Harvard's Dershowitz Challenges 'Israel Lobby' Authors to Public Debate
by Jim Brown
April 28, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A well-known attorney and Harvard Law School professor says the publication of a controversial new paper on the U.S. relationship with Israel has resulted in an attack on the American Jewish community. The essay by John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt, dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, is called "The Israel Lobby." Among other things, the essay accuses Israel of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and claims American foreign policy in the Middle East is dangerously influenced by a powerful lobby of American Jews and supporters of Israel.
Professor Alan Dershowitz of the Harvard Law School, a well-known lawyer and author of the book The Case for Israel (John Wiley & Sons, 2003), has written a 40-page critique of "The Israel Lobby." He says Mearsheimer and Walt's essay contains shoddy logic and numerous factual inaccuracies and omissions, and that it also takes certain quotes out of context.
Also, Dershowitz contends, the paper's two authors "borrow so many of their quotes and their arguments from hate sites -- from Neo-Nazi hate sites, from radical left hate sites, from Islamic extremist hate sites -- that you wonder what would motivate people to put together this assortment of recycled garbage. It just is shocking to me."
According to the celebrated attorney and legal scholar, Mearsheimer and Walt had credibility before they wrote this piece, but they have since lost it. The two essay writers have withheld comment on their paper. Ironically, Dershowitz asserts, the authors of "The Israel Lobby" claim supporters of the Jewish State "don't want open debate on issues involving Israel," yet the professors will not even debate their own essay in print.
"I've challenged them at their own schools," the Harvard Law professor notes, "at the Kennedy School, at the University of Chicago, [to] debate me, look me in the eye, tell me that because I am a proud Jew who is a critical supporter of Israel -- and I'm often critical of particular Israeli policies, as anybody should be free to be -- that because of that I'm a disloyal American or I have dual loyalty."
But his invitations to discuss the ideas posited in "The Israel Lobby" have been in vain, Dershowitz says. "They won't debate me." Nevertheless, he insists, "I'm going to debate them, by the way. I'm going to have a debate, either at the Kennedy School or the Law School, and there'll be two empty chairs."
Professor Dershowitz says the people praising "The Israel Lobby" the loudest are the "Neo-Nazis on the extreme, hard right and the haters on the hard left." Besides accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and making other controversial assertions, the essay by Mearsheimer and Walt argues that supporting the Jewish State is against America's best interests.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
