If you want to understand why anti-Semitism seems to be increasing among young people—especially young people on the hard left—consider a recent invitation extended by a left leaning school in New York to a self-proclaimed Jew hater.

The Friends Schools around the country are legendary.  Presidents’ children attend them, my own daughter and nephew were students, and they are regarded as among the most elite schools in the world.  That is why it is so shocking that the Friends Seminary in New York has lent its imprimatur to a notorious anti-Semite and Holocaust denier.  Friends Seminary has a reputation for propagandizing its students against Israel, but it has now crossed a red line into legitimating anti-Semitism.

Gilad Atzmon, who was invited to be a featured performer in a celebration of Martin Luther King at the Friends Meeting House, has written an overtly anti-Semitic book entitled “The Wandering Who?”, which, he acknowledges, draws…much of his “insights from a man who…was an anti-Semite as well as a radical misogynist.”

Among the “insights”  Atzmon seeks to share with students are the following:

While the Holocaust “was not at all an historical narrative,” and Auschwitz was not a “death camp,” the “accusations of Jews making matzo out of young Goyim’s blood,” may be true.

“The Jews” caused the recent credit crunch, which the author calls “the Zio-punch.”

If Iran and Israel fight a nuclear war that kills millions of people, “some may be bold enough to argue that ‘Hitler might have been right after all.’”

The “new Jewish religion…could well be the most sinister religion known to man…”

The author of the book containing these statements has told students that he cannot “say whether it’s right or not to burn down a synagogue. I can say that it is a rational act.” He has also apologized to the Nazis for having earlier compared them to Israel:  “Israel is in fact far worse than Nazi Germany.”

He has written that we “must begin to take the accusation that the Jewish people are trying to control the world very seriously,” and that “with Fagin and Shylock in mind, Israeli barbarism and organ trafficking seem to be just other events in an endless hellish continuum.”

For the first time since the end of World War II, classic anti-Semitic tropes—“the Jews” control the world and are to blame for everything that goes wrong, including the financial crisis; The Jews killed Christian children in order to use the blood to bake Matzo; the Holocaust never happened—are becoming acceptable and legitimate subjects for academic and political discussion.  To understand why these absurd and reprehensible views, once reserved for the racist fringes of academia and politics, are now moving closer to the mainstream, consider the attitudes of two men, one an academic, the other a politician, toward those who express or endorse such bigotry.  The academic is Professor Brian Leiter.  The politician is Ron Paul.

You’ve probably never heard of Leiter.  He’s a relatively obscure professor of jurisprudence, who is trying to elevate his profile by publishing a gossipy blog about law school professors.  He is a colleague of John Mearsheimer, a prominent and world famous professor at the University of Chicago.

Several months ago Mearsheimer enthusiastically endorsed a book, really a pamphlet, that included all the classic anti-Semitic tropes.  It was entitled “The Wandering Who” and written by Gilad Atzmon, a British version of David Duke, who plays the saxophone and has no academic connections.  Atzmon writes that we must take “very seriously” the claim that “the Jewish people are trying to control the world.” He calls the recent credit crunch “the Zio punch.” He says “the Holocaust narrative” doesn’t make “historical sense” and expresses doubt that Auschwitz was a death camp.  He invites students to accept the “accusations of Jews making Matzo out of young Goyim’s blood.”

Books and pamphlets of this sort are written every day by obscure anti-Semites and published by disreputable presses that specialize in this kind of garbage.  No one ever takes notice, except for neo-Nazis around the world who welcome any additions to the literature of hate.

What is remarkable about the publication of this hateful piece of anti-Semitic trash, is that it was enthusiastically endorsed by two prominent American professors, John Mearsheimer and Richard Falk, who urged readers, including students, to read, “reflect upon” and “discuss widely” the themes of Atzmon’s book.  Never before has any such book received the imprimatur of such established academics.

I was not shocked by these endorsements, because I knew that both of these academics had previously crossed “red lines,” separating legitimate criticism of Israel from subtle anti-Semitism.  Mearsheimer has accused American Jews of dual loyalty, and Falk has repeatedly compared Israel to Nazi Germany.  Both were so enthusiastic about Atzmon’s anti-Zionism—he has written that Israel is “worse” than the Nazis—that they were prepared to give him a pass on his classic “blood libel” anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.  No great surprise there.

What was surprising—indeed shocking—was the fact that Mearsheimer’s relatively apolitical colleague, Brian Leiter, rushed to Mearsheimer’s defense.  Without bothering even to read Atzmon’s book, Leiter pronounced that Atzmon’s “positions [do not mark him] as an anti-Semite [but rather as] cosmopolitan.” Leiter also certified that Atzmon “does not deny the Holocaust or the gas chambers.” Had Leiter read the book, he could not have made either statement.

As the discourse about Israel on university campuses continues to degenerate, there is growing concern that some of Israel’s most vocal detractors are crossing a red line between acceptable criticism of Israel and legitimizing anti-Semitism. The recent endorsements by several internationally prominent academics—including John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Richard Falk of Princeton—of an overtly anti-Semitic book written by a notorious Jew-hater illustrate this dangerous trend.

The book in question is entitled The Wandering Who? and was written by Gilad Atzmon, a British jazz musician. Lest there be any doubt about Atzmon’s anti-Semitic credentials, listen to his self-description in the book itself. He boasts about “drawing many of my insights from a man who … was an anti-Semite as well as a radical misogynist” and a hater of “almost everything that fails to be Aryan masculinity” (89-90). He declares himself a “proud, self-hating Jew” (54), writes with “contempt” of “the Jew in me” (94), and describes himself as “a strong opponent of … Jewish-ness” (186). His writings, both online and in his new book, brim with classic anti-Semitic motifs that are borrowed from Nazi publications:

Throughout his writings, Atzmon argues that Jews seek to control the world:

• “[W]e must begin to take the accusation that the Jewish people are trying to control the world very seriously.”
• “American Jewry makes any debate on whether the ‘Protocols of the elder of Zion’ [sic] are an authentic document or rather a forgery irrelevant. American Jews do try to control the world, by proxy.”

Atzmon expands on this theme in The Wandering Who?, repeatedly conflating “the Jews” and “the Zionist”:

• He calls the recent credit crunch “the Zio-punch” (22) and says it was not “a Jewish conspiracy” because “it was all in the open” (30).
• Paul Wolfowitz, Rahm Emmanuel, and other members of “the Jewish elite” remain abroad instead of moving to “Zion” because they “have proved far more effective for the Zionist cause by staying where they are” (19).
• The American media “failed to warn the American people of the enemy within” because of money (27).

Atzmon has written that Jews are evil and a menace to humanity:

• “With Fagin and Shylock in mind Israeli barbarism and organ trafficking seem to be just other events in an endless hellish continuum.”
• “The Homo Zionicus quickly became a mass murderer, detached from any recognised form of ethical thinking and engaged in a colossal crime against humanity.”

Atzmon rehearses many of these ideas in The Wandering Who?:

• “[T]o be a Jew is a deep commitment that goes far beyond any legal or moral order” (20) and this commitment “pulls more and more Jews into an obscure, dangerous and unethical fellowship” (21).
• If Iran and Israel fight a nuclear war that kills tens of millions of people, “some may be bold enough to argue that ‘Hitler might have been right after all’” (179).

