The Dershowitz–Finkelstein affair was a public controversy involving academics Alan Dershowitz and Norman Finkelstein and their scholarship on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in 2005.
Shortly after the publication of the book The Case for Israel, by Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, Norman Finkelstein alleged that it was "a collection of fraud, falsification, plagiarism and nonsense." Finkelstein further derided the book, remarking, "If Dershowitz's book were made of cloth, I wouldn't even use it as a schmatta ... his book is such garbage." Finkelstein charged that Dershowitz had engaged in plagiarism in his use of Joan Peters' book From Time Immemorial. Dershowitz denied the charges. Former Harvard president Derek Bok, following a review requested by then-Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan, determined that no plagiarism had occurred.
In Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, published by University of California Press on August 28, 2005, Finkelstein aimed to debunk The Case for Israel. Dershowitz had written letters to both The New Press and to the University of California Press to prevent its publication, claiming it contained massive libel and stating that the book should not be published. Dershowitz responded in his book The Case for Peace and alleged a politically motivated campaign of vilification spearheaded by Finkelstein, Noam Chomsky, and Alexander Cockburn against several pro-Israel academics.
Finkelstein's criticisms of Dershowitz
The bulk of Beyond Chutzpah consisted of an essay critiquing the "new antisemitism" and longer chapters contrasting Dershowitz's arguments in The Case for Israel with the findings of mainstream human rights organisations, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, asserting that Dershowitz had lied, misrepresented and fabricated many of his points in order to protect Israel and hide its record of alleged human rights violations. Finkelstein maintained that "the real issue is Israel's human rights record."
In addition, Finkelstein claimed to have uncovered plagiarism in instances where Dershowitz reproduced the exact errors found in Peters's citation of original sources, and thus saw it as evidence that Dershowitz did not check the original sources he cited, a claim that Dershowitz adamantly denied.
Finkelstein said he had located twenty instances that all occur within as many pages, Dershowitz used some of the same words from the same sources that Joan Peters used, largely in the same order. Several paragraph-long quotations that the two books share have ellipses in the same position. Finkelstein claimed that in one instance Dershowitz refers to the same page number as Peters, although he is citing a different (1996) edition of the same source, in which the words appear on a different page. Finkelstein stated: "It is left to readers to decide whether Dershowitz committed plagiarism as defined by Harvard University—'passing off a source's information, ideas, or words as your own by omitting to cite them.' According to a book review of Beyond Chutzpah, written by Professor Michael C. Desch in The American Conservative, "Finkelstein does not accuse Dershowitz of the wholesale lifting of someone else's words, but he does make a very strong case that Dershowitz has violated the spirit, if not the exact letter, of Harvard's prohibitions of the first three forms of plagiarism."
During an interview of the two men by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, Finkelstein also suggested that Dershowitz may not have written, or even read, the book. Later, he cited such allegedly "unserious" references as the Sony Pictures website for Kevin Macdonald's documentary film One Day in September and an online high-school syllabus from Teaching the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Unit for High School Students, by Professor Ronald Stockton, in his criticism of the book.
Dershowitz's response
Dershowitz threatened to bring a legal action against the University of California Press in response to the charges in Finkelstein's book. Dershowitz claimed to have written every word of The Case for Israel by hand and to have sent the University of California Press his handwritten manuscript. He says there is not a single phrase or sentence in it that was plagiarized, and accused Finkelstein of knowing this and making the charges in order to garner publicity. Dershowitz offered to produce his handwritten drafts (he does not type) to debunk the claim that The Case for Israel was ghostwritten and claimed Finkelstein has not asked to see them.