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“What Israel needs to do is say this to the Palestinians: ‘The moment you sit down at the negotiating table and begin negotiations, that is the moment we will freeze construction in the settlements,’” says Alan Dershowitz. “Yes, we have failed in the past, but this is a moral argument, and I am talking about a pragmatic argument. Israel has a huge interest in ceasing to be an occupying power.”
Despite what by all appearances seems to be an unprecedented crisis in relations between Washington and Jerusalem, Professor Alan Dershowitz, one of the most accomplished Jewish jurists in the world and perhaps one of the few people who is close to both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama, still believes that the latter has the ability to prevent an Israeli attack on Iran, and that he knows exactly what to do.
“Some time in the next few weeks, Obama needs to look straight into the television camera and say to the leaders of Iran: I say, you are now suffering because of sanctions and diplomatic isolation, and there is no reason for you to suffer. I promise you — and you can look me straight in the eye — that we will never allow you to develop a nuclear weapon. Why do you need to go through the agony of sanctions? No matter what happens, you will not get a nuclear weapon. If you cross our red line, we will use military force to destroy your capability to develop a nuclear weapon.”
“Obama needs to say this in a way that is unequivocal,” Dershowitz says. “He has two audiences — the Iranian leaders who need to believe him, and the Israeli leaders who must believe that the Iranians believe him. In my view, the Israeli leadership will be satisfied with this statement.”
Dershowitz sat down for an exclusive interview with Israel Hayom to promote the release of the Hebrew-language edition of his latest book, “The Trials of Zion,” published by Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir. One of Israel’s most enthusiastic advocates in the U.S., Dershowitz reveals that he has been in frequent contact with Obama over recent months, during which he offered advice over how to deal with the Iranian nuclear impasse.
“I visited Israel not long ago,” he recalls. “During my visit, I went to Nanuchka, a restaurant in Tel Aviv where everybody dances on the tables. Suddenly, the phone rang. It was the White House on the line, and the president wanted to talk to me, but I couldn’t hear anything because of the noise. I think I’m the first person to ever ask the president to get back to them later.”
“Obama, who knew that I was in Israel, spoke with me afterward and asked me what are the three things that are most worrisome to the Israelis. I said to him, ‘I will tell them to you in order of importance — Iran, Iran, and Iran.’ I explained to the president that until this issue is resolved, he cannot compel Israel to focus on any other issue, chief among them the Palestinian question. The president invited me to the White House to meet him, and last June we sat down face to face. I relayed some of my conversation with him to leaders in Israel. Mediating and bringing the president and the prime minister closer together is one job that I’m happy to accept.”
How do you think Israel should deal with the Iranian threat? Is a pre-emptive strike a real option?
“I don’t have an answer to that question because I don’t have access to information about Israel’s operational capabilities. I can say that Israel has a 100-percent legal right to carry out a pre-emptive strike against the Iranian nuclear program. Iran is already in a state of war against Israel. It murdered many Israelis and Jews around the world. It threatens to destroy Israel, and it is on its way to developing the means to do this. So Israel has a full, legal, moral and pragmatic right to attack, and I would defend this right before any court in the world. This doesn’t necessarily mean that it needs to attack. It depends on its military capability and its relationship with the U.S.”
Can Israel trust the U.S. to deal with the Iranian problem?
“No country can trust another country to defend it. The U.S. would never trust Israel to defend American citizens. It doesn’t matter who is in power, and President Obama could make as many promises as he wants to attack Iran if it crosses certain red lines, but what will happen if and when the red lines are crossed and Russia and China threaten a counter-attack? No president can make such a commitment a year in advance. President Obama looked me in the eye and told me, ‘I’m not bluffing,’ and I believe him.
“On the other hand, Obama can’t tie his hands over what may or may not happen in another year or two. On the whole, I agree with Prime Minister Netanyahu, and President Obama also agrees with him, that no country can leave its self-defense to another country, regardless of how friendly that country is. Israel needs to decide on its own. The wise decision could be to allow the U.S. to do it, but this is a decision that I can’t say needs to be made.”
Aside from being a high-powered attorney, Dershowitz has also been one of the longest-tenured and most-respected professors at Harvard University, and a highly sought lecturer. He has devoted a significant part of his life to advocating for Israel and researching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His latest book, which he describes as “a work of fiction but historically based,” focuses on — what else — events in Israel.
“This is a very topical book which begins with a terrorist attack that kills a number of public figures during the signing of a peace treaty,” he says. “The theme of the book is that history will be the one to solve the mystery, and that it is impossible to solve the problems of the Middle East without understanding history.”
