Free Republic

July 08, 2008 Following the terrorist attack in Jerusalem last Wednesday which killed at least 3 Israelis and injured approximately 50 others, discredited academic Norman Finkelstein sunk to a new low--which is saying something for a man who has trivialized the Holocaust, supported terrorism, and claimed that Libya had nothing to do with the downing of Pan Am 103. On his website he carries the following faked news story, which he attributes to the New York Times writer who covered the terrorist attack in Jerusalem. Times Exclusive: Deranged Arab in bulldozer attacks NY Times's Isabel Kershner at her pedicure. Reporting...

"All the news that's fit to print." Remember that slogan? It used to...most likely still does...grace the masthead of the New York Times. Little did fools like me suspect that the word "all" wasn't to be the universe, modified only by "fitness" [as in decency, respect for victims, etc.] ...no...no....NO! It turns out the word "Fit" is the universe...as in propaganda...political correctness...yes, even cultural suicide, the word "all" simply describes what's "fit"...not "news". Take one of the more recent examples. In "Paper Cuts", the Times' book blog, Alan Dershowitz'new "novel" [you'll pardon me if I've already forgotten its title] is...

American political scientist and fierce critic of Israel, Prof. Norman Finkelstein, was denied entry to Israel and deported from the country early Saturday morning. Officials said that the decision to deport Finkelstein was connected to his anti-Zionist opinions and fierce public criticism of Israel around the world. Finkelstein landed at Ben-Gurion International Airport at 2 a.m. Friday morning and was immediately taken for questioning by the Immigration Authority and the Interior Ministry. He arrived in Israel from Europe, where he was on a speaking tour. According to his Web site, his last talk was at the University of Amsterdam. His...

As Israel celebrates its 60th birthday, the world should recognize the enormous gifts the Jewish state has given the world. Israel has exported more lifesaving medical technology to the far-flung corners of the earth than any nation of comparable size. It has done more to protect the environment, to promote literature, music, the arts and sciences, to spread agricultural advances and to fight terrorism within the rule of law. Israel has created a legal system that is the envy of the world, with a Supreme Court that is open to all with few, if any, restrictions on its jurisdiction. As...

The federal criminal investigation that has led to Eliot Spitzer's resignation as governor of New York illustrates the great dangers all Americans face from vague and open-ended sex and money-transaction statutes. Federal law, if read broadly, criminalizes virtually all sexual encounters for which something of value has been given. Federal money-laundering statutes criminalize many entirely legitimate and conventional banking transactions. Congress enacted these laws to give federal prosecutors wide discretion in deciding which "bad guys" to go after. Generally, wise and intelligent prosecutors use their discretion properly -- to target organized crime, terrorism, financial predation, exploitation of children and the...

The federal criminal investigation that has led to Eliot Spitzer's resignation as governor of New York illustrates the great dangers all Americans face from vague and open-ended sex and money-transaction statutes. Federal law, if read broadly, criminalizes virtually all sexual encounters for which something of value has been given. Federal money-laundering statutes criminalize many entirely legitimate and conventional banking transactions. Congress enacted these laws to give federal prosecutors wide discretion in deciding which "bad guys" to go after.

Article 51 of the United Nations Charter guarantees its members “the inherent right to…individual self defense” against “an armed attack.” In January of 2006, Hamas was elected to govern the Palestinian Authority. After Israel ended its occupation of Gaza and removed all of its settlers, Hamas threw the Palestinian Authority out of the Gaza and assumed de facto as well as de jure control over the entire Gaza Strip. Its leaders then instructed its military wing to direct rockets at civilian targets in southern Israel. At first these rockets were Qassams with a relatively short range. Now they include Katyushas,...

