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On a long flight in the mid-aughts, I decided to read The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz. I thought of it like giving myself an assignment, the kind of thing I tended do when I was younger. I wanted to understand an argument I expected to disagree with.
But this proved to be a mistake. The Case for Israel is not a good enough book to reward that kind of exercise. I found it chock-full of conventional pro-Israel arguments that avoid the most difficult questions about Zionism.
And yet it an important book, maybe more so now than in 2003, when Alan Dershowitz was not advising the White House.
I had occasion to reconsider the Case for Israel in 2018, when Dershowitz let it be known that he had recently begun counseling Donald Trump on Middle East policy. I reported that Dershowitz had also recently agreed to a contract to provide advice to an American lobbyist who represented Qatar, an arrangement that arguably undermined the independence of the advice he offered the White House. Asked about this, Dershowitz hotly volunteered, unprompted, that he was an “expert” on Israel because he had written books, most notably, The Case for Israel, on the subject.
The problem with this argument is that the book, which I reread this year, is terrible. It would be bad even if you agreed with it. It is, first all of, kind of a gimmick. Like one of those famous coaches hawking business tips, Dershowitz tapped his fame as a defense lawyer to structure his book as a “defense of Israel…in the court of public opinion.” There are 32 chapters where he outlines what he says are common anti-Israel arguments, which he rebuts in sections that largely summarize what even then were well-worn pro-Israeli bromides.
And the book does not actually address the most compelling pro-Palestinian arguments. You might, for example, expect a chapter titled “Did European Jews Displace Palestinians?” to answer that question. The reader may look here for the author acknowledge that yes, Israelis expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the Arab-Israeli War in 1947-1948, even if he then attempted to justify that ethnic cleansing.
But Dershowitz doesn’t do any of that. Instead he details the historical presence of some Jews in Palestine, which is not responsive to his own question. He says many Jews, prior to the war, bought land in Palestine from absentee landlords, which is also off topic. And he downplays the extent of the Palestinian population in Israel at the time. He just ignores the well-documented Israeli efforts to expel Palestinians. (This policy was detailed in Benny Morris’ 1988 The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, which Dershowitz cites, for other purposes, in the same chapter.)
Dershowitz has been accused of plagiarizing material in this book, from Joan Peters’ 1984 book From Time Immemorial, a claim he denied so hard he once reportedly tried to get then-California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to suppress publication of a book detailing the accusation. (Dershowitz has not responded to my request for comment regarding these accusations.) Regardless, the book seems hastily written. Like other Dershowitz writing, it sounds like he dictated parts in an airport bathroom and never revised.
But despite its shortcomings, this is book which informs the views of people who are about to resume making US policy on Israel. Expert or not, Dershowitz really did advise Trump on Israel during the president-elect’s first term. And he also offered advice to Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner that informed the so-called Abraham Accords. (Dershowitz later nominated Kushner and his deputy Avi Berkowitz for the Nobel Peace prize, a proposal substantially undermined by Hamas’ October 7 attack and ensuing war.)
Dershowitz last month claimed he is assembling “legal dream team” to defend Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant in the International Criminal Court, which issued arrest warrants for the men. The former OJ Simpson defender is still very much making the case for Israel. Dershowitz is also a confidant of Mike Huckabee, Trump’s pick for ambassador and a frequent guest on Huckabee’s YouTube show. So his views continue to have influence.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting reading this book. From Time Immemorial might be a better choice. But it’s worth considering that this lazy, reflexively pro-Israel thinking is again informing Middle East policy. The Case for Israel is important. And it’s really bad.