Criticism of Israel and Anti-Semitism Are NOT Synonymous
Here's some thoughtful and engaging commentary by Johann Hari who, in addition to his time spent undercover in extremist Islamist and neo-Nazi organizations, has become a critic of (at least some of) the actions of the State of Israel:
Although in years past Hari worked undercover as an investigative reporter uncovering the ugly face of anti-Semitism in various places, which included the unfortunately rather easy job of documenting its prevalence amongst Islamic extremists, he has now been labeled an anti-Semite since he has the gall to criticize the inhumane actions of the Zionist government and their oppression of the Palestinian people. This gem of an article discusses everyone from Melanie Phillips and former President Jimmy Carter to Alan Dershowitz and Norman Finkelstein, and is thus highly recommended. It demonstrates once again that not only do the pro-Zionists not entertain such effrontery very well, but their responses are getting increasingly irrational and transparent. This is probably because the non sequitur of the "Criticism of Israel = Anti-Semitism" formula should be obvious to any morally decent person with a single active brain cell...especially when an increasing number of the critics are Jews and Israelis themselves.
For readers who may have been duped into believing that Islam condones anti-Semitism, then I suggest taking a look at Holocaust Denial Undermines Islam, by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, as well as all of our postings on the topics of Anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and Israel...keeping the title of this posting in mind while reading.
On that note, I'll add that there are a couple [(1)(2)] of new interviews with Norman Finkelstein out on YouTube.com that are well worth a watch. In the first one, although edited by the pro-Zionist group MEMRI, the truth still manages to come out...and it's great watching the former professor at DePaul University chastise the Lebanese interviewer. The latter video contains an interview with Riz Khan, formerly of CNN but now with Aljazeera, from July 2007, and focuses on the circumstances surrounding Finkelstein's denial of tenure by DePaul University, which was largely due to the efforts of Alan Dershowitz—Professor of Law at Harvard University, Advocate of Torture, Denier of the Plight of the Palestinian People, and Documented Plagiarizer.
Here's a link to the latest CounterPunch Special Report, which offers a detailed analysis of the charges of plagiarism leveled against Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz by Norman Finkelstein. In his discussion of this ongoing debate, Frank J. Menetrez shows how Dershowitz is both desperately trying to avoid discussing the detailed evidence against him and has deliberately misrepresented the issues as presented by Finkelstein. This is a fascinating issue, which has still managed to stay under the radar of the mainstream media, that I've been tracking for a couple of years now since I find what Dershowitz has managed to get away with to be truly outrageous. Even though this latest article is rather lengthy, it actually serves as a rather useful summary of this ongoing and heavily documented saga. Due to this, I strongly recommend reading it since it not only cuts to the chase and focuses on the real issues, but also provides some perspective on what's really at stake in all of this:
The Case Against Alan Dershowitz Plagiarism, Cover Up and Misrepresentations By Frank J. Menetrez CounterPunch.org - February 11, 2008
As the article points out, what lies at the heart of the case against Alan Dershowitz is the "identical errors argument"—which is why he has not only continually avoided discussing it, but deliberately misrepresented Finkelstein's case in order keep attention away from it. Upon looking at the evidence, Dershowitz's desperation is understandable, since he could be in some real hot water if Harvard ever initiated a forthright and detailed investigation. As Frank J. Menetrez states, "If Harvard never investigated the identical errors issue and Dershowitz has always known that, and if I am also right that Finkelstein's charge concerning the Twain quote is sound, then Dershowitz has committed academic misconduct on several levels." These "several levels" are then expounded upon. Once these are considered, along with the rest of the evidence that the article puts forward, I think any honest person should be outraged and frustrated by the fact that "No honest and competent investigation by Harvard would have held Dershowitz to a lower standard than Harvard sets for its freshmen." So what are they waiting for?
