Moral Indignation or Covert Intimidation?: exposing the cynical opportunism
of Mr Dershowitz
The following is a point-by-point analysis and critique of Alan Dershowitz’s article, “Europe’s
alarming push to isolate Israel” (Heritage, 16 May 2014). The article is so full of hyperbolic,
hysterical nonsense that it probably doesn’t really deserve a response, except that Dershowitz
appears to be taken seriously by some people.
“Europe’s alarming push to isolate Israel
By Alan Dershowitz
When President Barack Obama warned of “international fallout” if Israel fails to embrace the
latest U.S. Middle East peace proposal, Newsmax asked noted author and Harvard Law
professor Alan Dershowitz to comment on the growing talk of a European boycott against
Israel.
It might be more straightforward for you to have written “Newsmax asked me” since
you’re the author of this article. I guess we can just about forgive you for announcing
yourself as a “noted author and Harvard Law professor” just so long as you prove your
credentials with a really great article....
“Why are so many of the grandchildren of Nazis and Nazi collaborators who brought us the
Holocaust once again declaring war on the Jews?”
This statement presupposes that it is the case that “many of the grandchildren of Nazis and
Nazi collaborators who brought us the Holocaust once again declaring war on the Jews.”
Yet, oddly enough no one seems to have heard about any such declaration of war on the
part of “the grandchildren of Nazis and Nazi collaborators.” Are you sure about this?
“Why have we seen such an increase in anti-Semitism and irrationally virulent anti-Zionism
in western Europe?”
This statement presupposes that there has been an increase in anti-Semitism and
irrationally virulent anti-Zionism in western Europe. It also conflates the two, but without
defining either. No evidence is offered in support of either claim.
“To answer these questions....”
What questions? The questions you just posed that are based upon unsupported
presuppositions? I think that I’d like you to start by substantiating some of the
extraordinary claims that you’ve just made and defining your terms a bit clearer. We need
to be agreed on terminology before we can have a meaningful discussion about this. Right?
“a myth must first be exposed. That myth is the one perpetrated by the French, the Dutch,
the Norwegians, the Swiss, the Belgians, the Austrians, and many other western Europeans:
namely that the Holocaust was solely the work of German Nazis aided perhaps by some
Polish, Ukrainian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian collaborators.
False.”
Err, sorry, but you seem to be piling non sequitur upon non sequitur here. How is that of
the slightest relevance to the questions that you’ve just posed?
“The Holocaust was perpetrated by Europeans—by Nazi sympathizers and collaborators
among the French, Dutch, Norwegians, Swiss, Belgians, Austrians and other Europeans,
both Western and Eastern.
If the French government had not deported to the death camps more Jews than their
German occupiers asked for; if so many Dutch and Belgian citizens and government officials
had not cooperated in the roundup of Jews; if so many Norwegians had not supported
Quisling; if Swiss government officials and bankers had not exploited Jews; if Austria had
not been more Nazi than the Nazis, the Holocaust would not have had so many Jewish
victims.”
Err, okay, I didn’t realize that this was an article about the Holocaust, but I guess we can at
least accept your contention that the Holocaust wouldn’t have had so many Jewish victims
if people in those countries had refused to collaborate in the round-up of Jews. That seems
reasonable and believable enough.
“Oh no,” we hear from European apologists. “This is different. We don’t hate the Jews. We
only hate their nation-state. Moreover, the Nazis were right-wing. We’re left-wing, so we
can’t be anti-Semites.”
Nonsense.”
Sorry, but you yourself are talking nonsense. You haven’t even defined who it is you refer to
as ‘European apologists’ (apologists for what?) before putting words into their mouth that
appear to have no reference to anything that anyone has actually said.
“The hard left has a history of anti-Semitism as deep and enduring as the hard right. The line
from Voltaire, to Karl Marx, to Levrenti Beria, to Robert Faurisson, to today’s hard-left Israel
bashers is as straight as the line from Wilhelm Mars [sic] to the persecutors of Alfred Dreyfus
to Hitler.”
Analysing the merits of demerits of the claim that the ‘hard left’ has a history of antiSemitism “as deep and enduing as the hard right” might well be the topic of a PhD thesis (if
stated less polemically), but what’s that got to do with anything? Oh, apparently that
“today’s hard-left Israel bashers” are the modern-day inheritors of that shameful lineage.