Atzmon regularly urges his readers to doubt the Holocaust and to reject Jewish history:

• “It took me years to accept that the Holocaust narrative, in its current form, doesn’t make any historical sense. … If, for instance, the Nazis wanted the Jews out of their Reich (Judenrein—free of Jews), or even dead, as the Zionist narrative insists, how come they marched hundreds of thousands of them back into the Reich at the end of the war?”
• “[E]ven if we accept the Holocaust as the new Anglo-American liberal-democratic religion, we must allow people to be atheists.”

Atzmon reprises some of this language in The Wandering Who?:

• Children should be allowed to question, as he did, “how the teacher could know that these accusations of Jews making Matza out of young Goyim’s blood were indeed empty or groundless” (185).
• “The Holocaust religion is probably as old as the Jews themselves” (153).
• The history of Jewish persecution is a myth, and if there was any persecution the Jews brought it on themselves (175, 182).

Atzmon argues that Jews are corrupt and responsible for “why” they are “hated”:

• “[I]n order to promote Zionist interests, Israel must generate significant anti-Jewish sentiment. Cruelty against Palestinian civilians is a favourite Israeli means of achieving this aim.”
• “Jews may have managed to drop their God, but they have maintained goy-hating and racist ideologies at the heart of their newly emerging secular political identity. This explains why some Talmudic goy-hating elements have been transformed within the Zionist discourse into genocidal practices.”

Atzmon returns to this theme repeatedly in The Wandering Who?:

• The “Judaic God” described in Deuteronomy 6:10-12 “is an evil deity, who leads his people to plunder, robbery and theft” (120). Atzmon explains that “Israel and Zionism … have instituted the plunder promised by the Hebrew God in the Judaic holy scriptures” (121).
• The moral of the Book of Esther is that Jews “had better infiltrate the corridors of power” if they wish to survive (158).

Finally, Atzmon repeatedly declares that Israel is worse than the Nazis and has actually “apologized” to the Nazis for having earlier compared them to Israel:

• “Many of us including me tend to equate Israel to Nazi Germany. Rather often I myself join others and argue that Israelis are the Nazis of our time. I want to take this opportunity to amend my statement. Israelis are not the Nazis of our time and the Nazis were not the Israelis of their time. Israel, is in fact far worse than Nazi Germany and the above equation is simply meaningless and misleading.”

In light of this Der Stürmer-like bigotry against Jews, it should come as no surprise that even some of the most hard-core anti-Israel activists have shunned Atzmon out of fear that his anti-Semitism will discredit their cause. Tony Greenstein, a self-styled “anti-Zionist” who recently participated in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s unprecedented disruption of an Israel Philharmonic Orchestra concert in London (which Greenstein compared to protesting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in the 1930s), denounced The Wandering Who? as “a poisonous anti-Semitic tome.” Sue Blackwell, who co-wrote the Association of University Teachers’ motion to boycott Israeli universities in 2005, removed all links to Atzmon from her website and placed Atzmon on her list of “nasties” along with David Irving and Israel Shamir. Socialist Worker, a website that frequently refers to Israeli “apartheid” and publishes articles with titles such as “Israel’s murderous violence,” removed an interview with Atzmon and called the evidence of Atzmon’s anti-Semitism “damning.” At least ten authors associated with the Leftist publisher that published The Wandering Who? have called on the publisher to distance itself from Atzmon’s views, explaining that the “thrust of Atzmon’s work is to normalise and legitimise anti-Semitism.”

Ten students who set out to prevent Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren from speaking to students at the University of California Irvine campus have been convicted of a California misdemeanor and sentenced to probation and a fine.  The California statute is designed to protect the First Amendment rights of a speaker and his audience against those who would censor the speaker by deliberately disruptive conduct.  The conduct engaged in by the students, acting on behalf of a University of California Muslim group, was more than merely disruptive in the sense of episodic booing or heckling.  It was calculated to “shut down”, in the words of one of the students, Ambassador Oren.  In such a case, the First Amendment is clearly on the side of the prosecutor who seeks to prevent the censorship of protected speech, rather than on the side of those who have conspired to censor speech with which they disagree.

No reputable constitutional scholar would defend the right of students to conspire to prevent an invited speaker from presenting his speech.  Most universities have rules prohibiting the “heckler’s veto” from silencing an invited speaker.  Yet, because the students in this case were Muslims who were trying to prevent an Israeli diplomat from speaking, many on the hard left are making heroes of these ten censors, and villains of prosecutors who did their duty in protecting the First Amendment.  Even the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which is supposed to protect the First Amendment right of speakers, came down on the wrong side of this issue.

The Dean of the University of California at Irvine Law School, Erwin Chemerinsky, has tried to split the difference by arguing that the conviction was constitutional, that the “jury which found them guilty faithfully applied [the] law to the facts of this case,” but that the prosecutor who brought the case against these students “failed in his most important duty: to do justice.”  While I understand why a dean might take this somewhat convoluted position on prudential grounds, Chemerinsky’s argument simply doesn’t hold water.

Chemerinsky “strongly disagree[s] with those who try to defend the students as engaging in free speech.”  He acknowledges that “the First amendment does not protect the right of people to go into an auditorium and try to shout down a speaker.”  He is right in concluding that “no court would find that the students were engaged in protected speech.”  So far, we agree.  But he goes onto argue that the prosecutor should have employed his discretion to decline prosecution against these students, because they had already been disciplined by the university.  But the university discipline has been worn by the students as a red badge of courage.  They have been treated as heroes and the slap on the wrist discipline has certainly not deterred them or other students from conspiring to silence other controversial speakers, especially those who try to make the case for Israel.

The Palestinians are in the process of seeking sovereignty from the United Nations, but in doing so, they are asking for more than what was offered them in any prior negotiation with Israel—including during the talks involving President Clinton and Ehud Barak in 2000 and 2001. Rather than more, it is imperative that the Palestinians get less.

It is imperative to world peace that the Palestinians pay a price—even if it’s only a symbolic price—for rejecting the generous Clinton/Barak offer and responding to it with a second intifada in which 4,000 people were killed. It is also important that Israel not return to the precise armistice lines that existed prior to the 1967 war. If the Palestinians were to achieve a return to the status quo prior to Jordan’s attack on Israel in June of 1967, then military aggression will not have been punished, it will have been rewarded. That’s why Security Council Resolution 242—which was essentially the peace treaty that resulted from the end of the Six Day War—intended for Israel to retain territory necessary to give it secure boundaries (Indeed, in the formal application submitted by Abbas, he sought membership based on UN General Assembly Resolution 1810-11 of November 29, 1947, which would put the borders where they were before the Arab armies invaded the new Jewish state in 1948. This would reward multiple aggressions.)

Yet, however important it is that aggressive and unjustified violence not be rewarded, the international community seems bent on doing just that. If the end result of Jordan’s 1967 attack on Israel—an attack supported by the Palestinian leadership and participated in by Palestinian soldiers—is that the Palestinians get back everything Jordan lost, there will be no disincentive to comparable military attacks around the world. If the Palestinians get more than, or even as much as, they rejected in 2000 and 2001 (and did not accept in 2007), then further intifadas with mass casualties will be encouraged. A price must be paid for violence. That’s how the laws of war are supposed to work and there is no reason to make an exception in the case of the Palestinians.

