Tsuris Over Chutzpah

Cambridge, Mass.

Jon Wiener's screed ["Giving Chutzpah New Meaning," July 11] is based on a misrepresentation of my correspondence. I wrote to the directors of the University of California Press (with a copy and cover note to the Governor) emphasizing that "I have no interest in censoring or suppressing [Norman] Finkelstein's freedom of expression." In a further letter, I made it clear that "I am not trying to get the Governor to prevent the publication of Finkelstein's book." The purpose of my letters was to encourage the UCP to give "serious consideration" to its decision to publish a defamatory lie (that I did not write The Case for Israel).

My letter was stimulated by an e-mail Finkelstein sent to the dean of Harvard Law School stating that he was "completing a manuscript for the University of California Press" that will "demonstrate that [Dershowitz] almost certainly didn't write the book, and perhaps didn't even read it prior to publication." Finkelstein has gone even further, asserting that I didn't write any of my books: "[Dershowitz] has come to the point where he's had so many people write so many of his books.... it's sort of like a Hallmark line for Nazis.... they churn them out so fast that he has now reached a point where he doesn't even read them." (This was after he compared me to Adolf Eichmann.)

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