison Weir instead. (MacDonald explains why these books get published at the level they do - this is an Ace paperback at best - whereas, ahem, 'dissenting views' are ignored.)
*Obscuring the facts and redefining truth, appealing to universal values in defense of particularistic group interests (but not for universal application!) and so on are the very definition of dissimulation, obfuscation, and obtuseness. If this was a defense of Israel on honest ethnostatist grounds, I'd be inclined to give it a 4.
August 31, 2014
Tremendous resource to educate self and others
May 21, 2023
Wow, I just read 250 pages of diverting, finger pointing and blame shifting and poor use of rhetoric and propaganda. Much of the finger pointing is levied at the US itself, minimizing the actions of the Israelis and diverting attention away from the immoral Zionist cause. Perhaps his allegiance lies with Israel and not his own country, or it would appear so. I would expect more from an educated attorney and furthermore from an American.
Dershowitz clearly lacks in facts and spends much of his time playing the anti-Semite card not realizing Arabs are Semitic people as well. That connection being the Abrahamic connection which in essence makes the Jews and Arabs cousins. He also actively dismisses Jewish critics of the Zionist viewpoint as nothing more than confused, self-hating Jews. I have personally met quite a number of these people and have found them to be nothing less than loving, caring people with a sound moral compass.
He missed some vital points about Muslims that a non-Muslim might not be aware of. Namely his claim that Muslims were chanting, "Islam is the religion of the sword". That is a claim that is foreign to Muslims and not one they would use. It's use is in the non-Muslim West. In addition he claims that Palestinian schools teach children that Jews crucified Jesus in attempt to gain allies based on a falsehood. The Qur'an itself claims it was not Jesus himself that was crucified. Dershowitz seems to be naively unaware of this fact. The ill-informed reader would leave believing these misconceptions and untruths which leaves the informed reader to wonder what else Dershowitz has embellished, fabricated and/or outright lied about.
If Israel is a true democracy as he claims many times, then why not give the Palestinians citizenship, human rights and the right to vote? That would be true democracy if I'm not mistaken.
Dershowitz even goes as far as to blame the Palestinians both directly and indirectly for the Holocaust as if it wasn't European non-Muslims that committed those atrocities and even in veiled words states the Palestinians should pay for that with their lives and land.
His point of view, in line with the standard Zionist position is rendered false by the past as well as present actions such as settlements, further fragmenting and eating up of more Palestinian land which by the way constitutes an international crime according to the UN and human morals. The Knesset is now openly considering annexing the West Bank. So where does that leave Dershowitz' position? To be nothing more than false. The untrained eye with a sense of morality can see this, regardless of race, religion or creed.
As far as the writing style, I rather enjoyed that aspect. He states a point, uses rhetoric to gives a less than full account of the opposing view, then responds, albeit in a lacking manner in both truth and moral common sense.
I have a laundry list of issues with his points but to respond in full it would require me to write my own book. In lieu of this book, I would recommend the more balanced Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter. I suspect Dershowitz hasn't read that himself nor would he hear it anyway as he's clearly blinded by his own propaganda.
I can look at issues objectively, accept and understand an opposing viewpoint, hence I read this book. I did so looking for an objective Zionist viewpoint but I can not accept lies and moral bankruptcy. 1 ⭐...and I give that reluctantly. If there was ever a need to hold a book burning, this one would be on the top of the heap.
Dershowitz clearly lacks in facts and spends much of his time playing the anti-Semite card not realizing Arabs are Semitic people as well. That connection being the Abrahamic connection which in essence makes the Jews and Arabs cousins. He also actively dismisses Jewish critics of the Zionist viewpoint as nothing more than confused, self-hating Jews. I have personally met quite a number of these people and have found them to be nothing less than loving, caring people with a sound moral compass.
He missed some vital points about Muslims that a non-Muslim might not be aware of. Namely his claim that Muslims were chanting, "Islam is the religion of the sword". That is a claim that is foreign to Muslims and not one they would use. It's use is in the non-Muslim West. In addition he claims that Palestinian schools teach children that Jews crucified Jesus in attempt to gain allies based on a falsehood. The Qur'an itself claims it was not Jesus himself that was crucified. Dershowitz seems to be naively unaware of this fact. The ill-informed reader would leave believing these misconceptions and untruths which leaves the informed reader to wonder what else Dershowitz has embellished, fabricated and/or outright lied about.
If Israel is a true democracy as he claims many times, then why not give the Palestinians citizenship, human rights and the right to vote? That would be true democracy if I'm not mistaken.
Dershowitz even goes as far as to blame the Palestinians both directly and indirectly for the Holocaust as if it wasn't European non-Muslims that committed those atrocities and even in veiled words states the Palestinians should pay for that with their lives and land.
