De Paul on Shit-List

Illustration: Cover page of one of Norm Finkelstein’s latest books (one which Derschowitz tried to get Arnold Schwartzenegger to suppress. The book is brilliant and exposes Derschowitz’s absurdities and lies.

This is a fairly long issue – just advance notice. I was about to stop altogether, but the wise words of several of you leaves me somewhat abashed. After all, we all know that, realistically, there is no hope for our species and that life itself is doomed to end on this planet. But then, after all, as the bumper-sticker from the 60s said ‘REALITY IS A CRUTCH’. Furthermore, life is full of surprises.

For one thing, Paris Hilton said she couldn’t understand the attention given her by the media as she was being escorted back to court and stated that the media should focus on more important things like, for example, the fate of those in our army who are being killed. At the same time, she said she found God (this happened in the mental ward of a Los Angeles prison hospital).

News was released that the military is working on a “gay bomb.” That’s right, it would be loaded with hormones that could be dropped on the enemy and have them drop their guns and start screwing one another. Sure beats trying to get Castro’s beard to fall off, once a part of a CIA endeavor.

One the articles, De Paul University’s President said that one must not indulge in ad hominum attacks. This was a result of complaints by the dirty, dyspeptic, driveling, duplicitous, double-dealing, devious, disgusting, and disappointing Derschowitz. The chicken shit President caved in, shivering in fear. All that is discussed below, however.

If my sources are correct, students are protesting with a sit-in or teach-in. The faculty is going to take a vote of no-confidence in the President of De Paul. The President was caught between the forces of external pressure and academic freedom. He decided academic freedom is not that important.

Three articles follow. The first describes what happened at DePaul and then offers an extensive summary of Israeli actions. The second is a newspaper story about the case, showing that even a paper owned by Rupert Murdock has its integrity. The final one is from the world of academia, discussing the process of tenure in his case and others.

ZNet | Repression

DePaul Genuflects to Dershowitz

by Howard Friel; June 12, 2007

Norman Finkelstein was denied tenure at DePaul University on

June 8, 2007, despite votes in favor of tenure by the school’s

Political Science Department and a college-level personnel

committee. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education,

tenure was opposed by the dean of the College of Liberal Arts

and Sciences, the University Board on Promotion and Tenure, and

the university president, Rev. Dennis Holtschneider, the

ultimate decision-maker in the case, who reportedly told the

Chronicle that he found “no compelling reasons to overturn” the

tenure board’s recommendation.[1] <#_edn1>

In addition, Holtschneider reportedly told the Chronicle that he “decried the outside interest the case had generated” and stated for the record: “This attention was unwelcome and inappropriate and had no impact on either the process or the outcome of this case.”[2] <#_edn2> While the outside interference was both inappropriate and probably unprecedented, due on both counts to the prolifically public opposition to Finkelstein’s tenure by Harvard Law School’s Alan Dershowitz, it seems implausible that Dershowitz’s campaign had no impact at DePaul on the final decision to deny tenure to Finkelstein.

Because few assistant professors with books published by at

least three major publishers (in this case the University of

California, W.W. Norton, and Verso) are denied tenure, and

because even fewer with such books, a vote of support from their

department, and glowing student evaluations, are denied tenure,

it is difficult to imagine that anything other than outside

interference, almost all of it from Dershowitz, led to the

denial of Finkelstein’s tenure at DePaul.

Dershowitz’s intereference in the case was clearly extensive.

According to the Chronicle, “Mr. Dershowitz sent the DePaul law

school faculty and members of the political-science department

what he described, in a letter dated October 3 [2006], as a

‘dossier of Norman Finkelstein’s most egregious academic sins,

and especially his outright lies, misquotations, and

distortions.’” Dershowitz told the Chronicle prior to the tenure

decision: “It would be a disgrace to DePaul University if they

were to grant tenure. It would make them the laughing stock of

American universities.”[3] <#_edn3> In a Wall Street Journal

article titled, “Finkelstein’s Bigotry,” Dershowitz wrote about

the vote by Finkelstein’s department: “Mr. Finkelstein’s radical

colleagues voted for tenure, having cooked the books by seeking

outside evaluations from two of his ideological soulmates.”[4]

<#_edn4> In the New Republic, Dershowitz called Finkelstein (who

is Jewish) an “anti-Semite.”[5] <#_edn5> And a few weeks before

the tenure announcement was due, Dershowitz asked in print:

“Will [Finkelstein’s] bigotry receive the imprimatur of the

largest Catholic university in America?”[6] <#_edn6>

Anyone with even minimal awareness of the politics of

criticizing Israel in the United States understands the implied

threats against DePaul that such statements from Dershowitz

embodied. Clearly, Dershowitz sought to leverage Catholic

vulnerability about the Holocaust, given the “neutrality” of

Pope Pius XII in the midst of the genocide of European Jews, and

Finkelstein’s scholarship on the Holocaust, which argues that

it’s exploited by Israel to justify its otherwise illegal

occupation of Palestinian territory. Or perhaps President

Holtschneider happened to see the photograph of Pope Benedict

XVI placed next to one of David Duke on the homepage of the

Anti-Defamation League in January of this year—an apparent

co-conspirator (with the UN’s Kofi Annan) against Israel—and

imagined his own picture there pursuant to a grant of tenure to

Finkelstein. Or maybe he sought not to expose himself and his

university to the kind of Dershowitzian slander that Finkelstein

was subjected to, and which Holtschneider witnessed without a

public word to Dershowitz that his interference in the case was

improper and unacceptable.

Furthermore, by withholding tenure from Finkelstein while also

unconvincingly denying the public context of that decision,

Holtschneider sold-out long-standing Catholic “Just War”

doctrine to Dershowitz, which features the protection of the

rights of civilians in armed conflict.[7] <#_edn7> While

Dershowitz is in the vanguard, with the American Jewish

Congress, of a major effort to modify international humanitarian

law to further minimize the rights of civilians with the goal of

“unshackling” the United States and Israel in their various

military campaigns,[8] <#_edn8> Finkelstein supports

international humanitarian law and consistently applies it in

his scholarship, including to the Israeli occupation of

Palestinian territory.[9] <#_edn9> By, in effect, choosing

Dershowitz over Finkelstein, DePaul betrayed bedrock Catholic

principles pertaining to the protection of civilians in armed

conflict, and helped boost Dershowitz’s Medieval-dungeon views

about international humanitarian law and human rights. This is

easy to illustrate in the context of Dershowitz’s support of the

Israeli bombing of Lebanon in summer 2006.[10] <#_edn10>

On July 12, 2006, Hezbollah militants raided northern Israel

and, without provocation, killed three Israeli soldiers and

captured two. This attack was unjustified and a clear violation

of Israel’s territorial sovereignty; however, Israel’s survival

was obviously not endangered by the Hezbollah raid. Yet it

responded with extensive airstrikes and shelling inside Lebanon

that indiscriminately targeted civilians and civilian objects

(homes, bridges, hospitals, grocery stores, gas stations) and

far exceeded any legitimate requirement of self-defense.

