BOOK REVIEW
Exposing Alan
Alan
Dershowitz, The
Case Against Israel's Enemies: Exposing Jimmy Carter and Others Who Stand in
the Way of Peace (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2008) $25.95,
304 pp., Hardcover.
Reviewed by Stephen J. Sniegoski
This is a very
revealing book by a major defender of Israel, Alan Dershowitz, a high-profile
criminal defense trial lawyer and professor of law at Harvard. It is revealing
because Dershowitz is a very influential mainstream liberal who cannot be said
to represent neoconservatism or the broader Zionist Right. As stated in the
subtitle, the fundamental thesis of the work is that it is the critics of
Israel “who stand in the way of peace” between Israel and the Palestinians. If
Israel were not faced with external hostility and Palestinian resistance,
Dershowitz implies, it would, on its own, establish a just peace with a
Palestinian state.
The work takes the form of a tendentious
lawyer’s brief on behalf of Israel and not a more balanced assessment of the
critics’ overall messages. Dershowitz cleverly uses the rhetorical chicanery
that works so well in courtroom against the critics of Israel-- tearing down
their arguments and maligning their character--and also offers chapters
excoriating the Islamic “suicide bombers” and their sympathizers, and Iran,
especially, the latter’s alleged “genocidal nuclear weapons program.” (p. 186)
In Dershowitz’s
eyes, Israel, though not without (largely undiscussed) flaws, is a paragon of
virtue and benefactor to all of humanity. He gushes that “over the last sixty
years, no nation in the world has contributed more per capital to the general
welfare of the people of this planet than Israel.” (p. 2) Yet, despite Israel’s
unparalleled goodness, “no nation is hated as much as the Jewish nation.” (p.
2) This brings to mind Bush the Younger’s similar claim that the “terrorists”
hate the United States because it is so good.
But how does
Dershowitz address the various charges against Israel, especially in its
military operations? Israel, he maintains, “does everything reasonable to
minimize civilian casualties.” (p. 160) He claims that for every 30 combatants
killed by the Israeli air force, the collateral damage is only one civilian.
“No army in history,” Dershowitz intones, “has ever had a better ratio of
combatants to civilians killed in a comparable setting.” (p. 179) Moreover, he
contends that the number of Palestinian civilians allegedly killed by Israeli
forces is likely much inflated because “some Palestinian spokespersons count
among the Palestinian dead some or all of the following: the suicide bombers
themselves; armed Palestinian fighters, leaders of terrorist groups; terrorists
who were shot in self-defense while they were planting or throwing bombs; bomb
makers (and their neighbors) who have been killed when the bombs they were
making accidentally blew up; collaborators who have been killed by other
Palestinians; and even people who have died as a result of the absurd and
dangerous practice of shooting live ammunition in the air at Palestinian
funerals and protests.” (p. 179) Now it is actually hard to believe that
significant numbers of Palestinians are killed in bomb making or in
celebrations compared to the bombing and shelling by Israeli forces, but
Dershowitz is able to get away with such an outlandish claim to diminish
Israeli culpability for Palestinian suffering. One contrasts here the absolute
tsunami of moral outrage--and likely job loss and, in many Western democratic
countries, incarceration—accompanying those very few individuals who ever
minimize Jewish suffering in the Holocaust.
Dershowitz
firmly asserts that any “reasoned, comparative assessment” of Israel’s actions
in war would “show that no other such nation [in a comparable situation] has
tried harder to comply with the rule of law or has achieved a higher standard
of human rights and civil liberties than embattled Israel.” (p. 180) However,
this is not the way that the world looks at Israel, as the “biased media and
nongovernmental organizations, as well as the official organs of the United
Nations, devote more attention to [the alleged faults of] Israel than to any
other nation.” (p. 180)
But what does
Dershowitz say about the Israeli occupation and its control of the Palestinian
population? Don’t the Palestinians have something to complain about? In
Dershowitz’s view all Israeli actions are simply defensive. Dershowitz declares
that “Israel would have left Gaza and much of the West Bank long ago if not for
the fear of terrorism from that area.” (p. 183) Dershowitz’s lawyerly choice of
words here needs to be noted, since he doesn’t actually say that Israel would
leave all of the West Bank, much less that the Palestinians would have the
control of a viable state. Israel has never firmly promised to give up its
major West Bank settlements, control of the West Bank’s water supply (the West
Bank aquifer), Jordan River border “security zone,” or a number of Jewish-only
roads traversing Palestinian territory. In its peace offers it actually seems
that Israel would leave a territory for the Palestinians, in the same way, or to
a lesser extent, than the white South African government left the Bantustans
for its Black inhabitants. .
Don’t the
Palestinians have the right to be upset and forcefully resist Israeli
oppression? As a recognized liberal, Dershowitz would be predisposed to believe
that poverty and injustice cause crime in the United States, but he doesn’t
believe that any Israeli activities, including the occupation, have caused
Palestinian terrorism. He writes that the “oft-repeated manta that ‘occupation
causes terrorism’—[is] a claim that has been disproved over and over again by
history and contemporary experience.” (p. 182) Dershowitz tries to prove his
contention by pointing out that the Palestinians began their terrorist attacks
against the Jews in 1929, “well before there was any occupation.” (p. 182) One
would think, however, that the Palestinians of that time realized that the Jews
intended to dispossess them of their land and sought to prevent this from
happening—that Palestinian terrorism was a reaction to Zionist settlement.
