The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5
=> Re: Dershowitzs (doesn't sit for a piss... he stands as he shits)
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- Saturday, March 26 2011, 5:11:26 (UTC) from 173.13.27.45 - 173-13-27-45-Michigan.hfc.comcastbusiness.net  Network -  Windows NT -   MozillaWebsite: Website title: |
What was even more enjoyable than the article itself was the comments below the article... (See below) Marcello wrote: >http://mondoweiss.net/2011/03/notable-south-africans-denounce-dershowitzs-record-following-campaign-to-smear-desmond-tutu.html#more-39443 Notable South Africans denounce Dershowitz’s record following campaign to smear Desmond Tutu by Adam Horowitz on March 25, 2011 Like 6 Retweet 7 Send to a Friend del.icio.us Digg Furl The following article was published yesterday in the Cape Times, South Africa. It was signed by Judge Dennis Davis, Gilbert Marcus SC, Geoff Budlender SC, Wim Trengove SC, Rob Petersen SC, Prof John Comaroff, Prof Jean Comaroff, Fatima Hassan, Doron Isaacs, Mark Heywood, Jonathan Berger, Shuaib Manjra, Nathan Geffen, Adila Hassim, Pregs Govender, Daniel Mackintosh and Michael Mbikiwa. Although it distanced itself officially from the failed campaign to have Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu removed as patron of the Cape Town Holocaust Centre, the South African Zionist Federation (SAZF) has now invited the most prominent supporter of that campaign to address meetings in South Africa as its guest. Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz is known internationally for his furious attacks on all those who want effective peaceful measures against Israel to compel the ending of its military occupation of the West Bank and the removal of annexationist settlements. In support of the petition for Tutu’s removal, Dershowitz penned a vicious personal attack in the New York press, saying that Tutu’s “ever present grin … masks a long history of ugly hatred toward the Jewish people, the Jewish religion and the Jewish state.” According to Dershowitz, Tutu deserves to be “in the dustbin of history”. “The sad reality”, contends Dershowitz, “is that Bishop Tutu's beneficent look is the new face of the oldest of bigotries.” There is “only one word” to describe Tutu’s motives, he says: “It is called anti-Semitism.” In fact, Dershowitz claims that Tutu’s support for a cultural boycott of Israel “finds its roots in the Nazi ‘Kauft Nicht beim Juden’ campaign of the 1930's.” Dershowitz asserts that “the decent people of South Africa have become aware of Tutu's bigotry”. Our experience of Tutu has been different. All we have known is his bravery, integrity and sense of fairness. One among the many examples of this is his consistent call that Israel ends its military occupation, that both sides cease to attack civilians, and that a Palestinian state should exist alongside Israel in peace. The SAZF certainly has the right to meet and to invite Dershowitz to express his views. It is necessary however, in order to understand the person whom they have unfortunately chosen to invite, that we examine his political writing and speech. Dershowitz is an advocate for collective punishment of Palestinians, defending what the respected Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem (Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) has called a “policy of mass demolition of Palestinian houses in the Occupied Territories”. Some of the targets of this policy are the families of those suspected of involvement in terrorist attacks against Israelis. As B’Tselem notes, “This form of punishment is carried out primarily against individuals who are only suspected offenders.” In his recent book The Case for Israel Dershowitz calls this illegal practice “moral and calibrated” but notes that it “plays poorly on television”. Beyond home demolitions, Dershowitz proposed that Israel should destroy entire Palestinian villages. In a 2002 article in the Jerusalem Post he advised a brief cessation of Israeli retaliations, after which the “first act of terrorism following the moratorium will result in the destruction of a small village which has been used as a base for terrorist operations. The residents would be given 24 hours to leave, and then troops will come in and bulldoze all of the buildings. The response will be automatic… and there will be no discretion.” Dershowitz has stated that the goal of such measures is a peace agreement entailing an end to the Israeli military occupation, and the subsequent creation of a Palestinian state. However, his real commitment to these outcomes is lacking. In his 2008 book The Case Against Israel’s Enemies, he proposes removing only those Israeli settlements “in the heart of the West Bank”, and suggests the need thereafter for “some military presence”. Writing in The Wall Street Journal in January of this year he claimed that the settlements are not illegal and that some of the West Bank “rightfully belongs to Israel.” This view contradicts United Nations Security Council Resolution 465 which clearly states that the settlements, including those in East Jerusalem, “have no legal validity and that Israel's policy and practices of settling parts of its population and new immigrants in those territories constitute a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention” and are a serious obstruction to peace. Further, Dershowitz has proposed that terrorist attacks be responded to by immediate and permanent grabs of