In the 3 pm hour, in the first blush of the prostitution revelations against liberal Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York, MSNBC’s experts quickly described the scandal as a nothing-burger. Alan Dershowitz attacked America for being a "pandering society and hypocritical society," since this wouldn’t even make the back pages of a newspaper in sophisticated Europe. "Big deal, married man goes to prostitute!" Dershowitz also blamed "men" (as a group) for thinking with their private parts. Tucker Carlson agreed with that line, and said that Spitzer is sleazy, but this is "one of the least sleazy things he’s done." About...

Not long ago, my son and I had a dinner argument over the war against radical Islamist terrorism. He’s a brilliant academic, about to enter graduate school for either math, physics, or both, but he sometimes gets trapped in his rationalism — which, to be honest, isn’t exactly the worst thing a father could wish for his son. He insisted that violence only made the problem worse, and that we had to find a negotiated settlement with Islamist terrorists.Alan Dershowitz had an answer for that in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. In an essay entitled “Worshippers of Death,” Dershowitz argued that...

Zahra Maladan is an educated woman who edits a women's magazine in Lebanon. She is also a mother, who undoubtedly loves her son. She has ambitions for him, but they are different from those of most mothers in the West. She wants her son to become a suicide bomber. At the recent funeral for the assassinated Hezbollah terrorist Imad Moughnaya -- the mass murderer responsible for killing 241 marines in 1983 and more than 100 women, children and men in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 -- Ms. Maladan was quoted in the New York Times giving the following warning...

The leader of Hezbollah, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, has now called for revenge against Israelis and Jews around the world, for the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, which he claims was done by Israel. It does not matter, of course, who actually pulled off the assassination. Israel and the Jews would be blamed by Hezbollah even if Syria had been responsible. Blame Israel and the Jews for everything is what Hezbollah always does. In the past, Hezbollah has taken revenge against what it claimed to be Israeli actions by murdering Jewish school children in Argentina. Once again it is threatening to attack...

The Targeted Killing of Imad Mugniyeh By Alan M. Dershowitz FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, February 14, 2008 If Imad Mugniyeh - the Hezbollah terrorist mastermind who was responsible for hundreds if not thousands of murders – was indeed successfully targeted for assassination, his untimely death should be cause for celebration. I say untimely, because if he had been killed years ago, many innocent lives would have been saved. At the time of this writing, no one can be sure whether Imad Mugniyeh is really dead, whether if he is dead he was killed by a car bomb, and who is responsible...

Professor Alan Dershowitz, of the Harvard Law School, spoke before friends of the Hudson Institute in New York [yesterday]. Hudson Institute is a major think tank that conducts research to advance global security, prosperity and freedom. Among other things, Professor Dershowitz revealed that Noam Chomsky, the radical leftist, had once been his camp counselor. Apparently, Counselor Chomsky did no lasting harm to Counselor Dershowitz. Another thing Professor Dershowitz revealed tells us much about former President Jimmy Carter. It seems that when Carter appeared at Brandeis to plug his book Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid, he pledged to answer any questions that...

Stupid Intelligence By Alan M. DershowitzFrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, December 07, 2007 The recent national intelligence estimate that concluded that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 is just about the stupidest intelligence assessment I have ever read. It falls hook, line and sinker for a transparent bait and switch tactic employed not only by Iran, but by several other nuclear powers in the past. The tactic is obvious and well-known to all intelligence officials with an IQ above room temperature. It goes like this: There are two tracks to making nuclear weapons: One is to conduct research and develop...

A recent e-mail from Norman Finkelstein, which was forwarded to Dean Elana Kagan of the Harvard Law School, indicates that Finkelstein’s name-calling has now turned sexist. Using his mother’s voice, Finkelstein describes Dean Kagan as “a whore” and says that if his mother were still around she would come up to Cambridge and call her that demeaning, sexist term “to her face and then throttle her.” (This sounds very similar to the threat made by Finkelstein admirer Robert Trivers when he threatened to come to Cambridge and perpetrate violence on me.) Finkelstein’s apparent complaint about Dean Kagan -- who he...

