Not The Double Standard But The Impossible Standard

“But if none of these (Israeli military tactics) is permissible, what's left? Ah, but that's the point… What's left? Nothing. The whole point …is to deprive Israel of any legitimate form of self-defense. ..The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, six million - that number again - hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists - Iranian in particular - openly prepare a more final solution.”

Steve Apfel..
Enemies of Zion/JPost..
08 January '14..

Double standards are standard fare. Israelis more than other people have a right to feel blighted by them, for the whole world looks to Israel for a standard of conduct not expected or demanded of other people. Often it is Israelis themselves that insist on a discriminatory superior level of conduct.

“Shouldn’t our expectations be higher?” asks Jessica Montell of B’tselem. “From my country, I demand a lot more.”

Hence the feverish monitoring and reporting that almost makes Israel the human rights capital of the world. Israel’s conduct is daily and hourly under the microscope.

"Shame on those members of the American Studies Association for singling out the Jew among nations. Shame on them for applying a double standard to Jewish universities."

Alan Dershowitz, of all Israel advocates, ought to know better. Attack the dastardly ASA on academic freedom, but not on double standards. The Jew among nations not only invites but expects to be judged by different standards. And if the God of Israel meant for it to be a light unto the nations, Israel defenders who cry foul might just as well save their breath.

Then there’s the element of incrimination. In effect Dershowitz argues, ‘There are worse violators of human rights in the world, so why pick on Israel?’ In other words, proclaims Dershowitz, , ‘You caught me stealing, but there are bigger thieves in town. Why not pick on them first?’ So that when the ASA retorts, “We have to start somewhere,” they have a compelling argument.

In any case Israel is far from being the only victim of double standards. In a world of no absolutes, of no right and wrong, if something feels good or looks good, if it catches voters or buyers, it is good. Comfort or expediency not consistency governs the way our world works. Barak Obama won’t pardon Jonathan Pollard for petty espionage, yet thinks nothing of snooping on America’s close allies. Cry foul, but the fact remains that Alan Dershowitz is Obama’s long-time friend and committed voter.

Make no mistake, the great pro-Israel advocate is not the lesson to learn from this. Many besides him, including the US State Department, rely on the double standard for sorting Jew-bashing from well-meant protest. For that very purpose the European Union Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) laid down five criteria by which to pick out the wolf (anti-Semite) from the sheep (well-meaning critic).

1. Denial of the right of Jewish people to self-determination
2. Applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation
3. Applying symbols and images connected with classic anti-Semitism to characterize Israel or Israelis
4. Drawing a comparison of Israeli policy to that of the Nazis
5. Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the State of Israel.

The double standard again! But how applicable are any of the items? Do they stand the test for defining anti-Semitism? For example the latest test. If the criteria were applied, would they make the Bethlehem Wall stunt pulled by the Church of St James in London anti-Semitic? Which of the five boxes would be ticked? None that I can see; vile as it is, the replica wall hard by the church crosses no red line. In any case the question is academic after a new entity dumped the EUMC code and, signally and suspiciously, failed to offer a new one.

Who or what shall now pick out the wolf from the flock? And how can we avoid painting and tarring all criticism of Israel with one brush? Without a valid identikit what’s to prevent anti-Jews (or pro-Palestinians, the other side of the coin,) acting with impunity, knowing they’ll not be brought to book for racial incitement?

The double standard is dead; long live the impossible standard.

Acting the part of a stand-alone identikit the impossible standard renders definitions of anti-Semitism redundant. Five arguable criteria never stymied one demonizer of Israel that I know of. The chattering class anti-Semites can be clever and irritating. The more complete your system to bag them the more slippery and dismissive they get. But no one slips past the impossible standard.

Medad - Dershowitz wants Israel to gamble?

Yisrael Medad..
Green-Lined/JPost..
04 June '12..




I hope I understood correctly what Professor Alan Dershowitz intended in his latest attempt to assist Israel gain peace which was published in the Wall Street Journal.

Entitled "A Settlement Freeze Can Advance Israeli-Palestinian Peace", he suggests that "the time is ripe for [Israel's new coalition] government to make a bold peace offer to the Palestinian Authority."

But what he considers bold could be considered by others as perhaps, well, naive and even irrational. And not clever at all.

He writes there that since the "Palestinian Authority refuses to negotiate unless Israel accepts a 'freeze' on settlement building" and, since "Israel accepted a 10-month freeze in 2009, but the Palestinian Authority didn't come to the bargaining table" and when it "demanded that the freeze be extended indefinitely" and "Israel refused", well, "they walked away from the table...[and] there is every reason to believe that they would continue such game-playing if the Israeli government imposed a similar freeze now...".

Someone, like me, given that set of circumstances and odds, would say why get involved at all? Yes, Israel is being criticized but we do not have to keep repeating the same move (or mistake) over and over. Why gamble having once won?

No Way! Norway?

Norwegian academics boycotted
Professor Dershowitz,
but Chabad welcomed him --
as did crowds of students

AL
CAMERA/Snapshots
29 March '11

http://blog.camera.org/archives/2011/03/afraid_to_debate_norway_academ.html

The little Nordic country famed, among less positive matters, for giving the world a vivid synonym for traitor -- Quisling -- for its pro-Nazi regime during WWII, is seemingly obsessed with heaping contempt on Israel and its supporters. The latest example centers on renowned Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz's lecture tour of Norway, during which he offered to speak for no fee at any university on the subject of international law and Israel. All refused.

