My headline is a steal of the old W.C. Fields line, I’d rather be a lamppost in Denver than the mayor of Philadelphia. Oh I wish I had written this piece; here is a satire of the fact that the Israel braintrust wanted to hire Dershowitz to represent them at the UN, written by Meir Shalev, and picked up by Coteret:
As a criminal attorney Dershowitz is remembered as the defense lawyer for boxer Mike Tyson and former football player O. J. Simpson. It is hard to avoid the thought that not merely his views, but also his two trials and defendants indicate his ability to represent Israel as well…
Alan Dershowitz is not the first talented Jew summoned from the diaspora to save Israel. Already back in Biblical times, the Jewish-Persian Jew Nehemiah immigrated to Israel to run the matter of building the wall of Jerusalem, something that the poor Jews in the Land of Israel were unable to do on their own.
In the modern era too, there are examples, beginning with lobbyists and envoys like Elie Wiesel and Ron Lauder, to military men like Col. David Marcus who was recruited in the US during the War of Independence. …
Like Einstein at the time, Dershowitz also refused the offer. I understand him completely but hope that his refusal will not stop Netanyahu and Lieberman from continuing the trend of asking capable Jews of stature to move to Israel to fill positions — a welcome trend… My suggestion is that Lieberman ask Dershowitz to be Israel’s foreign minister and that Netanyahu ask him to be prime minister in his place.
But on second thought — for these two positions you don’t need stars of the magnitude of Dershowitz. There are enough Jewish grocery store owners, teachers, doctors, engineers and cab drivers in the diaspora, and many of them would be a better prime minister and foreign minister than the two currently serving in the Israeli government.
