More evidence of the power and autonomy of the Israel lobby. It turns out the Democratic Party’s platform’s lack of a Jerusalem plank isn’t the only thing wrong with it, and Alan Dershowitz is going to call the White House to complain. “The omission [of]… the Palestinian refugee issue and Hamas are, I think, deeply troubling,” Dershowitz tells the Daily Caller; the Democrats must be on the record not permitting any right of return of Palestinian refugees to their homes in Israel.
Notice the entitlement in Dershowitz’s boldfaced declarations. How many other Harvard law professors have a red phone to the White House? It would be hubris, or chutzpah, if he was blowing smoke. But I don’t think he is.
“As soon as I hang up with you, I will call people I know in the White House and in the Democratic Party and find out what’s going on,” Dershowitz said. ”But believe me this is not the last the Democrats will have heard about this issue. They will hear from me on this one.”
Dershowitz says while the platform debate could potentially just be chocked up to “carelessness,” he is afraid that anti-Israel extremists within the Democratic Party are having undue influence.
“It’s not the Democratic base. It’s extremists within the Democratic base who may have more influence than they should on platform,” he said. “I think extremists within the base may very well move the Democratic party away from its pro-Israel position.”
“He is afraid that anti-Israel extremists within the Democratic Party are having undue influence.”
As opposed to his influence. Poor Dersh. Like many great people he leaves nobody to carry the flame forward after he dies. He’ll end up like Zsa Zsa Gabor, with the same level of traction on the future.
In his Westchester county nursing home in 2024 the news will come through that Israel has been dissolved. The nurses will keep it from him. He’ll hopefully have an Arab American personal assistant by then. He’ll be deep into dementia.
funny stuff, seafoid. it would be interesting to read that blowhard’s definition of the terms ‘democratic base’ and ‘extremists within the democratic base’. does he even have clear definitions in mind, or has he just reached full-on dementia autopilot at this point in his career? (i’ll wager that ‘democratic base’ is a pretty narrow grouping – possibly including a select few million voters – in the dusty file of the dershowitz psyche.) i doubt that if you polled 1,000 random, registered democrats that ‘israel’ would crack the top ten most important issues for the majority of those polled.
This was on Mondo earlier in the year
“In Hebrew “tarbut ha ‘smoch’” means “the culture of people who say ‘just trust me’. ”
Dersh is one of those. He and the rest of the elite are leading Israel to a disaster.
He already is.
You have to admire his hypocrisy and lack if self awareness – the Democrats MUST be on the record as not permitting Palestinian refugees to return to THEIR homes?
And anyone who says otherwise is an extremist?
Who’s
yeah, because having radical extremists demand changes in the dem party platform is so comforting to lefties.
Hamsa, right of return, Jerusalem ; I think ‘extremists within the base’ is code for the dreaded believing Muslims, or as sometimes coded here, ‘Islamists’.
bilal, if you have any evidence ‘islamists’ were influencing the dem party platform cough it up, we’d love to see it. i’ll from page it. (or lobby to have it front paged, i don’t make decisions about what gets published) as you probably know aipac did have a say link to mondoweiss.net but so far nothing about any islamists.
dersh is an extremist, and a liar.
this issue was ‘opened up’ by rethug legislation a few months ago designed to legislate refugees into non refugees and it was introduced by a senator missing in action from a stroke. he knows this very well. so don’t go jumping the shark and trying to get this BS (about BOTH jerusalem AND refugees) retroactively inserted in dem party platform which is exactly what this is about.
at the rate we’re going we’ll have 90% of the platform all about israel and anti semitism. which would probably be fiiiineeee dersh.
This is funny
The comments on the Fink’s Waterloo speech where he owns the crying Zionist Batsheva and says if you had any heart you’d be crying for the Palestinians.
link to youtube.com
Page 6 of the comments
I really, REALLY wanted him to follow that up with “Now, GET THE FUCK OUT.”
Enzofromwb 1 month ago
omg! wonders never cease! i just wrote to bilala if you have any evidence ‘islamists’ were influencing the dem party platform cough it up, we’d love to see it. i’ll from page it. and low and behold look what phil just linked to!
link to mondoweiss.net
i opened the jstreet link and low and behold there is was just staring out at me, about the dem convention:
might this represent the ‘islamists’ ‘extremists within the base’ you were referencing bilala? and look, front paged for you too. and they do sound extreme!
bilal: Nothing bogus about their Right of Return. The UN continues to affirm their human right enshrined in international law and morality to return.
