But Bush says none of this amounts to torture, even as his protection of abusive practices now ventures beyond word games into mind-bending legal rationalizations.

Bush's lawyers went into federal court in Washington on March 2 and argued that a new law that specifically prohibits cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees – known as the McCain Amendment after its sponsor, Sen. John McCain – can't be enforced at Guantanamo Bay because another clause of the law grants these prisoners only limited access to U.S. courts.

In other words, the Bush administration is contending that the McCain Amendment might make it illegal to abuse the Guantanamo prisoners, but that the inmates have no legal recourse to enforce the law by going to court and getting an order for the abuses to end.

With the courts removed from the picture, the administration's legal reasoning holds that only Bush can act. He, after all, asserts that he is the nation's "unitary executive," meaning that he and he alone decides what U.S. laws to enforce.

But, in this case, Bush also is the ultimate authority behind the criminal behavior. Bush and his top advisers, such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, were the ones who ordered "the gloves off" in the treatment of prisoners seized in both the worldwide War on Terror and the resistance to the U.S. military occupation of Iraq.

In December, Bush specifically asserted this "unitary" power over enforcing the McCain Amendment by attaching a "signing statement" that reserved for Bush the right to ignore the law if he so wished.

"The Executive Branch shall construe [the ban] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President . . . as Commander in Chief," the signing statement read.

So, Congress went through the trouble of enacting a new law barring cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of inmates – to go along with earlier laws prohibiting torture – only to confront a variety of administration arguments that make all the laws meaningless.

Forced Feedings

While Bush's intent to circumvent the McCain Amendment has been apparent since December, administration lawyers made it official in arguing that a U.S. District Court judge must dismiss a complaint by Guantanamo inmate Mohammed Bawazir, whose lawyers complained that the Yemeni national was subjected to "systematic torture."

Bawazir's lawyers cited an "extremely painful" new tactic of brutally force-feeding their client and other inmates on hunger strikes. The procedure involved strapping Bawazir into a special chair, forcing a larger-than-normal feeding tube through his nose to his stomach, and then leaving him in the restraints for almost two hours while he soiled himself.

"These allegations … describe disgusting treatment that, if proven, is treatment that is cruel, profoundly disturbing and violative of" both U.S. and international laws banning torture, said U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler. [Washington Post, March 3, 2006]

But Bush's lawyers argued that the federal courts had no jurisdiction over the treatment of the Guantanamo inmates because a section of the December law – an amendment sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Carl Levin, D-Mich. – limited Guantanamo appeals only to judgments by military commissions about the inmates' status as "enemy combatants."

If that argument prevails, Bush will have wrapped the Guantanamo prisoners in a legal strait-jacket, preventing them from proving their illegal mistreatment in court or getting a judge to order that the criminal behavior be stopped.

In effect, Bush is calling on the Executive Branch, the Congress and the Judiciary to collude in a charade that lets the U.S. government publicly condemn torture and other mistreatment of detainees, but then permits this criminal behavior to continue unabated while barring the victims any legal recourse to justice.

Bush's legal arguments turn the Rule of Law inside out, essentially making all branches of the U.S. government complicit in a criminal conspiracy that is perpetuated even as anti-torture laws are held up as shining examples of the American commitment to humanitarian principles.

It's a case that would leave Kafka and Orwell either scratching their heads or contemplating how to incorporate these twisted legal absurdities into a new book.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

The officer, who wields power similar to a judge, was asked by the defense lawyer representing Ali Hamza Ahmad al-Bahlul, a Yemeni accused of plotting terror attacks for bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, if he was ready to exclude all evidence secured through torture.

After a long pause, Colonel Peter Brownback declined to commit to a blanket ban on evidence obtained as a result of torture.

"What you and I mean by torture could be different," Brownback told defense lawyer Major Tom Fleener.

He said "a red-hot needle in the eye" constitutes torture but was not ready to commit to a prohibition in advance of the trial. "My personal belief is that torture is not good," he added.

But he said it would depend on the circumstances and how the prosecution presented the evidence.