The protagonist of the book is a young American woman who travels to Israel to defend human rights in the West Bank. She ends up falling in love with a Palestinian Christian and joining the defense team of a terrorist suspected in the attack. Her father, a lawyer whose character is based on Dershowitz, also comes to Israel and becomes entangled in two trials in which his daughter’s life hangs in the balance.
How personal is this book? Could you envision a scenario in which you defend a terror suspect?
“Certainly. The first case I ever took was a terrorist trial, even though it was a Jewish terrorist who was a Kahane activist, but it was still terrorism. I won the case even though it was clear that the suspects were guilty, and I offered counsel in other cases in which the suspects were Arab terrorists. In one instance, I even convinced the Israeli government to release a suspected terrorist after I conducted an independent investigation which found that he wasn’t guilty. If someone is accused of a crime he did not commit — and it doesn’t matter how shocking and grisly the crime is — I will defend him.”
Given that you’re 74 years old, are you considering retirement at all?
“The truth is that I’m just about to finish up my autobiography. This was a very hard process which demanded a great deal of introspection and admission of mistakes that I made. Usually I’m much more wont to look forward than to look back, but when you write an autobiography, you have to look back to the past, and this was harder for me than anticipated from a psychological standpoint.
“In a year from now, on Sept. 1, 2013, there will be three things going on at the same time. I will be celebrating my 75th birthday, I will mark 100 semesters in 50 years of teaching at Harvard University, and my autobiography will be published. Everything is, as my grandmother would say, God willing. I have five jobs: I’m a lecturer, a litigator, I write all the time, I advocate for Israel as a full-time job, and I give speeches and lectures across the country. I can’t even dream of retirement. In the U.S., unlike in Israel, there is no age requiring one to retire, and the truth is that this is good for me because I’m still at the peak of my career.”
Dershowitz’s connection to Israel is an unusual one, almost extraordinary. He visits the country frequently, and he counts a number of Israelis as his good friends. Often, he becomes carried away in imagining himself making aliyah.
“My ties to Israel are emotional and very intellectual,” he says.
“On an emotional level, I deeply identify with the need for a national home for the Jewish people. Intellectually, I believe that even if I weren’t Jewish, I would defend Israel just as I have done all my life. I have no doubt that if I had two lifetimes, I would spend one of them in Israel.
“Many times, I thought about making ‘half-aliyah,’ and this possibility will always be ingrained in my head. I like coming to Israel. My closest friends live there, including Aharon Barak, Yitzhak Zamir, Amnon Rubinstein, Benjamin Netanyahu, Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak. One of the most profound pleasures in my life is that I had the chance to get to know so many respected dignitaries in Israel, and there are times that I do regret not being one of them. I often wonder what my life would be like if my grandfather had made aliyah in 1932. Recently, former IDF Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi paid me a compliment and said that if I had made aliyah, I would eventually become chief of staff. Maybe this is so. But even when I’m here [in New York], my friendship with Israel is always a part of me.”
Dershowitz does note, though, that despite the warm feelings, “my friendship with Israel is not devoid of criticism.” In 1970, he called for a two-state solution, and in 1973 made statements critical of the settlements. To this day, Dershowitz is disturbed by the continuing conflict. He believes that the two sides must work toward an agreement. Two years ago, he told Israel Hayom that he believed he would see an agreement in his lifetime. Even today, when it seems that the peace process is in a stalemate, he remains optimistic.
“I still believe,” he says emphatically.
“I think that it behooves Israel to be very generous and active and to offer a solution to the Palestinians that will make it difficult for them to say no. It is true that in the last 12 years Israel has done so twice and the Palestinians refused, but this doesn’t mean that it isn’t in Israel’s interest to put forward another offer.
“Israel doesn’t need to once again freeze settlement construction unilaterally, because this has already failed. What it needs to do is to say to the Palestinians, ‘The moment you sit down at the negotiating table and begin negotiations, that is the moment we will freeze construction in the settlements.’
“Yes, we have failed in the past, but this is a moral argument, and I am talking about a pragmatic argument. Israel has a huge interest in ceasing to be an occupying power.”
Has the Obama administration done enough to advance the peace process?
“No. I don’t think that any American president has done enough. But if you ask me who made the most critical mistake to Israel’s detriment in recent years, it was George W. Bush. The attack on Iraq made dealing with Iran much more difficult. Bush, for all intents and purposes, handed Iraq over to Iran, and from the vantage point of Israel, the U.S., and the Western world, there could not have been a greater mistake. Did Bush do this purposely to cause harm? No, he is a decent man who made a horrible mistake.