So the best these “extremists” could manage is to have the platform not say some stuff about Palestinians? How terribly extreme of them. I shudder to think what else they have terrorised the party into firmly, adamantly and unequivocally not saying.
shmuel, there was some WaPo talking head on the radio this morning wringing his hands over the omission of mention of jerusalem as the ‘capitol of israel’ in the democratic platform. (the head, i paraphrase, says that they [the democrats] shot themselves in the foot and stirred up some unwanted controversy by removing the mention of ‘g_d’ in the platform and omitting mention of their support for jerusalem being the ‘capitol of israel’. huh? this omission is controversial to whom exactly?) unfortunately the intellectually challenged host of the radio show missed the natural follow up.
link to hereandnow.wbur.org
and on ‘the world’, a PRI public radio program a few minutes ago: (just heard the mumbling in the background at work.) the controversy over the inclusion or omission of the reference to jerusalem as the capitol of israel in the democratic party platform is a controversy of US politics. the reader then goes on to note that every US president, including BushII has stalled the implementation of ‘the jerusalem embassy act’, recognizing jerusalem as the capitol, and coyly remarks that the US has a consulate there, and that no nation has an embassy in jerusalem. why? the new reader can’t say. no time to mention, apparently, the UNSC and UNGA resolutions dating from 1948 forward denying israel the authority to establish a capitol there, and further stating that israel’s continued administration of jerusalem is illegal.
Dershowitz claims that the problems in getting a pro-Israel plank in the Democratic platform are “not with the Democratic base”?? What rubbish.
Much of the Democratic voter base – African-Americans, white Liberals – are indifferent to Israel or critical of Israeli policy.
Meanwhile, many voters who are strong supporters of Israel are evangelical Christians – and in recent decades this means Republicans, not Democrats.
It’s really only among (some) American Jews that you find people who support liberal policies on all other issues but support Israeli racism, whether because of tribal solidarity or Zionist propaganda.
Once again, Dershowitz strikes out.
Let him gnash his teeth and stamp his feet.
He’s becoming irrelevant. Mondoweiss and others have helped to make the truth known and much more mainstream.
People are talking, and it is not anti- semitic talk. It is sunlight, starting to stream through the haze.
“People are talking, and it is not anti- semitic talk. It is sunlight, starting to stream through the haze.”
What a brilliant way of putting it.
On the horn means something else in Ireland…
In England they say “on the blower”.
This is why I’ve always said that the lobby works so much harder inside the Democratic party. 95 % of all Jewish members of the House are Democratic(19 out of 20).
The same pattern is true with senators.
Or as MJ Rosenberg wrote a while back:
Source: link to mjayrosenberg.com
It’s true. Part of it is Jewish legacy inside the Democratic party but a rising factor is also simply fear; the kind of fear that Dershowitz articulates.
He’s deluding himself if he thinks the Democratic base isn’t turning against Israel(those who are aware).
And the fact that the changes got in there, even with AIPAC minders, is impressive in of itself.
Expect a few CAP-style purging campaigns to take place.
My contention is, though, that all those campaigns can only slow, but not stop, the inevitable movement towards a general position for genuine democracy in Israel/Palestine.
Money only takes you so far. And unlike Stalin, the victims of the purges remember since they’re alive and some of them don’t even lose their jobs to begin with(like Matt Duss).
And will Obama help them in their attempts to purge the Democratic party of genuine liberals? Obama won’t help them a tiny bit more than he has to pretend to care.
“Getting the dirty work done” is not just about Israel. It’s about practically everything.
Obama says the words but doesn’t follow through (or does the opposite). He rhetorically massages the base while knee-capping any organized discontent. Discontent (and alienation) that is generated by a Dem who in equal parts is institutionalizing and/or acquiescing to the R policy wish list.
It would be a marvel to behold as it succeeds for the connected few, if only it wasn’t so damn destructive for the people that voted for him to change a few things in their direction.
Greenwald repeatedly points this out. It makes me almost want to strategically vote one last time – for Romney in this case – that there would at least be some public, albeit demonstrably insincere at this point, opposition to latch on to on at least some issues (obviously not including Israel). But even that strategic voting would only delay (best case, iff wildly successful in giving temporary voice to deep and deepening rightful discontent) the economic and political devolution that both parties are so fervently embracing at the political-class level.
Going Green this time. It won’t make a difference, but at least I’ll have the small consolation of not rewarding bad behavior.
What a putz. Where does he get the hyper inflated idea of his own importance? Yes, anybody is an ‘extremist’ who doesn’t toe the right wing fundamentalist zionist claptrap he peddles. Human rights are only for ‘extremists’, the right to live with a say over your own life is ‘extremist’, the right not to be bombed and shot at, or be free to move, is ‘extremist’. Go back to your moral black hole, loser. And quit your lifelong campaign to censor and smear others for saying so.
“Where does he get the hyper inflated idea of his own importance?”
He must have mixed some Viagra in his Ziocaine, when he misunderstood impotence and importance.
