Outspoken human rights lawyer and pro-Israel pundit Alan Dershowitz took the floor of Hart House’s Great Hall on Monday to deliver a lecture titled “Two Peoples, Two States, One Reality” in an event sponsored by Hillel of Greater Toronto.
U of T law professor Ed Morgan introduced Dershowitz as “a person who has been called everything from evil to brilliant, but was never called boring.” You can agree or disagree with him, said Morgan, but it is impossible to ignore him.
Dershowitz, the author of several books, including The Case for Israel, Why Terrorism Works, and America on Trial, started his lecture by attempting to redefine notions of what it means to be “pro-” or “anti-” Palestinian.
“I think of myself as pro-Palestinian,” he said. Those who should be called “anti-Palestinian,” he said, are the people who have refused to recognize two separate states, one Israeli and one Palestininan, in 1937, 1949, and 2000. According to Dershowitz, the refusal to recognize the distinction neglects the immediate needs of Palestinians on the ground, and also halts the peace process.
“Pragmatism,” he said, “is the name for peace.” Quoting Ecclesiastes, he said: “There is a time for everything-a time for peace, and a time for war.”
“Now, the time for peace has come,” Dershowitz said. “People on both sides are ready to live together side by side, but the great peril to peace is actually people who refuse to accept this idea.”
Dershowitz also blamed players in the international arena for creating a stand-off to peace. In a characteristically controversial gesture, Dershowitz called Iran “the greatest peril to peace in the Middle East,” and went on to quote the president of Iran, who Dershowitz said sees the development of nuclear weapons as a way of destroying five million Jews in Israel.
Dershowitz also criticized the UN.
“The UN still considers terrorist attacks as acts of liberation. It should be the responsibility of the world’s international organizations to redefine these terms. Who is being liberated when 17-year-old kids are being blown up at a discothéque, or when pregnant women are being killed at a shopping mall?”
The event concluded with questions from the audience. One student asked “How can you stand and argue for the ‘case for Israel,’ when in 1948 more than 400 Palestinian villages were razed to the ground by Jews who have occupied their land since then?” After cheers from audience members, Dershowitz responded: “The 1948 war was not an ethnic cleansing but a just war that resulted from the refusal on the part of the Palestinian leadership to accept Israel as its neighbour. In every war there are casualties. I will continue to enforce my idea that until acceptance among both parts to recognize each other is lacking, death and tragedies such as the ’48 war will continue to persist.”