His point of view, in line with the standard Zionist position is rendered false by the past as well as present actions such as settlements, further fragmenting and eating up of more Palestinian land which by the way constitutes an international crime according to the UN and human morals. The Knesset is now openly considering annexing the West Bank. So where does that leave Dershowitz' position? To be nothing more than false. The untrained eye with a sense of morality can see this, regardless of race, religion or creed.
As far as the writing style, I rather enjoyed that aspect. He states a point, uses rhetoric to gives a less than full account of the opposing view, then responds, albeit in a lacking manner in both truth and moral common sense.
I have a laundry list of issues with his points but to respond in full it would require me to write my own book. In lieu of this book, I would recommend the more balanced Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter. I suspect Dershowitz hasn't read that himself nor would he hear it anyway as he's clearly blinded by his own propaganda.
I can look at issues objectively, accept and understand an opposing viewpoint, hence I read this book. I did so looking for an objective Zionist viewpoint but I can not accept lies and moral bankruptcy. 1 ⭐...and I give that reluctantly. If there was ever a need to hold a book burning, this one would be on the top of the heap.
September 21, 2018
i did not actually read this sorry professor
May 11, 2010
This book is good. Not only is it good, it is eye opening. What Alan Dershowitz is saying is that, although he does not agree with Israel's every action, they have a right to existence. After reading this book, this is now my view. What I love that Deshowitz does is the formation of each chapter. He starts off by stating the accusation, the accusers and quotes them, the reality, then the proof. There were some accusations against Israel that even I thought were true, but turned out to be over shadowed by Palestinian and Arab actions. For example, the accusation "Settlement in the West Bank and Gaza is a Major Barrier to peace". I thought it was true, which it is and Dershowitz acknowledges it by saying "I am personally opposed to the settlements". What I did not know was that peace has been offered many times by the Israelis is exchange for the West Bank and Gaza, which, in my opinion, overshadows the settlements which could be avoided. One of my favorite quotes in this book, basically sums it all up; "Israel is the Jew among the nations. I would recommend this book to any person who is looking to enhance their knowledge of the Arab-Israeli conflict, or looking to get the Israeli side of it.
October 5, 2007
Of course the author has his biases. The book is needed because "The new anti-Semitism" has been defined as people who will accept a world with Jews but not a world with Israel. Dershowitz is a mainstream liberal and not an egghead like Noam Chomsky or Norman Finklestein. As a trained lawyer, Dershowitz knows that he must be careful with his facts. What I found most helpful is an appendix where he states what are legitimate disagreements about Israeli policy and what constitutes closet anti-Semitism. For example, I am opposed to the settlements but I would never suggest that Israel enter into a suicide pact.
November 15, 2007
Dershowitz does an excellent job tearing to pieces every unfair criticism of Israel, while not clearing Israel of all wrongs, either. A must read for anyone reading newspapers, listing to radio news, or watching tv news.
December 15, 2019
This guy is serial, compulsive liar with absolutely zero respect for anyone reading his book.
To add to this years later now in December 2019 it’s pretty evident that Dershowitz was on Jeffrey Epstein airplane a number of times and was a good buddy of his so he’s likely been involved in under age sex
To add to this years later now in December 2019 it’s pretty evident that Dershowitz was on Jeffrey Epstein airplane a number of times and was a good buddy of his so he’s likely been involved in under age sex
July 8, 2011
Intriguing and insightful. What's even more compelling is that this is written by a self-proclaimed lefty in the world of academia. Dershowitz makes a great case for the cause of Israel, that if the opponents would do even a smidgen of their homework on this, they too could understand the nature of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict....and that Israel should be praised and supported, not condemned.
This book is set up in a question/answer format which makes it accessible and fairly simple to follow. Dershowitz gives ample proof to support his theses and explains why various assertions are false. Great read for anyone trying to understand the situation in the Middle East and learn more about the plight of Israel.
This book is set up in a question/answer format which makes it accessible and fairly simple to follow. Dershowitz gives ample proof to support his theses and explains why various assertions are false. Great read for anyone trying to understand the situation in the Middle East and learn more about the plight of Israel.
March 1, 2009
It is sad that a book has had to be written to defend Israel's right to exist, but sadly that's the world we live in now.
Dershowitz defends Israel, as one would in an international court, against 32 'charges' against it, and does so convincingly simply by conveying historial facts and figures. It was good to see that Dershowitz did not rely on pro-Israeli sourses to back up his arguments, rather he used neutral, and often pro-Palestinian sorces to ensure that his facts were not tainted by bias.
