Perhaps the most ferocious denunciation, 43 pages long, came from Professor Alan Dershowitz of the Harvard Law School:
This study is so filled with distortions, so empty of originality or new evidence, so tendentious in its tone, so lacking in nuance and balance, so unscholarly in its approach, so riddled with obvious factual errors that could easily have been checked (but obviously were not), and so dependent on biased, extremist and anti-American sources, as to raise the question of motive: what would motivate two well-recognised academics to depart so grossly from their usual standards of academic writing and research in order to produce a ‘study paper’ that contributes so little to the existing scholarship while being so susceptible to misuse?
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graeme a
March 17th, 2009 12:41amJust a couple of points -
Mr Mirsky - your allegation of Israeli "war crimes" in Israel is based on nothing more empiric than Hizbollah propaganda. The cluster weapons were used against the Hizbollah fighters. Some civilians were hurt by them, but these are a quantity that is insignificant to the conflict. Your conclusion based on "numbers of Lebanese civilians killed" uses casualty figures published by the Hizbollah precisely for the consumption of the likes of you.
Israelis have no problem whatsoever with fair and balanced criticism. Israelis do have a problem with their rebuttal being lumped as "inability to accept criticism" and especially with most of this criticism being the mere deligitimization of the rights of Jews to national self determination (ie - anti-Zionism)
We are extremely tired of Jewish or ex Jewish persons in the diaspora using their Jewishness as a means to endow their statements with added validity and righteousness as they jump on the bandwagon of the hordes of trendy bleeding heart Israel bashers.
I say all this as a member of the IDF (reserve) serving for over 20 years with middle officer rank and intimately acquainted with how the IDF fights, its RoE and the efforts it makes to avoid civilian casualties.
I will add that when I have nothing but immense pride in Israel and the IDF in light of their achievements facing anything ranging from Islamic Jihad to the Western Left.
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israeli
September 30th, 2007 4:43pmI would just like to make the point that the reason why Israel (and Israelis) so often seems to reject any criticism is not because we are particularly thin skinned, but because we know that our enemies are looking for any and all ways to weaken us as a means to achieving their final goal of destroying us, and weakening any source of foreign support is one way of doing this. To outsiders it may seem that we are very strong, we feel very vulnerable and know at what price this strength is achieved and the eternal vigilance it demands.
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tihson
September 28th, 2007 5:23pmThe trouble with Jonathan Mirsky's thesis is that Ariel Sharon, person with unrivalled experience in the dynamics of Middle Eastern politics cautioned Bush privately prior to 1993 about the dangers of the US invading Iraq, for a number of reasons, including the unlikelihood of democracy taking root there and the danger of strengthening Iran. As to WMD, we shall probably never know the truth. They may have been transported to Syria before the invasion began in as stated in the admittedly hearsay testimony of the former Iraqi air force general, Georges Sada.
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tihson
September 28th, 2007 5:22pmThe trouble with Jonathan Mirsky's thesis is that Ariel Sharon, person with unrivalled experience in the dynamics of Middle Eastern politics cautioned Bush privately prior to 1993 about the dangers of the US invading Iraq, for a number of reasons, including the unlikelihood of democracy taking root there and the danger of strengthening Iran. As to WMD, we shall probably never know the truth. They may have been transported to Syria before the invasion began in as stated in the admittedly hearsay testimony of the former Iraqi air force general, Georges Sada.
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