However, Dershowitz implies that Palestinian terrorism is simply a radical
Islamic idea that has nothing to do with the actions of Israel. “Even if there
were no Israel,” Dershowitz insists, “ terrorism would persist as long as any
part of the world is not under Islamic control.” (p. 183)
But haven’t the
Palestinians been dispossessed of their homeland? In a previous book, The Case
for Israel (2005),Dershowitz had claimed that there really were few legitimate
Palestinians to be dispossessed. In this book, however, he takes a different
tact, arguing that the dispossession of the Palestinians was deserved because
of their support for Hitler during World War II, declaring bluntly that “the
Palestinian leadership, supported by the Palestinian masses, played a
significant role in Hitler’s Holocaust.” (p. 196)
Obviously, the
Palestinians hated the Zionists who were bent on taking over their country and
looked to support from anyone, including Hitler. And as nationalists they
sought to free themselves from their British rulers. (Similarly, the
still-admired Indian nationalist leader Subhas Chandra Bose had sought to ally
with the Germans and Japanese during World War II.) Dershowitz takes the most
extreme version of alleged Palestinian killing of Jews while playing down the
extent of any Jewish killing or other oppression of the Palestinians.
Dershowitz expresses revulsion that “Israel’s enemies sometimes compare the
so-called Palestinian Nakba [“catastrophe”] with the Holocaust,” which he
regards as “not only an obscenely false comparison, [but] it is essentially a
form of Holocaust denial or minimization.” (p. 206) It should be noted,
however, that Dershowitz did think it appropriate to claim that Palestinians
played a “significant role” in the Holocaust, though the number of Jews killed
by them would be infinitesimal compared to the millions of Jews killed by the
Germans in death camp gas chambers.
In using the
phrase “so-called Nakba,” Dershowitz would seem to even deny that the
Palestinians suffered a catastrophe in being driven from their homeland. While
the phrase the “so-called Holocaust” would cause Dershowitz to go apoplectic in
moral outrage, he sees nothing wrong in implicitly denying, or at least greatly
diminishing, the suffering of another group.
In Dershowitz’s
view, the Palestinians, because of their leaders’ support for Hitler and their
opposition to Zionist settlements, actually deserved to be forcibly
dispossessed. “Considering the active support by the Palestinian leadership and
masses for the losing side of a genocidal war,” Dershowitz pontificates, “it
was more than fair for the United Nations to offer them a state of their own on
more than half of the arable land of the British mandate.” (p. 203)
Dershowitz
ironically turns to what has been called World War II revisionism to justify
Israel’s prohibition of the Palestinian refugees from returning to their homes
in what had become Israel. “Recall that the Israeli decision not to allow the
return of the Palestinian refugees,” Dershowitz solemnly opines, “was made
against the background of post-World War II decisions by the allies, supported
by the United Nations to remove millions of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia
and other countries and resettle them in Germany.” (p. 204) Dershowitz points
out that “Tens of thousands may have died in the process of the transfer.” (p.
205)
Although Jews
often go ballistic when World War II crimes against the Germans are
mentioned—the blasphemy of Holocaust equivalency—Dershowitz, in contrast, uses
this barbarity as a precedent to justify Israel’s treatment of the
Palestinians. But why would such an atrocity against the Germans, which R.J.
Rummel, the noted expert on mass murders by governments, labels as “democide,”[i]
become a justifiable standard? And in actual fact, it is not apparent that the
Allies officially approved the brutal reality of the expulsion. Article 13 of
the Potsdam Agreement did sanction the transfer of some of the German
population from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary--though not to the degree
that this took place--but specified "that all transfers should take place
in an orderly and humane way.” Moreover, the Charter of the Nuremberg Trials of
Nazi Germans leaders (1945-1946) declared forced deportation of civilian populations
to be both a war crime and a crime against humanity. And specifically regarding
the Palestinian refugees, the UN General Assembly on 11 December 1948 resolved:
"that refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with
their neighbor should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.”
Thus the permanent removal of the Palestinians from what became Israel and the
prevention of their return to their homeland simply does not have any
international sanction. It should be noted here that the requirement to “live
at peace with their neighbor” did not require the Palestinians to politically
accept the Jewish control of the government, which is intimately connected to
the Zionist view of the “Jewish state.” It is the fear that a large Palestinian
population could by democratic means eliminate the Jewish domination and
orientation of the state of Israel that has not only prevented Israel from
allowing the return of the Palestinian refugees but has caused concern about
Israel’s existing Arab population. Despite his negative portrayal of the
Palestinians and claim that they deserve their plight, Dershowitz
simultaneously professes to be among the “many supporters of Israel . . . who
care deeply about the Palestinian people.” (p. 15)
Dershowitz’s
contention that the Palestinian people bear collective guilt for the Holocaust
because of their actions and sympathies and thus deserve their oppression is a
standard that Dershowitz does not even consider for Jews. Menachem Begin,
Yitzhak Shamir, and Ariel Sharon all were involved in terroristic activities,
yet all were elected prime ministers of Israel by the Jewish citizenry of that
state. If the Palestinians are culpable for the crimes of their leaders, then
the same should be said of Jews. Of course, Dershowitz never acknowledges the
fact that Jews have ever been involved in terrorism.
