Name	Norman Finkelstein
Birth date	December 08, 1953
Education	Binghamton University (B.A.)Princeton University (M.A.) Princeton University (Ph.D.)
Parents	Mother: Maryla Husyt Finkelstein Father: Zacharias Finkelstein
Nationality	American
Influences	Mohandas Gandhi, Noam Chomsky, John Stuart Mill
Website	normanfinkelstein.com }}

Norman Gary Finkelstein (born December 8, 1953) is an American political scientist, and author. His primary fields of research are the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust. He is a graduate of Binghamton University and received his Ph.D in Political Science from Princeton University. He has held faculty positions at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Hunter College, New York University, and, most recently, DePaul University, where he was an assistant professor from 2001 to 2007.

In 2007, after a highly publicized row between Finkelstein and a notable opponent of his, Alan Dershowitz, Finkelstein's tenure bid at DePaul was denied. Finkelstein was placed on administrative leave for the 2007-2008 academic year, and on September 5, 2007, he announced his resignation after coming to a settlement with the university on generally undisclosed terms. An official statement from DePaul strongly defended the decision to deny Finkelstein tenure, stated that outside influence played no role in the decision, and praised Finkelstein "as a prolific scholar and outstanding teacher."

Personal background and education

Finkelstein has written of his parents' experiences during World War II. His mother, Maryla Husyt Finkelstein, grew up in Warsaw, Poland, survived the Warsaw Ghetto, the Majdanek concentration camp, and two slave labor camps. Her first husband died in the war. She considered the day of her liberation as the most horrible day of her life, as she realized that she was alone, her parents and siblings gone. Norman's father, Zacharias Finkelstein, was a survivor of both the Warsaw Ghetto and the Auschwitz concentration camp. After immigrating to the United States, his father became a factory worker, while his mother was a homemaker. Finkelstein's mother was an ardent pacifist. Both his parents died in 1995.

Finkelstein grew up in New York City, where he attended James Madison High School and was a childhood friend of U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who was two years ahead of him. In his forthcoming memoir, Finkelstein recalls his strong youthful identification with the outrage that his mother, witness to the genocidal atrocities of World War II, felt at the carnage wrought by the United States in Vietnam. One childhood friend recalls his mother's "emotional investment in left-wing humanitarian causes as bordering on hysteria." He had 'internalized (her) indignation', a trait which he admits rendered him 'insufferable' when talking of the Vietnam War, and which imbued him with a 'holier-than-thou' attitude at the time which he now regrets. But Finkelstein regards his absorption of his mother's outlook — the refusal to put aside a sense of moral outrage in order to get on with one's life — as a virtue. Subsequently, his reading of Noam Chomsky played a seminal role in tailoring the passion bequeathed to him by his mother to the necessity of maintaining intellectual rigor in the pursuit of the truth.

He completed his undergraduate studies at Binghamton University in New York in 1974, after which he studied at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. He went on to earn his Master's degree in political science from Princeton University in 1980, and later his PhD in political studies, also from Princeton. Finkelstein wrote his doctoral thesis on Zionism, and it was through this work that he first attracted controversy. Before gaining academic employment, Finkelstein was a part-time social worker with teenage dropouts in New York. He then taught successively at Rutgers University, New York University, Brooklyn College, and Hunter College and, until recently, taught at DePaul University in Chicago. According to ''The New York Times'' he left Hunter College in 2001 "after his teaching load and salary were reduced" by the college administration.

Beginning with his doctoral thesis at Princeton, Finkelstein's career has been marked by controversy. A self-described "forensic scholar," he has written sharply critical academic reviews of several prominent writers and scholars whom he accuses of misrepresenting the documentary record in order to defend Israel's policies and practices. His writings, noted for their support of the Palestinian cause, have dealt with politically charged topics such as Zionism, the demographic history of Palestine and his allegations of the existence of a "Holocaust Industry" that exploits the memory of the Holocaust to further Israeli and financial interests. Citing linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky as an example, Finkelstein notes that it is "possible to unite exacting scholarly rigor with scathing moral outrage," and supporters and detractors alike have remarked on the polemical style of Finkelstein's work. Its content has been praised by eminent historians such as Raul Hilberg and Avi Shlaim, as well as Chomsky.

Finkelstein has described himself as "an old-fashioned communist," in the sense that he "see(s) no value whatsoever in states."

Academic career

On ''From Time Immemorial''

In Finkelstein's doctoral thesis, he examined the claims made in Joan Peters's ''From Time Immemorial'', a best-selling book at the time.

Peters's "history and defense" of Israel deals with the demographic history of Palestine. Demographic studies had tended to assert that the Arab population of Ottoman-controlled Palestine, a 94% majority at the turn of the century, had dwindled towards parity due to massive Zionist immigration. Peters radically challenged this picture by arguing that a substantial part of the Palestinian people were descended from emigrants from other Arab countries from the early 19th century onwards. It followed, for Peters and many of her readers, that the picture of a native Palestinian population overwhelmed by Jewish immigration was little more than propaganda, and that in actuality two almost simultaneous waves of immigration met in what had been a relatively unpopulated land.

''From Time Immemorial'' had been effusively praised in mainstream United States media sources by figures as varied as Barbara Tuchman, Theodore H. White, Elie Wiesel, and Lucy Dawidowicz. Saul Bellow, for one, wrote in a jacket endorsement that: :"Millions of people the world over, smothered by false history and propaganda, will be grateful for this clear account of the origins of the Palestinians."

Finkelstein asserted that the book was nothing more than what he now calls a "monumental hoax". He later opined that, while Peters's book received widespread interest and approval in the United States, a scholarly demonstration of its fraudulence and unreliability aroused little attention:

:"By the end of 1984, ''From Time Immemorial'' had...received some two hundred [favorable] notices ... in the United States. The only 'false' notes in this crescendoing chorus of praise were the ''Journal of Palestine Studies'', which ran a highly critical review by Bill Farrell; the small Chicago-based newsweekly ''In These Times'', which published a condensed version of this writer's findings; and Alexander Cockburn, who devoted a series of columns in ''The Nation'' exposing the hoax. ... The periodicals in which ''From Time Immemorial'' had already been favorably reviewed refused to run any critical correspondence (e.g. ''The New Republic'', ''The Atlantic Monthly'', ''Commentary''). Periodicals that had yet to review the book rejected a manuscript on the subject as of little or no consequence (e.g. ''The Village Voice'', ''Dissent'', ''The New York Review of Books''). Not a single national newspaper or columnist contacted found newsworthy that a best-selling, effusively praised 'study' of the Middle East conflict was a threadbare hoax."

Noam Chomsky later reminisced:

:"I warned him, if you follow this, you're going to get in trouble—because you're going to expose the American intellectual community as a gang of frauds, and they are not going to like it, and they're going to destroy you."

