Dershowitz on Obama: 'He should be ashamed' for his 'deep hatred of Israel'

Talk about Revolutions Eating 'their' Children…

Oh my, as much as I’d love to continue with posting old postcards, there are other things to attend to, including the below-reproduced gem that appeared on my LinkedIn feed earlier today (emphases and bottom lines mine):

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Alan Dershowitz calls out Obama's 'deep hatred of Israel': 'He should be ashamed'

By Kristen Altus, Fox Business (source)

Expressing outrage over former President Barack Obama’s call for an end to Israeli ‘occupation’, Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz expanded on why he’s never talking to the Democratic president again.

‘I think he always had a deep hatred of Israel in his heart. He hid it very well. He called me to the Oval Office and he said to me, “Alan, you've known me for a long time. You know I have Israel's back.” I didn't realize he meant to paint a target on it’, Dershowitz said Friday [10 Nov. 2023] on ‘Mornings with Maria’.

‘He's never been supportive of Israel. And finally, his true feelings have come out now that he's no longer president and doesn't have to be elected’, the professor continued. ‘He has contributed enormously to the problem because he is respected among young people. And if he says the occupation is unbearable and that anything can be done to stop it, he is encouraging people to engage in their antisemitic, anti-Israel and anti-American attitudes. He should be ashamed of himself. He should apologize, but he won't.’

Dershowitz’s commentary comes after he claimed Thursday that any relationship with Obama is ‘over’ following the 44th president’s onstage statements about the Israel-Hamas war.

[EDIT: here follows footage of what Obama said]

[Back to the Fox Business piece.]

Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz called for former President Barack Obama to apologize for his Israeli occupation comments on ‘Mornings with Maria’.  (Fox News)

‘All of this is taking place against the backdrop of decades of failure to achieve a durable peace for both Israelis and Palestinians’, the former president told the forum audience.

He continued: ‘One that is based on genuine security for Israel, a recognition of its right to exist, and a peace that is based on an end of the occupation and the creation of a viable state and self-determination for the Palestinian people.’

The Harvard professor on Friday accused Obama of lying ‘through his teeth’ about what the former president called an ‘unbearable’ occupation of Gaza.

‘To compare those disputed claims with the rapes, beheadings, burnings, kidnappings, it's just obscene and despicable’, Dershowitz said. ‘And what it does is it lends support to those students basically, who are saying, “Well, what Hamas really did was not so bad…It was in response to the occupation”.’

‘Although he said that the attacks by Hamas are not justifiable’, Dershowitz added, ‘he made them justifiable because if life really is unbearable, as it's not, then you can do anything you want.’

Obama is further ‘pouring gas on the fire’ of a serious matter, the Harvard professor argued, which could fuel more antisemitic sentiment nationwide.

‘What he did was contribute to the risks to not only Israelis, but Americans, because it's coming to a theater near you’, Dershowitz told host Maria Bartiromo. ‘If Hamas is not stopped in its tracks from doing the terrorist acts, they will bring them to the United States.’

The Obama Foundation did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.

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What’s in a Lie? (Another One, Like a Matryoshka Puppet)

The main issue at-hand is not, I’d argue, whether or not Prof. Dershowitz or Mr. Obama are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ on any of these issues.

The main issue is—what that kind of perverted discourse signifies.

And in this regard, what we are observing here, time and again, is the unholy matrimony of yet more lies with kernels of truth.

So, let’s start with the Israeli side here, o.k.?

‘I think he always had a deep hatred of Israel in his heart. He hid it very well. He called me to the Oval Office and he said to me, “Alan, you've known me for a long time. You know I have Israel's back.” I didn't realize he meant to paint a target on it’, Dershowitz said…

This statement alone is highly disingenuous and very problematic, for—what does anyone in his or her right state of mind think will inevitably follow?

I mean, visitor logs from the Obama administration will show that such a meeting took place, even though the account (recollection) of both men will differ. Even if the quote Dershowitz recounted would be correct, the latter part of his statement is non-falsifiable, i.e., a hypothetical that occurred exclusively in Mr. Dershowitz’ mind.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to defend Barack Obama whose record is, well, despicable; I’d also add that he’s about as genuine an honest person as his predecessor was an intellectual giant.

By way of connecting to the below segment on the Palestinians, I shall note that what Obama said—the current conflict being due to ’decades of failure to achieve a durable peace for both Israelis and Palestinians’—is both true (in the sense of it being a truism) and another disingenuous, narcissistic comment that serves no purpose other than absolving himself from all responsibility for it. I mean—Obama was US president for two terms, and, surely, ‘the leader of the most powerful country in the history of the world’ might be doing something about this situation, right…(I rest my case).

As to the Palestinian side, well, where shall I begin?

Yes, the Nakba was terrible, as were other genocidal instances of ethnic cleansing and mass murder during the mid-twentieth century.

In theory, there is a quite straightforward way to resolve the dreadful issue of the Palestinians’ ‘right to return’ (bear with me for a moment): an international commission that is as impartial as possible, perhaps including, apart from ‘Western’ powers, also Russia, China, Rwanda, and South Africa, as well as every other UN member-state to ensure compliance.

This process should, moreover, also include the occupied territories in the Golan Heights (that belong to Syria) as well as a withdrawal of Israeli citizens from the West Bank (that technically belongs to Jordan).

Endowed with plenty of funding and resources, reparations or restitutions to those who were displaced should be easily determined based on individual arbitrations between real estate values in 1948 vs. the present.

Now for the problematic parts, and here I see two main problems:

• In theory, Israel should (must) foot the bill or restoring the property rights to the descendants of those who were dispossessed.

• The same must also, logically, apply to Israel’s Moslem neighbours who, since the Nakba, kept the Palestinian refugees in their deplorable state of immiseration, kept them in camps, and denied them full integration into their societies.