Let’s briefly
mention the terrorist actions of the aforementioned trio of Israeli prime
ministers, which Dershowitz omitted in his fixation on Palestinian terror. Menachem
Begin headed the terrorist gang Irgun, which was involved in terror tactics
against the British and the Palestinians in the 1940s. In July 1946, the Irgun
used explosives to destroy the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which was serving
as the home of the British military command and government administration. The
explosion destroyed the building and killed 91 people, Arab and Jewish
civilians as well as British administrators and troops. The British government
officially labeled Begin as a criminal terrorist and put a price on his head.
In April 1948,
Irgun commandos along with members of the terrorist Stern Gang attacked the
Palestinian village of Deir Yassin, massacring 250 men, women, and children.
The massacre induced thousands of Palestinians to flee their homes and thus was
a significant factor in removing most of the Palestinian population from what
would become the state of Israel.
Yitzhak Shamir
was one of the leaders of the terrorist Stern Gang, officially named Lehi. When
war broke out between Britain and Germany in September 1939, Avraham Stern, a
member of the Irgun who was an admirer of Mussolini, contended that it was the
British who were the main obstacle to Jewish settlement of Palestine.
Consequently, he broke with the Irgun and formed his own organization. While
Britain was fighting Hitler, the Stern Gang engaged in robberies, murders, and
terrorist attacks against the British, as well as the Arabs. In September 1948,
the Stern Gang assassinated of the UN mediator in Palestine, Folke Bernadotte,
which caused the United Nations Security Council to label it "a criminal
group of terrorists.”
Perhaps even
more intriguing than the Stern Gang’s terrorism was the effort of its leader to
collaborate with Nazi Germany. Since Nazi Germany had facilitated Jewish
immigration to Palestine in the 1930s, Stern assumed that Nazi Germany might
support a Jewish state in then British-controlled Palestine in order to weaken
Britain’s geostrategic position in the Middle East. In December 1940, Stern
contacted German authorities with the aim of gaining their support in
establishing a Jewish state in Palestine and beyond (Eretz Israel) open to
Jewish refugees from Europe. He proposed to recruit and train an army of 40,000
Jews from occupied Europe with which he would use to defeat the British.
Stern’s proposed alliance with Nazi Germany never materialized. However, while
Dershowitz goes into apoplexy about the Palestinian leadership’s war against
the British to aid Nazi Germany, he is silent about the fact that one of
Israel’s prime ministers would be a member of a Jewish organization that had
tried to do the same thing, and did engage in wartime attacks on the British,
making it more difficult for them to combat the Nazi threat.[ii]
SHARON'S TERRORIST
BACKGROUND
Ariel Sharon’s
terrorist background included his command of special operations “Unit 101” that
launched brutal cross-border raids against Israel’s enemies in the 1950s,
including the notorious massacre of Palestinian villagers at Qibya in the then
Jordanian-controlled West Bank in October 1953. As Begin’s Defense Minister in
1982, Sharon was intimately involved in the slaughter of Palestinians by
Lebanese Christian militiamen at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps outside
Beirut.
One aspect of
the this book that especially stands out is Dershowitz’s focus on some of the
noted moral leaders and institutions of the world who, because of their
criticism of Israel, are described as motivated by a strong bias against the
Jewish state. He gives prominent attention to Jimmy Carter who, because of
criticism of Israel’s policies, was denied a significant speaking role at 2008
Democratic Convention. Dershowitz has claimed a role in preventing Carter from
speaking.
Carter’s
criticism of Israel’s policies in the occupied territories is referred to by
Dershowitz as “his recent descent into the gutter of bigotry.” (p. 48)
Moreover, Dershowitz holds that in 2000 Arafat would have agreed to Israel’s
allegedly generous terms (for which there is no clear evidence and, if true,
would have been equivalent to a one-time only bargain sale), but that Carter
persuaded him to reject them. Dershowitz implies that Carter might not even
sincerely believe his criticism of Israel, informing his readers that
“regarding money, it is he who has been bought off by millions of dollars in
donations from Arab governments that refuse to recognize Israel and from Arab
rulers who actively promote Jew-hatred in the Middle East and elsewhere.” (p.
