It appears the man who defended O.J. Simpson will go to any length for his current celebrity client, the State of Israel. From Haaretz: "Dershowitz calls Goldstone a traitor to the Jewish people."
In his book, The Best Defense, Dershowitz gave a view of the approach he would later take in the Simpson case. "Once I decide to take a case," Dershowitz wrote, "I have only one agenda: I want to win. I will try, by every fair and legal means, to get my client off–without regard to the consequences."
In his memoir The Best Defense, Dershowitz noted that "almost all of my clients have been guilty."
In the case of Israel, Dershowitz seems also willing to use unfair means to get his client off, including rabble-rousing incitement against an internationally recognized jurist, a Jew no less. Right out of the propagandists’ playbook of the worst regimes in history, Dershowitz said of Justice Goldstone, he "was a traitor to the Jewish people" and his report "is a defamation written by an evil, evil man." And that was not all from the worked-up Dershowitz.
The question has to be asked whether the job of defending Israel has become too much for the famous defense attorney. In this interview with Israeli Army radio, admittedly a friendly venue, Dershowitz seems to have shed any reasonable restraints. From Haaretz’s account:
Dershowitz and Goldstone have been colleagues and close friends for many years before the UN Gaza probe, but once Goldstone published his report the ties between the two were severed. "The Goldstone report is a defamation written by an evil, evil man," Dershowitz said.
In an interview with Army Radio, Dershowitz said he is appalled by the report and can’t fathom how it could have been written by a Jew. He said it is as if a Jew would have written the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and that the jurist is using the fact that his last name is ‘Goldstone’ to substantiate the report’s defamation against the Jewish people….
Former minister and Meretz chairwoman Shulamit Aloni responded to Dershowitz’s comments, saying that Goldstone is far from a traitor. "Dershowitz’s statements border on hate. Goldstone is a Zionist Jew who was simply doing his job," Aloni told Army Radio.
Look at the Protocols as a game plan for any abstract ambitious power group. This might even have been how it originated. Now simply apply its operating principles to any current or past historical event, or series of same. What do you see? As they say, do the (algebraic) math.
So you are saying that the Protocols may be a forgery, but they are relevant because they describe something real, so their basic doshonesty doesn’t discredit them?
Well, glad you came out in favor of the Protocols, at any rate.
Try this, Mooser:
link to notbored.org
Citizen what are you saying?
Dershowitz is a senior member of Israel Hasbara Committee. He has spent a greater part of his carrer denouncing Norman Finkelstein. Justice Goldstone is a Zionist Jew from South Africa – but he never praised the former South African apartheid regime. The irony with the dual citizen holding Jewish Hasbara members – is that most of them live and earn their fat salaries in the US – while sing for the glory of a foreign country (Israel).
Recently, Gild Atzmon published an article by Salahaeddin Ahmad exposing Tony Greenstein and Mark Elf as Israeli agents – they blamed Gilad Atzmon being Salahaeddin Ahmad. When I refuted the silly allegations at the Jews Sans Frontieres site – I was honored with typical Hasbara insults.
It’s these Hasbara lies which has pitted the US against Islamic Iran, which has no evil designs against the US or the practicing Jews around the world. Iran is home to 30,000 Jews and several American and European rabbis have visted Tehran to meet Dr. Ahmadinejad.
Israeli Hasbara and Iran’s mass protests
link to rehmat1.wordpress.com
Are you saying that Iran doesn’t have designs against practicing Jews or the US but does have designs against Israel?
Neither. There is a 25,000 member Jewish community in Iran who do not want to leave and are content where they are.
Because the Jewish community of 25,000 stays there, does not mean that they are “content” with the current regime.
OK. Do you have any evidence to support that claim that they are NOT content and would LOVE to leave Iran?
Avi :
“Neither. There is a 25,000 member Jewish community in Iran who do not want to leave and are content where they are.”
Now your an expert on the Jewish community in Iran. They execute Jews in Iran, moron. Do you actually think they are going to complain?
