A Challenge to Professor Hanson by Alan M. Dershowitz 1:27pm Wed Oct 2 '02 I hereby request an invitation from the students of Winthrop House to conduct a debate, either with Hanson present or with an empty chair on which the petition that he signed would be featured. print article In my 38 years of teaching at Harvard Law School, I don´t recall ever writing in praise of any action by a Harvard president, but this time I must congratulate President Lawrence H. Summers for his willingness to say out loud what many of us in the Harvard community have long believed: namely, that singling out Israel, among all the countries in the world, for divestment, is an action which is anti-Semitic in effect, if not in intent. A recent open letter by one of the signatories made it clear that he regards Israel as the "pariah" state, a word historically used by anti-Semites to characterize the Jewish people. As an advocate and practitioner of human rights throughout the world, I can confidently assert that Israel´s record on human rights is among the best, especially among nations that have confronted comparable threats. Though far from perfect, Israel has shown extraordinary concern for avoiding civilian casualties in its half-century effort to protect its civilians from terrorism. Jordan killed more Palestinians in a single month than Israel has between 1948 and the present. Israel has the only independent judiciary in the entire Middle East. Its Supreme Court, one of the most highly regarded in the world, is the only court in the Middle East from which an Arab or a Muslim can expect justice, as many have found in winning dozens of victories against the Israeli government, the Israeli military and individual Israeli citizens. There is no more important component in the protection of human rights and civil liberties than an independent judiciary willing to stand up to its own government. I challenge the proponents of divestment to name a court in any Arab or Muslim country that is comparable to the Israeli Supreme Court. Israel is the only country in the region that has virtually unlimited freedom of speech. Any person in Israel, whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian, can criticize the Israeli government and its leaders. No citizen of any other Middle Eastern or Muslim state can do that without fear of imprisonment or death. Israel is the only country that has openly confronted the difficult issue of protecting the civil liberties of the ticking bomb terrorist. The Israeli Supreme Court recently ruled that despite the potential benefits of employing non-lethal torture to extract information, the tactic is illegal. Brutal torture, including lethal torture, is commonplace in nearly every other Middle Eastern and Muslim country. Indeed, American authorities sometimes send suspects to Egypt, Jordan and the Philippines precisely because they know that they will be tortured in those countries. Nor is Israel the only country that is occupying lands claimed by others. China, Russia, Turkey, Iraq, Spain, France and numerous other countries control not only land, but people who seek independence. Indeed, among these countries Israel is the only one that has offered statehood, first in 1948 when the Palestinians rejected the UN partition that would have given them a large, independent state and chose instead to invade Israel. Again in the year 2000 Palestinians were offered a state, rejected it and employed terrorism. There are, of course, difficult issues to be resolved in the Middle East. These include the future of the settlements, the establishment of Palestinian self-governance and the prevention of terrorism. These issues will require compromise on all sides. Members of the Harvard community must be free to criticize Israel when they disagree with its policies or actions, as they criticize any other country in the world whose record is not perfect. But to single out the Jewish state of Israel, as if it were the worst human rights offender, is bigotry pure and simple. It would be comparable to singling out a black nation for de-legitimation without mentioning worse abuses by white nations. Those who sign the divestment petition should be ashamed of themselves. If they are not, it is up to others to shame them. Among those who signed this immoral petition was Winthrop House Master Paul Hanson. I wrote to Prof. Hanson challenging him to debate me in the Common Room of Winthrop House about his decision to sign the petition. He refused, citing "other priorities". I can imagine few priorities more pressing than to justify to his students why he is willing to single out Israel for special criticism. Accordingly, I hereby request an invitation from the students of Winthrop House to conduct such a debate, either with Hanson present or with an empty chair on which the petition that he signed would be featured. Universities should encourage widespread debate and discussion about divisive and controversial issues. A Housemaster who peremptorily signs a petition and then hides behind "other priorities" does not serve the interests of dialogue and education. I hope that Hanson will accept my challenge, and that if he does not, that I will be invited by his students to help fill the educational gap left by the cowardice of those who have signed this petition and refuse to defend their actions in public debate. Let me propose an alternative to singling out Israel for divestment: let Harvard choose nations for investment in the order of the human rights records. If that were done, investment in Israel would increase dramatically, while investments in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Philippines, Indonesia, the Palestinian Authority and most other countries of the world would decrease markedly. www.israelnationalnews.com/article.html3?... add your comments Source file