The Hezbollah raid into northern Israel occurred in the morning

in Israel on July 12. News outlets throughout the day reported

that Israel had bombed Lebanese civilians, villages, roads,

bridges, and Hezbollah positions, all preceding the firing of

rockets by Hezbollah into Israel the next morning.[11] <#_edn11>

Referring to the overnight bombing of Lebanon on July 12, the

Associated Press reported: “[Israeli] Air Force Gen. Amir Eshel

said the [bombing] campaign was likely Israel’s largest ever in

Lebanon ‘if you measure it in number of targets hit in one

night, the complexity of the strikes.’”[12] <#_edn12>

In response to these events Hezbollah fired its first rockets

into Israel, according to a /Ha’aretz/ report: “The [Hezbollah]

rocket fire began in the early morning hours of Thursday [July

13], after Israel Air Force jets struck targets across Lebanon

following cross-border attacks by Hezbollah….”[13] <#_edn13>

The Israeli airstrikes inside Lebanon in response to the

Hezbollah raid violated international law on at least four

counts: (a) they violated Article 2(4) of the UN Charter—the

cardinal rule of international law—which prohibits the threat

and use of force by states without Security Council

authorization (the only exception being a use of force in

“self-defense” in response to an “armed attack,” when, in the

generally accepted formulation by Daniel Webster, “the necessity

for action” is “instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of

means, and no moment for deliberation),”[14] <#_edn14> (b)

Israel’s military reprisals were illegal, given the broad

prohibition of the use of force in international affairs,

including as retaliation in response to an armed provocation,

© the massively disproportionate scale of the Israeli

reprisals, relative to any military necessity and the original

Hezbollah provocation, violated international humanitarian law

(“laws of war”), and (d) Israel’s failure to distinguish between

civilian and military targets in its air strikes and artillery

fire also violated international humanitarian law.

In addition, on July 12, Israel’s highest political and military

leaders indicated that they would punish “Lebanon” militarily

for the Hezbollah raid. For example, on July 12, /Ha’aretz/

reported that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert “held the Lebanese

government responsible for the [Hezbollah] attack, vowing that

the Israeli response ‘will be restrained, but very, very, very

painful.’ ” The same article reported that “senior Israel

Defense Forces officers said Wednesday [July 12] that ‘if the

abducted soldiers are not returned we’ll turn Lebanon’s clock

back 20 years.’ ”[15] <#_edn15> It is clear from these

statements and others issued at the time, that the intent of

Israel’s highest political and military leaders was to punish

“Lebanon,” that is, its people and infrastructure, in response

to the Hezbollah raid on July 12.

Also, in the immediate wake of Israel’s July 31 bombing of a

three-story house in Qana in southern Lebanon (which killed 28

Lebanese civilians, including 16 children, and left 13

missing), the/ New York Times/ published arguably the single

most important fact in its coverage of the 2006 Lebanon

conflict. In the last paragraphs of a front-page story about the

Israeli airstrikes on Qana of the previous day, the Times

reported that Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz had “relieved

the [Israeli] army of restrictions on harming civilian

population [/sic/] that lives alongside Hezbollah

operatives.”[16] <#_edn16>

Indeed, on July 16, just four days after Israel initiated its

armed reprisals against Lebanon, IsraelNN.com reported that

Israeli “Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Sunday [July 16] that

IDF troops have been given the go-ahead to set aside routine

regulations not to harm civilians, according to Army Radio.

Peretz said that civilians in south Lebanon who assist Hizbullah

terrorists may also be targeted.”[17] <#_edn17> In its August 1

report, the /Times/ referred to a column by the prominent

Israeli commentator, Nahum Barnea, who wrote the following in

the Israeli newspaper /Yediot Ahronot/:

The most pressing question I have is: Did the government, the

army, the political echelon and the media not take to blind

cheerleading, a move that served only the enemy? The question

came up when I heard Defense Minister Amir Peretz explain

proudly that he had removed limits on the IDF regulating warfare

in areas where civilians live alongside Hizbullah soldiers. I

can understand accidentally hurting civilians while fighting a

war. But explicit instructions about the civilian population in

south Lebanon and the Shiite neighborhoods in Beirut is a rash,

fool-hardy action that invited disaster. We saw the results of

that policy yesterday, in the bodies of women and children being

carried out of the rubble in Kana.[18] <#_edn18>

A few days later, the Jewish-American newspaper, the /Forward,/

published an article about the instructions that Israel Defense

Minister Peretz had issued.

As Jerusalem defends itself against worldwide condemnation over

a deadly air strike that killed dozens of Lebanese children,

current and former Israeli officials acknowledge that the

Israeli military has loosened the restriction on targeting

militants in populated areas.

After an Israeli air force raid Sunday on the Lebanese village of Qana left dozens of civilians dead, many of them children, human rights groups accused Israel of committing a “war crime.”

Many critics—including Israeli ones—are questioning the

military’s policy of bombing in densely populated Lebanese

areas. As of earlier this week, more than 550 civilians had been

killed in Lebanon during the current conflict, with Lebanese

officials claiming that the civilian death toll has exceeded

750. Following the Qana deaths, Israeli authors and

intellectuals signed a petition calling for an immediate

cease-fire and protesting the killing of civilians. The

Association for Civil Rights in Israel called for an official

commission of inquiry to investigate the military’s bombing

policies in Lebanon.[19] <#_edn19>

The instructions by Israel’s defense minister to disregard

well-known rules in international law that protect civilians in

armed conflict, in addition to statements from Israel’s top

leaders that it would punish “Lebanon” for the Hezbollah raid on

July 12, clearly indicate that Israel, from the beginning,

rejected the civilian protections embodied in international

humanitarian law throughout its bombing campaign in Lebanon.

Two days after the July 31 Israeli bombing of the three-story

house in Qana, Human Rights Watch issued a report, which stated:

The Israeli government initially claimed that the [Israeli]

military targeted the house [in Qana] because Hezbollah fighters

had fired rockets from the area. Human Rights Watch researchers

who visited Qana on July 31, the day after the attack, did not

find any destroyed military equipment in or near the home.

Similarly, none of the dozens of international journalists,

rescue workers and international observers who visited Qana on

July 30 and 31 reported seeing any evidence of Hezbollah

military presence in or around the home. Rescue workers

recovered no bodies of apparent Hezbollah fighters from inside

or near the building. The IDF subsequently changed its story,

with one of Israel’s top military correspondents reporting on

August 1 that, “It now appears that the military had no

information on rockets launched from the site of the building,

or the presence of Hezbollah men at the time.”[20] <#_edn20>

One day later, on August 3, Human Rights Watch issued a major

report on the Lebanon war. Not only did HRW state that Hezbollah

had no involvement in any of the Israeli attacks on Lebanese

civilians documented in the report, but the nature of numerous

attacks by Israeli war planes and helicopters clearly indicated

that Lebanese civilians were targeted by Israel. The HRW report

was very clear on these counts, beginning with the first page of

the executive summary:

The Israeli government claims that it targets only Hezbollah,

and that fighters from the group are using civilians as human

shields, thereby placing them at risk. Human Rights Watch found

no cases in which Hezbollah deliberately used civilians as

shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack. Hezbollah

occasionally did store weapons in or near civilian homes and

fighters placed rocket launchers within populated areas or near

U.N. observers, which are serious violations of the laws of war

because they violate the duty to take all feasible precautions

to avoid civilian casualties. However, those cases do not

justify the IDF’s extensive use of indiscriminate force which

has cost so many civilian lives. In none of the cases of

civilian deaths documented in this report is there evidence to

suggest that Hezbollah forces or weapons were in or near the

area that the IDF targeted during or just prior to the

attack.[21] <#_edn21>

HRW’s more extended findings in the August 3 report were

presented as follows:

The [HRW] report breaks civilian deaths into two categories:

attacks on civilian homes and attacks on civilian vehicles. In

both categories, victims and witnesses interviewed independently

and repeatedly said that neither Hezbollah fighters nor

Hezbollah weapons were present in the area during or just before

the Israeli attack took place. While some individuals, out of

fear or sympathy, may have been unwilling to speak about

Hezbollah’s military activity, others were quite open about it.