This is an obituary for the Oxford Union, which claims to be one of the most famous and distinguished debating societies in the world. The reality is that it is no longer a debating society at all; it has become a propaganda platform for extremist views, primarily of the hard-left. It has now stopped even pretending to present both sides of controversial issues. To be sure, it puts forward a façade of balance, by presenting speakers who purport to represent both sides of an issue. But the Oxford Union has become a Potemkin village where a façade of fairness serves...

Not only did she avoid mentioning the Saudi (Arab) lobby, which is by far the most powerful lobby in America, but she also chose to solicit the opinions of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter (himself a lobbyist for Arab causes), as well as professor Mearsheimer, both known for their controversial anti-Israel positions. Stunningly, no expert contradictory opinion to these two was offered during the six-hour program. It would have been just as easy for Amanpour to pose the same questions to Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz or Professor Fouad Ajami. http://www.aina.org/news/2007082994324.htm

Alan Dershowitz to defend Noel Gage in federal fraud case Las Vegas attorney Noel Gage has come out swinging in his fight with the federal government, airing a defiant television commercial since his indictment earlier this year and recently adding one of the country's top legal minds to his defense team. Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz has signed on to represent Gage, who faces fraud and other charges in connection with what prosecutors have described as a multimillion-dollar scheme to inflate settlements and judgments in personal injury cases. The defendant is tight-lipped about what role Dershowitz will play in...

Last week Judge Reggie Walton sentenced Scooter Libby to 30 months in the federal penitentiary for allegedly lying about a crime that never occurred and didn't exist. While everything about the case qualifies as script material for The Twilight Zone, acknowledging plot contributions from both Kafka and Heller, the newer developments owe more to One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. *** What is newly very apparent is the personal animus that Judge Walton has displayed towards those who have sprung to Libby's defense. *** Judge Walton's order allowing the 12 to file their brief was short, formulaic, curt. It contained...

A top American lawyer has threatened to wage a legal war against British academics who seek to cut links with Israeli universities. Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor renowned for his staunch defence of Israel and high-profile legal victories, including his role in the O.J. Simpson trial, vowed to "devastate and bankrupt" lecturers who supported such boycotts. This week's annual conference of Britain's biggest lecturers' union, the University and College Union, backed a motion damning the "complicity of Israeli academia in the occupation [of Palestinian land]". It also obliged the union's executive to encourage members to "consider the moral implications...

The complex conflict between the Arab and Muslim world on the one hand, and Israel on the other, is first-page news around the world. It is also at the forefront of discussion on many university campuses around the globe. I have visited many such campuses over the past several years and am distressed to report that the level of discourse has become increasingly dumber, shriller, and less nuanced. Name-calling has replaced serious academic discussion. This is particularly so among hard left Israel-bashers. Israeli policies certainly warrant just criticism, as do the policies of Israeli’s enemies. I am not talking about...

Gee, do you suppose Jimmy makes Roslynn Carter wear a burqua? (Sorry if this is a duplicate.)

I have known Jimmy Carter for years. In 1976... he sent me a handwritten note asking me for my help in his campaign. A former student brought Carter to Harvard to meet with some faculty members, me among them. I immediately liked Jimmy Carter and saw him as a man of integrity. I...worked hard for his election. Recent disclosures of Carter's extensive financial connections to Arab money, particularly from Saudi Arabia, had shaken my belief in his integrity. When told that he received a monetary reward in the name of Sultan Al Nahayan, and kept the money, even after Harvard...

I have met cigarette lobbyists, who are supported by the cigarette industry, and who have come to believe honestly that cigarettes are merely a safe form of adult recreation, that cigarettes are not addicting and that the cigarette industry is really trying to persuade children not to smoke. These people are fooling themselves (or fooling us into believing that they are fooling themselves) just as Jimmy Carter is fooling himself (or persuading us to believe that he is fooling himself). If money determines political and public views as Carter insists "Jewish money" does, Carter's views on the Middle East must...

"Oh no! It's full of Jews!"

It now turns out that Jimmy Carter--who is accusing the Jews of buying the silence of the media and politicians regarding criticism of Israel--has been bought and paid for by Arab money. In his recent book tour to promote Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, Carter has been peddling a particularly nasty bit of bigotry. The canard is that Jews own and control the media, and prevent newspapers and the broadcast media from presenting an objective assessment of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and that Jews have bought and paid for every single member of Congress so as to prevent any of them from...

Harvard Law School prof Alan Dershowitz yesterday used a new local Internet forum to escalate his feud with Jimmy Carter, accusing the former president of being “bought and paid for by Arab money.” Dershowitz, in a piece posted on Boston’s Gather.com, said Carter has suggested that criticism of the former president’s new book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” is coming mostly from affluent Jewish groups loyal to Israel. But Dershowitz, who tangled with Carter last month via dueling op-ed pieces and separate appearances on TV, said it’s Carter who has gotten money from wealthy Arabs in the past. “It is particularly...

YOU CAN ALWAYS tell when a public figure has written an indefensible book: when he refuses to debate it in the court of public opinion. And you can always tell when he's a hypocrite to boot: when he says he wrote a book in order to stimulate a debate, and then he refuses to participate in any such debate. I'm talking about former president Jimmy Carter and his new book "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid." Carter's book has been condemned as "moronic" (Slate), "anti-historical" (The Washington Post), "laughable" (San Francisco Chronicle), and riddled with errors and bias in reviews across the...

Former President Carter turned down a request to debate Alan Dershowitz about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying the outspoken Harvard law professor "knows nothing about the situation." Carter, author of a new book advocating "peace not apartheid" in the region, said he will not visit Brandeis University to discuss the book because the university requested he debate Dershowitz. "I don't want to have a conversation even indirectly with Dershowitz," Carter said in Friday's Boston Globe. "There is no need ... to debate somebody who, in my opinion, knows nothing about the situation in Palestine." "President Carter said he wrote the book...

BOSTON --Former President Carter has decided not to visit Brandeis University to talk about his new book "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid" because he does not want to debate Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz as the university had requested. "I don't want to have a conversation even indirectly with Dershowitz," Carter told The Boston Globe. "There is no need ... for me to debate somebody who, in my opinion, knows nothing about the situation in Palestine." ... "There is no debate in America about anything that would be critical of Israel," [Carter] said. But it's Carter who is unwilling to debate...

Mark Finkelstein October 20, 2006 Despite the harsh headline: Hillary Hits Bottom, Hillary Clinton might actually welcome Rosa Brooks' LA Times column of this morning condemning her for supporting legislation allowing torture in ticking-bomb cases. Call it a 'Sistah Rosa' moment that Hillary can point to as proof she's not too soft on terror to be president. But I wonder. Is Brooks aware - while bashing the presumptive presidential candidate for supporting legislation permitting torture in narrowly delineated cases - that Hillary is echoing her husband? Has Brooks read this column by Alan Dershowitz? The Harvard law prof reports on...

Michael Ignatieff, the former Harvard human rights professor and current candidate for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada, has made two serious misstatements regarding the recent war between Hezbollah and Israel, and most particularly the Israeli military actions in the Lebanese town of Qana. Back in August, Ignatieff said that he was "not losing sleep" over the attack in which 29 civilians, who had sought refuge in a building, were killed when the Israeli air force fired a missile at what it believed was a Hezbollah rocket-launching site. Every humane person -- and Ignatieff is surely that --...

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. (My note: If you go to the Catholic League link, there is a link to the indybay link and the...

The Guardian, which used to be a liberal British newspaper, has become the full-fledged Pravda of the British hard Left, especially when it comes to its one-sided bashing of Israel. Like Pravda, it will not publish alternative points of view, even when the alternative point of view seeks to correct willful mis-statements of fact. It's gotten to the point where a reader simply cannot trust the credibility of the reporting. Two recent incidents, in as many months, regarding total distortions of my own writing simply serve to illustrate a much larger problem. I have heard similar stories from others. Most...

