Letter to the editor
By Daily Bruin Staff
March 13, 2005 9:00 p.m.
Dershowitz citation accusation not true
Repeating a lie doesn’t make it true, but that’s
exactly what Matthew Kennard attempted in his column, “Author
uses faulty scholarship” (March 4). He repeated Norman
Finkelstein’s argument that, in Kennard’s words,
“Twenty-two of the first 52 footnotes from the first two
chapters of “˜The Case for Israel’ are lifted from Joan
Peters’ book “˜From Time Immemorial.'” He
also said that “Dershowitz doesn’t mention Peters once
in his citations.”
A check of my books shows these to be demonstrable lies. I cite
Peters’ book eight times, and I cite all other material to
their original sources. As Churchill once observed, “A lie
gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get
its pants on.”
An assertion is only as credible as the person who makes it, and
this assertion about my book was originally made by Finkelstein.
Listen to other scholars’ evaluations of Finkelstein’s
credibility.
Omer Bartov, professor of history at Brown University and a
leading expert on genocide, reviewed Finkelstein’s book,
“The Holocaust Industry,” for The New York Times,
characterizing the book as “self-righteous, arrogant and
stupid.” He compared it to “the anti-Semitic forgery,
“˜The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,'” and said
that Finkelstein’s claim of “an international Jewish
conspiracy verges on paranoia.”
Professor Peter Novick wrote the following of
Finkelstein’s last book ““ “no facts alleged by
Finkelstein should be assumed to be really facts, no quotation in
his book should be assumed to be accurate, without taking the time
to carefully compare his claims with the sources he cites,”
and that “such an examination reveals that many of those
assertions are pure invention.”
Nor is Professor Novick a biased source because Finkelstein
credits Novick ““ who is a recognized expert on the Holocaust
““ with having initially stimulated his book. When one’s
own muse warns readers not to believe him, that warning must be
taken seriously.
Kennard correctly quotes me as saying, “I unequivocally
state my opposition to any legislation that would in any way impose
… any government controls on what’s taught in the
classroom.” But that does not mean I must refrain from
exercising my own free speech rights when false information is
published about me.
Alan M. Dershowitz Professor, Harvard Law
School
