Chomsky and Dershowitz: On Endless War and the End of Civil Liberties

by Howard Friel

Through the lens of a careful assessment of the political views of MIT’s Noam Chomsky and Harvard’s Alan Dershowitz—the two protagonists of a Cambridge-based feud over the past forty years—author Howard Friel chronicles an American intellectual history from the U.S. war in Vietnam in the 1960s to the contemporary debate about the Israel-Palestine conflict. Major findings reveal the consistency of Chomsky’s principled support of international law, human rights, and civil liberties, and a reversal by Dershowitz from support in the 1960s to opposition of those legal standards today. Friel’s volume argues that a Chomskyan adherence by the United States to international law and human rights would reduce the threat of terrorism and preserve civil liberties, that the Dershowitz-backed war on terrorism increases the threat of terrorism and undermines civil liberties, and that the incremental but steady transition toward a preventive state threatens the permanent suspension of civil liberties in the United States.

584 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 15, 2013

Reviews

[Jake · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thorough compare/contrast analysis of Dershowitz and Chomsky, which, in the least surprising verdict ever, does not look favorably upon the Dersh. If anything, Fríel
is excessively generous towards Dershowitz, whose intellectual output of fraud and apologia for government abuse so long as it’s done by Israel or the US ought to have discredited him long before his becoming Trump’s grossest stooge over the past 4 years did.

[Peter Jakobsen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hysterical (yet deeply researched and readable) tract, designed to prove that Chomsky is Yahweh and Dershowitz is Satan. The author is obsessed with extrapolating individual examples of injustice (of which there are many) and rendering them into a damning case against Israel, without apparently considering the existential threat invoking these crimes and misdemeanours.

[Spicy T AKA Mr. Tea · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think Dershowitz is down for the count. Aside from the amazing contextualization of the feud between Chomsky and Dershowitz, the facts of where it came from, the feud itself, a thorough review of articles and books pertaining to the feud, Friel does a brilliant and page turning account of international law and how Chomsky and Dershowitz have each interpreted that law. I loved it. Fast read. Yep, . . . Dershowitz is down.