The Warped Morality of a Warmonger:Why Alan Dershowitz is Wrong on Israel's 'Rights'

"All of us have heard this term 'preventive war' since the earliest days of Hitler...A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility today. How could you have one if one of its features would be several cities lying in ruins, several cities where many, many thousands of people would be dead and injured and mangled, the transportation systems destroyed, sanitation implements and systems all gone? That isn't preventive war; that is war.

I don't believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing."

- President Dwight D. Eisenhower, August 11, 1954^*

Renowned torture enthusiast and perennial Israel apologist Alan Dershowitz is in Tel Aviv this week attending an annual business conference sponsored by Globes and, as usual, has been busy equivocating for Israeli espionage, defending war criminals, and warmongering about Iran.

During a speech he delivered on Sunday December 11, Dershowitz opined, "Israel has the right morally and legally to strike Iran just as it did on [the Osirak nuclear facility] in Iraq in 1981."

This is not a new line for the famous attorney who has worked tirelessly to acquit both aspiring and successful murderers and war criminals and defend billionaires who commit - and millionaires who cover-up - child rape. In April 2010, Dershowitz wrote, "I am asserting, in unqualified terms, that Israel has an absolute right -- legally, morally, politically -- to take such an action if it deems it necessary to protect its citizens from a threatened nuclear attack." Even as far back as 2005, he told The Jerusalem Post, "Legally and morally both Israel and the United States would have the right to launch preemptive strikes against Iran’s nuclear program. Recall that leading Iranian mullahs have indicated that Iran would use its nuclear capacity to kill three million Jews. I also believe that targeted assassinations of criminals who are illegally building weapons of mass destruction, can, under certain circumstances, be justified morally. I think the legal case would be much harder to make."

Like everything else The Dersh says, his statements are clearly out of step with the basic tenets of international law and, unsurprisingly, ignore both historical facts and current reality in order to draw his despicable and dubious conclusions. To understand Dershowitz's warped concepts of morality, one can simply read his copious justifications for the murder of civilians, as long as they're Arabs and/or Muslims.

First of all, the premise of Dershowitz's appalling argument regarding an Israeli attack is the assumption that Iran is, in fact, hellbent on building nuclear weapons and threatening Israel with genocidal annihilation. Of course, neither claim is true. Both the IAEA and the United States government (after years of covert operations and aerial surveillance) continue to agree that Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons program. In early 2011, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told both houses of Congress, "We continue to assess Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that better position it to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so. We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons." Dershowitz's insistence that the summary execution of Iranian scientists can be "justified morally" demonstrates the depths of his depravity.

Furthermore, so-called "preemptive" military attacks are illegal and explicitly forbidden by Chapter I, Article 2.4 of the United Nations Charter. The UN Charter also makes clear that it recognizes the "inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations." (Chapter VII, Article 51) Note that the Charter specifies that an aggressive, military response is allowed only "if an armed attack occurs...," which undoubtedly rules out "preemptive," "precautionary," or "preventative" military action of one State against another. Dershowitz conveniently ignores this clear fact.

Beyond that, using the example of Israel's June 7, 1981 airstrike on Osirak to argue for the legality of a similar attack on Iran's nuclear facilities is not only disingenuous at best, it is deliberately deceiving and completely wrong. The Iraqi nuclear program before 1981 was peaceful and subject to intensive safeguards and monitoring.

The Osirak reactor was, as Harvard physics professor Richard Wilson has explained, "explicitly designed by the French engineer Yves Girard to be unsuitable for making bombs. That was obvious to me on my 1982 visit." Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer of Norway's Institute for Defence Studies wrote this past summer that the Israeli attack on Osirak "triggered a covert nuclear weapons program that did not previously exist."

What Dershowitz omits from his ridiculous suggestion is that the Israeli attack, code named Operation Opera, took the lives of ten Iraqi soldiers and one French civilian researcher and was widely lambasted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the international community, including the United States.

Writing in The Guardian in 2002, Jonathan Steele reminded readers that "[t]he world was outraged by Israel's raid" and recalled some reactions:

"Armed attack in such circumstances cannot be justified. It represents a grave breach of international law," Margaret Thatcher thundered. Jeane Kirkpatrick, the US ambassador to the UN and as stern a lecturer as Britain's then prime minister, described it as "shocking" and compared it to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. American newspapers were as fulsome. "Israel's sneak attack... was an act of inexcusable and short-sighted aggression," said the New York Times. The Los Angeles Times called it "state-sponsored terrorism".

