Overall excellent book and a keeper. In fact I'm having it autographed on Sunday, November 20, 2016 at Temple Emanu-el in New York City. I encourage all nearby to come.

I gave the book four rather than five stars because it is a bit repetitive in many respects. The same positive attributes of Israel are listed, over and over. And some of the same examples are rehashed. Ditto with regard to their various nemesises, the Arabs and their complicit European allies. It is a miracle that any garrison state can keep most attributes of a democracy intact. Dershowitz has skillfully shown how well Israel has adhered to the rule of law, minority rights and freedoms in the face of constant suicidal warfare. I recommend the book to anyone with a serious interest in the Middle East and a willingness to think beyond the moronic chants and slogans of the college BDS movement and the toxic propaganda of the Arab nations and other anti-Semites, cranks and Holocaust deniers. ( )

Finally, a book by Dershowitz I can stand

To say that I have not been a fan of Alan Dershowitz would be an understatement. Time and again, his views have differed from mine, and he has expressed those views in the most strident, and sometimes offensive, terms possible. But several reviewers mentioned this book as a useful complement to Yaacov Lozowick's _Right to Exist: A Moral Defense of Israel's Wars_, a book I thought was excellent, so I decided to give _The Case for Israel_ a try.

Well, I'm not sure that I learned a lot from Dershowitz that I didn't learn from Lozowick, but this book is an easy read, fairly well-organized, and, for the most part, competently done. At times I wished Dershowitz would have addressed an issue more deeply rather than (what seemed like) giving it a surface treatment. And there was some annoying repetition within _The Case for Israel_. I don't know if this is a style Dershowitz has developed for arguing to juries, who can't be counted on to be paying close attention the first time a point is made, or maybe it's a consequence of the book having its genesis in notes Dershowitz has been assembling over the course of 40 years, but I find it aggravating for an author to present a quote for the second or third time as if he's presenting it for the first.

The reaction to this book by Dershowitz's prominent critics has been interesting. The focus of their counterattack seems to be to impugn Dershowitz's integrity by charging him with plagiarism, in particular with improperly citing primary sources rather than citing the secondary sources they say he relied upon. That may (or may not) say something about Dershowitz's character or the care with which he assembled this book, but it's not clear what it says about Dershowitz's argument. Some of his critics go on to assert that the secondary source he relied upon has allegedly been discredited, but when challenged to give examples of inaccuracies that Dershowitz's book inherited from that secondary source, few or none seem to be forthcoming. When Dershowitz offered to give Norman Finkelstein $10,000 if he would point out an inaccuracy in the book, the best Finkelstein came up with is that a couple of figures are too low by a factor of 100, but these are figures that would strengthen Dershowitz's case if they were higher! This example may benefit Finkelstein financially (if Dershowitz pays up), but it's hard to see it as more than a Pyrrhic victory when it comes to substance. It reminds me of the gang-at-Cheers' response when they learned that Gary (of Gary's Oldtown Tavern) had tricked them into "pants"ing their hero, Wade Boggs: "Look at the bright side. We've got Wade Boggs' pants! We're number one! We're number one! . . ." For those of you who remember it, I think the comment that the barfly Al made about this "victory" celebration applies in this situation as well. ( )

The Case for Israel outlines 31 popular misrepresentations and fallacies concerning Israel such as "Israel is the Cause of the Israel-Palestinian Conflict" and "Israel is the Prime Human Rights' Violator in the World". Each chapter is laid out in the same way: the Accusation, the Accusers (quotes from Noam Chomsky, Edward Saïd,, and other Arab sources figure heavily), the Reality (the actual state of affairs), and the Proof - Dershowitz's reasoning for this.

This method of addressing noted accusations against Israel is useful for correcting historical and political biases with historical facts including numerous quotes from the Mandate era. Dershowitz does this to counter the growing intellectual strain of anti-Semitism that unfortunately is present in universities and intellectual debate; however, Dershowitz does not shy from legimately criticising Israel for its actions in the Israel-Palestinian Conflict or elsewhere. This book though seeks to restore balance and a factual basis to an extremely polarised debate.

Though this book is soundly constructed, there are places where Dershowitz's arguments need development. Nevertheless, this books outlines simply the key points of the Israel-Palestinian Conflict though for a more detailed or scholarly approach, the reader would be advised to read other books after this. ( )

Well this is more than a bit of a warhawk book than I would have been comfortable with although it tends to make very interesting points that I will want to look further into in the future.

NO OF PAGES: 204 SUB CAT I: Israel SUB CAT II: Anti-Semitism SUB CAT III: DESCRIPTION: Even as Israel boldly offers statehood to Palestinians in exchange for an enduring peace, many academics and activists?primarily but not exclusively from the hard left?have gone on the attack against Israel, deriding it as an imperialist power bent on oppressing the Palestinians. On prominent campuses across the United States and throughout the world, petitions circulate asking universities to divest holdings in Israel and to boycott Israeli Jews without regard to their individual views. Virulent opponents of Israel have accused that democracy of unspeakable human rights abuses, while many who believe otherwise remain silent. Now, in this impassioned and closely argued book, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz sets the record straight and explains why Israel, while not perfect, is in fact the sole outpost of liberty and democracy in the Middle East?a country that has earned the right to exist within secure boundaries and defend itself.

Drawing on scrupulous, unbiased research and his peerless skills as an advocate, Dershowitz conclusively refutes thirty-two separate slurs, slanders, and misrepresentations that have been hurled at Israel in recent years, including:

Israel is a colonial, imperialist state
The Jews have always rejected the two-state solution
The Jews have exploited the Holocaust
Israel?s victimization of the Palestinians has been the primary cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict
Israel created the Arab refugee problem
Israel tortures Palestinians
Israel?s targeted assassinations of terrorist leaders are unlawful
Israel is the "prime" human rights violator in the world
Universities should divest from Israel and boycott Israeli scholars
In demolishing these charges, Dershowitz documents how Israel was founded with the blessing of the United Nations?and how it was Arabs, not Israelis, who initiated the

cycle of violence that still persists today. He proves that the division of Palestine between Israel and the Palestinians has long been accepted by Israel and rejected by most Arabs. He demonstrates why Israeli actions in the West Bank and Gaza are not motivated by territorial ambitions, but by the very real sense that Israel is under attack. And he shows how critics of Israel gloss over the terrorism, human rights abuses, and antidemocratic ideologies of other regimes in the region, substituting bigotry and veiled anti-Semitism for objective analysis. Well reasoned, hard-hitting, and provocative, The Case for Israel is essential reading for anyone who cares about Israel and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.NOTES: Purchased from the Amazon Marketplace. SUBTITLE: