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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Aha, now we know why the Dersh couldn’t make it to the White House for breakfast with Elie Wiesel this week. Too busy thinking up more nasty things to say when he accepts this booby prize from what is looking to be a laughingstock in the academic world. Dersh’s acceptance speech is bound to be entertaining.
I’m sorry to tell you that Tel Aviv Univ. has quite a good reputation among Israeli institutions. I’m guessing that the American trustees put the University up to this meshugas and Dershowitz isn’t as controversial or well known in Israel as here, so he won’t face the community response he truly deserves.
It wouldn’t surprise me, Richard. But I just cannot for the life of me figure out what use the Dersh is to anyone.
By the way, the photo of “Disco Dersh” is a hoot.
I really enjoy reading your articles on Dershowitz. Some of your comments are hilarious. You really have him pegged!
If I didn’t try to laugh & make a joke about it I’d cry. Better to use satire & humor. It’s a good non-violent weapon. Glad it made you laugh as well.
Richard, as always, you hit the nail on the head. Great writing, much appreciated that you share your views with the world.
I’m really surprised that they claim that Dershowitz gives out “sophisticated arguments against anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism”. From my observations, he will eventually turn his debates into shouting matches.
I can understand their sense that there is a need for sophisticated arguments against anti-Zionism. What is really interesting about this statement is that they are claiming by implication that there is a need for “sophisticated arguments against…anti-Semitism“. I don’t see a need for that when anti-Semitism is so obviously wrong on its face. Anti-Zionism is quite another matter, of course.
Dersh doesn’t offer sophistication of any kind, only bigotry and small-minded prattle.
What needs to be discussed in a simple way is that Dersh should not be perpetuating the idea that anti-Zionism is the same as anti-Semitism.
Unfortunately Dersh has a lot of allies in the mainstream press. The NYT has just published yet another piece by someone lumping anti-semitism in with anti-Zionism and further indicting the English intelligentsia as anti-semites because of it. In this case the “someone” is Harold Bloom. He also helpfully informs us that over half the countries in the world are worse human rights violators than Israel.
link
Another ally of Dersh is Steven Weinberg, the Nobel laureate for physics. I’ve always had much respect for him as scientist and sometimes commentator on secular affairs. He is a self-professed atheist, but when he comments on Judaism/Israel, one wonders, as I did when I read his essay “Israel and the Liberals” in his new book “Lake Views, the World and the Universe.” This essay was originally published in Tikkun Magazine on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel. Even he is surprised that Lerner published it uncut.
It is a rant worthy of Dersh or the Weasel. Just one quote from it:
“The most horrifying development of our time, with respect to Israel, is the worldwide conversion of many of my fellow liberal intellectuals – academics, artists, writers, labor leaders, “enlightened” clergy – to irrational hatred of Israel, the only liberal democracy in the Middle East and the only country in the region where any of us could bear to live.”
From there he goes on to manifest his hate for the Palestinians and that Israel can do no wrong. Ending with, “We should acknowledge that hatred of the Jewish state is the functional equivalent of hatred of Jews.” One wonders why such otherwise intelligent people just don’t get it?
I always find it odd that eminent scientists like Weinberg who, if they confronted work of grad students as shoddy as their own on this subject would see through it in a heartbeat, seem to have much laxer standards when it comes to articulating their political views. It’s shameful that someone can be a brilliant scientist & yet still possess ignorant, obtuse views like this.
I would say it is a rather dubious honor to have a worse human rights record than half of the world. Depends on how you look at it 🙂
Dersh will get up on his high horse and yammer his nonsense, and I do feel sorry for Tel Aviv University because he is going to sully their reputation.
However, I am sure the Dersh’s visit is politically motivated; there are a lot of pro-Zionist organizations and politicians back the USA who are counting on him to rake in some money for the midterm elections.
Bloom is yet another example of an intellectual who is brilliant in his field of expertise & completely at sea when he ventures into politics & the I-P conflict. His ideas on this subject simply can’t be taken seriously & he should stick to literary theory & cultural criticism, which IS his field.
For some pro-Israel Jews in the Diaspora Dersh is the great white Jewish hope. THey don’t care that he’s a blowhard, bigot, intolerant, ranter, etc. For them, he speaks for them. Therefore they must build him into some sort of heroic figure using inflated rhetoric like this.
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/05/08/18647404.php
See also the scurrilous attack on Lerner in Frontpagemagazine.com from today
richard,
dershowitz has been honored and has had many speaking engagements at universities across the united states.
nothing stopped you from attending one of those and voicing your opposition to him.
but if you want, here is a link to the vid of the event
http://video.tau.ac.il/Lectures/General/Public_Relations/Honorary_Degree_10/
you can spend the hour giving the finger to your computer screen
Why the hell would I want to listen to Dersh speak?? I have enough of reading his garbage & you want me to attend one of his talks?
He wasn’t merely giving a talk at TAU. He was receiving an honorary degree. Do you understand the diff.?
And at the very ceremony he attacked the academics from the “radical left” who “abuse the academic freedom to criticize Israel”… If you read Hebrew:
http://www.themarker.com/tmc/article.jhtml?ElementId=ld20100509_45871&from=haaretz
Indirectly responsible for the attack on Lerner’s house? Come now. You speak as if left-wingers never use polemical language to describe their intellectual adversaries. If someone attacks Dershowitz’s house, can we hold you indirectly responsible based on this post? Can we hold Norman Finkelstein responsible as well?
I never lied about Dersh’s views. Dersh lied about Lerner’s. And not only would I not be responsible if someone attacked Dersh, NO ONE HAS. Progressives generally don’t engage in violence against their adversaries & certainly to a much lesser extent than rightists as witness the Lerner attack & countless others I could name.