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Got a car?

Then you candrag race.

p 16

A short story

by K ev in Guilfoile

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Chicago’s first all-cupcake bakery, M

amet’s T

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at Stage Left, Jam

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The Empty

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Whose H

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August 26, 2005

Section One Letters 3Columns

Hot Type 4The shameful secret about civil-rights reporting

The Straight Dope 5What was Able Archer?

Chicago Antisocial 8Underground venues are dropping like flies

Our Town 10The Empty Bottle goes to Norway, one man’ssolution for flyers on his windshield

Photo Essay 16“Run what ya brung” drag racing atRoute 66 Raceway

Fiction 18“Zero Zero Day” by Kevin GuilfoileExcerpted from Chicago Noir

ReviewsMovies 30Michael Winterbottom’s 9 Songs

Music 32The White Stripes’ Get Behind Me Satan

Theater 34David Mamet’s The Cryptogram at Stage Left

Books 36James Frey’s My Friend Leonard

PlusInk WellThis week’s crossword: Flat Features

T he “worst enemies in the struggle against realanti-Semitism are the philo-Semites,” writesDePaul University political science professor

Norman Finkelstein in Beyond Chutzpah: On theMisuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History,scheduled to hit bookstores on August 29.“Alongside Israel, they are the main fomenters ofanti-Semitism in the world today. Coddling them isnot the answer. They need to be stopped.” Philo-Semites, he says, are American Jewish elites whouse the Holocaust and the charge of anti-Semitismto silence any criticism of Israel or themselves, and

at the top of the list he puts Harvard professor andauthor Alan Dershowitz.

Dershowitz responds by calling Finkelstein ananti-Semite, among other things. And he thinksDePaul—where, according to the head of his depart-ment, Finkelstein is popular with students and facul-ty—should dump him. “I think they think they’reprotected because he’s a Jew,” he told me. “That’s thedefense. ‘Well, how can he be an anti-Semite?He’s a Jew.’ Well, he’s a Jew and an anti-Semite—and a neo-Nazi supporter, and a Holocaust trivial-izer, and a liar, and a falsifier of continued on page 26

Dershowitz, Finkelstein

ON THE COVER: CHRISTIANE GRAUERT (FINKELSTEIN), PAUL HORNSCHEMEIER (GUILFOILE), MARTY PEREZ (EMPTY BOTTLE, DRAG RACING), YVETTE MARIE DOSTATNI (CUPCAKE)

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Whose HolocaustIs It Anyway?

Why Alan Dershowitz wants DePaul professor Norman Finkelstein fired

By Jeffrey Felshman

26 CHICAGO READER | AUGUST 26, 2005 | SECTION ONE

quotations and documents.”The two men first met on the

Democracy Now! radio programin 2003, after Dershowitz pub-lished The Case for Israel. “I wassupposed to debate [Noam]Chomsky, and instead he showedup,” Dershowitz recalls. “And hewas like a little worm.”

Finkelstein started out by accus-ing Dershowitz of plagiarism,characterized one of his argu-ments as a “very lovely bar mitz-vah speech,” and wound up by say-ing he wasn’t sure Dershowitz hadeven written The Case for Israel. Afew days later AlexanderCockburn repeated the plagiarismcharge in Counterpunch, and thenDershowitz and Finkelsteinexchanged letters in the HarvardCrimson. Finkelstein wrote, “Thebook he claims to have written is ahoax.” Dershowitz briefly defend-ed his work, then concluded, “Iwill no longer dignify false andempty charges leveled by theseserial fabricators. I rest my case.”

Finkelstein wasn’t about to lethim rest. In Beyond Chutzpah—the title’s a reference toDershowitz’s 1991 bookChutzpah—he charges thatDershowitz quoted withoutattribution from Joan Peters’s

1984 book From TimeImmemorial: The Origins of theArab-Jewish Conflict OverPalestine. Finkelstein had readPeters’s book carefully, combingthrough the footnotes in aneffort to challenge her sourcesand undermine her thesis thatPalestine was practically unpop-ulated when Jews began movingthere and that most of the Arabswho fled in 1948 were them-selves recent arrivals. The use of“fraudulent history” to cover upIsraeli “crimes” is one of hisfavorite themes, and in BeyondChutzpah he writes that Peters’sbook is a “colossal hoax.”