I support a two-state solution based on negotiation and mutual compromise. But the negotiations must not begin where previous offers, which were not accepted, left off. They must take into account how we got to the present situation: The Arab rejection of the UN partition plan and the attack on the new Jewish state that resulted in the death of one percent of Israel’s population; the attack by Jordan and its Palestinian soldiers against Israel in 1967, which resulted in Israel’s capture of the West Bank; Israel’s offer to trade captured land for peace that was rejected at Khartoum with the three infamous “no’s”—no peace, no recognition, no negotiation; Israel’s generous offer of statehood in 2000-2001 that was answered by violence; and Olmert’s subsequent, even more generous, offer that was not accepted by President Abbas.

Efforts to achieve peace must look forward but they must not forget the past. A balance must be struck between not rewarding past violence and not creating unreasonable barriers to a future peace. But the Palestinians made it clear last week that they reject such balance.

In a recent interview, Norway’s ambassador to Israel has suggested that Hamas terrorism against Israel is more justified than the recent terrorist attack against Norway.  His reasoning is that “we Norwegians consider the occupation to be the cause of the terror against Israel.”  In other words terrorism against Israeli citizens is the fault of Israel.  The terrorism against Norway, on the other hand, was based on “an ideology that said that Norway, particularly the Labor Party, is foregoing Norwegian culture.”  It is hard to imagine that he would make such a provocative statement without express approval from the Norwegian government.

I can’t remember many other examples of so much nonsense compressed in such short an interview.  First of all, terrorism against Israel began well before there was any “occupation.”  The first major terrorist attack against Jews, who had long lived in Jerusalem and Hebron, began in 1929, when the leader of the Palestinian people, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, ordered a religiously-motivated terrorist attack that killed hundreds of religious Jews—many old, some quite young.  Terrorism against Jews continued through the 1930s.  Once Israel was established as a state, but well before it captured the West Bank, terrorism became the primary means of attacking Israel across the Jordanian, Egyptian and Lebanese borders.  If the occupation is the cause of the terror against Israel, what was the cause of all the terror that preceded any occupation?

I was not surprised to hear such ahistorical bigotry from a Norwegian ambassador.  Norway is the most anti-Semitic and anti-Israel country in Europe today.  I know, because I experienced both personally during a recent visit and tour of universities.  No university would invite me to lecture, unless I promised not to discuss Israel.  Norway forbids Jewish ritual slaughter, but not Islamic ritual slaughter.  Its political and academic leaders openly make statements that cross the line from anti-Zionism to anti-Semitism, such as when Norway’s foreign minister condemned Barak Obama for appointing a Jew as his chief of staff.  No other European leader would make such a statement and get away with it.  In Norway, this bigoted statement was praised, as were similar statements made by a leading academic.

The very camp that was attacked by the lone terrorist was engaged in an orgy of anti-Israel hatred the day before the shooting.  Yet I would not ever claim that it was Norway’s anti-Semitism that “caused” the horrible act of terrorism against young Norwegians.

The recent attempts by anti-Israel extremists to break Israel’s naval blockage of Gaza and to flood Israel’s airports with troublemakers have failed.

The ships of fools, knaves, hypocrites, bigots, and supporters of terrorism that tried to sail from Greece have now apparently been run aground. Most of the hard-left extremists have gone home following a decision by the Greek government to prevent the boats from leaving Greek ports.  And those who tried to flood Israel’s airports are being deported.  The resulting fiasco, which was designed to discredit Israel, has succeeded only in discrediting the Israel-bashers on the boats and planes by exposing their true purpose.

The alleged purpose of the ships was to feed the starving Arabs of Gaza. The problem is that the Arabs of Gaza are not starving. Nor are they in need of outside help.

According to reporting by The New York Times, Gaza has been thriving recently. Luxury hotels are being built; stores are stocked with food; beaches are filled with children; and life is far better than in neighboring Al Arish, which is across the border in Egypt.

In fact, according to news reports, the residents of Gaza are far better off than the residents of many Arab areas in the Middle East. Medical care is better, infant mortality is lower, longevity is higher, employment is increasing, cars are plentiful, food is more available and the quality of water and air is higher. The Gross National Product has risen dramatically over the past year.

To be sure, the citizens of Gaza do not have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, the right to dissent or the ability to join political parties that are out of favor. These limitations are the fault of Hamas, not of Israel.

Indeed, the only Arabs in the region whose lives, in every respect, are better than those who live in Gaza, are the citizens of the West Bank, which is controlled by the Palestinian Authority rather than Hamas.

So if the fools on the ships were really interested in helping Arabs who are truly in need of food, medicine and other provisions, they would set sail for ports in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and other areas of the Middle East. But these hypocrites have no interest in helping the downtrodden. Their only interest is in delegitimizing the Jewish state of Israel.

Many of those on the ships actually support the most oppressive regimes in the Middle East, such as the Syrian regime, which murders its civilians in cold blood; the Iranian regime, which brutally suppresses dissent; Hezbollah which murders its political opponents; and Hamas which subjugates women and executes gays.

As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates prepares to retire to private life—following 5 years as the head of the Department of Defense in both the Bush and Obama administrations—praise is being heaped on him by Democrats and Republicans alike.  Herein a dissenting view.  History will not be kind to Gates.  Despite some noteworthy accomplishments, he will be remembered as the single most important facilitator of an Iranian regime with nuclear weapons.  Future historians will compare him to Neville Chamberlain’s military advisers, who—like Gates—strongly opposed all forms of military intervention against the greatest potential danger of the century:  An aggressively armed Nazi Germany in the 20^th century; a nuclear armed Iran in the 21^st century.

In a farewell interview with The New York Times, he put it this way:

If we were about to be attacked or something happened that threatened a vital U.S. national interest, I would be the first in line to say, ‘Let’s go,’ I will always be an advocate in terms of wars of necessity.  I am just much more cautious on wars of choice.

This certainly sounds reasonable—at least to anyone unfamiliar with the history of the 1930s.  As Hitler was rearming in a clear violation of Germany’s treaty obligation, and making it clear what he intended to do with his planes, tanks and submarines, Neville Chamberlain was arguing against his nation becoming involved in a war of choice.  He prevailed and took the military option off the table, thus encouraging the Germans to continue to violate the Versailles Treaty without fear of intervention.  Winston Churchill, on the other hand, was warning against allowing the Nazi regime to rearm.  Even the Germans expected those nations that defeated them in the First World War to march against them before they could fully rearm.  This is how Goebbels put it in his diary.

[W]e have succeeded in leaving the enemy in the dark concerning Germany’s real goals…We wanted to come to power legally, but we did not want to use power legally…They could have arrested a couple of us in 1925 and that would have been that, the end. No, they let us through the danger zone. That’s exactly how it was in foreign policy, too….In 1933 a French premier ought to have said (and if I had been the French premier I would have said it): “The new Reich Chancellor is the man who wrote Mein Kampf, which says this and that.  This man cannot be tolerated in our vicinity.  Either he disappears or we march!”  But they didn’t do it.  They left us alone and let us slip through the risky zone, and we were able to sail around all dangerous reefs.  And when we were done, and well armed, better than they, then they started the war!