Well it seems that for awhile Dershowitz had them duped, but the article in question might just be one more step towards waking the Harvard University administration from their stupor. As Menetrez explains, "Dershowitz's characterizations of the dispute are demonstrably incorrect. The identical errors argument, which lies at the heart of Finkelstein's case, shows that the plagiarism charge is not a technical matter about citation style or about the definition of plagiarism. Rather, it is factual dispute about whether Dershowitz copied primary source material directly from Peters without citing Peters and without checking the primary source himself. Again, Dershowitz has known this since the fall of 2003. It thus appears that Dershowitz's strategy from the start has been to pretend that this factual dispute does not exist and to hope that no one will notice." Ouch!
And keep in mind, that this isn't just a petty squabble between a couple of Ivory Tower academics, since there are looming questions concerning not only ethics and the long-term reputation of one of the most respected universities in the world, but academic freedom as well. As Menetrez puts it, "this is not just between Harvard and Dershowitz, or between Dershowitz and Finkelstein. Rather, Harvard has a moral obligation to Finkelstein to acknowledge, at a bare minimum, that it has never completely cleared Dershowitz of Finkelstein's plagiarism charges, because it has never rejected Finkelstein's argument concerning the identical errors"—so don't let Dershowitz's smoke screen fool you.
We've blogged on The Dershowitz Hoax and related topics quite a few times before ([1][2][3][4][5][6]), so hopefully this latest post will server as a good synopsis for those who don't have the time to read Norman Finkelstein's entire book Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History and the whole host of articles on this topic. However, if you have time, take a few minutes and watch these videos, since they provide ample evidence on just how pathetic Alan Dershowitz really is.
Below is a link to a recent Islamica Magazine interview with Norman Finkelstein, a "prolific scholar and outstanding teacher", who was recently denied tenure and put on administrative leave by DePaul University after scandalous, and ultimately successful, efforts initiated by Professor Alan Dershowitz not only brought about a grave injustice, but undermined academic freedom as well. As I touched upon in a previous blog posting, reading in detail about the anti-Finkelstein antics of Dershowitz is well worth the time invested. Not only is the fact that Alan Dershowitz got away with bringing Professor Finkelstein down totally outrageous, but the fact that a Harvard Law professor wrote a book that is "a mixture of plagiarism, shoddy research, and poor scholarship" (as Wahajat Ali puts in in the interview) but still manages to keep his job (although possibly not a very stellar reputation) is mind-boggling. Here's the link to the interview:
Interview with Norman Finkelstein[PDF] On Islamo-Fascism and Other Vacuous Epithets By Wajahat Ali - November 20, 2007 http://www.IslamicaMagazine.com/
Information on Dr. Finkelstein's book Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, in which he exposes the shoddy scholarship of Alan Dershowitz's book The Case for Israel, can be found here. As always, it's eye-opening to read the 1-star reviews of Finkelstein's book on Amazon.com just to get a taste of the myopic criticism that is normally thrown his way, including all of the banal accusations of anti-Semitism (keeping in mind that Norman Finkelstein is himself Jewish and his parents were survivors of Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust). To fully understand just how misplaced this criticism is, I strongly recommend watching the videos of a lecture given by Dr. Finkelstein entitled Is Criticism of Israel Anti-Semitic?, which can be found here.
For more information related to the Dershowitz-Finkelstein scandal, check out these links ([1], [2], [3]) and well as our previous postings ([1], [2], [3]) related to Norman Finkelstein...as well as this.
In the above clip, author and Middle East policy expert Robert Satloff discusses several stories in which North African Muslims helped Jews hide from and escape persecution by the Nazis during the Second World War. It's not well-known in the West that some North African countries, especially Morocco, have large Jewish populations due to the fact that they had to flee Christian persecution in Europe—especially Spain during the Reconquista. Unfortunately for them, Adolf Hitler decided to invade North Africa, thus extending his plan to exterminate the Jews (i.e. The Holocaust) across the Mediterranean.
