Wednesday, January 23, 2019
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.
He couldn’t have known that Obama was bosom buds with the raving lunatic and infamous antisemite that is Farrakhan.
Or could he?
After Photo Emerges with Farrakhan, Obama Claims He’s ‘a Liberal Jew’ in Speech at Synagogue https://t.co/4q8vJKCy2M pic.twitter.com/dJVvqNRslr— Chuck Woolery (@chuckwoolery) January 28, 2018
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.
A man who was the worst president the Jews and Israel have ever known.
