Dershowitz Contradicts Himself on the Power of the Israel Lobby
My generaton of Jews was too young to fight against Nazism or for Israeli independence, too American to make aliyah (emigrate to Israel), too comfortable to put our bodies on the line for anything Jewish. Instead, we observed, contributed... We became part of what is perhaps the most effective lobbying and fund-raising effort in the history of democracy. [my emphasis]
I say shocking because when Walt and Mearsheimer published their bombshell paper on the power of the Israel lobby in March, the Harvard Law Professor was their leading attacker. He said the scholars had "destroyed their professional reputations" (a disgraceful statement that Zbig Brzezinski would appear to include when he talks in Foreign Policy of "self-demeaning" attacks by critics of Walt and Mearsheimer) and three weeks after their paper was published, rushed a response onto Harvard's Kennedy School website, saying that speed was "essential" "because of the attention the original paper has received."
In fairness to Dershowitz, a good part of his rebuttal focuses on what he regards as bad research methods by Walt and Mearsheimer and their allegedly false view of Israeli history, which leads him to question their motives and imply that they are antisemitic. "I challenge Mearsheimer and Walt to look me in the eye and tell me that because I am a proud Jew and a critical supporter of Israel, I am disloyal to my country," the rebuttal ends throbbingly.
But in criticism of Dershowitz, a lot of his rebuttal rejects the idea of a vaunted Israel lobby. "The so-called lobby," he calls it, and asks, contemptuously, "Who belongs to 'the Lobby?'" He says that "there are many lobbies that support diverse approaches to the Arab-Israeli conflict," and generally, "thousands of other groups that maintain powerful lobbies in Washington." Yes, AIPAC "to its credit, has been an influential lobby." But he presents AIPAC as the Israel lobby. Everyone else who supports Israel in government and the press and thinktanks does so because they all independently believe that Israel and the U.S. share interests.
Oh, and also: "the most powerful lobby is AARP." But I guess it's not "perhaps the most effective lobbying and fund-raising effort in the history of democracy".
I've two responses to Dershowitz's hypocrisy. The first is that he's an advocate, and a great one, a verbal swordsman. He intimidates people (I remember talking to a pro-Palestinian professor of the Classics not long ago who begged me not to use his name, lest Dersh go after him), but he's not reflective. The guy was a high school and college debating star in Brooklyn; he's still that, rushing a thrown-together argument to the public within days of Walt and Mearsheimer's 18-months-long-prepared article, so he can do his flamenco in their spotlight. I have that disconnect with Dersh one has with many lawyers: The contradiction in his statements makes me wonder what he really thinks when he's not making a heated righteous argument. (Apropos of that lack of subtlety, I'd note that elsewhere in his book, he states that two uncles of his did emigrate to Israel. Yet he says his generation was too American to do so. It's not thought-through.)
Was he really trying to get people to the truth about the Israel lobby, an important issue? Or was he venting his anger?
That's my second point about Dershowitz; I think anger fed his attack on Walt and Mearsheimer. Read Chutzpah (I'm on page 100 or so now) and you see how much his views were shaped by the antisemitic discrimination he experienced on leaving the Brooklyn nest in the late 50s. Notwithstanding his great grades at Yale Law School, Dershowitz was rejected by white-shoe law firms in New York again and again, including Cravath and Paul, Weiss (the latter wouldn't accommodate his Sabbath-observance). Despite his subsequent achievements, in 1991, when he wrote the book, he was still extremely angry at all the Harvard deans and presidents who thru the 20th century rationalized discrimination against Jews. Again and again he calls these liberal leaders "bigoted." "A pack of dishonest bigots unworthy of respect or emulation... awful men whose names are memorialized [on buildings]..." Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell "should be honored by no one other than the Ku Klux Klan." He insists that President Derek Bok (soon-to-be-interim President again) sees Dershowitz as a "shtetl Yid" whose "breath smells of herring."
Later in the book he says that Shaw, Mencken, Henry Adams, Dreiser, and T.S. Eliot suffered "a disease of the soul": antisemitism, which can only be explained by the study of "abnormal psychology."