At a time of increasing—and increasingly complex—anti-Semitism throughout the world, Yale University has decided to shut down the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism, YIISA.  Founded in 2006, YIISA is headed by a distinguished scholar, Charles Small, with an international reputation for serious interdisciplinary research.  The precipitous decision to close YIISA, made without even a semblance of due process and transparency, could not have come at a worse time. Nor could it have sent a worse message.

I recently returned from a trip abroad—England, Norway, South Africa, among other countries—where I experienced the changing face and growing acceptability of anti-Semitism. Sometimes it hid behind the facade of anti-Zionism, but increasingly the hatred was directed against Jews, Judaism, Jewish culture, the Jewish people and the very concept of a Jewish State (by people who favor the existence of many Muslim States).

In England, a prominent and popular Jazz musician rails against the Jewish people, denies the Holocaust and apologizes to the Nazis for having once compared the Jewish State to Nazi Germany, since in his view Israel is far worse.  In Norway, a prominent professor openly criticizes the Jewish people as a group and Jewish culture as a collective deviation.  In Johannesburg, the university severs its ties with an Israeli university, while in Cape Town a newspaper headline welcomes me with the following words: “Dershowitz is not welcome here,” and an excuse is found to cancel a scheduled lecture by me at the university.

Throughout my visits to European capitals, I hear concern from Jewish students who are terrified about speaking out, wearing yarmulkes, Stars of David or anything else that identifies them as Jews.

In the United States, and particularly at American universities, matters are not nearly as bad.  There are of course some exceptions, such as at several campuses at the University of California where Muslim students have tried to censor pro-Israel speakers and have been treated as heroes for doing so, while those who support pro-Israel speakers are treated as pariahs.  The same is true at some Canadian universities as well.

One university that has been a model of tolerance, up until now, has been Yale, where Jewish and pro-Israel students feel empowered and comfortable, as do Muslim and anti-Israel students.  Perhaps this is why the Yale administration had no hesitancy in dropping YIISA.  It can easily defend itself against charges of bias by saying, “Some of my best organizations are Jewish!”  But this is no excuse.

Should students who conspire to “shut down” an invited speaker with whom they disagree be prosecuted for the misdemeanor of conspiracy to disturb a meeting?  That is the question roiling the University of California.  The facts are not really in dispute.  Israel’s Ambassador to the United States—a moderate academic named Michael Oren—was invited to present a talk at the University of California at Irvine, a hotbed of radical Islamic hate speech against Israel.  The Muslim Student Union organized an effort, in the words of one of its leaders, to “shut down” Oren’s speech—that is to prevent Oren from expressing his views and to stop the audience who came to hear him from listening to them.  Here is the way the Dean of the law school, who opposes any criminal prosecution, described what happened:.

“The Muslim Student Union orchestrated a concerted effort to disrupt the speech.  One student after another stood and shouted so that the ambassador could not be heard.  Each student was taken away only to be replaced by another doing the same thing.”

The dean’s description is something of an understatement —as anyone can see by watching a video of the event, available online.  This was more than a “concerted effort to disrupt the speech.  It was a concerted effort to stop it completely—to “shut [it] down.”

Ultimately, that effort failed and Oren managed to deliver his speech, after many long and sustained disruptions, but if the Muslim Student Union had gotten its way, Oren would have been shut down completely.  The University, which is a state institution, had a constitutional obligation to protect the First Amendment rights of Oren’s audience to hear what he had to say, and the state prosecutor has a legal obligation to deter future conspiracies to censor controversial speakers, by criminally prosecuting those students who conspired to deny other students their First Amendment rights.

While dissenting students have the right to express disapproval of a speaker’s views by episodic booing, heckling or holding signs, they have no right to conspire to shut down a speaker, which is what the Muslim Student Union students did in this case.  One would think that this distinction should be clear to all civil libertarians, academics and others who claim to care about freedom of speech on campus.

It is shocking therefore to see who has lined up behind the students who set out to censor Ambassador Oren.  Two prominent leaders of the American Civil Liberties have joined with radical Muslims and other extremists in an effort to pressure the local District Attorney to drop misdemeanor charges against 11 student censors.

A letter supporting the censoring students was signed by Chuck Anderson, President of the Orange County ACLU, and Hector Villagra, the incoming Executive Director of the ACLU of Southern California, along with several other radical anti-Israel extremists such as the local heads of the Council on American-Islamic relations, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the National Lawyers Guild, the Islamic Shura Council, and the West Coast Islamic Society (If you don’t believe this, as I originally didn’t, read the entire letter for yourself.

The ACLU leaders have denied they support censorship and claim that the letter they signed is merely a request to the local District Attorney to drop criminal charges against the students who tried to shut Oren down.  But the letter goes much further and defends—indeed praises—the censorial actions those students, while condemning the actions of other students who wanted to hear the speaker.

Noam Chomsky has shown his true colors in his recently published “reaction” to the targeted killing of Osama Bin Laden. He apparently thinks Osama Bin Laden is the innocent victim of a cold-blooded murder that is worse than if George W. Bush were to be assassinated in his “compound.” He doesn’t believe Bin Laden’s own admission of complicity in the murder of 3,000 people on 9/11, writing that it is about as credible as Chomsky’s “confession that I won the Boston Marathon.” Nor does he believe the evidence gathered by the 9/11 Commission, the grand jury that indicted Bin Laden, the numerous confessions and claims of responsibility by Al Qaeda operatives, and the video showing those who flew the planes in the presence of Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. He believes there is absolutely no “evidence”—”nothing serious”—that Bin Laden played any role in 9/11. He also accuses President Obama of “simply lying when he said, in his White House statement, that ‘we quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by Al Qaeda.’” To avoid any appearance of partisanship and to show that he is an equal opportunity despiser of all American presidents, he writes that “uncontraversally” President Bush’s “crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s.” (Guernica. My Reaction to Osama bin Laden’s Death. Noam Chomsky. May 6, 2011.)

If Bin Laden and Al Qaeda were not responsible for 9/11, who was? The United States? The Zionists? Maybe it never happened at all, as some hard-left “intellectuals” have claimed. After all, Chomsky is agnostic with regard to the Nazi Holocaust and believes that Holocaust denial is not anti-Semitic. Writing in defense of the Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson’s claim that the so-called Holocaust was a fraud perpetrated by the Jewish people, Chomsky assured his readers that “nobody believes there is an anti-Semitic connotation to the denial of the Holocaust . . . whether one believes it took place or not.” Chomsky is himself guilty of genocide-denial, having assured his readers (at the height of the Cambodian genocide) that the Khmer Rouge—which he admired—was being falsely accused of mass murder.

The real question is why any reasonable person pays any attention to the ignorant rants of this America-hater, Israel-basher and conspiracy theorist. I can understand why Osama Bin Laden himself was, according to the Wall Street Journal, “a fan of Noam Chomsky.” Bin Laden said that “Chomsky was correct when he compared U.S. policies to the Mafia.” (See: Bin Laden wasn’t an anti-Semite after all, since he liked at least one Jew, though he named one of his daughters Safiyah after Mohammad’s aunt, because, he proclaimed, “Safiyah killed Jews.”) I can even understand why radical anti-American zealots like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro admire him. But he has been described on his own book jacket as “arguably the most important intellectual alive.” He has also been called the most influential academic in the world. What does this say about today’s consumers of intellectual and academic wares?