Dershowitz defends Israel, as one would in an international court, against 32 'charges' against it, and does so convincingly simply by conveying historial facts and figures. It was good to see that Dershowitz did not rely on pro-Israeli sourses to back up his arguments, rather he used neutral, and often pro-Palestinian sorces to ensure that his facts were not tainted by bias.
May 5, 2016
Full disclosure: I didn't get more than a few chapters in before I gave up on this book. I'm anti-(political-)Zionist so I was hoping for a convincing and challenging defense of Israel that would require me to really examine my political and religious feeling about Israel and its place on the world stage and in Judaism. Unfortunately this book doesn't do that. It sets up flimsy strawman after flimsy strawman, and then barely succeeds at knocking even those down. Even my most pro-Israel family members hated this book.
August 16, 2023
The overwhelming majority of the naysayers in the reviews obviously haven’t read this book. Most of their objections are addressed in the book. Before reading this book, I was ambivalent on the Israel and Palestine turmoil, but now I would say I’m pro-Israel. The charge that Israel is an colonial, imperialist state that rejects a two-state solution is without merit.
April 3, 2017
Amazing, well researched book. One of the best things I have read on the subject. I highly reccomend this book.
June 11, 2015
Some of the criticism of this book is spot on. Dershowitz chooses a strange tactic to make his "case", which is actually centered on refuting points made by the most extreme academic critics of Israel. So it is a case, but perhaps appropriately for Dershowitz, it is a DEFENSE. Some would argue the case could be written from the standpoint of Plaintiff.
I'll start with some criticisms and end on a positive note with how this book is still well-worth reading.
1. The book is divided into 32 arguments made against Israel, refuted by the author. This makes it a quick and easy read, with very few arguments exceeding 10 pages. The problem is that for each argument Dershowitz tends to respond with the same set of 5 or so responses, which do not always directly answer the anti-israeli point. I heard these 5 arguments so many times (about 32 times each), that I can easily (and will) sum them up at the end of this review.
2. The strategy of using the words of "fierce critics of Israel" as support for Dershowitz' own case backfired in some cases. Some of the quotes and points made were taken wildly out of context, which is not persuasive even for someone who wants to believe the point. For example, in Chapter 2 Dershowitz quotes Benny Morris seeming to say that only "several thousand" Arabs were displaced following land sales to Jews between 1880 and 1930. The quote may or may not be technically accurate, but it is clear that Benny Morris does not generally think that only several thousand Jews were displaced from Israel. Also, I'm not sure Benny Morris qualifies as one of the fiercest critics of Israel.
3. Lack of organization. Each argument followed a similar pattern. Accusation, Reality, followed by proof. The problem was the "proof" was usually a rambling rant only superficially addressing the accusation and the reality. Refer back to the 5 arguments dropped into nearly every chapter, summarized imperfectly by me at the end of this review. I felt like a renowned academic and Harvard law professor should have excelled at crafting a properly organized and effective argument. I believe Dershowitz is justifiably beyond passionate about the subject matter here, and this clouds his legal thinking a bit.
Beyond these criticisms, I will point out that I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the subject. The main reason is, even though I found it sloppy at times, this view of the case absolutely needs to be made. Dershowitz is labeled by some as an extremist. I am fascinated by this idea considering he is in favor of a two-state solution, he acknowledges Israel must evacuate settlements in the West Bank, and the entire book is filled with optimism and a desire for long term peace. Surprisingly, the optimism and the creative solutions are hard to find even in the vast amount of scholarship on the issue. Most accounts I have found are extreme lamentations, demonizing one side or the other, and relying on ideological or ancient historical claims to the land. Very few express hope for resolution, and many outwardly advocate for one side to charge to victory.
I am still not one hundred percent certain I understand enough to firmly state my position, but at this point it seems to me that a sincere solution must be pragmatic. It may sound like fence-riding, but I think Dershowitz understands it. I think that is how an otherwise extreme left-wing liberal like Dershowitz can hilariously be lumped in with right wing extremists and vehemently attacked by those who share his ideology on every other subject.
The other reason I recommend the book is because I believe Dershowitz's double standard argument is spot on, and easily the highlight of the book. It is a bizarre phenomenon, the vile hatred poured out on Israel, and the laser focus of the UN on the "inhumanity" of Israel, when compared to the rest of the world. It is also a strange twist that so many of the most fierce critics of Israel are in fact Jews, and many of them even within Israel. He devotes a full chapter to this question, explaining how Jews might lash out against Israel. The thesis of this chapter is: Just because a few academic Jews are willing to jump into the camp doesn't give it validity. The Jewish (race/religion/culture/ideology) is far more complex than that. Unlike my criticism above, he stayed mostly on point in this chapter.
