Here’s a shocker. On Saturday Adalah NY held another protest outside Leviev, the diamond store owned by a proponent of the settlements, and Alan Dershowitz stopped and challenged the protesters to come in, then emerged from the store brandishing his purchase there. On youtube you can see him grinning as he shows off the bag. Sad. Earlier this year at Brandeis, I heard Dershowitz describe the pre-67 border as "Auschwitz borders," then when I asked him about it he spoke of the arbitrary character of the border and said it gave no security to Israel. Hillel Halkin makes the same point in Commentary this month. There is something self-ghettoizing about this kind of talk. Security will flow from a just peace with neighbors.
The good news here is that as Condi Rice and Annapolis and the IPF and others envision an equitable solution, the biblical landgrabbers are forced to come forward as landgrabbers. Dershowitz’s moment is Brechtian, a grotesque moment in American Jewish history….