I have debated Chomsky on several occasions and have found that he simply makes up facts and then characterizes them as “uncontroversial.” This tactic works with sycophantic college audiences on the hard-left, but anyone who bothers to check “Chomsky facts,” as his critics aptly dub them, will find that the source is often conspiratorial websites and hate propaganda. “Chomsky facts” bear little relationship to real facts, except on “Planet Chomsky,” where a different reality governs.

The time has come to dump Noam Chomsky into the wastebasket of history. He has been proved wrong—factually, morally, politically and in every other way—by the verdict of history. He was wrong about the Nazi Holocaust, the Communist genocides, the “peaceful” intentions of Hezbollah, and the alleged “war criminality” of every American president in recent memory. Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal correctly characterized Chomsky as “a two-nickel crank” with “paranoid notions of American policy.” Christopher Hitchens has called him a charter member of the “paranoid anti-war ‘left’” who believes that “America is an incarnation of the third Reich that doesn’t even conceal its genocidal methods and aspirations.”

Chomsky has no credibility among serious people who care about truth. He would be a joke if he were not so influential among the unthinking hard-left and the anti-intellectual academics who propagandize their naïve students to move to Planet Chomsky, where they can live their paranoid lives devoid of any contact with the reality of planet Earth. Nor would he have any credibility on political issues were he not a famous linguist—famous despite his absurd semantic claim that there is no “anti-Semitic connotation” to denying the Holocaust and calling it a fraud perpetrated on the world by the Jews! Even if his linguistic accomplishments were not controversial, they would not qualify him as a guru on the political, legal and military matters on which he regularly opines.

Chomsky will continue to hurt America and decent values so long as his political rants continue to be taken seriously by some of the intellectual elite who help to manufacture consent and create the illusion of credibility on the part of a hateful crackpot.

The photographs of Osama bin Laden’s dead body should be released for public scrutiny. The President’s decision to withhold photographs of Bin Laden’s dead body is only the last in a series of terrible mistakes in the handling of the dead terrorist’s body.  Although there should be no doubt that Bin Laden is actually dead, there are grave doubts as to the circumstances surrounding his death.  Was he shot in cold blood?  Was he standing or lying down when he was shot?  Was he shot in the back or in the front?  Were his hands raised in surrender?  Was he actively resisting?

Many of these doubts could have been resolved if Bin Laden’s body had been subjected to the usual investigatory techniques routinely employed in homicide cases.  His body should have been subjected to an autopsy, to forensic testing by an experienced medical examiner, to extensive photographing of entrance and exit wounds, to paraffin testing for gun powder residue, and to other such forensic examination.

Burying his body at sea constituted the willful destruction of relevant evidence, which naturally gives rise to suspicions that there was something to hide.  I fully credit the administration’s explanation that the reason for the hasty burial at sea was the desire not to offend religious Muslims and not to create a shrine to a dead mass murderer.  I believe that the President acted properly in ordering the targeted assassination of the world’s most culpable and dangerous terrorist and that our armed forces complied with the law in killing Bin Laden.  But many reasonable people around the world will wonder whether the decision to destroy the best evidence may also have been based on a desire to suppress the whole truth.

In my nearly half century of representing defendants charged with homicide, I have come to know that the best evidence of how a person died comes from the body of the deceased.  Dead bodies often talk more loudly, clearly and unambiguously than live witnesses.  Bin Laden’s body should have been preserved as long as necessary to gather all relevant evidence, notwithstanding the requirements of Sharia Law.  When a Muslim or a Jew is the victim of a homicide in the United States, religious considerations do not trump civil requirements.  Their bodies are generally sent to the medical examiner for thorough examination.  Notwithstanding religious prohibitions, autopsies are performed and organs removed for testing.  No special exception should have been made for Bin Laden’s body.

The decision to target and kill Osama Bin Laden is being applauded by all decent people. Approval to capture or kill this mass-murdering terrorist leader was given by Presidents Obama and Bush. It was the right decision, both morally and legally.

Although Bin Laden wore no military uniform and held no official military rank, he was an appropriate military target. As the titular and spiritual head of Al Qaeda, he was the functional equivalent of a head of state or commander in chief of a terrorist army. From the beginning of recorded history, killing the king was the legitimate object of military action. The very phrase “check mate” means “the king is dead,” signifying the successful end of the battle.

Yet there are those who claim that all targeted killings are immoral and illegal. These critics characterize such actions as “extrajudicial executions” and demand that terrorist leaders and functionaries be treated as common criminals who must be arrested and brought to trial.

The operation that resulted in Bin Laden’s death was a military action calculated to kill rather than to “arrest” him. It is possible, though highly unlikely, that he could have been captured alive and brought to trial. The decision to employ military personnel with guns, rather than a drone firing rockets, was probably made by generals rather than lawyers.

Had it been militarily preferable to fire a rocket, that option would almost certainly have been selected — as it was by the NATO forces that rocketed Ghadafy’s compound. A rocket attack would have been a pure targeted killing with no possibility of live capture. The operation directed against Bin Laden may have been designed, in part, to have preserved the theoretical option of “arrest,” though the likelihood of a live capture was virtually impossible under the circumstances. Indeed, it is likely that Bin Laden’s death was deemed preferential to his capture and trial, because the latter would have raised the probability that Al Qaeda would take hostages and try to exchange them for Bin Laden.

Indeed, a US national security official has confirmed to Reuters that “this was a kill operation” and there was no desire to capture Bin Laden alive. This was a targeted kill appropriate for a military combatant but not for an ordinary (or even extraordinary) criminal.

Nonetheless, our government felt it necessary to announce that Bin Laden was shot after he allegedly resisted, thus suggesting he was not killed in cold blood. But it is clear that he would have been killed whether or not he resisted, since this was a kill operation from the outset and it is unlikely he was ever given the opportunity to surrender an opportunity not required under the laws of war.

A recent speaking tour about Israel brought me to South Africa, following a visit to Norway.  Both countries are hostile environments when it comes to the Jewish state.  In Norway, the three faculties of the Norwegian universities refused to host me, but student groups broke the boycott against pro-Israel speakers by inviting me to speak.  In South Africa, the boycott held and I was precluded from speaking at any university.

The South African boycott against me, as an advocate for Israel, was spearheaded by a sitting judge named Dennis Davis, who aspires to serve on South Africa’s highest court and who authored an op ed in the Cape Times headlined  “Dershowitz is not welcome here!”  It was cosigned by a dozen other mainstream lawyers and academics strongly opposed to Israel.

I was originally invited to speak to the faculty and students at the University of Cape Town but Judge Davis pressured the school to make it impossible for me to appear.  The University’s excuse was insufficient interest in my talk to warrant the heavy security my presence would have required.  So instead I spoke off campus.  More than 1,000 people including hundreds of students showed up for my talk.  Another 1,000 people attended a second talk.