This is high-school rhetoric. It's the same moral vehemence that would erase all Jefferson's or Washington's achievements because they owned slaves. Grownups who study history should be a little more sophisticated. Think about it, how should people who dismissed Palestinian human rights be regarded a generation on?
Your not "thought-through":
"he states that two uncles of his did emigrate to Israel. Yet he says his generation was too American to do so. It's not thought-through."
Uncle and nephew are a successive, different generations.
"I challenge Mearsheimer and Walt to look me in the eye and tell me that because I am a proud Jew and a critical supporter of Israel, I am disloyal to my country," the rebuttal ends throbbingly.
I doubt that Mearsheimer and Walt would be willing to get close enough to Dershowitz to look him in the eye and tell him he's a disloyal American, but I've thought that about Dershowitz ever since I read Chutzpah 15 years ago. The man is obsessed with his Jewishness. He's also more than a little disingenous about the dual loyalty issue. He says in Chutzpah that people always ask him which side he would fight for if Israel and America were ever to go to war. His answer is that one side would have to be crazy for that to happen, so in that case he'd support the other side.
That position is of course a major dodge. The US and Israel are never going to go to war against each other, so Dershowitz never has to reveaL his real loyalties.
When it comes to real issues that do come up between America and Israel, Dershowitz always sides with Israel and goes nuts when someone like Mearsheimer and Walt have the nerve to suggest that what is good for Israel is not necessarily good for the United States. Dershowitz is a shill for Israel, not the disinterested observer he pretends to be. Thankfully, his hysterical reaction to the Mearsheimer-Walt paper has seriously damaged his credibility everywhere.
Israel has immense support in the United States, Europe, China and Brazil.
Israel is a regional super power aligned with the United States and one of the US's true, powerful allies. Israel supplies 11 percent of the worlds defense procurement (a friend that you want to keep).
If you have a problem with Israel, it's because you have a problem with America- not the other way around.
What Alan Dershowitz and Mearsheimer and Walt and other academics think about the situation is irrelevant. Politicians answer to corporate America, not to academics.
anonymous, not sure i follow this particular pitch; are you saying that because Israel now functions as a global technology & armaments center, any criticism is null & void?
And while we're on the topic, not only is much of that "11% of the world's defense procurement" underwritten by billions of US taxpayer dollars, but what on earth could explain Israel's quiet attempts back in 2000 to dress up and then resell US military technologies onwards to *China*, a nation that the US had explicitly embargoed for advanced technology? The State Department had to get uncharacteristically blunt in the diplomatic channels that time, I recall.
Not really the action of a "true, powerful ally" of the US, now is it?
When a global technology & armaments center is on your side, what's there to criticise?
Surely, the China incident was a ripple in relations. But as true allies do when differences come up, it was quickly resolved.
The gain from Israeli Defense technology, in particular the UAV and avionics, makes the miltary aid worth while. The targeting system that killed Zarqawi was Israeli made.
Don't get me wrong- war, killing, death and destruction suck. Unfortunately, not everyone wants peace and prosperity and many are in the business of death and destruction, so it's best to be prepared.
"When a global technology & armaments center is on your side, what's there to criticise?"
marshal petain probably uttered these exact words in 1940, seduced like you by giddy, bully fascism (quite literally - look up the term). good thing that a few pluckier cultures threw your kind of reasoning in the trashcan back then.
for most people, this would have been a laugh line. but somehow i suspect this actually is your argument in a nutshell, isn't it?
I don't see America as a bully fascist. I see it as a greedy, globalizationist.
Nations don't bomb their customers and suppliers. This is how globalization leads to peace. The US will defend Taiwan, because they make 3/4 of the notebook motherboards and China, because they make everything else. China will not attack the US because we buy everything they produce.
America protects its global business interests with its military might. Unfortunately, greed run amok and stupidity got us into Iraq and hopefully, this is an anomaly.
My only problem with being a "global technology & armaments " is that it's a waste of money. As they say, it costs a lot to win and even more to lose...
when Israel was still the struggling underdog, we all learned how the language of pragmatism, realpolitik and status quo was reprehensible. ah yes, remember when we were taught how the struggle for land and rights was so much more important than contributions to the world economy?