Bahlul's lawyer, who has the right to question the tribunal chief to verify his client will receive impartial treatment, said he asked the question because he alleged his client had been tortured while in detention.

"I believe Mr al-Bahlul was tortured," Fleener said.

He added that "it's going to be an issue" in the trial.

Brownback did say that how evidence was obtained would be a factor in whether to admit such evidence and how to evaluate it.

After the hearing, US officers confirmed that the rules written for the newly created military tribunals, or commissions, left the question open. The rules also allow for hearsay evidence and other exceptions to standard US and international legal norms.

Asked about evidence secured through coercion, a spokeswoman for the military tribunals said the issue would be addressed by the officers presiding over each trial.

"I can't speculate on what a presiding officer is going to do in any situation," Major Jane Boomer told a news conference.

Defense lawyers, human rights groups and European governments have accused the United States of abusing and torturing detainees held at the "war on terror" prison at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba.

Brownback's comments are sure to reinforce concerns about how the US government treats and prosecutes detainees held as part of the "war on terror."

The US military has denied systematic torture has been employed and insisted that any isolated abuses have been punished.

Of some 500 detainees held at Guantanamo for more than four years, Bahlul is one of 10 detainees formally charged by US military tribunals.

Addressing the tribunal in a courteous, articulate manner, Bahlul said earlier he could not receive a fair trial if he was represented by a US citizen.

Bahlul said the impact of the September 11 attacks, which he said had left a "deep psychological scar," meant that no US lawyer would be able to argue effectively on his behalf.

It would be "impossible for the counsel to push aside his feelings as an American," said Bahlul, speaking through an interpreter.

He renewed his request to be allowed to represent himself, though tribunal rules require that he accept a US lawyer, and asked for an attorney from his native country.

He sought to clarify earlier comments that he was a member of Al-Qaeda, saying that he did not have anything to do with the attacks of September 11, 2001.

"I had no connection to the events of September 11," he said.

Prosecutors allege he served as a propaganda specialist and bodyguard for bin Laden in Afghanistan before he was captured in 2001 and transferred to the controversial US-run detention camp at the Guantanamo Bay US Naval Base in Cuba.

The presiding officer rejected Bahlul's request, saying he could have a foreign citizen as a legal adviser but that the tribunal rules barred him from representing himself.

After several hours, Bahlul chose not to return to the hearing following a recess.

The presiding officer said he would not order Bahlul to be forcibly taken to the tribunal if he refused to attend the hearing when it resumed on Thursday.

Fleener, the defense lawyer assigned to Bahlul, said it was "absurd" that Bahlul could not argue his own case. He cited US domestic and military law as well as the Nuremberg war crimes trials, which he said allowed for self-representation or for citizens of the same nationality to serve as defense lawyers.

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse.

The government is sticking to its guns. "If we ignored this violation, you could have potentially 20 to 30 people standing out in front of the (FEMA) center, obstructing things," says Dean Boyd, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesman. "We've got a duty and a job under the law."

Boyd says the message on Barisich's shirt isn't the issue. Barisich says he intends to fight the $75 ticket in court.

Word of Barisich's plight is circulating around battered St. Bernard Parish, where 22,000 of the 26,000 homes were destroyed by flooding. Larry Ingargiola, the local emergency operations chief, calls it "totally ridiculous."

"I've tried to work with them," he says of the federal government. "But some of the rules they've got down here are unbelievable. For God's sake, everybody knows George. They're pushing the buttons a little bit too far."

Barisich says he was ticketed after six DHS officers gathered at his truck. Boyd says he can't confirm the number. Barisich says he was told he would be arrested if he did not take the ticket. "I said, 'Do you really want to arrest me? Am I the only one here who thinks this is asinine? You're harassing a person who just lost everything.' "

Barisich's extended family lost 14 of its 17 houses in St. Bernard. Three of his fishing boats vanished. Two other boats survived but can't get to sea because they're in a canal filled with debris and silt. And he doesn't have enough cash to rebuild his oyster beds.

He says he'll fight the ticket because "if you do something wrong, you pay for it. If you didn't, you don't ever say you did."

