In an Article published by FrontPage Magazine, Alan Dershowitz calls Norman Finklestein sexist because the latter said that someone he knew might have called a certain woman a whore. The quarrel between these two gentlemen is really not my concern. But what concerns me is the low level of comprehension that Dershowitz brings to the World scene and the analytical disabilities that power his midget intellect because the repercussions here are enormous given the breadth of activities that Dershowitz has engaged in on the international stage.
What makes the scene all the more alarming is that the man depends on his affiliation with a prestigious university like Harvard to pull off feats that belong to the gutter, not the realm of academe or world affairs.
Let us look at what this character has done now. The term whore as used in the context of this discussion means a prostitute. Finklestein used the term figuratively and gave a definition of what he meant. Dershowitz himself quoted that definition and here it is: "Because she's an Eichmann-like bureaucrat currying favor with the powerful while blandly following orders."
To say that only women are capable of prostituting themselves is to be sexist. That’s what Alan Deshowitz did, not Norman Finklestein. In fact, Finklestein wrote about Eichmann who was a male, and thus proved beyond any doubt that he believes both sexes are capable of committing the act of prostitution.
By contrast, the moment that Dershowitz read the word whore, he automatically associated it with women. He accused Finklestein of being what he is himself and thus proved that in addition to being sexist, he lacks the brainpower to realize what he is revealing about himself every time he insults someone.
In fact, the World is full of male and female whores according to the definition given by Finklestein. Dershowitz ought to know this because many of both sexes prostituted themselves to him when he was thought to be powerful. But then Finklestein deflating him by pointing out that the king was naked and people ceased to curry favor with him as a result. It is not difficult to imagine that Dershowitz then cursed one or two of them in the secrecy of his own mind.
When it comes to intellectual rigor, Dershowitz is a nobody and he shows it every time he reaches for his pen. Maybe this is why he is teaching Law at Harvard but this is something that the University will have to explain. As an intellectual midget though, Dershowitz cannot distinguish between a metaphor that is used figuratively and a language that is used at face value. If this deficiency does not prevent him from teaching at Harvard, it should prevent the rest of us from taking him seriously when he opines on World affairs.
This reality comes to the fore when Deshowitz says that Israel has the right to do to the Palestinians what Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and other monsters have done to their victims. This is real stuff because oppressing and killing the innocent is happening everyday in Palestine where people are dying partly because of the influence that Dershowitz had over the Congress and the American Administration who took his words at face value.
And yet Dershowitz complains about Finklestein speculating that a dead woman might have wanted to tell someone she is a whore to her face and then throttle her. Dershowitz laments the violence that is implied in this statement and thus demonstrates that he has no sense of proportion. And so I ask: Does this man have the mental capacity to tell whether a horizontal bar is above his bellybutton or below it? If he cannot, why is he still teaching to future barristers at Harvard? Will Dershowitz now appreciate this metaphor and recognize a figurative speech for what it is?
If I were still an active teacher and not a retired one, and if a student had given me a piece of writing in the caliber of the Dershowitz article, I would have tried to get inside the head of the student to search for the source of his confusion and thus put my finger on the deficiency that is reducing his analytic capability.
In the case of Dershowitz, I see that the man may have been thrown off by the following passage in the Finklestein writing: "Were [she] still around, I am quite sure - I mean this literally - she would have … as she did with the Nazi guards … called [her] a whore to her face and then throttled her." It could well be that the four words "I mean this literally" were the ones that confused Dershowitz.
As a teacher I would tell student Dershowitz that author Finklestein could only speculate what a woman who is now dead would have done based on what he saw her do before. Finklestein did not say, let alone threaten to commit a violent act, he only speculated what someone might have done. The words "I mean this literally" do not refer to Norman Finklestein doing something, they refer to the fact that the woman did so literally when she confronted the Nazis who were responsible for the Holocaust she was made to endure.
Dershowitz goes beyond proving that he is intellectually weak and proves that he is intellectually dishonest as well. He does this when he adds the following to the mix: This sounds very similar to the threat made by [a] Finkelstein admirer … when he threatened to come to Cambridge and perpetrate violence on me.
First of all, we don’t know what that so-called admirer said to threaten violence because Dershowitz has not quoted his words. But this does not matter now as it has been vitiated by the fact that Dershowitz used the incident to reinforce the idea that Finklestein made a threat which he did not.
Apparently in the miniature intellect of the Harvard Law Professor, two falsehoods make a truth. This is where the thing blew in his face and the face of the Harvard Administration. There is no doubt something stinks out there and everyone is nauseated except the Harvard folks who have gotten used to the foul smell if not have learned to enjoy it.
What we are left with is a man who has proven to be intellectually weak and dishonest at the same time. This makes Dershowitz just another dinosaur relic fossilized in the Harvard Jurassic Park of Academic Lawlessness and we must now cease to expect the institution to do the right thing. Instead, there are two possibilities out of which good may yet come.
First, good people will soon meet at Annapolis to repair the damage that Dershowitz and others like him have heaped on the World as they sat in the ivory towers of once great institutions. May the people at Annapolis look at the Dershowitz sort of gutter material that brought the Middle East to the present sorry state and say to themselves and to each other: "Never again will we listen to the emotionally unbalanced and the mentally challenged who emulate by the power of their fantasies the crimes that the ogres of the past have heaped on mankind in their own era."
Second, despite the fact that Dershowitz has made it his business to belittle the pain of the woman mentioned by Norman Finklestein, the latter never harbored enough vengeance in his heart to want to lay a finger on Dershowitz. This, despite the fact that the woman in question was none other than Norman’s own mother. This is what separates the mouthy idiots of Harvard from the quiet grace of those who suffer in silence then devote time and energy to alleviate the suffering of their fellow human beings.
Still, we must hope that if anything, Dershowitz is afraid of his own shadow because his conscience is beginning to wake up to the horror that he has perpetuated on the Palestinian people and those who feel their pain.
Here, there is a ray of hope that the consciousness of Dershowitz will do what Harvard has not done. Maybe now, like John Newton says, the man will be touched by the sweet sound of grace, will remove his wretched self from the World of academe, realize he was once lost but now is found, was blind and now he sees. And then go on from there to alleviate some of the suffering he has heaped on the many for such a long time.