Lawyer Alan Dershowitz has sharply criticized former President Jimmy Carter’s plans to meet with a Hamas leader in Syria. Dershowitz will speak May 8 at a Yom Ha’atzmaut program for the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County.
Sidebar
Dershowitz in MiddlesexApril 22, 2008
Lawyer Alan Dershowitz said plans by Jimmy Carter to meet with Hamas’ leader in exile “border on anti-Semitism.”
Speaking to a reporter ahead of his own May 8 appearance in New Brunswick (see sidebar), Dershowitz said the former president applies a “double standard” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“Jimmy Carter has a long history of sympathy for people who kill Jews but not for the Jews killed,” said Dershowitz. “It’s bigotry and a double standard and borders on anti-Semitism. His approach to the Jewish state and its enemies is hard to understand on any other basis except as a dislike for all things Jewish, the Jewish religion, and the Jewish state.”
Dershowitz spoke to NJJN on April 9, a week ahead of Carter’s planned visit to the Middle East.
Following a four-day stay in Israel last week, Carter planned to meet Hamas’ leader in exile, Khaled Meshaal, in Syria.
Prior to that, Carter visited Sderot to meet with Israeli victims of Gazan rocket attacks, and traveled to Ramallah to lay a wreath on Yasser Arafat’s grave and embrace a senior Hamas official.
Carter played down the significance of his meeting with Meshaal, while also suggesting he may have the power to soften the arch-terrorist’s commitment to Israel’s destruction.
Dershowitz said Carter’s trip, however, actually would hinder the quest for peace. The excursion has been criticized by several U.S. State Department officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
“Never has an American president done so much to undercut American foreign policy,” said Dershowitz from his Cambridge, Mass. office. “The United States’ and Europe’s policy is not to negotiate with Hamas. Now Jimmy Carter has decided he wants to make decisions for America regardless of what the American government believes.”
Dershowitz and Carter have tussled in the past: after Dershowitz challenged Carter to a debate over Carter’s controversial 2006 book, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, the ex-president declined.
“I don’t want to have a conversation even indirectly with Dershowitz,” Carter told The Boston Globe. “There is no need…to debate somebody who, in my opinion, knows nothing about the situation in Palestine.”
Dershowitz, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, is the author of 27 books, including The Case for Israel, written in 2003; and What Israel Means to Me and The Case for Peace: How the Arab-Israeli Conflict Can be Resolved, both written in 2006.
Dershowitz said he had just returned from an extensive trip to the Middle East, including Sderot. He found most people “cautiously optimistic” about the prospects for peace, although it is unclear exactly with whom that peace can be negotiated.
He believes an accord can be reached with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, but Dershowitz doubts any such agreement can be achieved with Hamas in Gaza.
“It’s going to be very difficult with Hamas in control,” he said. “But, things are good in Israel right now. Israel has only one major fear in the world, and that’s Iran.”
Dershowitz said all three major candidates in the presidential race have an Israel-friendly history and he did not see U.S. support for Israel waning.
Americans in general also support Israel, he said, although there is some anti-Israel sentiment on college campuses.
“But then the students grow up and realize Israel is America’s best friend in the world,” said Dershowitz. “Things are getting a little better; the radicals are self-destructing. They’re going too far and being rejected by the mainstream.”
And Dershowitz has advice for members of the Jewish community who want to advocate for Israel: “Go to Israel more, read more. Become more knowledgeable about Israel. Write letters to the editor, go on blogs. Use the technology we now have available and make a case for Israel.”
Dershowitz in Middlesex
Lawyer Alan Dershowitz will speak about Israel during a May 8 appearance in New Brunswick.
The appearance, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence, is being sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County. It begins at 8 p.m. at the Nicholas Music Center at Rutgers University.
Tickets must be purchased in advance. The cost is $60 for sponsor and preferred seating and $10 general admission.
Tickets can be purchased at Trio Gifts, 246 Raritan Ave., Highland Park; Lox Stock and Deli, 238 Ryders Lane, Milltown; and Congregation Neve Shalom, 250 Grove Ave., Metuchen.
Tickets are also available online at the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County web site. Checks may be sent to the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County, 230 Old Bridge Turnpike, South River, NJ 08882. Write “Alan Dershowitz” on the memo line.
For more information, contact the federation at 732-432-7711 via email or by going on-line.
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