A wan-looking Alan Dershowitz near UN earlier today (Mondoweiss)

Anyone think Alan Dershowitz is lookin’ might peaked, a bit white around the gills perhaps?  Anything wrong, Alan?  Israel’s increasingly isolated status on the world stage couldn’t be bringin’ ya down, could it?  I read that Dershowitz is one of Israel’s most critical advisors regarding relations with the U.S.  In fact, Bibi offered him Israel’s UN ambassadorship a few months ago.  Wonder why Dersh turned it down?  I would think standing up before the UN and telling off all those friggin’ anti-Semit’n would’ve tickled his fancy.

So no surprise that this portrait from a Mondoweiss photo montage finds him near the UN earlier today.  He’s probably pumping talking points to Bibi as he’s speaking on the UN rostrum.  Didn’t seem to help much though.

Yes, I kid you not. President of Israel.  The guy is a pure megalomaniac.  Dersh melech Yisrael, Chai, Chai v’kayam (“Long live Dersh King of Israel…”)

On a related subject, this is the first news that Dershowitz may be considering Bibi’s urgent offer to become Israel’s chief UN flack otherwise known as ambassador:

Last Saturday night, Dershowitz told Channel 1 (Israel Television ) that he was considering Netanyahu’s offer to become Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations. A week earlier, he spoke at Tel Aviv University, where he was awarded an honorary doctorate. After his talk, the actor Alex Ansky told him, “You must be our next president.” To which Dershowitz replied, “That’s a job I won’t turn down.”

A commenter below with a totally straight face wrote the following:

I can’t think of anyone who would make a better president of Israel.  I think that he would lend the office all the dignity it deserves.

Her second sentence unintentionally conveys all the irony necessary when regarding the possibility of this political car crash.

H/t Didi Remez.

Sasha Polakow-Suransky writes tellingly in Foreign Policy and Huffington Post about the current smear campaign against Judge Goldstone mounted by the Israeli government with the help of willing collaborating journalists like Tehiya Barak, Jeffrey Goldberg and Jonathan Chait. It was Barak who opened the floodgates with his Yediot Achronot hit-piece, undoubtedly inspired by material developed by the Lieberman-Ayalon foreign ministry.  Don’t ya just love the incestuous relationship the hacks in government ministries have with the hacks in the newsroom?

Since Barak claims that his story is a “special Yediot investigation,” let’s do the same thing it claimed to do to Goldstone’s record and shine a light on its journalistic claims. Well, it falls short right from the beginning when it claims that Goldstone “asserted that Israel committed war crimes.” He did nothing of the sort. What he DID assert was that his commission had amassed enough evidence that there MAY have been war crimes committed by BOTH sides that the charges should be investigated formally by both sides themselves.  Goldstone said many times that he was not a finder of fact as a judge would be in a formal legal proceeding.

The Yediot hit-piece continues with this breathless commentary:

The man who authored the Goldstone Report criticizing the IDF’s actions during Operation Cast Lead took an active part in the racist policies of one of the cruelest regimes of the 20th century.

During his tenure as sitting as judge in the appellant court during the 1980s and 1990s sentenced dozens of blacks mercilessly to their death.

This claim too falls by the wayside. Goldstone, as an appellate judge, reviewed sentences handed down by lower courts. And as such courts function everywhere, he could only overturn a verdict if he found a flaw in procedure or the earlier ruling.  Appellate judges don’t make law. They apply existing law. And in the rare instances in which they do innovate and plow new ground, they must do so in the context of the legal and legislative system in which function.

Not to mention that Goldstone only actually sentenced two individuals to death. The other 26 cases were appeals in which he upheld a lower court ruling.

The Goldstone smearmeisters have it all figured out with their 20-20 hindsight view of history. Goldstone’s responsibility was either to overturn capital punishment or resign his judgeship and emigrate from South Africa. Don’t you just love it when 20 years after the fact the smug hypocritical moralists come along and give advice about how others should behave in order to retain their moral purity?

