Finkelstein Proclaims 'The Glove Does Fit'

[durutti]

http://www.thecrimson.com/today/article349123.html

Alan Dershowitz either cannot or refuses to understand why there is a controversy surrounding The Case for Israel (Letter, “Plagiarism Accusations Political, Unfounded,” Sept. 30). Perhaps I can enlighten him. Quite simply, the book he claims to have written is a hoax: (1) substantial swatches are lifted from another notorious hoax on the Israel-Palestine conflict, (2) it is replete with egregious falsifications, and (3) the few scholarly sources actually cited are mangled beyond recognition. In this reply, I will only illustrate points (1) and (2). These, along with point (3), will be fully documented in a forthcoming monograph.
In 1984, Joan Peters published From Time Immemorial, which claimed that Palestine was virtually empty on the eve of Zionist colonization, and that Palestinians are in fact foreigners who surreptitiously entered Palestine after the Zionists “made the desert bloom.” The book is now widely recognized as a fraud. Baruch Kimmerling (of the Hebrew University) and Joel S. Migdal, in their authoritative study, Palestinians: The Making of a People, published by Harvard University Press, observe that Peters’s book is “based on materials out of context, and on distorted evidence,” and, citing my own conclusion that the book “is the most spectacular fraud ever published on the Arab-Israeli conflict,” report that “similar evaluations were expressed by notable historians” in Israel and Europe.

Dershowitz states that he uses only a “few sources” cited in the Peters hoax. In fact, fully 22 of the 52 endnotes in chapters 1 and 2 are lifted straight from her without any form of attribution. In his defense, Dershowitz claims that no foul play is involved because he checked Peters’s original sources before citing them, a laughable argument were an undergraduate to make it before a plagiarism committee. Dershowitz focuses on a lengthy citation from Mark Twain to argue this point. Yet, although Dershowitz reproduces Peters’s page references to Twain’s book in his own endnote, the relevant quotes do not appear on these pages in the edition of Twain’s book that Dershowitz cites. Furthermore, Dershowitz cites two paragraphs from Twain as continuous text, just as Peters cites them as continuous text, but in Twain’s book the two paragraphs are separated by 87 pages. It would be impossible for anyone who checked the original source to make this error.

[papau]

1. Boston Globe reviewed and said Alan Dershowitz did no wrong

He used corect quotes and attributed them correctly. That the first time he became aware of the quotes was in the end notes of Peters book does not require a reference to Peters work when he is not quoting her original work - and is only quoting the original quotes.

Give it up.

[Lithos]

2. Dupe

See:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=124&topic_id=17670