Overall, I compare the book a bit to Fox News. Clearly biased, but necessary and helpful because there are angles to the story that you will not find anywhere else. On that basis alone, I would have given it two stars, but the relevant chapters on the double standard, and the so-called "self-hating jew" (not Dershowitz' words, or mine) problem were unique and convincing enough that I consider this as three stars.
Below (spoiler), are the arguments that the reader is likely to run into in every single chapter. They are inartfully recited from my memory, and unedited, but they capture the gist of the book. Validity of the arguments aside, I don't think I needed to read them so many times.
1. Jews have a right to exist in the state of Israel and the Arab nations surrounding Israel publicly deny this right, and state as a goal the destruction of Israel.
2. The Palestinians have walked away from most of the negotiations in which they would have had 2 states many times over, in 1948, 1967, 2000, and 2005.
3. Israel does not intentionally target civilians, but has racked up far greater numbers of casualties including women and children against Palestine, mainly because the Palestinian strategy is to provoke attack (by targetting schools, churches, and other civilian centers) and then use women and children as shields in their own civilian centers.
4. There is a hint of racism in the most aggressive criticisms of Israel, paradoxically most espoused by prominent American Jews (Chomsky, Finklestein), but mere criticism alone is not anti-Semitic.
5. Israel has some of the most human rights friendly decisions from its Supreme Court in the past 15 years, restricting the right of Israeli soldiers to use any physical means to interrogate, destroy houses harboring terrorists, and strict rules of engagement. When compared against most developed nations (including the United States) Israel would earn the highest ranking for its human rights record, but is incessantly targeted by the UN in what appears to be a double standard.
I'll start with some criticisms and end on a positive note with how this book is still well-worth reading.
1. The book is divided into 32 arguments made against Israel, refuted by the author. This makes it a quick and easy read, with very few arguments exceeding 10 pages. The problem is that for each argument Dershowitz tends to respond with the same set of 5 or so responses, which do not always directly answer the anti-israeli point. I heard these 5 arguments so many times (about 32 times each), that I can easily (and will) sum them up at the end of this review.
2. The strategy of using the words of "fierce critics of Israel" as support for Dershowitz' own case backfired in some cases. Some of the quotes and points made were taken wildly out of context, which is not persuasive even for someone who wants to believe the point. For example, in Chapter 2 Dershowitz quotes Benny Morris seeming to say that only "several thousand" Arabs were displaced following land sales to Jews between 1880 and 1930. The quote may or may not be technically accurate, but it is clear that Benny Morris does not generally think that only several thousand Jews were displaced from Israel. Also, I'm not sure Benny Morris qualifies as one of the fiercest critics of Israel.
3. Lack of organization. Each argument followed a similar pattern. Accusation, Reality, followed by proof. The problem was the "proof" was usually a rambling rant only superficially addressing the accusation and the reality. Refer back to the 5 arguments dropped into nearly every chapter, summarized imperfectly by me at the end of this review. I felt like a renowned academic and Harvard law professor should have excelled at crafting a properly organized and effective argument. I believe Dershowitz is justifiably beyond passionate about the subject matter here, and this clouds his legal thinking a bit.
Beyond these criticisms, I will point out that I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the subject. The main reason is, even though I found it sloppy at times, this view of the case absolutely needs to be made. Dershowitz is labeled by some as an extremist. I am fascinated by this idea considering he is in favor of a two-state solution, he acknowledges Israel must evacuate settlements in the West Bank, and the entire book is filled with optimism and a desire for long term peace. Surprisingly, the optimism and the creative solutions are hard to find even in the vast amount of scholarship on the issue. Most accounts I have found are extreme lamentations, demonizing one side or the other, and relying on ideological or ancient historical claims to the land. Very few express hope for resolution, and many outwardly advocate for one side to charge to victory.
I am still not one hundred percent certain I understand enough to firmly state my position, but at this point it seems to me that a sincere solution must be pragmatic. It may sound like fence-riding, but I think Dershowitz understands it. I think that is how an otherwise extreme left-wing liberal like Dershowitz can hilariously be lumped in with right wing extremists and vehemently attacked by those who share his ideology on every other subject.
The other reason I recommend the book is because I believe Dershowitz's double standard argument is spot on, and easily the highlight of the book. It is a bizarre phenomenon, the vile hatred poured out on Israel, and the laser focus of the UN on the "inhumanity" of Israel, when compared to the rest of the world. It is also a strange twist that so many of the most fierce critics of Israel are in fact Jews, and many of them even within Israel. He devotes a full chapter to this question, explaining how Jews might lash out against Israel. The thesis of this chapter is: Just because a few academic Jews are willing to jump into the camp doesn't give it validity. The Jewish (race/religion/culture/ideology) is far more complex than that. Unlike my criticism above, he stayed mostly on point in this chapter.
