Professor Alan Dershowitz has released a new e-book, Terror Tunnels: The Case for Israel’s Just War Against Hamas, that provides an essential primer on the recent conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Dershowitz argues–clearly and conclusively–that Israel’s war effort was not only fully justified in terms of international law, but that it was also carried out in accordance with the highest regard for the human rights of Palestinians.
As he notes in the book, there are some Israelis who wish their army were less mindful of enemy civilians. In the end, roughly one Palestinian civilian was killed for every terrorist combatant. That is an astonishingly low proportion–one-fourth that of the global average, and quite extraordinary given the lengths to which Hamas, by its own admission, went to place civilians in harm’s way by firing rockets at Israeli civilians from civilian areas.
Dershowitz demolishes the most important anti-Israel arguments put forth during the war. He shows, contrary to the claims of radicals like John Dugard and Peter Beinart, that Gaza was not “occupied” by Israel and had not been occupied since Israel’s disengagement in 2005. He draws attention to the fact that there are open spaces in Gaza that Hamas could use to launch rockets, were it really concerned about the welfare of Palestinian civilians.
He also points out one of the most fundamental–and frequently overlooked–facts about the conflict: that the rocket attacks against Israeli civilians began in October 2001, immediately after President George W. Bush (yes, Bush!) became the first U.S. president officially to support the creation of a Palestinian state. Palestinian terror groups aimed to prevent that state from ever being founded–at least on a basis that would allow Israel to exist.
One section of the book is worth the price of purchase all by itself: a transcript of the Skype debate between Dershowitz and Prof. John Dugard, one of the most well-respected anti-Israel activists in the world today. Dershowitz absolutely wipes the floor with Dugard, who shows a basic lack of knowledge about the facts of the conflict, and relies entirely on false Palestinian claims and false assumptions about Israeli motivations.
The following passage is typical:
Professor Dugard: There was no evidence that Hamas was responsible for those killings [of three Israeli teenagers]. Israel started the suppression of Hamas in the West Bank, and that sparked off the rocket firing from Gaza. I don’t think it’s clear, or it’s fair to say, that Hamas was responsible for initiating the present conflict.
Professor Dershowitz: Hamas leaders admitted responsibility for this yesterday.
Professor Dugard: I was not aware of that.
That passage is worth re-reading, for the full weight of Dugard’s willful ignorance to sink in. He argues–and may even have convinced himself–that Israel started the war, even though the rocket fire long predated the kidnapping, and even though Hamas repeatedly violated ceasefires throughout the conflict, as the UN itself acknowledged.
Dershowitz tells Breitbart News: “My only weapon in the war of words against Israel is the truth. I wrote Terror Tunnels to respond to the lies that are the basis of the new law fare directed only at the nation state of the Jewish people.”
Those lies can only persist in a bubble of ignorance–a bubble assiduously maintained by the likes of Dugard and others, who strut about self-righteously like putrid peacocks, displaying their dim-wittedness for the fervent applause of audiences who are less careful in concealing their prejudicial motivations.
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