Abstract

Alan Dershowitz, Plagiarist

The commentator claims that, in his latest book, "The Case for Israel", Alan Dershowitz borrows heavily from the book "From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine", by Joan Peters, and provides examples of similar passages and the use of the same sources in the two books. The commentator writes: For those who, on the monkeys-writing-Shakespeare analogy, may speculate that Dershowitz somehow replicated Peters's researches unknowingly, I should add that in two very long passages, one from a letter from Wm. T. Young to Col. Patrick Campbell (May 25, 1839), and the other from Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad, Dershowitz reproduces the quotes with ellipses in exactly the same places as Peters. Amid this orgy of plagiarism, Dershowitz understandably gets confused about sources. Claiming to be inspired by George Orwell, Peters in her book coined the term "turnspeak" to signal an inversion of reality. Dershowitz is apparently so nervous of citing Peters in any way that he credits the term "turnspeak" to Orwell, accusing critics of Israel of "deliberately using George Orwell's 'turnspeak.'" Over to Harvard president Lawrence Summers--or will the man so happy to dress down Prof. Cornel West be more timid when it comes to confronting the occupant of the Felix Frankfurter Chair? All you have to do is remind him of Dershowitz's words about Prof. Faurisson.