Dershowitz begins by noting that the elements of the peace process that mainstream Israelis and Palestinians agree on are in place. These include an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and most of the West Bank; symbolic recognition of the ''rights" of Palestinian refugees but no absolute ''right of return"; a division of greater Jerusalem, with the Arab part becoming the Palestinian capital and the Jewish part the capital of Israel; and a renunciation of violence by the Palestinian state and the dismantling of terrorist groups.
But, the author writes, one thing has not changed: Israel's enemies. They continue to work for the nation's destruction and are opposed to the two-state solution that is part of the ''road map" for peace. Who are they? Hard-line academics, religious leaders, and politicians who ''. . . prefer the deadlock of ideological purity to the slow but steady progression toward an achievable compromise peace." His view is that some cannot accept ''normalcy for Jews."
There is righteous anger in Dershowitz that burns to right wrongs against the Jewish state. Among the leaders of the enemies of Israel, according to him, is Noam Chomsky, whose recent work, ''No Chance for Peace: Why It Is Impossible to Establish a Palestinian State With Israel and the U.S.," is the equivalent of a ''one-state non-solution" to problems in the Middle East. Other enemies are academe, Europe, the United Nations, the Arab world, and some religious groups that oppose Israel. Among individual enemies are Norman Finkelstein, Alexander Cockburn, and Edward Said.
The author's advocacy skills are well-honed and incisive. In fact, one is reminded of the logical argumentation used by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica, a 13th-century summary of Catholic theology. There is a parry and thrust in Dershowitz's presentation that, notwithstanding a different faith perspective, reminds one of Aquinas's style: laying out basic questions for analysis, exploring arguments that appear reasonable, and concluding with an equivalent of Aquinas's famous ''I answer that . . .," which gives the ''correct" answer.