Gosh, and well we never knew! Shame on them! Except that we still don’t know as all you
are doing is boldly pronouncing this hysterical claim without offering us even a shred of
evidence.
“The Jews of Europe have always been crushed between the Black and the Red—victims of
extremism whether it be the ultra-nationalism of Khmelnitsky to the ultra-anti-Semitism of
Stalin.
Well, maybe, but....?
“But some of the most strident anti-Zionists are Jews, such as Norman Finkelstein and even
Israelis such as Gilad Atzmon. Surely they can’t be anti-Semites.” Why not? Gertrude Stein
and Alice Toklas collaborated with the Gestapo. Atzmon, a hard leftist, describes himself as a
proud self-hating Jew and admits that his ideas derive from a notorious anti-Semite.”
There’s probably some truth in the claim that it’s possible for a person of Jewish descent to
harbour anti-Semitic views, but that certainly doesn’t mean that anti-Zionist Jews are antiSemitic just because such a possibility exists in theory. The case would have to be made
with respect to each person individually. So far you’ve proven nothing.
He denies that the Holocaust is historically proved but he believes that Jews may well have
killed Christian children to use their blood to bake Passover matzah. And he thinks it’s
“rational” to burn down synagogues.
Yes, I know that you’ve read his book and flattered his ego by getting so hysterically
worked up about it. You’re probably his biggest promoter in fact, after advising everyone
else to read it too to see how terrible it is. Sadly, you really don’t come across as any more
reliable or objective than him.
Finkelstein believes in an international Jewish conspiracy that includes Steven Spielberg,
Leon Uris, Elie Wiesel, and Andrew Lloyd Webber!
Really! Odd that no one else has heard about it. Or is this just your own projection?
“But Israel is doing bad things to the Palestinians,” the European apologists insist, “and we
are sensitive to the plight of the underdog.”
What do you mean by ‘European apologist’ and when did they make such a statement. Or
are you just putting words into peoples’ mouths?
“No, you’re not! Where are your demonstrations on behalf of the oppressed Tibetans,
Georgians, Syrians, Armenians, Kurds, or even Ukrainians? Where are your BDS movements
against the Chinese, the Russians, the Cubans, the Turks, or the Assad regime?”
Who’s demonstrations? Your statement doesn’t make any sense because you haven’t clearly
defined who you are talking about. Are you saying that there isn’t ever any protest within
Europe against any other human rights atrocities anywhere else in the world, ever?
Only the Palestinians, only Israel? Why? Not because the Palestinians are more oppressed
than these and other groups.
Leaving aside the broad ranging issue of whether or not the Palestinians are more
oppressed than the particular groups that you cite, I would agree with your broad
contention that it is not because Palestinians are more oppressed than other groups that
those of us campaigning for Palestinian rights do so. In fact I’ve often made this point
myself.
Only because their alleged oppressors are Jews and the nation-state of the Jews. Would there
be demonstrations and BDS campaigns on behalf of the Palestinians if they were oppressed
by Jordan or Egypt?
Okay, well at least we’re getting to the crux of your argument here – that it is only because
Palestinians are oppressed by Jews that those who support Palestinian rights do so.
Certainly, this claim is to some extent true with respect to some supporters of Palestinian
rights, particularly those who are themselves Jewish who feel that their Jewish identity is
threatened by Zionism’s attempt to conflate Judaism with support for Israeli expansionism
and aggression. It is far less likely to be a consideration for non-Jewish supporters of
Palestinian rights, for whom other motivations are likely to be more prominent. The truth
is that the range of motivations for supporting any cause is as diverse as the number of
people supporting it. But you only seem to admit the possibility of one motivation. Could it
be that you actually have no interest or curiosity in why people choose to support
Palestinians in their legitimate struggle for freedom and justice and merely want to
discredit them by maligning their motives?
““Oh, wait! The Palestinians were oppressed by Egypt and Jordan. Gaza was an open-air
prison between 1948 and 1967, when Egypt was the occupying power. And remember Black
September, when Jordan killed more Palestinians than Israel did in a century? I don’t
remember any demonstration or BDS campaigns—because there weren’t any.
When Arabs occupy or kill Arabs, Europeans go ho-hum. But when Israel opens a soda
factory in Maale Adumim, which even the Palestinian leadership acknowledges will remain
part of Israel in any peace deal, Oxfam parts ways with Scarlett Johansson for advertising a
soda company that employs hundreds of Palestinians.