As Dershowitz notes in his Wall Street Journal column, these same universities, having presented virulent anti-Israel speakers and advocated academic boycotts of Jewish Israeli academics are now boycotting pro-Israel Jewish speakers as well. The bigoted sentiment of some Norwegian professors is striking. Trond Adresen from Trondheim University has written:

There is something immensely self-satisfied and self-centered at the tribal mentality that is so prevalent among Jews...[They] as a whole, are charaterized by this mentality....It is no less legitimate to say such a thing about Jews in 2008-2009 than it was to make the same point about the Germans around 1938.

Fortunately, students at three universities organized enthusiastic meetings for the Harvard professor, attracting large crowds eager to hear the facts about Israel.

Norway expert Manfred Gerstenfeld contends the crude, exclusionary policies of the anti-Israel academics are a reality underestimated in their virulence by many policymakers in Israel. At the same time, Gerstenfeld notes, they don't represent everyone in Norway. Siv Jensen of the opposition Progress Party expresses positive sentiments towards Israel -- and even displays an Israeli flag on her desk.

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Goldstone Critics Have a Real Case

Letters to the Editor

The Jewish Daily Forward
www.forward.com
05 January '11
Posted before Shabbat

Letty Cottin Pogrebin’s defense of Richard Goldstone is as factually inaccurate as the Goldstone Report itself (“The Un-Jewish Assault on Richard Goldstone,” January 7).

Pogrebin’s thesis can be summarized in her own words: “Rather than discuss the contents of the report — which concluded that during the 2008-2009 Gaza war, Israel (as well as Hamas) may have committed war crimes — Israel’s defenders launched an all-points campaign to bury it.” She claims that “almost no one is talking about his findings.” She is dead wrong.

Within days of the report’s publication, there were numerous discussions of the contents and findings of the report. I myself published a 49-page, point-by-point critique of the report’s contents entitled “The Case Against the Goldstone Report: A Study in Evidentiary Bias” (which can be found at www.alandershowitz.com/goldstone.pdf). In it I focused on the report’s main findings that 1) the Israeli government had a policy of targeting civilians; and 2) that Hamas did not have a policy of hiding behind civilians. I proved that both of these findings were contradicted by the evidence.

Dershowitz Throws Down the Gauntlet to Obama

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
23 March '10

Let’s give credit where it’s due. In the past, I’ve written about Alan Dershowitz’s defense of the Obama administration as well as about his recent attack on J Street.

Despite Dershowitz’s outstanding pro-Israel record, I’ve taken him to task for his loyalty to Obama and refusal to call the president out for his decision to downgrade the alliance with Israel. But it looks as if the Harvard Law professor is finally starting to lose patience with the man whose candidacy for the presidency he supported so enthusiastically. In today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Dershowitz stops short of condemning the administration, but he delivered as stark a challenge to the president as one could imagine regarding Iran.

Pulling no punches, Dershowitz instructs Obama that no one remembers that Neville Chamberlain was a successful reformer who not only helped restore Great Britain’s financial stability during the Depression but also passed landmark legislation on unemployment and retirement benefits. Instead, all history remembers is Chamberlain’s “failure to confront Hitler.” It is, he writes pointedly, “Chamberlain’s enduring legacy.” And if Obama does not act to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, anything he achieves on health care or the economy will count for nothing when compared to the impact of a failure on Iran.

“History will not treat kindly any leader who allows so much power to be accumulated by the world’s first suicide nation,” Dershowitz writes. Like Chamberlain with Hitler, “Mr. Obama will come to symbolize the failure of the West if Iran acquires nuclear weapons on his watch.”

(Read full post)
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How Some Israeli and American Jewish Media Incite Violence

Alan M. Dershowitz
Hudson New York
09 February '10

(I had to laugh but it seems Prof. Dershowitz has been initiated to our world of media)

It all began with an innocent enough request for an interview about the Goldstone report and my 49 page response to it. (http://www.alandershowitz.com/goldstone.pdf) The Israeli Army radio station asked to interview me. The interview was conducted by an experienced host, Razi Barkai. Unbeknownst to me, Barkai had an agenda. He wanted to get me to say that I thought that Goldstone was a “moser.” He wanted me to use this Hebrew word, whose meaning I did not understand, because in Israel, this obscure theological term has taken on a meaning of its own. According to The Forward, “the term moser entered Israeli political discourse in 1995 in the wake of Rabin’s assassination by radical settler supporter Yigal Amir, when Amir cited some rabbis’ designation of Rabin as a moser as part of his justification for carrying out the murder.” The Forward quoted Michael Karpin, an Israeli journalist and the author of a book on Rabin’s assassination, as follows: “After the assassination, when Amir was interviewed by the police and he mentioned the term moser, people tried to find out what it is…Nobody used it here before the assassination.”

Unfortunately, I was totally unfamiliar with the “inside baseball”—or in this case “inside Israel”—use of this esoteric term.

Several times during the interview, Barkai tried to get me to agree that Goldstone was a moser, a word he pronounced with a thick accent. Since the interview was being conducted in English, I thought he was asking me to agree with him that Goldstone was a “monster.” I would never use the term “monster” since it suggests an inherent, even genetic, flaw in a person, without regard to what he has said or done. I was clear throughout my interview that I believed that Goldstone had exploited his Jewishness to lend illegitimate credibility to a false report.

(Read full story)
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