Latest Breaking News
In reply to the discussion: Jerry Nadler condemns 'vile' cartoon shared by Rashida Tlaib along with Trump's 'disloyal' Jews jibe [View all]emmaverybo
(8,144 posts)the horrors of the holocaust (experienced in his own family) to justify its racist and inhumane policies.
Dershowitz has had a large hand in discrediting Finkelstein, calling him not a real Jew for his being a secular Jew.
Snip- ( from The Guardian)
And, although The Holocaust Industry is Finkelstein's most frequently cited book in the defamatory attempts to cast him as a "Holocaust denier" and a "denier of justice to Holocaust survivors", Image and Reality in the Israel-Palestine Conflict - a thorough criticism of the central political and philosophical tenets informing Zionism - is his most scholarly and substantial work. But Finkelstein's detractors avoid discussion of Image and Reality for exactly that reason: it is considered a first-rate piece of scholarship. (Bolding mine)
Finkelstein argues that most US commentators obscure or avoid the clear historical and diplomatic record in examining the Israel-Palestine conflict by ignoring or downplaying international law, fooling the US public into believing that Israel's occupation is just, necessary, and lawful. One such example is the failure of the 2000 Camp David talks - a failure that has been attributed, at least in elite circles within the United States, to Yasir Arafat's intransigence. In actuality, what Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak offered Arafat was something no Palestinian leader could accept: a Bantustan state reminiscent of the African national territories.
Finkelstein's latest exposure of US and Israeli apologetics for state violence was of famed Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, who was at the centre of Finkelstein's analysis in Beyond Chutzpah: The Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History. In August 2003, Dershowitz published The Case for Israel, which Finkelstein uses as a foil in Beyond Chutzpah, demonstrating that Dershowitz misrepresents key diplomatic, legal and historical aspects of the conflict. Dershowitz attempted to block publication of Beyond Chutzpah by inundating the University of California Press with threatening letters from the major New York law firm of Cravath, Swaine, and Moore throughout the spring and summer of 2005, stating he would sue the press if it did not ensure that every claim Finkelstein made about Dershowitz was factually correct. Beyond Chutzpah was vetted by six experts of the Israel-Palestine conflict and several libel attorneys. When he could not prevail upon the press or the University of California's Board of Reagents, Dershowitz asked Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to intervene. Schwarzenegger refused to do so on grounds of academic freedom. Finkelstein wasn't so lucky at DePaul.
End snip-
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/jun/14/abattleforacademicfreedom