From Dershowitz's Lips To Biden's Ears -- Well, Maybe Not
If you stop supplying ammunition and arms to Israel and deny them the right to defend themselves, you have crossed my red line. I hope that doesn't happen. I now have a more open mind than I ever thought I would have about whom I will vote for in this election. The Democratic Party cannot take me, the people who listen to me, the people who vote the way I do, they can't take us for granted, sorry.
As of yesterday, there was a sorta-kinda answer from a "senior defense official" via Breitbart:
Regarding the question about security assistance, you know, security assistance, which is a longstanding feature of the U.S. Israel relationship and the U.S. Commitment Israel security, it has flowed more rapidly than ever since the attacks of October 7th. And the secretary ensures — said very clearly that we will continue to stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself in accordance with the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law, and to ensure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself.
Since Dershowitz's YouTube remarks last week, he's been in Israel, and in a second YouTube posted from Israel yesterday, he made it clear why he's there: At 0:20, he says,
Today I'm meeting some Israeli leaders and speaking to a group of young people, but I'm also reconsidering something that I've been doing for the last 60-something, 60 almost 65, years. I've never voted for a Republican candidate for president since I voted for John Kennedy in 1960. I've always voted Democrat. I've only regretted one of those votes, my second vote for Barack Obama, who I think was the worst second-term president in modern American history, certainly in foreign policy. I wish I had voted for Mitt Romney.
This is an astonishing admission for Dershowitz to make, but as I re-watched the video to prepare this post, I caught his body language and his tone -- he's quiet, he's outwardly relaxed, but he's seething with anger. The Breitbart story at the link above refers as well to Prime Minister Netanyahu, who must certainly be among the "Israeli leaders" with whom Dershowitz met yesterday:
The abstention [from the UN Security Council vote] infuriated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who canceled an Israeli delegation visit to the White House. The trip to the Pentagon by the Israeli defense minister, however, proceeded.
Where, I assume, some version of Dershowitz's red line statement was transmitted. I was skeptical of the reference in the story to Netanyahu being "infuriated" until I took my more careful look at Dershowitz in yesterday's YouTube. I've got to figure they're both angry, but it's a quiet, seething sort of anger, not the sort where anyone blows up in public. But apparently this isn't new. Last November,
Expressing outrage over former President Barack Obama’s call for an end to Israeli "occupation," Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz expanded on why he’s never talking to the Democratic president again.
"I think he always had a deep hatred of Israel in his heart. He hid it very well. He called me to the Oval Office and he said to me, 'Alan, you've known me for a long time. You know I have Israel's back.' I didn't realize he meant to paint a target on it," Dershowitz said Friday on "Mornings with Maria."
. . . Dershowitz’s commentary comes after he claimed Thursday that any relationship with Obama is "over" following the 44th president’s onstage statements about the Israel-Hamas war.
. . . The Harvard professor on Friday accused Obama of lying "through his teeth" about what the former president called an "unbearable" occupation of Gaza.
But as I said yesterday, Deshowitz is arguably the most prominent and influential US Jew, and that Obama would have called him into the Oval Office to reassure him in the past is simply a reflection of that. But Dershowitz isn't just a successful appellate attorney and a Harvard prof, he's a strategist. He was involved in developing the Chicago Seven defense; he was invovlved in the OJ Simpson acquittal; he secured a reversal of Claus von Bülow's muirder conviction on appeal, and amazingly, he extricated himself from the Epstein scandals.He and Netanyahu are talking strategy, I've got to assume. Neither one is going to be satisfied with reassurances on background from "senior defense officials". The problem is bigger than that, it's bigger than Biden, Netnyahu in particular is playing a longer game than the 2024 election, but the game most definitely involves 2024 and US Jews' ongoing poliical alignment.