33) In summarizing Carter’s actions, Dershowitz wails that he “must be exposed
as an enemy of a compromise peace, an inciter of Palestinian extremism, and an
apologist for those who would continue to employ terror in an effort to destroy
the Jewish state.” (p. 48) In short, the vituperative Dershowitz seeks to
transmute the image of Carter from beneficent humanitarian to purveyor of
hatred and murder. It appears that this verbal assault on the former
President’s reputation by Dershowitz and other Zionist Jews has worked well
since Carter has apologized to the Jewish community for “stigmatizing Israel”
and asked for forgiveness.
Dershowitz also
takes on the highly esteemed human rights organizations, Amnesty International
and Human Rights Watch, which have issued reports critical of Israeli actions.
Dershowitz refers to them as "so-called human rights groups" (p. 164)
who “constantly side with the terrorists.” (p. 174)
Mahatma Gandhi
doesn’t fare too well, either. Gandhi, Dershowitz maintains, “railed against
Zionist, supporting the British decision to exclude the Jews of Europe from
Palestine, where many could have been saved.” (p. 154) Dershowitz goes on in an
endnote to caustically observe that “Gandhi’s selfishness and singular concern
only for his own people dates back to his earliest activism in South Africa,
when he refused to lift a finger or raise his voice on behalf of Black South
Africans.” (p. 275) It would seem that in Dershowitz’s mind, Jews are the only
group that lacks this ethnocentrism and identifies with the good of all
humanity.
Naturally, the
Catholic Church is a target for Dershowitz’s barbs. Dershowitz is incensed that
Pope Benedict XVI would make what actually appears to be an extremely tepid
remark that Israel’s attacks on civilians were “not always compatible with the
rules of international law.” (p. 181) One wonders what country has always and
everywhere followed the “rules of international law” in warfare. Obviously, not
the United States. But as hypocritical as the Allies were during World War II,
even they did not have the audacity to claim that they had never violated
international law and, in fact, implied otherwise at the major war crimes
trials of the German leadership at Nuremberg in 1945-46 when they denied the
legitimacy of a tu quoque defense—that the Allies had engaged in similar
activities.
Dershowitz is
also incensed by the Vatican’s omission of Israel in a 2005 statement listing
countries victimized by terrorism and is enraged further by a Vatican response
that “it could not protest every Palestinian attack against Jewish civilians if
Israel did not always follow international law.” (p. 181) Presumably Dershowitz
regards attacks on Jewish settlers on the West Bank to be terrorism. While this
dispute was patched up between then Israeli Prime Minister Sharon and the
Vatican in August 2005, with the former sending the Pope a letter describing
him as a "a true friend of Israel,"[iii]
Dershowitz is unwilling to let this tiff end, but seeks to use it to infer
Catholic anti-Semitism. Trotting out the Vatican’s alleged indifference to the
Holocaust, he holds that the its position on this issue was motivated by the
“same reason that the Vatican took too long and did too little in protesting
against the mass extermination of Jews by Nazi Germany.” (p. 181) But how loud
was the protest from the rest of the world about the Holocaust? Was there any
firm belief at that time that the Germans were actually engaging in a mass
extermination of Jews in gas chambers? Certainly, the Allies did not bomb
Auschwitz or launch any undertaking to actually save Jews. Nor was an effective
effort ever made to barter for Jewish civilians under Nazi control. It would
even seem that the Zionists were more concerned about settling Palestine than
about saving Jews from Hitler.
MASS KILLINGS
And regarding
mass killings, it should be remembered that during World War II there was no
huge outcry about the Stalin’s mass killings either. On the contrary, the
Allied leaders not only praised Stalin during the war but in the immediate
postwar period and actually turned over hundreds of thousands
of prisoners to Stalin’s death camps in such abominations as Operation
Keelhaul. Moreover, such highly-praised Jewish leaders as Albert Einstein, who
was widely sought for the position of president of Israel, was actually quite
supportive of Stalin. In fact, many Jews were pro-Soviet until it became
clearly apparent—with such post-war Stalinist concoctions as the alleged
(Jewish) “doctor’s plot”—that Stalin intended to do them harm, too.
While the
Vatican’s reactions to the secret Holocaust in the 1940s or to the state of Israel
today can be seen quite in line with the mainstream, Dershowitz attributes it
to historical Catholic anti-Judaism. “The truth is that the Vatican has always
had something of a Jewish problem,” Dershowitz declaims. “Today that problem
focuses more on the Jewish state than on the Jewish religion.” (p. 181)
But if the
Catholic Church historically has been hostile toward Judaism, what does
Dershowitz say about the anti-Christian and anti-gentile statements in the
Jewish Talmud? Dershowitz takes to task Israel Shahak, the Jewish Israeli
Holocaust survivor, for his negative presentation of the Talmud. How does
Dershowitz know Shahak is wrong? Dershowitz says that he “asked dozens of
Orthodox rabbis about Shahak’s characterization of Talmudic principles, and not
a single one agreed with it.” (p. 103) Of course, one of Shahak’s allegations
is that Jews schooled in the Talmud engage in dissimulation if they think its
real messages might antagonize a gentile audience and thus be detrimental to
Jewish interests (this approach to outsiders is not unknown to representatives
of other religions also). A more objective description of the Talmud, however,
is often is provided in specialized scholarship, which Dershowitz apparently
felt no need to consult. For example, Peter Schäfer, Director of the Program in
Judaic Studies at Princeton University, recently authored the generally
acclaimed Jesus in the Talmud, which clearly brings out the Talmud’s
virulent hostility toward Jesus.