That’s it? That’s the best convincing argument you can put forth?
They execute people in the US, too.
And whether I’m an expert on Iran or not has no bearing on your proving your argument.
All you’ve posted is solely based on your opinion which, let’s be honest, doesn’t count for much.
Goldston helped put a 13 year old Black child in prison for protesting apartheid. What an evil man.
link to huffingtonpost.com
What do you call Israeli soldiers who don’t allow a 10 year old cancer patient confined to a wheelchair to get to a hospital so that he can get radiation treatment?
Now that’s evil.
Israeli soldiers are the most moral!
Just look at this picture:
link to electronicintifada.net
See, how the most moral soldier yanks a child from his family? Jules would be proud.
Dershowitz said of Justice Goldstone, he “was a traitor to the Jewish people”
But was Goldstone a traitor to justice?
Dershowitz is a traitor to the American people.
Dershowitz is a traitor to humanity, as are all Zionists.
“As are all Zionists”.
Brilliant analysis.
Dershowitz should pay his bets – he promised to pay Hamas $10,000 if anyone found errors in his book and Finkelstein found them easily.
The shoe fits, you just refuse to wear it.
It doesn’t really matter, does it, Richard, how brilliant it is or isn’t, as long as it works? Just like the ZIonists used whatever resources came to hand in their struggle, those who feel it necessary to oppose Zionism may use anything that works.
You got something you can do about it, besides cluck your tongue?
You use the term “traitor to humanity” in how you speak about anyone, let alone a group of civilians that regard self-governance as important to them?
Sometimes self-governance has to be curbed, Dick Witty–that’s quite often why criminals are in jail, and German leaders were tried at Nuremberg. Merely by using the abstract term “self-governance” you won’t be getting a blank check here. We don’t like the Israeli self-governing occupation over the lives of Palestinians, nor did we like the Gaza Turkey Shoot. If we could, we’d freeze
all US direct and indirect aid to Israel until it lived up to its own professed values which all American politicians repeat in the face of reality under penalty
of not getting or staying in political office.
I didn’t realize Dersh was capable of such an anti-Semitic rant. He’s attacking Goldstone for being Jewish. Dersh is a hater.
Dershowitz is way over the line in the “loyalty” accusation.
But, his recommendation that Israel conduct a thorough investigation led by jurists with integrity (better late than never) is the right one.
Goldstone is a jurist w/ integrity.
You should have asked first if I was saying that he wasn’t.
I was entirely referring to the proposal to have former Israeli Supreme Court justice Barak lead an inquiry, which would be of integrity, and not pre-ordained.
Fair enough Witty. (Although I do not know much about the Israeli jurists.)
“Mister Hitler really does need to conduct his own investigation as to whether or not his regime has indulged in conduct not acceptable to the world community.”
–Richard Witty, 1939
Richard, when did Goldstone lose his integrity? Hey was it about the same time Phil lost his journalistic integrity, when he visited Gaza.
Richard defines “loss of integrity” as taking any view but the Zionist one.
That’s fair, though at this stage I wouldn’t trust Israelis with the job–outsiders only, please. Some more people like Goldstone–the judge has a good record on human rights issues and wanted the mandate expanded to include Hamas crimes before he took the job and then he followed the evidence where it led. I wonder how many Israeli judges would show that much integrity? Maybe some would, but if so they are the ones least likely to be given the job.
I’d say the same about America–our own government obviously has zero interest in investigating and prosecuting its own high-ranking war criminals. There are Americans who would do it, but they’re not likely to find themselves appointed to any sort of official panel brought together for such a purpose.
Yeah, right, Dick Witty, and Germany should have been allowed to hold its own war crimes trials in 1945. Japan too. I won’t hold my breath for the Obama folks to
put the neocon Bush2 folks on trial here either.
