The Case for Israel

Alan Dershowitz

Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2003. ISBN: 0-471-46502-X. Pages: 262.

In what is bound to be a controversial book, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz presents a rather compelling case why Israel is a good cause that needs to be supported. The book is structured as a list of frequently asked questions (or, rather, frequently made allegation) that Dershowitz attempts to disprove methodically one by one. Some of them overlap, some of the arguments rely on somewhat dubious evidence, but in the end one cannot close this book without being forced to accept its main premise.

Let's start with the controversy. Dershowitz has been accused of plagiarism by none other than the infamous professor Norman Finkelstein, whose book on how Jews have exploited the Holocaust has failed to cause a stir in the U.S. in a way as spectacular as it has stirred spirits abroad. The charges against the present book is that Dershowitz has lifted some of the material from the egregiously pro-Israeli book From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters. You can read about the controversy at Finkelstein's web site, and you can read about the problems with Peters' book in the excellent exchange between Yehoshua Porath (1/16/86) and Daniel Pipes and Ronald Sanders (3/27/86) in the New York Times review of books. Basically, Mr. Porath convincingly shows that Mrs. Peters has exaggerated some of her claims about the number of Jews living in Palestine at the end of the 19th century and in the early 20th century.

How does that bear on Dershowitz's book? In few of the chapters (e.g. 2), the author makes an argument saying that Jews were a majority in the areas accorded to them by the U.N. Partition. In it, he relies somewhat cursorily on Mrs. Peters' discredited account. This part of the argument is actually neither necessary nor sufficient for his case and why he would choose to make it is a bit of a mystery to me. Unfortunately, it provides ample ammunition to critics who are quick to point out the problem. Further, and herein lies the charge of plagiarism, Finkelstein accuses Dershowitz of lifting quotes from sources used by Peters without checking the sources first.

As a professor, I find this particular charge perplexing. Surely Finkelstein cannot be suggesting that it is improper to use someone else's research to find source material. If he is, I wonder how one would expect one to do research at all if every scholar would have to start from scratch. Surely Finkelstein cannot be suggesting that one must cite the author who has identified the source. Although some people do this, it is ridiculous to suggest that it is necessary: after all, Mrs. Peters herself used secondary sources to identify some of the primary sources she quotes. Is one supposed to track these down and then credit them also? So what Finkelstein must be suggesting then, is that Dershowitz plagiarized Mrs. Peters' thesis.

But that's not what he shows. He only shows that Dershowitz has quoted from same sources. Furthermore, Dershowitz does cite Peters' book (e.g. footnote 31 to chapter 2) where he actually states that her conclusions are disputed, pointing to the book by Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens! Is it beyond doubt that Dershowitz should have paid close attention to the criticism, which is well-known even without having to refer to biased sources like Said. But it is also quite clear that Dershowitz is neither claiming to have done original research nor claiming credit for conclusions. He is citing sources, both primary and secondary, and he is also saying honestly when there are disagreements. It is incumbent upon readers to think and draw conclusions for themselves. In a polemic book like this one, the author is expected to present the strongest case. Similarly, his critics are expected to present their counter-arguments. The jury (the readers) can then decide for themselves. There is nothing misleading, dishonest, or plagiaristic in this, and saying so is tendentious in itself.

What's worse, even if Dershowitz were guilty of plagiarism, this would affect a handful of chapters that are of minor importance compared to the rest of the book. To claim to have identified "The Dershowitz Hoax," as Finkelstein does, is absurd. The book stands on the merits (or demerits) of its various arguments. Proving one as plagiarized or false does not necessarily negate the others that do not depend on it. Hence, even if Finkelstein were correct about plagiarism (and he is absolutely wrong about it), the other arguments still deserve their own field days. It is intellectually dishonest to dismiss the entire book because a flaw in one chapter.

I, for one, think that tracing demographic statistics from the 19th century to establish who has a more legitimate claim to the land is misguided. First, the Ottoman statistics are notoriously unreliable when it comes to registering both Muslims and Jews. Second, one must speculate about the causes of the demographic shifts, if any. Third, other statistics (e.g. the French geographer Cuinot's) are politically biased, and therefore suspect. Therefore, the case of demographics will probably always remain contentious. So where does this leave us, one might ask. Right back where we started: it is immaterial who has a more legitimate historical claim to the land; the fact is that Israel exists, and is not going away, and any solution now would have to recognize this once and for all.

Hence, the best arguments one can make are not about the dubious statistics of the Ottoman Empire and the "I was here first" types of nonsense: both sides have their mythologies and they are certainly entitled to them. This sort of claims may be useful if Israel did not exist and was about to be created. But the reality is that Israel has won, just like any other nation, the right to exist by the force of arms. Palestinian objections notwithstanding, it will exist where it is right now. The question is where to draw the line in the sand that would enable the inevitable separate Palestinian to exist side by side with Israel. Dershowitz provides various arguments about (i) why Israel can legitimately exist, (ii) why it was not Israel, but the Arabs, who have consistently rejected the two-state solution, (iii) why Palestinian terrorism exists, and (iv) why Israel deserves our support.

