Case for Israel » (Reprint)

Alan Dershowitz, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, is one of the country’s foremost appellate lawyers and a distinguished defender of individual liberties. He appears frequently on television and has contributed articles to the New York Times and other newspapers and magazines. His many books include the #1 New York Times bestseller Chutzpah and The Vanishing American Jew.

Even as Israel boldly offers statehood to Palestinians in exchange for an enduring peace, many academics and activists–primarily but not exclusively from the hard left–have gone on the attack against Israel, deriding it as an imperialist power bent on oppressing the Palestinians. On prominent campuses across the United States and throughout the world, petitions circulate asking universities to divest holdings in Israel and to boycott Israeli Jews without regard to their individual views. Virulent opponents of Israel have accused that democracy of unspeakable human rights abuses, while many who believe otherwise remain silent. Now, in this impassioned and closely argued book, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz sets the record straight and explains why Israel, while not perfect, is in fact the sole outpost of liberty and democracy in the Middle East–a country that has earned the right to exist within secure boundaries and defend itself.

Drawing on scrupulous, unbiased research and his peerless skills as an advocate, Dershowitz conclusively refutes thirty-two separate slurs, slanders, and misrepresentations that have been hurled at Israel in recent years, including:

• Israel is a colonial, imperialist state
• The Jews have always rejected the two-state solution
• The Jews have exploited the Holocaust
• Israel’s victimization of the Palestinians has been the primary cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict
• Israel created the Arab refugee problem
• Israel tortures Palestinians
• Israel’s targeted assassinations of terrorist leaders are unlawful
• Israel is the "prime" human rights violator in the world
• Universities should divest from Israel and boycott Israeli scholars

In demolishing these charges, Dershowitz documents how Israel was founded with the blessing of the United Nations–and how it was Arabs, not Israelis, who initiated the

cycle of violence that still persists today. He proves that the division of Palestine between Israel and the Palestinians has long been accepted by Israel and rejected by most Arabs. He demonstrates why Israeli actions in the West Bank and Gaza are not motivated by territorial ambitions, but by the very real sense that Israel is under attack. And he shows how critics of Israel gloss over the terrorism, human rights abuses, and antidemocratic ideologies of other regimes in the region, substituting bigotry and veiled anti-Semitism for objective analysis. Well reasoned, hard-hitting, and provocative, The Case for Israel is essential reading for anyone who cares about Israel and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

The Washington Post

In The Case for Israel, Dershowitz offers a lively, hotly argued broadside against Israel's increasingly venomous critics, although Israel's friends may well wonder if the Jewish state should feel relieved or uneasy about joining the ranks of such earlier Dershowitz causes as Claus von Bulow and Leona Helmsley. Each chapter features an allegation from Israel's critics, especially such nemeses as Noam Chomsky and Edward Said (who died in September), followed by a barbed refutation. — Warren Bass