Shortly after the publication of The Case for Israel (2003) by Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, Norman Finkelstein alleged that it was "a collection of fraud, falsification, plagiarism and nonsense.
Former Harvard president Derek Bok, following a review requested by then-Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan, stated that no plagiarism had occurred.
[4][5] In Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, published by University of California Press on August 28, 2005, Finkelstein aimed to debunk The Case for Israel.
[9] Finkelstein said he had located twenty instances within as many pages, in which Dershowitz used some of the same words from the same sources that Joan Peters had used, largely in the same order.
[10] Finkelstein stated: "It is left to readers to decide whether Dershowitz committed plagiarism as defined by Harvard University—'passing off a source's information, ideas, or words as your own by omitting to cite them.
[14] Dershowitz claimed to have written every word of The Case for Israel by hand and to have sent the University of California Press his handwritten manuscript.
He says there is not a single phrase or sentence in it that was plagiarized, and accused Finkelstein of knowing this and making the charges in order to garner publicity.
Finkelstein asserted: "Quoting a statement depicting the miserable fate of Jews in mid-19th century Jerusalem, Peters cites a British consular letter from 'Wm.
"[21] In response to the general charge of plagiarism, Dershowitz had characterized the excerpts as quotations that historians and scholars of the region cite routinely, such as Mark Twain and the reports of government commissions.
broadcast, host Amy Goodman alluded to an appearance on MSNBC's Scarborough Country in which Dershowitz made a challenge to "give $10,000 to the PLO" (Palestine Liberation Organization), playing a clip from the other program.
In the headnote to the transcript, Goodman wrote: On MSNBC's Scarborough Country on September 8, 2003, renowned appellate lawyer, Harvard Law professor and author Alan Dershowitz says: "I will give $10,000 to the PLO... if you can find a historical fact in my book that you can prove to be false."
Today author and professor Norman Finkelstein takes him on and charges that Dershowitz makes numerous factual errors in his book.
Finkelstein teaches at DePaul University and is the author of four books including The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering.The segment of Democracy Now!
appears in the included transcript of the program: Amy Goodman: ...we were intrigued on watching Scarborough Country when you debated, the offer that you made [....] just play it for a moment.Alan Dershowitz: Tell you what, I will give $10,000 to the P.L.O.
Finkelstein replied to that specific challenge for material errors found in his book overall, and Dershowitz upped it to $25,000 for another particular "issue" that they disputed.
[24] Dershowitz responded to Finkelstein's reply by stating that such a mistake could not have been intentional, as it harmed his own side of the debate: "Obviously, the phrase '2,000 to 3,000 Arabs' refers either to a sub-phase [of the flight] or is a typographical error.
"[1] In his review of Beyond Chutzpah, echoing Finkelstein's criticisms, Michael Desch, political science professor at University of Notre Dame observed: Not only did Dershowitz improperly present Peters's ideas, he may not even have bothered to read the original sources she used to come up with them.
[12]Oxford academic Avi Shlaim had also been critical of Dershowitz, saying he believed that the charge of plagiarism "is proved in a manner that would stand up in court.
The first is that Morris is hardly the left-wing peacenik that Dershowitz makes him out to be, which means that calling him as a witness in Israel's defense is not very helpful to the case.
Suchar stated he opposed tenure because Finkelstein's "personal and reputation demeaning attacks on Alan Dershowitz, Benny Morris, and the holocaust authors Eli Wiesel and Jerzy Kosinski" were inconsistent with DePaul's "Vincentian" values.
[33][34][35][36] In The Holocaust Industry, Finkelstein questioned Elie Wiesel's claim to have read Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in Yiddish.