Here Barak accuses Goldstone of committing the heresy of writing in favor of capital punishment, a crime committed–surprise, surprise–by most judges in this country who’ve ever affirmed such a sentence:

Goldstone sentenced at least 28 black defendants to death. Most of them were found guilty of murder and sought to appeal the verdict. In those days, he actually made sure he showed his support for the execution policy, writing in one verdict that it reflects society’s demands that a price be paid for crimes it rightfully views as frightening.

We’re going to have Supreme Court confirmation hearings soon for Elena Kagan. Would these same hypo-moralists demand that Kagan renounce capital punishment in her hearings? And if she couldn’t get four of her colleagues to agree that capital punishment should be overturned should she resign her seat and leave the country in disgust?

And keep in mind that Barak is in high moral dudgeon about South Africa’s policy of capital punishment when his own army regularly executes Palestinian militants without any trial. Is that the pot calling the kettle or what?

Here is another claim about which the only proper response is–not so fast, Barak:

Even when it came to far less serious offenses, Goldstone sided through and through with the racist policies of the Apartheid regime.

Actually, Barak is abysmally ignorant of the real history of the era as corrected by Polakow-Suraksy, who argues that the critics:

…Fail to acknowledge Goldstone’s crucial role in facilitating South Africa’s transition to democracy by chairing the investigative Commission on Public Violence and Intimidation from 1991-1994. Among other things, this commission exposed the apartheid government’s links to a so-called Third Force–made up of government security and ex-security operatives seeking to derail peaceful democratic elections.

The Goldstone Commission’s revelations outraged Nelson Mandela, leading him to conclude that F.W. de Klerk’s government had organized covert death squads…Goldstone’s work earned him Mandela’s respect and, in 1994, South Africa’s first black president appointed Goldstone to the Constitutional Court…

Further, it was Goldstone’s landmark ruling that overturned the Homelands policy that was a bulwark of the apartheid system. Amazing how an ignorant journalist with an axe to grind can reduce history to a steaming heap of rubble.

U.S. Federal Judge Thelton Henderson went to South Africa in the 1980s and according to a close friend of his who wrote me, discovered this about Judge Richard Goldstone:

Thelton first went to South Africa in the 1980s. In fact, being African-American, he was detained there and endured a very unpleasant experience. He will tell you about black leaders repeatedly telling him there were three good judges in the country, and the best of the three was a remarkable man, Richard Goldstone. In addition to being regarded for his fairness and justice in the courtroom, he was known by prisoners for his regular visits to the prisons. He went regularly because he was concerned about their being tortured and about their not getting medical care. (Another friend has told me about this aspect of Richard and that some black prisoners felt he literally saved their lives as a result of his visits to prisons.)

This is the very same judge who “sided through and through” with the apartheid regime. Shameful.

And then you have the outright lies of Alan Dershowitz which Yediot quotes as if they were halacha l’Moshe mi’Sinai:

“Goldstone took a job as an apartheid judge. He allowed dozens of black people who were unfairly tried to be executed,”

How does Dersh know they were “unfairly tried?” Did he do any research into the cases? Or does he argue that anyone sentenced to death under apartheid was tried “unfairly.” And would Dersh concede the same about Palestinian civilians killed by the IDF during the Gaza war? No, of course he wouldn’t. That’s his double-standard. He can denounce the sins of apartheid with clean hands and a clear conscience. But he refuses to acknowledge any sins of Occupation.

Dersh then goes on to quote his infamous comparison of Goldstone to Mengele, which I’ve eviscerated in a previous post:

“You know, a lot of people say we just followed the law, German judges… That’s what Mengele said too. That was Mengele’s defense and that was what everybody said in Nazi Germany. ‘We just followed the law.’ When you are in an apartheid country like South Africa, you don’t follow the law,” Dershowitz added.

I pointed out in that post that Mengele never mounted such a defense because he was never prosecuted for his crimes.

Here Dershowitz also uses a rhetorical smearing technique he accuses the far left of using against Israel: the Nazi charge. When you want to pull out all the stops and prove you have absolutely no sense of historical proportion liken your opponent or the regime your opponent supports to Nazis.

