Alan Dershowitz2012-05-16T14:06:19-04:00Alan Dershowitzhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=alan-dershowitzCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Alan DershowitzGood old fashioned elbow grease.Suppressing Ugly Truth for Beautiful Arttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14671742012-05-01T15:53:18-04:002012-05-01T15:52:24-04:00Alan Dershowitzhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/
Stein, a "racial" Jew according to Nazi ideology, managed to survive the Holocaust, while the vast majority of her co-religionists were deported and slaughtered. The exhibit says "remarkably, the two women [Stein and her companion Alice Toklas] survived the war with their possessions intact." It adds that "Bernard Fay, a close friend... and influential Vichy collaborator is thought to have protected them." That is an incomplete and distorted account of what actually happened. Stein and Toklas survived the Holocaust for one simple reason: Gertrude Stein was herself a major collaborator with the Vichy regime and a supporter of its pro-Nazi leadership.
According to a new book entitled Unlikely Collaboration: Gertrude Stein, Bernard Fay and the Vichy Dilemma, by Barbara Will, Stein publicly proclaimed her admiration for Hitler during the 1930s, proposing him for a Nobel Peace Prize. In the worst days of the Vichy regime, she volunteered to write an introduction to the speeches of General Phillipe Petain, the Nazi puppet leader who deported thousands of Jews, but who she regarded as a great French hero. She wanted his speeches translated into English, with her introduction, so that Americans would see the virtues of the Vichy regime. In that respect she was like other modernist writers, such as Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot who proudly proclaimed their pro-Fascist ideology, but Stein's support for Fascism was more bizarre because she was Jewish.
Stein's closest friend, and a man who greatly influenced her turn toward fascism was Bernard Fay, who the Vichy government put in charge of hunting down Masons, Jews and other perceived enemies of the State. Fay was more than a mere collaborator as suggested by the Met exhibit. He was a full blown Nazi operative, responsible for the deaths of many people. After the war, when the horrendous results were known to all, Gertrude wrote in support of Fay when he was placed on trial for his Nazi war crimes.
Perhaps an artist should be judged without regard to his or her political affiliations or actions, but the Met exhibit purports to present the story of the Stein collection and of Gertrude's life in France. It ends with a misleading description of her activities during the war years. It would perhaps be different if this were only an exhibition of the Steins' art collection rather than a biographical account of her family's life in France. By withholding from the viewers an important part of the truth, the Met is engaging in a falsification of history.
Why would the Met do that? Presenting a complete picture -- large warts and all -- and allowing viewers to judge for themselves as to what to make of her collaborations, would be far more interesting and educational.
When museums put on exhibitions, they often tend to glorify those whose work they are exhibiting. Sometimes they fail to convey an accurate historical picture. What the Met is doing is different. By offering a false explanation of how Stein and Toklas "remarkably" survived the Holocaust, while living in a town from which dozens of Jewish children were deported to death camps, the Met has distorted the history of the Holocaust and failed to point a finger of blame at collaborators, such as Stein, who made it possible.
The Met is a great museum. I love to go there. But when I visited the Stein exhibit, I was disappointed. There is still time for the Met to make it right. It should have a statement describing, fully and accurately, Stein's collaboration. And it should offer for sale at the exhibition shop Barbara Will's book, exposing Gertrude's pernicious collaboration, alongside the books currently on sale, all which glorify the Steins.
Before publishing this article, I wrote to the museum inquiring about the omission and proposing some changes. They justified the omission by arguing that the exhibit was primarily about the Steins' art and not about Gertrude's politics, but they agreed to sell Barbara Will's book. They have not yet responded to my request to include in the exhibit itself some information about Gertrude Stein's ignoble role in the Nazi occupation of France. Unless they do, those who see the exhibit will continue to be misinformed about the ugly truth of a woman with beautiful art.]]>The "Rorschach" Facts in the Killing of Trayvon Martintag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14184412012-04-11T14:36:43-04:002012-04-11T16:09:01-04:00Alan Dershowitzhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/
At the moment, the facts in the case -- at least those known to the public -- are ever shifting. One journalist aptly characterized the case as, "a narrative Rorschach that each side will interpret as it wishes." Now it has been announced that the special prosecutor may soon release new information that may change both the public perception of the case and its legal strengths and weaknesses.
Several points can be made even now with a high degree of certainty.
First, the decision by George Zimmerman's lawyers to stop representing him portends a disastrous reversal of fortune for Zimmerman as he faces the prospect of being charged with manslaughter for the killing of Trayvon Martin -- a charge that Zimmerman might well have been able to beat if he had hired competent lawyers and followed their advice. Instead, he had an unprofessional relationship with media-driven lawyers -- he called them "legal advisors" -- and refused to follow their advice, talking to the media, to the public via a website and to the prosecutor. Wildcat clients who operate outside of the lawyer/client framework are the bane of criminal defense lawyers. I know, because I've had several such clients.
Zimmerman's "lawyers" were right to end their legal relationship with their client, but they went about it in the wrong way. They simply should have notified the prosecution and the public in a one sentence statement that they no longer represented Zimmerman (if they ever really did!). They should not have explained the reason why they quit, because that inevitably revealed lawyer client privileged information such as the fact that Zimmerman was not following their advice, that he may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and that they can't reach him. They also had no right to discuss possible defenses, especially a claim of insanity, since that might undercut Zimmerman's absolute defense of justification.
The special prosecutor may soon announce whether she plans to indict and arrest Zimmerman -- a likely outcome. She may have been pressured by the lawyers' statements to arrest him even more quickly than she had originally intended, because the lawyers acknowledge that they don't know where he is.
Even Zimmerman's mysterious location is subject to differing interpretations. The Martin family sees it as flight suggestive of a guilty conscience and the need for a quick arrest, while Zimmerman's supporters view it as a rational response to the bounty put on his head by the Black Panthers.
Second, On the basis of the evidence currently in the public record, one likely outcome of the case against George Zimmerman is a mixed one: There may be sufficient evidence for a reasonable prosecutor to indict him for manslaughter, but there may also be doubt sufficient for a reasonable jury to acquit him.
Any such predictions should be accepted with an abundance of caution, however, because the evidence known to the special prosecutor, but not to the public, may paint a different picture. It may be stronger or weaker.
Media reports suggest that police found Zimmerman with grass stains on the back of his shirt, bloody bruises on the back of his head and other indicia that may support his contention that Trayvon Martin was banging his head against the ground when Zimmerman shot him.
We don't know what Martin's body or clothing show, other than the fatal bullet wound. If there are no comparable bruises or grass stains and if the bullet wound and powder residue establish that the gun was fired at very close range, this too might support a claim of self-defense.
Then there is a recorded cry for help, which, if it turns out to be the voice of Martin, would undercut the defense -- if the voice analysis passes scientific muster and is deemed admissible into evidence.
There may be additional forensic evidence -- or witnesses -- of which we are now unaware, though it is unlikely there is a "smoking gun."
Finally, there is the overarching and historically painful reality that an unarmed black teenager lies dead at the hand of an armed Hispanic man who ignored a dispatcher's advice not to follow and engage the "suspect," and who may have -- and this too is forensically unclear -- uttered a racial epithet while chasing him.
These "facts" give rise to several possible scenarios of what may actually have occurred on that dark rainy night. Under the Florida self-defense statute, it matters greatly what happened, most especially who "initially provoke[d] the use of force," and who started the physical encounter.
If Zimmerman initially provoked the deadly encounter, then he cannot invoke any "stand your ground" defense. He would then be under a legal obligation to "exhaust ... every reasonable means to escape."