The justification offered by Davis for trying to censor me is that I have been critical of Bishop Desmond Tutu for calling Israel an Apartheid state and for accusing the Jewish people of being “arrogant,” “peculiar,” “claiming a monopoly” on God, and on the Holocaust.  He also accused me of being opposed to peace and of supporting Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, despite my long term support for the two-state solution and the end of the occupation.  And he totally mischaracterized my views on torture, collective punishment and academic freedom.  (For a full rebuttal to Davis’ pack of lies see my response in the Cape Times E-dition 3.28.11 and 3.31.11)

I am critical of Bishop Tutu’s call for boycotts against apartheid Israel, because it is a totally false charge.  Israel is the only nation in the Middle East that does not practice any form of apartheid:  Jordan prohibits Jews from becoming citizens or owning land; Saudi Arabia practices gender apartheid; all Muslim countries engage in sexual orientation apartheid; Hamas is notorious for its anti-Christian apartheid; and the Palestinian Authority has said that “no Jew” will ever be allowed to live in a Palestinian state.  Israel, on the other hand,  is a racially diverse country in which Arabs serve in the Knesset, on the Supreme Court, on university faculties and even in the Cabinet.  The court that recently convicted Israel’s former president of rape included an Arab judge.  Nothing like this ever happened in apartheid South Africa.

Indeed, Tutu’s South Africa, remains a far more segregated country today than Israel.  Poor blacks live in segregated temporary settlements, and de facto apartheid can be seen throughout South Africa.

Moreover, the South African government, the African National Congress and Bishop Tutu himself have far worse human rights records than does Israel.  They have supported some of the most despotic regimes in the world, simply because the despots who head these regimes in Libya, Iran, Cuba, China, Zimbabwe,  and the Palestinian governments in the West Bank and Gaza–sided with their legitimate struggle against apartheid in years past.

Yet in a hypercritical display of double-standard immorality, they will never forgive Israel for its support of Dr. Klerk’s South Africa, despite the reality that most Arab and Muslim nations traded extensively with the apartheid regime.  They demand a moral pass for serving as enablers of repression on the ground that these tyrants supported them, but they refuse to give Israel a pass for having supported a tyrannical regime that helped them during trying times.

Bishop Tutu’s call for a boycott against the Jewish state is hypocrisy at its worst.  First, a boycott is the personification of collective punishment directed against all Israelis, regardless of their individual views or actions.  Second, it singles out only Israel for a boycott, while encouraging  “reconciliation” (and trade) with some of the world’s worst human rights offenders.  Third, it hurts the poorest people mostly blacks in South Africa.  Consider the recent boycott of Ben Gurion University by the University of Johannesburg, a boycott encouraged by Tutu.  Ben Gurion has helped Johannesburg with research on water purification, which affects many poor South Africans.  This joint research project which helps South Africa far more than Israel has now been ended because of the Tutu-inspired boycott.

Now Tutu has called for a worldwide cultural, academic and economic boycott against the Jewish state, a boycott reminiscent of the Nazi boycott of Jewish goods in the 1930s.  The difference, of course, is that today a total boycott of Israeli products would include cell phones, Intel processors, numerous medical technologies and pharmaceuticals, and important environmental and agricultural innovations.

I’m proud of standing up against Bishop Tutu’s singular bigotry against the Jewish nations and the Jewish people.  I will continue to do so until and unless he stop applying a double-standard to all things Jewish.

Yet I defend Tutu’s right and those of his sycophants such as Judge Davis to express their anti-Israel views.  I would never try to censor them, as they have tried to censor me and others who express views supportive of Israel.  The difference is I am not afraid of the truth, of debate or of the marketplace of ideas.  Those, like Judge Davis, who tried to ban me from speaking on university campuses are clearly afraid to have all sides of the Arab-Israeli dispute aired.  They have resorted to the age-old tactic employed by those who do not trust the public to make up their own minds: censorship of opposing views.  That seems to be the approach taken by South African universities when it comes to Israel.

South Africa thus joins Norway as among the nations of the world most intolerant of pro Israel–even moderately pro Israel–views. In at least one respect, South Africa is even worse: one major university has imposed a formal academic boycott against an Israeli university, thanks to Bishop Tutu; and another university has succeeded in preventing its students from hearing a pro-Israel speaker on their campus, thanks to Judge Davis.  But in another respect, South Africa is far better: its vibrant Jewish community is willing to fight back against those who would censor pro-Israel views.

I recently completed a “speaking tour” of Norwegian Universities on the topic of “international law as applied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”  The sponsors of the tour—a Norwegian pro-Israel group—offered to have me lecture without any charge to the three major universities in Bergen, Oslo and Trondheim.  Norwegian universities, especially those outside of Oslo, tend to feel somewhat isolated from the more mainstream academic world, and they generally jump at any opportunity to invite lecturers from leading universities.  Thus, when Professor Stephen Walt, co-author of The Israel Lobby—a much maligned critique of American support for Israel—came to Norway, he was immediately invited to present a lecture.  Likewise, with Ilan Pappe—a strident demonizer of Israel—from Oxford.  Many professors from less well-known universities have also been invited to present their anti-Israel perspectives.

My hosts expected, therefore, that their offer to have me present a somewhat different academic perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be eagerly accepted, since I have written half a dozen books on the subject presenting a centrist view in support of the two-state solution and against civilian settlements on the West Bank.  Indeed, one of my books is entitled The Case For Peace, and former President Bill Clinton praised my blueprint for peace as “among the best in recent years.”  But each of the three universities categorically refused to invite me to give a lecture on that subject.  The dean of the law faculty at Bergen University said he would be “honored” to have me present a lecture “on the O.J. Simpson case,” as long as I was willing to promise not to mention Israel.  The head of the Trondheim school was more direct:

“Israel and international law is a controversial and inflamed theme, which cannot be regarded as isolated and purely professional.  Too much politics is invited in this.”

But is it less “controversial” and “inflamed” when rabidly anti-Israel professors are invited to express their “politics?”

Apparently, a pro-Israel perspective is more controversial, inflamed and political than an anti-Israel perspective—at least at Trondheim.  The University of Oslo simply said no without offering an excuse, leading one journalist to wonder whether the Norwegian universities believed that I am “not entirely house-trained.”

Only once before have I been prevented from lecturing at universities in a country.  The other country was Apartheid South Africa where the government insisted on “approving” the text of my proposed talks on human rights.  I declined.

But despite the refusal of the faculties of Norway’s three major universities to invite me to deliver lectures on Israel and international law, I delivered three lectures to packed auditoriums at each university.  It turns out that the students wanted to hear me, despite their professors’ efforts to keep my views from them.  Student groups invited me.  I came.  And I received sustained applause both before and after my talks.  Faculty members boycotted my talks and declined even to meet with me.  I was recently told that free copies of the Norwegian translation of my book, The Case For Israel, were offered to several university libraries in Norway and that they declined to accept them.

Iran’s recent attempt to ship arms to Hamas in Gaza is an act of war committed by the Iranian government against the Israeli government.  The Israeli Navy seized the ship, loaded with weapons designed to kill Israeli civilians, and traced the weapons back to Iran.  Nor is this the first act of war that would justify a military response by Israel under international law.  Iran has sent other boatloads of anti personnel weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah.  In addition, back in 1992, the Iranian leaders planned and authorized a deadly attack on Israel’s embassy in Argentina.  That bombing, which was carried out by Iranian agents, constituted a direct armed attack on the state of Israel, since its embassy is part of its sovereign territory.  Moreover, the Iranian government has publicly declared war on Israel by calling for it “to be wiped off the map.”

