Dershowitz Follows Up
by Staff, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 5/19/2005
Earlier in the week, we wrote about a publishing squabble over a book in which a Depaul professor named Norman Finkelstein makes allegations about Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz. While the article quoted Professor Dershowitz, today he responds further.
------------------To the Editor:Steven Zeitchik’s article fails to inform your readers about the lack of credibility of Norman Finkelstein. Peter Novick, the man who inspired Finkelstein to write The Holocaust Industry, had this to say about him: “As concerns particular assertions made by Finkelstein…, the appropriate response is not (exhilarating) “debate” but (tedious) examination of his footnotes. Such an examination reveals that many of those assertions are pure invention… No facts alleged by Finkelstein should be assumed to be really facts, no quotation in his book should be assumed to be accurate, without taking the time to carefully compare his claims with the sources he cites.)”
(‘Offene Fenster und Tueren,’ Sueddeutsche Zeitung, February 7, 2001)“I had not thought that (apart from the disreputable fringe) there were Germans who would take seriously this twenty-first century updating of the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion.’ I was mistaken.”
(‘Offene Fenster und Tueren,’ Sueddeutsche Zeitung, February 7, 2001)“Finkelstein’s book is trash.”
(Tagesspiegel, February 6, 2001)Consistent with his usual approach, Finkelstein has entirely made up the claim that I didn’t write The Case for Israel and that I didn’t even read it before publication. It was as a result of this demonstrably false and defamatory claim that I wrote to the University of California Press and indeed sent them my handwritten draft of The Case for Israel. (I don’t type or use a computer. I write everything by hand, and I preserve my handwritten drafts.) As a result, the University of California Press has apparently made Finkelstein remove this defamation from his manuscript. That is the way the marketplace of ideas is supposed to work: truth is supposed to push falsehood out of the market. Lynn Withey, the publisher of the University of California Press, apparently denies that she made the changes in the manuscript as the result of my letters. Let the record speak for itself. In December 2004, Finkelstein wrote to the dean of the Harvard Law School: “My book will … demonstrate that he almost certainly didn’t write the book, and perhaps didn’t even read it prior to publication.” I wrote my letters following that claim. I am now reliably informed that Finkelstein’s false claim will no longer appear in the manuscript to be published by the University of California Press. I leave it to your readers to judge whether it is Finkelstein or Withey who is not telling the truth.Sincerely yours,Alan M. Dershowitz
|
|