60 years later, the positions are reversed and the underdogs this time are a little less 'Chosen'. And ain't it funny how the reasoning changes - we must unlearn the previous lesson, and now acknowledge that noble struggle is a quaint, pointless gesture of desperados. the harsh realities of global commerce must have their way.
i'll admit that your slippery, relativist worldview is certainly convenient. it helps explain how blowing up a hotel full of innocents makes you a scummy terrorist in 2006, yet a freedom-fighting hero for schoolchildren in 1946.
but we're Americans, so let's take the high road. let's apply the same moral yardstick regardless of who wields more power or who is wealthy enough to buy our courtesy, shall we?
"let's apply the same moral yardstick regardless of who wields more power or who is wealthy enough to buy our courtesy"
I wish we could, but America's a greedy, all-consuming globalizing monster.
Maybe it's time to go underground and start blowing up Starbucks and SUVs.
Blaming Israel for America's problems is like blaming the Jews for starting World War II.
When your having a problem, the best way to find the cause is to look in the mirror- this applies to the US, Israel and the Arabs.
Always remember- when arguing about Israel, if you get called an Anti-Semite, you just WON THE ARGUMENT- because that is what they always say when they can't defend their positions. They can shut you up by calling you a racist rather hypocritically because you care about the Nazi-style genocide Israel invokes upon the Palestinians. Walled up neighborhoods, checkpoints- Israelis use SO MANY NEATO HUMAN ABUSE TRICKS THEY LEARNED FROM THE NAZIS!!! HOW IRONIC!!
To sum up:
Dershowitz is a scum-sucking shill for the most oppresive anti-humanitarian, tyrannical regime on earth (A.K.A "Israel")
So... what's new?
Air Alan and effraim: good comments.
================
I find Dershowitz so tedious.
Did he ever stop to think that it wasn't his "Jewishness" that kept him out of the top NYC law firms, his assertions notwithstanding? (Louis Weiss of Paul, Weiss is Jewish.) Instead, that it was because he acts and reacts like John Bolton?
Who the hell wants to work with that?
It wasn't a religion thing. It was a class thing. And Dershowitz has none.
Reading the fairness paragraph--spoiled it!
QUOTE:
In fairness to Dershowitz, a good part of his rebuttal focuses on what he regards as bad research methods by Walt and Mearsheimer and their allegedly false view of Israeli history, which leads him to question their motives and imply that they are antisemitic.
.. BAD RESEARCH......FALSE ISRAEL HISTORY
Bad research in what area?--- could it be Hitler, FDR, Trueman, Churchill ect. pushed Jews into swamp Palestine or USA did not arm twist UN nations to vote for creation of Israel.
Oh! the false history of Israel--please do tell, could it be that invading Jews did not steal Palestinian lands but bought them at going prices. What a crock of Sh!t. European Jews do not,have not--never belonged or came from the middle-east.
The truth no-one wants to say--Israel was created for a foothold in the middle-east---Jews are being used by the west!
Have come to the conclusion that it is our fault these people (lobby) is/are so powerful.
We are asleep and they are at war.
If everytime their lobby wrote 1000 complaints, we sent in 10000 the next day these people would not have any power.
It is because we are asleep and they are awake and organised.
I have to say this again, if the day after dershowitz made these outrageous claims, if 10000 of us had come out and said "dude your an A grade moron, stick to the facts or shut your insipid face" he would have absolutely no legitimacy.
No use bitching and moaning anymore, we really just need to understand the game, the rules and get better than them at it.
That is very hard because they invented this game and are world masters at it but there are so many more people on our side.
This requires no violence, no bloodshed, it just requires us to be better than them at screaming since this is how they win, they start yelling and screaming and we just go quite for fear of being tarnished with the brush.
The solution is actually very, very simple and easy, it always has been, it is part of the plan to make these things seem harder than they actually are.
Start yelling!!
entropy | July 7, 2006 01:37 AM
You're dead right.
I see Israeli agents videotaping and celebrating the attack on the WTC. They like several other teams of Israeli "movers" are arrested in suspicious circumstances but quietly released. It is written about in the Sunday Herald overseas, but only "crazy" people here in the Homeland ever hear of it (www.whatreallyhappened.com/fiveisraelis.html).
