Killing Jews in Israel

Special to the Israel News Agency
By Alan Dershowitz

Jerusalem----April 7.....Recently, a young Israeli student at Hebron University was gunned down while jogging through a mixed neighborhood of Jews and Arabs. The al Aqsa Brigade, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yassir Arafat's Fatah movement, joyously claimed credit for the killing of yet another innocent Jew. When it was later learned that the jogger was an Arab-Israeli and not a Jew, al Aqsa quickly apologized to the family, calling it an accident. But the killing of the innocent young jogger was not an accident; the murderer had deliberately taken aim at his head and midsection, intending to end his life. The only thing accidental about the murder was the religion of the victim. The al Aqsa Brigade had sent the assassin to murder a Jew - any Jew, so long as he was a Jew.

This is racism, pure and simple. And despite efforts by supporters of Palestinian terrorism to justify the murder of innocent civilians as national liberationor by any other euphemism, this case proves that the Palestinian terrorists targeting of Jews and only Jews - as many as possible - is little different in intent than other forms of lethal or exterminatory anti-Jewish murders (I dont use the term anti-Semitic only because some Arabs claim that because they too are Semites, they cant be anti-Semitic). Obviously the numbers are different, because Israel is capable of defending its Jewish citizens, but if it were not, the goal of Palestinian terrorist groups would not be very different from that of previous groups intent on murdering as many Jews as possible.

The websites of various Palestinian terrorist groups proclaim - usually only in English and almost never in Arabic - that they have no quarrel with the Jews,only with the Zionists. Yet they target every Jew, regardless of his or her individual political views, and they apologize when they accidentally kill a non-Jew, regardless of his political views. The racist acts of these terrorist groups speak louder than their sanitized English-only anti-Zionist websites.

Yet the international community - including the U.N., the Vatican, and the European Union - claims to see no difference between Palestinian terrorists who target random Jewish civilians and the Israeli Defense Forces who target specific mass murderers, such as Sheikh Yassin. Its all part of a cycle of violence in which both sides are morally equivalent, according to the double standard consistently applied against Israel by people who should know better. The preventive killing of the mass murder Sheik Yassin received much more negative attention from the moralleaders of these organizations than did the racist attack that accidentallykilled the young Israeli Arab. This failure - or refusal - to distinguish murder based on religious affiliation from preventive self-defense based on past and future murderous acts is the height of immorality. It would be as if the soldiers who killed Auschwitz guards in the process of liberating the inmates were deemed morally equivalent to the Auschwitz murderers.

It should not be surprising that Palestinian terrorists employ racist criteria in selecting their civilian targets, since the entire goal of Palestinian terrorism is racist to its core. It seeks to deny the Jewish people the right to self-determination. Under their version of Islamic law, it is impermissible for Jews to govern any land that was once under Muslim control, and it is equally impermissible for a Jewish majority to govern a Muslim minority, namely Israeli Arabs.

The time has come for the international community to listen to what Palestinian terrorists say to their own people: that this is a racist struggle to ethnically cleanse all of Palestine,which includes Israel, of all Jews (except, they say, those Jews who lived there before 1917 and are willing to remain as a minority in a Muslim land). The civilian targets are selected on a racist basis - all Jews are fair game, and if a non-Jew is killed, that is an unfortunate accident.

The terrorist killing of the young Arab-Israeli student, coupled with the apology when it was learned he was not Jewish, was not only a tragedy for his family (which lost another member to a terrorist attack several years earlier), but it is also a revealing episode in the history of Palestinian terrorism. All who hate racism should condemn the selective morality under which a deliberate Jewish civilian death is applauded and a deliberate Arab civilian death is regretted. All deliberate targeting of non-combatants must be equally condemned. And the deliberate targeting of civilians based on their religion is to be especially condemned.

- 30 -

Alan Dershowitz is a professor of law at Harvard. His latest book is "The Case for Israel".

Editorial Reviews of "The Case for Israel".

From Publishers Weekly.
Noting that he has been working on versions of these arguments since 1967, famed Harvard law professor Dershowitz offers "a proactive defense of Israel," a kind of amicus brief to "the court of public opinion." Not least among the exhibits are a WWII-era Muslim Palestinian leader who was "a full fledged Nazi war criminal, and he was so declared at Nuremberg"; a "vastly underpopulated" late 19th-century Palestine, to which European Jews began emigrating; and a 75-year-long Arab-Israeli war that features "Arab nations dedicated to genocidal aggression against civilians." Each of the 32 chapters begins with a commonly heard accusation against Israel, with long quotes from reputable "Accusers" (including newspapers and intellectuals), followed by "The Reality" as Dershowitz sees it, and "The Proof," often drawing on the historical record.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist.
Dershowitz is one of the nation's most prominent and visible defense attorneys, and he is also an ardent, eloquent, but not always uncritical defender of Israel. This book is written in the form of a legal brief. He does not seek to defend particular policies of the current Israeli government. In fact, Dershowitz has frequently criticized some Israeli policies toward Palestinians, particularly regarding West Bank settlements. Rather, here he attempts to rebut what he views as the more general... read more

