Beinart vs. Medad (and Gordis)

Peter Beinart attacks me, along with Daniel Gordis.

As I do not think his site is allowing me to log in (or maybe my office computer is not compatible; I'll try later from home), I wouldn't want his post to go unreplied to so here's my comment that I wished to post there now:


As for the main hit on me - "Medad and Gordis’s claim that they will become more compliant if Israel eats away more of their future state is so absurd. One might even say that by claiming they support the two state solution while supporting policies that drive nails in its coffin, Medad and Gordis are playing us for suckers.", - while I cannot speak for Daniel, I, for one, don't think I expressed an unreserved support for the Two State Solution.  In fact, I have expressed support for the Three State Solution which, of course, demands that the territory of Jordan must be included in the land mass to be re-subdivided (not that partition ever worked or ever will).  While I am not a progressive liberal - although I have bled in my lifetime - I do think myself a liberal democrat and one who desires fairness.

It is grossly unfair for the territory of the former original Mandate for Palestine, which included TransJordan (see 1919 Versailles Peace Conference; 1920 San Remo Conference; and the 1922 League of Nations decision), to evolve into three states, two of which are Arab which ban Jews owning property or residing in them - apartheid, by the way - or perhaps even three Arabs states: Jordan, a kingdom of sorts, whose first monarch basically fled Saudi Arabia in 1920 to come assist rethrone his brother over Syria but ended up getting a Emirate from Winston Churchill while the brother was transferred to Iraq; Hamastan in Gaza and Fatahland in Judea and Samaria and one is Israel which must permit Arabs to reside therein (in "settlements"?), not pay full taxes, not serve in the Army or even a National Service program - all of which may contribute to the unjust, yes, discrimination they suffer, not to speak of Nakba Day festivities, rampant support for subversive Islamist elements, some stone throwing, et al.

And I certainly am upset that a Professor of Journalism would misquote me and thereby mispresent me in writing:

Yisrael Medad took a shot: He called Dershowitz a “freyer” or sucker. “Would you play chess in that fashion? Gamble even?” Medad asked.

What I did write about Dershowitz's suggestion was in terms of

...naive and even irrational. And not clever at all...To be generous, this is fairly amusing and at the same time, disappointing. One would have presumed a true defender of Israel to be more imaginative and, at the same time, more cognizant of the political realities of the conflict.

I think that's clear and English-understandable enough to be fathomed by a former editor of The New Republic and stands on its own as a political criticism of a bad idea.


I hope to take this up with Beinart next week.  In person.  In Jerusalem.

____________


Just now saw this from yesterday at the State Dept. briefing:

QUESTION: Yeah. Can we talk about --
MR. TONER: Yeah.
QUESTION: -- the Palestinian issue?
MR. TONER: Sure.
QUESTION: Today, one of the staunchest supporters of the Likud, Alan Dershowitz, a great legal mind, American legal mind, suggested that settlements ought to be frozen while talks are ongoing. Would you support such a proposition?
MR. TONER: Again, I think our focus remains on getting both sides back to the negotiating table as soon as possible. Again, we had this exchange of letters that was very positive.
QUESTION: Right.
MR. TONER: We want to see this back, but in terms of that specific proposal, what’s important for us is that both sides get back to the negotiating table where they can discuss all of these issues.

So, they really agree with Dershowitz either.

^

Dershowitz, With Hamas Assistance, Buries Goldstone

Here.

Excerpt:

Because it uncritically accepted the original Hamas claims of very few combatant deaths, the Goldstone Report was able to reach its flawed conclusion that the purpose of the operation must have been to kill civilians, not combatants.

Now that the truth has been admitted by the Hamas leadership -- that as many as 700 combatants were, in fact, killed -- the Goldstone Commission is obliged to reconsider its false conclusion and correct its deeply flawed report.
Richard Goldstone himself has repeatedly said that he hoped that new evidence will prove his conclusions wrong. Well, this new evidence -- a classic admission against interest -- does just that!

^

From "Natural Growth" to "Vertical Growth"?

I mentioned Jonathan Tobin's dust-up of Dershowitz, who had an op-ed in the WSJ and wrote this:

Rhetorically, the Obama team has definitely taken a harsher approach toward Israel compared to its tone during the campaign. But has there been a change in substance about Israel's security? In answering this question, it is essential to distinguish between several aspects of American policy.

First there are the settlements. The Bush administration was against expansion of West Bank settlements, but it was willing to accept a "natural growth" exception that implicitly permitted Israel to expand existing settlements in order to accommodate family growth. The Obama administration has so far shut the door on this exception.

I believe there is a logical compromise on settlement growth that has been proposed by Yousef Munayyer, a leader of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination League. "Obama should make it clear to the Israelis that settlers should feel free to grow their families as long as their settlements grow vertically, and not horizontally," he wrote last month in the Boston Globe. In other words, build "up" rather than "out." This seems fair to both sides, since it would preserve the status quo for future negotiations that could lead to a demilitarized Palestinian state and Arab recognition of Israel as a Jewish one -- results sought by both the Obama administration and Israel.

A majority of American-Jewish supporters of Israel, as well as Israelis, do not favor settlement expansion. Thus the Obama position on settlement expansion, whether one agrees with it or not, is not at all inconsistent with support for Israel. It may be a different position from that of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but it is not a difference that should matter to most Jewish voters who support both Mr. Obama and Israel.

