I WROTE a book called The Case for Israel. It's my least favourite book. I wish I didn't have to write it. Who has to write the case for Spain? Who has to write the case for Australia? Who even has to write the case for France? Maybe somebody should. But, unfortunately, I had to write The Case for Israel.

Why did I have to write it? Because the case against Israel is so filled with pernicious lies and it is so prevalent today on university campuses that a defence is needed.

In 2002, there was a debate going on at Harvard about divestment. People were trying to pressure Harvard to divest from companies that do business in Israel regardless of the nature of the business - even if it was providing healthcare or medical technology. One of the Harvard housemasters signed that immoral petition and I challenged him to a debate in front of his students. He refused. He was a professor of Old Testament Christian studies and he said to me, through a student, "I can't debate you, my knowledge of the Middle East ended with the death of Moses."

But he felt comfortable enough to sign the petition, so I decided that I was going to debate him whether he wanted to or not. He refused, but a lot of the students participated. At the end, after I made the case for Israel, many students came over to me and they had the same three words: "We didn't know."

"We didn't know that the Palestinians were offered a large contiguous state in 1937 by the Peel Commission and turned it down. We didn't know that the Palestinians could have had a large contiguous state in 1947 and turned it down. We didn't know that in 1967 the Palestinians said no to UN resolution 242. We didn't know that in 2000-01 Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and US president Bill Clinton offered the Palestinians a state and they turned it down and resorted to violence. We just didn't know."

Nor did they know that the states offered the Jews in 1937 and 1947 were non-contiguous and tiny. Yet the Jews agreed to compromise in the interests of a two-state solution...