Alan Dershowitz versus Susan Abulhawa: "Israel/Palestine: Novel Approaches" at Boston Book Festival 2010 [podcast]

This program was titled, optimistically, "ISRAEL/PALESTINE: NOVEL APPROACHES." Alas, it turned into "Israel/Palestine: Same Old Shit." Well, what did you expect? Put human canonball Alan Dershowitz on a panel with the Palestinian novelist Susan Abulhawa, a daughter of 1967 refugees, and you've got a new version of the old saw: Boston went to an argument about the Israel/Palestine situation and a book reading nearly broke out. 

This gets ugly pretty quickly: Dershowitz goes absolutely berserk and starts screaming at Abulhawa and at the audience, Abulhawa stays cool but reverts to canned provocations from a polemical script, both speakers turn infantile and bicker about how much response time they're being given, and moderator James Sebenius -- director of the Harvard Negotiation Project -- experiences firsthand the limits of negotiation, as insult, indignity, and insurrection overwhelm his even-tempered attempts at rational discussion. 

The result? Something that's less a debate than a sad metaphor for the difficulty of a serious dialogue on the conflict. 

A note on the podcast: the audio version is missing several minutes at the beginning, and picks up with Dershowitz's remarks in progress. However, the video above includes the full intros. 

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