Dershowitz is wrong . This is a dinger of an article which explains why.
Reminds me of THIS
link to northernsun.com
link to haaretz.com
The people aren’t stupid
By Amira Hass | Sep.05, 2012 | 3:31 AM
The people aren’t stupid. Even if last year’s social protest didn’t stop the plague of inequality, it proved that a crowd isn’t a mob, but a group of people with both collective and individual intelligence. Such critical, rebellious intelligence doesn’t get lost. Nor have people lost the understanding that the mechanisms of power and profit are reproducing themselves at the expense of and in opposition to the general public.
The people aren’t stupid. But the corporation executives, the bank owners and managers, their proteges in Knessets and cabinets, in party central committees and research institutes, are much stronger, not to mention more experienced and cunning. A year is a very short time, and there’s no reason to declare that the protest has gone bankrupt and bury the tents. We will yet enjoy a resumption of the protest, and also some of its fruits.
During and after the protest, this thinking crowd also discovered a great thirst for knowledge, and proved that it knows how to obtain this knowledge – through statistics, studies and analyses that explained their gut feelings very well. The decline of public medical care isn’t a decree from heaven; the difficulty of getting an apartment doesn’t stem from personal incompetence; and someone is profiting from your labor and your low salary.
Something else also became clear during the social protest: Despite their desire to do so, the forces of order and discipline could not allow themselves to suppress it brutally. After all, in the end, this is a democracy for Jews. Criticizing, demonstrating and organizing don’t cost us our lives. And for the vast majority of us, they also don’t cost us our jobs or our freedom.
Wonderful things can be done with such intelligence, such knowledge of how to obtain information and such freedom to oppose. Therefore, it’s only logical to expect the protest not only to return, but to improve. And therefore, every one of us is an active participant in the democ-tatoric, oppressive regime that is being developed between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea: Ashkenazim and Mizrahim, old and young, women and men, city dwellers and moshavniks, religious and secular, settlers and residents of Mitzpeh Hila, Kiryat Shmona and Ramat Aviv.
Perhaps there is a difference in what each group receives in exchange for its participation. Here too, we have the elite and the underdogs. But all of us are senior executives of this Jewish corporation that owes its capital and its well-being to the ongoing, cunning, arrogant, supremacist exploitation and abasement of the other people and their intellectual, material and emotional resources.
Familiarity with a plethora of information sources and geographic proximity to the scenes of the crime deprives us of the excuse “we didn’t know.” People are living without running water, or without water fit to drink. Do a google search and you’ll find the websites of Adalah, UNRWA and B’Tselem. The green line has two sides, and on both sides there are ways to ensure the supply of water to Jews and deny it to Palestinians. Even Satan never came up with discrimination more nauseating than this.
The civil rights that we enjoy won’t allow us to say what citizens of Turkey and Belarus rightly can, or what citizens of East Germany and Rhodesia once could: We cannot take action because we are afraid for our children and our jobs, fear our neighbors and torture. The future of Israeli students and lecturers is assured even if they besiege the Defense Ministry and the defense minister’s house to demand that Firing Zone 918 in the south Hebron Hills be outlawed. And after that, even if they strike against a long list of other discriminatory practices.
The people of Israel proved last year that they are not devoid of knowledge or of the recognition of injustice. Therefore, every single member of this thinking crowd bears direct responsibility for the disasters that will befall this place; for an accumulation of injustices will eventually explode.
Even if Dennis Ross is no longer in the White House, I’m sure there is someone on staff who will pick up a call from the Dersh, even if it isn’t a Harvard Law Alum who was required to take a course from him.
‘“I think extremists within the base may very well move the Democratic party away from its pro-Israel position.”
We are the extremist?……who woulda’ thought.
Being a person of ordinary common sense in the USA today is a lot like being in an asylum where the inmates are running the place.
Definitely feels like that to me.
The White House could just refuse to accept his call. My guess is Dershowitz would never admit that’s what had happened.
it’s not that he wouldn’t admit it, he’d simply make sh*t up. maybe he could call joan peters and ask her to write a transcript of a conversation between him and hillary clinton that never took place. (and then sue you for having the temerity to question his integrity.)
“Democrats must be on the record not permitting any right of return of Palestinian refugees to their homes in Israel”
How can he even voice such a notion if no one knows where Israel begins and ends? I just looked the guy up. Apparently he mostly aids fairly unsavoury people evade the consequences of anti-social actiions. Oh, and he supports animal rights.
RE: “It turns out the Democratic Party’s platform’s lack of a Jerusalem plank isn’t the only thing wrong with it, and Alan Dershowitz is going to call the White House to complain.” ~ Weiss
FROM Jason Ditz, Antiwar.com, 9/05/12:
SOURCE – link to news.antiwar.com