Was apartheid evil? Certainly. Was it worthy of comparison to Nazis? I don’t know. Perhaps as worthy as comparing Israel to Nazis. If you’re uncomfortable with the abuse of one historical analogy you should be uncomfortable with the other. Did South Africa commit genocide against Blacks? I don’t think so. Crimes yes. Injustice yes. But genocide?

Personally, I think someone ought to give Alan Dershowitz a Valium and get him to calm down a bit. He really does a grave disservice to his side every time he opens his mouth.

Both Barak and the Israel foreign ministry make a telling admission in this quotation from a ministry statement about the Yediot report (and this is why I believe this is an orchestrated government sponsored campaign):

A Foreign Ministry official referred to the investigation as “explosive PR material”

“PR material?” Really. Is that what working in the Israeli foreign ministry has become? PR flackery? Hasbara? Is that what this campaign against Goldstone is all about? Two-bit fakery?

The Yediot story quotes Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin making this specious claim against the South African jurist:

“Such a person should not be allowed to lecture a democratic state defending itself against terrorists, who are not subject to the criteria of international moral norms…”

The actual truth of the matter is that Goldstone did not quarrel with Israel’s right to defend itself or respond to the rocket attacks by Palestinian “terrorists,” which he conceded might be war crimes.  What he DID concern himself with was the Israeli attacks which killed 1,100 civilians, 300 of them children.

Menachem Being, Moshe Dayan and Yitzhak Rabin fete South African prime minister John Vorster in 1976 (Sa'ar Ya'acov)

The enormous contribution that Polakow-Surasky makes to this debate is his revelation of the deep ties between Israel and apartheid era South Africa.  I’m just beginning to read his new book, The Unspoken Alliance.  It uncovers the hitherto secret dealings between the two nations which brought much-needed cash to Israel in return for nuclear weapons technology and advanced weapons systems which South Africa used in its wars in Namibia and Angola.  In fact, Israel was the apartheid nation’s primary arms supplier ($1.5 billion worth in 1988 alone) and violated international sanctions to do so.  South Africa was Israel’s single largest customer for military exports.  Overall, the former country was Israel’s second or third largest trading partner after the U.S.  And this during a period when there were strict international sanctions in place to prevent precisely such trade.

In 1980, the UN voted for an oil embargo against South Africa much as Israel is urging the world body to do against Iran.  Where was the Israeli representative at the time?  Absent.  Is that how Israel showed its opposition to apartheid?  By failing to cast its vote when it had a chance?

So what you have is a current Israeli government hypocritically complaining about the alleged collaboration of one South African Jewish judge with a system which the entire Israeli military establishment at the same time was propping up with all the might at its disposal.  Who committed the worse sin?  Richard Goldstone or the State of Israel?  Was it worse for Goldstone to allow blacks to be sent to their execution or that Israel expedited South Africa’s development of a nuclear weapon?

We complain about the threat of nuclear proliferation if Iran gets a nuclear bomb.  We complain about Pakistani scientists giving WMD secrets to North Korea?  What about Israeli’s role in exporting such nuclear technology to South Africa?  We complain that Russia and China aren’t willing to coöperate with punishing sanctions against the Iranian regime to prevent it from getting nuclear weapons.  What about Israel’s own surreptitious violation of similar sanctions?

And what is Israel’s defense for its actions then?  We had few friends.  It was a relationship of convenience.  We had something they needed and vice versa.  We did what we had to do.  And is Israel’s excuse much different or superior to Goldstone’s own defense of his actions?

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Shorter Dershowitz: the Arabs make us kill their babies and then use them as propaganda against us.

A remarkable video offered by settler affiliated Arutz Sheva provides a peek into the jumbled mind of Israel’s foremost hasbarist fantasist.  Dersh was speaking at a conference organized by Tel Aviv University the same weekend that he received an honorary degree for his valiant defense of Israel against the noxious anti-Israel hordes.  Note the ironies and outright lies screaming out from the page.  Here are some salient quotes:

…The world should be praising Israel.  Has any country in history ever contributed as much to the world as Israel in 62 years?…In 62 years, the number of lives it has saved…The world should be coming to Israel and saying: Thank you, thank you, thank you instead of trying to delegitimate [sic].