Dershowitz counters that he readthe original sources Peters citedand then quoted the originals. Inone footnote he writes, “SeePeters. Peters’s conclusions anddata have been challenged. . . . I donot in any way rely on her demo-graphic conclusions or demo-graphic data, but I have quotedseveral historical quotations that Ifirst came upon in her book.”

The centerpiece of Finkelstein’scase that Dershowitz plagiarizedPeters is a quote from Mark Twainthat’s cobbled together from dif-ferent parts of The InnocentsAbroad in Peters and is quoted inmuch the same way in The Case

for Israel. Dershowitz says hewas using this quote before thePeters book even came out.Finkelstein also holds up theword turnspeak, which he saysPeters mistakenly attributed toGeorge Orwell, probablyintending to use newspeak.(Actually Peters seems to haveconsciously coined the termwithout reference to Orwell,defining it as the “cynicalinverting or distorting of facts,which, for example, makes thevictim appear as culprit.”)Turnspeak is in pages from thefirst edition of The Case forIsrael, which are reproduced inBeyond Chutzpah. During theirradio interview Finkelsteinattacked Dershowitz for usingthe word, and Dershowitzreplied, “I like it.” The currentedition of the book usesnewspeak. Dershowitz says thatHarvard reviewed all ofFinkelstein’s plagiarism chargesand found they had no merit.

But plagiarism isn’t the maintarget of Beyond Chutzpah. “Nextto Alan Dershowitz’s egregiousfalsification of Israel’s humanrights record and the real suffer-ing such falsification causes,”Finkelstein writes, “Dershowitz’sacademic dereliction seems small

beer.” Finkelstein argued againstwhat he sees as the abuse of his-tory in his 2000 book TheHolocaust Industry: Reflectionson the Exploitation of JewishSuffering, charging AmericanJewish organizations with usingthe Holocaust to extort moneyfrom Swiss and German banks,then giving only a small percent-age to Holocaust victims. In a2000 article he describes a con-ference to determine compensa-tion for slave laborers at which aGerman delegate told him, “Onour side we all feel like we’rebeing blackmailed.” He writesthat many Europeans may feel

the same way: “Kept underwraps in deference to ‘politicalcorrectness,’ the discontent willonly fester. To avert a resurgenceof anti-Semitism, the Holocaustprofiteers must be publiclyexposed and repudiated.” He alsoaccuses the same Jewish organi-zations, along with the Israeligovernment, of using theHolocaust and the victimizationof Jews as an excuse to mistreatPalestinians and as a justificationfor repressive policies in Israel,which he thinks only causesmore resentment.

Israeli new historians such asTom Segev, Avi Shlaim, and IlanPappe have taken similar posi-tions without being vilified inIsrael the way Finkelstein hasbeen in the U.S. Finkelstein’swork is cited admiringly on neo-Nazis’ Web sites, and that—alongwith his tendency toward over-statement and intemperate lan-guage—probably explains someof the hostility he’s faced.

But his work also has beenendorsed by Raul Hilberg, dean ofthe Holocaust historians. Andthough he’s been called aHolocaust denier, both of his par-ents were survivors of the Warsawghetto and concentration camps,and the rest of his family died in

Finkelstein

continued from page 1

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the Holocaust. He grew up dur-ing the 60s in Brooklyn, wherephotographs of dead relativeshung in the living room. Hisfather rarely discussed his experi-ence, his mother readily talked ofhers. The Holocaust colored theirperception of the world. “They

didn’t trust anyone,” Finkelsteinsays. “They were great humani-tarians, they loved people. Butthey were—it’s like that saying,‘He’s a great philanthropist, buthe can’t stand his neighbors.’They were like that.” It infuriateshim that anyone would try to use

their experience or the experi-ence of people like them torationalize unethical acts. “I willnot have the suffering of my par-ents used for any ulterior purpose,”he told the London SundayTimes in 2000, “whether it be theprevention of the assimilation of

Jews or the defense of Israel.” In the introduction to The

Holocaust Industry Finkelsteinwrites, “The current campaignof the Holocaust industry toextort money from Europe inthe name of ‘needy Holocaustvictims’ has shrunk the moralstature of their martyrdom tothat of a Monte Carlo casino.”He also told me, “I believe thateverything having to do with theHolocaust is bad for the Jews.”

