20 Comments

1. Richard Nieporent:

The edits were based not on Dershowitz’s efforts to fight the book, but simply on the desire to be careful, said Lynne Withey, director of the University of California Press. ”Clearly when you are challenging someone’s ideas and research methods, you have to be very careful that you are being completely accurate,”

It is funny that they weren’t so concerned about accuracy until they were threatened with a lawsuit.

said Withey, who added that ”we wouldn’t be publishing this book if we didn’t think it was on very solid academic grounds.”

So according to Withey, anti-Semitsm is on solid academic grounds. I guess the next book that the University of California Press will publish is the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”.

Jul 9, 2005 - 9:06 am 2. ShrinkWrapped:

The self hating Jew is an old, old story. It is based on the defence of “Identification with the Aggressor” which is also at the core of much of the Appeasement that occurs among those on the left. It essentially involves:

1. I am terrified of that monstrous person (often an abusive father or step-father).

2. I can not tolerate feeling so weak and helpless so I disown and disavow the fear.

3. I then become like my powerful abuser. (In the self-hating Jew, they adopt the very paranoid anti-Semitic fantasies that the hater uses to justify his hatred.)

4. I then turn and express my hidden fear as rage toward someone weaker and more helpless than me (a younger sibling, the now grown-up abuser’s children/spouse, the Jews).

It is an ugly and unconscious defence and helps perpetuate child and spousal abuse, as well as appeasement to vicious thugs. The Jewish guards in the camps could often exceed the visiousness of the German captors in their zeal to show how good they were to their “betters”. It can lead intellectuals to find higly convoluted, intellectualized rationalizations to demonize their own people.

Jul 9, 2005 - 9:18 am 3. Kyda Sylvester:

Dershowitz and Finkelstein go mano a mano on Democracy Now, video here

Jul 9, 2005 - 10:30 am 4. Kevin P:

Roger:

Dershowitz stood his ground and didn’t whine. He just said “go ahead and do it, I’ll own your company after I’m done with you.” He didn’t try to understand the publishers. He didn’t try to find out what the root causes of problem was and address those things first. He told them if you try to intellectually suicide bomb me “I will wipe you out” And they backed down. I think Alan has been reading the history of the IDF as well as his Law Books.

Kevin Peters

Jul 9, 2005 - 10:35 am 5. richard mcenroe:

Richard Nieporent ó They can’t. Using big words like “Protocols” is damaging to their unlettered students’ self-esteem. And “elders” is ageist.

So they just pass their imported copy around the faculty lounge.

Jul 9, 2005 - 10:44 am 6. JBR:

Query whether Alan Dershowitz (or any other sane person) would actually want to own the University of California Press.

Jul 9, 2005 - 10:51 am 7. Kevin P:

Roger:

Let’s just call him “Dirty Allan”.

“You’ve got to ask a question. Do I feel lucky? Well,do ya, punk?

Jul 9, 2005 - 11:36 am 8. exmaple:

“Finkelstein is the son of holocaust survivors..”

Never heard of this fellow. Fishy story. Anyone ever check his background or claims for exaggerations a la Mr. Ward Churchill?

Jul 9, 2005 - 11:51 am 9. Richard Nieporent:

Kyda, thanks for the link to the so-called debate between Dershowitz and Finkelstein. I knew that Finkelstein started out as a prot√©g√© of Chomsky but until I heard him speak I didn’t realize that an individual could sink so low. How ironic that he should be the son of a holocaust survivor. If Hitler had been more efficient he wouldn’t be around to spread his vile hatred of the Jews. Obviously Hitler’s inability to wipe out all of Jews has upset him greatly and he has dedicated his life to helping the Arabs complete Hitler’s work. What a miserable excuse for a human being he is.