In totality, the consistency, detail, and credibility of

testimony from a broad array of witnesses who did not speak to

each other leave no doubt about the validity of the patterns

described in this report. In many cases, witness testimony was

corroborated by reports from international journalists and aid

workers. During site visits conducted in Qana, Srifa, and Tyre

[in southern Lebanon], Human Rights Watch saw no evidence that

there had been Hezbollah military activity around the areas

targeted by the IDF during or just prior to the attack: no spent

ammunition, abandoned weapons or military equipment, trenches,

or dead or wounded fighters. Moreover, even if Hezbollah had

been in a populated area at the time of an attack, Israel would

still be legally obliged to take all feasible precautions to

avoid or minimize civilian casualties resulting from its

targeting of military objects or personnel.[22] <#_edn22>

HRW’s report was corroborated three weeks later by a report by

Amnesty International, issued on August 23, which stated:

During more than four weeks of ground and aerial bombardment of

Lebanon by the Israeli armed forces, the country’s

infrastructure suffered destruction on a catastrophic scale.

Israeli forces pounded buildings into the ground, reducing

entire neighbourhoods to rubble and turning villages and towns

into ghost towns, as their inhabitants fled the bombardments.

Main roads, bridges and petrol stations were blown to bits.

Entire families were killed in air strikes on their homes or in

their vehicles while fleeing the aerial assaults on their

villages. Scores lay buried beneath the rubble of their houses

for weeks, as the Red Cross and other rescue workers were

prevented from accessing the areas by continuing Israeli

strikes. The hundreds of thousands of Lebanese who fled the

bombardment now face the danger of unexploded munitions as they

head home.

The Israeli Air Force launched more than 7,000 air attacks on about 7,000 targets in Lebanon between 12 July and 14 August, while the Navy conducted an additional 2,500 bombardments. The attacks, though widespread, particularly concentrated on certain areas. In addition to the human toll—an estimated 1,183 fatalities, about one third of whom have been children, 4,054 people injured and 970,000 Lebanese people displaced—the civilian infrastructure was severely damaged. The Lebanese government estimates that 31 “vital points” (such as airports, ports, water and sewage treatment plants, electrical facilities) have been completely or partially destroyed, as have around 80 bridges and 94 roads. More than 25 fuel stations and around 900 commercial enterprises were hit. The number of residential properties, offices and shops completely destroyed exceeds 30,000. Two government hospitals—in Bint Jbeil and in Meis al-Jebel—were completely destroyed in Israeli attacks and three others were seriously damaged.

One paragraph later, the Amnesty report continued:

Amnesty International delegates in south Lebanon reported that

in village after village the pattern was similar: the streets,

especially main streets, were scarred with artillery craters

along their length. In some cases cluster bomb impacts were

identified. Houses were singled out for precision-guided missile

attack and were destroyed, totally or partially, as a result.

Business premises such as supermarkets or food stores and auto

service stations and petrol stations were targeted, often with

precision-guided munitions and artillery that started fires and

destroyed their contents. With the electricity cut off and food

and other supplies not coming into the villages, the destruction

of supermarkets and petrol stations played a crucial role in

forcing local residents to leave. The lack of fuel also stopped

residents from getting water, as water pumps require electricity

or fuel-fed generators.

Israeli government spokespeople have insisted that they were targeting Hizbullah positions and support facilities, and that damage to civilian infrastructure was incidental or resulted from Hizbullah using the civilian population as “human shields”.

However, the pattern and scope of the attacks, as well as the

number of civilian casualties and the amount of damage

sustained, makes the justification ring hollow. The evidence

strongly suggests that the extensive destruction of public

works, power systems, civilian homes and industry was deliberate

and an integral part of the military strategy, rather than

“collateral damage”.[23] <#_edn23>

The fact that such destruction was “deliberate,” as Amnesty

International reported, and “indiscriminate,” as Human Rights

Watch reported, is without question, given the documentation in

both reports. Israel’s highest political and military officials

at the time confirmed this intent in their statements, as did

the instructions by Israeli Defense Minister Peretz to the IDF

to disregard the legal protections of civilians. Yet, Dershowitz

supported Israel’s bombardment of Lebanese civilians and

infrastructure, despite its horrific effects, as reported in

detail by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International in their

reports.

In addition, neither organization found evidence of Hezbollah

fighters implicated in Israel’s numerous aerial attacks on

Lebanese civilians fleeing southern Lebanon. In its August 3

report, HRW found that “on a daily basis Israeli warplanes and

helicopters struck civilians in cars who were trying to flee

[southern Lebanon], many with white flags out the windows, a

widely accepted sign of civilian status.” HRW also reported that

“Israel repeatedly attacked both individual vehicles and entire

convoys of civilians who heeded the Israeli warnings to abandon

their villages.”[24] <#_edn24>

Instead of censuring the Israeli government for these attacks,

Alan Dershowitz blamed Lebanon’s civilians. In commentary dated

August 7—that is, three days after the August 3 HRW report was

issued—and titled “Lebanon Is Not a Victim,” Dershowitz refers

to the Lebanese civilians killed by Israel as “civilians,” using

quotation marks as if to somehow indict the Lebanese men, women,

and children who were bombed and killed by Israel in their homes

and in their cars. Dershowitz also referred to Lebanese

civilians as “collaborators,” apparently because many voted for

or otherwise supported the Lebanese government current at the

time, which had nothing directly to do with the Hezbollah raid

of July 12. He then agued that these “collaborators”—that is,

Lebanese civilians—were Israel’s legitimate military targets.

And, according to Dershowitz, the hundreds of Lebanese children

who were killed and wounded were victims of their parents, who,

as he argued, used them as human shields in their own bedrooms

and kitchens:

It is virtually impossible to distinguish the Hezbollah dead

from the truly civilian dead, just as it is virtually impossible

to distinguish the Hezbollah living from the civilian living,

especially in the south. The “civilian” death figures reported

by Lebanese authorities include large numbers of Hezbollah

fighters, collaborators, facilitators and active supporters.

They also include civilians who were warned to leave, but chose

to remain, sometimes with their children, to serve as human

shields. The deaths of these “civilians” are the responsibility

of Hezbollah and the Lebanese government, which has done very

little to protect its civilians.

Lebanon has chosen sides—not all Lebanese, but the democratically chosen Lebanese government. When a nation chooses sides in a war, especially when it chooses the side of terrorism, its civilians pay a price for that choice. This has been true of every war.

We must stop viewing Lebanon as a victim and begin to see it as

a collaborator with terrorism. . . . People make choices and

they bear the consequences of choosing to collaborate with

terrorism. Lebanon has chosen the wrong side and its citizens

are paying the price.[25] <#_edn25>

Dershowitz also wrote, as if without humanity, in light of the

slaughter and destruction that Israel had already brought to

Lebanon by this time (August 7), including the killing of

literally hundreds of children with its daily airstrikes and

artillery:

Lebanon has now declared war on Israel and its citizens are

bearing the consequences. Lebanon is no more a victim of

Hezbollah than Austria was a victim of Nazism. In fact a higher

percentage of Lebanese—more than 80%—say they support Hezbollah.

The figures were nearly as high before the recent civilian deaths.

This is considerably higher than the number of Austrians who supported Hitler when the Nazis marched into Austria in 1938. Austria too claimed it was a victim, but no serious person today believes such self-serving historical revisionism. Austria was not “Hitler’s first victim.” It was Hitler’s most sympathetic collaborator.

So too with Lebanon, whose president has praised Hezbollah,

whose army is helping Hezbollah, and many of whose “civilians”

are collaborating with Hezbollah.[26] <#_edn26>

After blaming Lebanese civilians for their own deaths and

injuries from Israeli airstrikes, Dershowitz then sought to

punish Human Rights Watch for its August 3 report. About that

report, Dershowitz wrote:

“Who will guard the guardians?” asked Roman satirist Juvenal.

Now we must ask, who is watching Human Rights Watch, one of the

world’s best-financed and most influential human rights

organizations? It turns out that they cook the books about

facts, cheat on interviews, and put out pre-determined

conclusions that are driven more by their ideology than by evidence.