Palestinian land by the state of Israel. “Every act of terrorism will result in an automatic and permanent decrease of a specific portion of the land mass that eventually would constitute the Palestinian state.” This land “would be immediately annexed to Israel and be deemed a permanent part of the Jewish state”. Terrorist attacks against Israelis are totally unjustifiable, and we oppose them absolutely. Wednesday’s deplorable bus-bombing in Jerusalem is a case in point. This does not change the fact that Dershowitz advocates collective punishment and reprisals expressly prohibited by international conventions. Dershowitz is an apologist for torture, albeit that he has suggested, in an essay titled ‘Tortured Reasoning’, that it be regulated by “means of a warrant or some other mechanism”. As a professor of criminal law Dershowitz often uses legal argument to justify Israeli misconduct. His commitment to international law is highly questionable. Speaking in Israel on 22 May 2010 he said, “The judges in the international tribunes are corrupt. They are appointed by political leaders to do their state’s bidding… My job today is to delegitimize international law, to attack it to the core. There must be one standard for all. Until that day happens, I will be its sworn enemy. I prefer no international law to unfair international law.” His commitment to democracy is similarly conditional. As the Egyptian revolution unfolded Dershowitz, interviewed on CNN, evinced a deep skepticism regarding the pending ouster of the dictator Mubarak, on the grounds that it may not serve Israeli or US interests. We are pleased to hear that neither the Kaplan Centre at UCT nor the Law Faculty (as was earlier mooted) will now be associating itself with Dershowitz by hosting him. Dershowitz is an advocate and a propagandist. He has a questionable record of respect for academic freedom. He tried to suppress publication of a book by Norman Finkelstein that critiqued the The Case for Israel. On 22 December 2004 Dershowitz wrote to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger urging him to “do anything to help prevent this impending tragedy”, i.e. the publication of Finkelstein’s book by the University of California Press. Dershowitz initially denied that he wrote a letter to Schwarzenegger but later admitted that he did. Schwarzenegger declined to suppress the book. In the wake of the publication of Finkelstein’s book Dershowitz waged a campaign to deny Finkelstein tenure at De Paul University. In 2007 Finkelstein was denied tenure. That many find Finkelstein tendentious or do not share his views is beside the point. Dershowitz has shown particular intolerance for Jewish and Israeli critics of Israeli policy. When he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Tel Aviv University in May 2010, he named and lashed out at Tel Aviv academics who have called for a boycott until Israel ends its military occupation, causing some eighty Tel Aviv academics to accuse him of incitement. He also grossly misrepresented the judicial record of Judge Richard Goldstone (whom he denounced as “an evil, evil man” and “an absolute traitor”) in retribution for the Goldstone Report on Gaza. In October 2005 Dershowitz wrote in the Jerusalem Post, “The fault for all civilian casualties in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lies exclusively with the Palestinian terrorists”. However, speaking at a symposium two days after his attack on dissenting Israeli academics, he said, “Our greatest enemies are not the Islamic extremists. They help our case in many ways... The problem is Jews. Jews and Israelis.” These two statements seem contradictory, but taken together they explain Dershowitz’s agenda. It is not the welfare of Israelis and Palestinians. It is the protection of the Israeli government, and its military occupation. In making that case the extremists, who kill people, are very useful to him, as Dershowitz himself insists. The greatest danger to his project is the truth, and those who speak it. { 31 comments… read them below or add one } Citizen March 25, 2011 at 12:40 pm Dershie’s activities suggests he does have a sense of ethics in terms of what American law school teaches because, as an officer of the court, an American attorney’s job is to present only the case for the party he/she represents; the attorney on the other side does the same; the jurisprudential model is of the adversary system where the judge or jury’s job is to decide which party “wins” the case. He operates as the advocate for the Israeli regime in any “case” or issue involving the conduct of Israel. In light of his view of international law as unfair because he believes it displays a double standard when it comes to judgment of Israel, he concludes he prefers operating without recognizing such law. And so he does. He is a kindred spirit with Tzipi Livni, an Israeli lawyer/Israeli party leader who has stated publically she does not believe in law (An English court has issued a warrant for her arrest respecting OP Cast Lead). As a lawyer myself, I really don’t see how any American legal institution can in any way support Dershie. Further, the logical conclusion of not recognizing the authority of the UN and international law generally is that Israel is not an authorized state in the first place and should not be a member state of the UN; in this sense Israel’s immediate breech of the UN’s condition subsequent to UN recognition, which has continued down to this day, is