“When it comes to President Obama, he could have done many things differently. First, he didn’t need to say that the peace process begins with the ’67 borders. That means that the Palestinians begin with taking control of the Western Wall, the roads leading to Mount Scopus, the Jewish quarter, Maaleh Adumim, and Gilo. It can’t begin from there, but it needs to start from the lines outlined by U.N. Resolution 242, the formulation of which I took part in, and which states that Israel could make territorial changes according to its security needs and the changing circumstances on the ground. When it comes to the wider swaths of territory, like Ariel, we will have to make land swaps. But there shouldn’t be land swaps over things like the Western Wall or the road leading to Hebrew University, because that is just plain extortion.
“Obama’s second mistake, and I think he recognizes this, is that he should have come to Jerusalem after he went to Cairo at the start of his term in office.
“The third mistake that he made was in his speech. He should not have mentioned the Holocaust and the Nakba in the same sentence. There is no comparison. The Nakba is a small wound that the Palestinians inflicted on themselves, and the Holocaust is the death of 6 million people. It’s insulting to the victims of the Holocaust to be in the same sentence, the same paragraph, the same page, in the same book, and even in the same library, as the Nakba. I think that the president understands that he made a number of mistakes, but on the other hand his intentions are pure and I believe that he wants to be the president who leads the Middle East to peace. At the end of the day, I think that President Obama will end up being a better president for Israel than President Bush.”
With less than two months remaining until presidential elections in the U.S., Dershowitz, an avowed supporter of the Democrats, states that he will once again cast his ballot for Obama.
“I’ve never been enamored with politicians, because I’m critical toward some of the things that they do,” he said. “But in the end voting is a choice between two competing ideologies, and I believe in a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion, gay rights, universal health insurance, and concern for the environment. So how could I in any way support [Mitt] Romney or the Republicans?
“For most voters, the most important issue in these elections is the job market and the economy, and I’m totally on the Democratic side on these issues as well. Israel is also a critical issue, but what I want to do is take Israel out of the equation, so that Israel remains a bipartisan issue and that no elections are decided by the question over which party is more supportive of Israel. Unfortunately, this has become a much more difficult task.”
Dershowitz got a first-hand look at just how difficult a task this would be earlier this month, when the Democrats held their national convention in North Carolina. During the proceedings, any mention of Jerusalem was magically omitted from the Democratic party platform.
“There is a problem in the Democratic Party,” Dershowitz says.
“It is much more divided on the issue of Israel than the Republican Party. One of the reasons that I have remained a Democrat is that I have a major battle to wage, and I need to lead this campaign from within the Democratic Party and to make sure that what happened with liberal parties in Europe who have turned anti-Israel doesn’t happen here.
“At the moment, the U.S. and the Democratic Party are pro-Israel, but it’s a tight battle. Taking Jerusalem out of the platform didn’t happen by mistake. There are elements within the Democratic Party who wanted to change the platform, and nobody noticed, so they went ahead and did it. The mistake was that nobody paid attention to it, but the change was deliberately made by a group of Democrats that wish to see the U.S. turn against Israel.”
Dershowitz surprisingly blames J Street, a Jewish organization on the Left side of the political spectrum, for the problematic sea change that is noticeable among Democrats. In his view, the organization, which was established in opposition to the legitimacy of the settlements, has long ceased to be pro-Israel.
“J Street is the most important anti-Israel organization in the U.S. today,” he says. “It is acting against everything that the U.S. and Israel agree upon. Everybody agrees that an American military option against Iran needs to stay on the table. Everyone, except for J Street. At first, they offered points of view similar to mine regarding the settlements, but then they decided to build their base of support on the extreme Left, and they allowed people who support a boycott into their tent. They even accepted people who don’t recognize Israel’s right to exist.”
Given how increasingly divisive the issue of Israel is within the Democratic Party, what do you anticipate the breakdown of Jewish votes to be for this coming election? Do the Republicans have a chance to win a majority of Jewish votes?
“Generally, the Jewish vote doesn’t really matter. It’s the Jewish vote in the swing states, chief among them Florida, that matters. At the moment, it’s up in the air in Florida, so much so that I wouldn’t even know what to bet. It’s awfully close. It certainly won’t be 77 percent to 23 percent like it was in 2008, but it might be closer to 60-40, and this is a huge drop-off for the Democrats.
“I and others will try to change this, but at the end of the day the voters in Florida will be much less influenced by what I have to say than by what the president has to say. Today I was on the phone with the White House, and I implored the president to mention every one of the four issues that were removed from the party platform. He should talk about Jerusalem, the settlement of refugees in Palestine, negotiating with Hamas only on condition that it recognizes Israel, and final-status borders that will differ from the ’67 lines. If he does this, I really believe that he can bring the Democrats back to where they always were when it came to the Jewish vote.”