In some cases, even having the name did not clarify the identity. In one document, the tribunal president asks a detainee if his name is Jumma Jan. The detainee responds that no, his name instead is Zain Ul Abedin.

The men were mostly captured during the 2001 U.S.-led war that drove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan and sent Osama bin Laden deeper into hiding, and the newly released documents shed light on some of the detainees' explanations.

In one unedited transcript, Zahir Shah, an Afghan accused of belonging to an Islamic militant group and of having a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and other weapons in his house, admits having rifles. He says they were for protection _ he had a running feud with a cousin _ and insists he did not fight U.S. troops.

The only time he shot anything, he says, was when he hunted with a BB gun.

"What are we going to do with RPGs?" he asks, adding: "The only thing I did in Afghanistan was farming. ... We grew wheat, corn, vegetables and watermelons."

In another document, a detainee identified as Abdul Haim Bukhary denies he is member of al-Qaida but acknowledges he traveled from his native Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan to fight U.S. forces, and says he met Osama bin Laden about 15 years ago while fighting in Russia. He praises his captors for running a good prison.

"Prisoners here are in paradise," he says. "American people are very good. Really. They give us three meals. Fruit juice and everything!" Still, he says, he wants to return to his family.

It was not clear whether Shah and Bukhary are still being held.

The documents do not name all current and former Guantanamo Bay detainees. And even when detainees are named, the documents do not make clear whether they have since been released.

The documents do contain the names of some known former prisoners, like Moazzam Begg and Feroz Ali Abbasi, both British citizens. A handwritten note shows Abbasi pleading for prisoner-of-war status.

Most of the Guantanamo Bay hearings were held to determine whether the detainees were "enemy combatants." That classification, Bush administration lawyers say, deprives the detainees of Geneva Convention prisoner-of-war protections and allows them to be held indefinitely without charges.

Documents released last year _ also because of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the AP _ included transcripts of 317 hearings, but had the detainees' names and nationalities blacked out. The current documents are the same ones _ this time, uncensored.

A U.S. military spokesman in Guantanamo Bay said the Pentagon was uneasy about handing over the transcripts.

"Personal information on detainees was withheld solely to protect detainee privacy and for their own security," said Lt. Cmdr. Chito Peppler. He said the Defense Department remains concerned that the disclosure "could result in retribution or harm to the detainees or their families."

Buz Eisenberg, a lawyer for a detainee, said he hopes the uncensored documents can help clear his client. "We have been trying to litigate a case without ever knowing what the allegations were that the government claimed justified his continued detention," Eisenberg said. "Thanks to the AP's successful lawsuit, we're looking forward to receiving that evidence so that we can properly prepare our client's substantive case in court."

Eisenberg did not want to name his client because he had not asked the man for permission.

The documents should shed light on the scope of an insurgency still battling U.S. troops in Afghanistan, in part by detailing how Muslims from many countries wound up fighting alongside the Taliban there.

Abdul Gappher, an ethnic Uighur, says he traveled from China to Afghanistan, passing through Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan, in June 2001 to "get some training to fight back against the Chinese government." But he denied doing anything against the United States. He was captured in Pakistan, and said Pakistani police officers "sold us to the U.S. government."

U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff of New York ruled in favor of the AP last week, a major development in a protracted legal battle. In the ongoing litigation, the AP has also asked the Pentagon to release a complete list of all detainees ever held at the prison on a U.S. Navy base in eastern Cuba.

"This is extremely important information," said Curt Goering, senior deputy executive director of Amnesty International USA. "We've been asking ever since the camp opened for a list of everyone there as one of the most basic first steps for any detaining authority."

Human rights monitors say keeping identities of prisoners secret can lead to abuses and deprive their families of information about their fate.

About 490 prisoners are being held at Guantanamo Bay, but only 10 of them have been charged with a crime.

"You can't just draw a veil of secrecy when you are locking people up," said Jamie Fellner, director of the U.S. program for Human Rights Watch. "You have to do at least the minimum, which is to acknowledge who you are holding."

Some of the testimony seemed bound to embarrass the military.

