Press Action ::: Dershowitz and the Two-Book Solution

Friday, November 25, 2005

Dershowitz and the Two-Book Solution

By Mark Hand

Norman Finkelstein believes in a two-state solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. When I asked him after a speech he gave at American University in Washington, DC, a year-and-a-half ago about his views on a one-state solution – the idea of a single country between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean in which Israelis and Palestinians would live together in a secular state – he dismissed such an idea as fanciful. All of the Palestinians who are suffering in the Israeli-occupied territories need help now and the quickest way to a solution would be through the creation of a separate Palestinian state, not through the unrealistic pursuit of some binational dream, he said.

Finkelstein’s beliefs on how to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict fall squarely into the mainstream of political discourse in the United States. In 2004, none other than President Bush publicly set a goal of ensuring the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel before he leaves office in 2009, although he backtracked on that timetable – but not the ultimate goal – last month.

Another supporter of the two-state solution is Finkelstein’s arch-nemesis, Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor and author of the new book, A Case for Peace: How the Arab-Israeli Conflict Can Be Resolved. So, given their agreement on a two-state solution, why are Finkelstein and Dershowitz engaged in such a bitter feud? The answer may be found in the fact that, unlike Bush and Dershowitz, Finkelstein wants Israel’s draconian policies against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories to end now. Bush and Dershowitz aren’t pressing Israel to cease or curb its terror in the interminable period leading up to the creation of a viable Palestinian state.

One of the key assets of Finkelstein’s new book, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, is the spotlight he directs on the dire humanitarian consequences of Israel’s policies against the Palestinians since the start of the second Palestinian intifada.

Finkelstein seeks, for instance, to undermine Israel’s contention that the construction of a separation wall that cuts deep into the Israeli-occupied West Bank was undertaken to curb Palestinian terrorism in Israel. If its concern was stopping terrorist attacks in Israel, the government could simply have erected the wall along the Green Line, the line established between Israel and Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

Such a wall “would have been legally unobjectionable,” Finkelstein argues. He cites an Amnesty International report that says “it is not unlawful for Israel to establish fences or other structures on its own territory to control access to its territory.” But since the wall goes deep into the West Bank, the real motive behind its construction appears to be security of Israeli settlements in the occupied land, he says.

Most of the publicity surrounding Beyond Chutzpah relates to Finkelstein’s exposure of what he views as the poor scholarship of Alan Dershowitz and other prominent writers. Finkelstein maintains that Dershowitz’s 2003 book, The Case for Israel, was “a fraud concocted from another fraud” – a reference to a book by Joan Peters that sought to prove that there are no Palestinians.

Finkelstein uses the work of Dershowitz and other supporters of Israel’s repressive policies as a vehicle for providing a more accurate portrait of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Finkelstein also puts into context Dershowitz’s defense of civil liberties at home and apologetics for their violation abroad. He compares Dershowitz’s support of Israel to many communists defense of the Soviet Union from the 1930s onward. In the mid-20th century, for example, Communist Party members often served as the most steadfast defenders of civil liberties in the United States while offering blind support for Stalin’s Soviet Union, he writes.

As expected, Beyond Chutzpah has received scant attention in the mainstream press since its release by the University of California Press in August. The book garnered a brief mention in Booklist, a book review magazine published by the American Library Association. The reviewer, Bryce Christensen, notes how Finkelstein attacks Dershowitz for “shoddy” scholarship. But Christensen doesn’t mention one of Beyond Chutzpah’s most compelling elements: Finkelstein’s contention that for chapters 1 and 2 of The Case for Israel, Dershowitz liberally lifted, without attribution, from Peters’ From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine.

In an entertaining review of Dershowitz’s A Case for Peace in the Los Angeles Times, Amy Wilentz, a contributing editor of The Nation magazine, describes Finkelstein’s new book as “extensively researched.” (On the other hand, Wilentz says of Dershowitz’s new book: “Before reading this book, I had always had faith in a two-state solution: Israel and Palestine sharing the land, with an established border and real sovereignty for both. But reading Dershowitz defend it with intemperate, ill-considered rhetoric and poor argumentation made me begin to appreciate how others might have come to question it – even to reject it.")

As for mainstream reviews of Beyond Chutzpah, that’s pretty much it.

Other reviews of Beyond Chutzpah, however, have appeared in smaller media outlets, including:

CounterPunch, review by Neve Gordon

Left Hook, review by Samule Waite

Logos, review by Matthew Abraham

ZNet, review by Neve Gordon