Counterpunch has a piece proving to my satisfaction–as far as I could read, before my head turned to blue cheese–that when Alan Dershowitz wrote Beyond Chutzpah, he picked up material from Joan Peters’s hateful book, From Time Immemorial– a lot of quotes from Mark Twain’s book Innocents Abroad (that’s as far as I got anyway)–without footnoting that he had gotten the stuff from Joan Peters’s book. It’s clear that Dersh picked up the Mark Twain quotes from Peters because the same errors that Peters made, Dershowitz made. Little stuff. Left out commas and semicolons.
Myself, I believe the investigator’s "evidence" against Dershowitz because in Dersh’s anti-assimilation book The Vanishing American Jew, there were many literary references, say to the great I.L. Peretz, which struck me as glosses of Peretz’s stuff that Dersh had picked up somewhere else–from a grad student or an email, or another book, or a memorandum, without reading Peretz’s marvelous short stories himself (which I read, after reading Dersh’s book. Check Peretz out on the corruption of weath…).
So what? This is a foolish fight for anyone to get mixed up in. It is immaterial. People read stuff in other books all the time and then quote them. Yes they should check the cites, if they’re good scholars, but it’s clear that the quotes from Twain are substantively accurate. So a couple of commas are left out. Who cares? People pick up stuff from Bartlett’s Quotations all the time. They take quotes from the New York Times. This is not plagiarism. It’s parroting. Does Peters feel taken advantage of? I’m sure not. Dershowitz never passes off Twain’s ideas as his own. Yes, surely, Dersh’s office is a dual-loyalty mill to which pro-Israel messengers bring in ideas and citations; and he then puts them in briefs and books under his name. Big deal. We want people to pass ideas around!
The real issue here is Dershowitz’s support for apartheid policies in Israel, rationalizing check points and landgrabs, and his vicious campaign to wreck the noble Norman G. Finkelstein’s position at DePaul. That is the scandal…
If Dershowitz would require from the Harvard Law School, the lifting of unattibuted material from Joan Peters would be small potatoes, but his continued presence at Harvard is a very bad example for students, who would be severely punished for doing what Dershowitz did whether or not the original author cared.
Kagan probably scorched her chances to become president by supporting Dershowitz.
OK. This part of Finkelstein's critique may come across as nit-picking. Dershowitz is not passing off Twain's ideas as his own but is he not repackaging Peters' interpretation of Twain ("a land with no people for a people with no land") as his own?
Peters may not care (they seem to be part of the same advocacy effort) but shouldn't the community of scholars and the Academy care about this reissuing of discredited scholarship?
So, there's no problem with lifting with items from another's work and ignoring many pages in between what you lifted? What happened to context, even if given second hand and for your own agenda? From time immemorial this propaganda has been going on–why, it's downright biblical.
And yes: "The real issue here is Dershowitz's support for apartheid policies in Israel, rationalizing check points and landgrabs, and his vicious campaign to wreck the noble Norman G. Finkelstein's position at DePaul. That is the scandal…"
BTW, Natalie Portman was one of the researchers on The Case for Israel.
I had an exchange with her at Adams House.
She is one of the more irritating Zionist Hollywood personalities.
See link to eaazi.blogspot.com
.
You might be interested in another – rather more obvious – case of plagiarism in service to pro-Israel propaganda that was served up on the fanatical Zionist FrontPageMag:
"You Have Our Permission to Put Your Names
on Our Press Release"
link to counterpunch.org
in which two supposedly reputable scholars republished a press release from The Israel Project as their own work. They sufered no sanction from their universities or the Neo-con think tank where they were associates.
Dershowitz continues to publish in FrontPageMagazine, most recently to justify extra-judicial murder. He should be fired AND disbarred. . .
I remember reading Jeff's article on plagiarism.
Of course, GMU acted badly in the case, but it had the Harvard Dershowitz example as a precedent.
I looked up the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy.
It was for the most part true to its intellectually dishonest nature. Not only is it not really a scholarly organization but it is just another Israel advocacy group.
From link to members.aol.com
.
Following the lead of AIPAC some think tanks like JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs) and WINEP (Washington Institute for Near East Policy) make no effort to conceal their Israel focus, but others like the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy try to conceal Neocon Zionist agendas behind a message of patriotism and anti-terrorism often combined with scare-mongering and anti-Arab or anti-Muslim incitement.