I have an edition of the Protocols by Stephen Eric Bronner (Oxford 2000), which points out, as I think many have done, that the source is an impeccably liberal but rather obscure pamphlet published by Maurice Joly, a French republican of Italian Catholic parentage, in 1864. He was neither Jewish nor concerned with Jews – he was satirising the rise to power of Napoleon III. Napoleon’s police did quite a good job of keeping the pamphlet from wide circulation or public attention, so it was available as a literary resource to plagiarists and was taken up for anti-Jewish purposes by Russian police agents. In rather vivid language – ‘like the god Vishnu my publicity machine will have a hundred arms’ – Joly makes the pamphlet’s main and most famous point, that the key to power in a society that is in any degree democratic is intensive infiltration and control of the press. So it is indeed a basic game plan for power seizure, quite a sensible one. Maybe the decline of the press and the rise of the internet have saved us? Ho hum.
The implication is that powerful publicity machines and dangerous conspiracies are rather hard to tell apart.
Bernays, the unknowing mentor to Goebbels; the NYT et al, the willing copy cats of Goebbels; the USA MSM is a rebel against the USA constitutional implementation of a USA 4th branch of government, a free press. It was not given constitutional protection to sell snake oil and obstruct the free play of facts and ideas within the USA. The Zionist enterprise is a cancer in the USA blood stream. It will take down
the USA, and is doing so as I type this comment. This is a major problem in the history of
progressive humanity, and by that I mean, the notion that humanity as a whole will
learn from history, and seek not to repeat its negative aspects.
“This is a major problem in the history of
progressive humanity, and by that I mean, the notion that humanity as a whole will
learn from history, and seek not to repeat its negative aspects.”
So I better get my Jewish ass to Israel before the next big anti-Semitic explosion? Well, thanks for the tip! Or are you saying that the Jews are the “negative aspect” of history, and what humanity has failed to learn is “don’t be taken in by the Jews”?
Mooser –
Your concern that ‘I get my jewish ass to Israel before the next big anti-semitic explosion’ is one of the reasons I follow this issue. It is a concern of mine that this issue and how forcefully the pro-Zionists elements push their agenda will result in some blowback in the future. How that manifests itself, I can’t say, but it is a concern of mine and I feel is a legitimate one.
As I spend time discussing the issue with friends, family and aquaintences (when it comes up), over time I can see a realization occurring that maybe Israel doesn’t deserve our unquestioning support. My problem is: How do I maintain my values as a Catholic and pursue justice for both Palestinians and Israelis? If in doing so I make pro-Zionists and Hama look bad, that’s tough. On the other hand I don’t want to incite anti-semitism, or shill for Israeli state-sponsored terrorrism.
So much easier to just disengage and ‘stop worrying’ as I am so often advised. Besides ‘Israel is the only Democracy in the middle east and an important ally – we can’t ‘sell them out’, you’re a neville chamberlain if you do’.
Having Zionists around does make your life more complicated…
You are correct, MHughes976. See Joly’s Dialogue in Hell. Much of it is verbatim in the Protocols, which adds the goys as sheep, the jews as wolves. Joly’s work was
a satire of right wing politics in the 19th Century.
I would say Dershowitz is a traitor to the truth. He has disseminated countless lies, like that the Israeli army’s concept of purity of arms “requires that soldiers put their own lives at stake in order to avoid harming non-combatants,” or that no Jew can be a citizen of Jordan. I debunked a few of these myths here and here.
To be fair, Dershowitz doesn’t make up his lies from scratch. He’ll take a portion of an actual quote, leaving out crucial but inconvenient information, and will append to it an unrelated bit of argumentation, maybe from another quote that also exists, to obtain something which, while vaguely based on the truth, is a downright falsity.
That way he’s been able to convince generation after generation of readers that black is white and up is down. Unfortunately for him, the Internet now enables those readers to check his sources and spot his deceit.
Dershowitz is mainly an appeals lawyer. That’s why most of his clients are guilty: They’ve already been convicted. Dershowitz attended the OJ Trial for the defense in anticipation of appealing OJ’s conviction. His presence could have suggested that OJ was, in fact, guilty, but the defense had him show up anyway. There was the possibility that having Dershowitz visible would keep the judge in line, so to speak.