In 1986, the ''New York Review of Books'' published Yehoshua Porath's review and an exchange with critics of the review in which he criticized the assumptions and evidence on which Peters's thesis relied, thus lending independent support from an expert in Palestinian demographics to Finkelstein's doctoral critique. In the house journal of the American Council on Foreign Relations, ''Foreign Affairs'', William B. Quandt, the Edward Stettinius professor of Politics at the University of Virginia and authority on Middle Eastern politics, later described Finkelstein's critique of ''From Time Immemorial'' as a "landmark essay" and a "victory to his credit", in its "demonstration" of the "shoddy scholarship" of Peters's book.

According to Noam Chomsky, the controversy that surrounded Finkelstein's research caused a delay in his earning his Ph.D. at Princeton University. Chomsky wrote in ''Understanding Power'' that Finkelstein "literally could not get the faculty to read [his dissertation]" and that Princeton eventually granted Finkelstein his doctorate only "out of embarrassment [for Princeton]" but refused to give him any further professional backing.

Finkelstein published portions of his thesis in the following publications:

"Disinformation and the Palestine Question: The Not-So-Strange Case of Joan Peters's ''From Time Immemorial''." Chapter 2 of ''Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question'' (1988); and

"A Land Without a People (Joan Peters' "Wilderness" Image)." Chapter 2 of ''Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict'' (1995).

''The Holocaust Industry''

''The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering'' was published in 2000. Here, Finkelstein argues that Elie Wiesel and others exploit the memory of the Holocaust as an "ideological weapon." This is so the state of Israel, "one of the world's most formidable military powers, with a horrendous human rights record, [can] cast itself as a victim state" in order to garner "immunity to criticism." He also alleges what he calls a "double shakedown" by "a repellent gang of plutocrats, hoodlums and hucksters" seeking enormous legal damages and financial settlements from Germany and Switzerland, moneys which then go to the lawyers and institutional actors involved in procuring them, rather than actual Holocaust survivors.

The book met with a hostile reception in some quarters, with critics charging that it was poorly researched and/or allowed others to exploit it for antisemitic purposes. For example, German historian Hans Mommsen disparaged the first edition as "a most trivial book, which appeals to easily aroused anti-Semitic prejudices." Israeli holocaust historian Israel Gutman called the book "a lampoon," stating "this is not research; it isn't even political literature... I don't even think it should be reviewed or critiqued as a legitimate book." The book was also harshly criticized by Brown University Professor Omer Bartov and University of Chicago Professor Peter Novick.

Finkelstein also had his supporters however. Raul Hilberg, widely regarded as the founder of Holocaust studies, said the book expressed views Hilberg himself subscribed to in substance, in that he too found the exploitation of the Holocaust, in the manner Finkelstein describes, 'detestable.' Asked on another occasion if Finkelstein's analysis might play into the hands of neo-Nazis for antisemitic purposes, Hilberg replied: 'Well, even if they do use it in that fashion, I'm afraid that when it comes to the truth, it has to be said openly, without regard to any consequences that would be undesirable, embarrassing.'

Criticism of Alan Dershowitz's ''The Case for Israel''

Shortly after the publication of the book ''The Case for Israel'' by Alan Dershowitz, Finkelstein derided it as "a collection of fraud, falsification, plagiarism, and nonsense". During a debate on Democracy Now!, Finkelstein asserted that Dershowitz lacked knowledge about specific contents of his own book, Finkelstein also claimed that Dershowitz did not write the book, and may not have even read it. Finkelstein noted 20 instances, in as many pages, where Dershowitz's book cites the same sources and passages used by Joan Peters in her book, in largely the same sequence, with ellipses in the same places. In two instances, Dershowitz reproduces Peters's errors (see below). From this Finkelstein concluded that Dershowitz had not checked the original sources himself, contrary to the latter's claims. Finkelstein suggests that this copying of quotations amounts to copying ideas. Examining a copy of a proof of Dershowitz's book he managed to obtain, he found evidence that Dershowitz had his secretarial assistant, Holly Beth Billington, check in the Harvard library the sources he had read in Peters's book. Dershowitz answered the charge in a letter to the University of California's Press Director Lynne Withey, arguing that Finkelstein had made up the ''smoking gun'' quotation, in that he had changed its wording (from 'cite' to 'copy') in his book. In public debate he has stated that if "somebody borrowed the quote without going to check back on whether Mark Twain had said that, obviously that would be a serious charge"; however, he insisted emphatically that he himself did not do that, that he had indeed checked the original source by Twain.

Dershowitz threatened libel action over the charges in Finkelstein's book, and, consequently, Finkelstein deleted the word "plagiarism" from the text before publication. Finkelstein also removed the charge that Dershowitz was not the true author of ''The Case for Israel'' because, as the publisher said, "he couldn't document that."

Asserting that he did consult the original sources, Dershowitz says that Finkelstein is simply accusing him of good scholarly practice: citing references he learned of initially from Peters's book. Dershowitz denies that he used any of Peters's ideas without citation. "Plagiarism is taking someone else's words and claiming they're your own. There are no borrowed words from anybody. There are no borrowed ideas from anybody because I fundamentally disagree with the conclusions of Peters's book." In a footnote in ''The Case for Israel'' which cites Peters's book, Dershowitz explicitly denies that he "relies" on Peters for "conclusions or data".

In their joint interview on ''Democracy Now'', however, Finkelstein cited specific passages in Dershowitz's book in which a phrase that he says Peters coined was incorrectly attributed to George Orwell:

"[Peters] coins the phrase, 'turnspeak', she says she's using it as a play off of George Orwell which as all listeners know used the phrase 'Newspeak.' She coined her own phrase, 'turnspeak.' You go to Mr. Dershowitz's book, he got so confused in his massive borrowings from Joan Peters that on two occasions, I'll cite them for those who have a copy of the book, on page 57 and on page 153 he uses the phrase, quote, George Orwell's 'turnspeak.' 'Turnspeak' is not Orwell, Mr. Dershowitz, you're the Felix Frankfurter chair at Harvard, you must know that Orwell would never use such a clunky phrase as 'turnspeak'."

James O. Freedman, the former president of Dartmouth College, the University of Iowa, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has defended Dershowitz:

I do not understand [Finkelstein's] charge of plagiarism against Alan Dershowitz. There is no claim that Dershowitz used the words of others without attribution. When he uses the words of others, he quotes them properly and generally cites them to the original sources (Mark Twain, Palestine Royal Commission, etc.) [Finkelstein's] complaint is that instead he should have cited them to the secondary source, in which Dershowitz may have come upon them. But as ''The Chicago Manual of Style'' emphasizes: 'Importance of attribution. With all reuse of others' materials, it is important to identify the original as the source. This not only bolsters the claims of fair use, it also helps avoid any accusation of plagiarism.' This is precisely what Dershowitz did.

Responding to an article in ''The Nation'' by Alexander Cockburn, Dershowitz also cited ''The Chicago Manual of Style'':

Cockburn's claim is that some of the quotes should not have been cited to their original sources but rather to a secondary source, where he believes I stumbled upon them. Even if he were correct that I found all these quotations in Peters's book, the preferred method of citation is to the original source, as ''The Chicago Manual of Style'' emphasizes: "With all reuse of others' materials, it is important to identify the original as the source. This...helps avoid any accusation of plagiarism...To cite a source from a secondary source ('quoted in...') is generally to be discouraged...."

