Dershowitz versus Scholarship: Some Comments on Dershowitz’s Critique of Walt and Mearsheimer

Alan Dershowitz’s blog article ‘Double Standard Watch: Questions for Walt and Mearsheimer’ at the Jerusalem Post is for any student of Dershowitz’s screeds - I won’t say writings because I personally don’t consider his written work on Israel and jews to be even educated polemics - an interesting one in terms of Dershowitz’s usual hysterics. To paraphrase Finkelstein in ‘Beyond Chutzpah’ Dershowitz desperately wants to prove something and will marshal any ‘evidence’ and make any tenuous connection to make his case.

In this case: he wants to prove that Walt and Mearsheimer (and presumably his other opponents such as Neumann and Finkelstein) base their research on ‘out-of-context quotes’ that they ‘lifted from anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi and radical Islamic hate sites.’

Now having read Walt and Mearsheimer’s book ‘The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy’ several times I don’t recall any conclusions from such supposed ‘bad sources.’

The question of what about a ‘hateful’ site makes it a bad source of information is of course a more lengthy and more detailed discussion that I won’t enter into here nor do I immediately recall any citation of such sources.

Perhaps Dershowitz could be specific in what he means and where Walt and Mearsheimer are supposedly skimming their research from such sources. Walt and Mearsheimer do mention David Duke once and in passing as an example, but they promptly condemn him. However as veteran Dershowitz readers will well know he makes these kinds of charges on a regular basis in both his books and other published work; his enemies are always ‘haters’, ‘anti-Semites’, ‘Nazis’, ‘Shoah/Holocaust Deniers’ and lord knows what else.

It is also interesting that Dershowitz immediately does exactly what he did to Finkelstein in his ‘The Case for Israel’ in declaring the following to create the suggestion of considerable specific scholarly criticism [and condemnation] (in both cases one easily imagines Dershowitz with an animalistic sneer plastered across his face):

‘That is why so many of their own colleagues - Jewish and not Jewish - have trashed their work as "piss-poor" research (as one colleague put it).’

Have ‘so many’ of ‘their own colleagues’ ‘trashed’ their work?

Not according to what I’ve read although Dershowitz and associates circulated numerous petitions condemning them for invented offences (some of which I was forwarded at the time by gracious friends) and engaging in a covert - as well as an overt - personal campaign against them; much as it was revealed he had considerable hand in Finkelstein being denied academic tenure at DePaul University.

But perhaps it is better to ask; why - if some colleagues disagree so strongly - there has never been a devastating critique brought out against the book from the direction that Dershowitz argues from (i.e., that the people of the United States love Israel so much and have so many ‘shared values’ they just want to give it billions of dollars annually).

Alright I am massively simplifying the argument here, but it makes the point that needs to be made regardless.

In fact, earlier in this same article Dershowitz manages to state what the ‘critical case’ made is. In so far that Dershowitz and his associates charge - often directly - that because Walt and Mearsheimer did not write a book about what they call ‘the Saudi Lobby’ and the suggested influence of oil companies on the decision to go war with Iraq in 2003 they must therefore be ‘anti-Semites’ because they are ‘blaming the jews’.

The logic is simple; because they have written a book primarily about jews lobbying and influencing United States foreign policy on behalf of a foreign country – Israel - and having disproportionate influence on this foreign policy. They are irrational and hence are ‘anti-Semitic’ because their work goes beyond the pale of what ‘new anti-Semitism’ authors - who are associated with Dershowitz and his associates not least by their almost universal shared jewish ancestry and approving citation of each other’s work (for example Dershowitz’s unrestrained admiration for Phyllis Chesler’s book ‘The New Anti-Semitism’; despite the fact she is ostensibly opposed to him politically) call ‘reasonable criticism’. This, of course, means you have to attach a metaphorical halo to Israel and believe pretty much the official Israeli story on all events to do with Palestine – specifically - to do with ongoing conflicts with Syria, Yemen and so forth.

Dershowitz doesn’t point out - assuming that his readers have likely not read Walt and Mearsheimer - that they address the points he makes as counters in their book although perhaps not at the length some may think they deserve they have addressed them and have done so consistently throughout their responses to criticism of their thesis. Dershowitz also does not note that the ‘Saudi Lobby’ is irrelevant to their thesis which is a narrow rather than a broad one about the influence of Israel in Washington. However perhaps what Dershowitz would argue is that because the thesis is that they argue the ‘Israel Lobby’ has disproportionate power and has a huge hand in controlling foreign policy in the Middle that the ‘failure to account for the ‘Saudi Lobby’’ displays lack of scholarly integrity.

However, something to consider is Dershowitz and associates own argument in this regard; they argue that because of the massive funding provided by Saudis for Islamic schools, anti-Zionist programs and so forth it invalidates Walt and Mearsheimer’s thesis. However, the fact is it doesn’t even impact on it because the real facts [i.e., the practical results] of the situation demonstrate that the ‘Saudi lobby’ is not effective and that the ‘Israel lobby’ is.

Walt and Mearsheimer made an excellent case and their opponents like Dershowitz have simply been relegated to inventing reasons to charge them with ‘bias’ and so forth [therefore in Dershowitz’s eyes invalidating any argument, counterargument or future argument they make unless they are willing to kiss Israel’s [or more precisely jewish] feet in unconditional supplication]. That is after all Dershowitz’s standard operating procedure in his books and screeds in general.

Dershowitz doesn’t really go into depth of his ‘criticisms’ which were supposed to appear in his book ‘The Case Against Israel Enemies’ but never actually did in any substantive form.

Unsurprisingly this is simply a repeat of Dershowitz’s past performance when he has produced many an unevidenced and dare I say libellous case against perceived and real opponents rather than producing a scholarly and objective case. Instead, Dershowitz’s style can be simplified to find a statement which he thinks he can or needs to (for example with the question of Palestine’s pre-Zionist population and their status) catch an opponent and produce a few bits of possible evidence to conclude the opponent is thereby opposing Israel ‘without scholarly context’/’scholarly objectivity’ and is therefore ‘biased’ against jews.

Therefore, said opponent is an ‘anti-Semite’ and is therefore according to Dershowitz’s thought process ‘irrational’, because all opposition to jews is in his mind irrational and based on ‘unfounded prejudice’. This means that Dershowitz in his own mind is free to link any author with all sorts of people with whom they are supposedly corresponding, are like and/or steal ideas from.

This is evidenced rather dramatically above by Dershowitz’s assertion of Walt and Mearsheimer’s supposed stealing of ideas and structures from ‘anti-Semites’ which considering that the two authors made it very clear in their book ‘The Israel Lobby’ that they don’t support the ideas, theses and arguments an ‘anti-Semite’ like me puts forward and I don’t recognise any of their arguments as being similar to my own apart from on the most superficial of levels. Dershowitz is simply in Freudian terms projecting his own bias onto his opponents in order to distract from his own sense of [sexual or dare I say racial] inferiority.

So, in conclusion to this brief commentary; we can paraphrase Dershowitz in saying: ‘Alan Dershowitz: Distinguished academic? Not as evidenced by his work. Unscholarly propagandist? The proof is in the reading.’