These are serious accusations, and they are demonstrably true.

Consider the highly publicized “conclusion” reached by Human Rights Watch about the recent war in Lebanon between Hezbollah and Israel. This is their conclusion, allegedly reached after extensive “investigations” on the ground:

“Human Rights Watch found no cases in which Hezbollah deliberately used civilians as shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack.”

After investigating a handful of cases, Human Rights Watch found that in “none of the cases of civilian deaths documented in this report [Qana, Srifa, Tyre, and southern Beirut] is there evidence to suggest that Hezbollah forces or weapons were in or near the area that the IDF targeted during or just prior to the attack.”

No cases! None! Not one!

Anyone who watched even a smattering of TV during the war saw with their own eyes direct evidence of rockets being launched from civilian areas. But not Human Rights Watch. “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?” That’s not Chico Marx. It’s Human Rights Watch. Their lying eyes belonged to the pro-Hezbollah witnesses its investigators chose to interview—and claimed to believe. But their mendacious pens belonged to Kenneth Roth, HRW’s Executive Director, and his minions in New York, who know how to be skeptical when it serves their interests not to believe certain witnesses. How could an organization, which claims to be objective, have been so demonstrably wrong about so central a point in so important a war? Could it have been an honest mistake? I don’t think so. Despite its boast that “Human Rights Watch has interviewed victims and witnesses of attacks in one-on-one settings, conducted on-site inspections . . . and collected information for hospitals, humanitarian groups, and government agencies,” it didn’t find /one instance /in which Hezbollah failed to segregate its fighters from civilians.

Nor apparently did HRW even ask the Israelis for proof of its

claim that Hezbollah rockets were being fired from behind

civilians, and that Hezbollah fighters were hiding among

civilians. Its investigators interviewed Arab “eye witnesses”

and monitored “information from public sources including the

Israeli government statements.” But it conducted no interviews

with Israeli officials or witnesses. It also apparently ignored

credible news sources, such as /The New York Times/ and /The New

Yorker/.[27] <#_edn27>

This is what Dershowitz wrote, but it does not accurately

reflect what the HRW report actually said. With respect to HRW’s

“conclusion,” quoted by Dershowitz as follows—“Human Rights

Watch found no cases in which Hezbollah deliberately used

civilians as shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF

attack”—the very next sentence in the HRW report, which

Dershowitz omitted, read:

Hezbollah occasionally did store weapons in or near civilian

homes and fighters placed rocket launchers within populated

areas or near U.N. observers, which are serious violations of

the laws of war because they violate the duty to take all

feasible precautions to avoid civilian casualties.[28] <#_edn28>

Thus, it was not the case that HRW reported /no/ instances in

which Hezbollah may have used civilians or civilian objects to

store weapons or place rocket launchers; rather, HRW reported

that no such instances were implicated in the Israeli attacks on

Lebanese civilians that were documented in the August 3 report.

And this is obvious upon reading the report.

In addition, HRW investigated dozens of cases—not “a handful of

cases,” as Dershowitz wrote—in which it found no evidence of

Hezbollah involvement at the time of or prior to Israeli attacks

on the civilian targets. By inaccurately citing only “a handful

of cases,” Dershowitz conveys a false impression that HRW’s

finding of no Hezbollah involvement in Israeli attacks is less

significant than it actually was.

Dershowitz’s reproduction of a brief excerpt of what he

described as the report’s “conclusion” (see above) is also of

interest: he omitted the preceding two sentences in the report,

which were highly incriminating of Israel’s conduct, and which

were far more suitable to excerpt as representative of the

report’s conclusion:

Since the start of the conflict, Israeli forces have

consistently launched artillery and air attacks with limited or

dubious military gain but excessive cost. In dozens of attacks,

Israeli forces struck an area with no apparent military target.

In some cases, the timing and intensity of the attack, the

absence of a military target, as well as return strikes on

rescuers, suggest that Israeli forces deliberately targeted

civilians.[29] <#_edn29>

While accusing HRW of disingenuously failing to cite evidence of

Hezbollah involvement in Israel’s attacks on Lebanese civilians,

Dershowitz supplied his own evidence to make a case for their

involvement. For example, he wrote that HRW “ignored” a /New

York Times/ story about Hezbollah using civilian shields in

southern Lebanon. Here is how Dershowitz began his excerpt from

the /Times/ report that he accused HRW of ignoring:

“Hezbollah came to Ain Ebel to shoot its rockets,” said Fayad

Hanna Amar, a young Christian man, referring to his village.

“They are shooting from between our houses.”[30] <#_edn30>

Rather than ignore the /Times/ report, as Dershowitz charged,

Human Rights Watch in fact quoted these same words while citing

the same report from the /New York Times/:

Christian villagers fleeing the village of ‘Ain Ebel have also

complained about Hezbollah tactics that placed them at risk,

telling the /New York// Times/ that “Hezbollah came to [our

village] to shoot its rockets. . . . They are shooting from

between our houses.”[31] <#_edn31>

Dershowitz also cited eight other reports from other news

organizations that he claimed demonstrated the use of civilian

shields by Hezbollah; he produced these articles to demonstrate

that Human Rights Watch had “cooked the books” by ignoring them.

Here are the titles, sources, and dates of four of the eight

reports Dershowitz cited:

* “The Battle for Lebanon,” /New Yorker/, August 8, 2006;

* “Diplomacy Under Fire,” /MacLeans/, August 7, 2006;

* “Hezbollah’s Deadly Hold on Heartland,” /National Post/, August 5, 2006;

* “Laying Out the Qana Calculation: Disarming Hezbollah Prevents More Crises,” /Chicago// Tribune/, August 2, 2006.

The obvious problem with Dershowitz citing these four reports,

while arguing that HRW deliberately ignored them, is that all

four reports were published either after or nearly simultaneous

to the August 3 HRW report. Once again, one must ponder the

methodology and motivation applied by Dershowitz in his attacks

on Human Rights Watch—in this case accusing it of neglecting to

cite articles in its August 3 report that were published after

August 3.

The four remaining reports cited by Dershowitz also provided no

evidence that Hezbollah used Lebanese civilians or civilian

homes or vehicles as shields prior to or during any of the

Israeli attacks on civilians in southern Lebanon documented in

the HRW report. Looking at these four reports one report at a

time, here is the entire excerpt that Dershowitz uses from one

of them:

Days after fighting broke out between Israel and Hezbollah on

July 12, [Samira] Abbas said Hezbollah fighters went

door-to-door in Ain Ebel, asking everyone to give up their cell

phones. “They were worried about collaborators giving the

Israelis information,” she said.

While she was there, Abbas said, she heard from relatives that her house in Bint Jbeil had been destroyed. She said Hezbollah fighters had gathered in citrus groves about 500 yards from her home.—Mohamad Bazzi, “Mideast Crisis: Farewell to a Soldier;

Reporting From Lebanon; Running Out of Places to Run,”

/Newsday/, July 28, 2006.[32] <#_edn32>

Gathering in a citrus grove 500 yards from a civilian home that

had been destroyed by an Israeli airstrike hardly constitutes

Hezbollah culpability for the Israeli destruction of the house.

Dershowitz provided no additional information or excerpts from

this report.[33] <#_edn33>

This leaves three reports cited by Dershowitz. One of these

reports—“Revealed: How Hezbollah Puts the Innocent at Risk; They

Don’t Care,” /Sunday Mail/ (Australia), July 30, 2006—apparently

pertained to photographs of a single truck-mounted anti-aircraft

gun taken in “the east of Beirut.”[34] <#_edn34> While it may or

may not have been the case that Hezbollah used civilians as

shields in Beirut, the predominant geographic focus of Israeli

attacks on Lebanese civilians in HRW’s August 3 report was

southern Lebanon, which sustained most of the civilian

casualties. Thus, this report had little relevance to HRW’s

August 3 report. In addition, the placement of an anti-aircraft

gun in a neighborhood that is being bombed by Israeli aircraft

hardly constitutes an illegal or otherwise unethical placement

of a defensive weapon.

