With his clear support, will Israel's supporters warm to Obama?

Quite a few supporters of Israel were pessimistic in the extreme about the prospects of Barack Obama being re-elected. But that feeling was far from unanimous among staunch advocates for the survival of the Jewish state.

Prior to his reelection, praise for Obama's dedication to Israel's security came from a people varying from  Harvard Law Prof Alan Dershowitz to right-wing former Lukid Foreign Minister Moshe Arens.

At a lecture last winter in Toronto, Arens said of Obama's speech to the UN that it was as if not more pro-Zionist than anything ever said to that body by an Israeli leader.

With Israel embroiled in another round of violence trying to prevent rocket attacks by the Hamas terrorist government in Gaza, Obama's words may provide some reassurance.

Though it doesn't officially begin until January, for all intents and purposes, Obama is in his second term and does not have to concern himself with another political campaign. He is free to say what he likes and what he's said so far has been fully supportive of Israel.

Said Obama: "We are fully supportive of Israel's right to defend itself...and we will continue to be supportive of Israel's tight to defend itself."

His statements are forceful and non-equivocating, which stands in stark contrast to Canada's morally relativistic New Democrat Party. The NDP's opportunistic leader, Thomas Mulcair is known to be a supporter of Israel but is unlikely to be publicly forthright about it, in order to placate the extremist anti-Israel    fanatics within his party whose support he will require in the next general election.

As for President Obama, his support for Israel in this crisis has been as forceful as anything said by his predecessor, George W. Bush, who was considered the most pro-Israel US President to date.

Alan Dershowitz: Soros-funded Media Matters is "the equivalent of David Duke on the Extreme Left"

“Media Matters and Center for American Progress are two extremely left-bigoted groups that are so virulently anti-Israel and anti-supporters of Israel that they’ve gone over the line from anti-Zionism to anti-Semitism,” Dershowitz said. ”They now use the term ‘Israel firsters,’ the way anti-Catholic bigots used to use the term ‘Vatican firsters’ or ‘Irish firsters,’ as if to suggest Americans who support Israel have dual loyalty. This false charge goes back to the Bible — goes back to the Book of Esther, goes back thousands of years. It was one of Hitler’s justifications for killing the Jews: ‘Dual loyalty, they’re not good Germans, they’re not good Americans,’ whatever it is.”

Dershowitz has been vocal against Media Matters in recent days, making that charge of anti-Semitism. However, his classification of the Center for American Progress as borderline “anti-Semitic” is noteworthy because both Media Matters and the Center for Progress have received money directly from billionaire left-wing financier George Soros, who has faced similar charges in the past.

“These two organizations have been found to be anti-Semitic by many of the objective monitoring groups,” he said. “And now they are closely associated with the Democratic Party and I have said very clearly there is no room in this tent for me on the one hand, and for Media Matters and for this other group on the other hand. We can’t be in the same tent. I will not be in a tent with fascists, with supporters of Ahmadinejad, with supporters of Hamas, with supporters of Hezbollah, with anti-Semitic bigots, whether they’re Jewish or not. Some of them are Jewish. Some of them are not.”

More here

Dershowitz, Woodward, Gibbs and Gergen discuss Middle East and America in Toronto

Four heavyweight political commentators were brought together yesterday for a panel in Toronto by the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, Barack Obama's former Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, CNN Political Analyst and former White House staffer David Gergen and Watergate reporter and best selling author Bob Woodward convened to discuss issues related to the Middle East. The discussion's particular focus was The United States' and Israel's relationship with each other and with the rapidly changing political climate in the Arab world.

Alan Dershowitz, Robert Gibbs and Bob Woodward

The event was the centrepiece of The Spirit of Hope gala fundraiser for the Weisenthal's Center's work to foster understanding among peoples and combat anti-Semitism. It attracted a full house of donors to the largest synagogue in Canada, the cavernous Beth Tzedek.

At 4 pm yesterday, a press conference was held at the Beth Tzedek with all four panelists that was surprisingly sparsely attended by the media. I planted myself in the otherwise vacant front row facing the quartet of American Establishment beacons with Che Guevara's iconic face peering at them from the t-shirt I wore under an orange plaid shirt. Unfortunately, the top layer wasn't opened to reveal my t-shirt's ironic message.

The panelists all made opening statements, each in turn praising the work of the Wiesenthal Centre and its promotion of tolerance. When the floor was opened to questions, the other gathered media seemed unprepared, so on the theme of 'tolerance' I gave a brief preamble about how Iran's 1979 revolution proved that what what can begin as a democratic movement can quickly become undemocratic and become the embodiment of what we would consider the opposite of tolerance. With the uncertainty of what may come from the wave of revolts in the Arab world, and the potential for subversion by nefarious groups like al Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood, I asked what they thought America could do to preserve its interests in the region.

That seemed to be the issue they all wanted to discuss, because it aroused a lively and lengthy exchange. (CP24 covered it live - you can see this at 7:03 of the video below) If there was a consensus, it was that no one can really be sure of what is going to happen and what certain measures could be taken. Gibbs suggested the sensible proposal of offering economic assistance to the democracies that might emerge from the Arab Upheaval. That term was thought to be a more accurate description of what is currently going on in the middle east, since it is yet to be determined whether the revolutions there lead to a spring or a winter.

