[Dershowitz has his uses]
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I will come, at my own expense, to debate Jimmy Carter on Carter’s own human rights record. If Cardozo will have me, I will come and provide the students, the administration and anyone else that is interested, with a first rate debate about the meaning of human rights and they can decide whether what Jimmy Carter has done, constitutes human rights or human wrongs.
Alan Dershowitz, Felix Frankfurter professor of law at Harvard Law School, has challenged former president Jimmy Carter to a debate on his human rights record.
Dershowitz spoke by telephone to a reporter with The Jewish Press, on Monday, April 8, in response to the news that the Cardozo School of Law’s Journal of Conflict Resolution will be honoring Carter with the “International Advocate for Peace” Award this Wednesday, April 10, as reported that morning.
During the course of the interview, the law professor recounted the widespread death and devastation caused by Carter’s efforts at “human rights.”
“What should be discussed is not Jimmy Carter’s role as a peacemaker, but instead it should be his role as a deal breaker,” said Dershowitz. He then proceeded to tick off the bases for his reasoning.
“First, it was Carter who advised Yassir Arafat not to accept the peace deal offered in 2000-01. That failure led to the deaths of more than 4000 Israelis and Arabs.”
“Secondly, by encouraging and supporting Hamas, and always placing the blame on Israel, Carter has guaranteed the continuation of terrorism.” Indeed, “Carter has embraced Arafat, he’s embraced Mashaal, why, he’s never met a terrorist he didn’t love, and never met an Israeli whom he did.”
“And third,” the professor said, “it was Carter who was responsible for not acting to prevent the death of two million Cambodians at the hands of Pol Pot. Carter was the president of the United States and yet he did not intervene in that slaughter, he did not lead and prod the United Nations to take action.”
Dershowitz paused, to sum up, “Carter has prevented peace, encouraged terrorism and done more than anyone else to isolate and demonize the Middle East’s only democracy, Israel.”
But Dershowitz wasn’t finished.
“Jimmy Carter has distorted the very meaning of human rights, he has turned the concept on its head, what he does should be called ‘human lefts.’”
What does that mean?
“The way human rights should be addressed is based on ‘worst, first,’ you deal with the most egregious wrongs, the worst kind of abuses committed by governments first,” Dershowitz explained. “He’s turned everything upside down. Instead of Israel, just look over a little to the south, “Saudi Arabia is the worst human rights violator in the world: sex segregation, gender preference discrimination, religious discrimination,” that’s where a real human rights activist would focus, said the law professor.
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“But Jimmy Carter was bought and paid for by the Saudis. The Carter Center stopped criticizing the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia when the Saudis started funding it.”
So what should be the plan of action with respect to the Cardozo award?
Dershowitz started out by suggesting that when Carter comes to Cardozo, leaflets should be distributed to everyone, including the former president, detailing Carter’s human rights records. But his thoughts continued to develop as he spoke further about the many “failures Carter has orchestrated.”
Turning again to talk about Yassir Arafat, Dershowitz, more slowly this time, explained how Arafat had gone to seek advice from Jimmy Carter, in the run up to Camp David. “And Jimmy Carter advised Arafat not to accept the peace accord.”
“We’d be celebrating 10 years of peace already had Carter not given that disastrous advice to Arafat. Jimmy Carter is primarily responsible – along with Arafat – for the deaths since that time.”
“What’s more,” Dershowitz continued, “Jimmy Carter has not only sown death and destruction by inserting himself in global conflicts, his actions themselves are illegal.” Dershowitz was referring to the Logan Act, passed in 1799 in the wake of the XYZ Affair, which made it a crime for private citizens to conduct foreign policy.
Finally, Dershowitz settled upon the best course of action.
Dershowitz said:
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I will come, at my own expense, to debate Jimmy Carter on Carter’s own human rights record. If Cardozo will have me, I will come and provide the students, the administration and anyone else that is interested, with a first rate debate about the meaning of human rights and they can decide whether what Jimmy Carter has done, constitutes human rights or human wrongs.
So, Dean Diller, other administration and faculty, and students on the Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution: here is your opportunity to resolve this particular conflict. Jimmy Carter, by all means! come to Cardozo and talk about human rights, but be prepared to have a full discussion, a debate even, with Alan Dershowitz on the topic.