This leaves the final two reports cited by Dershowitz. One of

these reports was an ambiguous one-line excerpt in a July 28,

2006, communication from a UN post in Naqoura in southern

Lebanon. Here is the entirety of what Dershowitz excerpted from

that communication:

It was also reported that Hezbollah fired from the vicinity of

five UN positions at Alma Ash Shab, AtTiri, Bayt Yahoun,

Brashit, and Tbinin.—United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon

(UNIFIL), Naqoura, July 28, 2006 (Press Release)

Presumably, for Dershowitz this single sentence constitutes

evidence that Hezbollah used UN positions at these locations in

Lebanon as shields that would justify Israeli attacks on those

positions. However, the four immediately preceding sentences in

the Naqoura communication, which Dershowitz omitted, read as

follows:

There were two direct impacts on UNIFIL positions from the

Israeli side in the past 24 hours. Eight artillery and mortar

rounds impacted inside an Indian battalion position in the area

of Hula, causing extensive material damage, but no casualties.

One artillery round impacted the parameter wall of the UNIFIL

headquarters in Naqoura. There were five other incidents of

firing close to UN positions from the Israeli side.[35] <#_edn35>

Thus, the same press release from which Dershowitz squeezed one

sentence to supposedly suggest that Hezbollah positions near

various UN posts might be implicated in Israeli attacks on such

posts in actuality suggests that Israel had attacked UN posts

without any reports of Hezbollah positions at the posts.

This leaves only one report left among the eight cited by

Dershowitz that were supposed to show that HRW had “cooked the

books” in its August 3 report. In this final instance, he cited

an article from the CanWest News Service in Canada that featured

an interpretation of an email written by Major Paeta Hess-von

Kruedener of Canada before he was killed by Israeli shelling at

the UN post near Khiam in southern Lebanon. Dershowitz excerpted

three paragraphs from the CanWest report which describe the

contents of the email, and two additional paragraphs with an

interpretation of that email by a retired Canadian general. The

email by Hess-von Kruedener was written on July 19. In it he

wrote: “What I can tell you is this. We have on a daily basis

had numerous occasions where our [UN] position has come under

direct or indirect fire from both (Israeli) artillery and aerial

bombing.” And: “The closest [Israeli] artillery has landed

within 2 meters (sic) of our position and the closest 1000 lb

aerial bomb has landed 100 meters (sic) from our patrol

base.”[36] <#_edn36> According to Dershowitz, the key evidence

of Hezbollah involvement—and thus a justification in his mind

for the Israeli attacks on the UN post—is this sentence in

Hess-von Kruedener’s email: “This has not been deliberate

targeting, but has rather been due to tactical necessity.”[37]

<#_edn37> CanWest then consulted Canadian Major-General Lewis

MacKenzie, who commented, as Dershowitz noted: “What that means

is, in plain English, ‘We’ve got Hezbollah fighters running

around in our positions, taking our positions here and then

using us for shields and then engaging the (Israeli Defense

Forces).’ ”[38] <#_edn38>

While it is possible that General MacKenzie’s interpretation is

accurate, there is no certainty that it is. One day after this

CanWest report was published on July 27, the /Toronto Star

/reported that MacKenzie had spoken “to a crowd of 8,000

supporters of Israel at a solidarity rally in Toronto two days

ago.”[39] <#_edn39> In addition, while the email by Hess-von

Kruedener was dated July 19, the UN post at Khiam was fatally

attacked by Israel on July 25, killing Hess-von Kruedener and

three other unarmed UN observers from Austria, Finland, and

China; assuming that MacKenzie’s interpretation of Hess-von

Kruedener’s email message was correct with respect to events on

July 19 or earlier, they were not necessarily applicable to

events on July 25. Furthermore, Dershowitz omitted an important

response to Hess-von Kruedener’s email that was printed in the

last three paragraphs of the article he cited:

A senior UN official, asked about the information contained in

Hess-von Kruedener’s e-mail concerning Hezbollah presence in the

vicinity of the Khiam base, denied the world body had been

caught in a contradiction.

“At the time [July 25], there had been no Hezbollah activity reported in the area,” he said. “So it was quite clear they [Israelis] were not going after other targets; that, for whatever reason, our position was being fired upon.

“Whether or not they thought they were going after something else, we don’t know. The fact was, we told them where we were.

They knew where we were. The position was clearly marked, and

they pounded the hell out of us.”[40] <#_edn40>

In its August 3 report, Human Rights Watch also reported that

the UN post was attacked by Israel on July 25 with “no Hezbollah

presence or firing near the U.N. position during the period of

the attack.” Finally, referring to the same incident, Reuters

reported on September 29 that “Israel used a precision-guided

bomb to launch a direct hit on four U.N. peacekeepers killed in

southern Lebanon last July, the United Nations said on Friday of

its probe into the incident.” According to Reuters, the

“U.N.-appointed board of inquiry could not affix blame because

Israel did not allow the access to operational or tactical level

commanders involved in the July 25 disaster at Khiam,” but the

UN did provide a senior official who briefed reporters, saying

that the Israeli munitions were “precision-guided and meant to

hit the targets they hit, which was the United Nations.”[41]

<#_edn41>

In summary, Dershowitz cited nine news articles as evidence—the

only so-called “evidence” that he produced—that Human Rights

Watch had “cooked the books” against Israel in its August 3

report. As it turned out, there was no such evidence in these

articles to support his charge. Nevertheless, Dershowitz

concluded: “Human Rights Watch no longer deserves the support of

real human rights advocates. Nor should its so-called reporting

be credited by objective news organizations.”[42] <#_edn42>

While seeking to further discredit the August 3 report by Human

Rights Watch, Dershowitz appeared to impugn HRW’s witnesses,

apparently on the grounds of their ethnicity or nationality,

since most HRW witnesses were Arab Lebanese nationals. This

apparently is why Dershowitz placed the words “eye witnesses” in

parentheses below:

[HRW’s] investigators interviewed Arab “eye witnesses” and

monitored “information from public sources including the Israeli

government statements.” But it conducted no interviews with

Israeli officials or witnesses.[43] <#_edn43>

In this passage Dershowitz asserted that HRW conducted no

interviews with Israeli officials or witnesses, yet, in its

August 3 report, HRW stated: “Human Rights Watch also conducted

research in Israel, inspecting the IDF’s use of weapons and

discussing the conduct of forces with IDF officials.”[44]

<#_edn44> This is the second instance—in addition to the /New

York Tim/es article that HRW supposedly did not cite—where

Dershowitz falsely accused HRW of ignoring sources that were in

fact cited in its report.

While continuing to impugn HRW’s methodology, Dershowitz wrote,

perhaps mistakenly, the word “for” instead of “from” in a key

sentence pertaining to that methodology. Here is what Dershowitz

reproduced as an excerpt from the HRW report, with his mistake

highlighted: “[HRW] collected information */for /*hospitals,

humanitarian groups, and government agencies.” However, the HRW

report in actuality stated that Human Rights Watch had

“collected information /from/ hospitals, humanitarian groups,

and government agencies.” Thus, according to the

Dershowitz-generated text, HRW’s sources for its report

consisted only of Arab “eye witnesses” (quotation marks added by

Dershowitz). In one way or another, he eliminated the /New York

Times/, Israeli officials, hospitals, humanitarian groups, and

government agencies from the list of sources used and cited by

HRW in its report.