Though this statute is anything but a model of clarity, it does suggest that whoever "provokes" a deadly encounter has a heavy burden of justification in claiming self-defense. But the statute doesn't define "provokes," and that ambiguous word may hold the key to the outcome of this tragic case.
If provocation is limited to a physical assault, and if Zimmerman's account that Martin blindsided him with a punch is believed, then Zimmerman did not provoke the encounter. But if provocation includes following the victim and harassing him, then Zimmerman may well qualify as a provocateur. Moreover, a jury may believe that Zimmerman started the physical confrontation by grabbing Martin. This would almost certainly constitute provocation.
But to complicate matters further, even a provocateur has the legal right to defend himself under Florida law if he can't escape and if he is in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm, as Zimmerman claims he was.
All this goes to show how factually driven this case is under Florida law. And we don't yet know all the facts. The special prosecutor, who has said she will not use a grand jury to decide whether to indict Zimmerman, has an obligation to consider all the evidence and to apply the law to the facts.
All she needs in order to indict is probable cause that a crime has been committed. A jury that ultimately decides whether the defendant is guilty needs much more: proof beyond a reasonable doubt. But what if a prosecutor concludes that there is both probable cause and a reasonable doubt?
That is the nightmare scenario that this prosecutor may well face. In ordinary circumstances, most prosecutors would not bring such a case, because it would be a waste of resources to indict someone who will probably be acquitted. But this is anything but a run-of-the-mill case.
Moreover, the Florida statute provides an additional layer of protection to a defendant claiming self-defense: A judge must decide whether the defendant is "immune from prosecution," that is, if the judge believes his actions fall under the law of self-defense.
So the following mixed outcome is certainly possible: The special prosecutor indicts; the judge does or doesn't grant immunity; if he doesn't, the jury acquits.
Many people would be unhappy with such a mixed outcome, but it is not the job of the law to make people happy.
Parts of this blog appeared on CNN.com and The Daily News.]]>Gunter Grass Shouldn't Be Barred From Israeltag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14123462012-04-09T13:06:03-04:002012-04-09T13:08:32-04:00Alan Dershowitzhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/
These wrong-headed views deserve to be rebutted on their demerits, as Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, did quite effectively in his public response to Grass, by exposing his "shameful moral equivalence between Israel and Iran, a regime that denies the Holocaust and threatens to annihilate Israel," by pointing out that "it is Iran, not Israel, that threatens other states with annihilation," and that it is Iran who supports the Syrian regime's crackdown of its people and "stones women, hangs gays and brutally represses tens of millions of its own citizens." Grass' poem has also been effectively critiqued by Israelis across the political and literary spectrum. That is as it should be in an open, vibrant democracy, accustomed to rancorous public debate. But a great nation, committed to freedom of expression and dissent, should not bar a critic, even a critic as bigoted as Grass, from its territory.
Gunter Grass has always had a problem with Jews, from his early days as a member of the Hitler youth and Nazi SS to his most recent application of a nasty double standard to the Jewish state. But his ridiculous poem doesn't pose any security threat to Israel that would justify his physical exclusion from the country.
To the contrary, he should be welcomed in Israel and shown the real facts on the ground: that Israel is a tiny country doing its best to defend itself against existential threats posed by Iran's determination to develop nuclear weapons and by the increasing radical Islamization of Israel's neighborhood. He should also be shown why Israel's submarines, which provide a second-strike capacity, serve as a deterrent to a possible nuclear attack by Iran. He should be made to feel shame for misusing his literary talents in the interests of bigotry and falsehood.
Grass should be debated and defeated in the marketplace of ideas rather than banned from participating in face to face dialogue with Israeli intellectuals and political figures, who are perfectly capable of confronting him in the public arena of debate and dialogue, and even of literature. Israel need not fear poets or polemicists. It should certainly not use its security apparatus, which includes control over its borders, to exclude has-been octogenarian writers with whom it disagrees.
By misusing border controls to make a symbolic gesture of contempt against a writer, Israel's Minister of the Interior weakens his nation's otherwise strong case for excluding individuals who pose genuine threats to the physical security of Israeli citizens. Border controls should be reserved for real security threats.
Grass, by using his literary and political influence to spread dangerous lies, does pose a threat to Israel, but it is not the kind of threat that can be dealt with by his physical exclusion from the country. Ideas, even bad ones like Grass', do not respect national boundaries. Grass can appear in Israel via the internet, television and the written word. Moreover, his danger lies not in his influence within Israel, which is virtually non-existent, but in the increasing acceptance of his false ideas in Germany and other parts of Europe. Israel's considerable intellectual and academic resources should be devoted to responding to this growing threat by developing and articulating counter arguments, not by responding emotionally and counterproductively.
Before the decision to bar Grass was announced, most serious intellectuals were critical of his poem and of him, but now many of the same intellectuals will rally to the defense of his freedom to express himself and to travel freely. That is as it should be, since disagreeable views, even when espoused by disagreeable people, should not be barred.
I hope that the decision by the Minister of the Interior will be quickly reversed by the Israeli government. It is too important a decision, and does too much damage to Israel, to be left to one minister. The entire nation suffers when a poet is barred from its land. That is not the democratic response to bad speech. Nor is it the response of the Jewish tradition, which thrives on debate and dissent. It should not be the Israeli response.
]]>The Case Against the Left and Right One-State Solutiontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.13702942012-03-21T13:18:49-04:002012-03-21T14:09:21-04:00Alan Dershowitzhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/
I have advocated a two-state solution, based on secure borders for Israel, since the early 1970s, when I debated Noam Chomsky, who was then an advocate of a secular bi-national state. I advocated a version of what was then known as "the Alon Plan," which, in effect, would have annexed portions of the captured territories that were necessary for Israel's security but would have precluded Israeli civilian settlements in other captured areas. This plan was consistent with Security Council Resolution 242, which allowed for some territorial annexation by Israel to achieve secure borders. I did not, and do not now, advocate a return to the indefensible 1967 lines, which reflected nothing more than temporary truce lines following the attack on Israel by the surrounding Arab states in 1948.
Now the hard left wants to eliminate these borders and create one state which would soon become another Arab Muslim state in which Jews would be a minority, while the soft left wants Israel to return all the territory captured in the defensive war of 1967, with mutually agreed acre-for-acre land swaps (to which the Palestinians now seem unwilling to agree).
The hard right, on the other hand, wants Israel to annex and settle the entire West Bank, make it part of Israel, but deny its Arab residents the right to vote and become citizens. (If the hard right position were to grant voting and citizenship to the Arab residents of the West Bank, they would be agreeing with the hard left's position on a "democratic" one state solution that would quickly turn into an undemocratic Muslim state based on Sharia law, as specified in the Palestinian Constitution).
Both one state solutions would end in Israel's delegitimation as the democratic nation-state of the Jewish people. That's why the vast majority of Israelis, as well as every centrist Israeli leader, rejects both the left and right wing versions of the one-state solution.
An Israel that would permanently deny millions of Arab residents the rights of citizenship would become illegitimate not only in the eyes of the international community, but even more important, in the eyes of most Israelis and Israeli supporters around the world. Israel would cease to be a democracy if nearly half of its residents could not vote. Some on the hard right would "solve" this problem by expelling the Arab residents of the West Bank. That too is not a solution that is consistent with democratic values.
In a recent article entitled "Disputing Dershowitz," Martin Sherman tries to make the hard right case against the two state solution. In doing so, he never even addresses the issue of democracy. This is perhaps because he doesn't care whether his "one state" is or is not democratic. But the vast majority of Israelis, and their leaders and supporters, do. But because Sherman doesn't value democracy, he seems willing to impose his undemocratic solution in an undemocratic manner on unwilling Israelis and Palestinians.