What planet? by jackslucid 3:01pm Wed Oct 2 '02 jackslucid@hotmail.com print comment I don't know what planet you are from, but you don't seem to be able to grasp the facts of this one. Just by saying that there are other countries that have worse human rights records than israel does NOT excuse the human rights record of israel. The Palestinians offered a state in 2000 that they rejected? I think you'll find that they were offered a bit of a state, which became less each time the israeli authorities decided that they could no longer agree with what they signed ... negotiated on the basis of 22% of Palestine, offered 17% in contract, gave 11% in press conferences, released 6% under conditions, reduced to 3% after land grab by settlers. An increase in excess of 2000% in ILLEGAL israeli settlements since sharon went with a thousand soldiers to cause a riot at the Dome of the Rock, which was the actual begining of the 'new' troubles. Good at killing unarmed children with high tec. amerikan weapons ... bad at telling the truth and respecting non jewish life. And the only reason that israel today operates a limited democracy with limited options for redress under law for some of its citizens is because some of those citizens fought tooth and nail against the ignorant and sly intentions of rascists, zionazis and bigots like yourself who fail to see that you don't have enough wool to pull over everybodies eyes. No justice no peace ... add your comments

Lets see the Facts by Ben 3:29pm Wed Oct 2 '02 print comment Where exactly did you get the information that Israel offered 3% of the land to the Palestinians at Camp David? There sure are enough Palestinian intellectuals today, former government ministers, and even Arafat himself, claiming the Camp David rejection was a huge mistake. But if you start with this idea that the Palestinians have already given away 78% of "historic Palestine" (which they contolled exactly when? After the Turks? After the British? While under Egyptian and Jordanian occupation? When?) then you have to be fair to all parties in the region. Jordan, after all, sits on more than half of this "Historic Palestine." Why don't you pressure them to pony up some land for their brothers they stole it from? But I do agree with you on your first point. Just because Israel has a better record then some does not excuse it from all standards. But again, lets be fair. Israel's mistakes do not make the Palestinians angels either. Lets hold them responsible for their crimes. It is not enough to just condemn suicide bombings. Lets make a realistic assessment of what we are dealing with when we say Palestinian. add your comments

Comment by * 4:13pm Wed Oct 2 '02 print comment A few exerpts and comments: "anti-Semitic in effect, if not in intent". - Does this make any sense? "A recent open letter by one of the signatories made it clear that he regards Israel as the "pariah" state, a word historically used by anti-Semites to characterize the Jewish people". - A state is one specific thing. A nation is another. A state has to do with territory defined by boarderes. I do not think the Jewish people can be confused with a piece of land. "As an advocate and practitioner of human rights throughout the world" - I would ask you not to claim this, untill you have read the UN universal declaration on Human Rights. Israel breaks: art. 1, art. 4, art 5, art 6, art 7, art 9, art. 10, art 11(1), art. 12, art 13(1 and 2), art. 15, art 17, art 20, art 21(2), art 22, art 23(2), art. 26. ....there are 30 Human Rights in total. Israel breaks many of them as a consequense of the occupation. If you are an advocate of human rights, you are certainly doing a very shitty job in this case. Getting paid? "Israeli Supreme Court recently ruled that despite the potential benefits of employing non-lethal torture to extract information, the tactic is illegal". - What a grand system. Art 5:" No one shall be subjected to torture or to druel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment". Israel goes ahead and does it anyways, even brings it up to a debate. That is in Human Right circles dispicable. In your cricle I do not know. add your comments