I suppose that at this point, you’re thoroughly outraged (if, in fact, you made it to this point). I propose to you that I’m not engaging in ‘cheap’ whataboutism, but my consideration is based on the one ethnic group that suffered comparable vicissitudes at roughly the same time and how ‘they’ fared.

The Limits of Whataboutism, or: The Lies We Live In

I’m, of course, talking about the millions of displaced and ethnically cleansed Germans who once resided east of Germany’s present borders.

At the end of WW2, millions fled before the advancing Red Army, were chased off the land their descendants had inhabited and cultivated for centuries, and all of this was done for no other reason than to mete out punishment for the crimes committed by the Nazi régime in the name of the German people.

I doubt many people in ‘the West’ know, or care, about this.

Back in 1945/46, it was payback time for Hitler’s war, no matter how many German civilians had perished during the war courtesy of what the Allies euphemistically called ‘strategic bombing’ (which today, if Israel is doing the bombing of Gaza, is denounced of course denounced as ‘genocide’).

At this point, you might want to consider asking the Japanese people about their experiences in WW2. But I digress.

Back in 1945/46, however, whatever would remain of ‘Germany’ also took in millions of their fellow countrymen and women from the East.

Their suffering must have been enormous (please see the bottom lines for some more commentary on this), and the shock of the magnitude of the defeat, coupled with millions of lost lives, was enormous. Due to the total Allied victory, though, Germans buried their anguish, trauma, and pain; I’d even go as far as to speculate that these powerful emotions were ‘compensated’ with shame, guilt, and an officially sanctioned re-written history of the German people(s) after WW2.

Still, even fewer people are aware of what happened despite all of the above (and then some): whatever shape or fate would befall ‘Germany’ after 1945/46, the millions of displaced—Heimatvertriebene, or ‘those pushed out of their homes’—were integrated into post-WW2 (mostly West) Germany without much ado. I’m adding another sentence here about this being a mainly West German issue, for the Soviet collaborators in what eventually became Communist East Germany simply pushed the dispossessed further west…

Yes, these poor Heimarvertriebene found new homes, for the most parts lived quiet lives, and ‘only’ in Bavaria—which took in hundreds of thousands, if not millions, from the Czech lands, Romania, Hungary, etc.—did they meaningfully affect state politics by ensuring the rather quite conservative Christian Socials to dominate post-WW2 politics. Their influence was not overwhelming, but at least some Bavarian politicos acknowledged the plight of the dispossessed.

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Bottom Lines: We Must Talk About ‘Islamic Solidarity’

I think we can all agree about the massive clusterf*** this situation is, to say nothing about the decidedly bleak prospects for a lasting peace that will be accepted by both sides.

Personally, I doubt that the still-current UN-mediated peace plan with the internationally recognised, pre-1967 Six Days War borders can be enforced. I just don’t see Israel returning the Golan Heights and the West Bank, for reasons of state (the former are the one natural obstacle for the Syrian army) and domestic politics (as the latter now contain hundreds of thousands of what are euphemistically called ‘ultra-orthodox’ settlers).

I also doubt that whatever the ultimate shape of ‘Palestine’ would simply cease to put pressure on Israel, and I doubt that a possible treaty between Israel and Palestine would resolve anything; at best, it would be a breathing space for at best a few months or years.

Why? Simple—let me provide you with two reasons:

• All neighbouring countries—esp. Lebanon and Jordan—have kept the Palestinian refugees in destitution, camps, and rendered them effectively second-class people. What do you think happens once ‘Palestine’ comes into existence? I don’t doubt for a moment that the Moslem countries will ‘make them’ finally ‘go back’ to Palestine, which will place unbearable pressures on whatever kind of government there, which will, inevitably so, relieve that pressure by resorting to more attacks (on Israel) to resolve these ‘political’ problems.

• The other main problem I see is that the above situation—or simply the opportunity to simply grab Al-Quds for themselves—will lead the Moslem countries to renew their push into Palestine. Either way, I doubt that ‘Palestine’ will survive for long.

What then, could be done?

I honestly don’t know, but based on the above history of the displaced Germans after WW2, I think that whatever could be done to address these problems must start by asking nearby Moslem governments to redress the problems arising from Palestinian refugees still (!) dwelling in camps. I mean, imagine the Germans would have done that in 1945?

Sure, none of Israel’s neighbours enjoys much, if any sovereignty in foreign affairs (with the partial exception of Syria), but this is a domestic issue. I suspect that the creation of economic and civic opportunities for displaced Palestinians would lower the appeal of martyrdom considerably.

Finally, I doubt that the introduction of an international force of peacekeepers along the (partially modified) 1967 borders could be avoided, if only to discourage both sides from simply trying to go to war to relieve domestic pressures. I’m mentioning ‘both sides’ here as this also applies to Israel that, let’s face it, will face a veritable revolt, if not civil war, if the ‘ultra-orthodox’ settlers are returned from the West Bank.

The above outline would require massive and above all sustained great-power involvement and the renewal, of sorts, of Islamic societies to accept limitations to the ‘House of Islam’.

I wish to close with one key insight by Mr. Dershowitz, though. Failure to achieve this renewal, or transformation, of Islam will result in one thing:

‘What he did was contribute to the risks to not only Israelis, but Americans, because it's coming to a theater near you’, Dershowitz told host Maria Bartiromo. ‘If Hamas is not stopped in its tracks from doing the terrorist acts, they will bring them to the United States.’

Mr. Dershowitz is correct, if only everyone at this point must understand that the key take-away isn’t anti-American or even anti-Western sentiments. This will affect all of the world’s no-Moslem peoples.

Put differently: failure to act now will lead to Samuel Huntingdon’s Clash of Civilizations becoming true.