Book Description.
"Alan Dershowitz’s detailed and penetrating analysis of the issues that fuel the continuing war in Israel should be read by everyone interested in reaching a fair conclusion as to how that tragic conflict should be ended. Every charge leveled by Israel’s opponents is dealt with lucidly and convincingly by one of the nation’s brightest minds and most effective advocates."
—Mario M. Cuomo
"The Jewish nation of Israel stands accused in the dock of international justice. The charges include being a criminal state, the prime violator of human rights, the mirror-image of Nazism, and the most intransigent barrier to peace in the Middle East. Throughout the world–from the chambers of the United Nations, to the campuses of universities–Israel is singled out for condemnation, divestment, boycott, and demonization. Its leaders are threatened with prosecution as war criminals. Its supporters are charged with dual loyalty and parochialism.

"The time has come for a proactive defense of Israel to be offered in the court of public opinion. In this book, I offer such a defense–not of every Israeli policy or action, but of its basic right to exist, to protect its citizens from terrorism, and to defend its borders from hostile enemies. I also try to present a realistic picture of Israel, warts and all, as a flourishing multiethnic democracy, similar in many ways to the United States, that affords all of its citizens–Jews, Muslims, and Christians–far better lives and opportunities than those afforded by any Arab or Muslim nation. Most important, I argue that those who single out Israel for unique criticism not directed against countries with far worse human rights records are themselves guilty of international bigotry. . . . But when the Jewish nation is the only one criticized for faults that are far worse among other nations, such criticism crosses the line from fair to foul, from acceptable to anti-Semitic." –from "The Case for Israel".

Bio: Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School has been described by Newsweek as "the nation's most peripatetic civil-liberties lawyer and one of its most distinguished defenders of individual rights." Time Magazine, in addition to including him in the cover story on the "50 Faces for the Future," called him "the top lawyer of last resort in the country -- a sort of judicial St. Jude." Business Week characterized him as "a feisty civil libertarian and one of the nation's prominent legal educators." He has been profiled by every major magazine ranging from Life ("iconoclast and self-appointed scourge of the criminal justice system"); to Esquire ("the country's most articulate and uncompromising protector of criminal defendants"); to Fortune ("impassioned civil libertarian" who has "put up the best defense for a Dickensian lineup of suspects"); to People ("defense attorney extraordinaire") to New York Magazine ("One of the country's foremost appellate lawyers") to TV Guide (one of "America's top attorneys").

More than 50 of his articles have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Book Review, and Op-Ed Pages. He has also published more than 100 articles in magazines and journals such as the New York Review, Saturday Review, The Harvard Law Review, The Yale Law Journal, The Stanford Law Review, The American Bar Association Journal, The Israel Law Review, Commentary, The New Republic, The Nation, Psychology Today, New Woman, Harper's, Atlantic, TV Guide, American Film Partisan Review, The Jerusalem Post, The International Herald Tribune, The Washington Post, Moment, Life and Penthouse. As a weekly columnist for United Features Syndicate, including The Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Herald, and The Chicago Sun Times. His essay "Shouting Fire" was selected for inclusion in "The Best American Essays of 1990."

Professor Dershowitz's last book, The Advocate's Devil was published in the United Stated by Warner Books in 1994 and in several other countries in 1995. The New York Times Book Review gave it "A thumbs up verdict....exciting, fast-paced, entertaining." The Advocate's Devil will soon be a Tri-Star television movie and is available on tape and in paperback. Also in 1997, Little, Brown, & Company published The Abuse Excuse, a provocative collection of essays examining the relationship between individual responsibility and the law. Contrary to Public Opinion was published in October of 1992. Chutzpah was published in May of 1991 by Little Brown & Company. After receiving critical acclaim as one of the most important books about Jews in America since World War II, it shot to the top of the New York Times and other bestseller lists. Currently, it is in its 12th printing and available in paperback and on tape. Professor Dershowitz's other books include Taking Liberties: A Decade of Hard Cases, Bad Laws and Bum Raps (1988), Reversal of Fortune: Inside the Von Bulow Case (1986), and The Best Defense (1982).

Alan Dershowitz was born in Brooklyn, New York and graduated from Yeshiva University high school and Brooklyn College. At Yale Law School, he was first in his class and editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal. After clerking for Chief Judge David Bazelon and Justice Arthur Goldberg, he was appointed to the Harvard Law faculty at age 25 and became a full professor at age 28, the youngest in the school's history. Since that time, he has taught courses in criminal law, psychiatry and law, constitutional litigation, civil liberties and violence, comparative criminal law, legal ethics and human rights. He has lectured throughout the country and around the world.

Professor Dershowitz plays basketball, regularly attends Boston Celtics home games, and occasionally comments on the Boston sports scene. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife and daughter. Simon & Schuster published REASONABLE DOUBTS The O.J. Simpson Case and the Criminal Justice System on March 12, 1996.

ISRAEL NEWS AGENCY

Sponsored by Leyden Communications (Israel)