consistent with Dershie’s view. The net effect is that Israel is clearly a rogue state by any international standards, and is so according to the UN’s technical standard of recognition of Israel itself. In the absence of law, the law of the jungle controls. That is the law Hermann Goering defended at Nuremberg. Dershie flies the flag of this might-makes-right philosophy, holding up simultaneosly the image of Justice as blind when he knows full well that’s the ideal, and that no judge or jury is ever totally blind. I’ve never seen or heard Dershie take pot shots at the fact Israel never honored its committment to the UN, the agency that gave it world-wide legitimacy based on such committment, and I’ve never heard or seen Dershie suggest that the Palestinian natives of the former Mandate land have ever been the bag-holders for unfair rule of law when this is so obviously the case ever since 1948. Indeed, he has never pointed out that Israel has never honored the condition in the Balfour Declaration requiring the Jews in their new “homeland” do nothing to harm or deprive the native Palestinians of their basic rights. Nor has he ever pointed out that England did not have actual authority to make the Balfour promise to the Jews. Dershie’s take on Goldstone and the Goldstone Report is consistent with Dershie’s disregard for the international rule of law. Did Dershie ever defend the apartheid S African regime when it was in power? Log in to Reply Report this comment DICKERSON3870 March 25, 2011 at 2:29 pm RE: “as an officer of the court, an American attorney’s job is to present only the case for the party he/she represents” – Citizen REPLY: Yes, Dershowitz and his ilk (Abe Foxman, etc.) advocate for Israel without making any effort to present (or even acknowledge) the case for the Palestinians. And yet, Dershowitz expects anyone advocating for the Palestinians to present Israel’s case as well lest they be dismissed as anti-Semitic. If that isn’t a bastardization of the jurisprudential model know as the ‘adversarial system’, then I don’t know what is! Talk about a “double standard”! But I suppose it’s a neat, self-seving trick if you can get away with it and manage to somehow be able to still look yourself in the mirror. See: The World According to Carter, by Alan Dershowitz, New York Sun, 11/26/06 LINK – http://www.nysun.com/arts/world-according-to-carter/43958/ Log in to Reply Report this comment DICKERSON3870 March 25, 2011 at 2:41 pm RE: “it’s a neat, self-seving trick” – me, above SHOULD HAVE READ: it’s a neat, self-serving trick Log in to Reply Report this comment Citizen March 25, 2011 at 5:49 pm Yeah, you’re right about that Dickerson. And there’s an echo of the same self-serving trick on campuses across the USA. So it’s not just a bastardization of the American jurisprudential system, but of the principles of free speech itself in the very high learning citadels suppose to especially enshrine the mandate for the free flow of ideas and facts. The Israel Firsters are termites in our basic American structures erected to serve wee the people. Log in to Reply Report this comment Gaius Baltar March 25, 2011 at 12:49 pm How about boycotting Harvard as long as OJ Dershowitz is there? Log in to Reply Report this comment LeaNder March 25, 2011 at 12:55 pm good article, Adam. Dershowitz calls this illegal practice “moral and calibrated” but notes that it “plays poorly on television”. Hmm? Wouldn’t it play well on TV if it was moral and calibrated? Log in to Reply Report this comment Gellian March 25, 2011 at 1:01 pm Derschowitz’s comments about the black bishop’s “smiling face” and the “decent people” of South Africa sure do remind me of bigotry. Just not the kind he’s talking about himself. Log in to Reply Report this comment seafoid March 25, 2011 at 6:10 pm Nobody messes with Bishop Tutu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQjGc2NdrAQ Log in to Reply Report this comment pabelmont March 25, 2011 at 1:07 pm Thanks, Adam, for re-publishing this excellent piece. Dershowitz deserves (and all decent people need) all the principled debunking he can get. Log in to Reply Report this comment David Samel March 25, 2011 at 1:10 pm An excellent letter, though a full indictment of Dershowitz undoubtedly would be book-length, perhaps even a trilogy. Just to add one small item, Dersh told Antony Loewentstein that Tutu was “one of the most evil men in the world,” because he support BDS but had very little to say against the regimes in China and Zimbabwe. Even if his premise were true, that’s an idiotic conclusion to draw, but as it turns out, Dersh was lying anyway, because 45 seconds of research uncovers vigorous criticism of both countries by Tutu. One more thing. This South African letter notes that Dershowitz originally denied asking Schwarzenegger to intervene against the publication of Norman Finkelstein’s book by the UC Press, then admitted it. That’s true, but it’s a little more comical than that. Dersh, when forced to acknowledge the existence of the written communication, said “It was not a letter. It was a polite note.” Log in to Reply Report this comment Citizen March 25, 2011 at 5:57 pm Perhaps there’s talmudic volumes on the distinction between a letter and a polite note, comparing contexts, and sender v recipient? And also a set of double talmudic book-keeping, one with the original and its Hebrew translation, the other with a revised original and/or translation that is not the same? The kind of thing Israel Shahak brings