Alan Dershowitz endorses a Republican

[Douglas Carpenter]

Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz will host a fundraiser for a Republican congressional candidate in Illinois. The candidate, Joel Pollak, studied under Dershowitz at Harvard. He is running against Democrat Jan Schakowsky.

Pollak is running because Schakowsky -- who is Jewish -- does not love Israel enough. She does love Israel, of course -- "I thought about my childhood again and the number of times I had saved my nickels and dimes to buy a tree certificate that we used for birthdays and anniversaries to plant trees in Israel and make that desert bloom," she said on the floor of the House earlier this year -- but she also might support the existence of a Palestinian state.

Seriously, the evidence that she is even remotely anti-Israel is ridiculous, even by the standards of the professional right-wing smear artist.


snip:

Her (Democrat Jan Schakowsky) actual crime is supporting the upstart liberal Jewish lobbying group J Street. The group aims to make it politically acceptable to actually criticize the actions of the Israeli government by demonstrating that plenty of American Jews don't agree with AIPAC and people like Dershowitz. You know, people who think "automatic" complete destruction of entire villages is a legitimate state response to terrorism, as long as you warn them first, thus making the loss of lives their fault. (This is the "why are you hitting yourself" school of counterterrorism.)

And now Dershowitz is demonstrating that Democrats cannot count on his support, just because he's always been a Democrat.

People like Dershowitz (and, say, megafundraiser Haim Saban, and other very hawkish longtime Democrats) will broker no dissent on Israel, and should the Democrats adopt any sort of rational policy toward our support for that nation's government and their policies, there's no reason for these lifelong Democrats to remain Democrats.

snip:

Schakowsky's seat is pretty safe. This is more of a warning shot than a true threat.

link:

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/06/16/dershowitz_endorses_republican

I suppose Professor Dershowitz has become so ideologically and emotionally fixated in his support for the State of Israel that he ends up unable to countenance even a fairly strident pro-Israeli public official who simply isn't strident enough.

Jan Schakowsky 2007-2008 Based on a point system, with points assigned for actions in support of or in opposition to U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation's position, Representative Schakowsky received a rating of -3. (Based on a scoring system of -5 to +5)

http://www.votesmart.org/issue_rating_category.php?can_id=6387

[Smarmie Doofus]

1. Cambridge: Where neoconism and teabaggery collide.

True... at least as far as Prof. Dershowitz is concerned.

Fanaticism: redoubling one's efforts when one has forgotten one's aim.

*That's* true for everyone.

[Ken Burch]

2. Did anyone still think The Dersh was a liberal?

n/t.

[Douglas Carpenter]

3. I don't know . What I see is the blindness of irrational nationalism

I can think of a Northern Irish Protestant I know who is probably well to the left of you or me on practically every issue. But when it comes to his Unionist sympathies, he is as strident as Ian Paisley, if not more so. I know of Serbs who are genuine heartfelt socialist - but when it comes to the issues that affect Serbian nationalism - not only their sense of reason, but even their sense of humanity mysteriously disappears.

I had a history Professor once who argued that nationalism is the new religion, the absolute moral principle in at least most of the Western world - the belief system that replaced religion in much world as the final point in which killing or dying is legitimized. I would guess that nationalism probably is the new religion and the new tribalism rolled into one. Not only the radical Zionism that Dershowitz embraces, but other forms of nationalism as well that throughout much of the world that causes many people around the world to abandon not only reason, but even their own sense of humanity as well.

[Ken Burch]

4. There is something to what you say.

But with The Dersh, this isn't just about Israel.

I still remember how, in 1989, Dershowitz accused the Left in this country of looking the other way about what the Chinese regime did in Tienenman Square and the streets thereabouts...when, in fact virtually EVERY Left publication(INCLUDING the People's World)denounced the massacre(the sole exception being the Worker's World Party rag).