…A variation on Holocaust denial is central to the anti-Israel critique.

…There is a direct connection between [World War II-era Palestinian Nazi supporter] Haj al Husseini and some of the organizations today which seek Israel’s delegitimation. [sic]  People [on college campuses] just close their ears [when they hear this argument].  It’s as if they’re on Planet Chomsky.

Then there is military delegitimation. [sic]  It is such a clever–if it weren’t such a horrible technique.  Again, I have a name for it.  I call it Hamas and Hezbollah’s “dead baby strategy.”  It sounds cruel.  But it’s very, very simple.  The most powerful image in the media is a mother holding a dead baby.

What Hamas and Hezbollah know is that if they fire enough rockets at Israeli children…they know eventually any democracy will have to respond.  How do you respond?  You try to get the rocket firings. [sic]  And where do they put the rockets?  You wouldn’t know it if you read the Goldstone Report…but right in the middle of civilian populations.  The goal is to induce Israel to kill as many babies as possible.  The object is to have Al Jazeera there to photograph the dead baby.  You can’t hear what I’m saying when you have those powerful visual images.

As to which country [Israel] has the best record of protecting civilians–not the second or third or fourth–but the best record…And when the worst is called the best and the best is called the worst nothing can be a greater defeat for human rights.

Our greatest enemies are not the Islamist extremists.  They help our case.  The problem is Jews.  Jews and Israelis. [applause]  It’s this argument by  ethnic identification.  You get a man like Norman Finkelstein who has never identified as a Jew.  A fervent anti-Jew in addition to being anti-Israel.  Never identified as a Jew.  But for purposes of attacking Israel he says, “I’m Jewish and therefore you have to give me more credibility.”

Among other ludicrous statements he made, he called Tel Aviv University Prof. Rachel Giora, a “censorial Stalinist” because he alleges that in supporting BDS she supports the stifling of free speech.

Mitchell Plitnick perhaps said it best:

Never think for a second that Alan Dershowitz has sunk as low as he can go. He’ll always surprise you.

Neal Sher, a former Justice Department lawyer and Aipac director, has demanded that the U.S. government refuse admittance to Richard Goldstone as an undesirable.  Of course, the media outlet that announced this development is the home of pro-Israel incitement, the Jerusalem Post:

In a letter sent to US officials, Neal Sher, a former executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said that recently disclosed information about Goldstone’s apartheid-era rulings raised questions about whether he was eligible to enter the United States. The letter was sent to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, US Attorney-General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Individuals who admit to acts that constitute a crime of moral turpitude¨are ineligible to enter the US, Sher charged. The recent public revelations, to which Goldstone has reportedly admitted, would appear to fit within this provision. At a minimum, there is ample basis for federal authorities to initiate an investigation into this matter, Sher said.

…In his judicial position, according to Sher, Goldstone was instrumental in effectuating and legitimizing a regime universally known for its widespread human rights abuses.

Of course, all of this is a heap of steaming manure.  What I always enjoy in reading such attacks from the likes of Dershowitz and Sher is their utter indifference to black South Africans during the apartheid regime.  All of a sudden when Israel’s ox is being gored (in their view) , the pro-Israel crowd goes into high dudgeon on behalf of a group of people for whom they could previously have cared less.  You’ll also hear nary a peep out of these professional hasbarists about the nuclear and military assistance provided by Israel to the very same apartheid regime which was executing many more than the 28 victims of South African justice whose capital cases Richard Goldstone reviewed on appeal.

You also won’t hear a peep out of Sher-Dershowitz about the critical rulings Goldstone wrote which struck down the homelands policy, which was the keystone of the racist system.  It was this ruling that most experts agree spelled the beginning of the end of apartheid.  You won’t hear a peep from these pro-Israel jackals about Judge Goldstone’s stellar work on international courts seeking to redress the crimes committed in Rwanda and Kosovo.