He makes the absurd argument that the Palestinians are not a people based on the fact that they don't have a unique language, script, religion, heritage or history. By that standard, the United States should still be part of Great Britain, because the American Colonists, who were being denied full citizenship, also lacked those characteristics. The Palestinians are a people because they regard themselves as such and seek to govern themselves. They will secure self-government, however, only if they come to the bargaining table, with no preconditions, and with the realization that they must accept borders and other conditions that assure Israel's security. They must also realize that they are not coming to the negotiating table in the same bargaining position as the Israelis. The Israelis secured the West Bank after winning a defensive war started by Jordan, in whose place the Palestinians now stand. By demanding preconditions from the Israelis to receive what they claim is their land, the Palestinians remind us what Abba Eban said in 1967 when the Arabs rejected Security Council Resolution 242:
"This was the first war in history which has ended with the victors suing for peace and the vanquished calling for unconditional surrender."
The major reason there is still no two-state solution is the Palestinian unwillingness to accept Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, to acknowledge the need for border adjustments necessary for Israel's security, and to renounce the phony "Right of Return," which is simply another ploy to secure a one-state solution.
The hard right is correct when they point out that there are risks associated with the two-state solution, but the vast majority of Israelis are prepared to accept those risks (reduced by border changes and other security measures) in order to assure a democratic Israel which will remain the legitimate nation-state of the Jewish people.]]>Why Deterrence Won't Work Against Irantag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.13673462012-03-20T12:39:28-04:002012-03-20T13:54:27-04:00Alan Dershowitzhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/
Following President Obama's strong renunciation of "containment" and his expression of willingness to use military force as a last resort to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, some on the left continue to oppose any threat to use the military option. Leading this approach is Fareed Zakaria, who recently on his CNN program, characterized the Obama policy as "a serious error," and called instead for a "robust policy of containment and deterrence."
But the policy that Zakaria is proposing is anything but robust. To the contrary, it is a call for inaction. It presumed that Iran will be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, but that they will be deterred from actually using them by the threat of nuclear retaliation. Zakaria points to the fact that deterrence succeeded in preventing war between the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as between India and Pakistan. He claims that each side was effectively deterred by the threat of mutually assured destruction. He says it will work equally well with Iran.
Let us pause for a moment to understand precisely what a policy of deterrence entails. Any such policy is based on the promise that if one side launches a nuclear attack, the other side will retaliate with an equally devastating nuclear attack, thus assuring the destruction of both societies and the deaths of millions of innocent civilians. The first question therefore is whether the United States would actually be willing to retaliate against a nuclear attack on Israel by dropping nuclear bombs on Tehran, killing millions of its civilian inhabitants. The second question is whether any civilized country--the United States or Israel--should be willing to kill millions of Iranian civilians because their leaders made a decision to use nuclear weapons against Israel or the United States. The third question--and the one never asked by advocates of deterrence--is whether it would be legal, under the laws of war, to target millions of civilians in a retaliatory nuclear attack.
These are the kinds of questions that Fareed Zakaria and his dovish colleagues refuse to ask. And the reason they refuse to ask these hard questions is precisely because we know the answers they would give: They would be categorically opposed to any retaliatory attack that targeted civilians in a tit-for-tat implementation of a mutually assured destruction policy of deterrence. If you don't believe me, ask him!
As to the legality of nuclear deterrence, the International Court of Justice issued a decision in 1996, in a case challenging the lawfulness of using, or threatening to use, nuclear weapons. The majority decision declined "to pronounce...on the practice known as 'the policy of deterrence'." It did rule unanimously, however, that any "threat or use of nuclear weapons" must "be compatible with the requirements of the international law applicable in armed conflict, particularly those of the principles and rules of international humanitarian law..." These rules, of course, generally forbid the targeting of civilian population centers and require proportionality even in the bombing of military targets. Since nuclear weapons are, by their nature, virtually incapable of destroying military targets without also inflicting countless civilian casualties, it would seem to follow that they could not be used except against remote military targets, such as ships and submarines on the high seas, or armies in isolated deserts or mountains. In a divided vote, the court ruled that:
the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict...
However, in view of the current state of international law, and of the elements of fact at its disposal, the Court cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defence in which the very survival of a State would be at stake.
In other words, it would be unlawful for the United States to threaten or use nuclear weapons as a deterrent, since its "very survival" would not be at stake, but it might be lawful for Israel to do so because it is a small state whose very survival would, in fact, be at stake were it to be attacked by nuclear weapons.
Menachem Begin, the Israeli Prime Minister who ordered the preventive attack on Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981, expressly renounced mutually assured destruction as a policy. He said that Israeli "morality" would never permit a retaliatory attack against an Iraqi city: "The children of Baghdad are not our enemy."
A preventive attack, on the other hand, is always directed against a military target. Only one person -- a nuclear technician -- was killed in the attack Begin authorized.
It would appear to be ironic that Zakaria, and others who purport to be "doves," would favor a mutually assured destruction policy that threatens the deaths of millions, over a preventive policy that targets military nuclear facilities. But it is not at all ironic, since such doves would be against actually carrying out the threat that is central to any credible policy of deterrence. For them, deterrence is a bluff -- a hollow threat and the Iranians would see right through it.
That's why President Obama is correct in renouncing containment and insisting that he isn't bluffing when he says Iran will not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, even if it takes a surgical military strike to stop them.
I am not here arguing in favor of a preventive attack on Iran at this time. I am arguing against reliance on a policy of deterrence and containment, because I don't believe it will work in relation to Iran, Israel and the United States.
What if deterrence and containment didn't work, and Iran were to fire nuclear rockets at Israeli cities? Those who now advocate robust deterrence -- instead of surgical prevention -- would simply say to the remaining Israelis: "Whoops. We were wrong. Sorry. We'll build you a new Holocaust Museum."]]>Should Harvard Sponsor a One-Sided Conference Seeking the End of Israel?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.13047982012-02-28T15:14:15-05:002012-04-29T05:12:01-04:00Alan Dershowitzhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/
If the answers to those questions are clearly "yes", then Harvard cannot be faulted for its role in the forthcoming anti-Israel hate fest. It would mean that in the name of academic and speech freedom Harvard will host a conference on nearly any kooky idea of the hard right or hard left. If the answer is "no", then the single standard of academic freedom would demand reconsideration of the Harvard Provost's decision to help fund the anti-Israel hate fest and the decision of the Kennedy School to lend its premises to this event. If Harvard were to decide to host the anti-Israel hate fest but not the anti Palestinian one, that would reveal either an anti Israel or pro hard left bias unbecoming a great university.
To be fair, the dean of the Kennedy School did issue a statement that his school "in no way endorses or supports the apparent position" of the conference, and that he hopes the "final shape of the conference will be significantly more balanced." But the question remains, would he have done no more than that if an anti-Palestinian conference were being hosted on his premises and supported by "centers" associated with the Kennedy School?
I believe Harvard would probably pass the "neutrality test," but I hope the issue is never directly put to Harvard, because it would be obnoxious for there to be a conference here on the subject of whether the Palestinians are a real people. They are, and so are the Israelis. The quest for a Palestinian state is a legitimate one, as is the need to preserve Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people.
The participants in the Harvard conference will deny that there is any parallel between the subject of their conference and the subject of my hypothetical one. They will claim that the "one state solution" is a serious academic subject, whereas the question "are the Palestinians really a people?" is not. This is a pure rationalization. The question regarding the Palestinians was raised by a candidate for President of the United States and has been the subject of debate and controversy in the media and in academic writings. Both subjects are essentially political in nature and both have similarly phony academic veneers. Both conferences would be unacademically one-sided in their selection of speakers. Moreover, a great university committed to free speech and academic freedom does not get to pick and choose which political issues it deems sufficiently "correct" to warrant its imprimatur.
