Defending Israel by Alan M. Dershowitz

Author:Alan M. Dershowitz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

In 2018, I published a book titled The Case Against BDS: Why Singling Out Israel for Boycott Is Anti-Semitic and Anti-Peace. In it, I urge students and others to use their moral voices to demand that both the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority accept a compromise peace that assures the security of Israel and the viability of a peaceful and democratic Palestinian state. I urge that the way forward should not be by immoral extortionate threats that do more harm than good but by negotiations, compromise and goodwill.

We are winning the war against BDS on campuses, insofar as no mainstream university has boycotted or divested from Israel. But the goals of BDS go beyond these specific outcomes. They include poisoning the minds of students with false accounts of Israel’s “apartheid,” “genocide” and other sins. (More on this to come.) It is for that reason that I decided to write The Case for Israel.

At about the time the Clinton–Barak peace offer was being rejected and the second intifada and BDS weapons were being aimed at Israel, a Harvard student came to see me during the 10 days of Repentance between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when Jews are supposed to seek forgiveness for sins of commission and omission. The student asked me to forgive him for his sin of omission in failing to stand up for Israel when his professors or fellow students unjustly condemned the Jewish state. He told me that he was quite knowledgeable about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, having spent a gap year in Israel and having also attended a Zionist high school. I asked him why he didn’t stand up for Israel, and he replied sheepishly, “If I’m perceived as a supporter of Israel, I won’t get dates. It’s not cool to be a Zionist.”

My immediate response was humorous. “Why don’t we start a campaign: Support Israel—Date a Zionist Tonight?” He didn’t laugh. It was becoming a serious issue on campus. Students were reluctant to stand up for Israel, some out of fear of losing popularity, others out of lack of the knowledge necessary to rebut the growing anti-Israel rhetoric. It was already becoming clear to me that college campuses would become one of the front lines in the war for public opinion on the question of Israel. Moreover, a number of pernicious myths had grown up around the Arab–Israeli conflict, some of them due to ignorance and others promulgated knowingly by anti-Israel activists and propagandists.

The Case for Israel therefore grew out of my desire to write an accessible primer on the core issues in this debate. My target audience was university students, and I arranged with my publisher to make copies available at a reduced cost for them. I was pleasantly surprised when the book not only became a campus bestseller but also landed on the New York Times bestseller list for general audiences.

The format of the book was simple and accessible. Each of its 32 short chapters begins with an accusation against Israel commonly made on campuses and in hard-left media.

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