The truth is that neither Dershowitz or Sher have the right to shine Goldstone’s shoes (I guess people don’t do this anymore, but you get the idea).  If anyone is ‘undesirable’ it is Sher and not Goldstone.  But as a citizen, we have to suffer Sher’s presence.  Having Judge Goldstone in this country, where he is teaching at Georgetown University, does honor to us and our justice system.  Neal Sher…not so much.

Make no mistake, this is incitement of the lowest form.  It should be impermissible for a responsible Jewish leader to make such statements and retain the respect of his colleagues in the leadership.  At least the Post does acknowledge that Sher’s ethical record has plenty of blemishes which make you wonder how he retains any credibility criticizing Judge Goldstone’s:

Sher had his own brush with trouble later, when he was investigated for misappropriating funds from the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims.

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Here’s the latest from Dershowitz Watch: not content to label Goldstone an “evil, evil man,” and to claim his UN report on the Gaza massacre was a “blood libel,” and that the eminent jurist is a moser (betrayer of Jews), Dersh has now likened the him to Josef Mengele.  The context for the charge is a new line of attack which the hasbarists have developed which charges Goldstone with being an “apartheid judge” who “just followed orders” in personally hanging innocent South African blacks.

Let’s put this in context: in a country like, say the U.S., in which capital punishment is the law of the land, it is very difficult for a judge to single-handedly overrule a law that others have deemed constitutional, and which perhaps is even commonly accepted and popular among citizens.  Imagine, for example, Elena Kagan in her confirmation hearings saying she finds executions morally repugnant and will do everything in her power to render them unconstitutional.  Would she end up on the Supreme Court?  No.

Judge Goldstone was an appeals court judge who ruled on 28 capital cases in which he upheld the punishment.  Only in two cases, did he himself render the first judgment of death (in the other cases he upheld an earlier sentence).  Alan Dershowitz is a criminal lawyer.  Never been a judge (and likely never will be after this outburst).  Likely knows next to nothing about South African law.  Easy for him to say what Judge Goldstone should’ve done 20 years ago during the apartheid era.

Of course, Dershowitz, being the intellectual slimeball that he is, omits the fact that Judge Goldstone delivered the critical legal ruling that began the undermining of the apartheid system.  No mention of the bravery it took for a single judge to write a ruling that he knew would be detested by the entire white power structure which had appointed him.  No mention of the fear he might’ve felt from the security services who were known to deal with the regime’s enemies rather harshly.

For this disgusting excuse for a human being and Jew to compare Richard Goldstone to Josef Mengele is a new, all-time low.  In this interview, he says that Goldstone’s defense of his actions regarding capital cases is like “Josef Mengele” saying “he was just following orders.” As Israeli blogger Yossi Gurvitz noted to me in considerably saltier language, Mengele never gave such an excuse since he escaped from Europe and was never captured or tried for his crimes. Dershowitz really means the Nazis brought before the Nuremberg tribunal or Adolf Eichmann. But hey, why let a few facts stand in Dersh’s way?   At long last, does this man have no dignity, no shame, not an ounce of human decency left in him?

This is the very man who Tel Aviv University honored with a doctorate last week, thanking him for his outstanding work on behalf of human rights. Thank God, 33 members of the history faculty took exception to the award.   This is man welcome in the pages of the Jerusalem Post and websites like Huffington Post.  A man lionized in synagogues and on the Jewish lecture circuit.  Welcome at academic conferences.  Finally, a man who likens one of most distinguished international jurists in the field of human rights and the laws of war to the Nazi “Angel of Death.”

Will a Jewish leader not finally take a stand and say enough, he is not welcome in my synagogue or before my organization.  If some other Jewish group wants to honor him be my guest.  But not here.

I can understand some Israel lobby groups saying we can’t choose our friends since we don’t have enough of them. That sort of embrace of Dershowitz I find repugnant, but at least I can understand it. However, for truly liberal groups like a university or websites like Huffington Post to lap up the slime that oozes out of his mouth is truly repellant to me.

