[This opinion piece appeared in Harvard University's newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, on Monday, September 23. Unfortunately, the Crimson's Website is down for "necessary maintenance", so I cannot link to the site. The article is reprinted here, but please visit the Harvard Crimson website, too. Dershowitz's article refers to a speech by Harvard president Lawrence Summers regarding a movement to require Harvard to divest its endowment of any investmetns in Israel. Summers characterized that move a form of latent anti-Semitism. This was Dershowitz's response.]

A Challenge to House Master Hanson

By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ

In my 38 years of teaching at Harvard Law School, I don't recall ever writing in praise of any action by a Harvard president, but this time I must congratulate President Lawrence H. Summers for his willingness to say out loud what many of us in the Harvard community have long believed: namely, that singling out Israel, among all the countries in the world, for divestment, is an action which is anti-Semitic in effect, if not in intent. A recent open letter by one of the signatories made it clear that he regards Israel as the pariah state, a word historically used by anti-Semites to characterize the Jewish people. As an advocate and practitioner of human rights throughout the world, I can confidently assert that Israel's record on human rights is among the best, especially among nations that have confronted comparable threats. Though far from perfect, Israel has shown extraordinary concern for avoiding civilian casualties in its half-century effort to protect its civilians from terrorism. Jordan killed more Palestinians in a single month than Israel has between 1948 and the present.

Israel has the only independent judiciary in the entire Middle East. Its Supreme Court, one of the most highly regarded in the world, is the only court in the Middle East from which an Arab or a Muslim can expect justice, as many have found in winning dozens of victories against the Israeli government, the Israeli military and individual Israeli citizens. There is no more important component in the protection of human rights and civil liberties than an independent judiciary willing to stand up to its own government. I challenge the proponents of divestment to name a court in any Arab or Muslim country that is comparable to the Israeli Supreme Court.

Israel is the only country in the region that has virtually unlimited freedom of speech. Any person in Israel whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian can criticize the Israeli government and its leaders. No citizen of any other Middle Eastern or Muslim state can do that without fear of imprisonment or death.

Israel is the only country that has openly confronted the difficult issue of protecting the civil liberties of the ticking bomb terrorist. The Israeli Supreme Court recently ruled that despite the potential benefits of employing non-lethal torture to extract information, the tactic is illegal. Brutal torture, including lethal torture, is commonplace in nearly every other Middle Eastern and Muslim country. Indeed, American authorities sometimes send suspects to Egypt, Jordan and the Philippines precisely because they know that they will be tortured in those countries.

Nor is Israel the only country that is occupying lands claimed by others. China, Russia, Turkey, Iraq, Spain, France and numerous other countries control not only land, but people who seek independence. Indeed, among these countries Israel is the only one that has offered statehood, first in 1948 when the Palestinians rejected the UN partition which would have given them a large, independent state and chose instead to invade Israel. Again in the year 2000 Palestinians were offered a state, rejected it and employed terrorism.

There are, of course, difficult issues to be resolved in the Middle East. These include the future of the settlements, the establishment of Palestinian self-governance and the prevention of terrorism. These issues will require compromise on all sides. Members of the Harvard community must be free to criticize Israel when they disagree with its policies or actions, as they criticize any other country in the world whose record is not perfect. But to single out the Jewish state of Israel, as if it were the worst human rights offender, is bigotry pure and simple. It would be comparable to singling out a black nation for de-legitimation without mentioning worse abuses by white nations. Those who sign the divestment petition should be ashamed of themselves. If they are not, it is up to others to shame them.

Among those who signed this immoral petition was Winthrop House Master Paul Hanson. I wrote to Prof. Hanson challenging him to debate me in the Common Room of Winthrop House about his decision to sign the petition.

He refused, citing other priorities. I can imagine few priorities more pressing than to justify to his students why he is willing to single
out Israel for special criticism. Accordingly, I hereby request an invitation from the students of Winthrop House to conduct such a debate, either with Hanson present or with an empty chair on which the petition which he signed would be featured. Universities should encourage widespread debate and discussion about divisive and controversial issues. A House master who peremptorily signs a petition and then hides behind other priorities does not serve the interests of dialogue and education. I hope that Hanson will accept my challenge, and that if he does not, that I will be invited by his students to help fill the educational gap left by the cowardice of those who have signed this petition and refuse to defend their actions in public debate.

