In his ad hominem attack on me – he calls me a dybbuk – Robert Sklaroff tells me to stop “declar[ing] that [I] support Israel.” His reason for attacking me is that I want support for Israel to remain a bi-partisan issue in American politics.
A simple fact-check of Sklaroff’s defamatory statements would demonstrate that virtually every one of his accusations is a malicious lie, as I will now show.
He claims that I place my loyalty to “progressives” above “fealty to Israel and world Jewry.” He says that because he ignorantly ignores what I have been writing for years. If he had simply opened my most recent book, Electile Dysfunction, he would see that I have taken the exact opposite position. I rail against the so-called “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party, who I call the repressives: [These quote progressives] “are often not the progressive “good guys” whom I looked up to in my youth; they are repressive bullies and bigots who disguise their anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, anti-Christian, and anti-American bigotry as a quest for social justice.
They must be fought – on campuses, at Democratic Party caucuses and conventions, and in the media – with the same righteous indignation with which decent people fight extreme right-wing manifestations of bigotry.”
Sklaroff mendaciously claims that in my talk to the ZOA, I argue that “a Trump presidency was illegitimate.” Nothing could be further from the truth as a review of my videotaped talk will prove. What I said was that support for Israel must remain bipartisan, and that we must never allow support for Israel to become “a referendum” in a national election.
In order to emphasize that important point – a point with which all Israeli leaders agree – I pointed out that if only one Party supported Israel, as is the case with many European countries, that party could lose a national election, as illustrate by the closeness of this election, in which Clinton won the popular vote and Trump the electoral vote. That is a fact, not a “talking point.” Under our Constitution, Trump is the legitimately elected president, and I immediately offered my assistance to him with regard to Israel, as I have to every president, regardless of party.
Sklaroff ridiculously suggests that I “ignored the fact that a truly non-partisan stance requires Democrats to increase support for Israel and for combatting anti-Jewish agitation.” Can Sklaroff really be that ignorant or blind to reality? Does he not know that I spend my life trying to push the Democrats in that direction? Has he not read my articles opposing Keith Ellison to head the Democratic National Committee? Again, from my recent book: “Oh, how things have changed over the past half century! The Democratic Party has been pushed farther left by the growing influence of radical activist organizations such as MoveOn, Occupy Wall Street, Code Pink, the National Lawyers Guild, and Black Lives Matter, as well as by leftward pressure from young voters, especially university students. This was manifested during the 2016 primary season by the surprising success of Bernie Sanders and the leftward push his voters gave Hillary Clinton.”
Sklaroff also criticizes me for attacking the anti-Semitism of the hard-right, and he apparently apologizes for such virulent right-wing Jew-Haters as Pat Buchanan and what he calls “self-marginalized white-supremacists.” He complained that I think Jew-haters and Israel bashers from the alt-right are as dangerous and violent as those from the hard-left. Unlike Sklaroff, I do not give a pass to Jew Haters on my side of the political spectrum. I attack with equal vigor, the bigots of the hard-left and hard-right.
At bottom Sklaroff’s real grievances with me is that I do not support his radical one-state solution that would require annexation of the entire west Bank and the expulsion or political subjugation of its Arab population. His Kahane-like solution is rejected by the vast majority of Israeli’s and American supporters of Israel. Yet Sklaroff falsely sees it as a litmus test for being considered a supporter of Israel.
Sklaroff lies about my position on the Iran deal, claiming that I “discounted any congressional effort that might be mounted to enjoin its implementation.” Had he glanced at my book: The Case Against the Iran Deal: How Can We Now Stop Iran From Getting Nukes, or my recent op-ed in the Boston Globe, he would know that I have urged Congress to authorize the President to take military action, if necessary to prevent Iran from ever developing nuclear weapons.
Sklaroff concludes with the absurd statement that “Dershowitz commits polemical malpractice when he declares that he supports Israel.”
Well, I am going to continue to support Israel. I’m going to continue to demand that support for Israel remain a bipartisan issue and that the Democratic Party reject the demands of “hard-left” progressives.
If Sklaroff has any problems with my continuing to support Israel on university campuses, in the media, and around the world, he should take it up with the democratically elected Prime Minster of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu who said the following at a recent Globus conference: "Israel has no greater champion and the truth no greater defender than Alan Dershowitz."
But then again Sklaroff probably doesn’t believe that Netanyahu is a supporter of Israel!