Under international law, these acts of war—known as Casus Belli—fully justify an Israeli armed response.  Even the UN Charter authorizes a unilateral response to an armed attack.  Providing weapons to a declared enemy in the face of an embargo has historically been deemed an armed attack under the law of war, especially when those providing the weapons intend for them to be used against the enemy’s civilians.  So too is the bombing of an embassy.

Two other recent events enhance Israel’s right use military means to prevent Iran from continuing to arm Israel’s enemies.  The recent disaster in Japan has shown the world the extraordinary dangers posed by nuclear radiation.  If anybody ever doubted the power of a dirty bomb to devastate a nation, both physically and psychologically, those doubts have been eliminated by what is now going on in Japan.  If Iran were to develop nuclear weapons, the next ship destined to Gaza might contain a nuclear dirty bomb and Israel might not intercept that one.  A dirty bomb detonated in tiny Israel would cause incalculable damage to civilian life.

Moreover, the recent killings in Itamar of a family including three children, demonstrate how weapons are used by Israel’s enemies against civilians in violation of the laws of war.  Even babies are targeted by those armed by Iran.  Hamas praised the murders.

When celebrities are drunk, on drugs or just high on their own egos, they often engage in rants.  These days many such rants are captured on cell phone videos or audio tapes and go viral on the internet.  Nothing surprising there. What is surprising to many is that the rant de jour these days seems to be directed against Jews.

Consider the former Dior designer, John Galliano, who was sitting in a bar in a Jewish section of Paris and announcing his love for Hitler and smiling as he told the people at an adjoining table, who he apparently assumed to be Jewish, that “People like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers, would all be f—– gassed.”

Or consider Charlie Sheen who claims to be high on Charlie Sheen, attacking his producer by emphasizing the Jewish nature of his original name, Chaim Levine.

Or Oliver Stone telling an interviewer last year that too much attention is paid to the Holocaust because of “Jewish domination of the media.”  And that Hitler wasn’t all that terrible to the Jews.

Then there is the Reverend Louis Farrakhan, ranting and raving about Satanic Jews controlling the world.

This is not an entirely new phenomenon.  Mel Gibson delivered a similar rant when he was stopped by Los Angeles police in 2006.  “F*****g Jews… The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” Gibson then asked the deputy, “Are you a Jew?”

Generally, sobriety results in apology, but the damage has been done.

The question is why the Jews?  There’s an old joke about a Nazi rally in Nuremberg where Hitler is screaming, “Who causes all of Germany’s problems?”  An old man in the crowd shouts back, “the bicycle riders.”  Hitler’s taken by surprise and asks, “why the bicycle riders?”  To which the old man replies, “why the Jews?”  That was the 1930s.  But “why the Jews” in the second decade of the 21^st Century?

Let me suggest two possible answers.  The first is that little about the nature of prejudice has really changed, but the advent of the age of high technology has brought private prejudices into the public arena.  In commenting on the Galliano outburst, Michael Goubert, a French DJ and music designer, observed that “virulent views like those expressed by [Galliano] are not rare.”  But “the public expression” of intolerance is unusual and particularly troubling, according to patrons of the bar in which Galliano expressed his bigoted views.  The pervasiveness of cell phone videos and the widespread use of the social media have blurred the line between private and public expression.  What used to be only whispered to friends at a bar is now broadcast around the world.

There is a second, a far more troubling answer to “Why the Jews?”  Prominent public figures have blurred another line as well—the line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, between attacking the Jewish state and attacking the Jewish people.  Consider widely publicized remarks made by Bishop Desmond Tutu, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and the American Model of Freedom, and a man openly admired and praised by President Obama.  He has called the Jews “a peculiar people” and has accused “the Jews” of causing many of the world’s problems.  He has railed against “the Jewish Lobby,” comparing its power to that of Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin.

The inappropriate use of Holocaust and Nazi imagery to attack political opponents is rampant both on the left and the right and both among Jews and non-Jews.  In fact, it seems far more prevalent on the left, many of whose most vocal ideologues invoke it against all manner of enemy ranging from George W. Bush, to Israel, to me (“Zionazi”).  Rabbi Michael Lerner and his supporters refer to Kristallnacht  when attacking those who criticize them.  Rabbi Arthur Woskow decries the possibility of a nuclear Holocaust.  Keith Olbermann repeatedly invokes Nazi imagery.  Move On, an organization funded by George Soros, produced a video showing pictures of Hitler and Nazi rallies and claiming that Hitler’s war crimes have become President Bush’s foreign policy.  Norman Finkelstein, whose articles are published and praised by Michael Lerner, repeatedly compares the Israeli army to the Gestapo.  Gilad Atzmon apologizes for making such a comparison, arguing that the Israeli army is far worse than the Gestapo.

There are also several prominent Israeli professors who regularly compare Israel and Nazi Germany.  And just a week or so before this Wall Street Journal ad appeared, a prominent Jewish liberal congressman, Steve Cohen, compared Republican arguments against Obama healthcare to the “big lies” told by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

One would think that a group of rabbis, many on the hard left, would express concern about their coreligionists and ideological soul mates misusing the Holocaust.  “But nooooooo!,” as John Belushi used to say.  These rabbis, 400 strong, took out a $100,000 ad in the Wall Street Journal, limiting their vitriol to two right wing figures who have misused Holocaust imagery:  Glenn Beck and Roger Ailes.  Not surprisingly, the list of rabbis includes both Michael Lerner, whose dubious rabbinical credentials have been questioned for years, and Arthur Woskow, a strident demonizer of Israel.  Both of these rabbis are guilty of the very offense they accuse Beck and Ailes of committing.  I would bet there are also other rabbis on the list whose sermons and political screeds include inappropriate Holocaust references and support for Move On.

Why then did so many decent rabbis sign an ad that includes indecent rabbis and that fails to deal with the far more serious problem of Jewish demonizers of Israel who repeatedly compare the Jewish state to Nazi Germany?  Related to that question is another one:  Who shelled out the $100,000 that it costs to run a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal?  Certainly it wasn’t the rabbis themselves, many of whom earn yearly salaries less that the cost of the ad.  The third question is how many of these rabbis would sign an ad condemning the inappropriate use of Holocaust imagery by hard left delegitimators of Israel such as Lerner, Woskow, Finkelstein and Atzmon?

Shortly after Sarah Palin provoked a barrage of criticism for her use of the term “blood libel,” a Democratic Congressman named Steve Cohen compared Republican statements about the Obama health care reform to “the big lie” told by Joseph Goebbels, saying it’s “like [a] blood libel. The same kind of thing.” Cohen further posited, “the Germans said enough about the Jews and the people believed it and you had the Holocaust.”  For the most part the left excoriated Palin for being insensitive to Jewish suffering, while the right has either defended her use of that historical term or has given her a pass on it.  I am one of the few liberal Democrats who, while criticizing her use of crosshairs in indentifying contested congressional seats, found nothing objectionable in her use of “blood libel” as a metaphor to describe what she regarded as a false accusation of complicity in the bloodletting in Tucson.  I have heard little from the left regarding Congressman Cohen’s more extreme statements.

The irony, of course, is that many of the same people on the left who criticized Palin for insensitively to Jewish suffering, have themselves contributed to Jewish suffering by unfairly demonizing the Jewish state and trivializing the increase in global anti-Semitism.  They have also given a pass to those on the hard left who have used Holocaust and Nazi references in mischaracterizing Israeli self defense actions.