Those are the kind of state-ments that drive Dershowitznuts. Part of his latest book, TheCase for Peace, published in earlyAugust, is devoted to trashingFinkelstein’s views, and he says

Finkelstein should be ashamedof the way he uses his parents toadvance those views. “He chargeshis own mother with being aNazi collaborator,” he says. “Nowwhat could be lower than that?”That’s a reference to an excerptfrom Finkelstein’s forthcomingmemoir that’s on his Web site(normanfinkelstein.com), inwhich he writes that, like PrimoLevi, his mother often said, “Toodelicate and refined, the bestdidn’t survive.” He goes on, “Wasthis an indirect admission ofguilt? Much later in life I finallysummoned the nerve to askwhether she had done anythingcontinued on page 28

Finkelstein accuses Jewish organizations,along with the Israeli government, of using theHolocaust and the victimization of Jews as anexcuse to mistreat Palestinians and as ajustification for repressive policies in Israel.

of which she was ashamed.Calmly replying no, she recalledhaving refused the privilegedposition of ‘block head’ in thecamp. She especially resentedthe ‘dirty’ question ‘How did yousurvive?’ with the insinuationthat, to emerge alive from thecamps, survivors must havemorally compromised them-selves. Given how ferociously shecursed the Jewish councils, ghet-to police and kapos, I assume mymother answered me truthfully.”Finkelstein says Dershowitz “bla-tantly inverts the meaning ofwhat I wrote, and in the processhe slanders the memory of aHolocaust survivor and he slan-ders her son.”

Beyond Chutzpah was sched-uled to come out in April, butDershowitz conducted a verypublic campaign against it. Anarticle in the Nation said he evenwrote Governor ArnoldSchwarzenegger to ask for helpin persuading Finkelstein’s pub-lisher, the University ofCalifornia Press, to drop thebook, but Dershowitz denies that.He did send the Crimson lists ofinflammatory quotes fromFinkelstein and responses fromhis detractors (the compiler of thelists wasn’t noted). He also threat-ened a lawsuit over Finkelstein’scharge that he hadn’t written TheCase for Israel, pointing out thathe has the handwritten manu-

script. And he wrote articles andletters to editors and gave inter-views, including one in which hecalled Finkelstein the “equivalentof a neo-Nazi.”

“I really didn’t expect the mag-nitude of the prepublication con-flict,” Finkelstein says. “He start-ed his campaign in October2004, when he started writingletters to my original publisher,New Press, and already it wasclear that problems were arising.”New Press suggested postponingpublication while they lawyeredthe manuscript.

Hoping to get his book intoprint sooner, Finkelsteinswitched to the University ofCalifornia Press. But they tooseemed worried about a lawsuitand insisted that his manuscriptbe pored over by four lawyers—only two had read his previousbooks. “I was involved in aprocess which had basically beentaken over by lawyers—wherethe university press was, I thinkit’s fair to say, shoved aside—andit was now the lawyers who were

calling the shots,” he says. “Theywere making all sorts ofdemands on me and all sorts ofdecisions, which I found unac-ceptable, about which I had verylittle negotiating space.”

But he went along with thechanges, and now that the book’sheaded for store shelves he doesn’twant to talk about what they were.“I’m not going to say anything,because I still think it could bepulped, it could be pulled from theshelves—all sorts of things canhappen,” he says. “I don’t knowwhat tricks Dershowitz has up hissleeve. He’s been acting very errat-ic. At this point he says he’s notgoing to sue, but I can’t predict.”

“If I wanted to sue him, I’d ownhim,” says Dershowitz. Instead hewants to come to DePaul nextyear, when Finkelstein is up fortenure, apparently intending tocrash the external peer review ofhis work. “I will come at my ownexpense, and I will document thecase against Finkelstein,” he says.“I’ll demonstrate that he doesn’tmeet the academic standards ofthe Association of AmericanUniversities.”

“I don’t understand why healways resorts—or maybe I dounderstand—to strong-armtactics to try to bully, blackmail,and threaten, rather than to doexactly what he formerly claimedhe’s committed to, namelybattling it out in the marketplaceof ideas,” says Finkelstein. “Let’s see what happens in themarketplace of ideas.” v

Finkelstein

28 CHICAGO READER | AUGUST 26, 2005 | SECTION ONE

continued from page 27

Dershowitz wants to come toDePaul next year, when Finkel-stein is up for tenure, appar-ently to crash the externalpeer review of his work.

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