Does anybody know whatever became of Joan Peters? Since her book was exposed in 1986, she seems to have just disappeared from the scene.
I assume she's living in Israel today, but what does she do there?
"…when Alan Dershowitz wrote Beyond Chutzpah…"
Finkelstein wrote Beyond Chutzpah, Dershowitz wrote The Case for Israel.
You should correct the post.
"So what? This is a foolish fight for anyone to get mixed up in. It is immaterial."
No it is a prudent fight since Finkelstein correctly describes Dershowitz's misconduct and material since Finkelstein has been personally, professionally and financially wronged by Dershowitz's exculpatory and retaliatory acts. Oh, and DePaul and Harvard both look like they're run by knaves, jackasses or both. No wonder this country's going down the tubes.
Dershowitz was right in "The Case For Israel" in identifying the degree that criticism of Israel slips into demonization or dehumanization of Israel and Israelis.
It is wrong for neo-conservatives to dehumanize Palestinians, in thinking of their civilians solely in political strategic terms.
It is similarly wrong for anti-Zionists to dehumanize Israelis or Zionists, in thinking of their civilians as insignificant or irrelevant, thinking solely in politically strategic terms.
I appreciate that about Dershowitz, and Phil should too.
To the extent that anyone does that, it allows Phil to be a respectfully assimilated Jew in the US, or to safely travel to or through Israel to get to Hebron. (I hope he went elsewhere in Israel/Palestine as well. Perhaps he can candidly comment on his experiences elsewhere.)
I agree that it is also reasonable to distrust Dershowitz. He included many misrepresentations (partial truths) in his "Case for Israel", and is reputed to indulge in defamatory methods of "argument".
My wife had an experience at a Howard Zinn lecture at my alma mater in Vermont.
At the lecture, he described that he had severe remorse for his WW2 service as a bombardier, including participating in the bombing of indirectly military sites.
I don't know what area of central Europe he was bombing.
We had had some contact with Howard in producing an audiobook of A People's History of the US, but he didn't remember us beyond incidentally. (Just that we had done it, and limited correspondence on artwork and narrator, but didn't remember us personally.)
My wife thanked him for doing what he could that shortened the war. Her father had been in line in a death camp, and it was likely that she would have never been born, had Howard or people like him not served, even as bombardiers.
He responded "your welcome", but I don't know what impression, if any, it made. Certainly the ambiguity of it was not a new thought for him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mfnsRA2EEw3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo70FvlBGqI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiLUnnxiAsI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMe08ASETtI
A debate between Alan Dershowitz and Meir Kahane.
Yes, Dershowitz is a real humanitarian! But apparently only "Chosen People" are truly "human."
Not only does he justify torture and collective punishment (i.e. war crimes) against opponents of the Jewish State, but also cheers for individual murder — or "targeted killing" in Zionist terminology.
The Targeted Killing of Imad Mugniyeh
link to frontpagemag.com
Now Imad Mugniyeh may have been a bad person and may in fact be guilty of serious crimes — but for a lawyer, an "officer of the court," to advocate execution without trial is truly breathtaking. This violates every canon of law and justice that has been codified — and taught to law students — for centuries. This is a LAW SCHOOL PROFESSOR AT HARVARD!
Can anything better indicate the depths to which elite institutions and elite discourse have descended than this "Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law"?
Ethnic fanaticism truly drives people accept any means to defend their "race," as some of us learned from the experience of Nazism. This wannabe war criminal should be on trial rather than on campus.
Yes, Dershowitz is a real humanitarian! But apparently only "Chosen People" are truly "human."
Not only does he justify torture and collective punishment (i.e. war crimes) against opponents of the Jewish State, but also cheers for individual murder — or "targeted killing" in Zionist terminology.
The Targeted Killing of Imad Mugniyeh
link to frontpagemag.com
Now Imad Mugniyeh may have been a bad person and may in fact be guilty of serious crimes — but for a lawyer, an "officer of the court," to advocate execution without trial is truly breathtaking. This violates every canon of law and justice that has been codified — and taught to law students — for centuries. This is a LAW SCHOOL PROFESSOR AT HARVARD!
Can anything better indicate the depths to which elite institutions and elite discourse have descended than this "Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law"?
Ethnic fanaticism truly drives people accept any means to defend their "race," as some of us learned from the experience of Nazism. This wannabe war criminal should be on trial rather than on campus.
