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Sir, –
Neve Gordon’s “Anti-Israeli? You just don’t like what I say” (November 8) was a cut-and-paste of an earlier letter he wrote to the National Catholic Reporter. It was full of lies, as was his op-ed.
Instead of answering why he seeks to stifle the free speech of Prof. Steven Plaut, Gordon turns around again – as he always does – and says I tried to stifle Norman Finkelstein’s free speech. I didn’t, and, as I
explained in my original op-ed, I’ve released all the letters I wrote to the University of California Press. I even quoted myself from them: “I have no interest in censoring or suppressing Finkelstein’s freedom of expression.”
Gordon again parrots Finkelstein’s claim that I plagiarized The Case for Israel. The origins of the slander: Finkelstein first said I “almost certainly didn’t write” The Case for Israel “and perhaps didn’t even read it prior to publication.”
He even suggested all my books were written for me by the Israeli Mossad: “[1]t’s sort of like a Hallmark line for Nazis… [T]hey churn them out so fast that he has now reached a point where he doesn’t even read them.”
When I produced my handwritten manuscript as proof, Finkelstein changed his story, claiming that I had plagiarized the book. I immediately demanded that Harvard conduct an independent investigation, and they cleared me of all wrongdoing, as have numbers of distinguished scholars, a
former president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, The New York Times and the head legal librarian at the Harvard Law School.
Yet Finkelstein and Gordon persist in making this charge – part of a long pattern of leveling personal attacks against those who support Israel or justice for Holocaust survivors, rather than engaging them on the merits of their views.
ALAN DERSHOWITZ
Cambridge, Massachusetts
…loose with free speech?
Sir, –
Watching Neve Gordon attack Prof. Alan Dershowitz’s academic record reminded me of the fable about the flea calling the elephant “shorty.”
While challenging Dershowitz’s record, Gordon (whose degree is from Notre Dame University) accuses the Harvard don of playing fast and loose with the facts, while Gordon denies Dershowitz’s claim that he often compares Israel to Nazi Germany. So who is playing fast and loose here?
Read, on: weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/664/op41.htm – Gordon comparing Israel’s behavior to that of Nazi Germany on Kristallnacht, in a piece that appeared in Al-Ahram and a dozen other anti-Semitic journals; and – on www.counterpunch.org/gordon0602.html – Gordon comparing Israeli behavior
to Adolf Eichmann’s. Gordon regularly compares Israel’s defense fence to the walls built by Nazi Germany around concentration camps and ghettos.
The media has already widely compared Gordon’s malicious misuse of the courts to attempt to suppress the freedom of speech of his critics to the tactics adopted by David Irving against Deborah Lipstadt.
While whining about his “reputation,” Gordon led a venomous and dishonest campaign of vilification against Israeli Gen. Aviv Kochavi for “war crimes,” which resulted in attempts to prosecute Kochavi overseas under phony charges.
Meanwhile Gordon continues to teach courses at Ben-Gurion University that consist of little more than anti-Israel political indoctrination, such as his notorious “Critical Aspects of the Occupation,” in which no Zionist opinion dare be expressed.
That says volumes about the academic standards of the political science department at BGU.
PROF. STEVEN PLAUT
University of Haifa
Haifa
