I disagree with Alan Dershowitz on probably just about everything. In fact, I often think it is the lawyers he has taught and trained who are largely responsible for gutting the formerly respectable practice of law and creating a morally idiotic defense and trial bar who will say anything and countenance any tactic to keep their client out of jail or to extort squeeze every last dollar out of a defendant regardless of the legitimacy of the claim. All that being said… when it comes to Israel — I agree nearly 100% with him. Here’s a bit of a piece on Israel and Hamas from The Christian Science Monitor — read the entire thing here:
On Sunday, I spoke to the air force general, now retired, who worked on the planning of the attack. He told me of the intelligence and planning that had gone into preparing for the contingency that the military option might become necessary. The Israeli air force had pinpointed with precision the exact locations of Hamas structures in an effort to minimize civilian casualties.
Even Hamas sources have acknowledged that the vast majority of those killed have been Hamas terrorists, though some civilian casualties are inevitable when, as BBC’s Rushdi Abou Alouf – who is certainly not pro-Israel – reported, “The Hamas security compounds are in the middle of the city.” Indeed, his home balcony was just 20 meters away from a compound he saw bombed.
There have been three types of international response to the Israeli military actions against the Hamas rockets. Not surprisingly, Iran, Hamas, and other knee-jerk Israeli-bashers have argued that the Hamas rocket attacks against Israeli civilians are entirely legitimate and that the Israeli counterattacks are war crimes.
Equally unsurprising is the response of the United Nations, the European Union, Russia, and others who, at least when it comes to Israel, see a moral and legal equivalence between terrorists who target civilians and a democracy that responds by targeting the terrorists.
And finally, there is the United States and a few other nations that place the blame squarely on Hamas for its unlawful and immoral policy of using its own civilians as human shields, behind whom they fire rockets at Israeli civilians.
It’s amazing to see how the Israelis (and the U.S.) are forced to fight with one hand tied behind our backs in order to try to impress folks who will never approve of what we’re doing anyway. People like Rushdi Abou Alouf will not become more fair and balanced in their reporting because the Israelis refrained from blowing him to bits along with the weird beards in Hamas.
Floyd,
You’ve nailed my opinion of Dershowitz exactly! His philosophical approach to law is idiotic and detrimental to the practice of law, but he’s sincerely honest when talking about U.S.-Israeli relations.