Abbasi complains that on two occasions, military police officers had sex in front of him, while others tried to feed him "a hot plate of pork," food banned by the Islamic faith. Some, he said, misled him into praying north toward the United States rather than toward Mecca as Muslims are required to do.

Like the other detainees, Abbasi wasn't allowed to see classified evidence against him. He repeatedly cited international law in arguing that he was unfairly classified as an enemy combatant. An Air Force colonel whose identity remains blacked out would have none of it.

"Mr. Abbasi, your conduct is unacceptable and this is your absolute final warning. I do not care about international law. I do not want to hear the words international law again. We are not concerned about international law," the colonel says. Then he has Abbasi removed from the courtroom.

Last year, Rakoff ordered the government to ask each detainee whether he or she wanted personal identifying information to be turned over to the AP as part of the lawsuit. Of 317 detainees who received the form, 63 said yes, 17 said no, 35 returned the form without answering and 202 declined to return the form.

The judge said none of the detainees, not even the 17 who said they did not want their identities exposed, had a reasonable expectation of privacy during the tribunals.

A Pentagon lawyer delivered the documents _ 60 files on a CD-ROM _ about 20 minutes after the deadline at the close of business Friday. But within minutes, an officer returned and took back the CD-ROM, which contained letters from relatives of some of the prisoners that were not intended for release. A new version was provided over an hour later.

One of the bill's sponsors, Democratic state Sen. Julie Bartling, said the time is right for a total ban on abortion. "In my opinion, it is the time for this South Dakota legislature to deal with this issue and protect the rights and lives of unborn children," Bartling told reporters.

Senators voted down a proposed amendment that would have made an exception to protect the pregnant woman's health. A proposed exception in cases of rape--raised by a Republican--lost in a 21-14 vote.

Legislators also rejected a proposal that would have taken the ban to South Dakota voters and put the measure on the November ballot. And they voted down a proposal that would have kept state tax dollars from being used to defend the bill--which will almost certainly be challenged in court and could take years to settle. Anti-choice forces in South Dakota hardly need the money, since an anonymous donor has reportedly offered a $1 million donation to defend the new law in court.

South Dakota's anti-choice governor, Republican Michael Rounds, has 15 days to sign the bill into law--and is likely to do so. Two years ago, Rounds issued a technical veto of a similar bill, but only because a court challenge to the legislation would have wiped out all the state's restrictions on abortion until the case was settled.

"I've indicated I'm pro-life, and I do believe abortion is wrong and that we should do everything we can to save lives," Rounds said. "If this bill accomplishes that, then I am inclined to sign the bill into law."

"Long term, I think this [current Supreme Court] is probably more amenable to restricting the impact of Roe v. Wade on a case-by-case basis and an exception-by-exception basis,'' Rounds said. "But in the meantime, this may satisfy a lot of individuals out there who would like to see if there is one slim chance the court may entertain three years from now a direct assault on Roe v. Wade." "I can tell you first-hand we've had people stopping in our office trying to drop off checks to promote the defense of this legislation already," Rounds added.

The South Dakota bill represents a new line of attack for anti-choice forces. Since abortion was legalized in 1973 with the Supreme Court's ruling in Roe v. Wade, the religious right has sought to chip away at women's access to abortion, while avoiding a head-on challenge to Roe.
Now, with the Bush administration's success in packing the Supreme Court with anti-choice conservatives Samuel Alito and John Roberts, some right-wing forces are pushing for a full frontal attack. "It is a calculated risk, to be sure, but I believe it is a fight worth fighting," said Republican state Sen. Brock Greenfield, who is also director of the South Dakota Right to Life.

The right's previous piecemeal strategy has already greatly limited a woman's right to choose in South Dakota. Last year, the state passed five laws restricting abortion. One requires a doctor to tell women that an abortion would end the life of a "whole, separate, unique human being."

South Dakota is one of three states--along with Mississippi and North Dakota--that has just one abortion provider. The doctors, who are rotated and flown into South Dakota from Minnesota, perform abortions only one day a week.