No doubt Yeshiva University, which today issued a statement about the controversial decision, will support the offer made by Dershowitz.
Richard Joel, president of Yeshiva University, under the auspices of which Cardozo operates, took pains to distance himself as well as the school from Jimmy Carter’s history of “statements and actions in recent years which have mischaracterized the Middle East conflict and have served to alienate those of us who care about Israel.”
But Joel concluded by emphasizing how seriously YU takes its obligation “to thrive as a free marketplace of ideas, while remaining committed to its unique mission as a proud Jewish university.”
So, on Wednesday, at Cardozo, what shall it be? Shall we have a true marketplace of ideas, or will only a single stall be open?
yamit82 Said:
Your kidding, who would have thunk it. CB is taking into town today,to Hobby Lobby to but paint!!!!!!!! Should have sent CB, he can be a real Tuchus.
Dershowitz is a media hog and this empty gesture is par for the course for him.
No one showed up to protest Carter at Cardozo. No one. Not even Dershowitz 🙁
Not one single protester showed up to Cardozo to express outrage that Jimmy Carter was receiving an award.
Carter is a vicious anti-Semite who has done much to spread the canard that Israel is a so-called “apartheid state.” He is so anti-Semitic that his own church, in Plains, Georgia stopped him from teaching Sunday school classes because he was bashing Jews to children! As for his human rights record, the Genocide committed by Pol Pot, in Cambodia, succeeded because Carter didn’t care. And his support for Arab terrorism is well-known. He deserves no awards, especially from a Jewish University. Alan Dershowitz would make mintz meat out of Carter in a debate.
@ Wallace Brand: good idea!
I will come to Harvard at my own expense to debate Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz on his choice of a two state solution for the Arab Israeli conflict over a one Jewish majority state based on the San Remo Resolution of April 25, 1920 and the Balfour Declaration. These documents and the League of Nations Mandate based on them already recognize the political rights over the West Bank as belonging to the Jews.
Alan could sponsor such a conference at Harvard. He claims all one state proposals are extremist.
Ray Saperstein Said:
STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES!!!!!!!!!!!!!
New York’s Yeshiva University engulfed in controversy over Jimmy Carter peace award
America’s preeminent Modern Orthodox academic institution distances itself from ‘student-initiated’ award as critics call for financial pressure to cancel ceremony.
Ray Saperstein Said:
You answered your own question. They are only supposed to be smart. They have proved once again that they are not only not smart but incredibly stupid even insidious.
How can a people who are supposed to be so smart, be so incredibly stupid? This applies not only to YU but the so-called 100 Jewish leaders
@ Yidvocate:
“International piece of shit” is more like it.
What more need be said?
Isi Leibler has just penned an excellent article titled, “Sanctimonious Jewish Bleeding Hearts” about the stupidity of Jewish cowards who had the nerve to petition the Israeli government demanding Israel shrink itself and put itself at the mercy of Israel’s destroyers. They did so from the safety of their rich gated shtetls in America, leaving the problem of defending a shrunken, weakened Israel to Jewish youth in Israel.
The Dershowitz offer to debate is, I guess, constructive, and Dershowitz is a good debater with strong command of important facts. I still do not know how Dershowitz can square his support of Obama with his detestation of Carter – the two leaders, the former President and the current President, are joined at the hip and share a common ideology when it comes to Middle East politics and belligerent, condescending and monomaniacal treatment of Israel that excludes criticism of Islamist terrorist and genocidal regimes.
Do not believe Yeshiva University’s claims. They can easily “thrive as a free marketplace of ideas” without inviting hateful Jew haters to campus. Yeshiva U does not have to contribute to the hate and propaganda circulating about Israel while adding to Carter’s pocketbook and stature by extending their warm, loving embrace. Their explanations do not make any sense just as the “100 American Jews including a number of rabbis, communal leaders and academics” who signed the Israel Policy Forum petition do not make sense. These are the folks who ought to study the history of counterproductive obsequious behavior by American Jews with regard to non-action during WWII to pressure their government to help save the Jews of Europe and their current actions to vilify and demonize Israel to put more distance between themselves (their positions and careers) and Israel to gain favor with the general population and political establishment in the USA.