...to which Cockburn responded:

Quoting ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', Dershowitz artfully implies that he followed the rules by citing "the original" as opposed to the secondary source, Peters. He misrepresents Chicago here, where "the original" means merely the origin of the borrowed material, which is, in this instance, Peters.

Now look at the second bit of the quote from Chicago, chastely separated from the preceding sentence by a demure three-point ellipsis. As my associate Kate Levin has discovered, this passage ("To cite a source from a secondary source...") occurs on page 727, which is no less than 590 pages later than the material before the ellipsis, in a section titled "Citations Taken from Secondary Sources." Here's the full quote, with what Dershowitz left out set in bold: "'Quoted in.' To cite a source from a secondary source ("quoted in") is generally to be discouraged, since authors are expected to have examined the works they cite. If an original source is unavailable, however, both the original and the secondary source must be listed."

So Chicago is clearly insisting that unless Dershowitz went to the originals, he was obliged to cite Peters. Finkelstein has conclusively demonstrated that he didn't go to the originals. Plagiarism, QED, plus added time for willful distortion of the language of Chicago's guidelines, cobbling together two separate discussions.

On behalf of Dershowitz, Harvard Law School dean Elena Kagan asked former Harvard president Derek Bok to investigate the assertion of plagiarism; Bok exonerated Dershowitz of the charge.

Although the plagiarism allegations by Finkelstein received the most attention and attracted a lot of controversy, Finkelstein has maintained that "the real issue is Israel's human rights record." His book ''Beyond Chutzpah'' counters Dershowitz's claim that Israel's human rights record is "generally superb."

In an April 3, 2007 interview with the ''Harvard Crimson'', "Dershowitz confirmed that he had sent a letter last September to DePaul faculty members lobbying against Finkelstein's tenure."

In April 2007, Dr. Frank Menetrez, a former Editor-in-Chief of the UCLA Law Review, published an analysis of the charges made against Finkelstein by Alan Dershowitz, finding no merit in any single charge, and that, on the contrary, "Dershowitz is deliberately misrepresenting what Finkelstein wrote". In a follow-up analysis he concluded that he could find 'no way of avoiding the inference that Dershowitz copied the quotation from Twain from Peters's ''From Time Immemorial'', and not from the original source', as Dershowitz claimed.

Controversies

Tenure denial and resignation

In early 2007 the DePaul University Political Science department voted nine to three, and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Personnel Committee five to zero, 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 Elie Wiesel and Jerzy Kosinski" were inconsistent with DePaul's "Vincentian" values. Amidst considerable public debate, Alan Dershowitz actively campaigned to block Finkelstein's tenure bid. 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.

The university denied that Dershowitz, who had been criticized for his campaign against Finkelstein's tenure, played any part in this decision. At the same time, the university denied tenure to international studies assistant professor Mehrene Larudee, a strong supporter of Finkelstein, despite unanimous support from her department, the Personnel Committee and the Dean. Finkelstein stated that he would engage in civil disobedience if attempts were made to bar him from teaching his students.

The Faculty Council later affirmed the right of Professors Finkelstein and Larudee to appeal, which a university lawyer said was not possible. Council President Anne Bartlett said she was "'terribly concerned' correct procedure was not followed". DePaul's faculty association considered taking no confidence votes in administrators, including the president, because of the tenure denials. In a statement issued upon Finkelstein's resignation, DePaul called him "a prolific scholar and an outstanding teacher." Dershowitz expressed outrage at the compromise and this statement in particular, saying that the university had "traded truth for peace."

In June 2007, after two weeks of protests, DePaul students staged a sit-in and hunger strike in support of both professors denied tenure. The Illinois Conference of the American Association of University Professors also sent a letter to the university’s president stating: "It is entirely illegitimate for a university to deny tenure to a professor out of fear that his published research … might hurt a college’s reputation" and that the association has "explicitly rejected collegiality as an appropriate criterion for evaluating faculty members".

Denied entry to Israel in 2008

On May 23, 2008 Finkelstein was denied entry to Israel, according to unnamed Shin Bet security officials, because "of suspicions involving hostile elements in Lebanon" and that he "did not give a full accounting to interrogators with regard to these suspicions." Finkelstein had previously visited south Lebanon and met with Lebanese families during the 2006 Lebanon War. He was banned from entering Israel for 10 years.

Finkelstein was questioned after his arrival at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv and detained for 24 hours in a holding cell. After speaking to Israeli attorney Michael Sfard he was placed on a flight back to Amsterdam, his point of origin. In an interview with ''Haaretz'', Finkelstein stated "I did my best to provide absolutely candid and comprehensive answers to all the questions put to me. I am confident that I have nothing to hide... no suicide missions or secret rendezvous with terrorist organizations." He had been travelling to visit friends in the West Bank and stated he had no interest in visiting Israel. Sfard said banning Finkelstein from entering the country "recalls the behavior of the Soviet bloc countries."

Reception

Finkelstein's books are an attempt to examine the works of mainstream scholarship. The authors whose work he has thus targeted, including Daniel Jonah Goldhagen and Alan Dershowitz, along with others such as Benny Morris whose work Finkelstein has also cited approvingly, have in turn accused Finkelstein of grossly misrepresenting their work, and selectively quoting from their books.

Finkelstein's work has attracted a number of supporters and detractors across the political spectrum. Notable supporters include Noam Chomsky, prominent intellectual and political critic; Raul Hilberg, Holocaust historian; Avi Shlaim, New Historian; and Mouin Rabbani, Palestinian jurist and analyst. According to Hilberg, Finkelstein displays "academic courage to speak the truth when no one else is out there to support him... I would say that his place in the whole history of writing history is assured, and that those who in the end are proven right triumph, and he will be among those who will have triumphed, albeit, it so seems, at great cost."

Criticism

Criticism has been leveled against Finkelstein from several angles. The first sources are responses from those whose work Finkelstein has discussed. Daniel Goldhagen, whose book ''Hitler's Willing Executioners'' Finkelstein criticized, claimed his scholarship has "everything to do with his burning political agenda." Peter Novick, Professor of History at the University of Chicago and a noted Holocaust historian whose work Finkelstein says inspired "The Holocaust Industry," has also strongly criticized the latter's work, describing it as "trash." Similarly, Alan Dershowitz, whose book ''The Case for Israel'' and Finkelstein's response ''Beyond Chutzpah'' sparked an ongoing feud between the two, has claimed Finkelstein's complicity in a conspiracy against pro-Israel scholars: "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," arguing that Finkelstein has leveled charges against many academics, calling at least 10 "distinguished Jews 'hucksters', 'hoaxters' (''sic''), 'thieves,' 'extortionists', and worse."

Israeli historian Omer Bartov, writing for ''The New York Times Book Review'', judged ''The Holocaust Industry'' to be marred by the same errors he denounces in those who exploit the Holocaust for profit or politics:

'It is filled with precisely the kind of shrill hyperbole that Finkelstein rightly deplores in much of the current media hype over the Holocaust; it is brimming with the same indifference to historical facts, inner contradictions, strident politics and dubious contextualizations; and it oozes with the same smug sense of moral and intellectual superiority... Like any conspiracy theory, it contains several grains of truth; and like any such theory, it is both irrational and insidious.'