Let me propose an alternative to singling out Israel for divestment: let Harvard choose nations for investment in the order of the human rights records. If that were done, investment in Israel would increase dramatically, while investments in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Philippines, Indonesia, the Palestinian Authority and most other countries of the world would decrease markedly.

Alan M. Dershowitz is Frankfurter professor of law at Harvard Law School

There has been a problem between Blogger and my blog host (Blogspot) that has prevented me from updating the page for about two weeks. Because I have a somewhat stressful job, I didn't have much time to post anyway, and frankly, wasn't all that religious about checking to see if the problem was fixed. I'm a little less stressed now, and the problem appears to be fixed, so hopefully, I can resume my regular irregular schedule of posts.

Someone who read my blog (my brother-in-law, to be specific), chided me that its contents might someday be fodder for opposition political research or the basis for difficult questions by a minority senator in a confirmation hearing. Herewith, my response:

First of all, to the extent that this comment suggests I am worthy of political office or an appointment to something requiring Senate confirmation, thank you for the compliment.

Second, I welcome the opportunity to discuss these views in the context of a political debate. I come by these views honestly (that is, I'm not posturing, or playing Devil's Advocate, or anything like that). If someone wants to challenge me, the ensuing debate would, by definition, have to be substantive. (Gasp!) What's wrong with that? Given the state of political discourse these days, a little substance might not be such a bad thing.

Third, speaking for myself only, I want politicians and judges to be people who have points of view. How is it good for society if we insist that public figures be bland, think blandly, and stake out no position whatsoever for fear of offending somebody? If I disagree with their points of view, then I can choose whether to oppose their appointments or elections. But if I don't know what their views are, how can I make a meaningful determinations about where they (or, for that matter, I) stand?

Homework for today's class is an article on Slate.com by Michael Kinsley [link]. In it, Kinsley makes the cogent observation that calling Osama Bin Laden and his band of thugs "evil" is a great soundbite, but doesn't really advance the public discourse on what we should do about it. And, he observes, neo-conservatives wish that we would all just agree on the label, support the war and move on.

The problem, of course, is that many moderates and those oh-so-pesky liberals aren't content with just labeling terrorists as "evil" and moving on. They insist on understanding the nuances -- did we provoke this, how are we ourselves complicit, and the like.

Kinsley speculates that the neo-con intolerance to the question "why do they hate us" stems from the fact that neo-cons won't like the inevitable answer: either the first world/third world divide made them that way, or it's because something we've done pissed them off. Either way, we would have to examine and modify our foreign policy, which is anathema to the neo-con way of thinking. As a result, neo-cons have tended to demonize the dissenters. Bush himself set the tone ("Either you're with us or you're with the terrorists"), John Ashcroft all but accused the ACLU of being a terrorist cell ("To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists") and neo-con pundits have howled with rage at the supposed "fifth column" in academia that dares ask whether we might take this opportunity to rethink our relationship with the developing world.

I agree with Kinsley that neo-cons have made it their business to demonize those who ask why. But I'm not so quick to conclude therefore that if the neo-cons wish we wouldn't question, the right thing to do must be to ask "why do they hate us". Kinley's argument on this point is, in essence, this: that to achieve the neo-con goal of eradicating terrorism, we must first examine the "why do they hate us" question; it is imperative that we know our enemies. As Kinsley sees it, branding terrorists as "evil" and pitching the fight as "us vs. them" glosses the real issues and ultimately, impedes our ability to first, understand the terrorists and second, to fight terrorism.

But do we really have to "understand" the terrorists, as Kinsley suggests? Isn't it possible that there are certain actions, certain modes of political engagement that are simply beyond the pale? I don't have to understand what motivated Hitler to know that genocide is evil. Must I rationalize attacking that evil, or may I simply act on the knowledge that it's wrong? Put another way, is there really any question that it's evil and needs to be eradicated?

This is not to say that I agree with the likes of Ashcroft and Bill Bennett. I don't. But my beef with the "axis of evil" mentality is not whether "evil" exists and should be eradicated, but rather, that we're inconsistent both about who is labeled "evil" and why. Why is Osama Bin Laden evil, but Yasser Arafat is not? Why is Saddam Hussein evil but Pervez Musharaf is not? Why is Al Qaeda evil, but Hamas is not? I suspect that, being unable to answer this much harder question, neo-cons have redirected the conversation to the safer ground of "good vs. evil" in the hopes that no one will notice the difference.