Overall, I compare the book a bit to Fox News. Clearly biased, but necessary and helpful because there are angles to the story that you will not find anywhere else. On that basis alone, I would have given it two stars, but the relevant chapters on the double standard, and the so-called "self-hating jew" (not Dershowitz' words, or mine) problem were unique and convincing enough that I consider this as three stars.
Below (spoiler), are the arguments that the reader is likely to run into in every single chapter. They are inartfully recited from my memory, and unedited, but they capture the gist of the book. Validity of the arguments aside, I don't think I needed to read them so many times.
1. Jews have a right to exist in the state of Israel and the Arab nations surrounding Israel publicly deny this right, and state as a goal the destruction of Israel.
2. The Palestinians have walked away from most of the negotiations in which they would have had 2 states many times over, in 1948, 1967, 2000, and 2005.
3. Israel does not intentionally target civilians, but has racked up far greater numbers of casualties including women and children against Palestine, mainly because the Palestinian strategy is to provoke attack (by targetting schools, churches, and other civilian centers) and then use women and children as shields in their own civilian centers.
4. There is a hint of racism in the most aggressive criticisms of Israel, paradoxically most espoused by prominent American Jews (Chomsky, Finklestein), but mere criticism alone is not anti-Semitic.
5. Israel has some of the most human rights friendly decisions from its Supreme Court in the past 15 years, restricting the right of Israeli soldiers to use any physical means to interrogate, destroy houses harboring terrorists, and strict rules of engagement. When compared against most developed nations (including the United States) Israel would earn the highest ranking for its human rights record, but is incessantly targeted by the UN in what appears to be a double standard.
August 18, 2014
very biased and a dull read. it's a book of opinions poorly represented. if you want to inform yourself, other books on the conflict are more recommended.
September 1, 2019
So wrong it's amazing it was even published in the first place.
February 2, 2008
Here is how you can argue the morons that claim Israel has no right to exist and that the Occupied Territories are an apartheid state. Morons.
September 14, 2022
It would be possible for an intelligent, compassionate, careful scholar to write an intellectually honest case for Israel. This is not that book. Alan Dershowitz, though an intelligent and talented defence lawyer (he was on OJ’s “dream team”), is not compassionate nor a careful scholar; and The Case for Israel (2003) is not intellectually honest.
(Those in search of objectivity might try a book by one of Israel’s “new historians,” who corrected Israeli history away from just being state propaganda in the 80s when state records were unsealed; for instance, Benny Morris’ Righteous Victims [2001 ed.], or Avi Shlaim’s The Iron Wall [2015 ed.]. The former is frequently cited by Dershowitz, albeit misleadingly. For a shorter, fairly mainstream, balanced primer try [Beinin and Hajjar, 2014].)
Consider Dershowitz’s attempt to prove that Egypt aggressively started the 1967 war (“Six-Day War”). First, the facts. Previously, in 1956 Israel had attacked Egypt for closing the Straits of Tiran against Israeli shipping in the Suez Crisis; promises were made to keep the Straits open and a UN presence was established. In the buildup to the Six-Day War, overblown USSR intel had claimed that Israel was mobilizing to invade Syria, which therefore asked Egypt to mobilize as a deterrent. Egypt mobilized, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser told the UN to gtfo the Sinai peninsula, Nasser trash talked in speeches on the radio (terrifying Israeli civilians), and Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran again. Israel declared the closing of the Straits to be its casus belli, and attacked Egypt’s air force, destroying it before it got off the ground (they call it “pre-emptive”). Jordan, which had a defence pact with Egypt, responded. The war was over in six days, Israel the victor. As Benny Morris puts it, “The Egyptian initiative and the subsequent Israeli responses, culminating in the Six-Day War that erupted on June 5, were in large part a product of error and mutual miscalculation. [Israeli commander-in-chief of the IDF] Rabin assumed—probably correctly—that the Egyptian move was deterrent and political, meant to persuade Israel not to attack Syria, and to demonstrate Egypt’s fraternity, resolve, and strength to the Arab world …” (Morris, 2001, p. 302).