Similarly, when Amnesty International issued its report on

August 23 documenting Israel’s destruction of Lebanon’s civilian

infrastructure, Dershowitz called the report “biased,” and wrote

that Amnesty was “in a race to the bottom” with Human Rights

Watch to see “which group can demonize Israel with the most

absurd legal arguments and most blatant factual misstatements.”

In a manner similar to his charge that Human Rights Watch had

“cooked the books” in its August 3 report, Dershowitz described

Amnesty as a “once-reputable organization” and asserted that it

was “sacrificing its own credibility” when it “misstates the law

and omits relevant facts” in its reports on Israel.[45]

<#_edn45> Like his attack on the August 3 HRW report,

Dershowitz’s assault on Amnesty’s August 23 report was designed

to discredit the report so that the press and public would

disregard it; instead, it highlighted Dershowitz’s own penchant

for (in his words) “misstating the law and omitting relevant

facts” when arguing on behalf of Israel’s illegal policies.

Finally, in the Wall Street Journal on July 19, 2006, that is,

one week into Israel’s military campaign against Lebanon,

Dershowitz wrote: “Israel must be allowed to finish the fight

that Hamas and Hezbollah started, even if that means civilian

casualties in Gaza and Lebanon. A democracy is entitled to

prefer the lives of its own innocents over the lives of the

civilians of an aggressor, especially if the latter group

contains many who are complicit in terrorism.”[46] <#_edn46>

Whatever rhetorical indiscretions that Norman Finkelstein may

have committed, which were cited by his dean as contrary to

“Vincentian personalism” as the basis for the dean’s

recommendation to deny tenure,[47] <#_edn47> Finkelstein has

never advocated the killing of one group of civilians over

another, and has deployed both his scholarship and public

rhetoric in a determined defense of international humanitarian

law. Thus, Finkelstein’s scholarship and public rhetoric, much

of it mischaracterized and misquoted by Dershowitz, is in

reality more closely aligned with root Catholic doctrine on

“just war” and the protection of civilians, it appears, than the

president, dean of humanities, and the members of the tenure

committee at DePaul, all of whom chose to align themselves

instead, at least in the public eye, with the Dershowitzian

rejection of international humanitarian law and its legal

protection of civilians in armed conflict.

In order to deconstruct Dershowitz’s serial misrepresentations,

one must painstakingly review them, which explains why he is

able to make one ludicrous charge after another about Norman

Finkelstein’s scholarship, and thus influence the public, and

thus DePaul, with respect to the recent tenure case. For

Dershowitz, no target, and no charge, is out of bounds. Recall,

for example, that Dershowitz accused both the political science

department at DePaul and Human Rights Watch of “cooking the

books”—a charge that he did not substantiate in either case, and

with respect to Finkelstein’s department, was totally out of

line and hideously unprofessional. How is it that Dershowitz’s

McCarthy-like public rampage against Finkelstein’s tenure case

was apparently tolerated by Dershowitz’s dean and Harvard’s

president? And by DePaul’s president and Finkelstein’s dean?

The tenure process for Norman Finkelstein at DePaul was almost

certainly, in fact, most evidently, was tainted by Dershowitz. A

review of that process would seem to be in order by both DePaul

and Harvard.

[1] <#_ednref1> “DePaul Rejects Tenure Bid by Finkelstein and

Says Dershowitz Pressure Played No Role,” The Chronicle of

Higher Education, June 8, 2007.

[2] <#_ednref2> Ibid.

[3] <#_ednref3> Ibid.

[4] <#_ednref4> “Finkelstein’s Bigotry,” Wall Street Journal, May 4, 2007.

[5] <#_ednref5> “Correspondence: Match Point; by Alan Dershowitz and Noam Chomsky,” The New Republic, June 1, 2007.

[6] <#_ednref6> “Finkelstein’s Bigotry,” Wall Street Journal, May 4, 2007.

[7] <#_ednref7> See “Pacem in Terris: Encyclical of Pope John Paul XXIII on Establishing Universal Peace in Truth, Justice, Charity, and Liberty,” April 11, 1963; “The Church’s Teaching on War and Peace: The Harvest of Justice is Sown in Peace; A Reflection of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops on the Tenth Anniversary of The Challenge of Peace,” November 17, 1993;

“What Is ‘Just War’ Today?” americancatholic.org, May 2004.

[8] <#_ednref8> See Alan Dershowitz, /Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways/ (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006); “AJCongress Applauds House Approval of ‘Human Shields’ Bill,” American Jewish Congress, April 25, 2007; “AJCongress Says Proposed Geneva Convention Update Affords An Opportunity to Unshackle Anti-Terrorist Forces,” American Jewish Congress, November 6, 2002.

[9] <#_ednref9> See Norman Finkelstein, /Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History/ (Berkeley:

University of California, 2005).

[10] <#_ednref10> See Alan Dershowitz, “Hezbollah’s Triumph:

Israeli Rockets Hits Lebanese Children,” Huffington Post, July

31, 2006; “Lebanon Is Not a Victim,” Huffington Post, August 7,

2006; “The ‘Human Rights Watch’ Watch, Installment 1,”

Huffington Post, August 21, 2006; “Amnesty International’s

Biased Definition of War Crimes: Whatever Israel Does to Defend

Its Citizens,” Huffington Post, August 29, 2006.

[11] <#_ednref11> “Hezbollah Kidnaps 2 IDF Soldiers During Clashes on Israel-Lebanon Border,” /Ha’aretz/, July 12, 2006;

“Israelis Attack Just 10 Miles From Beirut,” Associated Press,

July 12, 2006; “Nahariya: Woman Killed in Katyusha Attack,”

/Yediot Ahronot/, July 13, 2006.

[12] <#_ednref12> “Israel Claims Hundreds of Hits in Lebanon,” Associated Press, July 13, 2006.

[13] <#_ednref13> “One Killed, Dozens Hurt as Katyushas Rain Down on Northern Israel,” /Ha’aretz/, July 13, 2006.

[14] <#_ednref14> See The Consultative Council of the Lawyers Committee on American Policy Towards Vietnam, Richard Falk, chair, John H. E. Fried, rapporteur,/ Vietnam and International Law: An Analysis of International Law and the Use of Force, and the Precedent of Vietnam for Subsequent Interventions/ (Northampton, Mass.: Aletheia Press, 1990), p. 22. The Consultative Council of the Lawyers Committee on Vietnam, which, in addition to Falk and Fried, included Richard J. Barnet, John H. Herz, Stanley Hoffman, Wallace McClure, Saul H. Mendlovitz, Richard S. Miller, Hans J. Morgenthau, William G. Rice, Burn H. Weston, and Quincy Wright, explained further (p. 22): “In [UN Charter] Article 51, legal authorities usually invoke the classical definition of self-defense given by [U.S.] Secretary of State Daniel Webster in /The Caroline/. Mr. Webster’s description of the permissible basis for self-defense was relied upon in the Nuremberg Judgment in the case against major German war criminals. This judgment was, of course, based upon pre–United Nations law and, in turn, was affirmed unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly at its first session (Res.

95(I)).” The Lawyers Committee then noted “Mr. Webster’s

generally accepted words, [that] the right of self-defense is

restricted to instances ‘when the necessity for action’ is

‘instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no

moment for deliberation.’ ”

[15] <#_ednref15> “PM Olmert Calls Hezbollah Border Attack an ‘Act of War,’ ” /Ha’aretz/, July 12, 2006.

[16] <#_ednref16> “Israel Pushes on Despite Agreeing to Airstrike Lull,” /New York// Times/, August 1, 2006.

[17] <#_ednref17> “Peretz: Okay to Harm Lebanese Civilians If Necessary,” IsraelNN.com, July 16, 2006.

[18] <#_ednref18> “Inquiry Commission That Wasn’t: Politicians, Army Officers and Journalists Who Spend Their Time Covering Their Hide Should Be the First to Testify,” /Yediot Ahronot/, July 31, 2006.

