Reflections, Reflections

I hadn't heard about this, but since I hate Alan Dershowitz, I hope he gets stung, if not nailed by the allegations/facts.

Dershowitz in feud over plagiarism allegation

At the center of the argument is a book by Finkelstein claiming that Dershowitz -- the lawyer famous for representing O.J. Simpson and other high-profile clients -- inappropriately lifted material from another author when writing the book "The Case for Israel."

Finkelstein's book claims that "fully 22 of the 52 quotations and endnotes in chapters 1 and 2 of 'The Case for Israel' match almost exactly -- including, in long quotes, the placement of ellipses -- those in 'From Time Immemorial.'"

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And look, even wikipedia has an entry on this feud already! Including:

The $10,000 challenge

In an appearance on MSNBC's Scarborough Country, Dershowitz made the following challenge to Sam Husseini:

I will give 10,000 to the PLO. in your name if you can find historical fact in my book that you can prove to be false. I issue that challenge, I issue it to you, I issue it to the Palestinian Authority, I issue it to Noam Chomsky to Edward Said [2].

Finkelstein rose to the challenge on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now!. He first started with "concrete facts which are not particularly controversial". Finkelstein cited for a count of between 2,000 and 3,000 emigrant Arabs actually gave the range as between 200,000 to 300,000. Dershowitz replied that the mistake could not have been intentional on his part, because he had used these numbers to counter a claim that no Arabs at all had emigrated during the interval he had been addressing, and because it would only have served his argument to have gotten the numbers right. "Obviously, the phrase '2,000 to 3,000 Arabs' refers either to a sub-phase [of the emigration] or is a typographical error," Dershowitz said.

Finkelstein countered Dershowitz's claim that "Israel is the only country in the Middle East to have abolished any kind of torture in fact as well as in law." on page 206 by quoting The B'Tselem Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in Occupied Territories. "Torture. Interrogation by torture is absolutely prohibited by Israeli and international law. Despite this, Israeli security forces breached the prohibition and torture Palestinians during the interrogation." Finkelstein showed how also Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reached the same conclusion. Dershowitz said that "They are wrong.". Next was Dershowitz's claim that "There is no evidence that Israeli soldiers deliberately killed even a single civilian in Jenin." on page 126 Finkelstein quoted Human Rights Watch as concluding that "there's prima facie evidence that Israel committed war crimes in Jenin. Many of the civilian killings documented by Human Rights Watch are mounted to unlawful or willful killings by the IDF." and "among the civilian deaths were those of Kamal Zgheir, a 57-year-old wheelchair bound man who was shot and run over by a tank on a major road outside the camp on April 10 even though he had a white flag attached to his wheelchair." Dershowitz said the HRW's report was wrong.

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