Dershowitz’s
attack on Shahak illustrates his contention that Jews themselves can express
anti-Semitic ideas (he does not use the term “self-hating Jew”) in criticizing
Israel and thus are just as prejudiced as gentile critics of the Jewish state.
He lambasts Jewish critics of Israel, such as Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein,
and Rabbi Michael Lerner, as inauthentic Jews who use “their Jewish identity to
discredit accusations that their ideas are anti-Semitic . . . to establish
their special right to criticize Israel, and to give added stress to the evils
of Zionism.” (p. 100) In fact, Dershowitz claims that these critics are not
really “Jewish in any real sense, other than their parentage.” However, “they
accentuate their Jewish heritage (their names and connections to the Holocaust)
to gain credibility for their Israel bashing.” (p. 100) It is quite interesting
that Dershowitz does not even regard Jewish victims of the Holocaust to be
authentic Jews if they criticize Israel. But something tells be that if someone
ever tried to subtract the substantial number of non-Zionist Jews from the six
million figure, he would end up in very deep kimchi.
In making this
semantic argument regarding Jewishness, Dershowitz deftly
engages in a verbal slight-of-hand to shift the meaning of key words. Thus,
Dershowitz equates gentile criticism of anything to do with Zionism as being
anti-Semitic, in essence, reflecting a racial or ethnic bias. However, his
claim that Jewish critics of Zionism are not really Jewish would mean that
Zionism and Jewishness are not determined by race or ethnicity but rather are
intellectual beliefs. By this logic, then, criticism of Zionism should not be
considered racial or ethnic bias—that is, anti-Semitic--any more than the
criticism of radical Islam or any political movement.
Moving over to criticism of the power of
Israel’s American supporters to influence America’s Middle East policy,
Dershowitz goes into overdrive to smear John J. Mearsheimer’s and Stephen
Walt’s daring work, The
Israel Lobby. To Dershowitz, however, their thesis that Israel lobby plays
a major role in shaping American Middle East policy simply represents an
anti-Semitic meme. “The accusations leveled by Mearsheimer and Walt,”
Dershowitz proclaims, “share the same themes as the notorious Protocols of the
Elders of Zion, the czarist forgery whose motifs became a staple of
anti-Semitic propaganda.” (p. 52) After clearly implying anti-Semitism,
Dershowitz later emphatically denies that he ever made such a lethal charge,
categorically stating: “I have never called Mearsheimer or Walt anti-Semitic.”
(p. 78) Presumably in Dershowitz’s lawyerly mind, and in order to avoid the
charge that he attempts to silence people by name-calling, there is presumably
a major distinction between the expression of anti-Semitic themes that form the
“staple of anti-Semitic propaganda” and actually being anti-Semitic.
BONA FIDE ANTI-SEMITES
But
if not deemed bona-fide anti-Semites, Dershowitz does defame Mearsheimer and
Walt as “hate-mongers who have given up on scholarly debate and the democratic
process in order to become rock-star heroes of anti-Israel extremists.” (p. 79)
How he arrives at this scurrilous conclusion is not brought out fully from his
analysis of their writing. For example, Dershowitz discerns great significance
in the book cover of The Israel Lobby. “It is telling,” he conjectures, “that
the cover of their book consists of the U.S. flag in the colors of the Israeli
blue-and-white, implying that ‘the lobby’ controls not only U.S. foreign policy
but the United States itself. That is the classic conspiratorial mind-set.” (p.
55) Here Dershowitz relies on bludgeoning a straw man — or, better termed, a
straw demon— since in their actual book Mearsheimer and Walt explicitly reject
the idea of a Jewish "conspiracy" and never make the patently outrageous
claim that Jews "control" the United States, but only that the
Israeli lobby is very influential in shaping American policy in the Middle
East.
Dershowitz
further distorts what Mearsheimer and Walt actually write in contending that
“Their charge that Israel pushed the Bush administration to go to war in Iraq,
for example, is based entirely on opinion articles in the popular press. That
does not qualify as evidence.” (p. 58) Mearsheimer and Walt, however, never
claim that Israel “pushed” the Bush administration into war. In fact, they
describe the neoconservatives within the Bush administration as the driving
force for the war. However, while Dershowitz asserts that “Sharon actually
opposed the war against Iraq,” (p. 132) Sharon’s government actually publicly advocated
American entrance into war, for which there was plenty of evidence in the
mainstream newspapers, including direct quotes of Israeli leaders, which I
document in my own book, The
Transparent Cabal. And this evidence mostly came from regular news articles,
not “opinion articles,” as Dershowitz would have it. If Dershowitz really
believes that these mainstream newspapers fabricated the news to make Israel
appear bellicistic, then it would seem to be he, not Mearsheimer and Walt, who
possesses a “conspiratorial mind-set.”