Well, readers wrote some letters-to-the-editor:

Discussing the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank ("Has Obama Turned on Israel," July 2), Alan M. Dershowitz advocates a "vertical-growth" exception to an Israeli settlement freeze, believing that an increase in people, but not of land, should be an acceptable compromise.

In my opinion, both he and President Barack Obama, by neglecting to distinguish the issue of residency from that of sovereignty, have their eyes on the wrong ball. What makes the settlement issue so contentious, in fact, is the refusal of the Palestinian Authority to accept, and to guarantee the safety of, Jewish settlers on land that one day could be part of a Palestinian state. If Jews were able to live securely in West Bank villages under Palestinian control, just as more than 1.3 million Arabs live safely in Israel, what would there be to quarrel about?

Mitchell J. Rapoport
Wilton, Conn.

If President Obama wants Israel to completely freeze all settlement building, he needs to recognize the distinction between Jerusalem, the capital of the Israeli nation, and other settlements. Then he needs to make a demand of the Palestinians in exchange for abrogating a previous agreement. A suggestion would be an end to incitement on Palestinian TV. Mahmoud Abbas may control no segment of Palestinian society, but he does control his own media. So why on Palestinian TV recently were college members of his Fatah party bragging about how many Israelis they've killed, and trying to outdo Hamas in praise of wanton murder and terror?

Mr. Obama was elected to pursue America's interests, and if he feels he needs to make demands of Israel to do so, he is obligated. But those influential Zionists who supported Mr. Obama need to honestly deal with his one-sided threatening actions. If Israelis nearly unanimously feel he is endangering Israel, then please address their feelings -- don't skirt the issues.

Jonathan D. Reich
Lakeland, Fla.

Alan Dershowitz wrongly claims that most Israelis agree with President Obama's position on Jewish settlements. Mr. Obama's position is that there should be a total freeze on all Jewish construction throughout the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem, including even natural growth confined to the existing boundaries of such settlements -- and with that, most Israelis do not agree.

A Smith Research poll last month found that 69% of Israelis oppose freezing construction within large Jewish communities in the West Bank. Also, a major Israeli poll by the Maagar Mohot Survey Institute the same month shows that Israelis support by 56% to 37% Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's repudiation of President Obama's demand that Israel freeze all Jewish construction.

Morton A. Klein
National President
Zionist Organization of America
New York

Both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have castigated Israel over the "natural growth" of settlements in the West Bank. In doing so, they have willfully distorted the truth about past understandings between the U.S. and Israel. What is even more troubling is that the Obama administration has ignored the obvious lesson of Gaza -- that settlements are not the obstacle to peace.

For Jewish voters, the problem is not just the policies Mr. Obama has enacted, but the way he has singled out Israel and adopted the malevolent views of those who wish to undermine its legitimacy. Supporters of Israel who trusted his promises last year are justified in their feelings of betrayal.

Joel Pollak
Skokie, Ill.

For anyone paying attention, Barack Obama made it perfectly clear that he believed the Arabist/leftist narrative of the Middle East "crisis." Mr. Dershowitz and other American Jews had the right to vote for him anyway, and if they want they can now admit they were knuckleheads. But they are not entitled to claim that they've been betrayed.

Richard B. Belzer
Alexandria, Va.

Tobin Dusts Up Dershowitz

Jonathan Tobin opens his attack on Dershowitz thus:

The Obama administration’s decision to pick a quarrel with the Jewish state over settlements, Jerusalem, and how to deal with a nuclear Iran, are all light years away from the down-the-line support for Israel that candidate Obama and his Jewish surrogates articulated throughout the campaign. This leaves those Democrats who spent 2008 vouching for Barack Obama’s bona fides as a supporter of Israel, with, as they used to say on “I Love Lucy,” a lot of ’splainin’ to do.

Read on.

Finkelstein Corrected in NYTimes

Finkelstein needed to have a NYTimes story on his dispute with Dershowitz corrected:-

Correction: April 14, 2007

An article in The Arts on Thursday about a dispute in which Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor, is trying to block Norman Finkelstein, a political science professor, from gaining tenure at DePaul University in Chicago included an incorrect reference to DePaul that Mr. Finkelstein attributed to a dean there who opposes tenure for him. While DePaul is a Roman Catholic university, it is not Jesuit, and Mr. Finkelstein acknowledges that the dean, Charles Suchar, did not say that it is. The article also misstated Mr. Suchar’s middle initial. It is S, not E.

A Bitter Spat Over Ideas, Israel and Tenure

If the longstanding fight between two professors, Alan Dershowitz and Norman Finkelstein, was under the jurisdiction of family court, a judge could issue restraining orders and forbid inflammatory statements. But, alas, this nasty and zealously pursued feud is taking place in scholarly precincts, so each protagonist is continuing his campaign, unhampered, to destroy the other’s professional reputation and career.

In the latest round, first reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Mr. Dershowitz, a law professor at Harvard and a prominent defender of Israel, is trying to derail Mr. Finkelstein’s bid for tenure at DePaul University in Chicago. He has sent a blast of e-mail messages to faculty and administrators there accusing Mr. Finkelstein of shoddy scholarship, lying and anti-Semitism.

More here.