Dershowitz is only too candid in his defense that he did not plaigarise. It may be small potatoes considering his other more reprehensible attributes but since he is professing to be a scholar, his work in The Case For Israel is sloppy and does not meet the scholarly requirements that comes with the prestige of a Harvard alumni. We will never hear him confess his trangression but the evidence is too damning to not conclude that he lifted material that is not his own. If he did so, he must quote it. Harvard's own rules on plaigarism is obvious and Dershowitz was in violation of it.
Just because he parrots some quote that is not his is not just a simple "mistake" if he were as serious about his written work as he says he is. I think that if he were not so pro-Israel that maybe he would have been investigated over this alot more than Harvard looked at.
Incidently, it's muffled work such as these that enables the media to puzzle the truth about the Israel-Palestine issue; phony "scholarly" works that decontextualised which help promote that the Palestinians are solely to blame for their usurpation. So I believe it's a bigger issue than Philip suggests.
http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/10/re-caabu-letter-in-jewish-chronicle-5.html (especially the comments) is probably relevant to this discussion.
I agree that in the Case for Israel, Dershowitz comments were sloppy, and that made him the wrong messenger for the right message.
Dershowitz was writing outside of his professional field, as a concerned individual. Analagous to Phil writing a book (though Phil is not a tenured Harvard profession).
In contrast, Walt/Mearsheimer wrote sloppily WITHIN their field.
Also the wrong messengers.
I read an apropos science fiction story once. A space ship is captured by a group of "Berserker" killer robots who are looking for a suitable solar system where they can get resources to continue their killing spree. One of the passengers gives them an encyclopedia which helps them and they release the spaceship. The other people put the "traitor" on trial. But he explains that he works for the encylopedia publisher and to expose plagiarism they include fictitious information which only a plagiarist would reprint, since anyone honestly doing original research wouldn't include the fictitious information. The Berserkers only had enough fuel to reach the nearest Solar System listed in the Encyclopedia, but when they get there they'll find only empty space and a dead end, because the Solar System is one of the fictitious entries!
RE: 1985 Alan Dershowitz and Meir Kahane debate (partial summary):
MK: No self-respecting arab wants to live in a state defined as of/for the Jewish people–especially if they are/become the majority–that is the problem. Either they go or we go. This is the Middle East, not the Middle West. Either Judiasm or 'Westernism' (e.g., Rosseau, Jefferson), not both. If Judiasm is G-D's word, it's incompatible with democracy. I don't want jew fighting jew, (so) I want a democracy for jews.
AD: The solution to arab beating jew by the womb is not to deport them but to draw more jews to Israel.
MK: Early Jewish terrorists were heroes because they did what
their government failed to do–when the Allies bombed Dresden
it was a war against the German people. Israel is at war just as in the time of the Maccabees. We need to exchange populations.
AD: Sharon's war was a preemptive war, not comparable to WW2, which was a war for all humanity, for democracy & rule of law. We can't bomb an arab kid just because he's an arab, which is what the NAZIs did–liquidate a village because one isn't sure which one did it. Israel must take risk for peace with justice.
MK: The old Jewish establishment must take the blame for knowing about the Holocaust and not fighting back. One Jewish soldier is worth all the arabs.
AD: Jews should fight for Soviet Jewry, but also, e.g., for the blacks in S. Africa.
MK: The only question is, is it good for the Jews? A black replacement regime in S. Africa will be anti-Israel.
AD: Apartheid S. Africa is an abomination. The question is, is it good for humanity? A real Jew takes a stand against all oppression around the world–not just by asking is it good for the Jews.
(I left out a long debate as to who is a Jew and why and sorry if I misspelled anything–I've han appointment to make.
RE: 1985 Alan Dershowitz and Meir Kahane debate (partial summary):
MK: No self-respecting arab wants to live in a state defined as of/for the Jewish people–especially if they are/become the majority–that is the problem. Either they go or we go. This is the Middle East, not the Middle West. Either Judiasm or 'Westernism' (e.g., Rosseau, Jefferson), not both. If Judiasm is G-D's word, it's incompatible with democracy. I don't want jew fighting jew, (so) I want a democracy for jews.
AD: The solution to arab beating jew by the womb is not to deport them but to draw more jews to Israel.
MK: Early Jewish terrorists were heroes because they did what
their government failed to do–when the Allies bombed Dresden
it was a war against the German people. Israel is at war just as in the time of the Maccabees. We need to exchange populations.
AD: Sharon's war was a preemptive war, not comparable to WW2, which was a war for all humanity, for democracy & rule of law. We can't bomb an arab kid just because he's an arab, which is what the NAZIs did–liquidate a village because one isn't sure which one did it. Israel must take risk for peace with justice.
MK: The old Jewish establishment must take the blame for knowing about the Holocaust and not fighting back. One Jewish soldier is worth all the arabs.
AD: Jews should fight for Soviet Jewry, but also, e.g., for the blacks in S. Africa.
MK: The only question is, is it good for the Jews? A black replacement regime in S. Africa will be anti-Israel.
AD: Apartheid S. Africa is an abomination. The question is, is it good for humanity? A real Jew takes a stand against all oppression around the world–not just by asking is it good for the Jews.
(I left out a long debate as to who is a Jew and why and sorry if I misspelled anything–I've han appointment to make.
RE: 1985 Alan Dershowitz and Meir Kahane debate (partial summary):
MK: No self-respecting arab wants to live in a state defined as of/for the Jewish people–especially if they are/become the majority–that is the problem. Either they go or we go. This is the Middle East, not the Middle West. Either Judiasm or 'Westernism' (e.g., Rosseau, Jefferson), not both. If Judiasm is G-D's word, it's incompatible with democracy. I don't want jew fighting jew, (so) I want a democracy for jews.
AD: The solution to arab beating jew by the womb is not to deport them but to draw more jews to Israel.
MK: Early Jewish terrorists were heroes because they did what
their government failed to do–when the Allies bombed Dresden
it was a war against the German people. Israel is at war just as in the time of the Maccabees. We need to exchange populations.
AD: Sharon's war was a preemptive war, not comparable to WW2, which was a war for all humanity, for democracy & rule of law. We can't bomb an arab kid just because he's an arab, which is what the NAZIs did–liquidate a village because one isn't sure which one did it. Israel must take risk for peace with justice.
MK: The old Jewish establishment must take the blame for knowing about the Holocaust and not fighting back. One Jewish soldier is worth all the arabs.
AD: Jews should fight for Soviet Jewry, but also, e.g., for the blacks in S. Africa.
MK: The only question is, is it good for the Jews? A black replacement regime in S. Africa will be anti-Israel.
AD: Apartheid S. Africa is an abomination. The question is, is it good for humanity? A real Jew takes a stand against all oppression around the world–not just by asking is it good for the Jews.
(I left out a long debate as to who is a Jew and why and sorry if I misspelled anything–I've han appointment to make.
RE: 1985 Alan Dershowitz and Meir Kahane debate (partial summary):
MK: No self-respecting arab wants to live in a state defined as of/for the Jewish people–especially if they are/become the majority–that is the problem. Either they go or we go. This is the Middle East, not the Middle West. Either Judiasm or 'Westernism' (e.g., Rosseau, Jefferson), not both. If Judiasm is G-D's word, it's incompatible with democracy. I don't want jew fighting jew, (so) I want a democracy for jews.
AD: The solution to arab beating jew by the womb is not to deport them but to draw more jews to Israel.
MK: Early Jewish terrorists were heroes because they did what
their government failed to do–when the Allies bombed Dresden
it was a war against the German people. Israel is at war just as in the time of the Maccabees. We need to exchange populations.
AD: Sharon's war was a preemptive war, not comparable to WW2, which was a war for all humanity, for democracy & rule of law. We can't bomb an arab kid just because he's an arab, which is what the NAZIs did–liquidate a village because one isn't sure which one did it. Israel must take risk for peace with justice.
MK: The old Jewish establishment must take the blame for knowing about the Holocaust and not fighting back. One Jewish soldier is worth all the arabs.
AD: Jews should fight for Soviet Jewry, but also, e.g., for the blacks in S. Africa.
MK: The only question is, is it good for the Jews? A black replacement regime in S. Africa will be anti-Israel.
AD: Apartheid S. Africa is an abomination. The question is, is it good for humanity? A real Jew takes a stand against all oppression around the world–not just by asking is it good for the Jews.
(I left out a long debate as to who is a Jew and why and sorry if I misspelled anything–I've han appointment to make.
Sorry for the duplications–typad sucks some times.