Chomsky-Dershowitz-Finkelstein

Do Professors Chomsky, Dershowitz and Finkelstein believe in the >Holocaust-Shoah<?

Correspondence: Match Point
by Alan Dershowitz & Noam Chomsky
TNR Online 1 July 2007

It is always intriguing to see just how far Alan Dershowitz will go in his efforts to conceal the fact that Norman Finkelstein exposed him as a vulgar and fraudulent apologist for Israeli human rights violations--carefully, judiciously, with extensive documentation - "Taking the Bait,", May 21. Knowing that he cannot respond, Dershowitz is reduced to a torrent of slanders and deceit about Finkelstein's alleged misdeeds--which would, transparently, be irrelevant if there were a particle of truth to his easily-refuted charges. The latest chapter in Dershowitz's efforts at self-protection is a campaign to undermine Finkelstein's tenure appointment, actions that are utterly without precedent, even reaching to an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. In an attempt to obscure what he is up to, along with other little fibs that I'll ignore, Dershowitz has now invented a new fairy tale: that he is following my course when I "led [my] own jihad" to deny Kissinger a faculty position at Columbia.

As reported in such exotic sources as the national press - e.g., The Washington Post, May 27, 1977, when Henry Kissinger left the government, the Columbia administration created a special endowed chair for him, apparently without faculty consultation or normal review procedures. That elicited widespread opposition on campus, including a front-page denunciation in the student newspaper, protests signed by hundreds of faculty and students, and much more. My role in this was precisely zero, as Dershowitz knows, with one exception: I was invited by Columbia faculty members to speak at one of the events they organized. So much for the precedent Dershowitz invents to try to defend his disgraceful efforts to block Finkelstein's tenure.

Why does he drag me into this? For the same reasons as his Finkelstein rampage. I have been the target of a deluge of Dershowitz deceit and inventions since 1973, when I responded to his slanders about the Israeli League of Human Rights, even gross falsification of Israeli court records as he sought to defend serious violations of elementary civil rights that the court barred--exactly contrary to his claims - The Boston Globe, April 29, May 17, May 25, June 5, 1973, available online. As always when his performances are exposed, Dershowitz knows he cannot respond, and makes no effort to do so, instead resorting to the device that comes naturally to him: a torrent of vilification and deceit, of which his "Cambridge Diarist" submission is the most recent. As of today.

It is not surprising that Noam Chomsky would leap to the defense of his ideological soul mate Norman Finkelstein. He always supports the academic freedom of those with whom he agrees, never those with whom he disagrees. But even Chomsky cannot actually cite any scholarly contributions that Finkelstein--who admits that he has never had an article published in a peer-reviewed journal--has made. What passes for Finkelstein-scholarship is charging me, and virtually every other pro-Israel writer, with plagiarism for citing material to their original rather than secondary sources. Anti-Israel as well as pro-Israel scholars use the same citation method because it is the one preferred by the Chicago Manual of Style and other authoritative sources. For example, Professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer repeatedly cite primary sources for material they found in secondary sources. I proved this and challenged Finkelstein to level the same charge against these anti-Israel writers as he did against pro-Israel writers. He refused, because his is not scholarship; it is propaganda.

Finkelstein's other claim to scholarship is to cite the conclusions of anti-Israel human rights organizations as proof that I and other pro-Israel writers must be wrong when we come to independently researched conclusions that are different. He never provides independent research and when asked why not, he replied: "Why should I interview people?"

Finkelstein's only contribution to public discourse is to coarsen the level of debate about the Middle East. In a recent speech, Finkelstein called for all "monsters and freaks in the White House and their collaborators in Tel Aviv" to "drop dead." When Irshad Manji, the Canadian Muslim dissident, was subject to death threats, Finkelstein supported those threats and wrote to a website that was collecting petitions against the death threat the following: "Is there a petition supporting the death threats?" He has also supported, he claims in jest, my assassination. Some of his followers did not understand his humor and have made threatening phone calls to me. He has called me a moral pervert, a Nazi and commissioned a cartoon showing me masturbating in ecstatic joy to dead Lebanese civilians.

That is what passes for scholarship on Planet Chomsky. I challenge Chomsky to cite specific pages of Finkelstein's writings that warrant the grant of tenure. Since Finkelstein writes only for popular audiences and never for scholarly ones, his work can easily be evaluated by lay readers. The pages please!

Chomsky characterizes my input into the Finkelstein debate as "disgraceful." Yet he admits that he, as an MIT professor, spoke at a rally against Columbia University granting an academic position to Henry Kissinger. He claims that he was invited to speak by Columbia faculty members. I too was invited to write about Finkelstein by a DePaul faculty member. Moreover, my comments about Finkelstein have mostly been responsive to attacks by him against me. Would Chomsky deny me my freedom of speech when attacked? Has Chomsky ever remained silent in the face of criticism?