Dershowitz
continues: “Given the small size of the U.S. Jewish population, the broad
support among American Jews for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, and the heavy opposition to the Iraq War in the American Jewish
community—all facts that Mearsheimer and Walt admit to be true—it would seem
odd to assign responsibility for U.S. foreign policy to
pro-Israel activists and Jewish organizations.” (p. 74) Here Dershowitz tosses
in a red-herring since the two authors argue that only a small segment of the
Jewish population, fundamentally the neoconservatives, led the country into the
Iraq war, the anti-war position of most Jews is irrelevant. And it is hardly
odd for historians to attribute the power to shape national policy to a small
group of people—bankers, munitions makers, slave-holders, oil interests,
corporatists, etc.
Dershowitz goes
so far as to maintain that there is no clear evidence that the Israel lobby has
had any influence on American foreign policy and that, furthermore, Mearsheimer
and Walt did not take the necessary research approach to prove their case. To
adduce sufficient proof, he contends, the two authors would have had to conduct
“original research, such as interviews, analysis of government documents,
financial audits of lobby groups, and so on, to obtain a complete picture of
the policy process. From this wealth of primary sources they would have needed
to identify the most important individual actors, the most effective lobbing
strategies—if indeed domestic lobby groups had managed to shift U. S. policy in
any examples under scrutiny.” (p. 75) In going over the elements of this
alleged proper methodology, Dershowitz does not cite one book that made use of
such an approach to demonstrate the existence of any lobby. Yet, it is
generally accepted that various lobbies exist and do influence policy—the
Cuban-American lobby, the China lobby, the Greek Lobby, the oil lobby, the gun
lobby. Does the lack of the extensive proof demanded by Dershowitz mean that
none of these lobbies exists or ever existed? As a Ph.D. in American history, I
have read many history books that maintain that various extra-governmental
groups shaped government policy at various times in America’s history, but I
can’t recall any that engaged in all the research that Dershowitz holds to be
essential. Obviously, Dershowitz does not provide anything like this level of
proof for any of his own arguments.
Given
Dershowitz’s assertion of a lack of proof of the capability of the Israel lobby
to shape American policy, and, in fact, its likely powerlessness, one would
reasonably think that out of self-interest the lobby’s members, such as AIPAC,
would need to take issue with him to justify their existence. The fact of the
matter, however, is that Dershowitz actually expounds the basic position of
members of the Israel lobby toward Mearsheimer and Walt’s argument. It was
really quite piquant to hear members of the Israel lobby, who devote their
careers to promoting Israel, proclaim their uselessness and lack of influence.
Of course, if AIPAC’s donors actually believed any of this rhetorical spin,
there would be no reason for them to provide any financial support for a
totally ineffectual lobby.
Moreover, this
idea of the impotency of the Israel lobby would also seem to be belied by
Dershowitz’s own actions. For Dershowitz is widely recognized as an advocate
for Israel. He provides seminars instructing American Jews how to promote the
interests of Israel. And Dershowitz has recently been debating representatives
from J Street, which presents itself as the new progressive alternative lobby
to AIPAC. Dershowitz holds that J Street’s positions would be deleterious to
Israeli security, which certainly does imply that lobbies for Israel can affect
United States policy. Dershowitz even claims that his book “may help to promote
the kind of enduring peace that will serve the interests not only of the
Israeli and the Palestinian people but of the whole world as well.” (p. 16) To
reiterate, if the vast Israel lobby has had no impact on American foreign
policy, how could Dershowitz possibly believe that any of his own activities
could have any effect? On the issue of the influence of the Israel lobby,
therefore, his own actions speak far louder than his words.
Further
illustrating Dershowitz’s proclivity to render judgments with minimal or no
proof, he cavalierly categorizes Patrick Buchanan as a “vicious hater of
Israel,” criticism of Israel being equated with hatred. His alleged proof
descends into mind-reading, as he proclaims: “If Israel were not the Jewish
state, he [Buchanan] would be its most vocal supporter . . . . There is no
theory or policy that explains Buchanan’s upside-down view on this issue except
simply anti-Semitism.” (p. 128) However, since the end of the Cold War,
Buchanan has taken staunch non-interventionist positions, which loom large in
such books as A Republic not an Empire. There is no evidence that the
non-interventionist Buchanan advocates American support for any other country,
no matter what its ethnic or religious make-up, comparable to the current
United States support for Israel. For example, Buchanan opposes close
collaboration with Christian Eastern European countries, including Catholic
Poland, against Russia. Thus, Buchanan’s opposition to a virtual alliance with
Israel is completely consistent with his overall non-interventionist stance.
That Dershowitz ignores this obvious fact is either a sign of extreme
ignorance, since Buchanan is a prominent news commentator, or an effort to
deceive his less knowledgeable readers.
GENOCIDAL WEAPONS
Like the
government of Israel, Dershowitz focuses on Iran—with its alleged “genocidal
nuclear weapons program”--as the current major threat to the Jewish state.
