The Dershowitz–Finkelstein affair was a public controversy involving academics Alan Dershowitz and Norman Finkelstein and their scholarship on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in 2005.

Shortly after the publication of The Case for Israel (2003) by Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, Norman Finkelstein alleged that it was "a collection of fraud, falsification, plagiarism and nonsense." Finkelstein further derided the book, remarking, "If Dershowitz's book were made of cloth, I wouldn't even use it as a schmatta ... his book is such garbage." Finkelstein charged that Dershowitz had engaged in plagiarism in his use of Joan Peters' book From Time Immemorial. Dershowitz denied the charges. Former Harvard president Derek Bok, following a review requested by then-Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan, stated that no plagiarism had occurred.

In Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, published by University of California Press on August 28, 2005, Finkelstein aimed to debunk The Case for Israel. Dershowitz had written letters to both The New Press and to the University of California Press to prevent its publication, claiming it contained massive libel and stating that the book should not be published. Dershowitz responded in his book The Case for Peace and alleged a campaign of vilification by Finkelstein against several pro-Israel academics.

In addition, Finkelstein wrote that he had found plagiarism where Dershowitz reproduced the exact errors found in Peters's citation of original sources. He said this was evidence that Dershowitz did not check the original sources he cited, a claim that Dershowitz adamantly denied.

Finkelstein said he had located twenty instances within as many pages, in which Dershowitz used some of the same words from the same sources that Joan Peters had used, largely in the same order. In several paragraph-long quotations, the two books have ellipses in the same positions. Finkelstein wrote that, in one instance, Dershowitz refers to the same page number as Peters, although he is citing a different edition of the same source, in which the words appear on a different page. Finkelstein stated: "It is left to readers to decide whether Dershowitz committed plagiarism as defined by Harvard University—'passing off a source's information, ideas, or words as your own by omitting to cite them.' According to a book review of Beyond Chutzpah, written by Professor Michael C. Desch in The American Conservative, "Finkelstein does not accuse Dershowitz of the wholesale lifting of someone else's words, but he does make a very strong case that Dershowitz has violated the spirit, if not the exact letter, of Harvard's prohibitions of the first three forms of plagiarism."

During an interview of the two men by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, Finkelstein also said that Dershowitz may not have written, or even read, the book.

Dershowitz's response

Dershowitz threatened to bring a legal action against the University of California Press in response to the charges in Finkelstein's book. Dershowitz claimed to have written every word of The Case for Israel by hand and to have sent the University of California Press his handwritten manuscript. He says there is not a single phrase or sentence in it that was plagiarized, and accused Finkelstein of knowing this and making the charges in order to garner publicity. Dershowitz offered to produce his handwritten drafts (he does not type) to debunk the claim that The Case for Israel was ghostwritten and claimed Finkelstein has not asked to see them. Schwarzenegger's legal advisor responded, however, that the governor would not intervene in issues of academic freedom. "Dershowitz has said he cited sources properly, attempting to check all primary sources and citing Peters when she was his only source."

Dershowitz said that Finkelstein has invented false charges in order to discredit supporters of Israel: "The mode of attack is consistent. Chomsky selects the target and directs Finkelstein to probe the writings in minute detail and conclude that the writer didn't actually write the work, that it is plagiarized, that it is a hoax and a fraud," alleging that Finkelstein has leveled the same kind of charges against many others, calling at least 10 "distinguished Jews 'hucksters,' 'hoaxters,' 'thieves,' 'extortionists,' and worse."

Dershowitz's subsequent book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, The Case for Peace, contains a chapter rebutting Finkelstein's charges, which Dershowitz made available on his web site.

Additional responses by Finkelstein and Dershowitz

Finkelstein argued in a letter to The Harvard Crimson published on October 3, 2003, that Dershowitz reproduced exactly two of Peters' mistakes, and made one relevant mistake of his own. In quoting Mark Twain, Finkelstein argued, "Dershowitz cites two paragraphs from Twain as continuous text, just as Peters cites them as continuous text, but in Twain's book the two paragraphs are separated by 87 pages."

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

Dershowitz writes:

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

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

Dershowitz strenuously denied that he did not credit Peters' book adequately in his own book, and Harvard University supported him in that position in exonerating him against Finkelstein's charges that he committed "plagiarism".

$10,000 challenge

During the joint interview of Dershowitz and Finkelstein in a 2003 Democracy Now! broadcast, host Amy Goodman alluded to an appearance on MSNBC's Scarborough Country in which Dershowitz made a challenge to "give $10,000 to the PLO" (Palestine Liberation Organization), playing a clip from the other program. In the headnote to the transcript, Goodman wrote:

<blockquote>On MSNBC's Scarborough Country on September 8, 2003, renowned appellate lawyer, Harvard Law professor and author Alan Dershowitz says: "I will give $10,000 to the PLO... if you can find a historical fact in my book that you can prove to be false." The book Dershowitz refers to is his latest work The Case For Israel.