Consider the case of Norman Finkelstein, a hero of the hard left.  Finkelstein regularly uses Nazi references in his attacks on Israel.  He has said the following about the Israeli Defense Forces:  “[I] can’t imagine why Israel’s apologists would be offended by a comparison with the Gestapo.” (This same formulation has been used by Finkelstein’s British clone, Gilad Atzmon and by others on the hard left.)  Most recently, Finkelstein, who regularly refers to the Holocaust as a “circus,” responded to a critic with the words “Heil Hitler,” and to Israeli President Shimon Peres’ Christmas greeting to the Christian world with the words, “And a ‘Heil Hitler!’ to you too.”   He has also offered the following advice to Israelis, when they travel abroad:

“Do not raise your arm at 45 degree angles and shout ‘Heil Hitler!’ Do not sing or hum ‘Israel uber Alles!’”

So proud is Finkelstein of his references to Hitler that he regularly includes them on his website.  Other Finkelstein misuses of the Holocaust include calling prominent Jews “Nazis” and comparing them to Eichmann, Streicher and Ribbentrop. He has also said they are “parasites” who “resemble stereotypes straight out of Der Sturmer.”

Yet, although J Street, which claims to be a pro-Israel lobby, went out of its way to criticize Palin’s remarks, it has not leveled comparable criticism against Finkelstein and other prominent leftists who abuse the language of Jewish suffering.  The reason is obvious:  Many J Street supporters adore Finkelstein, cheer him at his lectures and echo his demonization of Israel.  J Street does not go after Finkelstein for the same reason it refused to go after Richard Goldstone:  If it did, it would lose support from many on the hard left, which it is trying to cultivate.  (One of J Street’s leading activist and supporters, Letty Pogrebin, has praised Goldstone as a modern day prophet and supported the most egregious statements made in his report.)

Why J Street felt it necessary to enter the kerfuffle about the use of blood libel may not be obvious to those who actually believe that J Street is a “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobby that limits its activities to issues surrounding the Israeli Arab conflict.  After all, J Street does not claim to be in the business of defending the Jewish people against defamation as does the ADL.  Nor is it a protector of Jewish sensitivities as is the Wiesenthal Center.  But to those of us who understand what J Street really is, its attack on Palin makes perfect sense.  J Street is a lobby for the Democratic Party in general and for the Obama Administration in particular.  That’s why it doesn’t deviate from the Obama line, doesn’t criticize the Obama Administration, and doesn’t miss an opportunity to dump on Republicans, even those who support Israel.

J Street will respond to this charge of a double standard by arguing that Sarah Palin is a prominent public figure, a potential presidential candidate, while Finkelstein and others on the hard left who abuse the language of Jewish suffering are marginal figures.  But that misses the mark.  Those of us who are liberals have a special obligation to criticize abusers of the left, just as those who are conservatives have a special obligation to criticize abusers of the right, such as Patrick Buchanan.  It’s too easy for J Street to pile on when the alleged abuser is a conservative Republican.  It’s far more difficult, and costly, for J Street to go after fellow leftists who abuse language, especially those with large followings among its supporters.  But that is their responsibility if they are to assume the role of protector of Jewish sensibilities.  I doubt it is a role they are willing to assume, except when it serves the interests of their real clients: the Democratic Party, the Obama Administration and the left.  That is why they went after Sarah Palin, even though her remarks had nothing to do with Israel or peace.

Any genuine lobby group for Israel and for peace must assure that support for Israel and for peace remains a bipartisan concern.  J Street wants to turn it into a partisan wedge issue that divides Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, young and old.  That’s why they focus so much criticism against Republicans who support Israel.  Such divisions do not serve the interests of peace or Israeli security.

P.S.  I’m still waiting for J Street’s reaction to Congressman Cohen’s invocation of the Holocaust, Goebbels and blood libels to attack Republicans.

Alan Dershowitz’s latest novel is The Trials of Zion.

Among the world’s most respected figures is South Africa’s Bishop Desmond.  His recognizable face—with its ever present grin—has become a symbol of reconciliation and goodness.  But it  masks a long history of ugly hatred toward the Jewish people, the Jewish religion and the Jewish state. Bishop Desmond Tutu is no mere anti-Zionist (though Martin Luther King long ago recognized that anti- Zionism often serves as a cover for deeper anti-Jewish bigotry). He has minimized the suffering of those killed in the Holocaust. He has attacked the “Jewish”–not Israeli–”lobby” as too “powerful” and “scar[y].”  He has invoked classic anti-Semitic stereotypes and tropes about Jewish “arrogance”, “power” and money.  He has characterized Jews a “peculiar people,” and has accused “the Jews” of causing many of the world’s problems. He once even accused the Jewish state of acting in an “unChristian” way.

Were he not a Nobel laureate, his long history of bigotry against the Jewish people would have landed him in the dustbin of history, along with a dishonor roll of otherwise successful people, whose reputations have been tainted by their anti-Semitism such as Henry Ford, Charles Lindberg, Patrick Buchanan and Mel Gibson. But his Nobel Prize should not shield him from accountability for his long history of anti-Jewish bigotry, any more than it should for Yassir Arafat, Jimmy Carter and Jose Saramago.

Let the record speak for itself, so that history may judge Tutu on the basis of his own words—words that he has often repeated and that others repeat, because Tutu is a role model for so many people around the world.  Here are some of Tutu’s hateful words, most of them carefully documented in a recent petition by prominent South Africans to terminate him as a “patron” of the two South African Holocaust Centers, because he uses his status with these fine institutions as legitimization for his anti-Jewish rhetoric.

He has minimized the suffering of those murdered in the Holocaust by asserting that “the gas chambers” made for “a neater death” than did Apartheid.  In other words, the Palestinians, who in his view are the victims of “Israeli Apartheid,” have suffered more than the victims of the Nazi Holocaust.  He has complained of “the Jewish Monopoly of the Holocaust,” and has demanded that its victims must “forgive the Nazis for the Holocaust,” while refusing to forgive the “Jewish people” for “persecute[ing] others.”

Tutu has asserted that Zionism has “very many parallels with racism,” thus echoing the notorious and discredited “Zionism equals racism” resolution passed by the General Assembly of the United Nations and subsequently rescinded.  He has accused the Jews of Israel of doing “things that even Apartheid South Africa had not done.”  He has said that “the Jews thought they had a monopoly of God:  Jesus was angry that they could shut out other human beings.”  He has said that Jews have been “fighting against” and being “opposed to” his God.  He has “compared the features of the ancient Holy Temple in Jerusalem to the features of the apartheid system in South Africa.”  He has complained that “the Jewish people with their traditions, religion and long history of persecution sometimes appear to have caused a refugee problem among others.”  He has implied that Israel might someday consider as an option “to perpetrate genocide and exterminate all Palestinians.”

He has complained that Americans “are scared…to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful—very powerful.”  He has accused Jews—not Israelis—of exhibiting “an arrogance—the arrogance of power because Jews are a powerful lobby in this land and all kinds of people woo their support.”

“You know as well as I do that, somehow, the Israeli government is placed on a pedestal [in the U.S.] and to criticize it is to be immediately dubbed anti-Semitic, as if Palestinians were not Semitic.”