The survivors of the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty are still awaiting an honest investigation of that operation.
If ain't on the TV it never happened.
Dancing Israelis
www.whatreallyhappened.com/fiveisraelis.html
USS Liberty www.ussliberty.org
When I lived in Manhattan, every single Israeli, except the ones in the Diamond District, cheated me.
Israelis dont walk their talk.
I agree with FedUp and I'm Jewish. I would never hire an Israeli. I never met one who is honest.
Try going to Israel to rent an apartment for a month. The moment they find out you're American, they double or quadruple the price.
Fed Up:
in New York they have a word for people that get cheated repeatedly: suckers
Hardly a days goes by when the 'holocaust and the anti-semitism' criers don't kill a few Palestinians ( an average of 2 or 3 a day for over 4 years now); yet when the stone throwers blow up their bodies to kill a few Israelis having Pizzas with a choice of toppings, all hell breaks loose in the Jewish controlled U.S. media. Naturally because these were rich kids and their killers poor, dispossessed kids. Is their any limit to the racism?
Killing thousands with F-16's is fine, but killing with suicide bombs is evil?
I'm sure very soon the whole concept of Israel will become anathema. How long will these European converts to Judaism claim land rights in the middle east? How long will this hoax continue? I mean come on. None of these guys even claim to look middle eastern. Yet we are expected to believe that they all come from Jerusalem. In the same way that I guess, Jesus, a middle easterner has been given a Scandinavian look by the West!
Hardly a day goes by when some moronic American blames Israel for everything wrong with world while 40,000 civilians are killed in Iraq and America exploits the third world at every turn and can't even take care of their own citizens with health care and education.
These poor idiots are too stupid to even fix thier own problems. Rather, they just blame, blame, blame...
Know what anon-I have had it with "your kind" the Israeli apologists...
Military families have a display going on right now outside the steps of Congress-empty boots for soldiers and empty shoes for civlian Iraqis' killed in the war.
A group of Israeli tourists in DC last week told these military families "You should not protest this war-you should be proud your sons are fighting for Israel".
They are lucky one of those moms didn't knock their heads off their self-rightous bodies.
Captain, that's proof positive, of the conspiracy, huh?
Hardly a day goes by when some moronic American blames Israel for everything wrong with world while 40,000 civilians are killed in Iraq and America exploits the third world at every turn and can't even take care of their own citizens with health care and education.
These poor idiots are too stupid to even fix thier own problems. Rather, they just blame, blame, blame...
The sad thing about the jews is that they do not know their limits. Have a look at European history. They were chased out in England, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Russia, Germany ..and maybe I even forget some countries. Why? Before getting in trouble they always had monopolised banking in an unlawful way, influenced lawmaking in their favour and behaved as a sect, a tribe. , against the will of the host-country. Then trouble started and they had to get out or get killed.
The way the jews try to rule USA reminds me of those history-lessons. You 'd better turn a bit humble, jews,over there in USA.
When I eat jew's excrement out of the toilet to try to resuscitate my brain it seems to help.
Good job, Nico. Everyone please join me in welcoming David Duke the conversation.
Now then. Clearly, there is a colossal difference between inadvertently killing civilians hanging about terrorists as they lob rockets as Israeli towns and get onto a bus packed with civilians with the intention of killing them all.
Palestinian society is perhaps the most vicious of the modern age. Obviously, Israel must respond to their acts terrorism and despite the politically motivated, ad-hoc condemnation by insufficiently manned and funded human rights groups, no country under such circumstances could have been so humane.
Nice work, Nico. Ladies & gentlemen please join me in welcoming David Duke to the conversation.
No then. Clearly, there is a colossal difference between inadvertently killing civilians hanging about terrorists as they lob rockets as Israeli towns and get onto a bus packed with civilians with the intention of killing them all.
Palestinian society is perhaps the most vicious of the modern age. Obviously, Israel must respond to their acts terrorism and despite the politically motivated, ad-hoc condemnation by insufficiently manned and funded human rights groups, no country under such circumstances could have been so humane.