If South Dakota succeeds in its all-out assault on abortion rights, other states will probably follow suit. Ohio, Indiana, Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky lawmakers are already looking at similar bans.

Nevertheless, some anti-abortion forces are afraid of the backlash such an all-encompassing attack will provoke.

Unfortunately, it's hard to imagine the organizations that claim to defend abortion rights, like NARAL Pro-Choice America, being able to wage the kind of fight it will take to beat back this assault.

"When you see them have a ban that does not include exceptions for rape or incest or the health of the mother, you understand that elections do matter," concluded Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. "We will be very active in '06 and in '08 in electing candidates that represent the views of most Americans."

Keenan is wrong if she thinks NARAL's long-held strategy of electing Democrats is going to work. After all, in the South Dakota senate, five Democrats voted for the abortion ban, one more than voted against it. In the process of showering their so-called political allies with support, liberal women's organizations have done nothing while access to abortion has been chipped away.

More attacks on abortion rights are guaranteed in the coming months. Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the Bush administration's appeal of a decision invalidating the so-called "Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003," a law that would ban pregnancies terminated as early as 12 or 13 weeks, and that doesn't include exceptions for the woman's health.

The religious right's success in restricting women's access to abortion--from mandatory waiting periods to parental consent legislation--has built their confidence to take on Roe. An activist movement to defend abortion rights has to organize where it can't be ignored--in the streets.

Elizabeth Schulte writes for the Socialist Worker.

Before directly addressing these criticisms, it merits setting the broader context of Saperstein's review. Readers of MEJ are undoubtedly aware that my publisher, University of California Press, was subject to an unprecedented and highly public campaign by Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard University, reaching up to Governor Schwarzenegger's office, to block publication of my book. UCPress was accordingly at great pains to ensure that my book met the most stringent scholarly (and legal) standards. Numerous editors, libel lawyers and leading scholars in the field from Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States were called upon to render judgment. Having concluded after this extraordinary peer review process that Beyond Chutzpah did indeed make a significant scholarly contribution, and notwithstanding brutal external threats and pressures, UCPress courageously went ahead and published it. The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) subsequently commended UCPress for its principled stand.

Saperstein has now weighed in on Dershowitz's side, expressing puzzlement that UCPress should have committed such an egregious blunder. This judgment in a prestigious academic journal constitutes a grave indictment not only of my own reputation but also that of a respected publisher, distinguished scholars and the main professional organization in the field. Careful and sober scrutiny of the evidence Saperstein adduces is clearly warranted. Should it prove that Saperstein's claims lack merit, it would seem that the responsible gesture of the journal's editors would be to retract their imprimatur from the review.

The central thesis of Beyond Chutzpah is that on crucial dimensions of the Israel-Palestine conflict little (if any) controversy remains among serious scholars and that what passes as controversy in public life is in reality a contrived discourse to deflect criticism of Israeli policy. Paradoxically Saperstein's review, although intended to refute my thesis, lends further weight to it:

(1) To demonstrate that I have misrepresented the conflict's history, Saperstein cites as his one and only example my claim that Israel "ethnically cleansed Palestine in 1948." Not only is this not true, according to Saperstein, but "the fact is the only ethnic cleansing that occurred in 1948 in Palestine was by Arabs of Jews from the West Bank and Gaza" (his emphasis). In my book I cite the research of Ieading Israeli scholars Baruch Kimmerling, Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe. (Each has used the descriptive "ethnic cleansing" in his respective writings on the topic.) An unimpeachably mainstream figure like Shabtai Teveth, who is Ben-Gurion's official biographer, acknowledged long ago that once the Arab armies attacked on 15 May "one may properly speak of expulsion by Israel" of the Palestinians ("Charging Israel With Original Sin," Commentary, September 1989). Indeed one might even cite former Israeli foreign minister and respected historian Shlomo Ben-Ami, who documents in his study Scars of War, Wounds of Peace (Oxford: 2006) that Palestinians were expelled in accordance with the Zionist "philosophy of transfer," which framed Ben-Gurion's "strategic-ideological" vision and "provided a legitimate environment for commanders in the field actively to encourage the eviction of the local population."

