Dershowitz Strikes Back
THE CASE FOR PEACE by Alan Dershowitz
John Wiley & Sons. 246 pages.
reviewed by Yevgeny Shrago
Yasser Arafat’s death removed one of the major stumbling blocks to peace in the Middle East. The failure of peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians was often blamed on his intractable nature and inability to compromise. Arafat, however, has been dead for over a year, and peace is still not in the foreseeable future. Steps toward peace have certainly been made, but many of the main problems remain unresolved. For example, there is no consensus among Israelis or Arabs on the value of the unilateral Gaza pullout by Ariel Sharon, and various radical terror groups continue to deny Israel’s legitimacy.
The Case for Peace by Alan Dershowitz asserts that most moderates know only one sensible solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: a two-state system including a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and a Jewish state in Israel. The dispute over Jerusalem, Dershowitz claims, must be solved by splitting the city, as the Palestinians do have a significant presence there. In exchange, the Palestinians must renounce all terrorist activity, and guarantee Israel that a Palestinian state will not serve as a conduit for terrorism. Finally, there must be a symbolic acknowledgement of the right of return. It cannot literally occur because it would undermine the purpose of a Jewish state.
Dershowitz correctly states that the solution would be undesirable for both sides. If one side were completely satisfied, then the other would have sacrificed too much. Dershowitz believes that this solution, although not ideal, is clearly the best. He does not waste time complaining about the intractability of the situation, nor does he concentrate on pointing fingers at the perceived culprits. Rather, Dershowitz asks whether any of the well-cited barriers to peace are real. These “geopolitical barriers to peace,” as Dershowitz calls them, are thirteen of the largest obstacles.
This is where The Case for Peace shines. Primarily a law professor, Dershowitz has devoted a great deal of time, thought and analysis to the situation. In these thirteen chapters he approaches the problem evenhandedly. Dershowitz censures Israel when he feels it is necessary and seeks solutions, regardless of who is to blame. Each chapter opens with a series of quotations from notable figures involved in the Middle East peace process, and Dershowitz presents hard data to support his conclusions. He does not, however, shy away from a criticism of the leadership.
In his opening thesis, Dershowitz states that the Palestinians have no one to blame for their small state but their own absolutist leadership. He argues that every time peace negotiations are abandoned in favor of terrorism, the Palestinians should receive less the next time they come to the table. This position is not synonymous with peace. Dershowitz’s suggested policy would make the Palestinians less likely to compromise with every successive return to negotiations. It would only serve to perpetuate the cycle of violence by fueling the anger of moderate Palestinians. In a more reasonable scenario, Israel would decide how much of the West Bank it could reasonably give up and hold that figure regardless of what happens. This would allow Israel to show both its refusal to bow to terrorism and its restraint in dealing with terrorists.
While all of Dershowitz’s points about geopolitical barriers to peace are thought-provoking, most interesting is the information he provides about Israeli Arabs. If Israel is truly an anti-Arab, racist state as so many imply or explicitly claim, then Arabs residing in parts of Israel within the Green Line would eagerly accept absorption into the new Palestinian state. Dershowitz claims that just the opposite is true—the Israeli Arabs would rather have the freedom granted by Israel than be governed by a potentially repressive Palestinian regime. Although his citations for this argument are impeccable, this line of logic does not necessarily follow the given facts. The Israeli Arabs have hardly assimilated into Israeli culture, and have maintained separate schools and low-level courts. They remain separate from Jewish Israelis. Also, many of the Israeli Arabs are Druze or Christian, and so it would logically follow that they would not want to live in a potentially fundamentalist Muslim state, regardless of their views on Israel. This is not to say that Israeli Arabs do not want to remain part of Israel, but only that the situation is not as black and white as Dershowitz argues.
The Case for Peace then moves into its second, less productive section. “Overcoming the Hatred Barriers to Peace” discusses the problems caused by ideological purists outside of the struggle. His recounting of academic and political bias both for and against the State of Israel, while well-researched, takes the form of a cutting tone, and what was once an analysis becomes a diatribe. The given examples of ultra left-wing Palestinian support outside of Israel were intended to cause revulsion. None of the examples of European anti-Semitism or the UN’s institutional opposition to Israel surprised me, yet taken together their effect is tremendously increased. Dershowitz masterfully plays to his audience in this chapter, but he misses the point. These examples, each repeated several times, serve only to create anger, not to drive the discourse forward. Everything that he writes is important knowledge to have, but a book attempting to foster understanding is not the place to learn it.
The biggest flaw of this otherwise even-handed work is Dershowitz’s attack on Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein. Chomsky, an MIT professor, is one of the most acclaimed linguistic academics in the world. He is also a vehement critic of American foreign policy and the existence of Israel, but he has not been particularly outspoken as of late. Finkelstein, who visited the University of Michigan campus in late October, is a more virulent critic of Israel. An associate professor at DePaul University, he stands to lose less than Chomsky by expressing radical views, and therefore expresses a Holocaust agnosticism that borders on denial.
On an episode of the MSNBC program Scarborough Country, Finkelstein accused Dershowitz of plagiarizing content from Joan Peters’s book From Time Immemorial for The Case for Israel.1 Finkelstein referred to several instances where Dershowitz cited sources or had quotations identical to Peters’s, even though her original citations had been inaccurate. This led Finkelstein to believe that Dershowitz had taken the statements from Peters’s work and failed to cite them. Finkelstein also attacked Peters’s book as a fraud itself, allowing him to make his charge on Dershowitz seem even more serious. With his latest book, Dershowitz launches a polemic defense, accusing Finkelstein and Chomsky of being allied in an attempt to discredit all pro-Israel authors.
Dershowitz’s anger at these critics is understandable. The two tried to brand him a plagiarist after the publication of The Case for Israel, and Dershowitz is entitled to defend himself. Dershowitz again makes the mistake of departing from the calm tone that previously pervaded his book. Instead, reading this chapter, it appears as though he is discharging a vendetta in print. The actions of Chomsky and Finkelstein are reprehensible. Anyone who denies the veracity of Elie Wiesel’s accounts of the Holocaust certainly deserves disdain, but Dershowitz’s launch into these personal attacks taints the academic integrity of the entire work.
The Case for Peace, despite these shortcomings, can only be considered a success. While public opinion polls in the United States support the existence of Israel, Dershowitz is one of the few openly pro-Israel academics at a major American university. This makes it all the more imperative that his writings about the situation be even-handed, fair and meticulously researched. This book shows that supporting Israel does not require abandoning academia. This work can change the nature of discourse in the collegiate realm by encouraging professors to openly support a two-state solution and to understand Israel’s actions. Academic support, as Dershowitz realizes, is part of the necessary progression in thought that is necessary to bring true peace to Israel.