Just What Were The Jews Doing in Then-Palestine Before The Balfour Declaration?

Thursday is the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, yet after 100 years people still argue over it and Abbas is still asking Great Britain for an apology.

What did the Balfour Declaration actually do?
And what did the Balfour Declaration recognize?

The second question is no more settled than the first, but gives a surprising answer.

Arlene Kushner Takes On Alan Dershowitz About Obama

From Arlene Kushner:

November 3, 2012
Motzei Shabbat (After Shabbat)

The Last Effort

Likely my last major communication on the issue of the US election. And this one with a very specific focus.

On Friday, in the Jerusalem Post, Alan Dershowitz had a major piece called, "The case for Obama's reelection." It was so rife with distortions, I could not let it pass. It read to me like a campaign document, not a serious analysis of how the president has conducted himself.

Alan Dershowitz is a big name and highly respected in many quarters -- thus likely to be believed in what he writes. And so, I offer this as a counter to anyone who may have seen Dershowitz's piece -- either in the JPost or in other venues where it may have appeared -- and feels inclined to accept his word on the issues. I will do this briefly, touching on main points he attempted to make:

Audio: Alan Dershowitz On Fox Radio Discussing Disproportionate Force

A radio interview with Alan Dershowitz, addressing the issue of Disproportionate Force that he wrote about in his article.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Gaza and Hamas and Operation Cast Lead and Disproportionate Force.

Alan Dershowitz: "The Case Against Israel's Enemies"

I''m being sent a free review copy of, "The Case Against Israel's Enemies" by Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz.

The book begins with a detailed rebuttal of Jimmy Carter's book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," and ends with Dershowitz making the case for an Israeli preemptive strike against Iran.

The publisher, Wiley, has made the entire chapter on Jimmy Carter available for free download at the following link:

http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470379928.html
(direct link here)

I will write more about the book after I have a chance to read it.

Technorati Tag: Dershowitz.

Dershowitz On US Aid To Israel

Among the points Dershowitz makes: in real terms--taking into account that much of the aid to Israel is in the form of loans--Israel actually ranks around 30th in terms of receiving American aid.

[Hat tip: Blackbook]

Technorati Tag: Israel and Dershowitz.

Dershowitz: Terrorism Requires New Rules

The goes beyond the use of civilians: the use of their neighborhoods and homes--and the use of the civilians themselves as human shield. New rules are need to take into account the civlians who incite and actively help, either physically or financially.

Dershowitz writes:

Civilian casualties also increase when terrorists operate from within civilian enclaves and hide behind human shields. This relatively new phenomenon undercuts the second basic premise of conventional warfare: Combatants can easily be distinguished from noncombatants. Has Zahra Maladan become a combatant by urging her son to blow himself up? Have the religious leaders who preach a culture of death lost their status as noncombatants? What about "civilians" who willingly allow themselves to be used as human shields? Or their homes as launching pads for terrorist rockets?

The traditional sharp distinction between soldiers in uniform and civilians in nonmilitary garb has given way to a continuum. At the more civilian end are babies and true noncombatants; at the more military end are the religious leaders who incite mass murder; in the middle are ordinary citizens who facilitate, finance or encourage terrorism. There are no hard and fast lines of demarcation, and mistakes are inevitable -- as the terrorists well understand.

We need new rules, strategies and tactics to deal effectively and fairly with these dangerous new realities. We cannot simply wait until the son of Zahra Maladan -- and the sons and daughters of hundreds of others like her -- decide to follow his mother's demand. We must stop them before they export their sick and dangerous culture of death to our shores.

But does anyone seriously think that the UN is up to the task?

Technorati Tag: Terrorism.

EVEN ACCORDING TO CARTER--CARTER CAN'T BE TRUSTED. Allan Dershowitz

No reasonable person can dispute therefore that Jimmy Carter has been and remains dependent on Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi Arabia. Does this mean that Carter has necessarily been influenced in his thinking about the Middle East by receipt of such enormous amounts of money? Ask Carter.

The entire premise of his criticism of Jewish influence on American foreign policy is that money talks. It is Carter, not me, who has made the point that if politicians receive money from Jewish sources, then they are not free to decide issues regarding the Middle East for themselves. It is Carter, not me, who has argued that distinguished reporters cannot honestly report on the Middle East because they are being paid by Jewish money. So, by Carter's own standards, it would be almost economically "suicidal" for Carter "to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine."

By Carter's own standards, therefore, his views on the Middle East must be discounted.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Jimmy Carter and Alan Dershowitz.

FINKELSTEIN VS DERSHOWITZ: Yid With Lid has the latest confrontation--on his newly redesigned blog, thanks to Mr. Bagel.

Technorati Tag: Norman Finkelstein and Alan Dershowitz.

Norman Finkelstein Sinks To New Lows

Catholic League president Bill Donohue seems to have a novel idea of the role of Free Speech on university campuses.

Too bad it is not shared by others.

From The Catholic League For Religious and Civil Rights
October 11, 2006

DePAUL PROFESSOR DEFAMES CATHOLIC EDUCATION:
DONOHUE DEFENDS DERSHOWITZ

Catholic League president Bill Donohue issued the following remarks today about an incident involving a DePaul University professor:

“Catholics have every right to expect that Catholic colleges and universities are free from bigotry of any kind. Unfortunately, a recent ugly incident by DePaul professor Norman G. Finkelstein has betrayed that trust. To be specific, an online column he wrote at indybay.org suggesting that Alan Dershowitz be assassinated, coupled with an obscene depiction of the Harvard professor, is cause for alarm.

