With A Little Help From Hollywood
February 18, 2008
So Alan Dershowitz thought recruiting an A-list Zionist starlet from Hollywood as a research assistant would help boost his book’s prestige. Who would have thought that the book — The Case for Israel — would instead end up exposing him on live TV as a fraud and a plagiarist.
On his excellent blog Joachim Martillo provides some information on Natalie Portman’s ‘genocidal racism‘, and reveals that she served as a research assistant on Dershie’s famous hoax.
…Portman tells us that Israel is her home without any acknowledgement that members of her E. European ethnic group simply stole the country from the native population and are continuing commit genocide right before our eyes according to a program that was formulated in cold-blood during the second half of the nineteenth century.Portman later adds (in really atrocious Hebrew) that her feeling of roots there [in Israel] are hard to explain. She said something very similar to me once at Adams House at Harvard. I told her I was not surprised. When she was born, her family was probably living in a stolen house most probably on stolen land in a stolen country. Delusions about roots serve as one of the mechanisms used by far too many Jews and Christians to excuse the crimes that Zionists have been committing against the native Palestinian population for over a century.At Adams House in the context of a Jewish-Arab dialogue, she had the nerve to tell me that Dershowitz did not plagiarize From Time Immemorial in his book The Case for Israel. She said she knew because she worked as one of Dershowitz’ researchers. And I asked how many researchers there were. Apparently around twenty. And was Portman there from start to finish? No, she was not. Had she read From Time Immemorial? No, she had not. I offered to lend her my copy. She had no interest.
“So Alan Dershowitz thought recruiting an A-list Zionist starlet from Hollywood as a research assistant would help boost his book’s prestige.”
I am not sure the issue is as much prestige as it is citability.
I have noticed citation rings from Dore Gold to Bernard Lewis to David Pryce-Jones back to Dore Gold, who can now cite Pryce-Jones for the original unsubstantiated claim in another context. In most cases the citation ring has a larger diameter.
Dershowitz-Portman collaboration broadens the target market in a sense. When a director (or perhaps the executive producer) wants a movie to cover several different audience segments, he might make choices of actors on the basis of their popularity with different types of fans in order to broaden the movie’s appeal.
Joachim, welcome to the Fanonite.
I think we are in agreement here. Like the star struck Columbia classroom, there will be many impressionable youth who are likely to pick up the book because it is recommended by a startlet with an alleged social consciousness and a reputation for being smart. Perhaps ‘hippness’ would better describe what Dershie was aiming for her name to contribute.