The Case for Israel

Not recommended for anyone wishing to obtain a balanced view of the situation in Israel/Palestine. As a previous reviewer has noted, by dealing with the 'issues' in separate chapters Dershowitz completely loses any context. Having recently returned from Israel I would strongly recommend reading Pappe, Halper, & get on the internet: there are a couple of very good news websites such as IMEMC, & Alternative Information Centre. We are being seriously let down by the international media and this book does nothing to provide balanced information in what is a very complex situation.

Plagiarism? (18/63 people found this helpful)

I would strongly urge readers to counterbalance this with Norman Finklestein's "Beyond Chutzpah". Finkelstein mounts a strong case that Dershowitz has actually based some of the content of his book on a discredited work by Joan Peters called "From Time Immemorial". The latter is an attempt to prove, amongst other things, that Palestinian refugees in the '48 war had only very recently moved into the area which was to become Israel proper after the war, hence belying their claims to being "real" refugees from the same area post '48. The book, in my view, has been shown, by Finkelstein (Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict) to be speculative at best. The same critique by Finkelstein also presents a strong (and to my knowledge uncontested) case that Peters' case is not even made in good faith. For example, checking her sources, Finkelstein notes severe misrepresentation. This even goes as far as ellipsis points in Peters' text in place of words which negate precisely the sentence Peters presents in the text (a bit like me quoting someone who wrote "Finkelstein has no qualifications to talk about Israel" as saying "Finkelstein has ... qualifications to talk about Israel".)Yehoshua Porath (Professor Emeritus of Middle East History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) wrote a review of Peter's book in the New York Review of Books (Vol 32 Number 21 January 1986) in which he wrote: "The unfortunate thing about Joan Peters' From Time Immemorial (1984) is that from a position of apparently great learning and research, she attempts to refute the Arab myths merely by substituting the Jewish myths for them."

Now the point here is that Dershowitz, aware of the debunking of Peters' book, clearly relies on it in "The Case for Israel". This is no major offence in itself. It may lower his credibility amongs specialists in the field, but beyond that I guess he is entitled to source as he sees fit. A bigger issue going to the heart of Dershowitz' academic integrity is that, as Finkelstein has shown in the first cited book above, Dershowitz does not make proper attribution of his use of Peters' discredited book in his "Case For Israel". Finkelstein makes a very strong case that Dershowitz relies directly on Peters for portions of his book, without consistently noting his reliance (he makes proper attribution for part of his total reliance - 8 citations). He quotes - ostensibly from primary sources - but repeating Peters' mistakes in quotation, mistakes in phrase-coinage and so forth, which suggest he did not read those sources at all! In a debate between Dershowitz and Finkelstein to be found here (www.democracynow.org) Dershowitz repeatedly insists that the cited passages will be found in the sources he cites. For me this is not a point of dispute. Neither is it really relevant whether what Dershowitz has done is to be called "plagiarism". (This was not the case with Finkelstein, who did accuse Dershowitz of plagiarism). The heart of the question is the respect we are to accord a purported scholar whose work draws, without consistent attribution, on the work of another.

Recent events have taken an ironic turn. Finkelstein has been denied tenure based on the "ad hominem" nature of some of his work (his work can be highly vituperative. But we must distinguish attitude from scholarship. Oxford Professor of International relations Avi Shlaim sounds ringing endorsements of Finkelstein's scholarship, though he also complains about Finkelstein's tone). Were Dershowitz to come under the same exacting standards, then he might begin to regret writing his "Case for Israel"

A Pointless Exercise (18/71 people found this helpful)

Dershowitz can at best be described as biased. His work is not a scholarly piece, and one can only hope that its vile contents are not absorbed by the hapless feeble minded. I wholeheartedly recommend that you look elsewhere for your information on this area. Try Said, Pappe, Shlaim, or Chomsky for instance.
As an aside, Mearsheimer and Walt's 'The Israel Lobby' is also worthy of
attention.