David Gergen and Alan Dershowitz

While all the panelists naturally support democracy, Gergen offered the caveat that America should have shown more support to its loyal friends, like Hosni Mubarak, whom he felt the Obama Administration abandoned too readily. For America to maintain regional credibility, it can't be seen to desert its friends. Bob Woodward took issue with that, saying that it was critical that America support democracy not just for strategic reasons but as an expression of its own values.

An elegant-looking Heather Riseman, the CEO of Chapters-Indigo and the moderator of the panel that was to take place that night entered the room and seated herself beside me as Dershowitz provided two examples of legitimate democratic elections that can have disastrous results leading to totalitarian regimes. Germany in 1933 and The Palestinian Authority in 2006. He also provided the interesting anecdote of how supposedly knowledgeable Westerners are incapable of predicting the outcomes of some elections. Dershowitz related how he was with Jimmy Carter in Israel at the time of the election that brought Hamas to power. Carter assured him there was nothing to worry about and Fatah would win overwhelmingly.

Dershowitz concluded by explaining revolutions from one particular Arab perspective. According to the Hamas Charter, the French and Russian Revolutions, [along with Communism and Capitalism,] are all the fault of the Jews.

Norman Finkelstein: The Anti-Semites' Favorite Jew

The documentary film American Radical is a sympathetic look at Norman Finkelstein, the former DePaul University professor who was denied tenure after a very public spat with renowned Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz.

The whole film is now available to be viewed online at Al Jazeera English.

Finkelstein is notorious as a vociferously anti-Israel Jew who published The Holocaust Industry, which accused Jews of not being interested in Holocaust remembrance so much as manipulating the Holocaust to extort money and support for Israel from Europe. That work solidified Finkelstein as the favorite Jew of the neo-Nazi movement. His shameless, ongoing use of his family's suffering in the Holocaust as validation of his one-sided critiques of Israel earned Finkelstein contempt and discredit as a propagandist.

The documentary is a fascinating look at a fanatic who was raised in an environment of activist extremism. The product of a hysterical mother was a dogged researcher who is less an academic than a polemicist. His  presented facts frequently lack context, but there is an indication that Finkelstein is well aware of that. His work is to serve a cause, and that cause is Palestinian activism, not the truth of the complexities of the Israeli/Palestinian and Israeli/Arab conflict.

One of the ironies of Finkelstein's life, which the film demonstrates, is that Finkelstein was both made and undone by his obsession with one particular book: From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine.

That book, by Joan Peters, was intended to bolster the Jewish claim to both Historical Palestine and modern Israel by denigrating the Palestinian claim to that land. Finkelstein's doctoral thesis was able to establish that this popular best seller was based in part on shoddy, if not fraudulent scholarship. That exposé propelled Finkelstein to prominence as a critic of Israel. It was also his undoing, when he accused Alan Dershowitz of plagiarizing from Peters' book by using the same Mark Twain contained in From Time Immemorial. Dershowitz was cleared of plagiarism, but the spruious accusation and the acrimony that Finkelstein incurred  from making it irreparably damaged his reputation and made him persona non grata to university administrators across America.

At about 90 minutes, American Radical is a worthwhile glimpse at one of the stranger personalities in the world of grievance politics. You can see it here. 

Alan Dershowitz denounces propaganda attempt by the anti-Israel movement regarding Harvard Fund stock sale

Professor Alan Dershowitz made the following statement today regarding Harvard's Sale of Israeli Stocks


I have been advised by Harvard that the decision of The Harvard's Management Company to sell stocks in Israeli companies reflected the good news that Israel is no longer considered an "emerging" economy, but has been promoted to the status of a "developed" economy. As a result of this promotion, the Harvard Management Company could no longer hold Israeli stocks in its "emerging" nation's portfolio. I am told that Harvard continues to hold Israeli stocks in its "developed" nation's portfolio. The end result may well be that Harvard will have greater rather than lesser holdings of Israeli stocks. No one should misinterpret this purely economic decision as support for any form of divestment against Israel. Indeed, Harvard has publicly committed itself not to divest from Israel and not to participate in any campaign of boycotting the Jewish nation.

There will be some irresponsible anti-Israel extremists who will try to portray this technical economic decision as an attack against Israel. Shame on them. They will continue to lose their credibility among all reasonable and objective people if they try to take political advantage of this purely technical decision.



Professor Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.  He has also published more than 100 articles in magazines and journals such as The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post. The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, The Nation, Commentary, Saturday Review, The Harvard Law Review and the Yale Law Journal, and more than 300 of his articles have appeared in syndication in 50 national daily newspapers. Professor Dershowitz is the author of 27 fiction and non-fiction works with a worldwide audience. His most recent titles include Rights From Wrong, The Case For Israel, The Case For Peace, Blasphemy: How the Religious Right is Hijacking the Declaration of Independence, Preemption: A Knife that Cuts Both Ways, Finding Jefferson – A Lost Letter, A Remarkable Discovery, and The First Amendment In An Age of Terrorism, and The Case For Moral Clarity: Israel, Hamas and Gaza.