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Dersh from the Age of Disco

Tel Aviv University will confer an honorary doctorate on Alan Dershowitz tomorrow Saturday, May 8th at 9PM at Smolarz Auditorium on campus.  Perhaps you good reader would like to speculate on the particular specialty for which the Dersh will be honored.  Perhaps Israel’s leading hasbarist?  Perhaps as the Diaspora’s leading critic of the Israeli NGO community?  Perhaps this is his sop to Israel after rejecting Bibi’s plan for him to become Israel’s UN ambassador?

I only regret that I just heard about this shandeh tonight.  I would certainly have tried to provide Dershowitz a bit of Jewish hachnasat orchim for his ceremony if I’d known earlier.

From the University’s press office [readers are warned to take anti-nausea medication before reading this]:

Professor Dershowitz…is one of the truly great American lawyers…He receives this honor because of his reputation as a sterling jurist, a well-respected public figure, a true and dear friend of Israel, international authority in criminal law, for his twenty-year advocacy for civil and human rights and for being a fanatical defender of them, and for his hundreds of articles and books which merited wide distribution.

[He receives this honor] as a sign of appreciation for his passionate and convincing defense of the State of Israel in his books, his interviews in the international media and university campuses; and for his unique ability to fight anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism with sophisticated argumentation; and for his active and thought-provoking discussion of the Middle East conflict.

Tel Aviv U. should indeed be proud of its choice.  Apparently, if you call respected Jewish jurists mosrim and indirectly incite fellow Jews to deface the homes of rabbis you’re worthy of an honorary doctorate.  Can I nominate a few excellent candidates for future such honors?  What about Jack Teitel, Asher Weissgan, Moshe Feiglin, Steven Plaut, Meir Dagan, Yuval Diskin, Dan Halutz, Doron Almog, Dov Weisglass.  Each of these individuals has broken new ground in the struggle to turn Israel from a marginal democracy into a full-blown society anchored in hate for fellow Jews and Palestinian citizens.  They and Dershowitz and the University would be in convivial company.

Tel Aviv’s board of trustees is indeed showing the way to the rest of the Jewish world and we’re proud of the good taste they’ve shown.  If you’re in Tel Aviv tomorrow night perhaps you can give Dersh the raspberry for me.  I’d be there myself if there was a plane fast enough to get me there.

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I bet you didn’t know I accused Alan Dershowitz of trying to kill Michael Lerner.  Neither did I.  But hell, that’s what the Dersh would have you believe in his latest ripping lie-filled yarn at HuffPo.  He’s back there for the second time in six days, this time claiming Michael Lerner is trying to silence him.

Editors would do the man a favor by restraining his written output.  Every time he writes he lies.  And often when he writes he repeats the same lie he’s already published, which only compounds the problem.  It’s come to the point where I wonder whether he knows he’s lying and doesn’t give a crap; or whether some mental impediment or grandiosity complex actually persuades him that anything issuing from his mouth must be true.

Somehow Lerner and I, by noting these lies and their ability to inspire the acts of other unbalanced individuals who share Dersh’ s views, constitute an attempt to “silence” him. Which is ludicrous if you consider that it is Dersh has published two pieces on this in four different publications in a space of six days. If this is silencing, then what would giving him free reign look like? Besides, God forbid anyone should think they could silence the biggest and fastest mouth this side of Brooklyn.

Imagine the hypocrisy of a tenured Harvard professor who almost single-handedly destroyed the academic career of Norman Finkelstein complaining about someone trying to silence him?  In fact, I half expect Dershowitz may be researching employment information about our 38 rabbis and dispatching a damning dossier to their synagogue boards as he did at DePaul with Finkelstein.  I wouldn’t put it past him.

Imagine the hypocrisy of someone who called Richard Goldstone a moser, a Jewish crime punishable by death, dismissing a claim that Dersh might be guilty of inciting violence against Michael Lerner.

First, our brash advocate believes he can’t be guilty of inciting the acts of vandalism against Lerner because he doesn’t know the perpetrators and didn’t put them up to it.  Like a good defense attorney, Dershowitz knows how to frame an issue narrowly to absolve himself of responsibility.  But you don’t have to know someone or tell them to do a bad act to be guilty of incitement.  All you have to do is make odious statements whose contents are widely known in the uber-Israelist crowd in which Dersh and these scumbags run.  Comments like Dershowitz’, in which he called Lerner and others who signed a statement supporting Richard Goldstone, “Hamas rabbis” and “virulently anti-Israel” among other choice epithets, could easily drive bad people to commit bad deeds.