The only real difference between the two subjects is that if Harvard were to sponsor a one-sided conference against a Palestinian state, there would be massive protests, especially by some of the very academics who are willingly lending their imprimatur to the anti-Israel hate fest. But the charge of hypocrisy has never stopped these professors from applying a double standard against Israel. They should not be stopped from speaking -- that would be censorship and a denial of academic freedom. But they should be shamed for participating in an unacademic one-sided hate conference, and for their hypocrisy in doing so in the name of academic freedom, when they would never tolerate a comparable hate conference against a Palestinian state or the Palestinian people.
Let there be no doubt that the call for a single state solution is a euphemism for ending the existence of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. The major proponents of this ruse acknowledge -- indeed proclaim -- that this is their true goal. Tony Judt, who was the academic godfather of the "one state" ploy, saw it as an alternative to Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, which he believed was a mistake. Many of those speaking at the Harvard conference are on record opposing the existence of Israel. Leon Weiselteir was right when he observed that the one state gambit is not "the alternative for Israel. It is the alternative to Israel."
The "one state" solution failed in the former Yugoslavia. It failed in India. And it would fail in the Mideast. That's why most Palestinians and nearly all Israelis are against it. They favor a two state solution, as does most of the rest of the world.
Many of the speakers at this conference will rail against "a Jewish State." But they will not protest the Palestinian Constitution which establishes Islam as the only "official religion" and requires that "the principles of Islamic Sharia shall be the main source of legislation." Moreover, it establishes Arabic as the sole "official language" of Palestine. Israel, in contrast, treats Judaism, Islam and Christianity equally, does not base its laws (except regarding family matters of Jews) on Jewish law, and has three official languages -- Hebrew, Arabic and English (with Russian constituting the 4th unofficial language and Ethiopian a 5th, manifesting its extensive ethnic diversity).
As this conference goes forward, and as the massive casualties mount in Syria, the resounding silence about the victims of the Assad brutality by those speakers, who use the G word (genocide) every time Israel acts in defense of its citizens, speaks louder than their hypocritical words. The extremists who will be speaking at this hate fest are so obsessed with Israel's imperfections that they ignore -- indeed enable -- the most serious human rights violations that are occurring throughout the world. That is the real shame of the double standard that is represented by this hateful conference.
A shorter and somewhat different version of this appeared on Newsmax.]]>Friends Seminary Plays Bait and Switch on Anti-Semitismtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.13011552012-02-27T10:10:15-05:002012-04-28T05:12:01-04:00Alan Dershowitzhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/
After I exposed the original invitations to Gilad Atzmon -- who justifies the burning down of synagogues as "reasonable" response to Jewish efforts to "control the world" -- the Headmaster of the school agreed to several things. First, he would speak at an assembly to the students about the evils of anti-Semitism; second, he would assign my essay to the students who were assigned Atzmon's essay; and third, he would invite me to address the students. He has now broken each of these promises.
Students who were at the assembly have confirmed that the speakers only made things worse. The teacher who invited Atzmon talked about what a great musician he was. The Headmaster was defensive about how his words were manipulated and justified bringing Atzmon based on Quaker principles. Apparently, the word anti-Semitism was never once mentioned during this meeting. My article was not assigned to the students; a citation was sent to them saying that I wanted students to read its content.
When I wrote to the Headmaster complaining about these breaches, they used my letter as an excuse for canceling my appearance. The real reason was almost certainly pressure from hard-left members of his faculty and others.
Let's be clear what this means. The school was unwilling to cancel Atzmon's appearance, even after learning that he was virulent anti-Semite who questions the Holocaust but believes that it may be true that Jews kill Christians to use their blood for religious purposes. But they have canceled my appearance because they didn't like the tone of a private letter that I wrote to them that was critical of the Headmaster's failure to comply with his promises. I ended my letter with the following words: "Please assure me that I am wrong about my judgment about you. I really would like to see this move forward in a positive direction, but you are not helping. The ultimate sufferers are your students, who are being taught the wrong values that will serve them poorly in college and in life."
The values that Headmaster Bo Lauder is imbuing to his students are deception, breach of promise, toleration of anti-Semitism and an unwillingness to present all sides of an issue. In the end, the Headmaster is showing tremendous distrust of his students by refusing to allow them to hear another side of the issue, by canceling my promised appearance, by not assigning my essay and by continuing to be defensive regarding the dreadful mistake of judgment he made in allowing Atzmon to teach his students.
The Headmaster may believe that by breaking his promises, he has ended this issue. Let him be absolutely certain that, as I wrote in my letter to him: "This issue will not go away, and nor will I. Misled once, shame on you. Misled twice, shame on me." Unless I am invited to address the students inside of the school, I will appear outside of the school, where I will hand out my essays to those students who are willing to read them and will address those students who have an interest in hearing a response to anti-Semitism. I am also considering inviting parents, students and other members of the Friends Seminary community to an event, in a venue outside of the school, where these issues can be discussed openly and candidly. Headmaster Lauder may be able to keep me physically outside of his school, but he will not be able to stop my ideas from reaching his community. The truth does not respect artificial boundaries.
The Friends Seminary, like other elite schools around the country, teaches our future leaders. Many Friends Schools around the country have espoused strongly anti-Israel policies for years. The Friends Seminary in New York itself has a rabidly anti-Israel history teacher on its faculty, who propagandizes his students against Israel in the classroom, and who has a picture of Anne Frank wearing a Palestinian headdress on his website. The school has and is again planning to take its students on trips to the Middle East that present a one-sided perspective. Now, they have crossed the line from preaching anti-Zionism to tolerating anti-Semitism. I will not remain silent in the face of the Friends Seminary's double standard, and neither should you. ]]>Who Are America's Reliable Allies?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.12794392012-02-17T13:04:40-05:002012-04-18T05:12:01-04:00Alan Dershowitzhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/
India has long claimed to be a reliable ally, but it is now undercutting American efforts to impose meaningful sanctions against Iran. Its help cannot any longer be counted on in the struggle against the greatest danger faced by the United States -- an Iran with nuclear weapons. Japan, another ally, is dilly dallying on sanctions as well. Brazil used to be a reliable partner, until it began to fall under the sway of Venezuela's Chavez, who is closely allied with Iran and other American enemies. The "new" Russia and China demonstrated their lack of reliability when they vetoed American efforts in the Security Council to help resolve the Syrian crisis. Egypt, which has received billions of dollars of American aid, has defied American warnings not to put US citizens on trial on phony, trumped-up charges. Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates are now playing footsy with Hamas and Hezbollah, also Iranian surrogates, as they worry about the contagion of the Arab Spring and the growing influence of the Muslim Brotherhood.
It turns out that other than Europe, Israel may be America's only remaining reliable ally. And even some European countries, such as France, Sweden and Norway, are in doubt.
Israel will always remain a strong American ally because it shares an American commitment to democracy, to freedom of religion, to freedom of expression and to an open market economy. It also shares a common commitment to fight against terrorism and other threats to the security of the United States -- a commitment that is less than vigorous among some European countries.
Some political scientists and state department officials, who call themselves "realists", question Israel's value as an American ally. They are wrong, and recent events confirm how wrong they are and have been.
There is no doubt that America helps Israel enormously, as it should help those who share our democratic values. But there is also no doubt that Israel helps the United States considerably, by sharing its extraordinary intelligence-gathering capabilities, its military R&D, its computer know-how and other intangibles. As other nations in the region debate whether American troops should even be allowed to set foot on their territory, Israel welcomes the American military to engage in joint exercises. In its nearly 64 years of existence, Israel has never asked for a single American soldier to fight its battles. It fights its own battles while assisting the American military in defending our country against terrorism and other threats to our citizens.
