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Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Is it Fair for Dershowitz to Criticize Tamika Mallory? (Judean Rose)

Alan Dershowitz has a piece over at the Gatestone Institute website on the Women’s March and antisemitism, “Termites, Bigots, and GOATs: Rationalizing Complicity with Antisemitism.” There isn’t a thing wrong with this piece. Dershowitz is absolutely right about everything he says here. Take this, for instance:
“Marching with these supporters of an anti-Semite is the equivalent of marching under the banner of David Duke, who inspires white supremacists with the same sort of bigotry with which Farrakhan preaches Black supremacy. Hitler inspired pride in Aryans, Mussolini made the trains run on time, and Stalin spread the wealth. But would the women who marched with Farrakhan's admirers have marched with these bigots?”
And this:
“Recall that Hitler was not elected by anti-Semites or because of his anti-Semitism. He was elected as the result of his economic and other policies by people who gave him a pass for his anti-Semitism because they approved of his other policies.
“People who support Farrakhan because of the alleged good he does for the Black community and despite his overt anti-Semitism are complicit in bigotry, and those who march under the banner of such bigots are only one degree removed from such complicity.”
No rational person could disagree with these words. But those of us who remember Dershowitz’s support for Obama in both 2008 and 2012, could perhaps be forgiven for looking askance at the source and thinking, “Pot, meet kettle.”
Now it’s true that Dershowitz disavowed Obama after a 2005 photograph surfaced of the smiling former president being all chummy with Farrakhan. Dershowitz's actual words were, "If I had known that the President had posed smilingly with [Louis Farrakhan] when he was a senator, I would not have campaigned for Barack Obama."
The fact of the matter is that black lawmakers colluded with the media to keep the photo out of the public eye during both campaigns and for all the years Obama was in office. Dershowitz didn’t know about the photo. None of us did. So is it perhaps unfair to blame Dershowitz for calling the kettle, um, “black?”

He couldn’t have known that Obama was bosom buds with the raving lunatic and infamous antisemite that is Farrakhan.
Or could he?
Written the same year that photo came out, “How Could We Have Known: The Jews Who Voted For Obama,” details Obama’s associations with a long list of known antisemites. At the top of the list is the man who officiated at the marriage of Barack and Michelle Obama, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright:
“We knew [Obama would] be bad for the Jews because he associated with people like the Reverend Jeremiah Wright who was outspoken in his support for both the Jew-hating Louis Farrakhan and Hamas. During an appearance at Michigan State University on February 7, 2008, Wright explained the creation of the State of Israel as ‘a political decision made in 1948 to solve a European problem of European Jews by putting them in somebody else’s country.’”
It’s certainly possible that Dershowitz, who termed President Obama a “true friend of Israel,” didn’t know that Obama was in thick with Farrakhan. But everyone knew about Obama’s friendship with the Reverend Wright. The idea that Dershowitz didn’t know about Wright’s association with Farrakhan just doesn’t pass the smell test.
Now for sure, Obama disavowed Reverend Wright’s views, in particular the Reverend's admiration for Farrakhan, early on, in 2008:
"I gave him the benefit of the doubt in my speech in Philadelphia, explaining that he has done enormous good in the church. But when he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS; when he suggests that Minister Farrakhan somehow represents one of the greatest voices of the 20th and 21st century; when he equates the U.S. wartime efforts with terrorism – then there are no excuses. They offend me. They rightly offend all Americans. And they should be denounced, and that’s what I’m doing very clearly and unequivocally here today.
"It is antithetical to my campaign. It is antithetical to what I’m about. It is not what I think America stands for.”
But that disavowal falls short. Obama never actually disavows Reverend Wright. He only disavows his views and not the man.
By the same token, during her infamous appearance on The View, when pressed by Meghan McCain, Mallory refused to denounce Farrakhan, the man. From the Fox News coverage:
“What I will say to you is, I don’t agree with many of Minister Farrakhan’s statements,” Mallory said.
McCain asked, “Do you condemn them?”
“To be very clear, it’s not my language. It’s not the way that I speak,” Mallory said.

To be fair Obama used stronger language than Mallory, absolutely denouncing the content of Wright’s words, even if he was unable to bring himself to repudiate Farrakhan, the man. But both Obama and Mallory refused to say, “I condemn Wright. I condemn Farrakhan.”
As Jews, we have no way to look kindly on this, and no reason to do so, either.
Of course, it is indeed possible that Dershowitz repents his two-time support for Obama. Maybe he regrets that he, like so many other liberal Jews, looked the other way on Obama’s associations with Wright. Perhaps he's sorry, that like the rest of Obama’s Jewish base, he, Alan Dershowitz, truly believed Obama’s denunciation of Wright’s views as a repudiation of the man himself.
But that belief was only possible because he wanted to believe in Barack Obama, like the other Jews wanted to believe in Barack Obama. They looked the other way, and gave Obama a pass on his associations with known antisemites. 
They gave Obama a pass just as Hitler’s supporters, in Dershowitz’s own words, “gave him a pass for his anti-Semitism because they approved of his other policies,” The difference is that Dershowitz not only gave Obama a pass, but like so many other liberal Jews, did so twice over. To Israel's detriment (and the world's).
 Dershowitz’s two-time vote for Obama seems no different, from this perspective, than supporting Mussolini because he “made the trains run on time,” or Stalin because “he spread the wealth.” Dershowitz’s support for Obama, in this light, also seems no different than Tamika Mallory, the Women’s March leader, giving Farrakhan a pass, and calling him “the GOAT.”
One would hope that Dershowitz’s Gatestone piece is really just a vehicle to express his shame at having twice supported and campaigned for a man who associated with known antisemites.

A man who was the worst president the Jews and Israel have ever known. 
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