Pure Racism & Jewish Professor by Dr. Eliahu Rabkover 10:53pm Wed Oct 2 '02 print comment I wonder if Professor Hansen knows from the first hand WHAT is our eternal Judaic racist systhemology. I would advise him to try to make a Fundation which shall allocate a few bucks to study the psycho-social pathology of our Judaic racism through the thousands of years of the theocratical apartheid with the institutionalized offers of our children ( the Semitic ones, no less pure than the children of Palestinians ) to the shtetele idols of our power/money thirsty rabblarians. When interviewed in private the little Fuehrers of our without any measure nobelized university circles could provide a fantastic and at the same time pragmatic and rational information. Judaism has heavily influenced through dollar-family and carrier-psychosis factors the 24/7 life of American Jewry which may be considered as much historically intact as some rare German Nazi organisations or the exciting lezards of Gallapago archipel. Professor Dershowitz and thinking alike real Jewish American academicians could add to the so needed further purification of cornered young Jewish generations by answering questionaries posted on Internet ( under aliases, for the reason of academical privacy ) with the accent on their daily style of life, their families's congenital problems, their existing sexual universum, their psychic development into uncontrolled haters of the Other, whom they called in the sneezing way thousands years long only Goyyim and Shikses. They got known results... We need to collect and to study such material. I think we shall find a lot of common traites with the early Gestapo or the late CheKa mentality and family life. Our nice Jewish textiles or dentists are of no use as they have learned in their lifes only the art of cutting in a very clever way different tissues or extracting with a satisfying level of pain the Jewish teeth also. They did not learn to formulate in full academical honesty. That's why we must study American professors. The European or Russian or Arab or Chinese would not understand what I'm talking about. Only American professors shall not be ashamed to show us, poor provincials, their real nature. And why not?..After the results will be summed up who knows what shall we see on the screen... Percentage after percentage... But not as usual. Do not forget, the KuKluxKlan members cannot analyze their internal needs and secret thoughts the way the really pure Jewish academicians do. I could assure you the surprises no circus in the entire world would be able to provide. add your comments

Alan M. Dershowitz is a fraud by Paul Tremblay 5:08am Thu Oct 3 '02 phthenry@earthlink.net print comment Alan: Instead of trying to debate professor Hanson, why don't you debate Noam Chomsky? Some years agao, Dershowitz tried to smear Chomsky in an article in the *Boston Globe* and got caught outright lying. Dershowitz calls himself "an advocate and practitioner of human rights throughout the world." He then praises Israel's Supreme court for making torture illegal. He contrasts Israel with other Islamic countries that practice torture. What a hypocrite and liar! He himself is an advocate of torture, and has written articles saying it should be used. That disqualifies him as a "practioner of human rights." Further, although Israel has technically outlawed torture, it still uses it against Palestinians, as human rights groups and the UN have discovered. Desshowitz is too dishonest to mention any of these facts. Deshowitz mentions all of the human rights that Israels enjoy. This argument is facile. No knowledgable person would deny that Isralis have many more civil rights than citizens in countires like China. A more honest assessment of Israelis human rights record would have included its treatment of the people in the occupied territories. In this count, Israel is guilty of breaking almost every aspect of the fourth Geneval convention. Israel has stollen land and water, has imposed collective punishment, has tortured and murdered--all so some fanatical Zionists (Desshowitz is one of them) can have eretz-Israel. Perhaps if enough people write Noam Chomsky, a debate can be set up between the two. I would love to see it, though I don't doubt that Dershowitz would find some reason to avoid such a debate add your comments

To indymedia by * 2:47pm Thu Oct 3 '02 print comment I wrote a response yesterday that seems to have been removed. I would like to know why. Most of the response was the citing of Human Rights articles that one can argue that Israel breaks. Is this too disturbing? The response came after "Let's see the facts" by "Ben". I would appreciate a rapid response. Thank you. add your comments

what a difference a few years make... by alan as a legal fraud/ 11:22pm Thu Oct 3 '02 print comment A few years back I watched a talk show hosted by Liza Gibbons. In it she interviewd alan dershowitz on moral practices in the legal profession. As I, remember alan claimed that everyone IS innocent until proven guilty in a court of law and therefore he as a Jewish lawyer would gladly represent Adolph Hitler. add your comments