Dershowitz, in numerous places in the book, imputes the intention of the
Iranian nuclear program to be the genocide of the Jewish citizens of Israel.
For example, he refers to “Ahmadinejad’s nuclear weapons program for Iran
(which it has threatened to use to wipe Israel off the map).” (p. 110) In actuality,
this interpretation of Ahmadinejad’s statement is highly questionable. First,
there is no clear proof that Iran is developing a nuclear weapons; the question
is whether its nuclear power program will lead to a nuclear weapons capability.
Moreover, there is no evidence that Ahmadinejad has ever threatened to initiate
a nuclear attack on Israel. And in one place in his book, Dershowitz does admit
that Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric could mean the elimination of the Zionist regime
over time rather than the extermination of the Jewish people by a nuclear
strike. This, of course, would seem to be the much more accurate
interpretation, given the fact that the Iranian government has actually said it
has no intention to launch an attack on Israel. And, with Israel’s 200-400
nuclear warheads, including nuclear-armed submarines, plus an extensive air
defense system, an Iranian strike by one or a few missiles would be suicidal
while perhaps doing absolutely no damage to Israel. But Dershowitz argues by
analogy that “Hitler too often spoke in vague and euphemistic terms about
ridding Europe of Jews. Israel certainly has no obligation to give Ahmadinejad
the benefit of any doubts when it comes to interpreting threats of
annihilation.” (p. 212) In this reductio ad Hitlerum, Dershowitz manages to
transcend even former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s Orwellian
reasoning regarding the inability to discover the Saddam’s non-existent WMD:
“The absence of evidence is not necessarily the evidence of absence.” For Dershowitz,
the absence of evidence actually serves as evidence, because this was
presumably the case with Hitler.
Dershowitz
worries that “an Iran with nuclear weapons would become the first nation in the
Middle East to use its nuclear arsenal, not only against Israel but against
U.S. interests.” (p. 216) There is no real evidence for this. Again why would
the Iranian leadership risk suicide? But he argues that a nuclear-armed Iran
could not be contained by nuclear deterrence, as was the Soviet Union, because of
its “suicidal and apocalyptic leadership.” (p. 216) Although often implying
with certitude that, once in possession of nuclear weapons, Iran would
ineluctably attack Israel, in a few places he does qualify the likelihood of
such an attack, though without changing the implication. He writes: “Even if
Israelis believe there is only a 5 percent chance that Iran would attack Israel
with nuclear weapons, the risk of national annihilation would be too great for
any nation to ignore—most especially one built on the ashes of the Holocaust.”
(p. 221) But there is no reason to posit even a five percent probability of an
attack, since Islamic Republic of Iran has never initiated any type of suicidal
war. From the time of its beginning in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has
not been involved in an offensive war and only fought a major war after
Saddam’s full-scale invasion of its territory in 1980. It would be just as
logically justifiable to claim that there is a five percent chance that Israel
would launch a surprise nuclear attack on Iran, despite the fact that Israel
has yet to attack with its nuclear weapons.
NUCLEAR THREAT
Dershowitz
maintains that if all other measures—diplomacy, economic sanctions—fail to stop
the Iranian nuclear program, “Israel and the United States must be allowed
under international law to take out the Iranian nuclear threat before it is
capable of the genocide for which it is being built.” (p. 219) Although
Dershowitz argues in favor of preemptive and preventative war, he claims that
this argument would not even be required to justify an Israeli attack on Iran.
An Israeli attack on Iran, in his view, would be “retaliatory, since Iran
attacked the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires [in 1992] and Iran assisted
Hezbollah in its attack against Israel in 2006.” (p. 217) One wonders if he
would also agree if that the United States support for various anti-government
terrorist groups in Iran would justify an Iranian attack on United States
forces in the Middle East? Or could Iran “retaliate” for the military support
the United States gave to Saddam in the 1980s in his war on Iran? The attack on
the Israeli embassy took place in 1992, so it would seem to be appropriate to
move back even a few more years.
While
Dershowitz views an American or Israeli attack on Iran as entirely justifiable,
he is expresses pessimism (from his perspective) about the outcome, holding
that the United States will not attack Iran and that an inevitably weaker
Israeli air strike might actually serve to strengthen the Islamic regime. Undoubtedly,
however, if Dershowitz were largely certain of this (for him) pessimistic
scenario, he would have discussed some alternative way of dealing with Iran,
since otherwise Israel, in his view, would be left vulnerable to an Iranian
nuclear attack. A seemingly reasonable option to protect Israel from nuclear
annihilation would be the creation of a nuclear-free Middle East.
In bemoaning
Iran’s possible development of nuclear weapons, however, it is noteworthy that
Dershowitz does not see the need to discuss Israel’s extensive nuclear arsenal.