The Goldstone report was not done to judicial standards, and judge Goldstone agrees with this evaluation.
I would take the issues raised by Goldstone more seriously if somebody had come up with a way for the IDF to stop the rocketing some other way, and if Hamas had made a serious effort to follow the international rules of war. Hamas says specifically they are exempt from these rules. Terrorists, including Hamas, generally act on the seam between law enforcement and warfare, making it impossible for any consistent rules to apply.
Law must apply to both sides if it is to be law.
A lawyer’s clients may have been convicted, but still be innocent. In fact we would hope that convicted innocents would get help to prove their innocence, and that the guilty would not be freed on appeal by a clever lawyer. Unlike a judge, a defense lawyer is not concerned with the reasonableness and completeness of his efforts. His job is to put the best case forward, not the most truthful or accurate. Dershowitz faithfully follows this mode of argument in his histories and politics, and that is the reason his scholarship should not be taken seriously.
The rocketing was virtually stopped by a ceasefire, and ending an illegal blockade might have been a good place to start towards ending the rockets. Neither party is following the international rules of war, and the IDF has been breaking these rules long before Hamas even existed.
Taking the issue out of the hands of both parties is the only way to end the persistent illegalities terrorizing civilians on both sides. I will take Israel and its supporters more seriously when they stop acting as both judge and executioner, and put the entire unfinished business of 1948 before international arbitration.
Well said, Bruce. How would the French Resistance have followed international law if it had existed back then?
I would take the issues raised by Goldstone more seriously if somebody had come up with a way for the IDF to stop the rocketing some other way
well, let’s see, the IDF could have stopped forcing Palestinians from their homes so settlers could take them over; it could have stopped bulldozing innocent little American protesters; it could have stopped using Gestapo tactics against peaceful protesters; it could have been a force for compelling the government of israel to be good neighbors rather than the instrument of oppression by one neighbor over all the others; the IDF could have uprooted the many illegal settler communities and given the land back to the rightful owners (the Palestinians); the IDF could have built roads and schools and brought water and jobs to the oppressed Palestinian areas; best of all the IDF could follow international law and treat all the human beings in the area with equal protection and basic human dignity
Goldstone told the truth and the zionists can’t stand it – so now he is vilified as some kind of traitor – but he knows better, treason against inhumanity and serial war-crimes is not treason at all … it is bold, visionary, risk-taking revolution and history will commend him for many decades or longer … funny his name should be Goldstone … gold is precious and timeless and somewhat malleable, whereas stone is tough and strong requires great force to damage it – all kind of like the truth
As for Dersh, by his own account he is a major scumbag “almost all of my clients have been guilty.” So, he chose to represent criminals and scum whereas he could have chose to represent other clients. He lied down with the scum and has become the scum
Some people not schooled in the USA legal education do not understand that
the USA legal education posits an adversarial system wherein two opponent advocates each argue all that will help their case, and ignore all that will not. The imaginative scenario is each side paints a picture to the jury or judge most supportive
of their client. The idea is that, having heard the most positive aspects of each side of the controversy, which includes every negative implication against the opponent, the Truth will prevail in the interest of universal blind justice.
This legal utopia has been given the task of judging political decisions that reflect
much more than the trial of one individual’s conduct within the social realm.
The court of public opinion is a joke when the information given to the masses
is so one-sided as it is in the USA. It’s all about the USA MSM and it’s insider taboos. The sheeple continue to be sheared.
Two centuries later, Maurice Joly’s The Dialogue In Hell (1864) is still applicable.
Israel could have stopped the rocketing by accepting the Hamas offer of a ceasefire, which it made from the moment it won the parliamentary election. War was Israel’s choice.
