Criticizes Israeli Legal System; Offers Jewish Unity Principles

HONORARY DOCTORATE TO ALAN DERSHOWITZ

The University conferred an honorary doctorate on the noted American lawyer and Harvard law professor, Alan M. Dershowitz, in a special ceremony just after Passover. Living up to his reputation as a controversial figure, the honoree in his response faulted the Israeli legal system for perpetuating divisions in Israeli Jewish society. He also charged Israel with being a source of dividing American Jewry.

These criticisms, however, were made in the context of a call for Israeli and world Jewry to unify itself as Jews entered what he termed the “post ‘tzoris’” or post-persecution era.

The University cited Dershowitz for his “relentless and compassionate struggle to implement human rights and to protect civil liberties” as well as for his contributions to legal education and devotion to Jewish causes.

The Israeli legal system, Dershowitz said, “fails to understand what real democracy is.”

In a democracy, he continued, “everyone is listened to, but seven percent do not dictate what it [a democracy] is.” He thinks the extremes of both left and right in Israel should be marginalized and urged Israelis to “figure out a way” to make mainstream attitudes be reflected in the politics of the country.

Dershowitz said he found the rhetoric of this country shrill, with everyone trying to delegitimate each other, and parties talking to each other “un-Jewishly.” There was not the humor and irony that marked debate between sides in the past, he felt. Now people talked cruelly to those with opposing views.

What was happening in Israel, he told his audience, was also affecting American Jewish society. “We are catching it in America,” he said of the internal divisions among Israeli Jews.

“If we today are to save the Jewish people,” Dershowitz stated, “we must unite. Otherwise it will be our own fault. Destroying the Jewish people lies in our hands alone.”

The American Jewish legal scholar offered ten principles, covering the Jewish people and Israel, on which he thought 90 percent of Israeli and world Jewry could agree. He called for focusing on these areas of consensus, warning against continuing the culture of hatred that he saw here.

The ten areas of “principled consensus”:

  1. Judaism should not be allowed to shrink into marginality.

  2. Israel is central to Jewish continuity and culture.

  3. Israel should remain a Jewish and democratic state.

  4. All Jews should have freedom of religion and conscience.

  5. Empowered Jews have the responsibility to work for the safety of Jews anywhere in the world.

  6. Antisemitism and anti-Zionism may impose double standards, but are not enough to pressure Jews.

  7. Israel and its Arab neighbors should make a peace that would assure both Israel’s security and Palestinian self-determination.

  8. Israel must maintain qualitative military superiority over Arab armies.

  9. Judaism can contribute in a significant way to the world.

  10. Jews of all convictions should take and listen to one another with respect.

Called by Time magazine “America’s lawyer of last resort” for his defense of the likes of Natan Scharansky (when the now minister was imprisoned by the Soviet government), Jonathan Pollard, and O. J. Simpson, Brooklyn-born Dershowitz was the youngest ever to have attained the rank of full professor at the prestigious Harvard Law School.

He was also in the forefront of helping to bring former Prisoner of Zion Ida Nudel out of the Soviet Union.

 

 

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