Guest Blog: Alan Dershowitz still doesn't get it

My criticisms here of the piece Alan Dershowitz wrote in the Wall Street Journal appear to be making some waves across the pond. Dershowitz has now written a lengthy defence of himself against me on his JPost blog Double Standard Watch. I had said that he had failed to address the most egregious aspects of Obama's extreme hostility towards Israel, and that this was undoubtedly because, like most American Jews, he was incapable of admitting that a Democratic President could be so vicious towards it.

In his reply, Dershowitz not only shows that he still doesn't 'get it' but also that he doesn't appear to have understood what I wrote. Dershowitz says:

• Israel must not be turned into a 'wedge issue' in America as it is in Britain, where it has become a target of virulent hatred for the Left while the Right remain more supportive; in the US it must remain bi-partisan.
• I have advised American Jews to vote Republican.
• I don't want American Jews to remain Democrats.

To take the last two points first: I said nothing of the kind. Dershowitz declares: 'She should not be trying to influence the voting patterns of American Jews.'

But I did no such thing. I did not advise them to vote Republican. Nor did I say I didn't want them to remain Democrats. I simply wanted them to acknowledge the danger that Obama poses to Israel and the free world. I hold no particular candle for the Republican party. As in Britain, I look at the positions being adopted by whichever party, issue by issue.

My argument was rather that Dershowitz and those like him amongst American Jews appeared incapable of acknowledging the terrible truth about Obama simply because they appear incapable of acknowledging that a Democratic President could ever be bad for Israel and the world. Their obsessive and irrational - indeed, Manichean - dread of the Republican party means they approach politics with heavy blinkers on and become incapable of seeing what is under their noses, a fact which Dershowitz's own article merely underscores.

His main point, however, is that Obama must be supported because Israel must not become a politically divisive 'wedge issue' in the US as it is in Britain. He writes that instead of criticising American Jews, I should be

trying to change the terrible situation in Great Britain, where support for Israel has never been lower--in part because support for Israel has become a liberal versus conservative wedge issue."

This is wrong in almost every respect. First, I am trying to change the terrible hatred in Britain towards Israel. Second, it is not a political wedge issue in Britain. For sure, hatred of Israel is virulent on the Left. But it also courses through the Right. Although the two sides come at this issue from totally different positions, there is barely a cigarette paper to slide between them when it comes to attitudes towards Israel. The Left is fuelled by its anti-imperialist, anti-west, pro-Third World attitude, which means it hates Israel as America's supposed proxy.' Conservative 'Middle Britain' thinks that 'abroad' is a dangerous place full of lunatics who will leave us alone as long as we are nice to them, and that the only reason we and the world are at risk is because we support America and America supports Israel; and Israel is at the root of the world's problems because it is preventing the Palestinians from having a state of their own, a fact of which the 'settlements' are the unpalatable evidence.

Moreover, support for Israel is not quite as bipartisan in the US as Dershowitz makes out. 'New realist' Republicans unite in their detestation of and disgust for Israel with Democrat professors and the Democrat-leaning media. It was after all in America that Mearsheimer and Walt produced their disgusting and much lionised 'Jewish conspiracy theory' that the 'Israel Lobby' runs America's foreign policy, in a book which became a New York Times bestseller. Dershowitz writes:

Recall as well that among Israel's most virulent opponents are right-wingers such as Pat Buchanan and Robert Novak."

For sure - but that roll-call of infamy also includes Noam Chomsky, Susan Sontag, Norman Finkelstein, Tony Judt, Jimmy Carter, Tony Kushner. (The fact that so many virulent Israel-bashers on the left are Jews merits a separate discussion). The suggestion that it is only in Britain and Europe where hatred of Israel resides on the Left is absurd.

Most important, however, is not that Israel is a Democrat or Republican issue; after all, both parties have been cool or worse towards Israel in the past. It is simply that this particular far-left Democrat President is a menace. Yet remarkably, Dershowitz argues that he must be supported because Republican support for Israel under Bush alienated younger voters. He writes:

During the Bush administration, Republican support for Israel - which they linked to their failed Iraq policy - alienated many younger and more liberal voters who despised Bush, Cheney and their policies.

Among the reasons that I supported Obama, having first supported Hillary Clinton, is because I believed, and continue to believe, that a young, extremely popular African American President who supports Israel, even if he disagrees with its policies regarding settlement expansion, would be far more influential with mainstream Americans and with people throughout the world than an old conservative republican, who also supported Israel. That is why I gave, and continued to give, President Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt in his dealings with Israel. I take him at his word that he seeks to bring about peace, by means of a two state solution pursuant to which all the Arab states recognize Israel's right to thrive as a Jewish democracy, while agreeing that any Palestinian state must be demilitarized and incapable of waging war or terrorist attacks against Israel.

I also take him at his word when he says that the United States will not accept a nuclear armed Iran, and I believe that he has a better chance of achieving that goal through diplomacy - including sanctions if necessary - than would a tough talking and non-negotiating Republican administration."

That is really an astounding thing to say. First, it undercuts his own argument that support for Israel is bi-partisan. Second, it was not the Republicans who linked Israel to Iraq - it was the enemies of Israel and the Jewish people on both Left and Right who falsely claimed, a la Mearsheimer and Walt, that Israel had manipulated the Bush administration into war in Iraq. It is quite remarkable to argue that American Jews should not vote Republican because of that prize piece of bigotry which has so disfigured politics and driven it off the rails in both America and Britain. It is even more astounding to argue, with a total absence of logic, that Obama should therefore be 'given the benefit of the doubt' and 'taken at his word' on account of that bigotry.

But then just as astoundingly Dershowitz also says:

The vast majority of Jews were on the winning side, and that is good for Israel."

The idea that because their guy won that must be good for anyone is just bizarre. It means that might is right. It means that whatever Obama does it's good that American Jews helped bring him to power to do it. If Obama were - heaven forbid - to cause Israel to be destroyed, would Dershowitz still be saying that it was good that American Jews had been 'on the winning side'?

Dershowitz writes:

The major difference between Melanie Phillips and me is that I want Jews to remain Democrats - if they support, as I do, liberal principles such as a women's right to choose abortion, the rights of gays and lesbians to equal justice, and other progressive policies."

Ah. Here surely is the rub. As I have written on a number of occasions, it seems that for most American Jews liberal issues are so important - or maybe wearing their liberal credentials on their sleeve by voting Democrat is so important - that the security of Israel or indeed the world plays a poor second fiddle.

The first consideration, as stated here, is that American Jews must always vote for the Democrats; their actual policies are a secondary issue.

I'm afraid that, if Dershowitz imagined that his piece would lay to rest the idea that American Jews don't 'get it,' he is sadly mistaken.