Last month I wrote an article called “Norman Finkelstein’s Obscenities,” a response to Finkelstein’s latest screed, “Should Alan Dershowitz Target Himself for Assassination?” As the title of the article suggests, Finkelstein puts forward in his article what he believes to be a justification for my assassination as a war criminal, based on my support for Israel. Nor was this the only obscenity in the article. Not by a long shot. As I wrote in my article, Finkelstein piece was accompanied by a: cartoon drawn by “Latuff”, a frequent accomplice of Finkelstein. The cartoon portrayed me as masturbating in rapturous joy...

Just about everything Israel does to defend itself is 'illegal.' The two principal "human rights" organizations are in a race to the bottom to see which group can demonize Israel with the most absurd legal arguments and most blatant factual mis-statements. Until last week, Human Rights Watch enjoyed a prodigious lead, having "found" - contrary to what every newspaper in the world had reported and what everyone saw with their own eyes on television - "no cases in which Hizbullah deliberately used civilians as shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack." Those of us familiar with Amnesty International's nefarious...

The uniqueness of the Holocaust was not the Nazi's determination to kill the Jews of Germany and even of neighboring Poland. Other genocides, such as those by the Cambodians and the Turks, sought to rid particular areas of so called undesirables by killing them. The utter uniqueness of the Holocaust was the Nazi plan to "ingather" all the Jews of the world to the death camp and end the Jewish "race" forever. It almost succeeded. The Nazis ingathered tens of thousands of Jews (including babies, women, the elderly) from far flung corners of the world--from the Island of Rhodes from...

The oft-reported mantra that "occupation causes terrorism" is false. Occupations, like Israel's presence in the West Bank, are often the necessary result of attacks by insurgent groups and terrorists - not the other way around. History and contemporary experience make this clear. First, Palestinian terrorism began well before there was any Israeli occupation. It started in 1929 when the grand mufti of Jerusalem ordered a terrorist attack against Jewish residents of Hebron, whose families had lived in that Jewish holy city for generations. Second, terrorism against Israel got worse after Israel ended its occupation of southern Lebanon and Gaza, as...

Sunday was a day of great triumph for Hezbollah. Its tactics had worked. By launching rockets at Israeli civilians within yards of a building filled with refugees, Hezbollah had induced Israel to make a terrible mistake. Its defensive rocket had missed the Hezbollah launchers and hit the civilian building. That was Hezbollah’s plan all along. As Israelis wept in grief over the deaths of the Lebanese children, Hezbollah leaders celebrated its propaganda victory. Yes, Hezbollah was happy that an Israeli rocket had killed Lebanese children. The children were now in paradise, martyrs to Hezbollah’s cause. Israel was being condemned throughout...

Israel has its air force, nuclear facilities and large army bases in locations as remote as anything can be in that country. It is possible for an enemy to attack Israeli military targets without inflicting "collateral damage" on its civilian population. Hezbollah and Hamas, by contrast, deliberately operate military wings out of densely populated areas. They launch antipersonnel missiles with ball-bearing shrapnel, designed by Syria and Iran to maximize civilian casualties, and then hide from retaliation by living among civilians. If Israel decides not to go after them for fear of harming civilians, the terrorists win by continuing to have...

THE HEZBOLLAH and Hamas provocations against Israel once again demonstrate how terrorists can exploit human rights and the media in their attacks on democracies. By hiding behind their own civilians, the Islamic radicals issue a challenge to democracies: Either violate your own morality by coming after us and inevitably killing some innocent civilians, or maintain your morality and leave us with a free hand to target your innocent civilians. This challenge presents democracies such as Israel with a lose-lose option and terrorists with a win-win option. There is one variable that could change this dynamic and present democracies with a...