to our attention. Log in to Reply Report this comment seafoid March 25, 2011 at 1:34 pm Dershowitz is a clown and Finkelstein has demolished his reputation. He is bad news for Jewish PR ( with apologies to Mooser for implying there is such a thing). The Dersh is rabid and he does no justice to the ordinary Jews of Israel who need thoughtful people rather than demagogues to represent their best interests. I guess he never got therapy for the Shoah either. Or else he’s an example of how the Jewish community needs a few more generations to figure out how to use power effectively. Log in to Reply Report this comment Antidote March 25, 2011 at 5:30 pm “He is bad news for Jewish PR ( with apologies to Mooser for implying there is such a thing).” Dershowitz strikes me as a typical American BS academic and pundit (with apologies for implying there is such a thing). Netanyahu does have a point, and Dershowitz knows it: “America is a thing you can move very easily” Log in to Reply Report this comment Potsherd2 March 25, 2011 at 1:38 pm That’s really vile stuff. It reflects much worse on Dersh than on Tutu, and I believe the world will instantly recognize this. Log in to Reply Report this comment Kathleen March 25, 2011 at 1:55 pm Dershowitz is the dust bin. Tutu speaks the truth and Dershowitz speaks with forked tongue Log in to Reply Report this comment rachelgolem March 25, 2011 at 2:01 pm Israel may be the new South Africa, but South Africa will soon be the new Zimbabwe. And Libya will soon be the new Cambodia. Log in to Reply Report this comment MRW March 25, 2011 at 2:18 pm South Africa will soon be the new Zimbabwe Hardly, darling. They have gold, diamonds, and great wine country. Fix your own mess first before you cast aspersions. Log in to Reply Report this comment seafoid March 25, 2011 at 2:52 pm South Africa has a future. Israel doesn’t. Log in to Reply Report this comment Citizen March 25, 2011 at 6:05 pm Hey Golem, cheer up; maybe popular rebellions will spread south of the Sahara as well as into Israeli territory. BTW, Zimbabwe is making progress on a new contsitution while Israel does not even have one. Time for all the thugocracies to all fall down. Log in to Reply Report this comment DICKERSON3870 March 25, 2011 at 2:05 pm RE: “According to Dershowitz, Tutu deserves to be ‘in the dustbin of history’”. – Adam Horowitz ‘OLDE SNARKY’ SEZ: And Dershowitz deserves to be named ‘Miss Congeniality’ in the drag queen pageant of history! Log in to Reply Report this comment Kathleen March 25, 2011 at 2:10 pm strong Zionist and Jewish population in South Africa for a long time. Will never forget back in 1971 a Jewish friend who lives in Denver telling us that you could get cheap labor there and live like a king. My response to his statement. WTF are you talking about? he shut up Log in to Reply Report this comment Citizen March 25, 2011 at 6:11 pm Yeah, well, Kathleen, if you’re old friend is still panting to live like a king on the cheap maybe he’s heading to an Israeli settlement? If so, better warn him to watch out for those Thai coolies he hires–tell him he needs to at least pay them on time. Log in to Reply Report this comment annie March 25, 2011 at 2:12 pm thank you very much adam, once again you’ve brought us vital news we likely wouldn’t hear about anywhere else. and a huge shout out to the letter writers for standing up to SAZF. Log in to Reply Report this comment MRW March 25, 2011 at 2:16 pm God, this is vile, Tutu’s “ever present grin … masks a long history of ugly hatred toward the Jewish people, the Jewish religion and the Jewish state.” Masks a long history? What history? No wonder it’s extremist Jewish Islamophobes (in the US) who are leading the anti-Obama campaign here and in Israel, where the stuff being said is particularly virulent. Log in to Reply Report this comment MRW March 25, 2011 at 2:20 pm I can’t even watch a movie with Natalie Portman in it these days because she was Dersh’s assistant at Harvard. They sought each other out…so go the news accounts. Log in to Reply Report this comment Donald March 25, 2011 at 2:34 pm I’d don’t care about that unless she still admires him. You’re allowed to be stupid when you’re an undergrad, at Harvard as well as other places. Log in to Reply Report this comment MRW March 25, 2011 at 2:54 pm As of a year ago she did. That’s what alerted me to it. She was calling him mister wonderful and how privileged she was to have worked for him while she was in school blah-blah. She is rolled out whenever the likuddies need a star to pr Israel around the world. Log in to Reply Report this comment Citizen March 25, 2011 at 6:15 pm Reminds me, what happened to that brunette member of the Sex And The City foursome, the one who played the character who converts to Judiasm because her hubby was such a good bald guy–she was selling Israeli settlement products on the side but after BDS gave her notice she dropped selling the product? Can she still get a job? Log in to Reply Report this comment Nevada Ned March 25, 2011 at 2:29 pm Dershowitz is Israel’s lawyer and PR flack. I wonder if he’s on retainer to the Israeli government. Log in to Reply Report this comment MRW March 25, 2011 at 2:56 pm Which means the US taxpayers are footing his bill. Log in to Reply Report this comment Citizen March 25, 2011 at 6:17 pm I bet he pays for nothing himself; it’s all taken care of… Log in to Reply Report this comment --------------------- |
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