Non­fic­tion

The Case Against Israel’s Ene­mies: Expos­ing Jim­my Carter and Oth­ers Who Stand in the Way of Peace

  • Review
By – January 16, 2012

No one can deny that Israeli poli­cies and pol­i­tics cre­ate a flash­point for divi­sive­ness. How­ev­er in his new book, The Case Against Israel’s Ene­mies, Alan Der­showitz demon­strates that the con­tro­ver­sies sur­round­ing the Jew­ish State have also giv­en the unin­formed, the short­sight­ed, and those lack­ing a con­science, an irre­sistible oppor­tu­ni­ty for exploita­tion. Self aggran­dize­ment and career enhance­ment, Der­showitz argues, have become more impor­tant than facts and due dili­gence when it comes to all things Israel. 

Using metic­u­lous research artic­u­lat­ed through sec­tions that read as if they were legal briefs, Der­showitz lays bare not only the fol­ly of Israel’s attack­ers, but their per­verse motives as well. Jim­my Carter’s claim that Israel is an apartheid state” is proven to be lit­tle more than a cow­ard­ly attempt to shore up a tat­tered lega­cy. Har­vard pro­fes­sors Mearsheimer and Walt are shown to use dis­cred­it­ed sources to make their sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic claims — dis­parag­ing Amer­i­can Jews who sup­port Israel— and there­by reach best­seller lists all over the world. Sui­cide bombers? Used by the politi­cians who order them into cafes and mar­kets to for­ward their own agen­das and solid­i­fy their pow­er bases. And Iran? Ahmadine­jad rails against Israel using out­landish pro­pa­gan­da in a bare­ly con­cealed effort to divide the rea­son­able and try to con­quer the region. 

Alan Der­showitz is deft and damn­ing. While care­ful­ly con­don­ing rea­soned crit­i­cism of Israeli poli­cies backed by facts, he expos­es those who employ slip­shod or pho­ny research to make their argu­ments and there­by enhance their ill-got­ten celebri­ty. Appen­dix, author notes, index.

Glenn Frank has prac­ticed law in Boston for over 20 years. He is the author Abe Gilman’s End­ing, a nov­el pub­lished in 2007. Mr. Frank was also the win­ner of the Bruce P. Ross­ley Lit­er­ary Award for Best New Voice in 1999. He is mar­ried, and has two chil­dren, and lives in Ply­mouth, MA.

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