Dershowitz distorts quotations by excising inconvenient words from them, and leaves out crucial context. In one of Nasser’s speeches, as quoted in Dershowitz’s source, he said: “We knew that closing the Gulf of Aqaba meant war with Israel … If war comes it will be total and the objective will be Israel’s destruction” (Oren, 2002, p. 93; emphasis added; I’ve elsewhere also seen it translated as “might mean war with Israel”; for criticism of that source, see Finkelstein, 2003). Dershowitz surgically removes the phrase, “If war comes,” instead rendering the mutilated quotation as “We knew that closing the Gulf of Aqaba meant war with Israel … the objective will be Israel’s destruction” (Dershowitz, 2003, p. 92).* Both are belligerent, of course, but the difference is crucial for Dershowitz’s argument. Dershowitz then writes, after more quotations of hostile rhetoric, “Nor was this only rhetoric. Arab armies were massing along Israel’s border poised to strike …”; not once does he mention that the massing of the Arab armies was to deter an Israeli invasion of Syria (based on the aforementioned false USSR intel).
That is: Dershowitz could have attempted to make an argument, based on the actual facts, that Egypt was belligerent enough and circumstances risky enough for Israel’s strike to be justified, despite the war overall being “the product of error and mutual miscalculation.” Instead, Dershowitz deliberately distorted the facts.
Or consider Dershowitz’s chapter titled, “Does Israel Torture Palestinians?” As pointed out in a Current Affairs article, the chapter merely argues that Israel’s High Court of Justice, in 1999, ruled that it was illegal to torture; but that was not the question; the question was whether Israel does torture; and in any case, Dershowitz also misrepresents the law, neglecting to mention that it contains a massive loophole (Robinson, 2019). As the leading Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem puts it: “… However, [the HCJ] also held that ISA agents who exceed their authority and use ‘physical pressure’ may not necessarily bear criminal responsibility for their actions, if they are later found to have used these methods in a ‘ticking bomb’ case, based on the ‘necessity defense’. Following this ruling, reports of torture and ill-treatment in ISA interrogations did drop. However, ISA agents continued to use interrogation methods that constitute abuse and even torture, relying on the court’s recognition of the ‘ticking bomb’ exception. These methods were not limited to exceptional cases and quickly became standard interrogation policy” (B’Tselem, 2017; emphasis added).
These are the two chapters that I have so far examined; their distortions are so egregious, and so audacious, as to damn the whole book. I strongly expect that such distortion also is “not limited to exceptional cases” and is Dershowitz’s standard rhetorical policy.
In 1984, a fraudulent book by Joan Peters was published called From Time Immemorial (trying among other things to prove that Palestinians were mostly all recent immigrants anyway). Israeli scholar Yehoshua Porath wrote of that book in his NYRB review, “Readers of [this] book should be warned not to accept its factual claims without checking their sources … Everyone familiar with the writing of the extreme nationalists … would immediately recognize the tired and discredited arguments in Mrs. Peters’s book. I had mistakenly thought them long forgotten. It is a pity that they have been given new life” (Porath, 1986).** The same applies to Alan Dershowitz’s book. It is not history nor serious argument; it is blatant propaganda, of the kind that would embarrass serious defenders of Israel. Do not, ever, trust a single word Dershowitz says, or a single quotation he mines, without checking it against a credible source.
If you read this book in conjunction with checking its sources, or a suitable corrective book digging into its distortions (e.g. Norman Finkelstein’s thoroughly-vetted Beyond Chutzpah [2008 ed.], whose publication by the University of California Press, incidentally, Dershowitz tried to get Arnold Schwarzenegger to block), then you may learn a lot about the argument strategies of the more specious apologists for Israeli policy.
But if you only read this book, you will know less about the Israel-Palestine conflict than when you started.
References
B’Tselem. (Nov. 11, 2017). Torture and Abuse in Interrogation. Retrieved from https://www.btselem.org/torture
Beinin, J. and Hajjar, L. (2014). “Palestine, Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict: a primer.” Middle East Research and Information Project. Retrieved from: https://merip.org/palestine-israel-pr...
Chomsky, N., Mitchell, P. R., and Schoeffel, J. (2002). “The fate of an honest intellectual.” In: Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky. New Press. Retrieved from https://chomsky.info/power01/
Dershowitz, A. (2003). The Case for Israel. Wiley.
Finkelstein, N. G. (1995). Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. Verso.
Finkelstein, N. G. (2003). “Abba Eban with footnotes.” Journal of Palestine Studies 32, pp. 74–89.
Finkelstein, N. G. (2008). Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (updated edition). University of California Press.
Morris, B. (2001 ed.). Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–2001. Vintage Books.
Oren, M. B. (2002). Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East. Oxford University Press.
Peters, J. (1984). From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine. Harper & Row.
Porath, Y. (Jan. 16, 1986). “Mrs. Peters’s Palestine.” Review of (Peters, 1984). The New York Review of Books. Retrieved from https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1986...
Robinson, N. J. (Sept. 20, 2019). “Do not listen to Israel’s lawyer.” Current Affairs. Retrieved from https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/0...
