Alan Dershowitz was against Nazis before he was for them? (Larisa Alexandrovna)

Larisa Alexandrovna| BIO | I'M A FAN OF THIS BLOGGER
Alan Dershowitz was against Nazis before he was for them?
Posted November 11, 2007 | 08:49 AM (EST)

Welcome to the desert of the real in which a Jewish man can cite Nazis in defense of torture tactics. I was raised on the Holocaust. I went to a highly religious school where many of my teachers and guest lecturers were Holocaust survivors.

My family talked about the Holocaust at every opportunity, remembering those who were imprisoned, tortured, and murdered, including members of my family. I lived under the Soviet regime, which also tortured and murdered. I have never met or spoken with any Jew who has ever defended torture, no matter who the "scapegoat" is.

Apparently, there are some Jews who are more than willing to become the very monsters they abhor. This mentality I do not understand and never will.

Take for example the latest Alan Dershowitz column in the Wall Street Journal. Aside from getting the new meme on Mukasey about how the Democrats are beholden to MoveOn.org - echoed by meister Rove, President Bush, Dick Cheney, and the right wing propaganda machine as if one ring ruled them all - Dershowitz actually writes this:



This statement defies logic. Even if in some instances Nazi tactics worked, why would anyone endorse them for any reason, especially a Jewish man? Dershowitz, and others like him - Joe Lieberman, et al - do not speak for Jews, nor do they speak for Israel. In fact, the far right regime that has co-opted Israel and the US both is not representative of Judaism or Christianity for that matter. Whatever or whomever it is they represent, it is not the Israeli people or the American people. It is as though a multi-national organized crime syndicate has taken over both countries and is using the cover of religion as a shield against criticism.

No Jew, no real Jew, would ever support torture. When torture becomes policy for politically influential American and Israeli Jews, then the whole of our history becomes polluted with monsters whose crimes we lose the right to condemn. It is the responsibility of other prominent Jews in both countries to take our religion back from these political parasites, because if we don't, their handy work will create the kind of antisemitism not seen since WWII. Ever since this morally repugnant right wing extremism has in a "paper coup" taken over both Israel and the United States, antisemitism has skyrocketed.



If Israeli citizens will not demand a more moderate government, then Jews around the world will have to ask the hard question: what is more important, the country of Israel or the Jewish people as a a whole?

And if American Jews do not demand that right wing political prostitutes, Jews in name only, stop the US march toward world domination, then American Jews might have to ask themselves a hard question as well: Is the United States more important than our traditions, morals, values, and history as a Jewish people?

In both cases, Jews of the world have to stand up against torture that other, more visible Jews in the US and Israel publicly endorse. We have to do this because we are a good people, a victimized people who know what torture is, and because we know that someday in the future we might, once again, be on the other side of this debate.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larisa-alexandrovna/alan-dershowitz-was-again_b_72076.html
or here:
http://www.atlargely.com/2007/11/alan-dershowitz.html

and totally unnecessary. It's a reflection of the enemy's intolerance, all right. Problem is, the attitude keeps making new ones ...

All issues, even the tough ones, should be on the table and disagreements aired. Labeling opposition evil and claiming there's no room for such attitudes is childish.

they were still alive (albeit looking like a poster for the ills of anorexia) ... by Bush's definition, they weren't "tortured" ...

That should be a real talking point ... by Republicans' definition of "torture", Auschwitz was not a place where people were tortured ...

speak at the big aipac conference last year. Rev John Hagee, who says that the holocaust was god's punishment for Jew's "disobedience". (but he supports Israel, so its okay)

Dershie said "he has earned a place at the table".

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/aipac-cheers-an-antisemi_b_43377.html

I thought Germany lost the war.

"There are some who claim that torture is a nonissue because it never works..."
So we're taking lessons from the most horrible perpetrators of violence in the last century? :wtf:

nt

he proves me wrong. Despicable is a major understatement when used to describe this POS, imo.

I mean, I believe Alexandrovna accurately quoted him, but I still can't get over the shock and bring myself to believe he could say that, if you know what I mean.

This is the type of Nazi torture that Dershowitz is raving about for its effectiveness, as discussed at the Jewish virtual library of the holocaust.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Barbie.html

For example, the torture of top ranking resistance leader Jean Moulin by Klaus Barbie involved the types of things you might see in a horror film like the movie "Hostel":

"...A dedicated sadist, responsible for many individual atrocities, including the capture and deportation to Auschwitz of forty-four Jewish children hidden in the village of Izieu, Klaus Barbie owed his postwar notoriety primarily to one of his 'cases', the arrest and torture unto death of Jean Moulin, one of the highest ranking members of the French Resistance.

Jean Moulin was mercilessly tortured by Klaus Barbie and his men. Hot needles where shoved under his fingernails. His fingers were forced through the narrow space between the hinges of a door and a wall and then the door was repeatedly slammed until the knuckles broke.

Screw-levered handcuffs were placed on Moulin and tightened until they bit through his flesh and broke through the bones of his wrists. He would not talk. He was whipped. He was beaten until his face was an unrecognizable pulp. A fellow prisoner, Christian Pineau, later described the resistance leader as "unconscious, his eyes dug in as though they had been punched through his head. An ugly blue wound scarred his temple. A mute rattle came out of his swollen lips."

Jean Moulin remained in this coma when he was shown to other resistance leaders who were being interrogated at Gestapo headquarters. Barbie had ordered Moulin put on display in an office. His unconscious form sprawled on a chaise lounge. His face was yellow, his breathing heavy, his head swathed in bandages. It was the last time Moulin was seen alive. ..."


Dershowitz is either completely ignorant of what the Nazis did to try to get their prisoners to talk, or he's a very, very sick man.

Great essay from Larisa as always.

:kick:

I don't subscribe to WSJ, so I can't read it for myself.

Did Dershowitz come out for torture, with the justification that it sometimes work? Or was it for some other reason that he said it sometimes works?

There are plenty of reasons to condemn torture: It's morally wrong, international and American law both forbid it, if we do it then our enemies are more likely to do it to us. In addition, it is sometimes argued, it doesn't work. But the reasons we condemn it are the moral ones; we add that it doesn't work just to bolster our argument.

But does it work? If it does, then we should not be arguing that it does not, because that will only weaken our position. If it does work, then what is wrong with Dershowitz saying so?

It is distasteful to see a Jew or anyone else pointing to the Nazis for an example. Again, I did not read AD's piece, so I don't know what he meant by that. If he was trying to say we ought to do just like them because it worked, then I agree, the guy's position is reprehensible. But if he just wanted to point out that torture sometimes works, I think he has a valid point.

is more or less what he said.

Torture NEVER "works."

:applause: :loveya: