[Peace-discuss] Norman Finkelstein on Alan Dershowitz

[David Green]

  http://mondoweiss.net/2015/01/finkelstein-dershowitzs-troubles
I prefer not to comment directly on the serious allegations being leveled against Alan Dershowitz.It appears that everyone will have their day in court, which is as it should be.However, I would want to express an opinion on the letter signed by 38 Harvard Law School professors (including “radical” Critical Legal Studies professor Roberto Unger and liberal tribune Laurence Tribe) in defense of Dershowitz.They describe him as “courageous” and “outspoken” in “defending the despised, and attacking the views of important people.”The journalist Jack Newfield memorably described former New York City Mayor Edward Koch as a “toady to the powerful and a bully to the powerless.”If you multiply this description a thousand fold, you might begin to approach the real-life Alan Dershowitz.It is break-taking to read the Harvard statement in the context of a sexual slavery case pitting vulnerable minors against billionaires, celebrities and royalty.Of particular relevance to your website, no single person in the U.S. was more responsible than Dershowitz for whitewashing Israel’s brutal torture of Palestinian detainees.  When Israel’s torture first came under public scrutiny, Dershowitz wrote (with attorney Monroe Freedman) in the New York Times, “Allegations of systematic torture and allegations of systematic violations of human rights by Israel must be viewed with more than a little skepticism.”Dershowitz repeated his egregious apologetics during the first intifada (beginning 1987) when, according to B’Tselem, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, Israel was “systematically” torturing Palestinian detainees, deploying methods similar to those recently recounted in the Senate Report on Torture, but on a vastly greater scale.  The Torture Report documents 39-44 cases of CIA use of torture, whereas HRW estimated that during the first intifada alone, Israel tortured and ill-treated “tens of thousands” of Palestinian detainees.Indeed, Dershowitz misrepresented Israeli torture practices in testimony sworn to under oath in a U.S. extradition hearing of a Palestinian resident, Mahmoud el-Abed Ahmad, fearing torture in Israel.   For example, he said that Israel’s “toughest methodology for eliciting statements” from Palestinian detainees “is to frighten the person being interrogated into believing that the situation is actually going to be worse than it would become.”  Israel was at most guilty, according to Dershowitz, of “occasional pushing and shoving…physical touching.”   (I go through the sordid record in detail in my book Beyond Chutzpah.)Is this what the Harvard Law School professors had in mind when they praised Dershowitz’s “courageous” and “outspoken” defense of “the despised”?- See more at: Finkelstein on Joan Peters's legacy (and Dershowitz's legal troubles)
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| Finkelstein on Joan Peters's legacy (and Dershowitz's le...Adam Horowitz interviews Norman Finkelstein on the work and legacy of Joan Peters, the author of "From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict... |
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