{"id":6887,"date":"2009-03-20T00:02:14","date_gmt":"2009-03-20T07:22:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=6887"},"modified":"2009-03-20T00:02:14","modified_gmt":"2009-03-20T07:22:02","slug":"call-critics-of-israel-antisemites-without-calling-them-antisemites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=6887","title":{"rendered":"Calling critics of Israel antisemites without calling them antisemites"},"content":{"rendered":"

Harvard professor and plagiarist <\/a>Alan Dershowitz has a reputation for unfairly suggesting that Israel’s critics are antisemites. In response, Dershowitz says:<\/p>\n

I have challenged anyone who claims that mere criticism of Israel is often labeled anti-Semitism to document that serious charge by providing actual quotations, in context, with the sources of the statements identified. No one has responded to my challenge.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Howard Friel’s lengthy article<\/a> about Dershowitz shows that Dershowitz — a lawyer — does in fact manage to avoid calling critics of Israel antisemites… while nonetheless leaving the strong impression that he’s calling them antisemites. Friel’s whole article is worth reading, but here are a few examples:<\/p>\n

About former President Jimmy Carter, Dershowitz wrote: “Whatever the reason or reasons for Jimmy Carter’s recent descent into the gutter of bigotry, history will not judge him kindly.”[3] In an interview on Shalom TV in Israel, Dershowitz said: “Jimmy Carter has literally become such an anti-Israel bigot, that there’s a kind of special place in hell reserved for somebody like that.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So according to Dershowitz, Carter’s descended into “the gutter of bigotry” and is damned to hell because he’s “such an anti-Israel-bigot” — but Dershowitz didn’t call Carter an antisemite!<\/p>\n

Because Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch\u2014both of which are on Dershowitz’s enemies list\u2014issued reports that were critical of Israel’s conduct in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon in summer 2006, Dershowitz referred to them as “so-called human rights groups,” and described their reports as “bigotry\u2014pure and simple.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

See? Didn’t call them antisemites!<\/p>\n

The desire to<\/a> destroy Jews has been reconfigured as the desire to destroy or dismantle the Jewish State. Boycotters may have Jewish friends, they may be Jews themselves but in supporting a boycott they have put themselves in anti-Semitism’s camp.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

See? Didn’t call them antisemites!<\/p>\n

Similarly, he calls Noam Chomsky<\/a> a “Holocaust denier” — a charge that is not true<\/a> — but he didn’t call him an antisemite! ((Ironically, Chomsky himself, as a matter of logic, has argued that Holocaust denial and antisemitism are logically distinct — “if a person ignorant of modern history were told of the Holocaust and refused to believe that humans are capable of such monstrous acts, we would not conclude that he is an anti-Semite.” I don’t think that argument could be credibly applied to the Dershowitz’s critique of Chomsky, however.))<\/p>\n

If Dershowitz wasn’t a powerful man, willing to go to great lengths to bully, intimidate and harass anyone he disagrees with (in the comments following Friel’s article, a Hampshire student — where students have recently run a high-profile divestment campaign — alleged that Dershowitz has been “personally calling students and threatening them over the phone,” which if true is grossly inappropriate behavior), he’d be funny.<\/p>\n

Curtsy: Muzzlewatch<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Harvard professor and plagiarist Alan Dershowitz has a reputation for unfairly suggesting that Israel’s critics are antisemites. In response, Dershowitz says: I have challenged anyone who claims that mere criticism of Israel is often labeled anti-Semitism to document that serious … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-palestine-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6887\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}