It's time for the realists to acknowledge that Israel not only has a moral and ideological claim to American support, but it also has a claim base on realpolitik. Moreover, Israeli exports -- medical, environmental, educational, cultural, agricultural, and high tech -- contribute to the quality of life of all Americans. No country in history has contributed more in 64 years to the quality of life of the world's population than Israel has since its birth.
Those are some of the reasons why thoughtful Americans overwhelmingly support Israel, why every mainstream presidential candidate supports Israel's security, and why Israel has never been a divisive issue in American politics, as it has sometimes been in European politics.
This commonality of interests should not immunize Israeli policies and actions from legitimate and reasonable criticism, any more than England's shared values should immunize that country from criticism. Allies need not agree on every aspect of each other's policy to remain supportive friends. But Israel's reliability as an eternal American ally -- and its many contributions to American security and daily life -- should cause us to treat that nation as a friend and to resolve reasonable doubts in its favor.
Unfortunately, the opposite is being advocated by some "realists," hard left academics and extremist student activists. They see Israel as an enemy and resolve all doubts against it. They single out the Jewish state for divestment, boycotts and sanctions, (DBS) -- ignoring real human rights offenders such as China, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Iran and Syria. They apply a double standard of judgment against Israel. They do not limit their hostility to particular Israeli actions or policies. Instead, they seek to delegitimate the entire concept of a secular, democratic, pluralistic nation state for the Jewish people in a world that includes numerous "Arab," "Muslim," "Christian," "Hindu" and other far more particularistic states.
At its root much of the animus directed at Israel, particularly from the hard left, is actually directed at the United States. The hard left hates America, and it also hates its reliable allies such as Israel. But for those of us who love America, support for Israel -- its most reliable ally -- comes naturally.
So let our great nation continue to support the security and survival of another great democracy with the understanding that there is mutual benefit to our enduring alliance and friendship. Israel, unlike many other fair weather allies, can always be counted on by the United States.
]]>Is Paterno Getting a Bum Rap?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.11019332011-11-18T16:23:17-05:002012-01-18T05:12:01-05:00Alan Dershowitzhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/
In my Legal Ethics class at Harvard Law School, a spontaneous debate broke out over whether Joe Paterno got a bum rap for being fired. As in any good law school class, all sides of the issue were presented vigorously and articulately.
First, we discussed whether Paterno had any legal obligation to report to the police what his assistant coach, Mike McQueary, told him he saw in the locker room. The virtually unanimous view was that he had no legal obligation to do anything -- not even to do what he did, namely relay the conversation to his immediate superior, the Director of Athletics. Unlike many European countries, most American states place no affirmative duty on citizens to report even crimes they have themselves seen, and certainly no duty to report crimes that others have told them about. I'm not aware of any Pennsylvania law, in effect at the time of these events, that would have imposed any such legal duty on Paterno. The fact that he did report the conversation to his superiors would seem to immunize him from any legal liability, either criminal or civil.
This conclusion was based on what is currently in the media. There may be facts not known to the class that could change the legal landscape.
Several students immediately sought to probe the distinction between legal and moral obligations. This being a class on legal ethics, this distinction is often central to our discussions. In the classroom, the issue often arises in the context of information confidentially given to a lawyer by his client. In such situations, the lawyer may have conflicting obligations: a legal obligation to confidentiality of his client; and a moral obligation to try to prevent continuing conduct that could harm others. But Paterno is not a lawyer, and McQueary was not his client. He was free, therefore, to disclose the conversation to anyone he chose, and it seems likely that McQueary actually wanted him to turn the information over to the proper authority, so that Jerry Sandusky would not be able to continue doing what McQueary had seen him do.
The moral question, therefore, is whether Paterno did enough by simply conveying the information one step up in the hierarchy to the athletic director, and doing nothing further. Reasonable people can, and do, disagree over the answer to this question. Some take the view that Penn State is a rigidly hierarchical organization, and that in such an organization, it is sufficient to report to one's superior. Others point out that the Catholic Church too, is a hierarchical organization, and when priests reported abuse to their bishops and the bishops reported the abuse up the hierarchy, the problem persisted. Yet others take the view that if Penn State is a hierarchy like the Vatican, then Paterno was "the Pope," and the buck stopped with him. He, not his superiors, was the person responsible for reporting the episode to the police. That seems unfair in light of the fact that popes can't be fired, and yet Paterno was discarded like a bag of putrid garbage, when it served the interests of the Board of Directors to distance themselves from him. The President, who was also fired, was apparently the highest official to whom the information was transmitted, although it isn't clear precisely what he was told by the time it got to him through the filter of several others. It was the president who was ultimately responsible for the misguided decision to "resolve" the "problem" internally instead of reporting the crime to the police, as should have been done.
There is another factor, which may explain, if not justify, Paterno's limited actions in going only to his immediate superior. Paterno and I come from roughly the same generation. We grew up during the period of McCarthyism, and my parents taught me, as his parents may well have taught him, that the most unforgivable sin is to "snitch" on one's friends and colleagues. Being called a "snitch" was just about the worst thing anybody could say about someone who grew up in the 1940s and 1950s. Moreover when we grew up, no one understood the pervasiveness and seriousness of child abuse. Again this is not an excuse, any more than the Catholic Church's long traditions of confidentiality, forgiveness and hierarchy, were an excuse for its inactions in the face of widespread child abuse. But it may help some to understand why a good man like Joe Paterno might fail to do what a younger generation of good men and women would naturally do when told about a child being abused by a former assistant coach.
I think the consensus of the class was that regardless of what the law did or did not require, Paterno should have done more than simply report to his superior and wash his hands of the matter -- if, in fact, that's all he did. As the moral leader of Penn State athletics, he should have served as a role model for the current generation of students and athletics. At the very least, he should have followed up to see whether the school had done enough to avoid a recurrence. Perhaps if he had insisted that more be done beyond taking away Sandusky's key and gym privileges, more would have been done.
All this is clear with the benefit of hindsight. But from the perspective of events as they unfolded, it is asking a lot of a football coach, even one as revered as Paterno, to have served as the primary or exclusive guardian of the morals of Penn State.
I believe, and here I'm speaking for myself and not my students, that, on the basis of the information now in the public sphere, Paterno was treated unfairly by the Penn Board. His extraordinary contributions to the school -- both on the field and off -- should have been weighed in the balance and he should have been permitted to retire with dignity. His legacy should be that of a giant, who may have made one serious mistake of judgment, which seems clearer in retrospect than it probably was at the time it was made. There are no perfect heroes in real life, just flawed human beings who should be judged on the totality of their merits and demerits. When so judged, Joe Pa is still a flawed hero in my eyes. Many of my friends and students disagree, believing that his mistake was so serious that it trumps his victories on the Grid Iron. It's an interesting debate. What do you think?
A version of this article first appeared on Newsmax ]]>Should Israel Have Agreed to Exchange Terrorists for a Kidnapped Soldier?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.10114152011-10-14T15:33:06-04:002011-12-14T05:12:02-05:00Alan Dershowitzhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/
Leaders of terrorist groups, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, fully understand this cruel arithmetic of death. As Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, put it: "We are going to win because they love life and we love death." Democratic societies that value the life of each citizen are more vulnerable to emotional blackmail than societies that are steeped in the culture of death. Terrorists understand what history has shown: that democratic societies, regardless of what they say about not negotiating with terrorists, will, in the end, submit to emotional blackmail. They will release their terrorist prisoners in order to obtain the release of their own kidnapped or hijacked citizens. Accordingly, the threat of deterrence against terrorists is weak, because every terrorist knows that regardless of the prison sentence he receives, there is a high likelihood that he will be released well before he has served it. This not only encourages more terrorism, but it also incentivizes kidnappings and hijackings that provide the terrorist with hostages to exchange for captured terrorists.