Jul 9, 2005 - 12:29 pm 10. Kyda Sylvester:

Question: Finkelstein’s charges of plagerism (he’ll tell you all about it at his web site) stem from Dershowitz’s use of identical quotes and source material citations as Joan Peters used in her book From Time Immemorial (which Finkelstein calls a “monumental hoax”). Finkelstein seems to feel that Dersh should have cited Peters. Is this plagerism in a legal sense? Ethical sense?

Jul 9, 2005 - 12:49 pm 11. Richard Nieporent:

Kyda, the answer is no. Plagiarism is taking material from another source without attribution. The fact that you use a few of the same quotes as someone else is not plagiarism. If that was not the case then you couldn’t write a book on the same topic as someone else because all of the source material was already used. As to whether he should have quoted Peters who quoted Twain the answer is again no. You are supposed to go back to the original source. Otherwise you would have to identify everyone in chronological order who made the same quote.

Jul 9, 2005 - 1:20 pm 12. erp:

Dershowitz understands that the best defense is offense in protecting his good name and scholarship, how come he can’t see that the same

offense is needed to defend our country?

Jul 9, 2005 - 1:37 pm 13. Kyda Sylvester:

Thanks, Richard; I didn’t think so. Strange that Finkelstein would take on Dershowitz over this, he’s a lawyer for pete’s sake. Some egos just know no bounds (something about which Dersh knows quite a bit as well).

Jul 9, 2005 - 4:20 pm 14. Katherine:

Erp,

Because he cannot ever connect.

Jul 9, 2005 - 4:30 pm 15. Kyda Sylvester:

Although on most issues Alan Dershowitz and I wave to one another across a great cultural/philosophical divide, I think he’s been pretty good wrt the GWOT. two examples

Jul 9, 2005 - 5:23 pm 16. Silicon valley Jim:

Dershowitz understands that the best defense is offense in protecting his good name and scholarship, how come he can’t see that the same

offense is needed to defend our country?

He’s a lawyer.

Truth for a scientist (a real scientist, not, for example, a sociologist) is a hypothesis that has been experimentally tested, with controls, double-blind testing, etc.

Truth for many religions is something received without question from a self-designated class of holy men.

Truth for a lawyer is anything that he can convince you is true. I spent twenty years living with a lawyer and a year-plus in law school finding that out.

Jul 10, 2005 - 7:17 am 17. Kyda Sylvester:

How very intriguing, SVJim. Of what “truths” did your live-in lawyer convince you?

Jul 10, 2005 - 9:13 am 18. Silicon valley Jim:

Of what “truths” did your live-in lawyer convince you?

The lawyer with whom I lived for twenty years was my father. His behavior, like that of many of my law school classmates (and some of the professors), convinced me that he believed that something was true if he said it confidently enough, often enough, and loud enough, and if he acted as if I had not made the arguments that I had. Three random contentions that I remember are that Northern Illinois University is one of America’s top engineering schools (I really don’t know, but it certainly doesn’t have that reputation), that one should wait until driving a car several miles before checking the air pressure in the tires (absolutely wrong), and that one should wait until a car’s engine has cooled down before changing the oil and filter (also absolutely wrong).

Jul 10, 2005 - 11:16 am 19. markus:

How about leaving the coffeetable psychoanalysis out, and simply look at the facts. Either Finklestein raises some valid points about the use of Holocaust history in contemporary political debate, or he doesn’t. His family history should be irrelevent.

Another question: does anyone know what actually happened to Joan Peters? I wonder why she hasn’t been heard from since the publication of From Time Immemorial, over twenty years ago.

Jul 10, 2005 - 12:54 pm 20. Silicon valley Jim:

How about leaving the coffeetable psychoanalysis out, and simply look at the facts. Either Finklestein raises some valid points about the use of Holocaust history in contemporary political debate, or he doesn’t. His family history should be irrelevent.

It may surprise you to find that I quite agree with you; I’m quite opposed to long-distance psychoanalysis, and I’ve made that point here myself before.

Jul 10, 2005 - 3:08 pm

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