Free Republic

The Obama administration’s decision to pick a quarrel with the Jewish state over settlements, Jerusalem, and how to deal with a nuclear Iran, are all light years away from the down-the-line support for Israel that candidate Obama and his Jewish surrogates articulated throughout the campaign. This leaves those Democrats who spent 2008 vouching for Barack Obama’s bona fides as a supporter of Israel, with, as they used to say on “I Love Lucy,” a lot of ’splainin’ to do. And none of them have as much to answer for as Harvard Law’s Alan Dershowitz who used his status as a...

Many American supporters of Israel who voted for Barack Obama now suspect they may have been victims of a bait and switch. Jewish Americans voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Obama over John McCain in part because the Obama campaign went to great lengths to assure these voters that a President Obama would be supportive of Israel. This despite his friendships with rabidly anti-Israel characters like Rev. Jeremiah Wright and historian Rashid Khalidi. At the suggestion of Mr. Obama's Jewish supporters -- including me -- the candidate visited the beleaguered town of Sderot, which had borne the brunt of thousands of rocket...

Dershowitz: Obama Has Iran Linkage Backwards by Hillel Fendel (IsraelNN.com) Prominent Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz - who endorsed Barack Obama for U.S. President last year, partially because of his support for Israel - now says Obama’s policies are dangerous for Israel. His opinions appear in a recent Jerusalem Post blog as well as in an article for the New York Post. In his blog published last week, Dershowitz wrote that while Obama feels a "two-state solution" paves the way towards dealing with Iran, the opposite is actually true, and that strong American action towards Iran is a prerequisite for...

Federal agents in Geneva on Sunday escorted Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz away from the Geneva hotel were Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz were meeting, after he declared plans to challenge the Iranian leader about his views on the Holocaust and Israel. Merz met Ahmadinejad upon the latter's arrival in Geneva on Sunday, a day before the United Nations was to open its first global racism conference in eight years. Merz described the presence of Ahmadinejad at the Durban II conference as a good chance to discuss ways to mature bilateral ties as well as regional...

Those who successfully challenged the nomination of Charles W. Freeman, Jr. to become chairman of the National Intelligence Council should be praised for an act of high patriotism. It would have been disastrous for the United States to have, as the person responsible for overseeing “policy-neutral intelligence assessments” for the President, a zealot who is anything but policy-neutral when it comes to two of the most important areas of international conflict. Freeman not only has extremist views regarding the Middle East and China, but he has been beholden to lobby groups that are anxious to influence intelligent assessments regarding Saudi...

Dershowitz on the Chas Freeman Resignation As someone who was deeply involved in the Chas Freeman episode, I can tell you that at times I was too busy "fighting" to get a clear view of what I was doing. I was always writing another post, op ed, sending more evidence to my Congressman Steve Israel. or appearing on another radio show, trying to get the word our. In my sleep I could tell you why Freeman was bad for the United States, and when I ran out of things to say, Aaron Klein, Steve Rosen, Eli Lake or some one...

Hampshire Divests from Israel   By Alan M. DershowitzFrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, February 17, 2009 Several months ago, a rabidly anti Israel group on the Hampshire College campus began a campaign to try to get the college to divest from six companies that they claim helped “the Israeli occupation of Palestine.” Those who came up with this formulation regard all of Israel, including Tel Aviv, Haifa and Ben Gurion Airport, as “occupied Palestine.” In other words, their goal is to end the existence of Israel. This divestment effort is part of an international campaign against Israel. Until now, every American...

January 21, 2009 # Note: The following text is a quote: http://knoxville.fbi.gov/pressrel/2009/kx012109.htm Suspicious White Powder Letters Postmarked from Knoxville Received in New York and Massachusetts On Wednesday January 21, approximately 13 powder-laden envelopes were received at the office of the Wall Street Journal in New York City. The letters reportedly bear a Knoxville, Tennessee postmark. New York City Police Department's Emergency Services Unit and the FBI responded to the scene and are testing the letters to determine whether they contain a hazardous substance. An additional letter was also received today at Harvard Law School addressed to Alan Dershowitz. This letter...

In Gaza, it targets Israeli citizens with rockets, then shields its fighters behind Palestinian civilians. A temporary cease-fire in Gaza that simply allows Hamas to obtain more lethal weapons will assure a repetition of Hamas' win-win tactic of firing rockets at Israeli civilians while using Palestinian civilians as human shields. The best example of Hamas' double war crime tactic was Tuesday, when it succeeded in sending a rocket to a town less than 20 miles south of Tel Aviv and injuring a child. At the same time, it provoked Israel to attack a United Nations school from which Hamas was...

Dennis Prager sent a challenge to Alan Dershowitz yesterday about his politics, not because Dershowitz wrote something with which Prager disagrees, but because he understands the issue of Israel so well.  After excoriating Israel’s critics for “moral idiocy” for ignoring the genocidal intent of Hamas, and their insipid arguments of proportionality, Prager thinks Dershowitz should reconsider his entire political bent — or at least the company he chooses: In his Monitor column, Dershowitz describes “three types of international response to the Israeli military actions against the Hamas rockets” — “Iran, Hamas, and other knee-jerk Israeli-bashers,” “the United Nations, the European...

Harvard Law Professor Alan M. Dershowitz is that rare individual who is both a highly respected academic and well known to the general population. But in another regard he is even rarer. He regards himself as a man of the Left, yet on one of the defining moral issues of our time, attitudes toward Israel, he has nothing in common with the Left. He is not only one of Israel’s staunchest supporters, he spends much of his time defending Israel. He has written innumerable articles and four books defending Israel: “The Case against Israel's Enemies: Exposing Jimmy Carter and Others...

It is relevant to the question I will pose that he omits any mention of the world's left, even when mentioning the European Union. Who exactly in the European Union is condemning Israel? Its conservatives? Who in America is condemning Israel? Conservatives? Who in Australia or Canada? Conservatives? Of course not. As regards Israel (and America and much else), the Western world's moral idiots, to use the term in the title of the Dershowitz column, are virtually all on the left, including and especially many of his colleagues in academia. So, I have a question for my friend Dershowitz ....

Cambridge, Mass. - Israel's decision to take military action against Hamas rocket attacks targeting its civilian population has been long in coming. I vividly recall a visit my wife and I took to the Israeli city of Sderot on March 20 of this year. Over the past four years, Palestinian terrorists – in particular, Hamas and Islamic Jihad – have fired more than 2,000 rockets at this civilian area, which is home to mostly poor and working-class people. The rockets are designed exclusively to maximize civilian deaths, and some have barely missed schoolyards, kindergartens, hospitals, and school buses. But others...

Of all the supporters of Israel and the Jewish people in the past 100 years, Alan Dershowitz may very well be the most valuable and significant. This is because he stands for the Jewish cause in an environment generally filled with venomous hatred toward Jews and Israel. In the academic domain, where thinkers, writers, lecturers and media personalities regularly make a name for themselves by taking a stand against the Middle East's solitary democracy — and where, increasingly, joining the club hinges on one's stance vis a vis Israel — Dershowitz stands strong, steadfastly and tirelessly fighting the good fight....

Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz took the stage at the New York premiere of his new documentary, The Case for Israel, prepared to defend the Jewish state against accusations of apartheid made by former US president Jimmy Carter. Instead, Dershowitz found himself defending a possible Democratic Obama administration to conservative Jews who argued that anyone who was worried about Israel should be for Republican John McCain. "Israel faces an existential threat from Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas... and [presidential candidate] Barack Obama wants to sit down with them," said one man who came to the microphone during a post-film question-and-answer session. "I...

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...

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.