[19] <#_ednref19> “Israeli Military Policy Under Fire After Qana Attack,” /Forward/, August 4, 2006.

[20] <#_ednref20> “Israel/Lebanon: Qana Death Toll at 28,” Human Rights Watch, August 2, 2007.

[21] <#_ednref21> Human Rights Watch, “Fatal Strikes: Israel’s Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon,” August 3, 2006, www.hrw.org <http://www.hrw.org/>.

[22] <#_ednref22> Ibid.

[23] <#_ednref23> Amnesty International, “Israel/Lebanon:

Deliberate Destruction or ‘Collateral Damage’? Israeli Attacks

on Civilian Infrastructure,” August 23, 2006, www.amnesty.org.

[24] <#_ednref24> Ibid.

[25] <#_ednref25> Alan Dershowitz, “Lebanon Is Not a Victim,” /Huffington Post/, August 7, 2006, www.huffingtonpost.com <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/>.

[26] <#_ednref26> Ibid.

[27] <#_ednref27> Alan Dershowitz, “The ‘Human Rights Watch’ Watch, Installment 1,” /Huffington Post/, August 21, 2006, www.huffingtonpost.com.

[28] <#_ednref28> “Fatal Strikes: Israel’s Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon.”

[29] <#_ednref29> Ibid.

[30] <#_ednref30> “The ‘Human Rights Watch’ Watch, Installment 1.”

<#_ednref31>

ZNet | Repression

DePaul denies tenure for controversial professor

*by Maudlyne Ihejirika and Dave Newbart; Sun Times

<http://www.suntimes.com/news/education/421003,CST-NWS-depaul09.article>;

June 11, 2007*

<http://www.suntimes.com/news/education/421003,CST-NWS-depaul09.article>

For a man who has just lost his job after a highly public

battle, DePaul University assistant political science Professor

Norman Finkelstein is calm and accepting.

That’s because Finkelstein, whose tenure bid drew widespread

interest because of the Jewish professor’s blunt criticism of

Jews and the state of Israel—and the attack on those views

waged by Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz—stands firmly

on the beliefs that may have got him fired.

“There is a song by the folk singer Keith [sic] Seeger, ‘Die

Gedanken sind frei,’” the controversial academic reflected in a

rare interview with the Sun-Times.

“That means, ‘thoughts are free.’ No one can deny that ‘die

gedanken sind frei.’ They can deny me tenure, deny me the right

to teach. But they will never stop me from saying what I believe.”

What Finkelstein—the son of Holocaust survivors—believes

is that his people are culpable in the plight of the

Palestinians. He drew wrath from prominent Jewish leaders when

he accused some of exploiting Jewish suffering to block

criticism of Israel, and made other enemies when he accused some

survivors of conducting a “shakedown” to get payments from Germany.

Dershowitz, author of The Case for Israel, called Finkelstein’s

writings full of distortions about Jews in general and himself

in particular, and was one of many weighing in on a normally

closed-door process. He implored DePaul to reject Finkelstein’s

tenure.

A debate over Finkelstein had raged among students and faculty,

including universities nationwide and internationally.

“Over the past several months, there has been considerable

outside interest and public debate concerning this decision,”

DePaul’s president, the Rev. Dennis Holtschneider, said Friday.

“This attention was unwelcome and inappropriate and had no

impact on either the process or the outcome of this case.”

DePaul said the political science department and the College of

Liberal Arts and Sciences recommended tenure for Finkelstein,

but the college’s dean and the University Board on Promotion and

Tenure recommended against it and were upheld by Holtschneider.

“I would be disingenuous if I said I were not disappointed,”

Finkelstein said.

“On the other hand, both of my parents survived the Nazi death

camps. Growing up, what I remembered most was my late mother

used to say, ‘Some people are beasts, and there’s nothing to be

done with them. But what about the silence of everyone else?

That I cannot understand.’ Those were thoughts that left a deep

mark on me.”

Finkelstein has a year left at DePaul. “I met the standards of

tenure DePaul required, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the

political opposition to my speaking out on the Israel-Palestine

conflict,” he said.

“As it happens, I was just this past week teaching about Paul

Robeson in my political science class. When Robeson was

crucified for his beliefs, he said, ‘I will not retreat

one-thousandth part of one inch.’ That’s what I say to the thugs

and hoodlums who are trying to silence me. They don’t want to

talk about what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. So they

make Norman Finkelstein the issue.”

Inside Higher Ed

June 11

DePaul Rejects Finkelstein

DePaul University on Friday formally denied tenure to Norman G. Finkelstein, who has taught political science there while attracting an international following — of both fans and critics — for his attacks on Israeli policies and the “Holocaust industry.”

Finkelstein’s tenure bid has attracted an unusual degree of outside attention and his research has been much debated by scholars of the Middle East. In evaluating his record, DePaul faculty panels and administrators praised him as a teacher and acknowledged that he has become a prominent public intellectual, with works published by major presses. But first a dean and now the president of DePaul — in rejecting tenure for Finkelstein — have cited the style of his work and intellectual combat. Finkelstein was criticized for violating the Vincentian norms of the Roman Catholic university with writing and statements that were deemed hurtful, that contained ad hominem attacks and that did not show respect for others.

Given that line of criticism, the Finkelstein case is emerging as a test of whether a range of qualities grouped together as “collegiality” belong in tenure cases. Many colleges and universities consider collegiality — perhaps not surprising given that a positive tenure vote can make someone a colleague for the duration of a career. But many experts on academic freedom, as well as the American Association of University Professors, view skeptically the practice of treating collegiality as a major, independent factor in the tenure process. They fear that collegiality can provide cover for squelching the views of those who may hold controversial or cutting edge views or who just get on their colleagues’ wrong sides.

Adding to the tensions over the Finkelstein case is another element to it. His tenure bid was backed by his department and a collegewide faculty committee, and hit roadblocks when a dean weighed in against him. <http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/04/03/finkelstein> And the same day DePaul’s president denied Finkelstein tenure, he also denied tenure to another professor — who had backing from her department, the collegewide faculty panel, and the dean who weighed in against Finkelstein.

While most tenure processes are layered, several people at DePaul said it was unusual for tenure candidates there to advance several steps in the review process — only to be rejected — and that the cases raise questions about how much deference should go to a department.

“The real responsibility for assessing someone’s scholarship and teaching and service rests with the department. Your closest colleagues are expected to understand what you do more precisely than an upper level body,” said Anne Clark Bartlett a professor of English and president of the Faculty Council at DePaul. In the aftermath of Friday’s announcements, she said that “people are very concerned.”

That concern extends beyond DePaul. “This is a very important case not just for DePaul, but for the country as a whole,” said Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors. He declined to offer an opinion on the case because the AAUP could become involved. The Illinois conference of the association already has, objecting to some of the arguments used against Finkelstein.

Finkelstein meanwhile does not plan to take his loss of tenure quietly. He said via e-mail, with more than a little irony, that “it’s gratifying to see that the system works.”

What are his plans? “I’m unemployed and unemployable at 53,” he said. “I accumulated an impressive teaching record yet will never again be able to step foot in a college classroom. I’ve written five books to considerable scholarly acclaim and that have gone into 46 foreign editions, yet I won’t have access to a good research library with borrowing privileges. Like I said, the system works. Do I have any regrets? None at all. To quote my childhood hero Paul Robeson when he was being crucified in the 1950s: I will not retreat one thousandth part of one inch.” (Actually, Finkelstein isn’t unemployed; as is standard in tenure denials, he is employed at DePaul for the next academic year.)