Against this wealth of research by leading Israeli scholars across the political spectrum, Saperstein cites not a single academic authority but rather the avowal of an Israeli novelist (Amos Oz). It is, or should be, cause for wonder that such a lone reference passes muster in a serious academic journal as scholarly rebuttal, and that the remarkable claim that no Palestinians--none--were expelled in 1948 passed editorial scrutiny. Will the editors now approve quotation of Leon Uris as a scholarly source? Saperstein can perhaps be excused since his area of expertise is ancient Jewish texts (he's apparently never written professionally on the Israel-Palestine conflict). But how did the explosion of scholarship on the birth of the Palestinian refugee question confuting the novelist's statement escape the notice of MEJ's editors? Saperstein's only other evidence that Palestinians weren't ethnically cleansed is that of the 900,000 Palestinians living in the areas Israel conquered 150,000 managed to remain in situ at war's end. Yet, apart from Holocaust deniers who would argue that Jews weren't subject to a genocide because of the 7,000,000 Jews living in the areas conquered by the Nazis 1,000,000 managed to survive at war's end? (For charity's sake I ignore Saperstein's argument that Israel couldn't have expelled Palestinians from the areas of Palestine it conquered in 1948 because they continued to live in areas of Palestine that Israel didn't conquer.)

(2) To demonstrate that I have grossly misrepresented Israel's human rights record in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Saperstein takes me to task for relying on mainstream human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and--what's yet more sinister in his view--Israeli human rights organizations like B'Tselem (Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories), which he derides as "useful rhetorically." He further impugns the documentation I cite from these organizations as "facts" (his scare quotes) and waxes indignant that I didn't cast doubt on their judgments.

In researching Beyond Chutzpah I perused thousands of pages of mainstream human rights reports. One surprising conclusion I reached was how uncontroversial Israel's human rights record was. Although each of these human rights organizations has a fiercely independent research, legal and field staff, I came across only one instance over a 15-year period where two human rights organizations differed on a (tiny) point of fact. I then compared the uniform findings of these organizations with the claims of Professor Alan Dershowitz in his book The Case for Israel. More often than not Dershowitz either cites no source whatsoever or, as I document, fabricates a source out of whole cloth.

Consider torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian detainees. In Beyond Chutzpah I cite the annual findings of Amnesty International over a ten-year period that "Palestinians were systematically tortured or ill-treated during interrogation"; the findings of a major Human Rights Watch report that "the number of Palestinians tortured or severely ill-treated while under interrogation during the [first] intfiada is in the tens of thousands"; and the findings of B'Tselem that "[S]ome eight-five percent of persons interrogated by the GSS were interrogated by methods constituting torture." Against these findings I juxtapose Professor Dershowitz's unsourced counterclaim that Israel only "sometimes" employed what he calls a "modified form of non-lethal torture." Saperstein wonders why I regard the evidence and findings of human rights reports as valid. The obvious answer would seem to be that if all mainstream human rights organizations reach identical conclusions and no contrary evidence exists, there's no rational reason to infer that their reports are false--unless one accepts the faith-based counterclaim that Amnesty, HRW and B'Tselem are part of a vast (anti-Semitic) conspiracy to malign Israel. Saperstein appears to belong to the latter school since he characterizes my evidence, culled overwhelmingly from mainstream human rights reports, as "every anti-Israel argument in the arsenal of its opponents." He wonders why I didn't engage in a "critical weighing of evidence on different sides of a controversial issue." Again, the obvious answer would seem to be that Dershowitz doesn't supply any evidence to weigh, and there's no controversy among mainstream human rights organizations to adjudicate. On a related matter Saperstein is appalled that I should treat as "self-evidently true" the allegation of all mainstream human rights organizations that Israel committed war crimes during its 2002 invasion of Jenin. Should I have doubted this uniform conclusion because a notorious apologist for Israel asserted without any evidence that it wasn't so?

