The Case for Israel

Rating:
Summary: Lays the Lie to the Arab/Palestinian Propaganda Machine
Review: This blast of unvarnished truth lays the lie to the vast Arab/Palestinian propaganda machine. Yes, Dershowitz is Jewish, but what is truly impressive about the book is that he frequently uses ARAB sources to make his various points in support of Isarel. Example: in discussing Arafat's rejection of the Barak/Clinton peace proposals of 2000-2001, Dershowitz quotes Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, who was a behind-the-scenes mediator: "I hope you remember, sir, what I told you," Bandor told Arafat before Arafat's rejection of Israel's generous offer. "If we lose this opportunity, it is not going to be a tragedy, it is going to be a crime." Particularly eye-opening too is how Dershowitz details how the Palestinian leadership, during World War II, not only admired the Nazis, but actually actively supported them as well. Indeed, after reading this straight-forward, no-nonsense work, there can be little doubt that a major impetus of the drive for Palestinian statehood is virulent anti-Semitism.

Rating:
Summary: Very worthwhile; a bit turgid
Review: Dershowitz offers a good, solid history of the region that takes us much further back in time than other books about Israel and Palestine. He shows maps of the territory, then--all the thens--and now. He tells us up front he has a "case" -- no bones about a slant; this is a book written by a person with an opinion, a strong desire to educate, and a sense of mandate to prove his correctness. He invites disagreement, though my sense is the invited disagreement is more applicable to smaller issues than to primary matters.

Dershowitz favors a two-state solution. Each chapter begins with an anti-semitic comment or question, then quotes sources of that opinion--often Noam Chomsky or Said, always someone well-known--he follows that with the "truth" in one succinct paragraph, and the remainder of the chapter is an argument in support of this truth. This edition has an interesting introduction about his encounters with college students around the world during his book tour of its 1st edition.

He offers a sort of apology for going back in history, with a caveat about its necessity for understanding the region, alongside the opposite reasoning for a "statute of limitations" about looking too far in the past. I felt that, within the book, the history held the most interesting, most direct, and most factual/credible information. Included are details of Britian's role; Balfour; Oslo; immigration during the late 1800's; population data at various times; Palestine's relationship within/to Syria, Jordan, other countries; and fascinating to me about the land's progression, The Roman Empire's division of the region (Palestine was then named Philistine, an "outcast" area). The history of the region and its cultivation is itself one of the most powerful arguments as a case for Israel, and much of it is not only "underpublicized" but its opposite so often quoted as to have become accepted as fact.

The bad part: His citations are dicey and his language legalese. It's not horrifically legalese, but enough to be a bit of a snoozer. I felt I was listening to a lawyer make a case, which in reality I was, but it read a bit too much like a courtroom presentation or an academic/legal text. Dicey citations: While the quotes at the start of the chapter are followed by the speaker or author of them, each fact within the chapter has a footnote, and there are so many per page you won't be running to the back of the book every paragraph to see their origin. Sometimes he quotes sources with names like propalestine.org with the same respect he gives world leaders, but he doesn't tell us who owns these websites who or wrote these words.

Somehow no matter how interested I was in each thing Dershowitz wrote--and I truly was; I felt he was smart, dedicated to the issue, extremely knowledgeable--I was slightly bored, or I became more so as I continued to read. At the start I was fully captivated. I believe it's a stylistic flaw, a [turgid, to me] style more appropriate for a "Case," as the title says, than for the general public, his intended audience. In a way, this intense case-making, a footnote for each fact, seems to have rendered the use of less-credible-than-necessary sources. The historic information truly stands on its own as a solid and nearly inarguable argument. To give credibility to dicey sources is to dilute his own case (and fill up the margins with unnecessary footnotes... should I go to the back of the book this time, again, or shouldn't I?).

Overall: What a great person, and I never knew before I saw this book. I'm impressed by his dedication, his knowledge, his sense of duty to take action and to educate. I was unaware he'd been this interested and involved, and this book has given me more respect for Alan Dershowitz. There is a lot of good information in here, and I learned a lot from it, but stylistically it could use some work in order to read less like a legal case. Odd to say, but it seems a bit less rigidity of format might be a help.