There are dung heaps and there are dung heaps

My watching the debate between Finklestein and Dershowitz led to a sort of déjà vu with the very first post in this blog; the reason for the blog and some nineteen months on I would be the first to admit that my potpourri of this, that and the next thing, might have flattered to deceive at times but has generally failed to metamorphose into real scholarship.

No, in keeping with the wise words of my mentor at the then New University of Ulster in the early eighties, my brain has proved itself to be indeed like his proverbial dung heap which, if left long enough, will produce something: a dipping into a the 'Guardian' here, a looking at 'Haaretz' there and abracadabra, lo and behold, as if it were straight from the horses mouth. Nevertheless, Alan Dershowitz makes me think that I am possibly being a little bit too harsh on myself and when it comes to mediocrity there is worse, much worse.

Anyway, there was Finkelstein unmasking Dershowitz for the great fraud that he is and what did I realise? Well, I realised that it gets much worse than the 'Guardian' the 'Haaretz' and any of the other books and publications that I have quoted from when knocking something together. Not only does Professor Dershowitz in his 'Case for Israel' largely plagiarise Mary Peter's great hoax, 'From Time Immemorial', but he also avails himself of sources that make a mockery of any serious debate on a very serious issue. Yes, if it is bad enough that the "author" refers to IDF internal investigations and Israeli government websites as a source of evidence, it becomes ridiculous in the extreme when we have him, quoting the 'Boston Globe' when that paper quotes an IDF source on casualties, quoting an editorial  in the 'Orlando Sentinal' and even quoting the website of a film he had seen, or not seen.

Well, there we are, the dung heap has produced again and from the dung heap comes the conclusion that, while I will never adopt my mentor's favoured "falsificationist" approach, a la Popper, and while I will never have the industry to emulate a Dr Finkelstein, well, there are just dung heaps and dung heaps, aren't there? Furthermore, as I have already indicated there might just be an occassion when my dung heap flatters to deceive and produces a flower of sorts. With Professor Dershowitz on the other hand, it really is just a pile of shite, isn't it?