Today author and professor Norman Finkelstein takes him on and charges that Dershowitz makes numerous factual errors in his book. Dershowitz denies the charges. Finkelstein teaches at DePaul University and is the author of four books including The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering.</blockquote>

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

<blockquote>Amy Goodman: ...we were intrigued on watching Scarborough Country when you debated, the offer that you made [....] just play it for a moment.</blockquote>

<blockquote><blockquote>Alan Dershowitz: Tell you what, I will give $10,000 to the P.L.O. in your name if you can find historical fact in my book that you can prove to be false. I issue that challenge, I issue it to you, I issue it to the Palestinian Authority, I issue it to Noam Chomsky to Edward Said, every word in my book is accurate and you can't just simply say it's false without documenting it. Tell me one thing in the book now that is false?</blockquote></blockquote>

<blockquote>Amy Goodman: Okay. Let's go to the book. The Case for Israel $10,000.

Dershowitz responded to Finkelstein's reply by stating that such a mistake could not have been intentional, as it harmed his own side of the debate: "Obviously, the phrase '2,000 to 3,000 Arabs' refers either to a sub-phase [of the flight] or is a typographical error."

Los Angeles attorney Frank Menetrez concluded in an opinion piece that he can find "no way of avoiding the inference that Dershowitz copied the quotation from Twain from Peters' From Time Immemorial, and not from the original source," as Dershowitz claimed. Dershowitz has replied briefly to this charge, in an exchange with Menetrez. Menetrez has also said his belief that "neither Dershowitz nor Harvard, however, has identified the specific issues or arguments that Harvard allegedly investigated and rejected. In particular, neither of them has ever said whether Harvard investigated the identical errors issue."</blockquote>

Support for Dershowitz

As Desch acknowledges in his book review of Beyond Chutzpah, "In the wake of a number of similar complaints against Dershowitz and two of his Harvard Law School colleagues Laurence Tribe and Charles Ogletree, former Harvard President Derek Bok conducted an investigation—the details of which were not made public—that... vindicated Dershowitz" (32, col. 3). In April 2007 the De Paul University Liberal Arts and Sciences' Faculty Governance Council had voted unanimously to send a letter to Harvard University expressing "the council's dismay at Professor Dershowitz's interference in Finkelstein's tenure and promotion case."

In early 2007, the DePaul University Political Science department voted 9 to 3, and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Personnel Committee 5 to 0, in favor of giving Finkelstein tenure. The three opposing faculty members subsequently filed a minority report opposing tenure, supported by the Dean of the College, Chuck Suchar. Suchar stated he opposed tenure because Finkelstein's "personal and reputation demeaning attacks on Alan Dershowitz, Benny Morris, and the holocaust authors Eli Wiesel and Jerzy Kosinski" were inconsistent with DePaul's "Vincentian" values. In June 2007 a 4–3 vote by DePaul University's Board on Promotion and Tenure (a faculty board), affirmed by the university's president, the Rev. Dennis Holtschneider, denied Finkelstein tenure. Finkelstein was placed on administrative leave for the 2007–2008 academic year (the remainder of his contract with DePaul), his sole course having been cancelled. However, in announcing his decision, Holtschneider said the outside attention "was unwelcome and inappropriate and had no impact on either the process or the outcome of this case." On September 5, 2007, Finkelstein resigned after he and the university reached a settlement; they released a joint statement on the resolution of the conflict.

Additional points of dispute between Finkelstein and Dershowitz

In The Holocaust Industry, Finkelstein questioned Elie Wiesel's claim to have read Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in Yiddish. According to Finkelstein, no translation of the work existed in Yiddish at the time. Dershowitz responded that this was not so: he alleged that one had been published in Warsaw in 1929, and said that he had seen a copy at the Harvard Library.

During a clash with members of J Street at the 2010 American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference, Dershowitz chastised J Street for pandering to anti-Israel activists and asked, "Why are you so popular with Norman Finkelstein?" Both J Street rebuffed Dershowitz's claim.