In 2003, Finkelstein published a considerably expanded second edition of this book, focusing especially on the Swiss Banks case. He identifies areas where people have attacked the book, but claims that none of them question his actual findings.

Finkelstein has accused Jeffrey Goldberg of "torturing" Palestinian prisoners during his IDF service in the First Intifada. Goldberg referred to the allegation as "ridiculous" and he had "never laid a hand on anybody." Goldberg said his "principal role" was "making sure prisoners had fresh fruit." He characterized Finkelstein as a "ridiculous figure" and accused him of "lying and purposely misreading my book."

2009 film about Finkelstein

''American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein'' is an award-winning documentary film about the life and career of Norman Finkelstein, released in 2009 and directed by David Ridgen and Nicolas Rossier. It has been screened in Amsterdam IDFA, in Toronto Hot Docs and in more than 40 other national and international venues, it received 100% freshness ratings on film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

Statements on Israel and Israelis

Finkelstein is a sharp critic of Israel. In a telephone interview with ''Today's Zaman'', in 2009, Finkelstein stated:

I think Israel, as a number of commentators pointed out, is becoming an insane state. And we have to be honest about that. While the rest of the world wants peace, Europe wants peace, the US wants peace, but this state wants war, war and war. In the first week of the massacres, there were reports in the Israeli press that Israel did not want to put all its ground forces in Gaza because it was preparing attacks on Iran. Then there were reports it was planning attacks on Lebanon. It is a lunatic state.

When asked how he, as the son of Holocaust survivors, felt about Israel’s operation in Gaza, Finkelstein replied:

It has been a long time since I felt any emotional connection with the state of Israel, which relentlessly and brutally and inhumanly keeps these vicious, murderous wars. It is a vandal state. There is a Russian writer who once described vandal states as Genghis Khan with a telegraph. Israel is Genghis Khan with a computer. I feel no emotion of affinity with that state. I have some good friends and their families there, and of course I would not want any of them to be hurt. That said, sometimes I feel that Israel has come out of the boils of the hell, a satanic state

The Anti-Defamation League has described Finkelstein as an "obsessive anti-Zionist" filled with "vitriolic hatred of Zionism and Israel." On being called an anti-Zionist Finkelstein has said: "It's a superficial term. I am opposed to any state with an ethnic character, not only to Israel."

Hezbollah and Hamas

Finkelstein has expressed solidarity with Hezbollah and Hamas with respect to defensive actions, alleging that Israel had invaded Lebanon as a signal of rejection when Hamas was seeking a diplomatic settlement with Israel. He also condemned Israel's refusal "to abide by international law (and) to abide by the opinion of the international community" to settle the conflict".

"I don’t care about Hizbullah as a political organization. I don’t know much about their politics, and anyhow, it’s irrelevant. I don’t live in Lebanon. It’s a choice that the Lebanese have to make: Who they want to be their leaders, who they want to represent them. But there is a fundamental principle. People have the right to defend their country from foreign occupiers, and people have the right to defend their country from invaders who are destroying their country. That to me is a very basic, elementary and uncomplicated question."

While condemning the targeting of civilians to achieve a political goal, Finkelstein has stated he believes Hezbollah has the right to target Israeli civilians if Israel targets civilians.

During the Second Intifada, Finkelstein stated a moral equivalence exists between Hamas and the state of Israel in regards to the military policy of targeted killings. Finkelstein argued one of Israel’s primary motivation for launching the 2008 offensive in Gaza was that Hamas was “signaling that it wanted a diplomatic settlement of the conflict along the June 1967 border.” Finkelstein believes Hamas had joined the international community in “seeking a diplomatic settlement” and describes Hamas's stance towards Israel prior to the war as a “peace offensive.”

Bibliography

Books

2010: ''This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion''. OR Books, New York: 2010.

2005: ''Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History''. U of California P, ISBN 0-520-24598-9. 2nd updated edition, U of Cal. P. June 2008, ISBN 0-520-24989-5, contains an appendix written by Frank J. Menetrez, ''Dershowitz vs Finkelstein. Who's Right and Who's Wrong?, p. 363-394,

2000: ''The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering'', Verso, ISBN 1-85984-488-X.

1998: ''A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth'' (Co-author with Ruth Bettina Birn) Henry Holt and Co., ISBN 0-8050-5872-9.

1996: ''The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years''. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, ISBN 0-8166-2859-9.

1995: ''Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict'', Verso, ISBN 1-85984-442-1

1987: ''From the Jewish Question to the Jewish State: An Essay on the Theory of Zionism'', thesis, Princeton University.

Articles and chapters

”Disinformation and the Palestine Question: The Not-So-Strange Case of Joan Peter's 'From Time Immemorial.'“ in ''Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question''. Ed. Edward W. Said and Christopher Hitchens. Verso Press, 1988. ISBN 0-86091-887-4. Chapter Two, Part One:

”Peace process or peace panic? - The scourge of Palestinian moderation”, ''Middle East Report'', 19 (1989) 3/158, pp. 25–26,28-30,42

”Zionist orientations”, ''Scandinavian Journal of Development Alternatives'' 9 (March 1990) 1. p. 41-69

”Bayt Sahur in year II of the intifada. - A personal account”, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'' 19 (Winter 1990) 2/74.p. 62-74

”Israel and Iraq. - A double standard”, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'' 20 (1991) 2/78. p. 43-56

"Reflections on Palestinian attitudes during the Gulf war", '' Journal of Palestine Studies'', 21 (1992) 3/83, p. 54-70

”Réflexions sur la responsabilité de l´État et du citoyen dans le conflit arabo-israélien” (Reflections on the responsibility of state and citizen in the Arab-Israeli conflict), in ''L' homme et la société'', L'Harmattan 1994, 114, S. 37-50

”Whither the `peace process'?”, ''New Left Review'', (1996) 218, p. 138

”Securing occupation: The real meaning of the Wye River Memorandum”, ''New Left Review'', (1998) 232, p. 128-139

Contributor to ''The Politics of Anti-Semitism''. Ed. Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. AK Press, 2001. ISBN 1-902593-77-4.

”Lessons of Holocaust compensation”, in ''Palestinian Refugees: The Right of Return''. Ed. Naseer Aruri. Pluto Press, 2001, S. 272-275. ISBN 0-7453-1776-6.

”Abba Eban with Footnotes”, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'',, vol 32. (2003), p. 74-89

”Prospects for Ending the Occupation”, ''Antipode'', 35 (2003) 5, p. 839-845

Contributor to ''Radicals, Rabbis and Peacemakers: Conversations with Jewish Critics of Israel'', by Seth Farber. Common Courage Press, 2005. ISBN 1-56751-326-3.