If Israel’s extremely large nuclear arsenal is for defensive purposes, why
would that not also be the case for any nuclear weapons that Iran would
possibly ever develop? For Iran is surrounded by nuclear powers—Israel, Pakistan,
India, and currently United States military forces—but Dershowitz cannot even
conceive of the possibility that Iran would want to have a nuclear capability
for the purpose of deterrence. If Israel is terrified of Iran’s potential
nuclear weapons, why would not Iran likewise be fearful of its neighbors’
existing nuclear weapons? An internationally-guaranteed nuclear-free region,
with rigorous inspections for all countries, would secure the safety of all
countries in the area from a nuclear attack and thus preclude the prospect of
Israel’s nuclear decimation, which Dershowitz so professes to fear. And
Dershowitz ignores this solution despite the fact that his choice for the
President, Barack Obama, publicly emphasizes the need to move to a nuclear-free
world. Given Dershowitz’s omission of this crucial subject, it would seem that
his unstated, actual goal is the preservation of Israel’s regional nuclear
monopoly, which undergirds its unchallengeable hegemony.
For his
conclusion, Dershowitz calls for “people of good will and common sense to
insist that rationality be restored to discussions of the Middle East.” He
looks to “reasoned discourse” and the need to “cease the name-calling” and to
an end to the “double-standard against the Jewish state.” (p. 228) Most, if not
all concessions, would have to be made by Israel’s adversaries. While he refers
to a compromise, it is not apparent that Israel would have to compromise on
anything since Dershowitz describes all significant criticism of Israel as spurious
and malicious. Thus, it would seem that Dershowitz believes that Israel,
without any outside interference, would fashion a just peace for the
Palestinians.
What makes Dershowitz’s book so
revealing is that despite its extreme claims that run afoul of obvious reality,
its heavy use of vituperation and character assassination, its unproven
assertions, its distortion of Israel’s critics’ actual positions and numerous
other flaws, it is deemed perfectly acceptable in the mainstream. Not only was
it extensively reviewed, but a quick perusal of the Web shows that almost all
of the reviews are very positive. Few, if any, of the book’s flaws noted in
this review are ever mentioned. Obviously, a writer who applied comparable
tactics in most (non-PC) situations would be excoriated to high heaven. And
when one takes a critical approach to Jewish interests, even the mildest
language is denounced as hateful or extremist, as I have seen in some reactions
to my book (that is, the few times when it is not being totally ignored).
It might be
somewhat understandable that a Jewish individual would be highly-biased in
favor of the Jewish state, and regard all of its critics as morally defective.
Perhaps self-deception can prevent such an individual from seeing his own extreme
biases. Thus the fundamental problem is not with pro-Zionist Jews, but rather
with American gentiles. But why do many respectable gentiles find nothing wrong
with Dershowitz’s approach (and approaches like his by other pro-Zionist Jews)?
Instead of being chided for his obvious bias, Dershowitz is described as
“brilliant” and “outspoken,” and has achieved the status of a media celebrity.
In contrast, criticism of Israel and its American supporters, even if of the
mildest variety, can make one a pariah in the American mainstream. And the
success of pro-Zionist Jews such as Dershowitz to smear and silence the few
open critics of Israel is successful only because respectable gentiles go along
with it and shun those so targeted.
GUILTY GENTILES
Undoubtedly,
respectable American gentiles either feel too guilty or too fearful to do
anything but collaborate with Israel Firsters such as Dershowitz. Given his
success and the plaudits he has received, there is no external motivation to
induce him to change his modus operandi. His current views sell very well not
only in the marketplace of ideas but in the economic marketplace as well.
Tens, if not
hundreds of thousands, of Middle Easterners have already died and suffered dire
hardships as a result of America’s Israelocentric Middle East policy. Maybe
most Americans are unconcerned about truth and morality when it involves
distant subjects and when its pursuit could bring about a possible
confrontation with a powerful interest group and the concomitant deleterious
personal consequences. However, now the security of the American people
themselves has become intimately involved. Due to America’s Israelocentric
policy, the Middle East has become so fraught with incalculable peril for the
United States and for the world-at-large that American gentiles can no longer
afford to coddle people such as Dershowitz but must dare to confront them with
the truth. At stake is the peace and security of the United States and the
world as a whole.
Stephen J. Sniegoski is author of The
Transparent Cabal.
This review was
published in the October 2011 issue of Culture
Wars.
Share |
The
Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its Impact on World History by
E. Michael Jones. Jews for Jesus versus Jews against Jesus; Christians versus
Christians versus Jews. This book is the story of such contests played out
over 2000 turbulent years. In his most ambitious work, Dr. E. Michael Jones
provides a breathtaking and controversial tour of history from the Gospels to
the French Revolution to Neoconservatism and the “End of History.” $48 + S&H,
Hardback. [In ordering for shipment outside the U.S., the book's price
will appear as $57 to offset increased shipping charges.] Read Reviews
Footnotes
[i] “Democide” is a term coined by political scientist R. J. Rummel for "the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder." R. J. Rummel, Death by Government (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1994).
[ii] For a discussion of the overall Zionists connection to Nazism, see Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (1983), which is on-line at http://www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/index.htm; For the Stern gang specifically, see: Joseph Heller, The Stern Gang: Ideology, Politics, and Terror, 1940-1949 (London: 1995), extensive preview in Google books, http://tinyurl.com/ydwkhe9