In addition to distorting the record with regard to Finkelstein's scholarship Chomsky distorts the history of my criticism of him. It began when he endorsed a notorious neo-Nazi Holocaust denier named Robert Faurisson by writing an introduction to his book. He also legitimated his falsification of history by characterizing Faurisson's fabrications--he claimed that Hitler's gas chambers never existed and that the Holocaust "never took place"--as having been based on "extensive historical research". Chomsky also legitimated Holocaust denial by writing that he saw "no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the Holocaust." Chomsky once told a group of people that he himself was "agnostic" on whether the Holocaust occurred. When professor Robert Nozick, who was part of the group, confronted Chomsky with this outrageous statement following a debate at Harvard Medical School, Chomsky shoved Nozick, saying, "How dare you quote an off-the-record remark I made to a small group at Princeton." He did not deny making the statement.

Chomsky then championed another anti-Semite, this time a Jewish one named Israel Shahak who has written that Jews worship the devil and that Israel is comparable to Nazi Germany. Shahak, like Chomsky, was a phony civil libertarian who believed in defending only the rights of the left, tried to hijack an Israeli human rights group.

Now Chomsky is once again championing an anti-Semite who has made a career out of rewriting the history of the Holocaust and denying the reality of Holocaust survivors. Chomsky and Finkelstein deserve each other. The DePaul community deserves better.

Alan Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter professor of law at Harvard and author of Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways.

Noam Chomsky is a professor of linguistics at MIT and author, most recently of Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy.

- Prof Siegfried Tischler’s response when asked to write up an English version of his German comment

It was a real treat to be able to savour the diatribes between Chomsky and Deshowitz over the Finkelstein tenure. It became abundantly apparent that the vaunted >>peer review<< is little else but a magic wand put up in front of former - and present - misdemeanours and abominations of judaized sciences.

A consensus should emerge from within the realm of real science as to a boycott of >peer reviewed< science faction literature - which is ever more becoming an integral part of the >dumbing machine<. The Finkelstein Saga is living proof for Dershowitz & Co. not being willing - able? - to act within the scientific method as defined by Sir Francis Bacon.

They only ever plagiarize themselves and their paradigms. Come to think of it, what has that kind of >science< come up with? Novel things (as in real novelty / qualitative as opposed to quantitative / different as opposed to >more<) never sees the light of day. Reports on innovative research fade away in the drawers of the >Elders of the Disciplines< where they have been put for safe-keeping - so that they cannot rattle the cages within which paradigmatic scientists are >kept<. Whoever rummages inside the >peer reviewed< journals will discover all sorts of incredible - literally! - and mind-boggling nonsense, which is printed with alacrity so as to shore up the paradigms, set within the shifting sands of Platonic >idealism< - or is it ideology?

What did the paradigmatic sciences come up with during the 20th century that was of any real benefit to mankind and Gaia - the latter is probably more to the point! - ? Atomic bombs, Neutron bombs, computerized mass unemployment, zombified species, hybridized plants and animals that have provided sustenance to mankind - not to mention the >achievements< of the >humanities< - an oxymoron if there ever was one. For example, Poppers >falsification< - not to mention his >propensity theory< which was surely the crowning achievement of >modern< thinking in terms of the goings-ons in the subatomic realm - leg-irons for real thinking, just as the >participant knowledge< of Habermas makes idiots out of anybody not capable - or willing? - to use the arcane language of those who think that science is an activity that discovers truth only to bury it deeper in fancy terminology.

Really significant results of historical research would necessitate >history< to be re-written for most periods. But that will never be because it would reveal history - as written in the books one has to have read - is little else but an endless string of lies and things not mentioned. Should it really become known that the horrid tales that are written regarding the >history< of the 20th century are little more than stories concocted in sick minds, then the Zionist cabal could not go on to turn their possibilities into everybody else's necessities.

Right - it is much easier to send out the dog-patrols so as to seek out all scientific work that endangers the home-spun halo around the >GREATS< of science and toss it deeply into the septic tank of >unparadigmatic science<. But there it all ferments, and when will a revolt ensue from all this? If there is no such revolt, then the academies should be de-funded and closed by the sovereign. As asked above, what >good< are >active denial< weapons - all weapons for that matter - they only enable those who have to keep their ill-gotten gains, what good are gene-manipulated - we should call them genetically perverted! - species and concepts like >collateral damage<? This sick verbiage is ample proof for the uselessness of what emanates from academia these days.

