Doubting Dershowitz

Regarding “Chasing peace,” the Nov. 24 interview with Alan M. Dershowitz by Matthew Hays:

I happened to be in Montreal today, picked up a copy of the Mirror in a coffee shop, and saw Alan Dershowitz’s name on the front cover. As a past target of Dershowitz’s dishonesty, I am particularly interested in how the media, especially the alternative media, portray this man.

Hays’s article lacked the effusive praise with which Dershowitz is regularly presented in the American media, and did challenge some of his arguments as “predictable.” For this, Hays and the Mirror should be commended. Still, the article suffered from severe deficiencies, namely a refusal to challenge Dershowitz’s hypocrisy or even to correct his outright falsehoods.

Hays reports that Dershowitz calls the war in Iraq “foolish.” This is the sheerest hypocrisy. In the paperback edition of The Case for Israel, Dershowitz states, “I was opposed to the war in Iraq, although I thought it was a close question based on my belief that Saddam Hussein did have weapons of mass destruction and was tyrannizing his own people.” Is Dershowitz also conflicted about whether or not the United States should invade and brutally occupy Israel, which barely conceals its offensive nuclear, biological and chemical weapons arsenal and runs the Gaza Strip, described by Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling in Politicide as “the largest concentration camp ever to exist”?

Furthermore, Hays let Dershowitz get away with what seems to be his favourite falsehood: Yasser Arafat “single-handedly stopped the peace agreement at Camp David.” It is simply a matter of documentary record that Ehud Barak did not offer the Palestinians a compromise on the lines of the international consensus of a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict at Camp David. After Camp David, during the Taba negotiations, Barak made a somewhat better offer, which he subsequently withdrew after realizing he was going to lose the February 2001 election to Ariel Sharon. This was all widely reported in the Hebrew and English media, as Dershowitz is well aware. So, too, should be anyone interviewing him about the Arab-Israeli conflict. On what was offered at Camp David, see Robert Malley (Special Assistant to President Clinton for Arab-Israeli Affairs and a member of the U.S. negotiating team at Camp David) and Hussein Agha in the New York Review of Books, Aug. 9, 2001. On Barak calling off the Taba negotiations, see the Guardian, “Barak halts talks until election,” Jan. 29, 2001.

As an alternative paper, the Mirror ought to speak truth to power. In this case, anybody even vaguely aware of the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict should have known full well that Dershowitz was lying about Arafat “single-handedly” foiling the Camp David talks. Your readership is poorly served when you allow powerful apologists for state terror, military aggression and violent occupation to bend the facts to suit their interests.

» Feroze Sidhwa, Baltimore, Maryland

Alan Dershowitz a peacemaker? Dershowitz’s vision of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict mirrors that of Ariel Sharon’s. In other words: one large Jewish state that includes Jerusalem and most of the West Bank, and one Palestinian “state” in Gaza that is essentially an open-air prison where the inmates are free to leave their cells, but the jailers are entrenched around the perimetre.

Whether it is OJ Simpson or Israel that Dershowitz defends, worth remembering is his advice: “It is the job of the defense attorney—especially when representing the guilty—to prevent, by all lawful means, the ‘whole truth’ from coming out.”

» Shirley Groves

Criticizing Israel

Benji Teboul solemnly declares that “the more the left tries to bash Israel,” as the Mirror does, we are informed, “the more Islamic bombs will be exploding throughout the world” until they reach Montreal [Letters, Nov. 24].

As evidence of his prescience, he deftly delivers the punchline, “We’ve already had one riot and one school fire bombing, but I guess that doesn’t count, right?” Translation: Unless we stop criticizing Israel, the terrorists—who are apparently avid readers of the New Left Review and the Mirror—will most certainly strike here. (Should we not also refrain from picking on Uncle Sam? We all know the carnage that such criticism can inflict.)

According to Mr. Teboul, last year’s firebombing of a Jewish school and the earlier riot at Concordia are clear indications of a looming Islamic threat. These are the facts: Canada’s most vicious attack on record—the firebombing of a Jewish school by a Muslim teenager angry over Israel’s assassination of the paraplegic Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin—was timed to damage property but not lives. If anything, the chorus of public outrage that followed that incident only underscored how socially unacceptable such anti-Semitic acts are. As for the riot that prevented Netanyahu from speaking at Concordia, what was the damage? One broken window.

There is surely, somewhere, a legitimate reason for protecting Israel’s crimes from criticism. I’m still waiting for it.

» John Dirlik

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