http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Rebut-or-retract-A-public-challenge-to-Dershowitz-312710
“I challenge Dershowitz to respond to the queries I raise and to rebut my critiques of his proposal.
If he cannot, he should retract both the proposal and his pejorative portrayal of its critics. That would be no more than his moral and public duty.”
Alan Dershowitz’s response to his derisive reception at ‘Post’ conference in New York late underscores bankruptcy of “The Case for Two States”.
I have now joined this distinguished company of people who get booed for advocating territorial compromise in the interest of peace. That’s why I will no longer lend my support to ‘far-right pep’ rallies of the kind I spoke at last week.
– Alan Dershowitz, Jerusalem Post, May 5
In many ways, Alan Dershowitz’s somewhat puerile and petulant response to the derisive reception he was given by the audience at The Jerusalem Post Second Annual Conference in New York late last month vividly underscores just how bankrupt “The Case for Two States” has become.
Sulk, sulk; pout pout
True, Dershowitz has been a stout defender of Israel against its more vehement critics. For this he should be – and often is – commended.
But this does not give him a carte blanche to promote preposterous and perilous policy proposals – or immunize himself from censure when he does.
His intemperate reaction to the irreverent giggles that the plan he presented for restarting talks with the Palestinians – or at least, certain elements of the plan – elicited from the audience were hardly becoming of a figure of his stature.
Although a case could perhaps be made for greater courtesy from the crowd, Dershowitz’s disparaging dismissal of his critics as “foolish” and “part of the problem, not the solution”; and his rather juvenile jibe that he reserved the right “to tell you what I think of you, and it’s not much,” hardly added to the force of his arguments.
His conference exchange apparently stung him sufficiently to prompt him into penning a riposte last Sunday, in The Jerusalem Post, titled “Jews who boo efforts to make peace.”
In a display of pouting pique he, in essence, declared that henceforth he would confine the presentation of his blueprint for peace to more compliant and consensual crowds, sulking: “… I will no longer lend my support to ‘far-right pep’ rallies of the kind I spoke at last week.”
When an ardent and articulate two-state advocate, such as Dershowitz, finds himself resorting to insults, rather than intellect, and vows to eschew endeavors to persuade dissenting audiences of the merits of his case, the arguments for it must be becoming terribly threadbare.