”The Camp David II negotiations. - how Dennis Ross proved the Palestinians aborted the peace process”, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'', vol. 36 (2007), p. 39-53

”Dennis Ross and the peace process: subordinating Palestinian rights to Israeli ‘needs’” Institute for Palestine Studies, 2007 ISBN 0-88728-308-X

Others on Finkelstein and his works

Academic reviews of books by Finkelstein

Massad, Joseph. "Deconstructing Holocaust Consciousness," Review Essay, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'', Vol. 32, No. 1. (Autumn, 2002), pp. 78–89.

Cole, Tim. the Holocaust in America: Mixed Motives or Abuse?," ''The Public Historian'', Vol. 24, No. 4. (Fall, 2002), pp. 127–131

Hooglund, Eric. Reviewed work: and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict'' by Norman Finkelstein, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'', Vol. 33, No. 3, Special Issue in Honor of Edward W. Said. (Spring, 2004), pp. 123–124.

Pelham, Nicolas. Reviewed Work: and Reality in the Israel-Palestine Conflict''. by Norman G. Finkelstein, ''International Affairs'', Vol. 72, No. 3, Ethnicity and International Relations. (July 1996), pp. 627–628.

Pappe, Ilan. "Valuable New Perspectives," Reviewed Work: ''Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict''. by Norman G. Finkelstein, ''Journal of Palestine Studies'', Vol. 26, No. 4. (Summer, 1997), pp. 113–115.

Beinin, Joel. "The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict after Oslo," Reviewed work: ''Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict'' by Norman G. Finkelstein. ''Middle East Report'', No. 201, Israel and Palestine: Two States, Bantustans or Binationalism?. (Oct. - Dec., 1996), pp. 45–47.

Reviews of books by Finkelstein

Blokker, Bas. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah'' in ''NRC Handelsblad'' 24 February 2006.

Pappe, Ilan. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah''. ''BOOKFORUM'' Feb./March 2006.

De Zayas, Alfred. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah'' in ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung'' 3 February 2006.

Merkley, Paul Charles. These Pigs on the Face of the Earth: Israel's most relentless critic. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah'' in ''Christianity Today'' January/February 2006.

Desch, Michael C.. The Chutzpah of Alan Dershowitz. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah'' in ''The American Conservative'' 5 Dec. 2005

Goldberger, Ernest. English translation of German review Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah''. ''Neue Zürcher Zeitung'' 10 Dec. 2005

Marqusee, Mike. Israel, fraud and chutzpah Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah''. ''Red Pepper (magazine)'' Jan. 2006

Prashad, Vijay. Z magazine reviews Beyond Chutzpah. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah''. ''Z Magazine'' November 2005 Volume 18 Number 11

McCarthy, Conor. The case against Israel Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah''. ''Village Magazine, Ireland'' 17 Nov. 2005

Gordon, Neve. Neve Gordon: Review of Norman Finkelstein's, Beyond Chutzpah. Review of ''Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History'', by Norman G. Finkelstein. ''History News Network'' 12 Oct. 2005

Nicolás, Rubén. El conflicto entre israelíes y palestinos sólo empeorará. Review of ''Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict'', by Norman G. Finkelstein. ''El Mundo'' 23 Oct. 2003

Bogdanor, Paul. The Finkelstein Phenomenon. Review of ''The Holocaust Industry'', by Norman Finkelstein. ''Judaism'', Fall, 2002.

Abse, Tobias. Finkelstein's Follies: The Dangers of Vulgar Anti-Zionism Review of ''The Holocaust Industry'', by Norman Finkelstein. ''New Interventions'', vol. 10, no. 2, 2000.

Bartov, Omer. A Tale of Two Holocausts. Review of ''The Holocaust Industry'', by Norman Finkelstein. ''New York Times Book Review'' 6 Aug. 2000.

Profiles of Finkelstein

Garner, Mandy. "The Good Jewish Boys Go into Battle." ''Times Higher Education Supplement'' 16 December 2005.

Naparstek, Ben. "His Own Worst Enemy." ''The Jerusalem Post'' 12 December 2005.

Rayner, Jay. "Finkelstein's List." ''The Observer'' 16 July 2000.

Sheleg, Yair. "The Finkelstein Polemic." ''Ha'aretz'' 30 March 2001.

Critics of Finkelstein and replies

Daniel Goldhagen, The New Discourse of Avoidance

* Norman Finkelstein, Response to Goldhagen

William Rubinstein et al., Uses of Holocaust, letters to the ''London Review of Books''

Alex Callinicos, Finkelstein and the Holocaust, criticism in ''Socialist Worker''

David Friedman, Anti-Defamation League letter, calling Finkelstein a Holocaust denier

* How the ADL Fights Anti-Semitism

* The Washington Post Publishes a Retraction, Marc Fisher, WP columnist, publishes a retraction of his charge of "holocaust revisionism

References

External links

''American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein'' - official website of the documentary film on Norman Finkelstein (for a shortened online copy see the video section)

Official website of Norman G. Finkelstein, featuring biography, works by Finkelstein, past and upcoming speaking engagements, and other links to information about him and controversies in which he is involved.

Norman Finkelstein Solidarity Campaign Website Norman Finkelstein Solidarity Campaign - Supporters of Norman Finkelstein

"Depaul University -- Against" bibliography at "Norman G. Finkelstein Solidarity Campaign"

'An Interview with Norman Finkelstein' State of Nature interview with Norman Finkelstein (2008)

Video

''American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein'' - Al Jazeera English broadcast of the documentary in two parts (2 video2, each ca 46 mins)

Resolving the Israel-Palestine Conflict: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Jan 21, 2009.

Interview in Aljazeera English: Tear down the walls

Interview Broadcasted on Lebanese TV January 20, 2008

VIDEO: Norman Finkelstein - Israel and Palestine: Roots of Conflict, Prospects for Peace, presentation in Seattle, Washington, May 8, 2008.

VIDEO: Norman Finkelstein - The Coming Breakup of American Zionism, presentation in Olympia, Washington, May 8, 2008.

VIDEO: Norman Finkelstein at Brown University, April 15, 2008

Finkelstein in a dual interview with former US-Israel ambassador Martin Indyk, discussing the US Role in Israel’s 2008-09 Assault on Gaza on Democracy Now, January 8, 2009.

Doha Debate at the Oxford Union Video of debate on whether the "pro-Israeli lobby has successfully stifled Western debate about Israel's actions" with Andrew Cockburn, Martin Indyk, and David Aaronovitch, May 1, 2007

Debate with Shlomo Ben-Ami on Democracy Now!, February 14, 2006

Norman Finkelstein Responds to Clinton, Netanyahu AIPAC Comments March 23, 2010

Category:1953 births Category:American political scientists Category:American political writers Category:Binghamton University alumni Category:DePaul University faculty Category:American people of Polish-Jewish descent Category:Jewish American historians Category:Historians of Jews and Judaism Category:Historians of the Holocaust Category:Historians of the Middle East Category:Hunter College faculty Category:Jewish anti-Zionism Category:Living people Category:New York University faculty Category:Personae non gratae Category:Princeton University alumni Category:Rutgers University faculty Category:Writers on Zionism Category:Jewish peace activists

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name	Alan Dershowitz
alt	photograph
birth date	September 01, 1938
birth place	Brooklyn, New York
nationality	American
education	Brooklyn College (A.B.) Yale Law School (LL.B)
occupation	Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School
spouse	1. Sue Barlach 2.Carolyn Cohen
parents	Harry and Claire Dershowitz
website	www.alandershowitz.com

Alan Morton Dershowitz (born September 1, 1938) is an American lawyer, jurist, and political commentator. He has spent most of his career at Harvard Law School where in 1967, at the age of 28, he became the youngest full professor of law in its history. He has held the Felix Frankfurter professorship there since 1993.