Notes

References

  • Arkes, Hadley. "The Rights and Wrongs of Alan Dershowitz." Claremont Review of Books November 4, 2005. Accessed February 11, 2007.
  • Chrucky, Andrew "Norman Finkelstein, DePaul, and U.S. Academia: Reductio Ad Absurdum of Centralized Universities", July 23, 2007.
  • Cockburn, Alexander. "Alan Dershowitz, Plagiarist." CounterPunch September 26, 2003. Accessed February 11, 2007. (Commentary on Dershowitz's book The Case for Israel.) [Reproduces comparisons of passages from the book and its alleged sources as examples of "plagiarism" which may come from Finkelstein, as well as others, but without attribution to Finkelstein.]
  • –––. "CounterPunch Diary:...Dershowitz Flaps Broken Wings: Dershowitz: The Case of the Plagiarist Prof (continued)." CounterPunch October 11–13, 2003. Accessed February 11, 2007. (Presents "rebuttal" by Alan Dershowitz of Cockburn's commentary on The Case for Israel (listed above) and Cockburn's subsequent response.)
  • Dershowitz, Alan M. "The Lerner-Finkelstein Duet." The Jerusalem Post October 16, 2006. Accessed February 11, 2007.
  • –––. "Neve Gordon Can't Take Criticism." The Jerusalem Post November 8, 2006. Accessed February 11, 2007.
  • –––. "Plagiarism Accusations Political, Unfounded." The Harvard Crimson September 23, 2003. Accessed February 11, 2006.
  • –––. "Tsuris Over Chutzpah." The Nation August 29, 2005. Rpt. in normanfinkelstein.com n.d. Accessed February 11, 2007. (Comment on Wiener; see below.) [This article is followed by a letter from Dershowitz's research assistants: Holly Beth Billington (2002–2004), Alexander J. Blenkinsopp (2004–2005), Eric Citron (2003–2004), C. Wallace DeWitt (2004–2005), Aaron Voloj Dessauer (2004–2005), and Mitch Webber (2005); a reply by Jon Wiener; and a comment by Finkelstein.]
  • "Dershowitz v. Desch." The American Conservative January 16, 2006, Forum. Rpt. normanfinkelstein.com n.d. Accessed February 12, 2007. (Incl. detailed reply by Alan Dershowitz to book review of Beyond Chutzpah by Desch (see below) and reply by Desch (with pdf link), and a response added to his own site's presentation of this material by Finkelstein.)
  • Eichner, Itamar, and Tova Tzimuki: "Simpson's Attorney Advises: "Acquittal" of Israel." Yedioth Ahronoth November 18, 2003: 11. Rpt. in normanfinkelstein.com n.d. Accessed February 11, 2007. (Incl. English translation & scan of Hebrew original.)
  • Finkelstein, Norman. "Dershowitz Was To Meet With Israeli Officials." The Harvard Crimson November 8, 2005, Letter to the Editors (Opinion). Accessed February 11, 2007.
  • –––."Finkelstein at Yale: Beyond Chutzpah. Video prod. by Leitrim Productions of lecture and discussion. Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. October 20, 2005. Accessed February 11, 2007.
  • –––. "Little Prissy Al." normanfinkelstein.com October 17, 2006. Accessed February 11, 2007. (Response to Dershowitz, "The Lerner-Finkelstein Duet.")
  • –––. "Moment of Truth – Will Dershowitz Release the Letters?" normanfinkelstein.com November 9, 2006. Accessed February 11, 2007.
  • –––. "Never Before Aired: Watch Part II of the Debate between Finkelstein and Dershowitz." Online posting. normanfinkelstein.com n.d. Accessed February 11, 2007. (Incl. link to Part I of the debate.) (See Goodman.)
  • Francois, Wendy. "Politics Rip through Columbia." Columbia Daily Spectator March 28, 2006. Accessed February 11, 2007.
  • Gordon, Neve. "Dershowitz's Smear: Anti-Semitism? You Just Don't Like What I Say!" CounterPunch November 8, 2006. Accessed February 11, 2007. (Response to Dershowitz; see reply by Dershowitz, "Neve Gordon Can't Take Criticism," as listed above.)
  • Human Rights Watch. "Human Rights Watch Responds to Dershowitz." The Jerusalem Post September 7, 2006. Accessed February 11, 2007.
  • Maizel, Lindsay A. "At Talk, Finkelstein Calls Dershowitz Book a Fraud." The Harvard Crimson November 4, 2005. Accessed February 11, 2007.
  • The Case Against Alan Dershowitz By FRANK J. MENETREZ
  • Dershowitz v. Finkelstein: Who's Right and Who's Wrong? By FRANK J. MENETREZ
  • Segev, Tom. "Sharon Recommends a Book." Ha'aretz October 24, 2005. Accessed February 11, 2007.
  • Seiderman, Ian. "Right of Reply: Biased against Israel? Not at all Amnesty International responds to Dershowitz." The Jerusalem Post September 11, 2006. Accessed February 11, 2007.
  • Tetley, William. "Another Dershowitz Diatribe." National Post July 24, 2006, letter to the editor. Accessed February 11, 2007.
  • Troianovski, Anton S. Crimson Cuts Columnist for Lifting Material: Online Magazine Slate Says It Won't Pursue Action Against Paper." The Harvard Crimson October 27, 2006. Accessed February 11, 2007.
  • Wiener, Jon. "Giving Chutzpah New Meaning." The Nation July 11, 2005. Accessed February 11, 2007.
  • Alan M. Dershowitz's Faculty Bibliography at Harvard Law School and Alan M. Dershowitz's own commercial website (alandershowitz.com) with links to publications by Alan M. Dershowitz and responses to some comments and publications by Norman Finkelstein.
  • "Statement of Alan M. Dershowitz".
  • Norman Finkelstein's website
  • "The Dershowitz Hoax" (2003–2006) at the "official website of Norman G. Finkelstein" (normanfinkelstein.com), an in depth collection of materials relating to the affair from Finkelstein's point of view.