The Abuse of History: From Ancient Greece to Modern Israel
I was relieved when I found that The American Conservative magazine website had posted the full-text of It’s All Greek to Victor Davis Hanson, by Gary Brecher, since it saved me the trouble of posting large quotations from it myself. This much-needed review is a scathing critique of Victor Davis Hanson’s most recent waste of ink and paper entitled A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War. As Gary Brecher astutely points out, this book is so “confused” that even the title contradicts the author's line of argument in the actual text: “If Hanson believes that the Peloponnesian War was really so unique, why does he spend his first chapters making far-fetched connections between that war and every other war in history? If he wanted his title to reflect what he actually argues, Hanson should have called this book A War Like Nearly Every Other, Especially Iraq.”
Even though I’ve neither read the book—and after reading the review in question, I don’t plan to—nor spent much time reflecting on Hanson’s analysis of the Peloponnesian War, based on some of his articles that I have read, I've reached the conclusion that he doesn't have any business commenting on Islam or the Middle East (or much else, for that matter). If you think Bernard Lewis is an example of a highly-educated academic who sometimes comes to baffling (if not idiotic) conclusions, then Victor Davis Hanson's sloppy thinking also earns him a seat at the table of those whose education exceeds their intelligence. Overall, I see him as an uncritical cheerleader when it comes to his own values and civilization, but who suffers from being proverbially blind in one eye and unable see out of the other when it comes to those unfortunate "others". In the above-mentioned review, Gary Brecher concludes that: "This book is just a point on the graph of Hanson’s decline. It shows him in the late stages of a wild ego trip, getting more and more thoughtless as he starts believing his own press. The whole book stinks of vanity, from the idea of thinking you could improve on Thucydides to the careless writing, the sleazy connections between alien cultures, and the big blind spot at the center of it all." This review is well worthwhile, so please take the time to read it all…
Another must-read review, which is also found on The American Conservative site, is The Chutzpah of Alan Dershowitz, by Michael C. Desch. This thoughtful review of Norman G. Finkelstein's latest book, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, can also be found here in Adobe Acrobat format [4,262 KB]. Like the book, this review exposes and discusses the tired antics and intellectual dishonesty of Alan Dershowitz—who is well known as a Harvard Law Professor, an advocate of torture, a talking-head commentator on cable news and a former defense lawyer for O.J. Simpson. For more details on his path to infamy, check out The Dershowitz Hoax section on Norman G. Finkelstein's website—and you might have to read quite a bit of this material to get a full appreciation of how slimy and underhanded Alan Dershowitz really is…but it’s worth the effort.
An even more recent review of Beyond Chutzpah can be found here. It's by Ilan Pappé, an Israel historian who teaches at Haifa University, and bears the name Occupation Hazard: Norman Finkelstein Challenges the Conventional Line on Israel. Overall, he's got a lot of good things to say about Normal Finkelstein's work, which is expressed in his conclusion that the "book cracks the wall of deception and hypocrisy that enables the daily violation of human and civil rights in Palestine. As such, it has the potential to contribute to the removal of the real wall that shuts out those in the occupied territories".
Before closing, I’ll take this opportunity to mention that NormanFinkelstein.com, in addition to those materials just mentioned, is full of a lot of great content. If you want to read Doctor Finkelstein's diagnosis of a case of foot-in-mouth disease, have a look at The Cowardly Commissar: An e-mail correspondence with Prof. Froma Zeitlin of Princeton University. Likewise, there's a considerable amount of audio and video material on this site, or linked to from it, that's worth downloading. Among my favorites are Is Criticism of Israel Anti-Semitic? and Video: Finkelstein at Yale, 10.20.2005, which can be downloaded in several parts and formats. And while we’re on the subject of audio, video and Alan Dershowitz, the recent (29-Nov-2005) debate between him and Noam Chomsky can be found here. This debate is well worth watching, and I would have expected that Dershowitz—with all of his stand-up lawyer oratory and spin-doctor skills—would have done better, but I guess that’s what happens when you’re trying to defend a tenuous and immoral case in the face of facts that just won’t go away.
In spite of their often xenophobic views, concerted opposition to multiculturalism and other distasteful tendencies, I give The American Conservative credit for thinking outside the box (at least once in awhile) and exposing not only the sloppy thinking of neo-cons but for seeing through the smoke screen of Israeli-Zionist propaganda as well...
