The Unbearable Lightness of Alan Dershowitz

by Andrew G. Bostom

It may well be that Alan Dershowitz suffers from a unique syndrome of Law Professor idiot savantism. Or perhaps he is just another vapid, doctrinaire Leftist who (wrongly) views himself as a "traditional liberal" Zionist -- and of course, "sage." 

Regardless, Dershowitz's self-righteous and angry clinging to the failed Oslo delusion "Two State" solution (which ignores the 77% of the original 1920 Mandate for Palestine that was arbitrarily given over to Muslim "Transjordan" in 1922, as well as the ancillary Muslim jihad terror state-let of Gaza, under Hamas since shortly after the Israeli withdrawal in 2005), was on vivid display on Sunday, April 28, 2012. Speaking at the Jerusalem Post Annual Conference in New York, Dershowitz

...told the audience that he had spoken with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and suggested that a new basis for negotiations be agreed upon in which construction would continue in the settlement blocs but not in any areas in which there is "reasonable disagreement." Abbas signed a paper with Dershowitz that he would agree to such a move if the Israeli side would as well, the professor stated.

Angered by the informed audience's reaction -- laughter -- to his risible words and deeds, Dershowitz responded peevishly,

It's so easy to laugh, but I have to tell you the audience today is not helpful in resolving complex and serious issues. You're proving my point. You are part of the problem, not the solution.

The informed audience reaction to this peevish tirade was jeers and boos.
Had I been there I would have shared the audience's disgust with and disdain for this preening narcissist who remains steadfastly impenetrable by fact, for all his alleged intellectual prowess. Thus Monday (4/29/13), one day after Dershowitz uttered his latest inanities, illustrating but the latest in an endless litany of comparable examples, it was reported that "moderate" Palestinian leader and Dershowitz's personally designated peace partner for Israel, Mahmoud Abbas

...again insisted last week (while hosting a two-day "Freedom and Dignity" conference in Ramallah) that Palestinian Arabs who murder Israeli Jews cannot be punished for their crimes.

Dershowitz's writings and speeches, and worse still, actions, regarding the "Israeli-Palestinian conflict," are redolent with the uninformed, if hubristic canards that characterize unrepentant avatars of the abysmally failed Oslo process. Dershowitz and his ilk steadfastly refuse to acknowledge that the "Israeli-Palestinian conflict" has always been a jihad, relentlessly fomented and supported by the entire global Muslim umma since just after the Balfour Declaration.

On June 30, 1922, a joint resolution of both Houses of Congress of the United States unanimously endorsed the "Mandate for Palestine," confirming the irrevocable right of Jews to settle in the area of Palestine -- anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The Congressional Record contains a statement of support from New York Rep. Walter Chandler which includes an observation, about "Turkish and Arab agitators... preaching a kind of holy war [jihad] against... the Jews" of Palestine. Earlier, in 1921, leaders of the Indian Khilafat (Caliphate) movement made clear at conferences held in India that Islamic suzerainty must prevail over all of historical Palestine. And in 1920, at the local level, within British-controlled Palestine, Musa Kazem el-Husseini, former governor of Jaffa during the final years of Ottoman rule, and president of the Arab (primarily Muslim) Palestinian Congress, in a letter to the British High Commissioner, Herbert Samuels, demanded restoration of the Sharia -- which had only been fully abrogated two years earlier when Britain ended four centuries of Ottoman Muslim rule of Palestine -- stating that this Religious Law, was "...engraved in the very hearts of the Arabs and has been assimilated in their customs and that has been applied... in the modern [Arab] states..." During this same era within Palestine, a strong Arab Muslim irredentist current --epitomized by both Hajj Amin el-Husseini and shortly afterward, Izz ad din al-Qassam -- promulgated the forcible restoration of Sharia-mandated dhimmitude via jihad.

The 1948, 1956, and 1973 wars -- and every other conflagration in which Israel has been embroiled ever since -- have all been manifestations of the ceaseless jihad imperative to destroy the "Zionist entity."

Consider two fatwas, both published January 5, 1956 by then-Grand Mufti of Egypt Sheikh Hasan Ma'moun and another by the leading members of the Fatwa Committee of Sunni Islam's de facto Vatican, Al Azhar University, representing all four Sunni Islamic schools of jurisprudence. [English translation from State Department Telegram 1763/ Embassy (Cairo) Telegram 1256 D441214] These rulings -- issued nine months before the 1956 Sinai War, and while Israel existed within the 1949 armistice borders -- elaborated the following key initial point: that all of historical Palestine -- modern Jordan, Israel, and the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria, as well as Gaza -- having been conquered by jihad, was a permanent possession of the global Muslim umma (community), "fay territory" -- booty or spoils -- to be governed eternally by Islamic Law.

The January 1956 Al Azhar fatwas' language and arguments are indistinguishable from those employed by current Egyptian President Morsi, or Hamas (in its Covenant), revealing the same conjoined motivations of jihad and conspiratorial Islamic Jew-hatred:

Muslims cannot conclude peace with those Jews who have usurped the territory of Palestine and attacked its people and their property in any manner which allows the Jews to continue as a state in that sacred Muslim territory ... [as] Jews have taken a part of Palestine and there established their non-Islamic government and have also evacuated from that part most of its Muslim inhabitants ... Jihad ... to restore the country to its people ... is the duty of all Muslims, not just those who can undertake it. And since all Islamic countries constitute the abode of every Muslim, the Jihad is imperative for both the Muslims inhabiting the territory attacked, and Muslims everywhere else because even though some sections have not been attacked directly, the attack nevertheless took place on a part of the Muslim territory which is a legitimate residence for any Muslim ... Everyone knows that from the early days of Islam to the present day the Jews have been plotting against Islam and Muslims and the Islamic homeland. They do not propose to be content with the attack they made on Palestine and Al Aqsa Mosque, but they plan for the possession of all Islamic territories from the Nile to the Euphrates.

Bat Ye'or, noting the ceaseless calls for jihad in Palestine during modern times, from 1920 through to the present era, observed that jihad remained,

...the main cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Since Israelis are to be regarded, perforce, only as a religious community, their national characteristics -- a geographical territory related to a past history, a system of legislation, a specific language and culture -- are consequently denied. The "Arab" character of the Palestinian territory is inherent in the logic of jihad. Having become fay territory by conquest (i.e., "taken from an infidel people"), it must remain within the dar al-Islam. The State of Israel, established on this fay territory, is consequently illegal.

And she concluded:

Israel represents the successful national liberation of a dhimmi civilization. On a territory formerly Arabized by the jihad and the dhimma, a pre-Islamic language, culture, topographical geography, and national institutions have been restored to life. This reversed the process of centuries in which the cultural, social and political structures of the indigenous population of Palestine were destroyed. In 1974, Abu Iyad, second-in-command to Arafat in the Fatah hierarchy, announced: "We intend to struggle so that our Palestinian homeland does not become a new Andalusia." The comparison of Andalusia to Palestine was not fortuitous since both countries were Arabized, and then de-Arabized by a pre-Arabic culture.

Alan Dershowitz proudly accepted an award in 2003 for his putative efforts to protect the separation of religion (church) and state, despite continuing to ignore the promulgation of liberty-crushing Sharia, Islamic Law, touted as a means of complementing, even "perfecting" the U.S. legal system, at his very own Harvard Law school.

It is a dubious proposition at best that a factually-bereft, willfully blind hypocrite such as Alan Dershowitz will ever acknowledge, let alone imbibe the wisdom of Bat Ye'or.

Andrew G. Bostom

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/05/the_unbearable_lightness_of_alan_dershowitz.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.