Dershowitz is known for his involvement in several high-profile legal cases and as a commentator on the Arab–Israeli conflict. As a criminal appellate lawyer, he has won 13 of the 15 murder and attempted murder cases he has handled, and has represented a series of celebrity clients, including Mike Tyson, Patty Hearst, and Jim Bakker. His most notable cases include his role in 1984 in overturning the conviction of Claus von Bülow for the attempted murder of his wife, Sunny, and as the appellate adviser for the defense in the O.J. Simpson trial in 1995.

He is the author of a number of books about politics and law, including ''Reversal of Fortune: Inside the von Bülow Case'' (1985), the basis of the 1990 film; ''Chutzpah'' (1991); ''Reasonable Doubts: The Criminal Justice System and the O.J. Simpson Case'' (1996); ''The Case for Israel'' (2003); and ''Rights From Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the Origins of Rights'' (2004).

Early life

Dershowitz was born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to Harry and Claire Dershowitz, an Orthodox Jewish couple, and was raised in Borough Park. His father was a founder and president of the Young Israel Synagogue in the 1960s, served on the board of directors of the Etz Chaim School in Borough Park, and in retirement was co-owner of the Manhattan-based Merit Sales Company. According to Dershowitz, Harry had a strong sense of justice and talked about how it was "the Jew's job to defend the underdog."

Dershowitz's first job was at a deli factory on Manhattan's Lower East Side in 1952, at age 14. He recalls tying the strings that separated the hot dogs and once getting locked in the freezer. He attended Yeshiva University High School, where he played on the basketball team. He was a rebellious student, often criticized by his teachers. The school's career placement center told him he had talent and was capable of becoming an advertising executive, funeral director, or salesman. He later said his teachers told him to do something that "requires a big mouth and no brain ... so I became a lawyer." After graduating from high school, he attended Brooklyn College and received his A.B. in 1959. Next he attended Yale Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the ''Yale Law Journal'', and graduated first in his class with a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) in 1962. He has been a member of a Conservative minyan at Harvard Hillel, but is now a secular Jew. He is married to Carolyn Cohen and has three children.

Career

After being admitted to the bar, Dershowitz served as a clerk for David L. Bazelon, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He said that "Bazelon was my best and worst boss at once ... He worked me to the bone; he didn't hesitate to call at 2 a.m. He taught me everything—how to be a civil libertarian, a Jewish activist, a mensch. He was halfway between a slave master and a father figure." During the 1963–1964 term, he served as law clerk for the Supreme Court Associate Justice Arthur Goldberg. He told Tom Van Riper of ''Forbes'' that getting a Supreme Court clerkship was probably his second big break; his first was when, at age 14 or 15, a camp counselor told him he was smart but that his mind operated a little differently. He joined the faculty of Harvard Law School as an assistant professor in 1964, and was made a full professor in 1967 at the age of 28, at that time the youngest full professor of law in the school's history. He was appointed Felix Frankfurter professor of law in 1993.

Much of his legal career has focused on criminal law, and his clients have included high-profile figures such as Patty Hearst, Harry Reems, Leona Helmsley, Jim Bakker, Mike Tyson, Michael Milken, O.J. Simpson and Kirtanananda Swami. He sees himself as a "lawyer of last resort"—someone to turn to when the defendant has few other legal options—and takes those cases that are what he calls "the most challenging, the most difficult and precedent-setting cases." He is currently advising Julian Assange's legal team.

Recognition

Dershowitz has been described by ''Newsweek'' as America's "most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer and one of its most distinguished defenders of individual rights." He was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 1979, and in 1983 received the William O. Douglas First Amendment Award from the Anti-Defamation League for his work on civil rights. In November 2007, he was awarded the Soviet Jewry Freedom Award by the Russian Jewish Community Foundation. He has been awarded honorary doctorates in law from Yeshiva University, the Hebrew Union College, Monmouth College, University of Haifa, Syracuse University, Fitchburg State College, Bar-Ilan University, and Brooklyn College. In addition, he is a member of the International Advisory Board of NGO Monitor.

Cases

Pornography (1976)

In 1976, Dershowitz handled the successful appeal of Harry Reems, who had been convicted of distribution of obscenity resulting from his acting in the pornographic movie ''Deep Throat''. In public debates, Dershowitz commonly argues against censorship of pornography on First Amendment grounds, and maintains that consumption of pornography is not harmful.

Claus von Bülow (1984)

Dershowitz represented Claus von Bülow, a British socialite, at appeal for the attempted murder of his wife, Sunny von Bülow, who died in 2008 after going into a coma in Newport, Rhode Island in 1980. He had the conviction overturned, and von Bülow was acquitted in a retrial. Dershowitz told the story of the case in his book, ''Reversal of Fortune: Inside the von Bülow case'' (1985), which was turned into a movie in 1990. Dershowitz was played by actor Ron Silver, and Dershowitz himself had a cameo role as a judge.

Józef Glemp (1989)

In 1989, Dershowitz filed a defamation suit against Cardinal Józef Glemp, then Archbishop of Warsaw, on behalf of Rabbi Avi Weiss. Glemp had accused Weiss and six other New York Jews of attacking nuns at a much-disputed convent on the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Glemp's statement about Weiss, made in July 1989, was coupled with suggestions that Jews control the world's news media. Dershowitz's account of the lawsuit appears in his book ''Chutzpah'' (1991).

Mike Barnicle (1990)

Dershowitz sued ''The Boston Globe'' in 1990 over a remark reporter Mike Barnicle attributed to him, in which Dershowitz allegedly said he preferred Asian women because they are deferential to men. Dershowitz reportedly received a $75,000 out-of-court settlement and the newspaper's ombudsman questioned Barnicle's credibility, according to ''The Boston Phoenix''.

O.J. Simpson (1995)

Dershowitz acted as an appellate adviser to O.J. Simpson's defense team during the trial, and later wrote a book about it, ''Reasonable Doubts: The Criminal Justice System and the O.J. Simpson Case'' (1996). He wrote: "the Simpson case will not be remembered in the next century. It will not rank as one of the trials of the century. It will not rank with the Nuremberg trials, the Rosenberg trial, Sacco and Vanzetti. It is on par with Leopold and Loeb and the Lindbergh case, all involving celebrities. It is also not one of the most important cases of my own career. I would rank it somewhere in the middle in terms of interest and importance." The case has been described as the most publicized criminal trial in American history.

