POLITICS: The Dershowitz Response

In an earlier post I documented the incredible frustration one feels when trying to get an accurate view of the Israel-Palestine debate. Alan Dershowitz, and his Harvard companion Mearsheimer (writing with Walt) present completely different versions of the events. This post will examine Dershowitz's new paper, pointing out disingenuousness as I find it.

-First things first, the Dershowitz paper is definitely worth reading. It is, if taken with a grain of salt, a decent critique of the facts and logic of the M/W paper. The observation that M/W leave out prominent liberal members of the Jewish lobby, ie Ted Kennedy, is telling. Also, I don't read the NYT much, but I was pretty surprised to learn the far-left publication is radically pro-Israel; Dershowitz demonstrates that, in keeping with my thoughts, the paper is not.

-But as I said with the Mearsheimer paper, this is mediocre opinion journalism cloaked as Harvard scholarship. The nonstop barrage of loaded terms and exclamation points, coupled with repeated intimations that Mearsheimer and Walt are anti-Semites (their paper is so bad it raises "the question of motive;" their charges are no different than Pat Buchanan's were when William F. Buckley called the paleocon an anti-Semite; there is no anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that doesn't have a lot in common with this paper), really makes the argument seem infantile.

-One particularly egregious slight-of-hand occurs when Dershowitz attributes to M/W the statement that Jewish congressional staffers look "at certain issues in terms of their Jewishness." Those words appear in the M/W paper attributed to a Jewish lobbyist. This is just flat-out dishonesty on Dershowitz's part.

-Dershowitz attributes to M/W the notion that the Palestinians are, in the present tense, "largely innocent." The actual paper uses the term to refer to the Palestinians before the mass immigration of Jews.

-One passage particularly irked me: Dershowitz perhaps correctly accuses M/W of having a conspirational view of Jewish history. But he follows it with this liberal cliche: "just because a person believes there are some exceptions to his pejorative gerneralizations does not erase the underlying prejudice." Sorry, but ethnic groups really do have different tendencies (blacks and crime, one Dershowitz mentions, being the most stereotypical). Noticing these differences, and realizing there are exceptions, is not the mark of a bigot in any meaningful sense.

-I'm a little bit annoyed with an analogy Dershowitz repeatedly uses, first in The Case for Israel and now in this response paper: A Harvard administrator once proposed not allowing Jews into the university because "Jews cheat." When another administrator pointed out that other ethnicities cheat too, he responded, "but I'm talking about Jews." This is a worthy analogy when people single out Israel for criticism when other (Arab) nations are far worse. But it is, by and large, not a good analogy with regards to this paper. Dershowitz points out that M/W compare Israel to its neighbors and find it lacks the higher ground, so it holds some water in that sense. However, the U.S. government singles out Israel for its rather consistent support, so M/W are fully justified in singling the nation out for criticism. Deciding whether the country deserves our money and military is not anti-Semitic, and it's completely irrelevant that other nations are worse.

-This passage needs no comment: "The most vocal proponent of their paper so far has been David Duke, but that does not mean that [M/W] are beholden to the Klan lobby. The better explanation is simply that Walt, Mearsheimer, and Duke happen to have reached the same conclusions, and share the same interest in vilifying Jewish leaders and spouting conspiracy theories about Zionist plots against American interests."