Dershowitz Antics 'Undermine the Case for Israel'
Press Action
Sunday, November 02, 2003
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/akram11022003/
In the following letter, Tanweer Akram responds to Alan Dershowitz’s letter to the editor in the Oct. 23 issue of the Harvard law school newspaper, the Record. In his letter, Dershowitz was responding to a letter from Akram that had appeared in the Oct. 16 issue of the Record in which Akram had said Dershowitz’s “denial of plagiarisms rings hollow."
Editor
The Record
Harvard Law School
Cambridge, MA 02138-9984
Dear Editor:
Alan Dershowitz’s plea (“Plagiarism charge part of coordinated effort to defame,” The Record, October 23, 2003) would be comical were it not a rationalization of seriously flawed scholarship. Professor Norman Finkelstein has already shown that Dershowitz has taken more than 20 exact quotes from Peters’ fraudulent book, including the same mangled quotes that distort the meaning of the original. Dershowitz attempts to rationalize his tactics because he has used “very few quotes … fewer than a dozen out of approximately 2,500 sources cited in her [Peters’] book and mine.” Would that be acceptable for students’ term papers at Harvard Law School? Would a scholar use as a textbook a work that took more than 20 exact quotes from a book that has been shown be a fraudulent? Have standards at Harvard Law School fallen so low? Or is this a new standard that Dershowitz recommends be adopted by various manuals of style?
In the letter Dershowitz also claims, “As to my views regarding ‘collective punishment’ and ‘torture,’ Tanweer Akram got them all wrong, as anyone who actually reads what I have written can attest.” In an article titled, “New Response to Palestinian Terrorism” published in the Jerusalem Post [March 11, 2002, p. 6], Dershowitz advocates: “Israel would institute the following new policy if Palestinian terrorism were to resume. It will announce precisely what it will do in response to the next act of terrorism. For example, it could announce the first act of terrorism following the moratorium will result in the destruction of a small village, which has been used as a base for terrorist operations. The residents would be given 24 hours to leave, and then troops will come in and bulldoze all of the buildings.” The policy of bulldozing the buildings of a small village and forcing its residents to leave because a terrorist happens to hail from that village is a form of collective punishment. Incidentally his proposal to “bulldoze” constitutes incitement to war crimes as defined by the Fourth Geneva Convention as well as other international statutes.
In chapter 19 of his recent book, Dershowitz purports to refute the argument that “Israeli law authorizes the torture of Palestinian detainees, and Israel authorities persistently engage in torture.” Amnesty International (December 2002), however, reports, “Certain abuses committed by the Israeli army constituted war crimes. These included unlawful killings, obstruction of medical assistance and targeting of medical personnel, extensive and wanton destruction of property, TORTURE and cruel and inhuman treatment, unlawful confinement and the use of human shields.” The same report provides details of Israeli torture techniques: “Detainees reported various forms of torture and ill-treatment, including beatings, being handcuffed and tied in uncomfortable positions for prolonged periods, threats to the detainee and their relatives, and sleep deprivation. At least one detainee died in custody after he was beaten.”
I sincerely hope that Dershowtiz will realize that his poor scholarship and his antics undermine the case for Israel. It does him no good to either dig source materials from Peters’ fraudulent book, or to engage in childlike tantrums and denials when confronted with the undeniable reality of Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine.
Sincerely,
Tanweer Akram
Dated: October 25, 2003