Accordingly, from a pure cost-benefit perspective, it may well be wrong to agree to such disproportionate exchanges. But democracies do not operate solely on a cost-benefit basis because the families of kidnapped or hijacked citizens have a right to present their emotional case in the court of public opinion, as Gilad Shalit's family, especially his mother, so effectively did. They can influence policy against a simple cost-benefit calculation and in favor of a more humanistic approach. Israelis know Gilad Shalit. He is everyone's son. They do not know those who may someday be killed by the released terrorists. They are faceless and nameless statistics -- at least for now. The pleas of the Shalit family resonate with every Israeli who loves their children.
Contrast the pleas of the Shalit family with the plea of Zahra Maladan. Maladan is an educated woman who edits a women's magazine in Lebanon. She is also a mother, who undoubtedly loves her son. She has ambitions for him, but they are different from those of most mothers in the West. She wants her son to become a suicide bomber. At the funeral for the assassinated Hezbollah terrorist Imad Mugniyah -- the mass murderer responsible for killing 241 marines in 1983 and more than 100 women, children, and men in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 -- Ms. Maladan was quoted in the New York Times offering the following admonition to her son: "If you're not going to follow the steps of the Islamic resistance martyrs, then I don't want you."
Nor is Ms. Maladan alone in urging her children to become suicide murderers. Umm Nidal, who ran for the Palestinian Legislative Council, "prepared all of her sons" for martyrdom. She has ten sons, one of whom already engaged in a suicide operation, which she considered "a blessing, not a tragedy." She is now preparing to "sacrifice them all."
It is impossible, of course, to generalize about cultures. There was genuine joy among many in Gaza when the deal was announced and when it became evident that their loved ones, despite their terrorist activities, would be returned. All decent people love their children and want them to live good lives. It is their leaders who prefer death (though not their own) over life and who make their followers feel guilty for not acting on that perverse preference. Democratic leaders, on the other hand, urge their citizens to act in the interests of life and who see death as a necessary evil in fighting against even greater evils.
While the preference for life over death may appear to be a weakness in the ability of democracies to fight against terrorism, in the end it is a strength. It is a strength because it signals a democracy's commitment to value the life of every single one of its citizens. Israeli and American soldiers go into battle knowing that their countries will do everything in their power to rescue them, even if it means taking extraordinary risks. Nations that are committed to such humanistic values tend to have superior armies, as the United States and Israel do.
An important goal of terrorists is to force democracies to surrender their humanistic values. Israel's values include never leaving a soldier behind, whether he is alive, as Shalit is, or dead, as have been other soldiers whose bodies have been exchanged for prisoners. Israel, by agreeing to exchange hundreds of terrorists for one soldier, has shown the world that it will not compromise on its value system which proclaims that "he who saves one human being, it is as if he has saved the world."
Alan Dershowitz's latest book is the Trials of Zion. An earlier version of this article was published in Newsmax.]]>Conviction of the "Irvine Ten" is Constitutionally Soundtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9886702011-09-30T09:28:13-04:002011-11-30T05:12:03-05:00Alan Dershowitzhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/
No reputable constitutional scholar would defend the right of students to conspire to prevent an invited speaker from presenting his speech. Most universities have rules prohibiting the "heckler's veto" from silencing an invited speaker. Yet, because the students in this case were Muslims who were trying to prevent an Israeli diplomat from speaking, many on the hard left are making heroes of these ten censors, and villains of prosecutors who did their duty in protecting the First Amendment. Even the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which is supposed to protect the First Amendment right of speakers, came down on the wrong side of this issue.
The Dean of the University of California at Irvine Law School, Erwin Chemerinsky, has tried to split the difference by arguing that the conviction was constitutional, that the "jury which found them guilty faithfully applied [the] law to the facts of this case," but that the prosecutor who brought the case against these students "failed in his most important duty: to do justice." While I understand why a dean might take this somewhat convoluted position on prudential grounds, Chemerinsky's argument simply doesn't hold water.
Chemerinsky "strongly disagree[s] with those who try to defend the students as engaging in free speech." He acknowledges that "the First amendment does not protect the right of people to go into an auditorium and try to shout down a speaker." He is right in concluding that "no court would find that the students were engaged in protected speech." So far, we agree. But he goes onto argue that the prosecutor should have employed his discretion to decline prosecution against these students, because they had already been disciplined by the university. But the university discipline has been worn by the students as a red badge of courage. They have been treated as heroes and the slap on the wrist discipline has certainly not deterred them or other students from conspiring to silence other controversial speakers, especially those who try to make the case for Israel.
It was imperative, therefore, that a public prosecutor apply the law to these students, because to do otherwise would be to tolerate, if not encourage, conduct that would undercut the constitutional rights of an invited speaker. This is especially true because the University of California is a state-run institution to which the First Amendment applies in full force. A prosecutor has the obligation to protect the First Amendment, especially if the university has imposed discipline that is inadequate to assure that censorial conduct will be deterred. Moreover, these students must be made to understand that their conduct is not only morally indefensible; it is criminal. It is entirely just that these students should have a criminal record and that the world should know that they tried to prevent the exercise of First Amendment rights because they disagreed with the content of an invited speaker's remarks. They should be made to pay a heavy price for their criminal conduct.
The same would be true if Jewish students were to try to prevent an anti-Israel speaker from presenting the case against Israel. No student, no matter how strongly they feel that their view is the only correct one, has the right to prevent the open marketplace of ideas from operating on a university campus, as these ten students tried to do.
The successful prosecution of the Irvine Ten will not "chill" free speech rights of hecklers. No one should or would be prosecuted for simply booing the content of a speech, leafleting a speaker, holding up signs in the back of the auditorium, conducting a counter event or demonstration. It was these young criminals who were trying to chill, indeed freeze, the constitutional rights of the speaker and those who came to hear him. They should not be treated as heroes by anyone who loves freedom and supports the First Amendment.
It was a good day for the First Amendment when the prosecutor decided to apply the law to their censorial conduct. It was another good day for the First Amendment when the jury appropriately convicted them. And I hope it will be yet another good day for the First Amendment when the appellate courts affirm this constitutionally just conviction.
This article appeared in the Orange County Register]]>Why the UN Should Not Recognize the Proposed Palestinian Statetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9737922011-09-21T11:23:34-04:002011-11-21T05:12:02-05:00Alan Dershowitzhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/
We know what the Palestinian leadership is saying to the West. Now let's look at what its saying to its own people, who will, after all, be the ultimate decision makers if Palestine is indeed a democracy.
The draft constitution for the new state of Palestine declares that "Islam is the official religion in Palestine." It also states that Sharia Law will be "the major source of legislation." It is ironic that the same Palestinian leadership which supports these concepts for Palestine refuses to acknowledge that Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people. Israel, in contrast to the proposed Palestinian state, does not have an official state religion. Although it is a Jewish state, that description is not a religious one but rather a national one. It accords equal rights to Islam, Christianity and all other religions, as well as to atheists and agnostics. Indeed, a very high proportion of Israelis describe themselves as secular.
The new Palestinian state would prohibit any Jews from being citizens, from owning land or from even living in the Muslim state of Palestine. The Ambassador of the PLO to the United States was asked during an interview whether "any Jew who is inside the borders of Palestine will have to leave?" His answer: "Absolutely"! After much criticism, the Ambassador tried to spin his statement, saying that it applied only to Jews "who are amid the occupation." Whatever that means, one thing is clear: large numbers of Jews will not be welcome to remain in Islamic Palestine as equal citizens. In contrast, Israel has more than 1 million Arab citizens, most of whom are Muslims. They are equal under the law, except that they need not serve in the Israeli army.