Views

On Israel

While Dershowitz is an outspoken supporter of Israel, Dershowitz self-identifies as "Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestine". Dershowitz engaged in highly publicized debates with a number of other commentators, including Meir Kahane , Noam Chomsky, and Norman Finkelstein. When former U.S. President Jimmy Carter had his book ''Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid'' (2006) published—in which he argues that Israel's control of Palestinian land is the primary obstacle to peace—Dershowitz challenged Carter to a debate at Brandeis University. Carter declined, saying, "I don't want to have a conversation even indirectly with Dershowitz. There is no need to debate somebody who, in my opinion, knows nothing about the situation in Palestine." Carter did address Brandeis in January 2007, but only Brandeis students and staff were allowed to attend. Dershowitz was invited to respond on the same stage only after Carter had left.

He also took part in the Doha Debates at Georgetown University in April 2009, where he spoke against the motion "this House believes it's time for the US to get tough on Israel," with Dore Gold, President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Speakers for the motion were Avraham Burg, former Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel and former Speaker of the Knesset; and Michael Scheuer, former Chief of the CIA Bin Laden Issue Station. Dershowitz's side lost the debate, with 63 percent of the audience voting for the motion.

Harvard-MIT divestment petition

Randall Adams of ''The Harvard Crimson'' writes that, in the spring of 2002, a petition within Harvard calling for Harvard and MIT to divest from Israel and American companies that sell arms to Israel gathered over 600 signatures, including 74 from the Harvard faculty and 56 from the MIT faculty. Among the signatures was that of Harvard's Winthrop House Master Paul D. Hanson, in response to which Dershowitz staged a debate for 200 students in the Winthrop Junior Common Room. He called the petition's signatories antisemitic, bigots, and said they knew nothing about the Middle East. "Your House master is a bigot," he told the students, "and you ought to know that." Adams writes that Dershowitz cited examples of human rights violations in countries that the United States supports, such as the execution of homosexuals in Egypt and the repression of women in Saudi Arabia, and said he would sue any professor who voted against the tenure of another academic because of the candidate's position toward Israel, calling them "ignoramuses with Ph.D.s."

"New Response to Palestinian Terrorism" (2002)

In March 2002, Dershowitz published an article in ''The Jerusalem Post'' entitled "New Response to Palestinian Terrorism." In it, he wrote that Israel should announce a unilateral cessation in retaliation, at the end of which it would "announce precisely what it will do in response to the next act of terrorism. For example, it could announce the first act of terrorism following the moratorium will result in the destruction of a small village which has been used as a base for terrorist operations. The residents would be given 24 hours to leave, and then troops will come in and bulldoze all of the buildings." The list of targets would be made public in advance. The proposal attracted criticism from within Harvard University and beyond. James Bamford argued in ''The Washington Post'' that it would violate international law. Norman Finkelstein wrote that "it is hard to make out any difference between the policy Dershowitz advocates and the Nazi destruction of Lidice, for which he expresses abhorrence—except that Jews, not Germans, would be implementing it."

Norman Finkelstein

Shortly after the publication of Dershowitz's ''The Case for Israel'' (2003), Norman Finkelstein of DePaul University said the book contained plagiarism. He offered several examples, one of which was a quote from Mark Twain appearing on pages 23–24 of ''The Case for Israel'', which he said was the same as one on pages 159–160 of ''From Time Immemorial'' by Joan Peters, including with the ellipses in the same place. Dershowitz said the quote was taken from Mark Twain, to whom he gave credit. Harvard's president, Derek Bok, investigated the allegation and determined that no plagiarism had occurred.

In early 2004 it was announced that Dr Finkelstein would publish a study rebutting Professor Alan Dershowitz’s The Case for Israel and documenting that extensive passages in his book had been plagiarized, Dershowitz and his attorneys entered into a protracted correspondence with the publisher, originally New Press and subsequently University of California Press also involving Governor Schwarzenegger . Dershowitz had pressured the publishers suppressing the release of Beyond Chutzpah, yet refused to release his correspondence – indeed, falsely claiming that he had released it. Later in 2007 a California Public Records Act (CPRA) request was made to the University of California Press and the letters were released .

In October 2006, Dershowitz wrote to DePaul University faculty members to lobby against Finkelstein's application for tenure. The university's Liberal Arts and Sciences faculty voted to send a letter of complaint to Harvard University. In June 2007, DePaul University denied Finkelstein tenure.

Mearsheimer and Walt

In March 2006, John Mearsheimer, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, Professor of International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, co-wrote a paper entitled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," published in ''The London Review of Books''. Mearsheimer and Walt criticized what they described as "the Israel lobby" for influencing U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East in a direction away from U.S. interests and toward Israel's interests. They referred to Dershowitz specifically as an "apologist" for the Israel lobby. In an interview in March 2006 for ''The Harvard Crimson'', Dershowitz called the article "one-sided" and its authors "liars" and "bigots." The following day on MSNBC's ''Scarborough Country'', he suggested the paper had been taken from various hate sites: "every paragraph virtually is copied from a neo-Nazi Web site, from a radical Islamic Web site, from David Duke’s Web site." Dershowitz subsequently wrote a report challenging the paper, arguing that it contained "three types of major errors: quotations are wrenched out of context, important facts are misstated or omitted, and embarrassingly weak logic is employed." In a letter in the ''London Review of Books'' in May 2006, Mearsheimer and Walt denied that they had used any racist sources for their article, writing that Dershowitz had offered no evidence to support what they said was his false claim.

2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict

In July 2006, Dershowitz wrote a series of articles defending the conduct of the Israel Defense Forces during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. There was an international outcry at the time regarding escalating Lebanese civilian deaths and the destruction of civilian infrastructure resulting from Israel's stated attempt to weaken or destroy Hezbollah. After the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour indicated that Israeli officials might be investigated and indicted for possible war crimes, Dershowitz labeled her statement "bizarre," called for her dismissal, and wrote about what he called the "absurdity and counterproductive nature of current international law." In a ''Boston Globe'' editorial several days later, he argued that Israel was not to blame for civilian deaths: "Israel has every self-interest in minimizing civilian casualties, whereas the terrorists have every self-interest in maximizing them—on both sides. Israel should not be condemned for doing what every democracy would and should do: taking every reasonable military step to stop the killing of their own civilians."

Second Amendment and the U.S. Constitution

Dershowitz is strongly opposed to firearms ownership and the Second Amendment, and supports repealing the amendment, but he vigorously opposes using the judicial system to read it out of the Constitution because it would open the way for further revisions to the Bill of Rights and Constitution by the courts. "Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it's not an individual right or that it's too much of a public safety hazard don't see the danger in the big picture. They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like."

Views on torture

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, Dershowitz published an article in ''The San Francisco Chronicle'' entitled "Want to Torture? Get a Warrant," in which he advocated the issuance of warrants permitting the torture of terrorism suspects, if there were an "absolute need to obtain immediate information in order to save lives coupled with probable cause that the suspect had such information and is unwilling to reveal it." He argued that authorities should be permitted to use non-lethal torture in a "ticking time bomb scenario," and that it would be less destructive to the rule of law to regulate the process than to leave it to the discretion of individual law-enforcement agents. He favors preventing the government from prosecuting the subject of torture based on information revealed during such an interrogation. The "ticking time bomb scenario" is the subject of a play, ''The Dershowitz Protocol'', by Canadian author Robert Fothergill, in which the American government has established a protocol of "intensified interrogation" for terrorist suspects.