“Finkelstein has every right to quarrel with Dershowitz’s proud defense of Israel’s right to exist, but when he compares him to a Nazi (this despicable charge is made twice), then elementary standards of civility have been shattered. Similarly, calling Dershowitz a ‘moral pervert’ who ‘missed the climactic scene of his little peep show’ is the language used by street propagandists, not academicians. Make no mistake about it, Finkelstein wrote this to illustrate the vicious cartoon he commissioned: Dershowitz is depicted masturbating in glee over dead Lebanese civilians. It doesn’t get much lower than this.

“There are plenty of arenas in and around Chicago where those who want to rant can go to express themselves, but a university is not such a venue: the university exists so that the truth may be pursued. That is what a liberal arts education is expected to provide, and it is nothing but a travesty when the rights afforded faculty members are abused in the way Finkelstein has done. This is doubly true when it happens on a Catholic campus.

“The time has come for responsible Catholic leaders to hold up a stop sign to this kind of ad hominem assault. Robust free speech should be welcomed on campus, but if it is to have pedagogical value, it must respect logic and standards of evidence. Character assassination of the kind Finkelstein engages in does not meet that test. He has abused his rights as a faculty member and he has defamed Catholic education.”

Technorati Tag: Norman Finkelstein and Alan Dershowitz and Free Speech.

Dershowitz, Chomsky, and Camp Massad

Noam Chomsky who is no friend of Israel went to Camp Massad, together with Alan Dershowitz, during the 1940's--Chomsky was a counselor, and Dershowitz a camper there according to The Forward.

Camp Massad was an interesting place in its own right.

Marcel Silberman writes

in order to ‘keep the purity of the Hebrew language and its completeness without the necessity of introducing foreign and unattractive expressions,’ Massad produced a practical dictionary which covered the vocabulary needed for camp life. It had Hebrew words for different foods, clothing, everyday activities, and also sports, and it came up with Hebrew baseball, basketball, and American football terms. I don’t know how many words in the Massad dictionary about those sports have survived or been adopted.”

...Massad was a unique place, a combination of an American summer camp, a kibbutz and a Soviet gulag. The gulag part had to do with the fact that speaking Hebrew all day long was not only mandatory...

To the degree that Camp Massad influenced Chomsky and Dershowitz, it did so in very different ways.

Technorati Tag: Chomsky and Alan Dershowitz and Camp Massad and Hebrew.

Dershowitz vs. Chomsky

Last week Alan Dershowitz and Noam Chomsky duked it out, so to speak:

Two noted academics offered vastly different views on the history and path forward in the Arab-Israeli conflict recently as Alan Dershowitz and Noam Chomsky debated each other at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Whereas Chomsky claimed "Israeli rejectionism" was the source of Arab-Israeli tensions, Dershowitz derided the Palestinian rejection of the peace offer made to Yasser Arafat by Ehud Barak at Camp David.

Dershowitz also called on academics to stop demonizing Israel. "At the moment, I am sad to report that many academics around the world are contributing to an atmosphere that makes peace more difficult to achieve," Dershowitz said. "Thank G-d Israel has to make peace with the Palestinians, and not with the professors!" Dershowitz went on to say that peace "will require that both sides give up rights."

Chomsky and Dershowitz were each given ten minutes for opening remarks, followed by forty-five minutes for a question-and-answer session with the audience, and two minutes for closing statements.

To a skeptical audience however Dershowitz refuted Chomsky's line of attack.

Solomonia blogged the debate, and offers the following evaluation:

Final wrap-up: OK, I did a sort-of live blog which I've shuffled off into the extended entry. I found it very difficult to type and quip and still listen, so mostly I didn't.

Dershowitz fans will enjoy this, so give it a listen/watch when the video is up on the archive. He's aggressive and ready, occasionally delving more into the ad hominem than Chomsky (one of the expressions he likes to repeat is "Planet Chomsky," which I enjoyed but have to admit was getting personal), but overall driving the debate and responding extremely well. Chomsky is getting old. He's quieter and more tentative. Not as impressive a presence or voice. Classic Chomsky, he speaks like he writes, referring constantly to sources, "serious scholars," and things which "everyone knows" while waiving his hand. You can almost see the little footnote marks floating over his head. Dershowitz, of course, challenges the audience to do as Professor Chomsky says and check his sources.

It would be an interesting excercise, if there is a transcript posted, or someone wants to slog through the video, actually doing just that. Chomsky is called by a member of the audience during the question and answer period on his characterization of the work of one of the audience member's friends, for instance.

The audience, what could be heard on the audio, was a bit louder on the Chomsky side, although both had their fans and there was some hissing but I'm not sure at who.

Unquestionably, Dershowitz came out looking like the forward thinker, the one desiring peace and willing to self-criticize. Chomsky is, to put it bluntly, stuck on stupid and has been for decades. The man is genetically incapable of doing anything other than villifying Israel and the United States. Everything is their fault -- from the war in '48 to the failure of Taba -- their actions always without context or justification. Trying to get a forward looking, "OK, so where do we go from here" statement out of him is like pulling teeth. He just won't do it. He can't concede a thing. (He seems to think the Geneva Accord was OK, though.)

You can download a video of the debate here.

Technorati Tags: Israel and Palestinians and Dershowitz and Chomsky.