To be fair to Finkelstein, apart from attacking the two first chapters in the book, he goes on to produce evidence of what he calls "absurd falsifications." First, he goes after Dershowitz about the latter's exaggerated claims about the evil of the Mufti of Jerusalem al-Husseini (to whom Finkelstein himself refers to as "undoubtedly a despicable human being"). Does it really matter whether Eichmann did or did not visit the Mufti in Jerusalem? After all, the Mufti is on record supporting the "final solution" for the Palestine, and then there's the little pesky case with the bastard making sure that loads of Hungarian children are not accidentally diverted from their proper destination of the death camp. In other words, even if Dershowitz exaggerated, one could add very little black to this terrible human being.

Then Finkelstein takes issue with Dershowitz about the latter's claim that Israel has abolished torture, in fact as well as in law. He concedes that the Israeli Supreme Court has outlawed any kind of torture... it would be difficult to deny this, of course. This in itself is of immense importance: no other country undergoing consistent terrorist attacks like Israel has even come close to such a daring stance. Not even the United States. Certainly not any of the Muslim states to which we are shipping off Taliban criminals for "special" (read: pistol whipping) interrogation. But this is not good enough for Finkelstein: he disputes Dershowitz's "in fact" part of the statement. That is, according to Finkelstein and based on information from B'Tselem, the Israeli security forces occasionally do torture suspects.

Do they? Probably. In fact, most likely. But that is not the point. The point is that it is illegal, and so potentially a Palestinian suspect has legal recourse under Israeli law, which cannot be said about any other nation in the region. We're not even talking Egyptian-style torture here, mind you. At any rate, I fail to see how what some officers do can in any way diminish the value of the official position. Certainly one cannot invalidate the extremely serious and courageous law just because some Israelis (in well-understandable desire to prevent terrorist acts) resort to torture. By shifting the focus from the really important, and underlined by Dershowitz, issue, Finkelstein engages in an academic sleight of hand. And not a very good one too.

Finally, Finkelstein takes on Dershowitz on Jenin. Were civilians killed there? Sure. In numbers claimed by the Palestinians? Nonsense. In numbers anywhere near those claimed by the Palestinians? Nonsense. By pointing out a severely disputed cases of one 57-year old wheelchair-bound man allegedly purposefully murdered despite being equipped with a white flag, or a 37-year old purposefully crushed to death, Finkelstein (yet again) tries to deflect the argument from its main thrust: The terrorists dress like civilians, hide among the civilians, and build their bomb factories close to civilians. Of these Palestinian civilians, close to 90% approve of their actions. Unlike these terrorists who deliberately target civilians, Israel does not. Instead of carpet-bombing Jenin to kill the 200 or so terrorists hiding there, Israel sent in its own soldiers, into a hellish door-to-door combat, to root out the terrorists at minimal losses to innocent civilians. It is a tragedy that some 30 civilians were killed by the IDF, but the point is that this is not a deliberate policy of Israel that does everything possible to minimize these casualties... no matter how little deserved these tactics may be.

As a last, related because relevant by establishing the character of the witness, point, I'd like to note that Finkelstein's own Image and Reality of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is an absurd concoction of lies and revisionist strangulation of history. Just to take the most egregious example: the Six Days War was not a preemptive war because Egypt did not intend to strike! What? Excuse me? What happened to all the well-documented evidence? What about Michael Oren's excellently researched Six Days of War? What about the closing of the straits of Tiran, or the May mobilization of Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan? Or the ominous Nasser-Hussein agreement? Or 80,000 Egyptian troops with hundreds of tanks massing on the border? Apparently, Finkelstein would need a written declaration of intent to judge that the Arabs were poised to strike. But Enough with Finkelstein and his ilk. It is certainly not anti-Semitic to attack a pro-Israeli book, but to go about it in the heavy-handed way that Finkelstein and others have done, is stupid. Back to the book now.

Among the most interesting and relevant problems that the book addresses are the questions of (a) Palestinian victimization, (ii) the Arab refugee problem, (iii) the peace efforts and lack of them, (iv) the supposed moral equivalence of the two sides, (v) and the status of Israel as "the world's Jew." I would have thought that for any reasonable American, some of these would be undisputed. But I was wrong. Which means that people should read this book.

Dershowitz does not endorse every action by the Israeli government. In fact, he is a vocal opponent of many policies. He somewhat perplexingly omits references to uncomfortable events (e.g. the 1956 Sinai/Suez War, or the controversial 1982 Lebanon invasion), and somewhat inexplicably fails to castigate the Europeans for their morally bankrupt behavior in abandoning Israel after the Yom Kippur War because, among other things, of the economic pain caused by the resulting OPEC oil embargo. Actually, the European role in promoting rabid anti-Semitism through the U.N. deserves a whole book by itself. The point, however, is that instead of blindly defending Israel, the author proposes a fair perspective of Israel's record in just about every area and then suggests the (apparently revolutionary) notion to compare Israel with others instead of singling out for condemnation.