The new Palestine will have the very "law of return" that it demands that Israel should give up. All Palestinians, no matter where they live and regardless of whether they have ever set foot in Palestine, will be welcome to the new state, while a Jew whose family has lived in Hebron for thousands of years will be excluded.
To summarize, the new Palestinian state will be a genuine apartheid state. It will practice religious and ethnic discrimination, it will have one official religion and it will base its laws on the precepts of one religion. Imagine what the status of gays will be under Sharia law!
Palestinian leadership accuses Israel of having roads that are limited only to Jews. This is entirely false: a small number of roads on the West Bank are restricted to Israelis, but they are equally open to Israeli Jews, Muslims and Christians alike. The entire state of Palestine will have a "no Jews allowed" sign on it.
It is noteworthy that the very people who complain most loudly about Israel's law of return and about its character as the nation state of the Jewish people, are silent when it comes to the new Palestinian state. Is it that these people expect more of Jews than they do of Muslims? If so, is that not a form of racism?
What would the borders of a Palestinian state look like if the Palestinians got their way without the need to negotiate with Israel? The Palestinians would get, as a starting point, all of the land previously occupied by Jordan prior to the 1967 War, in which Jordan attacked Israel. This return to the status quo that led to the 6 Day War is inconsistent with the intention of Security Council Resolution 242, which contemplated some territorial changes.
The new boundaries of this Palestinian state would include Judaism's holiest place, the Western Wall. It would also include the access roads to Hebrew University, which Jordan used to close down this great institution of learning founded by the Jews nearly 100 years ago. The new Palestinian state would also incorporate the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem, in which Jews have lived for 3000 years, except for those periods of time during which they were expelled by force.
It is contemplated, of course, that Israel would regain these areas as part of a land swap with the Palestinians. But there is no certainty that the Palestinians would agree to a reasonable land swap. Palestinian leaders have already said that they would hold these important and sacred sites hostage to unreasonable demands. For example, the Western Wall covers only a few acres, but the Palestinian leadership has indicated that these acres are among the most valuable in the world, and in order for Israel to regain them, they would have to surrender thousands of acres. The same might be true of the access road to Hebrew University and the Jewish Quarter.
When Jordan controlled these areas, the Jordanian government made them Judenrein -- Jews could not pray at the Western Wall, visit the Jewish Quarter, or have access to Hebrew University. There is no reason to believe that a Palestinian state would treat Jews any differently if they were to maintain control over these areas.
An Apartheid, Islamic, Judenrein Palestine on the 1967 borders is a prescription for disaster. That is why a reasonable Palestinian state must be the outcome of negotiations with Israel, and not the result of a thoughtless vote by the United Nations.
The Palestinians and Israeli leaders are now in New York. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has offered to sit down and negotiate, with no preconditions, a realistic peace based on a two-state solution. President Abbas should accept that offer, which will actually get the Palestinians a viable state rather than a cheap paper victory that will raise expectations but lower the prospects for real peace.
A shorter version of this op ed appeared in The Daily News.]]>Should Israel Welcome Glenn Beck's Support?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9333802011-08-22T16:03:35-04:002011-10-22T05:12:02-04:00Alan Dershowitzhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/
These issues should not divide decent people along ideological or political lines. Israel's existence and right to defend itself should be bipartisan issues, not only in the United States, but in all democratic countries of the world.
The reality, however, is very different. The Jewish state is demonized by the hard left in America, by virtually the entire left in much of Europe, and by most of the left and right in Ireland, Norway and Sweden. Its right to exist is denied by a high proportion of Arabs and Muslims, and most of the Arab and Muslim nations do not have diplomatic relations with Israel.
In many circles, anti-Zionism easily morphs into anti-Semitism, and in some countries Jews are afraid to walk the streets wearing any clothing or symbols that identify them as Jewish.
The general assembly of the United Nations has become the world's new Der Sturmer, whose podium hosts, and many of whose audience members cheer, virulent anti-Semites such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Defenders of Israel, even those critical of some of Israel's policies, are banned from speaking at universities, are attacked personally by the hard left media and are treated as pariahs by their academic colleagues.
It is against this sad and increasingly dangerous background that one must evaluate Glenn Beck's visit to Israel. I disagree with much of Beck's politics and with virtually all of his conspiracy theorizing. Yet I admire his courage in putting his body in the line of fire. I believe him when he says:
If the world goes down the road of dehumanizing Jews again, "then count me a Jew and come for me first."
At a time when old friends and allies who should be supporting the Jewish state are abandoning it in droves, Beck's willingness to stand up for Israel must be accepted with gratitude. I, for one, do not question his motives. I believe they are genuine. One need not accept all of Beck's positions on Israel -- and I certainly do not -- in order to agree with him that support of Israel is one of the great moral issues of the 21st Century.
Those who thoughtlessly attack Israel no matter what it does and thoughtlessly defend Israel's enemies regardless of what they do, are making peace far more difficult. They incentivize terrorism by Israel's enemies and disincentivizes compromise on all sides.
I will wait to hear precisely what Glenn Beck says during his visit to Israel before I evaluate it. Just as I feel free to criticize the Israeli government when I think it is wrong, I certainly feel free to criticize defenders of Israel when I think they are wrong. But I will not prejudge Beck until he is given a full opportunity to express his views.
I certainly admire Beck's decision to go to Israel far more than the decision of so many so-called artists and intellectuals who call for a boycott against the Jewish state without even bothering to go there and see for themselves. I welcome the support of religious Christians who love Israel for religious reasons. I abhor the ignorant and misguided efforts of other Christians, such as Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu, who misuse their faith against the Jewish state. I hope that more Christians will follow in Beck's footsteps and take the time to visit Israel. They will see Christianity thriving in Israel while at the same time being dismantled and destroyed in Lebanon, in Gaza, in Egypt, and in other areas in which Islamic fundamentalists have taken over. Christian religious sites are preserved in Jerusalem and other areas under Israeli control. When the Jordanian government controlled parts of Jerusalem, it destroyed many historic religious sites sacred to both Jews and Christians.
Nation states are entitled to engage in Realpolitik so long as they do so within the limits of acceptable morality. Realpolitik requires accepting support from, and sometimes giving support to, nations and people who are not in complete agreement over policies. Consider Nelson Mandela's alliances with some of most brutal dictatorships (Libya, Cuba, Syria) and supporters of terrorism (P.L.O., Iran) while he was engaged in his just struggle against the evils of apartheid. I do not recall the left condemning Mandela for doing what he had to do. But the same left was unforgiving in Israel when it was forced to make some strategic military deals with South Africa, while strongly opposing its apartheid policies. I do not mean to compare dictatorial, terrorist or apartheid regimes with Glenn Beck, only to make the point that the Jewish state is often subjected to a double standard when it comes to the support it receives or gives.
Many Israelis will welcome Glenn Beck's support. Some will oppose it. Others will wish his views were more consistent with their own. This is as it should be in a democracy. The fact is that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that would allow Glenn Beck to express his views, without censoring them or even knowing in advance what he was going to say. This too is as it should be in a democracy.
]]>The Dumb Luck of Roger Clemenstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9014352011-07-20T12:25:26-04:002011-09-19T05:12:02-04:00Alan Dershowitzhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/New York Times, failed to object as soon as the prosecutor started to play a tape that the judge had earlier ruled could not be shown to the jury. The only person who deserves credit for ending the fiasco that played out in federal court is Judge Reggie Walton who ordered a mistrial.
