A friend has directed me to the following report in the Yale Daily News on Alan Dershowitz’s visit to the school in October. I wish I had the transcript of his talk; but it is significant that Dershowitz makes the same analogy I have insisted on making since my visit to Gaza, to the Warsaw Ghetto.
Dershowitz then denied that there is a humanitarian situation in Gaza. One student challenged him, citing examples of limitations on fruits and vegetables as one of many examples of such a crisis. Dershowitz dismissed this as superfluous, brazenly stating that the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto would have been glad to have such a range of choice, and adding that this range was probably greater than in Martha’s Vineyard. The coarseness of his joke combined with the chuckles and applause in response led one student to leave the room in tears. There is no greater way to profane the memory of those at Warsaw than to use their suffering as a way — as a rhetorical weapon — to justify living conditions in Gaza as somehow better than the former.
The fact that Dershowitz is using the analogy to a different end than I do is not as significant as the fact that his mind leaps to Warsaw. His comment reveals the huge psychic wound that the Holocaust has generated in Jews and, more important, reveals the belief that the Palestinians deserve to suffer for the sins of the Nazis–that Gaza is just retribution. (On a related note: Dershowitz at Brandeis spoke of the ’67 borders as "Auschwitz borders"; because they made the Jews vulnerable to Nazis.)
The Yale Daily News report was written by Yasmin Zaher, Jordan Laris Cohen, Aminah Zaghab and Alexandra Dennet.
I am learning how twisted Dershowitz is as I go through Beyond Chutzpah. What a sociopathic liar. Its amazing how he can hold up a statement in their meeting, say he agrees with everything, but then takes positions that are completely different. Of course, in the ‘pro’ opinion of the essay, the writer seems to have learned from Dershowitz – I am still not sure if they know what they are supporting and are lying through their teeth because they are racists, or if they are truly blind to reality and have built up a victim mentality.
dipshitwitz…………………………………………………………………………………..
‘Victims as victimizers.’
That’s been my approach to understanding the hate inside of Zionism and I’d like to see you unpack that idea a bit more here, Phil. And not just vis-a-vis Holocaust paraphernalia or suffering in general. Instead, it’d be great to see you relate to Palestinians positively. In a lot of ways, Palestinians are/were the Jews of the Arab world.
Just wait until he turns around and starts trivializing the deaths to come of American soldiers in Iran for the sake of “the Jewish people” — ostensibly, only the self-interests of Israelis and their Zionist supportors, rather than Jewish people as a whole. Which would include around 25,000 living in Iran. Oh, it’s coming.
Ya’ll talk about Iran like you WANT it to happen.
Actually, it would be nice if Dershowitz revealed himself for the fraud and traitor that he is, yes. Then maybe more Americans will know better.
Far or not, the cards are in Iran’s hands. I don’t know who wants an Iranian strike more, Iran or the people on this blog. Its like you all are will to sacrifice the people of Iran to further demonize the US and Israel. Sick and twisted…… sick and twisted….
*Fair, I apologize in advance for the typo
So if Israel bombs Iran, you’re already declaring that Iran’s fault ahead of time? Cute. I’m glad most Jews believe your Jewish supremacist philosophy that leaves Jews (Israelis among them) completely blameless for unethical actions to be total bullshit.
The term “Auschwitz borders” first used by Abba Eban in the aftermath of the 67 war (I’m sure in later years he regretted his words) , meant vulnerability to extermination by whomever rather than vulnerability to Nazis.
And it’s no less a hyperbole, considering the war was started by Israel and the purpose was ostensibly to expand Israel’s boders tremendously.
Can anyone explain how the title is not an outright lie.
Gaza happened because of missiles, not as retribution for the Holocaust. There is an obsession w/ the Holocaust on this blog, its really disturbing…
Jesus Phllip, you have no integrity at all.
Hi Yonira,
I think one might reply to your point that “Gaza happened because of missiles, not as retribution for the Holocaust,” might be that “Kristallnacht happened because of Nazi agitation, not as retribution for the actions of Herschel Grynszpan”. In other words, everyone knows that the pretext for sealing off Gaza is the missiles. The question is, what is more likely the real reason for sealing off Gaza? After all, missiles can fly over walls, but people can’t…
Your Nazi obsession is disturbing.
LOL! Pot kettle black.
Aren’t you the ass-clown you said ‘no Cliff, you’re not going to wipe us [Jews] out’ or something like that?
You’re mentally ill – or you have very short-term memory.