And it is these comparisons --- with Palestinians, Arabs, Muslim states, and Western Europeans --- that Israel passes with flying colors. Dershowitz shows what many students of military history know well: that in its conflict with the Arabs Israel has consistently minimized civilian casualties even when its opponents deliberately tried to kill Israelis. Given our own deplorable record in this area, Israel's ability to withstand such overt provocation is remarkable. Dershowitz also documents the consistent peace proposals Israel has directed to its neighbors. The simple facts speak for themselves: after trying three times (!) to extinguish Israel and failing, Egypt finally "saw the light" when Sadat decided that if the Arabs could not defeat the IDF even under the most favorable circumstances (after all, in October 1973, the Yom Kippur War caught Israel unprepared), then the only way to recover some of the lost prestige along with the lost territories was through negotiation. Camp David and the consequent Egypt-Israeli treaty came about because the Arabs could not murder the Jews at will... and they also managed to lose even more territories and had to bailed out by the USSR in the process. But the basic point is clear: Israel accepted the peace and returned the lands, a rare instance of a victorious state abandoning territories that rightfully belonged to it by the right of conquest in return for peace. Very seldom are losers treated in such a way. If this does not demonstrate that Israel has always wanted peace more than land (and the Sinai had oil and settlements, all of which Israel dismantled, some forcibly), then I don't know what would.

I should also mention that the only reason the West Bank did no go back to Jordan was because the Jordanians did not want it and the troublesome Palestinians that came with it, so they relinquished the claim in favor of the Palestinians. And today, the Golan Heights are Syria's for the taking if only the idiotic state would grant peace to Israel. These are fact, and I am hard pressed to understand why people consistently ignore them.

I also think it is important that Dershowitz makes the moral case as well. He points that the disparity in body counts on the two sides, all too frequently mentioned by the critics of Israel, are quite misleading. For example, it may be true that 2,000 Palestinians and "only" 800 Israelis have been killed in the al Aqsa intifada thus far. What does this tell you? Do you want to know that the 2,000 figure includes the suicide bombers themselves, along with terrorists who have blown up themselves and their neighbors while making bombs, and Palestinians murdered by other Palestinians for suspected collaboration with Israel? Or that of the 2,000 about 18% (according to IDF estimates) are innocent civilians, making the count somewhere close to 360 innocent Palestinian civilians killed in the conflict. 360 is an awfully high number, but of the 800 Israelis, about 80% were innocent civilians (because terrorists deliberately target them), making the body count on the Jewish side about 640, or nearly twice the number of killed Palestinians. What about the gender of the murdered: 95% of dead Palestinians were male versus 40% dead female Israelis. Who is killing whom then? Not to mention that the figure of 800 is only so "low" because the Israelis have managed to thwart hundreds of terrorist attempts, which, had they succeeded, would have doubtless brought up the death count on the Israeli side quite substantially.

Numbers have to be read carefully. From the simple example above, it is fairly easy to deduce that (a) Palestinians target civilians, including children and women, deliberately, unlike the Israelis who try to avoid inflicting civilian casualties, and (b) unfortunately, the Palestinians manage to kill far too many Israelis anyway. And what about the morality? Is the death of a Palestinian "worth" as much as a death of an "Israeli"? In terms of human suffering, the comparison cannot be made because both instances are equally awful. However, from a perspective of an impartial observer (if such a creature existed), one must conclude that when the Palestinian death is an unfortunate but perhaps inevitable result of the "fog of war," and when the Israeli death is the stated goal of the terrorists, then the Palestinians simply don't have a shred of morality to stand on.

Dershowitz also investigates U.N. and Arab allegations that Israel is an apartheid state. These would have been laughable if their authors were not dead serious. The only democracy in the Middle East, the only country in the region where Arabs could hope to get a fair trial, the only country that has outlawed torture categorically, whose own Arab minority enjoys a standard of living that far exceeds anything offered by the neighboring states, the only country in the region with a truly free press... that is an apartheid? That is a "racist state"? The mind boggles at the temerity, stupidity, and intellectual dishonesty of people who would make such an accusation.

Dershowitz only barely touches on an extremely important topic that he tackles in Why Terrorism Works: the reason why Palestinians resort to terrorism (because it works) and why they have managed to leap-frog over groups with far worthier claims (e.g. Tibetans, Kurds) in the U.N. agenda (European fear, self-interest).

I am sorry Dershowitz did not address the Wall question because it is one of the best examples of Palestinian duplicity. The Palestinians don't like the Wall. Of course they don't because it will work. It will work for what it is designed to do: stop their terrorists from entering Israel. It will work just like the Berlin Wall worked for preventing East Berliners from going West. It was not meant to be unbreachable by tanks, only people. And this wall will work too. And it will also force the Palestinians to live with the reality of Israel: it is not going away. It will also force them to finally confront their own problems, which, just like the problems of the rest of the Middle East, are entirely of their own making. The wall follows the pre-1967 borders pretty closely (and the exceptions are allowed by U.N. Resolution 242, with which Israel has fully complied). In other words, the wall has the uncomfortable feature for drawing a firm line in the sand that the Palestinians should have accepted a long time ago. Say 50 years ago.

March 1, 2004