Prominent Profs Spar Over Israel

In a rancorous event that often challenged the moderator’s ability to keep control and drew strong reactions from the overflow crowd, Frankfurter Professor of Law Alan M. Dershowitz debated MIT linguistics professor Noam Chomsky on the Israeli and Palestinian conflict last night.

The debate at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, which touched on issues such as the contiguity of a future Palestinian state and Israel’s commitment to peace, was highly confrontational. Dershowitz accused Chomsky of living on a fictional “Planet Chomsky” and Chomsky claimed that Dershowitz had misrepresented his views on the Middle East.

On the issue of territory, Dershowitz—a strong supporter of Israel—said that the peace plans put forth during the Clinton administration would have created “functional contiguity” within the Palestinian state, enabling Palestinians to move between any two parts of their country within 90 minutes.

Chomsky—a harsh critic of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians—disagreed, saying that the plans “cut through the West Bank completely.”

Both professors displayed a variety of different maps to support their claims, and frequently attacked the veracity of their opponents’ sources.

In response to Dershowitz’s claim that his knowledge of the peace process—including the 2000 Camp David summit­—was based on what President Clinton had told him “directly and personally,” Chomsky said that his own arguments were based on written and accessible evidence.

“You can believe one of two things,” Chomsky said. “The extensive published diplomatic record...or what Mr. Dershowitz says he heard from somebody.”

Dershowitz was no less critical of Chomsky, accusing him of “selectively quoting and picking tidbits out of context” from his sources.

When Chomsky accused the American media of failing to cover Israeli helicopter attacks on Palestinian homes in the first weeks of the current intifada and the subsequent American shipment of attack helicopters to Israel, Dershowitz said it was absurd to believe Chomsky’s claims of a media conspiracy.

“Why would the newspapers not cover these stories?” Dershowitz said. “They are figments of Chomsky’s imagination.”

Dershowitz said that his opponent lived on “Planet Chomsky...where the news reflects his views on the world.”

Later in the debate, when Dershowitz said that Chomsky had labeled Israel “the worst human rights violator in the world,” Chomsky denied having said that and openly challenged the audience to write to Dershowitz and get him to provide evidence for such a claim.

The audience did not sit by idly during the heated debate.

At one point, when asked whether or not he supported certain peace plans, Chomsky gave an indirect answer that led audience members to loudly call out, “That’s not the question” and “Answer the question.”

Dershowitz’s suggestion for putting the security fence between Israel and Palestine on wheels and his claim that he was “pro-Palestinian” both drew large amounts of laughter from the crowd.

The moderator, Kennedy School of Government Lecturer in Public Policy Brian Mandell, had to frequently interrupt the speakers in an attempt to keep debate flowing smoothly.

“I would ask each of you to exercise a bit of restraint,” Mandell interjected in the midst of the heated exchange between Chomsky and Dershowitz about media bias.

Both speakers often ignored Mandell’s pleas to move to the next question.

The event—co-sponsored by a number of groups including the Harvard Society of Arab Students, Harvard Students for Israel, and the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee—completely filled the forum and required the use of nearby classrooms to hold the crowd.

This was not the first time Dershowitz and Chomsky have faced off. They first debated in 1973 and have met several times since then.

—Staff writer Evan H. Jacobs can be reached at ehjacobs@fas.harvard.edu