Beyond Chutzpah

Starred review from August 1, 2005
Finkelstein, a political science professor and author of The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, has conducted a rancorous public feud with Harvard Law professor and pro-Israel stalwart Alan Dershowitz over the latter's The Case for Israel, and here expands his arguments into a vigorous polemic on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The first part of the book examines what he feels is a growing tendency of pro-Israel commentators to use spurious charges of anti-Semitism to deflect and discredit legitimate criticism of Israel. The second, much longer, part is a line-by-line debunking of The Case for Israel, which he compares to Communist apologetics for Stalinist Russia. Rebutting Dershowitz's claims about Israel's "superb" human rights record, Finkelstein cites human rights organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Israeli group B'Tselem to document Israeli abuses in the occupied territories, including killings of Palestinian civilians, torture of Palestinian prisoners and home demolitions. Lengthy appendices flesh out his explosive assertion that Dershowitz plagiarized the historical research and interpretations (but not the actual phrasing) of Joan Peters's From Time Immemorial. The Middle East conflict rarely inspires calm discussion, and Finkelstein duly pillories his opponents as perpetrators of "hoax" and "fraud" who lack "ordinary moral values" and whose behavior resembles anti-Semitic stereotypes. Inflammatory rhetoric aside, he does raise serious questions about the veracity, scholarly methods and fairness of Dershowitz and others. More important, he presents a wealth of evidence on the human rights situation in the occupied territories, so often ignored in American debate on these issues. Exhaustively researched and meticulously-if intemperately-argued, Finkelstein's book is a formidable challenge to the conventional wisdom on the Middle East. Photos.

October 15, 2005
Supporters of this book will not include Alan Dershowitz, author of " The Case for Israel " (2003). Very little of Dershowitz's widely acclaimed defense of Israel's occupation policies escapes Finkelstein's withering scrutiny. Behind Dershowitz's firm assurances that Israel is dealing with its adversaries justly and humanely, Finkelstein discerns ugly realities, including brutal torture of Palestinian prisoners and lethal disregard for Palestinian children and noncombatants. In Finkelstein's assessment, Israel is grievously violating Palestinian rights because its leaders deliberately choose to ignore both the humanity of the Palestinian people and the justice of international law. And in the claim that will perhaps stir the fiercest debates, Finkelstein asserts that when Dershowitz and his allies defend Israel with shoddy and mendacious scholarship, they actually stoke the very anti-Semitism they claim to be combating. Neither anti-Semitism nor global antipathy toward Israel will persist, Finkelstein avers, if Israel and its partisans will honestly confront and redress the malign consequences of current Israeli policies. This book, which has already sparked intense controversy, belongs in collections seeking to represent multiple points of view on significant topics of international interest. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)

Starred review from August 1, 2005
Finkelstein, a political science professor and author of The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, has conducted a rancorous public feud with Harvard Law professor and pro-Israel stalwart Alan Dershowitz over the latter's The Case for Israel, and here expands his arguments into a vigorous polemic on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The first part of the book examines what he feels is a growing tendency of pro-Israel commentators to use spurious charges of anti-Semitism to deflect and discredit legitimate criticism of Israel. The second, much longer, part is a line-by-line debunking of The Case for Israel, which he compares to Communist apologetics for Stalinist Russia. Rebutting Dershowitz's claims about Israel's "superb" human rights record, Finkelstein cites human rights organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Israeli group B'Tselem to document Israeli abuses in the occupied territories, including killings of Palestinian civilians, torture of Palestinian prisoners and home demolitions. Lengthy appendices flesh out his explosive assertion that Dershowitz plagiarized the historical research and interpretations (but not the actual phrasing) of Joan Peters's From Time Immemorial. The Middle East conflict rarely inspires calm discussion, and Finkelstein duly pillories his opponents as perpetrators of "hoax" and "fraud" who lack "ordinary moral values" and whose behavior resembles anti-Semitic stereotypes. Inflammatory rhetoric aside, he does raise serious questions about the veracity, scholarly methods and fairness of Dershowitz and others. More important, he presents a wealth of evidence on the human rights situation in the occupied territories, so often ignored in American debate on these issues. Exhaustively researched and meticulously-if intemperately-argued, Finkelstein's book is a formidable challenge to the conventional wisdom on the Middle East. Photos.

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.