The Furor Over Finkelstein

At DePaul, Finkelstein has been well regarded as a teacher and until his tenure case, he was not at the center of campus political debates. He is probably best known as a critic of Israel and of Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard University law professor. (Among Finkelstein’s controversial books is one, published by the University of California Press, <http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10505.html> devoted to attacking Dershowitz.) While many of Finkelstein’s strongest critics are not surprisingly supporters of Israel and of Dershowitz, not to mention Dershowitz himself, there are also plenty of scholars who are critical of Israel and Dershowitz on various issues, but who find Finkelstein’s work ill informed or offensive. Likewise, there are a number of scholars who don’t necessarily share Finkelstein’s analysis, but who think his treatment by DePaul raises issues of academic freedom.

Much of the criticism from the dean focuses on Finkelstein’s book /The

Holocaust Industry./ <http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/content.php?pg=3>

The book argues that supporters of Israel use the Holocaust unreasonably

to justify Israel’s policies. While the book does not deny that the

Holocaust took place, it labels leading Holocaust scholars “hoaxters and

huxters.” A review of the book in /The New York Times/

<http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C02E1DF163DF935A3575BC0A9669C8B63&n=Top/Features/Books/Book%20Reviews>

called it full of contradictions and full of “seething hatred” as he

implies that Jews needed the Holocaust to justify Israel. The reviewer,

Brown University’s Omer Bartov, a leading scholar of the Holocaust,

described the book as “a novel variation on the anti-Semitic forgery,

‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.’ “

Finkelstein maintains on his Web site

<http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/index.php> a bibliography, links to

many of his writings, and much of the hate mail he receives. Dershowitz

also maintains a Web page about Finkelstein,

<http://www.alandershowitz.com/news.php#1> featuring the “most

despicable things Finkelstein has said” (attacks on Elie Wiesel, for

instance) and the “stupidest things Finkelstein has said” (quotes about

Jewish influence, for instance).

What DePaul’s President Said

After two faculty panels backed Finkelstein’s tenure bid, and the dean came out against it, the case went to a universitywide faculty panel, which made a recommendation by a 4-3 vote against tenure. In his letter to Finkelstein rejecting him, DePaul’s president, the Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, quoted at length from that faculty panel’s memo to him. (The university released only a brief statement on the tenure case, but Finkelstein put the letter from the president on his Web site.)

The universitywide faculty committee report from which the president quoted called Finkelstein “an excellent teacher” and “a nationally known scholar and public intellectual, considered provocative, challenging and intellectually interesting,” but also noted that some researchers find his scholarship faulty. The focus of the committee’s criticism was “the intellectual character of his work and his persona as a public intellectual.”

The committee added that “some might interpret parts of his scholarship as ‘deliberately hurtful’ as well as provocative more for inflammatory effect than to carefully critique or challenge accepted assumptions.”

Father Holtschneider, the president, in his letter to Finkelstein, stressed similar concerns about which he read in the record of the case. “I have considered the fact that reviewers at all levels, both for and against tenure, commented upon your ad hominem attacks on scholars with whom you disagree,” Father Holtschneider wrote. “In the opinion of those opposing tenure, your unprofessional personal attacks divert the conversation away from consideration of ideas, and polarize and simplify conversations that deserve layered and subtle consideration. As such, they believe your work not only shifts toward advocacy and away from scholarship, but also fails to meet the most basic standards governing scholarship discourse within the academic community.”

He then went on to cite various responsibilities outlined in DePaul’s faculty handbook that he said Finkelstein didn’t follow. “I cannot in good faith conclude that you honor the obligations to ‘respect and defend the free inquiry of associates,’ ’show due respect for the opinions of others,’ and ’strive to be objective in their professional judgement of colleagues,’ ” Father Holtschneider wrote. “Nor can I conclude that your scholarship honors our university’s commitment to creating an environment in which all persons engaged in research and learning exercise academic freedom and respect it in others.”

In his letter to Finkelstein and in the statement released to the press, Father Holtschneider said that outside pressure (from Dershowitz or others) had no impact on his decision. “Over the past several months, there has been considerable outside interest and public debate concerning this decision. This attention was unwelcome and inappropriate and had no impact on either the process or the outcome of this case,” the president said in his press statement.

He added: “Some will consider this decision in the context of academic freedom. In fact, academic freedom is alive and well at DePaul. It is guaranteed both as an integral part of the university’s scholarly and religious heritage, and as an essential condition of effective inquiry and instruction.”

Why Some Are Concerned

While Finkelstein’s anger and Dershowitz’s satisfaction with the decision are to be expected, others see broader significance to the case.

“This case is important because we must allow an academic to speak with emotion and to speak freely,” said Peter N. Kirstein, a professor of history at Saint Xavier University and a leader of the Illinois conference of the AUUP. Kirstein’s blog <http://english.sxu.edu/sites/kirstein/> frequently focuses on academic freedom and he has broken the news of several of the developments in the Finkelstein tenure case.

Kirstein said that the criticisms of Finkelstein in the president’s

letter all amount to collegiality questions of the sort that AAUP

recommends shouldn’t be the basis of tenure decisions

<http://www.aaup.org/publications/Academe/1999/99so/SO99CRPT.HTM> and

that aren’t appropriate to raise. “He has scholarly credentials that

have been vetted by elite university presses” but DePaul seems worried

about issues of tone and assertiveness, Kirstein said.

If such collegiality issues are allowed into tenure cases, Kirstein said, academics of a wide range of politics and personalities can unfairly lose tenure bids. He cited as an example the case of KC Johnson, <http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/history/johnson/tenure.htm> who won tenure on appeal — but who had offended some of his Brooklyn College history colleagues despite an unquestioned record as a teacher and a prolific author with top publishers.

Bartlett, the Faculty Council president, said that while the Finkelstein case raises governance issues, she didn’t think it should be portrayed as a case of the administration reversing the faculty generally. She noted that the committee on which the president relied was a faculty panel. The issue that is more appropriately raised, she said, is one of what appropriate review should happen after a department votes on a candidate.

She said that she viewed the universitywide panel’s job as one of reviewing “the way the process was carried out,” not “retrying the case.” She said she wasn’t sure that this time there wasn’t a retrying of the case.

Concerns over that issue are reinforced by Friday’s tenure denial to Mehrene Larudee, who teaches international studies at DePaul, and whose work is in economics (and on issues having nothing to do with Finkelstein’s research). Larudee had strong backing throughout the process, until the final committee review and presidential decision to reject her. Via e-mail, she said that many at DePaul are wondering about the “startling departure” from university principles in her case and Finkelstein’s.

“I personally support, and have always supported, the right of every faculty member, including Norman Finkelstein, to fair and equitable treatment by the university, and in particular to fair and equitable treatment in the tenure process,” Larudee said. “DePaul University claims to have a deep commitment to social justice. The decisions handed down on Friday, June 8 to deny tenure to Norman Finkelstein in no way reflect any such commitment.”

Bartlett said she was worried about some of the standards being suggested in terms of causing offense and engaging in contentious debate.

A scholar of women in medieval times, Bartlett said that when she started her career, and challenged assumptions about the limited role of women at the time, she angered people “and it even got heated sometimes.”

Is the difference between her career and Finkelstein’s that she was controversial in a different way, or just that her debates “weren’t played out on the world stage”?

Some topics are “highly flammable, so when you participate in them, you get a more flammable context and that needs to be understood,” she said. “I think it’s really really important to acknowledge that all new contributions to the production of knowledge are controversial or they wouldn’t be new,” she said.

That doesn’t mean that the ideas are good, she said, but intense anger doesn’t mean that they are bad. Bartlett said she’s concerned about, but not certain about, the impact the case could have on faculty members who hope to earn tenure. “I think we as faculty need to come together and figure out exactly what kinds of messages are being sent, if any,” she said.

— Scott Jaschik <mailto:scott.jaschik@insidehighered.com>

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