An Evil, Evil Man

The defamation campaign against one critic of Israel is escalating. American journalist Alan Dershowitz called U.N. Special Envoy Richard Goldstone a traitor. That is tantamount to a death sentence.

According to Wikipedia, Alan Dershowitz is “currently one of the most famous lawyers in America.”* A committed Zionist, his international notoriety is due less to his legal accomplishments than to the verbal fallout from many of his statements on constitutional and humanitarian principles. He has, for example, advocated in favor of using torture, not only in Israel but also in the United States, as well as for illegal collective punishment such as the destruction of homes and even entire villages if there is any suspicion that they harbor assassins; the inhabitants are to be given only a few minutes to flee prior to the onset of destruction. Dershowitz has proposed this measure only for those Palestinian areas occupied by Israel since 1967.

Dershowitz attacks Jews who do not share his views with a special vehemence. Last Sunday, he met with South African judge Richard Goldstone who was appointed United Nations Special Envoy to investigate possible human rights violations committed during Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip in December 2008 and January 2009. The Goldstone Report, published in September 2009, caused major controversy in Israel as well as among Zionists worldwide that continues unabated. The U.S.-based Simon Wiesenthal Center and other groups have tried to make public appearances by Goldstone as difficult as possible with threats as well as defamatory statements about him.

But back to Dershowitz: In an interview broadcast by Israeli military radio on February 7th, he said Goldstone is “an evil, evil man” whose defamatory statements about Israel amounted to a sort of ritual purification certificate. “It would be as if the Czar, when he wrote the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, then asked a prominent Jew to edit the report and sign the Protocols in order to show that it had credibility,” Dershowitz thundered.

Interviewer Razi Barkai then asked Dershowitz, “Do you hint, professor, that he is a moser, someone who betrays his own people?” Dershowitz emphatically answered, “Absolutely. There is a prayer that is said every day for people like him: La-malshinim al t’hi tikvah (‘there shall be no hope for the betrayers’). He is a man who uses his language, his words against the Jewish people. I regarded him as a friend. I now regard his as an absolute traitor.”

Numerous journalists criticized Dershowitz for his reaction. They pointed out that the term “moser” used traditionally for an informer or detractor has taken on a modern meaning of “traitor” against the Jewish state and the Jewish people in general as well as the historic definition of someone deserving the death penalty. Some influential religious authorities in Israel explicitly encourage and approve of putting a “moser” to death. The right-wing extremist assassin who killed Yitzhak Rabin on Nov. 4, 1995 claimed his act was justified because the Prime Minister was a “moser.” Many on Israel’s political right agreed with him.

Dershowitz responded to these critics with the fatuous excuse that Barkai had purposely led him into a trap during the interview. He claimed to be unaware of the meaning of the Hebrew word “moser,” something highly unlikely for someone who had attended Yeshiva, a Talmudic institution, spoke fluent Hebrew and was intimately acquainted with the ins and outs of daily Israeli politics. The assertion was made even more ludicrous and unbelievable when Dershowitz immediately recited the opening lines of “La-malshinim” (traitor to the Jewish race) from memory and had several particularly unfriendly prayers ready that are considered curses even though they are meant to be blessings. The one quoted by Dershowitz opens with the lines, “And for the informers may there be no hope. And all heretics in a moment should disappear and all enemies of your people should be destroyed, and all evil people you should quickly uproot and smash and obliterate and shame and humiliate and defeat quickly in our days.”

The problem underlying this event is the existence of a political culture in some parts of Zionism that relies on a very broad and aggressive definition of treason. This culture demands that Jews – regardless of how they define themselves – are required to be unconditionally loyal members of a compulsory community that finds its most important and undisputable common denominator in nationalism. And in doing so, it relies on the most extreme and stupid form of nationalism, namely the one that preaches “My country, whether right or wrong!”

* Translator’s Note: That is the lead sentence in the German Wikipedia’s entry for Dershowitz. The English version of Wikipedia introduces Dershowitz with the neutral declaration that he is “an American lawyer, jurist, and political commentator.”