Israel did accept the promise of Hamas’ ceasefire, (which worked, for 6 months) but didn’t follow up on its own undertakings
The Israeli government deliberately decided not to honour the promise of lifting the Israeli siege of Gaza, and deliberately attacked Gaza to stop a so-called ‘tunnel to kidnap’ IDF soldiers, on November 4 2008, when the world’s attention was switched to the US election
Israel ignored/rejected Hamas’s initial offer of a ceasefire because it would have applied also on the West Bank and required them to cease murdering Palestinians. To make the point, they attacked several Palestinians, and that was the end of that.
What’s funny is that in bringing up the Protocols *himself* in declaring Goldstone a “traitor” for saying something he could only envision Gentiles saying, Dershowitz not only renews the memory of the former but then proclaims his belief in an even more ridiculous idea that there is conspiracy or pact or at least obligation to remain silent at certain times that binds *all* jews and not just some “Elders.”
Way to advocate, Alan….
Dershowitz is an example of the worst aspect of the US legal adversarial process. I mean, he has taken that individual legal process and, instead of a jury, or judge, used it to present a Zionist case before the court of world public opinion. You just need to realize that he is always arguing one side of the issue. The Jewish Zionist side.
People like Dershowitz represent the Zionist establishment and not Judaism as religion. For example the “British Iraq Inquiry” in progress – is conducted by a panel of four ‘sir’ and one ‘baroness’ – has two ‘sir’ are not only Jewish but well-known pro-Israel Zionists. However, when a former British ambassador Oliver Miles raised doubts that those two Zionist Jewish members would certainly cover-up Israel Lobby’s involvement in pushing Tony Blair to help Bush’s failed adventure in Iraq in 2003 – TIME magazine called Miles’ comment as “disgraceful” and bordering ‘anti-Semitism’.
British Iraq Inquiry: An ‘old fashioned anti-Semitism’
link to rehmat1.wordpress.com
So should Mohamman El-Baredi been barred from investigating Iranian nukes? I like a lot of the posters on this site but the above is consistently anti-semite.
BSDNOW – still can’t get the spelling right? You’re very obviously a troll, following the Israeli line
Mohammad El-Baredi’s job was investigating anyone’s nukes, but he didn’t have the opportunity to investigate Israel’s very real 200+ nukes, because Israel has never signed up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
So he could never investigate the Israeli bombs
I simply came here to learn, however I find there are a lot of comments here that cross the line. Rehmat’s comments consistently do so. If you can’t see that, then there is a major problem here.
OK, BSDNOW, now that you’ve given us your unsupported generality about a lot of the comments here crossing some line in your head, now respond to Richard Parker’s direct response to your earlier direct comment on this thread.
BSD.
You are make benign single-sentence statements complimenting Israel (without context, by definition : essentially, giving PR) or ‘denounce’ others whom you perceive to be [whatever] – without explaining why and with the implication that said ‘others’ contribute a substantial portion of commentary here.
Keep it up though. It’s not like people here are going to magically forget your previous lies.
The Israel Hasbara Committee has a little list , of authors, on which Alan Dershowitz features, not once, but twice which I feel is a little greedy. I am not all sure, Rehmat that this brands Dershy as a senior member of the committee, but just an author who wrote something sympathetic about Israel at one time, that the IHC picked up. This blind ‘honours list’ of Israeli supporters has not been revised for a long time, because it doesn’t even get names in alphabetical order (look at what happens after Z)
link to infoisrael.net
The list goes on and on, there are plenty of dual-loyalty names of interest on the list. If my name was on it, then I would be very scared about anonymous assassination at any time.