The remainder of Saperstein's indictment can be more easily dispatched. He deplores that I treat with "scorn and sarcasm" the claims of New Anti-Semitism authors that "Western-based international human rights organizations," "Jewish feminists," Associated Press, Reuters, Time, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, BBC, NPR, CNN and ABC are all anti-Semitic; that the creation of Israel was a plot by European governments to concentrate all Jews in Palestine in order to exterminate them; that it's only a matter of time before "a loudspeaker goes off and a voice says, 'All Jews gather in Times Square.'" Among scholars who base their findings on evidence and conclusions on reason the obvious retort would seem to be, Why shouldn't these ravings be treated with "scorn and sarcasm"? Saperstein wonders why I don't consider anti-Semitism in the Arab world. Yet, although surely a significant phenomenon it's also surely not new, while the burden of my first chapters was to analyze the so-called New Anti-Semitism that allegedly now permeates the Western world. Incidentally, Saperstein's recommendation of MEMRI as an objective source on the Arab world is of a piece with his recommendation of an Israeli novelist for the truth on the 1948 war.

Objecting to my comparison between the Nazi destruction of Lidice and Dershowitz's notorious policy prescription for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Saperstein states that the Nazis killed adult male inhabitants whereas Dershowitz merely advocated the destruction of "empty houses in a particular village." In my book I juxtaposed Dershowitz's deploring that "Hitler destroyed the entire Czech village of Lidice" with his own advocacy of the destruction of entire Palestinian villages. To dispute this comparison Saperstein introduces an element not mentioned by Dershowitz, that beyond destroying the village the Nazis also killed adult males at Lidice. However, is it even true that Dershowitz's proposal bears merely on "empty houses in a particular village"? Although you wouldn't know it from Saperstein's disingenuous gloss, here's what Dershowitz actually advocated: "[D]estruction of a small village which has been used as a base for terrorist operations. The residents would be given 24 hours to leave, and then troops will come in and bulldoze all of the buildings. The response will be automatic. The order will have been given in advance of the terrorist attacks and there will be no discretion." Dershowitz couldn't be clearer on the fate of residents who don't abandon their homes: "the response will be automaticthere will be no discretion." Saperstein also expresses perplexity that UCPress should have allowed me to document Dershowitz's plagiarism from a notorious hoax. It's unclear why a serious allegation of professional malfeasance shouldn't be reported especially since Saperstein doesn't dispute a single word of the 25 pages of evidence I assembled.

The "bottom-line" for Saperstein is that my book is the work of an "arrogant academic pit bull." Beyond Chutzpah is the product of twenty years of sustained reflection and what all reviewers (including Saperstein) agree was prodigious research. Saperstein consented to review the book although he's never written a single word on the main subject area. But I am the arrogant academic. Saperstein dismisses the accumulated research of Israeli historians by citing a statement of an Israeli novelist. But I am the arrogant academic. Saperstein mocks the cumulative findings of all mainstream human rights organizations as "facts" (his scare quotes). But I am the arrogant academic. In order to discredit my work Saperstein blots out existing scholarship, cites only preposterous sources, impugns the integrity of all human rights organizations and disingenuously quotes Dershowitz. But I am the pit bull. Saperstein accuses me of "getting carried away in his rhetoric" and of resorting to "outrageous ad hominems" and then labels me an "arrogant academic pit bull." On a related note, MEJ's stated policy prohibits the use of "intemperate or abusive language" in its pages, which must mean that the editors don't consider the phrase "arrogant academic pit bull" intemperate or abusive.

Saperstein wonders why University of California Press published my book. The obvious answer would seem to be that it both passed an unprecedentedly rigorous peer review process and met the press's rigorous publication standards. In a sane intellectual culture the only questions would be: Why did MEJ commission a review from Saperstein, and why did he agree to do it? His only qualification for reviewing my book would seem to be that for many years he sat on the Board of Directors of Harvard Hillel and was a colleague of Dershowitz. Readers of MEJ would have been better served if the editors had exercised minimum professional responsibility rather than let their pages be used for a transparent--not to mention slightly ridiculous--hatchet job.

Norman Finkelstein's most recent book is Beyond Chutzpah: On the misuse of anti-Semitism and the abuse of history (University of California Press). His web site is www.NormanFinkelstein.com.