The pro-Israel propagandist scoffs at the notion that Lerner was in any jeopardy despite the fact that his life has repeatedly been threatened over the 24 years he has published Tikkun:

On a scale of one to ten, having a few posters glued to your house ranks at about a one for seriousness.

Dersh, on the other hand, has faced down the tiger in his den.  Who sent the tiger?  Why, Michael Lerner of course:

I have been threatened with real violence, not a couple of posters on my house. I have needed armed bodyguards, policemen with bulletproof vests and other forms of protection from those incited by Lerner and his crew.

If any of this is true (it would be nice if Dershowitz would provide evidence for any of it, which he doesn’t), where is the least smidgen of evidence that anything Michael Lerner did or said about him had any impact on those who allegedly threatened his life?  Dershowitz also ignores the fact that Lerner’s life too has really been threatened by people like Victor Vancier who have demonstrated the capacity for real acts of violence.

And where is the evidence that anything Michael Lerner has done or said was intended to “silence” someone afflicted with loggorhea?  There is none of course.  But don’t let that stop a serial liar when he’s just getting started.

The demagogue’s dismissal of any jeopardy Lerner faced through the attack on his home contrasts to this trenchant and eloquent comment in the HuffPo thread by Paul Surovell:

As a defender of democracy and free expression it behooves you to issue a more serious response to the action against Lerner, perhaps along the lines of the statement by the ADL, Jewish Community Relations Council, Northern California Board of Rabbis, and Jewish Federation of the East Bay, which says:

“We unequivocally condemn criminal acts perpetrated against Rabbi Lerner’s home. Political disagreements must be resolved in a civil manner, and not by resorting to violence. Our communities are especially disturbed that this crime targeted Rabbi Lerner at his home, thereby conveying to him the message that he may not be safe there. We are encouraged by the responsiveness of the Berkeley Police Department to this incident, and we urge its officers to investigate this crime as thoroughly as possible. The entire community must send a message to the perpetrators that we reject violence and criminality as a means to express our political opinions.”

The Harvard bloviator calls me a “follower” of Michael Lerner.  Not only am I NOT a follower of Lerner, we often disagree on many issues.  My post, which Dersh attacks was written independent of any discussion or consultation with Lerner.  I don’t support Lerner because he is Lerner.  I support him because I originally devised the idea of writing the letter whose signatories Dershowitz maligned; and because the Tikkun founder’s reputation and property have been  assaulted by hyper-Zionist thugs, one of whom is Alan Dershowitz.

I wrote that his incitement against Lerner reminded me of King Henry’s statement about Thomas a Becket: “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest.”  Somehow this becomes a claim:

…Accusing me in effect, of trying to kill Lerner.

Note the well-placed “in effect.”  That phrase conceals a lot of mendacity since I not only never accused him of trying to kill Lerner, I never accused him of inciting anyone else to do so either.  But hey, why let a few facts get in the way?

You’d think with all that Harvard faculty support behind him he’d have a grad student proofread his copy before publishing.  Get a load of this sentence, responding to my criticism of the professor for “impugning the morals of his enemies.”  This is his barely coherent reply:

This is by one who supports the rabbi who has impugned the morals of his own enemies, namely the leaders of Israel by falsely accusing them of setting out to kill as many civilians as possible.

Of course, this claim too is a lie.  Neither Lerner, nor Goldstone nor the rabbinical signers have accused Israel’s leaders of “setting out to kill as many civilians as possible.”  Norman Finkelstein has already pointed out that Dershowitz either doesn’t know what a lie is or simply doesn’t give a crap.  He is to liars what O.J. Simpson was to sociopaths–a perfect specimen of the type.

What Lerner and I demand is truth and accuracy, qualities Dershowitz wouldn’t know if they bit him in the ass.