THE NEWS IS filled these days with reports of civilian casualties, comparative civilian body counts and criticism of Israel, along with Hezbollah, for causing the deaths, injuries and "collective punishment" of civilians. But just who is a "civilian" in the age of terrorism, when militants don't wear uniforms, don't belong to regular armies and easily blend into civilian populations? We need a new vocabulary to reflect the realities of modern warfare. A new phrase should be introduced into the reporting and analysis of current events in the Middle East: "the continuum of civilianality." Though cumbersome, this concept aptly captures the...

Tuesday, April 11, 2006 Poisoning The Well By now much has been made of the paper "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," recently produced for Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government by Stephen Walt, its academic dean, and Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, which charges that such a lobby influences American foreign policy against American interests. If you read the paper, all 35,000 words of it, it isn't much different that what one might read on a neo-Nazi or anti-Semitic hate site. A few Jews in government have undue influence, Jews bias the media, and...

Coverage of the debate over the recent paper by professors Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago that examines the influence of Israel and its supporters in Washington over US foreign policy has been, mostly, absent from US media. But the paper generated vigorous debate in the British and international media and on the Internet. Since the working paper's release, there have been several more attacks on it, but also more support for the professors' position on the need to look hard at the US-Israel relationship. The Financial Times reports on Wednesday that Harvard Law...

WASHINGTON - A prominent Harvard law professor, Alan Dershowitz, is alleging that the authors of a Harvard Kennedy School paper about the "Israel lobby," one of which is the Kennedy School's academic dean, culled sections of the paper from neo-Nazi and other anti-Israel hate Web sites. "What we're discovering first of all is that the quotes that they use are not only wrenched out of context, but they are the common quotes that appear on hate sites," Mr. Dershowitz, who is identified in the paper as part of the "lobby," told The New York Sun yesterday. "The wrenching out of...

BOSTON (Reuters) - If U.S. officials overhear talk of a planned murder or rape while eavesdropping on a telephone call under President George W. Bush's domestic spying program, what can they do -- within the law -- to stop it? "We don't know," said Harvard law professor and celebrated defense lawyer Alan M. Dershowitz. "Plainly we would not want them to ignore it" but no laws have been written to govern how the information can be used in court, he said. "We wouldn't even know where to look to find the law because there is no law," Dershowitz, one of...

This time, the press failed the public By William J. Bennett and Alan M. Dershowitz February 24, 2006 There was a time when the press was the strongest guardian of free expression in this democracy. Stories and celebrations of intrepid and courageous reporters are many within the press corps. Cases such as New York Times v. Sullivan in the 1960s were litigated so that the press could report on and examine public officials with the unfettered reporting a free people deserved. In the 1970s the Pentagon Papers case reaffirmed the proposition that issues of public importance were fully protected by...

There was a time when the press was the strongest guardian of free expression in this democracy. Stories and celebrations of intrepid and courageous reporters are many within the press corps. Cases such as New York Times v. Sullivan in the 1960s were litigated so that the press could report on and examine public officials with the unfettered reporting a free people deserved. In the 1970s the Pentagon Papers case reaffirmed the proposition that issues of public importance were fully protected by the First Amendment.

Next week a vastly important book will be published: "Preemption, A Knife That Cuts Both Ways" by Alan Dershowitz. Yes, that Alan Dershowitz: the very liberal civil libertarian, anti-capital punishment Harvard Law School professor. And but for my lack of his legal scholarship, there is nary a sentence in the book that I — a very conservative editor of the Washington Times, and former press secretary to Newt Gingrich — couldn't have written. The premise of his book is that in this age of terror, there is a potential need for such devices as profiling, preventive detention, anticipatory mass inoculation,...

A PLURALITY of one faculty has brought about an academic coup d'etat against not only Harvard University president Lawrence Summers but also against the majority of students, faculty, and alumni. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which forced Summers's resignation by voting a lack of confidence in him last March and threatening to do so again on Feb. 28, is only one component of Harvard University and is hardly representative of widespread attitudes on the campus toward Summers. The graduate faculties, the students, and the alumni generally supported Summers for his many accomplishments. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences includes,...