Shlaim, A. (2015). The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (updated edition). Penguin.
*To Alan Dershowitz’s credit, I bet he’d be great at the “text blackout” meme.
**It was Norman Finkelstein who first went through Peters’ sources, exposing her fraudulent distortions; that work is reprinted as a chapter in Finkelstein’s Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (1995); Peters’ book was initially lionized in most of the American media, but by the time it got to Britain, and then finally back to NYRB in America, its fraud was well-known; Chomsky tells the story in (Chomsky et al., 2002, pp. 244–248). It is therefore amusing to note that Dershowitz also heavily relied on Peters’ book as a secondary source, often without attribution (e.g. reproducing her quotation of Mark Twain with all the ellipses in all the same places)—and that it was Finkelstein, who knows Peters’ book like the back of his own hand, who noticed this. It is less amusing to recount that in the course of this academic beef, Dershowitz stooped to the disgusting anti-Semitic low of falsely claiming that Finkelstein had called his own mother, a Holocaust survivor, a Nazi collaborator.
(Those in search of objectivity might try a book by one of Israel’s “new historians,” who corrected Israeli history away from just being state propaganda in the 80s when state records were unsealed; for instance, Benny Morris’ Righteous Victims [2001 ed.], or Avi Shlaim’s The Iron Wall [2015 ed.]. The former is frequently cited by Dershowitz, albeit misleadingly. For a shorter, fairly mainstream, balanced primer try [Beinin and Hajjar, 2014].)
Consider Dershowitz’s attempt to prove that Egypt aggressively started the 1967 war (“Six-Day War”). First, the facts. Previously, in 1956 Israel had attacked Egypt for closing the Straits of Tiran against Israeli shipping in the Suez Crisis; promises were made to keep the Straits open and a UN presence was established. In the buildup to the Six-Day War, overblown USSR intel had claimed that Israel was mobilizing to invade Syria, which therefore asked Egypt to mobilize as a deterrent. Egypt mobilized, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser told the UN to gtfo the Sinai peninsula, Nasser trash talked in speeches on the radio (terrifying Israeli civilians), and Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran again. Israel declared the closing of the Straits to be its casus belli, and attacked Egypt’s air force, destroying it before it got off the ground (they call it “pre-emptive”). Jordan, which had a defence pact with Egypt, responded. The war was over in six days, Israel the victor. As Benny Morris puts it, “The Egyptian initiative and the subsequent Israeli responses, culminating in the Six-Day War that erupted on June 5, were in large part a product of error and mutual miscalculation. [Israeli commander-in-chief of the IDF] Rabin assumed—probably correctly—that the Egyptian move was deterrent and political, meant to persuade Israel not to attack Syria, and to demonstrate Egypt’s fraternity, resolve, and strength to the Arab world …” (Morris, 2001, p. 302).
Dershowitz distorts quotations by excising inconvenient words from them, and leaves out crucial context. In one of Nasser’s speeches, as quoted in Dershowitz’s source, he said: “We knew that closing the Gulf of Aqaba meant war with Israel … If war comes it will be total and the objective will be Israel’s destruction” (Oren, 2002, p. 93; emphasis added; I’ve elsewhere also seen it translated as “might mean war with Israel”; for criticism of that source, see Finkelstein, 2003). Dershowitz surgically removes the phrase, “If war comes,” instead rendering the mutilated quotation as “We knew that closing the Gulf of Aqaba meant war with Israel … the objective will be Israel’s destruction” (Dershowitz, 2003, p. 92).* Both are belligerent, of course, but the difference is crucial for Dershowitz’s argument. Dershowitz then writes, after more quotations of hostile rhetoric, “Nor was this only rhetoric. Arab armies were massing along Israel’s border poised to strike …”; not once does he mention that the massing of the Arab armies was to deter an Israeli invasion of Syria (based on the aforementioned false USSR intel).
That is: Dershowitz could have attempted to make an argument, based on the actual facts, that Egypt was belligerent enough and circumstances risky enough for Israel’s strike to be justified, despite the war overall being “the product of error and mutual miscalculation.” Instead, Dershowitz deliberately distorted the facts.
Or consider Dershowitz’s chapter titled, “Does Israel Torture Palestinians?” As pointed out in a Current Affairs article, the chapter merely argues that Israel’s High Court of Justice, in 1999, ruled that it was illegal to torture; but that was not the question; the question was whether Israel does torture; and in any case, Dershowitz also misrepresents the law, neglecting to mention that it contains a massive loophole (Robinson, 2019). As the leading Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem puts it: “… However, [the HCJ] also held that ISA agents who exceed their authority and use ‘physical pressure’ may not necessarily bear criminal responsibility for their actions, if they are later found to have used these methods in a ‘ticking bomb’ case, based on the ‘necessity defense’. Following this ruling, reports of torture and ill-treatment in ISA interrogations did drop. However, ISA agents continued to use interrogation methods that constitute abuse and even torture, relying on the court’s recognition of the ‘ticking bomb’ exception. These methods were not limited to exceptional cases and quickly became standard interrogation policy” (B’Tselem, 2017; emphasis added).
