Alan Dershowitz seems to place loyalty to Democrats and Progressives over fealty for Israel and World Jewry, even as he struggles to straddle this yawning gulf.
When he speaks at Sunday’s economic conference in Tel Aviv, maybe someone should ask him to justify remaining a professorial pundit when, fundamentally, he harbors a problematic belief-system.
That’s why he was spontaneously booed during his award acceptance speech at the Zionist Organization of America’s Annual Brandeis Dinner Gala on November 20, 2016
There was a spontaneous chorus of robust disapproval among the 1,200 disgruntled Gala attendees, when he asserted the Trump-Clinton presidential election had resulted in a “tie.”
Hearing this Constitutional law expert regurgitate a radical Democratic party talking-point, to intimate that a Trump presidency is illegitimate, prompted the no-nonsense ZOA audience to erupt.
We knew he knows that President-elect Trump overwhelmingly won the Electoral College – America’s sole Constitutional method of electing a president.
The ZOA’s polite listeners were undoubtedly disgruntled by Dershowitz’s prior pronouncements, notably advice against confronting key policy differences between America’s political parties.
He threatened that loss of bipartisanship risked polarization that could unify opposition to Israel’s interests – for “We might lose.”
He ignored the fact that a truly nonpartisan stance requires Democrats to increase support for Israel and for combating anti-Jewish agitation, uncomfortable pursuits for his fellow-liberals.
Instead, Dershowitz claimed self-marginalized white-supremacists are just as virulent as are hordes of violent left-wingers and radical Islamists – the latter linked by “intersectionality.”
He even argued erstwhile Republican populist Pat Buchanan is just as dangerous as is the potential Democrat Party leader, Rep. Keith Ellison — downplaying the congressman’s Islamist associations. and anti-Semitism.
Thus, Dershowitz urged the ZOA to limit its advocacy to “consensus” issues in concert with efforts of other Jewish organizations, such as opposing both the Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement and any attempt by the United Nations to create a “Palestinian state.”
Important as those issues are, this contradicted the audience’s pride in a ZOA that serves as the leading organization that courageously defends the national and civil rights of Israel and the Jewish people.
Indeed, Dershowitz sides with anti-Israel groups that want to force the Jewish State to prohibit Jews from living in the Jews’ Homeland.
He would discount Israel’s legal, religious, moral and security right to Judea, Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem – areas encompassed by the Balfour Declaration (and the San Remo Conference and the Treaty of Sèvres) that Jordan illegally occupied from 1948-1967 until Israel recaptured them in the defensive 1967 Six Day War.
Dershowitz revealed this core-belief in his 2012 essay in the Huffington Post: “[S]ince the early 1970s…I [have] advocated [annexing] portions of the captured territories that were necessary for Israel’s security, but would have precluded Israeli civilian settlements in other captured areas.”
- That’s why Dershowitz remains wedded to the myth that creating a “Palestinian state” (euphemistically and misleadingly called the “two-state solution”) is the only way to achieve “peace” – with an implacable foe that refuses to recognize Israel’s existence as a Jewish State.
- That’s why Dershowitz, who selectively favors “free speech,” would silence the ZOA from pointing out the certainty that a Judenrein “Palestinian state” – dominated by Hamas, Hezbollah and Fatah terrorist groups – would pose a grave threat to Israel.
- That’s why Dershowitz has unjustifiably written, for the Gatestone Institute, that “Both Bannon and Breitbart have made bigoted statements about Muslims, women and others.”
This latter posture also starkly contrasts with the ZOA’s defense of Stephen Bannon, virtually alone among pro-Israel organizations, and with awareness that Breitbart is consistently pro-Israel.
Years ago, I sensed his tendency to advocate for social-justice when the far more gripping current concern is the need to fight radical Islamism and Jew hatred, and to prioritize support for Israel.
I have publicly criticized Dershowitz’s declarations: at the University of Pennsylvania, on satellite-radio, and at a Jewish community center.
In February, 2012, to a packed-house at Penn’s Annenberg Center, the Jewish Exponent reported Dershowitz had endorsed President Obama in 2008 and had preached that “Israel should remain a bipartisan issue” – despite Obama’s having repeatedly created “space” between erstwhile allies.
I told the organizers of my displeasure with his inability to convey uncomfortable facts.
Thus, in December, 2014, when Dershowitz spoke at Penn’s University Museum, I asked: “What could Obama possibly do that would prompt you to retract your endorsement of Obama?”
Dershowitz’s explosive reaction — which persisted while he responded to subsequent questioners — devolved into a reversal of the raison d'être for his appearance: to lambaste the stances of “J Street.”
Dershowitz ultimately exclaimed, “I’m politically closer to J Street, than to Revisionist Zionists!”
Dershowitz ultimately exclaimed, “I’m politically closer to J Street, than to Revisionist Zionists!”
Dershowitz actually answered my question a few weeks later, when he briefly hosted a call-in show on SiriusXM, entitled “Debate Dershowitz.” (The title was misleading; Dershowitz routinely cut-off callers with whom he disagreed.)
After interrupting me on week #1, Dershowitz was unable to avoid answering me on week #2.
He finally said he would disavow Obama if Obama allowed Iran to develop nuclear weapons.
In September 2015, after Obama had concluded the pact that paves Iran’s way to a nuclear bomb, I reminded him of his pledge before an audience of 700 people at a JCC in Cherry Hill, N.J.
After I also had reminded him that he had characterized the Iran deal as a “treaty” based upon Supreme Court precedent (Gibbons v. Ogden) in USA Today, he nevertheless discounted any congressional effort that might be mounted to enjoin its implementation…before America became the chief funder of global terrorism.
Yet,thereafter, Dershowitz failed to condemn Obama’s “political commitment” with Tehran’s neo-Nazis, and Dershowitz endorsed then-candidate Hillary Clinton, who had laid the groundwork for this catastrophic Iran deal as Secretary of State.
Dershowitz commits polemical malpractice when he declares that he supports Israel – while he empowers her mortal enemies.
Instead of preaching to the ZOA that it stop truthfully advocating for Israel and against the real anti-Semitic radical Islamist threats, Dershowitz must convey reality to his fellow progressives.
Robert B. Sklaroff, M.D. is a political-activist; he has litigated against implementation of the Master Settlement Agreement with the tobacco industry due to flawed oversight, against the creation of health-insurer Highmark because it created a monopoly and monopsony, and against unconstitutional levels of public funding for two sports stadiums in Philadelphia.
