Norman Finkelstein, born 1953
American political scientist and author
From introduction to
Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History
"I began this introduction recalling the From Time Immemorial hoax, since a main reason so much controversy swirls around the Israel- Palestine conflict is the vast proliferation of sheer fraud masquerading as serious scholarship. Although imperfect, a mechanism for quality control nonetheless exists in intellectual life. In practice it usually takes the form of a sequence of skeptical questions. If someone quotes a book putting forth an altogether aberrant thesis, he or she is usually asked, "Where does the author teach?" or "Who published the book?" or "Who blurbed the book?" or "What sorts of reviews did it receive (in the main professional journals)?" The answers to these questions generally provide a more or less accurate gauge of how much credence to put in the publication. It is one of the egregious features of the Israel- Palestine conflict, however, that these mechanisms of quality control function barely, if at all.(34) The book's author can teach at a first-rank university, and the book itself can be published under a prestigious imprint, receive lavish blurbs as well as reviews in prominent mainstream publications, and yet still be complete nonsense. The most recent addition to this genre and the subject of the second part of this book is the best seller The Case for Israel by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz.(35) It can fairly be said that The Case for Israel surpasses From Time Immemorial in deceitfulness and is among the most spectacular academic frauds ever published on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Indeed, Dershowitz appropriates large swaths from the Peters hoax. Whereas Peters falsified real sources, Dershowitz goes one better and cites absurd sources or stitches evidence out of whole cloth. The core chapters of the present book juxtapose the findings of all mainstream human rights organizations about Israel's human rights record in the Occupied Territories against Dershowitz's claims. I demonstrate that it's difficult to find a single claim in his human rights chapters or, for that matter, any other chapter of The Case for Israel that, among other things, doesn't distort a reputable source or reference a preposterous one. The point, of course, is not that Dershowitz is a charlatan. Rather, it's the systematic institutional bias that allows for books like The Case for Israel to become national best sellers. Were it not for Dershowitz's Harvard pedigree, the praise heaped on his book by Mario Cuomo, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Elie Wiesel, and Floyd Abrams,(36) the favorable notices in media outlets like the New York Times and Boston Globe,(37) and so on, The Case for Israel would have had the same shelf life as the latest publication of the Flat-Earth Society."
34. Revealingly, this caveat applies to the field of “Holocaust studies” as well. For pertinent criticism by Raul Hilberg, dean of Nazi holocaust scholars, see Finkelstein, Holocaust Industry, p. 60.
35. All references in this book are to the first hardback printing of The Case for Israel, published in August 2003 by John Wiley and Sons, Inc. Almost immediately after publication of The Case for Israel I publicly charged, and provided copious evidence, that it was a fraud (see www.NormanFinkelstein.com under “The Dershowitz Hoax”). In the first paperback edition of his book, published in August 2004, Dershowitz entered some revisions.
36. See their laudatory comments for the book posted on www.Amazon.com.
37. In the New York Times Sunday Book Review, Ethan Bronner praised Dershowitz for his “intelligent polemic” and ability “to construct an argument” and for being “especially effective at pointing to the hypocrisy of many of Israel’s critics” (“The New New Historians,” 9 November 2003). Bronner sits on the Times’s editorial board, where he’s its “expert” on the Israel-Palestine conflict. In the Boston Globe, Jonathan Dorfman waxed rhapsodic about how Dershowitz “goes after Israel’s enemies . . . with the punch and thrust of courtroom debate” and praised the author for having “restated some obvious truths about Israel—truths its friends need to convey, its enemies need to confront, and the chattering classes need to learn before they venture forth with pronouncements about Israel that are simple, easy—and wrong” (“Dershowitz makes the ‘Case,’” 26 November 2003). Both these reviews appeared well after evidence had been widely disseminated demonstrating that Dershowitz’s book was rubbish.
Source: http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10505/finkelstein.pdf
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