-In a recent interview, Noam Chomsky said “Dershowitz has been repeatedly exposed as a dedicated liar, charlatan, and opponent of elementary civil rights, and he is, uncontroversially, an extreme apologist for the crimes and violence of the State of .” Most serious historians and scholars will agree with this. However, he is still considered as prestigious by the corporate media, his books treated with reverence and his op-eds often picked by various newspapers, while the same newspapers even refuse to review your carefully documented work. How do you explain that?

Some people become fixtures on the cultural landscape of society and it then makes no difference what they say or do. Dershowitz resembles this character named Al Shaprton, an African-American political activist who has a long record of lying and opportunism.  But no one seems to care, just like Dershowitz.  He's a character in the theater.

-Your research on “From time immemorial” caused a delay in earning your PHD from Princeton, and you have now been denied tenure and DePaul University. Does it means that the Israel lobby in the U.S.A is so powerful that any criticism of Israel and its policies will be severely punished even forcing Universities to break their own rules?

Professors are among the most spineless creatures on earth.  It comes with the territory. To get tenure one has to go through this protracted process of being the sycophant to one's advisor and then one's department.  By the end, you've been completely neutered.  There's also this resentment against those who don't play by the rules:  If I had to sell my soul, so does he!  So, part of the answer is the fear inspired by the Lobby, but part of it is also the cowardice of professors generally.

-Your doctoral thesis was on Zionism, therefore could you give us your views on the way this movement has evolved from its creation as a political movement in the late 19^th century to the present day? Who are its main leaders now and do they have the same ambitions as past ones such as David Ben Gurion?

The original Zionists were truly committed to the idea.  Whether you agree with it or not, it's hard not to respect the level of commitment and integrity of the Ben-Gurion generation.  They led austere lives and passed up many conventional opportunities for their ideals (cf. Abba Eban).  Once the Zionists came to power, however, they succumbed to the usual corruptions of commanding a state.  In 's case, the corruptions were of a higher order because of the special nature of the state: it required the expulsion of the indigenous population, the alienation of the region, and the support of a Great Power.  By now the leadership of is Zionist as I am.  They are mostly a gang of relatively incompetent thugs.  Ben-Gurion was surely capable of ruthlessness and thuggery but there was yet more to him than that. 

-Still, can we really respect someone’s ideals when the first step to reach them is the ethnic cleansing of an indigenous population (as it was the case in 1948, with Plan Dalet, a plan Ben Gurion was one of the architects of)?

Aristotle defended slavery; George Washington was nicknamed "Town Destroyer" by the Iroquois; Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner.

-Also, do we have any idea (polls, interviews…) of how mainstream Jews regard Zionism?

I was surprised to read recently how few American Jews classify themselves as Zionist.  I'd have to look around but the percentage was remarkably low.

-What about their vision of a Greater Israel, from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean?

Nearly all the original Zionists shared this vision, and continued to do so until after the June 1967 war. Things changed somewhat because of the inability to expel the indigenous population in the West Bank and Gaza. The consensus of the Zionist leadership now is that, barring an ethnic cleansing, should control the whole of historic Palestine but annex only those areas which aren't densely populated by Palestinians.

-We have recently seen the rise of the extreme right in (Avidgor Lieberman) and the return to power of Ehud Barak. Where are the politicians really committed to peace and a two state solution?

No one in the Israeli leadership has ever been committed to a two-state settlement along the lines defined by the international community: return to the June 1967 borders, with minor and mutual border swaps.  In this particular respect, there's no difference between Lieberman and Barak.

-John Mc Cain said during a live interview accorded to the hugely popular “The daily show with Jon Stewart” that “the U.S should emulate which does not torture people”, leading viewers into believing that ’s human rights records were good. Is that so?

Human rights organizations uniformly concluded that "routinely" tortured Palestinian detainees from right after the occupation in June 1967.  was the only country in the world that had legalized torture.  During the period 1987-1993 alone, estimates are that tortured tens of thousands of Palestinian detainees.  After the High Court rendered its decision in 1999 partially banning torture, the extent of torture decreased somewhat.  Currently, Palestinian detainees typically suffer ill-treatment while "high quality" detainees are still tortured.

-In an article you wrote in 2006 for a Norwegian newspaper (Aftenposten), you’ve explained that an economic boycott of was justified. What is your view on other types of boycott and, more precisely, academic ones?

I do not have strong views on this subject.  I can see the arguments on both sides. But in my opinion it is a pragmatic issue: is boycott an effective tactic?  I see nothing in principle wrong with it.

-According to a new Associated Press report, the US is offering Israel a record $30-billion 10-year military aid package (which works out to about 5000 dollars in arms aid per man, woman and child OR ten times the entire US aid budget to fight aids in Africa). What would it take for the U.S.A to stop their blind and unconditional support to ?

In principle the challenge is not different from other aspects of foreign policy that violate international law: it requires organization and commitment.  I don't think there are any magic formulas in these matters. 

-Olmert and Bush, during their White House summit in June 07, concluded that Hamas’s violent ousting of Fatah from Gaza had presented the world with a new “window of opportunity”. What did both they mean by that?

Presumably it means that Fatah was finally desperate enough to play the role for which it was groomed during the Oslo years: a Quisling for U.S.- Israel power in the Occupied Territories.  The technical term for this is "bring democracy to the Middle East."

-Hamas, since the Gaza events, has reacted to Abbas’s war with constant calls for dialogue, reconciliation and a return to a national unity government. It has also, despite the siege of Gaza, succeeded in holding its own government successfully, paying the wages of thousands of government employees and has offered to start negotiating a long term truce. In contrast Abbas has rejected any intra-Palestinian dialogue, has asked for the Rafah Gaza-Egypt crossing point to remain closed, has sent a Palestinian delegation to lobby tirelessly at the UN to block a UN call for helping the Palestinian population in Gaza (July 30) and has received Olmert like a king in Jericho literally embracing the occupier and coloniser. What, in your opinion, does he want to achieve? What are his goals?

Abbas is now working for the Americans and Israelis, who believe that the Arabs only understand the language of force and must be brought to their kness.  In fact it's not altogether impossible that this strategy will succeed and Abbas will become the head of a puppet regime, while the throws him some crumbs to consolidate a thin layer of society loyal to the new arrangement, while the security services handles the recalcitrants.

-What’s the most likely to happen in Gaza in the next few months?

More of the same. I see no possibility of a successful resistance.  Hamas has no strategy.  It's just tit-for-tat.  The Israelis might yet succeed in crushing any resistance, in the short term.

-In light of all this, what do you think are the objectives of Bush, Olmert and Co in the U.S sponsored Middle-East peace conference set to take place in November 2007?

Bush and Rice have been criticized for not having engaged in the "peace process."  I suppose this is supposed to demonstrate that in fact they are engaged.  I can't see any other purpose to it.  I doubt it will fill more than a couple of days of news, if that much.

-To conclude, does the creation of a Palestinian state have any chance to happen in the future or are we about to witness the destruction of Palestine ? Also, what part do you think activism around the world should play in this unending conflict?

Intellectually I see no possibility of a reasonable settlement of the conflict in the near future.  But one never knows.  In 1914 Lenin lamented that he would never live to see a socialist revolution...

©Palestine Solidarity Campaign.  Sept 2007