Neve Gordon: Dershowitz invites him to sue

Prof Neve Gordon, a teacher and prolific left-wing writer from Ben Gurion University who regularly bashes Israel and her leaders, may have finally met his match. Last month, Dr. Gordon, who is currently suing Haifa University Economics Prof Steven Plaut for essentially writing an insultingly negative review, was challenged by Harvard law professor and author Alan Dershowitz to sue him as well.

“Here is my challenge to Neve Gordon: I visit Israel frequently, and am easily available for service of process. I invite Gordon to sue me for essentially restating in my own words what Prof Plaut has said: It is my opinion that Neve Gordon has gotten into bed with neo-Nazis, Holocaust justice deniers, and anti-Semites. He is a despicable example of a self-hating Jew and a self-hating Israeli,” wrote Mr. Dershowitz.

Dr. Gordon, a BGU senior lecturer with special interests in “Political Theory, Human Rights, and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” based his suit against Dr. Plaut on an Internet email posting after Dr. Gordon wrote a positive (Mr. Dershowitz called it “a fawning”) review of the book Beyond Chutzpah by Norman Finkelstein in Ha’aretz.

While Mr. Finkelstein does not deny that the Holocaust occurred, he regularly minimizes the number of survivors and refers to many of them as “hoaxes” and “hucksters.” He has accused Elie Wiesel of lying about his past.

Who Wrote the Book?

In 2003, when Mr. Dershowitz, an ardent, eloquent, and not always uncritical defender of the Jewish state, published his well-received book, The Case for Israel, Mr. Finkelstein initially suggested the book, which has been described as a proactive defense of Israel and almost an amicus brief to the court of public opinion, had been written by the Israeli Mossad.

When Mr. Dershowitz produced his hand-written manuscript, Mr. Finkelstein changed his story and claimed that, in the book, Mr. Dershowitz had plagiarized information and ideas from Joan Peters’s From Time Immemorial, a claim most scholars—including Harvard’s own investigative team—dismissed.

The charge appears again in Beyond Chutzpah, which, according to Mr. Finkelstein “copiously documents that The Case for Israel is among the most spectacular academic frauds ever published on the Israel-Palestine conflict.”

Some say the animus between Messrs Dershowitz and Finkelstein prompted the latter to title his new book Beyond Chutzpah as a surly tweak at Mr. Dershowitz’s 1991 best-seller Chutzpah....