Keep in mind that Oxfam has provided “aid and material support” to two anti-Israel terrorist
groups, according to the Tel Aviv-based Israeli Law Group.
The hypocrisy of so many hard-left western Europeans would be staggering if it were not so
predictable [sic] based on the sordid history of Western Europe’s treatment of the Jews.”
What you seem to fail to understand is that human rights activism is not some sort of
reverse beauty contest in which the choice of cause is chosen from one year to the next on
the basis of an annual assessment of who is The Very Worst Human Rights Abuser for that
particular year. People protest all sorts of things many of which fall far short of human
rights abuses. Political activism is simply about trying to change things for the better
(according to each group’s beliefs about what that means) and is not about assigning a
relative weighting to how bad things are in comparison to each other. And the fact that
people don’t always form or join dedicated organisations in response to learning about
human rights abuses doesn’t mean that they don’t care about them.
“Even England, which was on the right side of the war against Nazism, has a long history of
anti-Semitism, beginning with the expulsion of the Jews in 1290 to the notorious White
Paper of 1939, which prevented the Jews of Europe for seeking asylum from the Nazis in
British-mandated Palestine. And Ireland, which vacillated in the war against Hitler, boasts
some of the most virulent anti-Israel rhetoric.”
Oh dear, so you’re insinuating that the fact that Ireland vacillated about involvement in
WWII is evidence of anti-Semitism, and then insinuating that this is intimately connected
to what you refer to as ‘anti-Israel rhetoric.’ Except that there are other possible reasons
why Ireland might have been hesitant about involvement in WWII and other possible
reasons why Irish might be critical of Israel. Anyone would have thought that as a
Harvard Professor you might be smart enough to be aware of such possibilities. Could it be
that you actually have no interest or curiosity in why some Irish people are critical of Israel
and merely want to discredit them by tarring them with the slur of anti-Semitic?
“The simple reality is that one cannot understand the current western European left-wing
war against the nation-state of the Jewish people without first acknowledging the long-term
European war against the Jewish people themselves.
Theodore Herzl understood the pervasiveness and irrationality of European anti-Semitism,
which led him to the conclusion that the only solution to Europe’s Jewish problem was for
European Jews to leave that bastion of Jew hatred and return to their original homeland,
which is now the state of Israel.”
Once again you are making the outrageous and (still) unsubstantiated claim equating
Palestinian rights activism with European anti-Semitism under the guise offering us a
pearl of wisdom.
“None of this is to deny Israel’s imperfections or the criticism it justly deserves for some of
its policies. But these imperfections and deserved criticism cannot even begin to explain,
must less justify, the disproportionate hatred directed against the only nation-state of the
Jewish people and the disproportionate silence regarding the far greater imperfections and
deserved criticism of other nations and groups—including the Palestinians.”
Leaving aside the claim that the Palestinians deserve greater criticism than Israelis you are
once again demonstrating a profound lack of curiosity about why some Europeans are
critical of Israel, and repeating your insinuations and irrelevant comparisons.
“Nor is this to deny that many western European individuals and some western European
countries have refused to succumb to the hatred against the Jews or their state. The Czech
Republic comes to mind. But far too many western Europeans are as irrational in their
hatred toward Israel as their forbearers were in their hatred toward their Jewish
neighbours.”
Really?! Well, nothing that you’ve said makes a remotely convincing case for that being the
case.
“As author Amos Oz once aptly observed: the walls of his grandparents’ Europe were covered
with graffiti saying, “Jews, go to Palestine.” Now they say, “Jews, get out of Palestine”—by
which is meant Israel.
Who do these western European bigots think they’re fooling? Only fools who want to be
fooled in the interest of denying that they are manifesting new variations on their
grandparents’ old biases.
Any objective person with an open mind, open eyes, and an open heart must see the double
standard being applied to the nation-state of the Jewish people. Many doing so are the
grandchildren of those who lethally applied a double standard to the Jews of Europe in the
1930s and 1940s.”
Any objective person will recognise that this article has no merit whatsoever and is just
emotionally-driven hysterical nonsense. Your real aim is to stifle appropriate
condemnation of Israeli actions by intimidating people with the slur of being an antiSemite. You have no compunction about shamefully misusing the memory of many
innocent people who died in the Holocaust in order to malign the motives of Europeans
whose families, in many cases, also suffered during WWII, and who now feel motivated,
through compassion, to try to help the Palestinians.
“For shame!”
Yes indeed!