Disappointingly one-sided (24/74 people found this helpful)

With The Case For Israel, Alan Dershowitz has missed a great opportunity. Although Mark Twain famously claimed that one could not possibly write about the 'Holy land' without passion, it seems Dershowitz has not even attempted to present an objective view.

Unfortunately, when writing on a subject as pressing and hotly contested as the Israel-Arab conflict, personal views are always going to taint the writing, and those seeking to be informed rather than persuaded are going to be either disappointed or misled by The Case For Israel.

It seems that Dershowitz has picked his audience, (the 'American Jews' for whom this is a 'must-read' according to the Jerusalem Post quotation on the back cover, and the easily-led), and is writing to arm them with responses to those who criticise Israel. In doing so, Dershowitz has missed an opportunity to write a credible response to the propaganda used by some pro-Palestinian organisations, and therefore an actual 'Case For Israel'.

What struck me towards the end of The Case For Israel was how Dershowitz seems to repeat the same points over. One example of this is the way the Israeli army are encouraged to avoid civilian deaths, and brought to task if they accidentally do so. Whether you agree or disagree with this (and I think it's a valid point), reading it three times in the same book only undermines it's important, and seems to suggest Dershowitz is short on actual evidence.

One reason for this confusion is the way the book is presented; Every chapter is a different 'accusation' made by critics of Israel; details of the 'accusers'; Dershowitz's 'reality'; and finally the 'proof' that explains Dershowitz's point. However, although this format makes for easy reference and easy reading, the point, and with it the argument, often gets lost as Dershowitz attempts to make the book flow throughout, as opposed to being a set of different questions and answers. Furthermore, the 'accusations', usually made by pro-Arab commentators such as the late Edward Said, are not always saying what Dershowitz wants them to. In addition to this, sometimes the quotations are taken from members of the Syrian government (p166), and are therefore not representative of the typical critic of Israel.

Sadly, Dershowitz's conclusion is to fall back on the age old defence of Israel; namely labelling its critics anti-Semitic (despite claiming not to do so), and calling Israel 'the Jew among nations'. Comparisons are made with similar struggles in Tibet and Armenia, and Dershowitz decides the sole reason for the Western focus on the Israel-Arab conflict is because of anti-Jewish feeling, conveniently omitting the other possible reasons, for example Europe's part in establishing Israel, Israel's geographical location in Europe, and the reported $8 billlion in aid that Israel receives yearly from the United States.

All in all, Dershowitz has presented a one sided view that falls back on labelling critics of Israel as anti-Semitic, and in doing so has buried the few good points that he makes in a sea of hyperbole. If the book is taken with a pinch of salt and and open mind, it is possible to learn something from it, but it would be wise to follow it up by reading Norman Finkelstein's Beyond Cutzpah, written partly as a response to The Case For Israel, and trying to make up your own mind about the conflict, rather than simply reading one or the other.

Dershowitz is as lucid as ever (62/92 people found this helpful)

The best case for the "Case for Israel" is that none of the one-star reviewers even attempts to debate Dershowitz's facts, figures or logic - instead, they seem to resort to calling him a liar, a fabricator, a plagiarist and such like. Now, if this was indeed the case, why would they not refute his premises and / or conclusions? IMHO, this would be either due to the absence of arguments which can meet the test of critical reasoning - or due to strongly held system of beliefs which has nothing to do with critical reasoning to begin with. No work of homo sapiens can ever be 100% accurate, and it is not impossible that Dershowitz got some things wrong. Well, let's point them out and leave name-calling for the streets.

Alan Dershowitz

Reader Reviews:

Polemic rather than Scholarship (1/2 people found this helpful)

Plagiarism? (18/63 people found this helpful)

A Pointless Exercise (18/71 people found this helpful)

Disappointingly one-sided (24/74 people found this helpful)

Dershowitz is as lucid as ever (62/92 people found this helpful)

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