Clemens is not particularly smart because it was his own arrogance that got him in trouble. He was not subpoenaed to testify in front of the congressional committee looking into steroid use in major league baseball. Not satisfied to deny steroid use on 60 Minutes, Clemens volunteered to testify under oath. His testimony contradicted findings made by former senator George Mitchell. Obviously a congressional committee would believe Mitchell over Clemens. The result was in inevitable indictment for perjury.
Clemens apparently made the additional mistake of confiding his steroid use to the most credible of his teammates, Andy Pettitte, who then apparently told his wife about Clemens' admission. It was this hearsay evidence of Laura Pettitte that the judge properly excluded, ruling that "a first year law student would know that you can't bolster the credibility of one witness with clearly inadmissible [hearsay] evidence" from another witness. Nonetheless the prosecutors showed this prejudicial hearsay to the jurors. The judge rebuked the defense for not having objected as soon as the video began playing. The defense then apparently sought a mistrial and the judge, after a recess, reluctantly granted it.
This was a real stroke of luck for Roger Clemens. It is unlikely that he will be retried because, jeopardy had already attached when the judge made his ruling. Unless the motion by the defense for a mistrial is deemed to be a waiver of double jeopardy, the case is over. (Had the defense immediately objected to the video, but left it to the judge to decide to grant a mistrial, instead of moving for that remedy, Clemens would be in an even stronger position to oppose a retrial.)
Several commentators have been quoted as saying that there is no double jeopardy bar to a second trial. One former federal prosecutor put it this way, "If I were a better, I'd bet that this case will be retried. Just consider this a false start to a race and the race will start again in the fall." I will take that bet. The law is that when a mistrial is entirely the fault of prosecutors and when the prosecutors acted in bad faith to cause the mistrial, a second trial is not permitted. There is a good reason for this. If prosecutors could get a mistrial without double jeopardy by simply messing up, they could use this ploy to get a "do over" if they picked a bad jury or if the case were not going well for them. To prevent such manipulation of the system, the courts generally preclude a second trial when the first trial ended as a result of prosecutorial misconduct.
That rule should apply here. There is absolutely no innocent explanation for why prosecutors would put before the jury evidence that the judge had clearly excluded. Prosecutors are used to getting away with such shenanigans, because most judges are reluctant to declare mistrials and simply admonish the jury to ignore the prejudicial evidence. But a skunk once thrown into the jury box leaves its stench behind, as all practicing lawyers well know. Accordingly, the courts should prevent the government from simply considering this a "false start," thus allowing the "race" to begin again in a few months.
Even if the courts were to permit a fresh start it would be wise for the Justice Department to drop the case at this point. Prosecutors have better things to do than to go after arrogant athletes who in an effort to preserve their place in baseball history, deny what most people believe. The federal government seems to have devoted more time and attention to trying to put Roger Clemens in jail than they did to trying to find Whitey Bulger, a mass murderer who was hiding in plain sight for many years.
So let baseball sit in judgment of Roger Clemens. Let the Hall of Fame decide whether his extraordinary pitching career has been sufficiently tainted by his post career actions to deny him a well-deserved place in Cooperstown.
Perjury is a serious crime, especially when it takes place in courtrooms. One of the Ten Commandment prohibits bearing false witness, and that is as it should be in situations where lives or liberty are at stake. But volunteering to testify at a congressional hearing and offering an account which is contradicted by credible witnesses is a moral misdemeanor not worthy of 3 years of investigation and a second trial.
This article originally published in Newsmax. ]]>Should You Trust Jim Cramer?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9016402011-07-18T12:11:46-04:002011-09-17T05:12:01-04:00Alan Dershowitzhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/Mad Money, the guy who tells you how to make lots of dough by taking his advice about hot stocks (such as Bear Sterns just before it crashed). Before that he made lots of money for himself and his clients by running a successful, if controversial, hedge fund. And before that, he briefly worked for me as a research assistant while he was a student at Harvard Law School.
In each of these positions, he was in a fiduciary relationship of trust -- with his listeners, with his clients, and as a research assistant with me and with my clients. I recently learned that he breached the last of these fiduciary relationships in a particularly troubling fashion.
Here is the story.
A few weeks ago was the 26th anniversary of Claus Von Bulow's acquittal on charges he attempted to murder his wife by injecting her with insulin. On that anniversary, Scott McCabe wrote in the Washington Examiner that I had won Claus Von Bulow's freedom, even though I believed him to be "supremely guilty." I was flabbergasted, since I had never made any such statement. I immediately dashed off a letter stating the following.
In his article on the anniversary of Claus Von Bulow's acquittal, Scott McCabe purports to quote me -- he places my alleged words -- as saying that I believe that Claus Von Bulow was "supremely guilty." This is a categorical untruth. I never uttered these words. I never even thought them. I do not believe them to be true. I challenge McCabe to put up or retract his false and defamatory words.
The red-faced author of the article acknowledged that he was wrong in quoting me and that I had never made any such statement. Instead, he attributed the statement to my former research assistant, Jim Cramer. This is what the corrected article said.
On this day, June 10, in 1985, British socialite Claus von Bulow was acquitted on charges he tried to murder his wife at her Rhode Island estate.
Von Bulow's previous conviction for attempted murder of his wife, Sunny von Bulow, was overturned on appeal after he hired Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. Dershowitz was assisted by Jim Cramer, who went on to become a host of CNBC's "Mad Money."
Cramer later acknowledged that Claus von Bulow was "supremely guilty." Prosecutors believed von Bulow tried to kill his wife by administering an insulin overdose in 1980, but at the retrial, top-notch defense experts testified that Sunny von Bulow likely killed herself.
I couldn't believe that my former research assistant would ever make such a statement about my former client -- and his. It is absolutely unethical for a lawyer to "acknowledge" his client's guilt, when his client adamantly insists on his innocence. I then checked and, sure enough, Cramer had made such a statement in his 2005 book Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World. This is what he said.
At Harvard Law School, I managed in my spare time to work for Alan Dershowitz, helping to get the supremely guilty -- at least in my view -- Claus Von Bulow acquitted on procedural grounds.
Cramer was, of course, in no position to know whether Von Bulow was supremely innocent, supremely guilty or somewhere in between. I am not sure whether he ever met Von Bulow, and his research on the case was minimal and did not involve issues of guilt or innocence. Moreover, he got the facts of the case completely wrong. Von Bulow was not "acquitted on procedural grounds," as Cramer stated. He was acquitted by a unanimous jury on the ground that he didn't do it. Indeed, several jurors, when questioned, stated that no crime was committed at all, and that the evidence at the second trial proved conclusively that Sunny Von Bulow had died of a self-administered overdose of barbiturates combined with other drugs and food she had ingested. Nor did we win the appeal on "procedural grounds" alone. The primary ground was that Von Bulow had been denied access to evidence -- notes taken by Sonny Von Bulow's lawyer -- that proved his innocence. Indeed it was this evidence, when presented to the second jury, that contributed to his acquittal.
The reason it is particularly wrong for a defense lawyer -- or a research assistant for a defense lawyer -- to "acknowledge" a client's guilt (to say nothing about supreme guilt) is that the reader of such a statement is likely to believe that it is based on confidential information or other privileged knowledge that the defense team has but that the general public lacks.
Indeed, the word "acknowledged" -- the word used by Scott McCabe to characterize Cramer's statement -- derives from the word "knowledge." But Cramer, as a minor research assistant, had absolutely no knowledge upon which to base his uninformed opinions that Von Bulow was "supremely guilty." His opinion was based on abysmal ignorance and a desire to make a point about why he hated law school and rarely attended his "bor[ing] classes."
Maybe if Cramer had gone to class and paid attention to his teachers, he would have learned not to breach his fiduciary obligation to clients.
A version of this article previously appeared in the New York Daily News.
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