These are the two chapters that I have so far examined; their distortions are so egregious, and so audacious, as to damn the whole book. I strongly expect that such distortion also is “not limited to exceptional cases” and is Dershowitz’s standard rhetorical policy.
In 1984, a fraudulent book by Joan Peters was published called From Time Immemorial (trying among other things to prove that Palestinians were mostly all recent immigrants anyway). Israeli scholar Yehoshua Porath wrote of that book in his NYRB review, “Readers of [this] book should be warned not to accept its factual claims without checking their sources … Everyone familiar with the writing of the extreme nationalists … would immediately recognize the tired and discredited arguments in Mrs. Peters’s book. I had mistakenly thought them long forgotten. It is a pity that they have been given new life” (Porath, 1986).** The same applies to Alan Dershowitz’s book. It is not history nor serious argument; it is blatant propaganda, of the kind that would embarrass serious defenders of Israel. Do not, ever, trust a single word Dershowitz says, or a single quotation he mines, without checking it against a credible source.
If you read this book in conjunction with checking its sources, or a suitable corrective book digging into its distortions (e.g. Norman Finkelstein’s thoroughly-vetted Beyond Chutzpah [2008 ed.], whose publication by the University of California Press, incidentally, Dershowitz tried to get Arnold Schwarzenegger to block), then you may learn a lot about the argument strategies of the more specious apologists for Israeli policy.
But if you only read this book, you will know less about the Israel-Palestine conflict than when you started.
References
B’Tselem. (Nov. 11, 2017). Torture and Abuse in Interrogation. Retrieved from https://www.btselem.org/torture
Beinin, J. and Hajjar, L. (2014). “Palestine, Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict: a primer.” Middle East Research and Information Project. Retrieved from: https://merip.org/palestine-israel-pr...
Chomsky, N., Mitchell, P. R., and Schoeffel, J. (2002). “The fate of an honest intellectual.” In: Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky. New Press. Retrieved from https://chomsky.info/power01/
Dershowitz, A. (2003). The Case for Israel. Wiley.
Finkelstein, N. G. (1995). Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. Verso.
Finkelstein, N. G. (2003). “Abba Eban with footnotes.” Journal of Palestine Studies 32, pp. 74–89.
Finkelstein, N. G. (2008). Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (updated edition). University of California Press.
Morris, B. (2001 ed.). Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–2001. Vintage Books.
Oren, M. B. (2002). Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East. Oxford University Press.
Peters, J. (1984). From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine. Harper & Row.
Porath, Y. (Jan. 16, 1986). “Mrs. Peters’s Palestine.” Review of (Peters, 1984). The New York Review of Books. Retrieved from https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1986...
Robinson, N. J. (Sept. 20, 2019). “Do not listen to Israel’s lawyer.” Current Affairs. Retrieved from https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/0...
Shlaim, A. (2015). The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (updated edition). Penguin.
*To Alan Dershowitz’s credit, I bet he’d be great at the “text blackout” meme.
**It was Norman Finkelstein who first went through Peters’ sources, exposing her fraudulent distortions; that work is reprinted as a chapter in Finkelstein’s Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (1995); Peters’ book was initially lionized in most of the American media, but by the time it got to Britain, and then finally back to NYRB in America, its fraud was well-known; Chomsky tells the story in (Chomsky et al., 2002, pp. 244–248). It is therefore amusing to note that Dershowitz also heavily relied on Peters’ book as a secondary source, often without attribution (e.g. reproducing her quotation of Mark Twain with all the ellipses in all the same places)—and that it was Finkelstein, who knows Peters’ book like the back of his own hand, who noticed this. It is less amusing to recount that in the course of this academic beef, Dershowitz stooped to the disgusting anti-Semitic low of falsely claiming that Finkelstein had called his own mother, a Holocaust survivor, a Nazi collaborator.
July 24, 2007
Read this book shortly after having dinner with the author. This book put the Israel-Palestinian conflict into perspective and has helped me not only become more educated on the issue, but also remain educated on it.
June 10, 2020
This book is a disgrace. Its a case for apartheid, colonialism, and oppression. What a shame. Its better to read Norman G. Finkelstein Beyond Chutzpah.
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