- Bob Dylan, singer
- Caroline B.Glick, journalist, Jerusalem Post (featured 3 times)
- Charles Krauthammer, journalist and TV pundit (doesn’t like Germans very much)
- Dan Gillerman, Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations (also featured twice)
- Daniel Pipes, Ph.D. , academic (listed twice)
- David Brooks, journalist (NYT)
- David Miliband, British Foreign Secretary
- Frank J. Gaffney Jr. TV pundit (listed 3 times)
- Gary Cooperburg, internet author and publisher of Project Shofar link to projectshofar.org
(listed 3 times)
- Henry Kissinger, consultant
- IDF SPOKESPERSON, spokesperson
- JUDITH MILLER, journalist
- Larry Derfner, journalist (featured twice)
- Mahmoud Abbas, politician
- Peter Falk (as Columbo) , actor
- Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada
- Associated Press (listed 3 times)
link to infoisrael.net
“The Goldstone report is a defamation written by an evil, evil man,” Dershowitz said.
Did he really say that? Dershowitz has proven himself to be such a pompous ass over and over again.
Is it true that Goldstone will not hold any debates with him. Goldstone’s integrity and brilliance shines through everything he has to say. He would wipe up the floor with Dershowitz
“Goldstone is a Zionist Jew who was simply doing his job,” Aloni told Army Radio”
Who operates from a commitment to the truth and the rule of law and applies it where ever he has been called out to apply it. An honorable man iwith his cells filled with a deep sense of justice no matter what the case.
What an incredible example for us all
I’m not sure that these comments get us anywhere. There’s a small core of commenters on Mondoweiss, who say much the same things every day, but their comments have no effect whatsoever on the rest of the world.
I regret this. It’s sad.
The comment section at any blog is unlikely to have an effect except on other commenters and the lurkers. Phil’s blog might conceivably have some effect, depending on who reads it.
I believe it does, definitely, but he might as well shut down the comments and not have to bother with the trolls.
Don’t people know that? It’s a small investment. Shutting down a comments section may be seen as capitulation.
In any country most people don’t follow their government’s foreign policy at all. They are preoccupied working, or looking for work, and relaxing from both at the end of the day. Mondoweiss is performing a civic duty regarding issues that affect all Americans, whether they know it or not–most don’t. The regular commenters
are also performing a civic duty, a duty to humanity. Man can not live by bread alone.
Cheer up, RP. Once the war is on with Iran there will be a gradual awakening. It took Hitler’s pretext and invasion of Poland; it will next be Israel’s pretext and bombing of Iran. Go to the gym, eat healthy. You will get to see it all unfold, WW3.
Dershowitz is a silly clown when it comes to Israel, he cannot argue his way out of a paper bag. When he cannot do that he vilifies and threatens whoever he disagrees with. I will spare you the subject, but he told me after disagreeing with him, and his patent inability to act civil afterwords, that he was going to compile my statements in a book along with others who disagreed with him. Of course, that was supposed to have a twofold punch – first exposure (underlying, like that is really going to do anything at this juncture), and secondly he was going to make money from it and give the money to the “cause” we hated the most. Plainly childish, and a low blow artist.
Dershowitz deserves to be locked in an elevator with Joe Goebbels. How’s that for a new version of The Promoters?
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So “loyalty to Jews” should come before concern for truth, justice, or common decency?
That is the way it has been for decades. Judge Goldstone’s honest assessment of what took place in the Gaza one year ago tilts the situation more towards, truth, justice and common decency…that is if the Dershowitz’s of the world are not successful at shutting the report down. So far looking good for the Dershowitz camp.
Congress condemning the report without even reading it. Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, the alleged progressive branch of the MSM ignoring the Goldstone Report. Completely ignoring it.
Along with The Diane Rehm Show, Talk of the Nation, Terri Gross’s Fresh Air (knew she would not touch it she does the lobbies bidding) as well as the rest. SILENCE ON THE GOLDSTONE REPORT IN OUR MS,
CONTACT YOUR REPS ASK/DEMAND THAT THEY READ THE GOLDSTONE REPORT AND ASK/DEMAND THAT THEY INVITE THE HONORABLE JUDGE GOLDSTONE ON THE HILL TO DISCUSS HIS FINDINGS. PLEASE CALL OR EMAIL NOW
So Dershowitz has declared Goldstone to be takfir.
Huh? link to en.wikipedia.org
You mean, not kosher?
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