Saturday, August 12, 2006

Descent Into Moral Barbarism

As Israel's military bravely fires away shells and missiles to lay waste the fragile human and physical infrastructure of Lebanon, Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, waging battle on a second front to legitimize Israel's criminal aggression, bravely fires away op-eds from his foxhole at Martha's Vineyard to lay waste the fragile infrastructure of international law. These are but the latest salvoes in Dershowitz's long and distinguished career of apologetics on behalf of his Holy State.

Since becoming a born-again Zionist after the June 1967 war Dershowitz has justified each and all of Israel's egregious violations of international law. In recent years he has used the "war on terrorism" as a springboard for a full frontal assault on this body of law. Appearing shortly after the outbreak of the second intifada, his book Why Terrorism Works (2002) served to rationalize Israel's brutal repression of the uprising. In 2006 Dershowitz published a companion volume, Preemption: A Knife that Cuts Both Ways, to justify Israel's preventive use of force against Iran. It is painfully clear from their content that Dershowitz possesses little knowledge or for that matter interest in the timely political topics that purport to be the stimuli for his interventions. In reality each book is keyed to a current Israeli political crisis and seeks to rationalize the most extreme measures for resolving it. If Why Terrorism Works used the war on terrorism as a juggernaut to set back the clock on protection of civilians from occupying armies, Preemption uses the war on terrorism to set back the clock on the protection of states from wars of aggression. Dershowitz's current missives from Martha's Vineyard take aim at the protection of civilians in times of war. Continued.

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