Inside Higher Ed
27 June 2005

Some books are destined to set off controversy. The University of
California Press has such a volume in Beyond Chutzpah: On the
Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, slated for release
in August. The book argues that supporters of Israel prevent human
rights abuses by that country from getting the attention they
deserve, in part by calling those who raise such issues
anti-Semites. That thesis would be controversial from most authors,
but the book in question is by Norman G. Finkelstein, a political
scientist at DePaul University who has enraged Jewish groups by
questioning the role of the Holocaust and with consistently harsh
criticism of Israel.

Even before the release of Beyond Chutzpah, the book has set off a
broader debate over the First Amendment. An article published
Friday by The Nation charges that Alan M. Dershowitz, a Harvard law
professor who is attacked in the book and who has been a critic of
Finkelstein, tried to get the California press to call off
publication.

The article -- by Jon Wiener, a professor of history at the
University of California at Irvine -- says that Dershowitz had
lawyers send threatening letters to the press, and that Dershowitz
appealed to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, top University of California
officials and others to try to block publication. Given that
Dershowitz is famous for his defense of the First Amendment, the
clear implication of the article is that he is a hypocrite.

Dershowitz, in an interview on Friday, said nothing could be further
from the truth. He said that the letters referenced in The Nation
article were designed to prevent publication of falsehoods about
him, specifically the charge that he was not the true author of one
of his books, The Case for Israel (Wiley). Dershowitz said that the
letters he sent offered definitive proof that he did write the book,
and he noted that the University of California Press has in fact
asked Finkelstein to remove the charge from his book.

"I want to see his book published now," Dershowitz said of Beyond
Chutzpah, which he said was in some ways "a sequel" to the notorious
anti-Semitic tract Protocols of the Elders of Zion. "I want to see
it demolished in the marketplace of ideas."

But Lynne Withey, director of the University of California Press,
said in an interview Friday that Dershowitz had tried to stop
publication of the book. "He doesn't want the book published,"
Withey said, adding that it was "outrageous" for Dershowitz to
charge the book with being anti-Semitic. "To say that the book is
anti-Semitic is to say that any criticism of Israel is
anti-Semitic," she said. (Finkelstein could not be reached for
comment.)

As detailed in The Nation article, Dershowitz first became aware of
Beyond Chutzpah when it was under review at The New Press. When the
book ended up at California, he started sending letters to the press
there, as well as to political and education leaders in the state.

One letter from one of Dershowitz's lawyers, quoted by The Nation,
said that the California press, in publishing the book, was "part of
a conspiracy to defame" Dershowitz, adding, "The only way to
extricate yourself is immediately to terminate all professional
contact with this full-time malicious defamer."

Dershowitz said that sending such letters was not inconsistent with
his support for the First Amendment, which he noted assured citizens
both of free speech and of the right to petition the government over
grievances. He was exercising the latter right, he said, when he
sent copies of his letters to California officials.

As to the part of the First Amendment that provides for free speech,
Dershowitz said, "Any person has a right to make an honest mistake,
but no one has the right to defame another maliciously and
knowingly."

On The Case for Israel, Dershowitz said not only that the claim that
he didn't write the book himself was false, but that he could prove
it was false. Dershowitz said that he writes all of his books
longhand, and saves his drafts, and that he offered to share copies
with the California press. He also said that while Finkelstein
questions some of his footnotes, implying that they came from
another book, Dershowitz was able to show that he was citing those
sources before the other book was published.

"I don't think Finkelstein takes these charges seriously. He just
uses them as a weapon," Dershowitz said. "I'm not going to let him
get away with it."

He stressed that objecting to these statements did not amount to
trying to quash the book as a whole. "My whole career is devoted to
being involved in controversies," Dershowitz said. "I never, ever
sought to suppress criticism or this book, but he cannot expect to
get away with saying that I didn't write my book."

Withey, the press director at California, said that the book will
not suggest that Dershowitz didn't write The Case for Israel.
Finkelstein did originally have a reference that might have been
read that way, she said, but that was not necessarily the only
reading. "It was unclear the point he was trying to make and he
couldn't document that, so we asked him to take it out," she said.

Press officials reviewed Dershowitz's complaints, she said, and took
them seriously. But Withey added that debate over the book's claims
won't be black and white. "What constitutes an error can be a matter
of opinion," she said.

And Wiener, the professor who wrote about the controversy in The
Nation, said in an e-mail interview that one of the letters he
quoted from to press officials asked them to reconsider the decision
to publish the book. "Please note that he did NOT ask them to make
sure errors were corrected," Wiener said.