William F. Schulz, Executive Director of the U.S. section of Amnesty International, found Dershowitz's ticking-bomb scenario unrealistic because, he argued, it would require that "the authorities know that a bomb has been planted somewhere; know it is about to go off; know that the suspect in their custody has the information they need to stop it; know that the suspect will yield that information accurately in a matter of minutes if subjected to torture; and know that there is no other way to obtain it." James Bamford of ''The Washington Post'' described one of the practices recommended by Dershowitz—the "sterilized needle being shoved under the fingernails"—as "chillingly Nazi-like."

Animal rights

Dershowitz is one of a number of scholars at Harvard Law School who have expressed their support for limited animal rights. In his ''Rights from Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the Origins of Rights'' (2004), he writes that, in order to avoid human beings treating each other the way we treat animals, we have made what he calls the "somewhat arbitrary decision" to single out our own species for different and better treatment. "Does this subject us to the charge of speciesism? Of course it does, and we cannot justify it, except by the fact that in the world in which we live, humans make the rules. That reality imposes on us a special responsibility to be fair and compassionate to those on whom we impose our rules. Hence the argument for animal rights."

Books

1982: ''The Best Defense''. ISBN 978-0-394-50736-1. 1985: ''Reversal of Fortune: Inside the von Bülow Case''. ISBN 978-0-394-53903-4. 1988: ''Taking Liberties: A Decade of Hard Cases, Bad Laws, and Bum Raps''. ISBN 978-0-8092-4616-8. 1991: ''Chutzpah''. ISBN 978-0-316-18137-2. 1992: ''Contrary to Popular Opinion''. ISBN 978-0-88687-701-9. 1994: ''The Advocate's Devil'' (fiction). ISBN 978-0-446-51759-1. 1994: ''The Abuse Excuse: And Other Cop-Outs, Sob Stories, and Evasions of Responsibility''. ISBN 978-0-316-18135-8. 1996: ''Reasonable Doubts: The Criminal Justice System and the O.J. Simpson Case''. ISBN 978-0-684-83021-6. 1997: ''The Vanishing American Jew: In Search of Jewish Identity for the Next Century''. ISBN 978-0-316-18133-4. 1998: ''Sexual McCarthyism: Clinton, Starr, and the Emerging Constitutional Crisis''. ISBN 978-0-465-01628-0. 1999: ''Just Revenge'' (fiction). ISBN 978-0-446-60871-8. 2000: ''The Genesis of Justice: Ten Stories of Biblical Injustice that Led to the Ten Commandments and Modern Law''. Warner Books. ISBN 978-0-446-67677-9. 2001: ''Letters to a Young Lawyer''. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-01631-0. 2001: ''Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000''. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-514827-5. 2002: ''Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge''. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-09766-5. 2002: ''Shouting Fire: Civil Liberties in a Turbulent Age''. Little Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-18141-9.

2003: ''The Case for Israel''. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-471-46502-7

2003: ''America Declares Independence''. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-471-26482-8. 2004: ''America on Trial: Inside the Legal Battles That Transformed Our Nation''. Warner Books. ISBN 978-0-446-52058-4. 2004: ''Rights From Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the Origins of Rights''. ISBN 978-0-465-01713-3. 2005: ''The Case for Peace: How the Arab-Israeli Conflict Can be Resolved''. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-471-74317-0); . 2006: ''Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways''. W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-06012-6. 2007: ''Blasphemy: How the Religious Right is Hijacking the Declaration of Independence''. ISBN 978-0-470-08455-7. 2007: ''Finding Jefferson: A Lost Letter, a Remarkable Discovery, and the First Amendment in an Age of Terrorism''. ISBN 978-0-470-16711-3.

2008: ''Is There a Right to Remain Silent?: Coercive Interrogation and the Fifth Amendment After 9/11''. ISBN 978-0-19-530779-5.

2008: ''The Case Against Israel's Enemies: Exposing Jimmy Carter and Others Who Stand in the Way of Peace''. ISBN 978-0-470-37992-9.

2009: ''Mouth of Webster, Head of Clay'' essay in ''The Face in the Mirror: Writers Reflect on Their Dreams of Youth and the Reality of Age''. ISBN 978-1-59102-752-2.

2009: ''The Case For Moral Clarity: Israel, Hamas and Gaza''. ISBN 978-0-9661548-5-6.

2010: ''The Trials of Zion''. ISBN 978-0-446-57673-4.

Notes

Further reading

Upham, S. Phineas (ed.). ''Philosophers in Conversation: Interviews from the Harvard Review of Philosophy'', Routledge, 2002, pp. 64–70.

Berkow, Ira. ''Court Vision: Unexpected Views on the Lure of Basketball'', University of Nebraska Press, 2004, pp. 207–216.

Dershowitz, Alan (ed.). ''What Israel Means to Me: By 80 Prominent Writers, Performers, Scholars, Politicians, and Journalists'', John Wiley & Sons, 2007, pp. 1–6.

Goldberg, Elizabeth Swanson. ''Beyond Terror: Gender, Narrative, Human Rights'', Rutgers University Press, 2007, pp. 88–95, 101.

Loewenstein, Antony. ''My Israel Question'', Melbourne University Press, 2007.

Dershowitz, Alan. "Echoes of 1938" in Helmreich, William B.; Rosenblum, Mark; Schimel, David. (eds.). ''The Jewish Condition: Challenges and Responses — 1938–2008'', Transaction Publishers, 2008, pp. 39–44.

Norwood, Stephen H.; Pollack, Eunice G. (eds.). ''Encyclopedia of American Jewish History'' (Volume 1), ABC-CLIO, 2008, pp. 53–54.

Rejali, Darius. ''Torture and Democracy'', Princeton University Press, 2009.

External links

Alan Dershowitz at ''The Huffington Post'' (June 2005– ). Dershowitz's blog.

Alan M. Dershowitz Faculty directory entry at Harvard Law School, incl. hyperlinked "Bibliography."

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Alan M. Dershowitz Official website. (Top menu features hyperlinks to his biography and selected publications.)

Interview with Alan Dershowitz from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

Alan M. Dershowitz Personal group space at Gather.com.

SWINDLE Magazine Interview

Alan Dershowitz debates Meir Kahane 1985

Alan Dershowitz Playlist Appearance on WMBR's ''Dinnertime Sampler'' May 11, 2005

Category:1938 births Category:Living people Category:People from Brooklyn Category:American Jews Category:American lawyers Category:American legal writers Category:American legal scholars Category:Jewish American writers Category:Jewish agnostics Category:Brooklyn College alumni Category:Yale Law School alumni Category:Law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States Category:Harvard Law School faculty Category:Guggenheim Fellows Category:O. J. Simpson murder case

Category:Interdisciplinary Center faculty Category:Zionists Category:Members of the American Civil Liberties Union Category:Writers on Zionism Category:Scholars of antisemitism Category:Historians of Israel Category:Academic scandals Category:Animal rights advocates

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