I think Phil gives Zionist Jews like Dersh too much credit. There is no psychic wound. These people are just greedy crooks. Inhuman. Tribal. Etc.
That’s it. People project too much mysticism and wonder on the Juice. Especially when it comes to Zionism.
It’s just European style colonialism. The exceptional part is not so much the Juice (although they are certainly exceptional in monitoring ‘anti$emiti$m’) but how ignorant most gentiles are.
Nothing new is happening. Israel does the same thing all the time. So you’d think people would catch on. But there’s no evidence that sets the American people apart from any other mass of people in terms of intelligence and intellectualism.
So Zionist Jews can stoke the fires of Islamophobia and deep-seated hatred of Arabs amongst the average stupid American.
When all it takes is a bit of reading from mainstream books about I-P. None of these stupid rhetorical games will work.
Missiles? Crude home-made rockets. How many people did Israel kill in Gaza during the same time-period that rockets were being fired? How many kidnappings? How many incursions? What about the blockade? Who controlled the air/sea/etc?
The rockets are a war crime but any honest person would put any violence in context.
Israel is using the rocket attacks as a pretext and that allowed it to go into Gaza and carry out it’s terrorist attack (to punish the Palestinians for voting in a non-collaborating entity).
That’s it. No one has to recognize the legitimacy of any State. But people have a right to exist. And then there’s common morality, logic, and the law.
So when you factor that into your decision-making – you can think of a practical and fair solution to this conflict.
But it won’t happen because there’s no incentive. Israel does not give a shit about the rockets. It cares about the effectiveness of non-violent resistance and about international solidarity.
That’s why it goes on huge campaigns of PR. That’s why it locks up Palestinian activists. Even exiles them in some cases.
Israel is indefensible. Most people who do support Israel are either Zionist Jews, evangelical Christians who believe in the Apocalypse, racists/bigots, and finally the ignorant (they have been brainwashed by their community/the media/their family) who may become enlightened later on.
What, you’ve run out of personal insults so now you have to ape Witty? At least before you had original material. As such.
Gaza happened because Israel wants to destroy Hamas. Hamas had stopped the missiles, but Israel kept right on killing Gazans.
yonira keeps repeating every Zionist lie. How is Gaza not like the Warsaw Ghetto? A population is driven into a small area, walled inside, and starved, while subject to shelling and repeated military incursions. Where is the difference?
Even that is too specific. Gaza happened because Israel wanted to destroy Palestine, and as a region where Palestinian sovereignty did exist, at least right up to the borders of the total blockade, it was necessary for Israel to bomb them back to the stone age, if they could help it. Which is why hospitals, mosques, government buildings, factories, schools, civil infrastructre, etc. were the targets.
Hamas was not the target. They just happened to be between Israel and the rest of the Palestinians.
Interesting comment in the Seattle cop-killing case:
link to philly.com
When will the diaspora, Israel’s partners in crime, be held to account?
The desire to inflict suffering, suffering on anyone who opposes, possesses something coveted or is just inconvenient, is not confined to Israelis and their allies. America has inflicted much suffering around the world, even in its own land, and what Americans have in common with Zionists is an immigration to a self-realized national ideal. Although Zionists claim of a deity’s gift of land is a rationale used to covet a certain bit of land not theirs, it is their migrant status buttressed with a righteous ideology that allows them to kill with impunity. English immigrants to Australia and their treatment of the Aborigines comes to mind, yet they lacked the religious zealotry that characterizes both the Americans and Israelis. Ideological zealotry certainly characterized the Germans, who were not immigrants, but may have felt a certain sense of loss, as immigrants and exiles do, from the national debilitating effects of the Treaty of Versailles. Righteous ideology combined with an aspiration to create the perfect nation/state, which echoes the Soviet experiment, seems to lead to a lot of suffering and death for anyone perceived to impede that goal. Intellectuals, even ones who lecture the law, are just as susceptible to the pleasures of making a city on the hill as anyone else, and can rationalize many ways to make suffer those who protest their settlement.
This is why the Dersh is the most intellectually dishonest, smashmouth-mouthpiece for the Zionist apartheid project. From the Yale Daily News:
Dershowitz was stupid to be baited into comparing and contrasting Gaza with the Warsaw Ghetto. Recall the (possibly apocryphal) LBJ story about accusing his opponent of being a pig fu**er. You cannot win this by arguing differences.
Baited? Seriously, are Zionists not responsible for anything they say or do? God, you guys are like little children. “Waaah! But they made me do it!”