I do agree with Kinsley that "why do they hate us so much" is certainly a valid question, and one that we should be thinking about. I would posit, however, that that inquiry is in some ways premature. We initiated the Marshall Plan in response to the question "how do we keep from losing the peace", but that question came after "how do we win the war". So yes, at some point, it will be necessary to ask "why do they hate us so much" and the companion question, "how to do we keep them from hating us so much", but maybe not just now.

Am I missing something here? I have just finished reading reports in the New York Times, CNN.com, MSNBC and ABC News about the latest terrorist attack in Tel Aviv, and all of them are written as if there had been no attack on a Palestinian elementary school by Jewish settlers. If I hadn't read the reports of that attack myself, I would begin to doubt that the school attack ever took place.

Of course, what's truly bizarre is that all of the articles cite a six-week "lull" in violence, broken at last by a suicide bombing yesterday and the bus bombing today. Umm, excuse me, but wasn't the bomb at the Palestinian school the first act of violence to break the six-week lull?

Bizarre.

Israeli settlers are alleged to have set off a bomb laced with nails and screws at a Palestinian elementary school. Police later detonated a second bomb discovered at the school. Five children, the youngest of them six years old, were wounded. Had the bomb gone off twenty-five minutes later, as many as 350 children could have been killed. [link to New York Times article]

Outraged is a word that has lost its power through overuse. Similarly, adjectives like despicable, deplorable and inexcusable. If I could, I would manufacture a new word, one that means "that which brings the weight of the heavens crashing down upon the world", one that instills in everyone who hears it a genuine and abiding fear for his own life, one that is so terrible, so awful that no one would dare speak it. It would combine the power of Emile Zola's "j'accuse" [link] with the exasperation of Joseph Welch's "Have you no sense of decency, sir?" [link], and would convey to those who brought on its utterance the complete and total contempt and condemnation of every man, woman and child ever to have walked the face of the earth. It would communicate to its targets that they are lower than low, not even on par with slime mold, fleas or the most disgusting vermin. Those to whom this word was directed would know that it was for them that the worst ravages of hell were created and reserved.

If such a word existed, I would use it to condemn the cowards who stood before God on Yom Kippur, praying for the sins of the world during the past year, and then went out and plotted to murder and maim 350 children. Who planted two bombs that were intended to kill children. Who thought that it was somehow justifiable to torture and kill children. That is how I would use this word.

Overheard on the subway:

The players: two twenty-something men. The speaker was dressed in a t-shirt that said "D&E Carpets" on the front. The back said "Carpet Layers Do It on the Floor"

The scene: the 6 train, going uptown. The two men are discussing a conversation with a mutual acquaintance; the carpet guy did all the talking.

"So she's telling me all about her day. First she goes to class and then she works the rest of her day at some think tank writing position papers on American foreign policy. Then at night, she still has to do all her homework. So she's like, she's all tired and falls into bed at night. I was like, that's totally different from my college experience. Mine involved sleeping through my first class, which was okay because it was just a lecture. Then maybe I went to my second class. By then, I was so confused, I'd come home and just get high and then go to sleep."

I confess, it's hard to imagine how this studious fellow could have ended up as a carpet-layer and wearing a t-shirt that said "Carpet Layers Do It on the Floor". Still, I had to wonder who this mystery woman was, how she got to be so cool, and why she's hanging around this dweeb.

This morning, at 10:19 a.m., I did something monumental. I arrived at my office, I sat down, and I turned on my computer to work. In short, I went about my ordinary business this morning, and that is monumental. One year ago exactly, I was standing huddled in a small take-out restaurant while black dust turned day into night outside and a small group of frightened people stood inside trying to figure out what had happened to the world we woke up to that morning. One year ago exactly, I should have been in my office on the 30th floor of the south tower, working on some unmemorable thing or just sitting at my desk, not worrying about whether my pregnant wife would go into labor when she discovered I wasn't home, safe and sound. I should have been shooting the breeze with my coworkers, wondering where we would go for lunch and what I might watch on television that night. I should have been living an ordinary life.

One year ago exactly, I would have given almost anything to be able to go to work and do something mundane. Today, I will complete that unfinished commute. I work hard, but I will not do anything particularly monumental in the grand scheme of things. But no matter: today, I will write some letters, and I will move some papers from my inbox to my outbox. Maybe I will make some phone calls today, or make some photocopies or read the memos stacked up on the side of my desk. The point is that there is nothing going on today that could not wait until tomorrow, and at the end of the day, some of the projects I am working on will have moved only incrementally toward conclusion. My day will be completely ordinary and the things I work on unmemorable.

It will be one of the best days of my career.