Finkelstein: Dershowitz Was To Meet With Israeli Officials

To the editors:



The Crimson reports that, according to Frankfurter Professor of Law Alan M. Dershowitz, I misrepresented him during a recent lecture at Harvard Law School on the Israel-Palestine conflict (“At Talk, Finkelstein Calls Dershowitz Book a Fraud,” news, Nov. 4).

During the question and answer session, I noted Dershowitz’s hostile reaction to the courageous actions of Israeli Air Force (IAF) dissenters and his scrambling to meet with Israeli government officials.

According to a Nov. 18, 2003 article in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronoth, after a group of reserve pilots in the IAF declared in a public letter their refusal to participate in future political liquidations, Dershowitz objected to the pilots’ letter and was heading for Israel to persuade Israeli pilots of the legality and morality of the targeted killing operations. In addition, seeking to meet with the commanders of the IAF, he planned to discuss with them ways of dealing with the pilots’ letter. The newspaper detailed that Dershowitz was scheduled to meet, among others, with Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, top Foreign Ministry officials, and Israeli public relations officials. Efforts were also made to schedule meetings with IAF Commander Maj. Gen. Dan Halutz and other commanders in the IAF.



NORMAN G. FINKELSTEIN

Chicago, Ill.

Nov. 4, 2005



The writer is a professor of political science at DePaul University.