I wait for the hysterical comments of mental castrates and mental pygmies who consider this a demented rave. My salute to Norman Finkelstein and all those in academia who have the raw guts and brawn, not to mention brain, to oppose the rabbinical / talmudic nonsense that controls us all!
____________________

German

Aus dem genüßlichen Briefwechseln von Chomsky und Dershowitz wird endlich einmal deutlich, daß >Peer Review< eigentlich nur sicherstellt, daß vergangene - und gegenwärtige - Schwindlereien - und Schweinereien- der judaisierten >Wissenschaften< nicht aufgedeckt werden. Es sollte sich ein Konsensus der wirklichen Wissenschaftler der Welt bilden, die >peer reviewed< Schundromanproduzenten dieser Welt - sie sind ein integraler Teil der globalen Verdummungsmaschine - einfach zu boykottieren.

Die Finkelstein Saga ist der schlagende Beweis dafür, daß Dershowitz & Co. von wissenschaftlicher Methode rein gar nichts halten und nur von sich selber immer abschreiben..... wozu eigentlich >wissenschaftliche< Forschung? Wirklich neue Dinge sehen sowieso nie das Licht des Tages und Berichte über sie vergilben in den Schubladen der Weisen der Disziplinen. Wer in >peer reviewed< Journalen sich umtut, wird viel haarsträubenden Unsinn finden .... der aber mit Freuden gedruckt wird, wenn er die morschen Paradigmen aufrecht erhalten kann.

Was haben >die Wissenschaften< im 20. Jahrhundert denn wirklich >gebracht<? Atombomben, Neutronenbomben, computerisierte Massenarbeitslosigkeit, zombifizierte natürliche Sorten, hybridierte Nutzpflanzen und - Tiere ..... von den >Leistungen< der Humanwissenschaften sei gar nicht erst gesprochen: Poppers >Falsifizierung< wie auch seine >Propensitaetstheorie< sind ebensolche geistige Fußangeln wie Habermas's Forderung nach >participant knowledge<. Wirklich signifikante Ergebnisse historischer Forschung nötigten dazu die "Geschichte" der Welt über weite Strecken neu zu schreiben; damit es dazu ja nicht kommt >wo kämen wir denn da hin, wenn einmal bekannt würde, daß die >Geschichte< - so wie sie in den Lehrbüchern - Leerbüchern? - steht - nur eine endlose Aneinanderreihung von Lügen und >Auslassungen< darstellt? Wenn sich einmal zeigen täte, daß die Schauermärchen die über das 20. Jahrhundert propagiert werden nur eine Fortsetzung schon seit anbeginn der Geschichtsschreibung - Schreibung von Geschichten...- üblicher Unsinn sind, dann könnte sich der zionistische Kabal nicht mehr seine Möglichkeiten aus unser aller Notwendigkeiten konstruieren.

Eben - da ist es einfacher die Hundestreife auf den Weg zu schicken, jegliche neuen Forschungsergebnisse die den Glanz der selbstgestrickten Heiligenscheine der "Größen" der Wissenschaften verminderten einfach in der Versenkung von als "unparadigmatisch" verdammter Forschung verschwinden zu lassen. Wenn nicht bald sich eine Revolte in den Akademien ereignet, dann sollten diese vom Souverän zugesperrt werden. Denn - wie gesagt - zu was sind denn >active denial weapons<, genmanipulierte - besser wohl: genpervertierte - Sorten und Konzepte wie >Kollaterale Schäden< - eine der Glanzleistungen der Schreiberlinge der >Zeitgeschichte<.... - den wirklich >gut<?

In Erwartung entrüsteter Proteste von geistigen Kastraten / Lilliputanern verbleibe ich mit herzlichen Grüssen aus Batam,

A top American lawyer has threatened to wage a legal war against British academics who seek to cut links with Israeli universities. Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor renowned for his staunch defence of Israel and high-profile legal victories, including his role in the O.J. Simpson trial, vowed to "devastate and bankrupt" lecturers who supported such boycotts.

This week's annual conference of Britain's biggest lecturers' union, the University and College Union, backed a motion damning the "complicity of Israeli academia in the occupation [of Palestinian land]". It also obliged the union's executive to encourage members to "consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions".

Prof Dershowitz said he had started work on legal moves to fight any boycott. He told the Times Higher Educational Supplement that these would include using a US law - banning discrimination on the basis of nationality - against UK universities with research ties to US colleges. US academics might also be urged to accept honorary posts at Israeli colleges in order to become boycott targets.

"I will obtain legislation dealing with this issue, imposing sanctions that will devastate and bankrupt those who seek to impose bankruptcy on Israeli academics," he told the journal.

Sue Blackwell, a UCU activist and member of the British Committee for Universities of Palestine, said: "This is the typical response of the Israeli lobby which will do anything to avoid debating the real issue - the 40-year occupation of Palestine."

Jewish groups have attacked the UCU vote, which was opposed by Sally Hunt, its general secretary.

Harvard legal expert vows to sue lecturers boycotting Israel