In Praise of Smoking Guns: The Dershowitz File

Posted in Finkelstein, Dershowitz, Truth on November 1st, 2007

The Dershowitz letters! The truth!

In Praise of Smoking Guns: The Dershowitz File

When it was announced in early 2004 that I would publish a study rebutting Professor Alan Dershowitz’s The Case for Israel and documenting that extensive passages in his book had been plagiarized, Dershowitz and his attorneys entered into a protracted correspondence with my publisher (originally New Press and subsequently University of California Press) and other interested parties such as California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Dershowitz has emphatically maintained that he did not seek to suppress publication of my study Beyond Chutzpah, yet he has refused to release his correspondence – indeed, falsely claiming that he had released it. Several months ago a resourceful young man named Shankar Ramamoorthy obtained much of this correspondence via a California Public Records Act (CPRA) request to the University of California Press. Readers can now judge for themselves whether the famed civil libertarian Alan Dershowitz sought to suppress publication of Beyond Chutzpah. It will be noticed that Dershowitz was particularly exercised by the appendix in my study that conclusively demonstrates his plagiarism. For example, a June 1, 2005 letter from his lawyer to University of California Press reads:

An appendix is a vestige of some previously needed function in the body. There is no legitimate need for it in your book. The only reason for you to have an appendix is to sell books. But your appendix — if it is not removed before publication — is going to lead to painful surgery for the Press.

[Go to the above link to see a list of all the correspondence (29 items).]

01/11/07 - normanfinkelstein.com