Within two days of the attack on Osirak, the Reagan administration suspended the shipment of F-16 fighter jets to Israel because of its contention that Israel had "violated its commitment to use the planes only in self-defense."

Ambassador Kirkpatrick, addressing a June 19, 1981 meeting of the United Nations Security Council, stated the Reagan administration's official views on the attack by condemning it as an "act of violence" that "gravely jeopardizes the peace and security" in the Middle East, "undermines the stability and well-being of the area," and "threatens global peace." Despite noting the "strength of United States ties and commitment to Israel" and insisting that the U.S. government "would approve no decision that harmed Israel's basic interests, was unfairly punitive or created new obstacles to a just and lasting peace," Kirkpatrick also told the Council,

Nonetheless, we believe the means Israel chose to quiet its fears about the purposes of Iraq's nuclear program have hurt, and not helped, the peace and security of the area. In my Government’s view, diplomatic means available to Israel had not been exhausted and the Israeli action has damaged the regional confidence that is essential for the peace process to go forward. All of us with an interest in peace, freedom and national independence have a high stake in that process. Israel's stake is highest of all.

That very day, the Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution expressing that the body was "[d]eeply concerned about the danger to international peace and security created by the premeditated Israeli air attack on Iraqi nuclear installations."

The resolution (S/RES/487) also "[s]trongly condemns the military attack by Israel in clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the norms of international conduct," "[c]alls upon Israel to refrain in the future from any such acts or threats thereof," warns that the attack undermined both the IAEA and NPT, calls on Israel to "urgently to place its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards," and demands Israel provide Iraq with "appropriate redress for the destruction it has suffered, responsibility for which has been acknowledged by Israel." (emphasis added, italics in original)

Later that year, after the Reagan White House had caved to Israeli pressure and resumed warplane deliveries, the UN General Assembly passed a similarly critical resolution (36/27) on November 13, 1981 that "strongly condemn[ed] Israel for its premeditated and unprecedented act of aggression in violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the norms of international conduct, which constitutes a new and dangerous escalation of the threat to international peace and security." (emphasis added)

The resolution also reaffirmed Iraq's "inalienable sovereign right" to "develop technological and nuclear programmes for peaceful purposes" and stated that, not only was Iraq a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but had also "satisfactorily applied" the IAEA safeguards required of it. Conversely, it noted "with concern" that "Israel has refused to adhere to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and, in spite of repeated calls, including that of the Security Council, to place its nuclear facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards."

In addition to condemning "the misuse by Israel, in committing its acts of aggression against Arab countries, of aircraft and weapons supplied by the United States of America," the resolution reiterated "its call to all States to cease forthwith any provision to Israel of arms and related material of all types which enable it to commit acts of aggression against other States" and requested "the Security Council to investigate Israel's nuclear activities and the collaboration of other States and parties in those activities" and "institute effective enforcement action to prevent Israel from further endangering international peace and security through its acts of aggression and continued policies of expansion, occupation and annexation."

Furthermore, the General Assembly demanded that "Israel, in view of its international responsibility for its act of aggression, pay prompt and adequate compensation for the material damage and loss of life suffered" due to the illegal and lethal attack.

Only the United States and Israel voted against the resolution.

In August 2002, Mary Ellen O'Connell, law professor at the Moritz College of Law and Associate of the Mershon Center for International Security and Public Policy at Ohio State University, wrote an extensive analysis entitled "The Myth of Preemptive Self-Defense" for the American Society of International Law (ASIL) Task Force on Terrorism wherein she explicitly addresses the very misconception Dershowitz is attempting to put forward.

"Preemptive self-defense," O'Connell writes, "is clearly unlawful under international law." She explains, "The right of self-defense is limited to the right to use force to repel an attack in progress, to prevent future enemy attacks following an initial attack, or to reverse the consequences of an enemy attack, such as ending an occupation" and also points out that "the United States as a government has consistently supported the prohibition on such preemptive use of force." O'Connell continues, "the reality is that the United States has no right to use force to prevent possible, as distinct from actual, armed attacks. The further reality is that the United States does not advance its security or its moral standing in the world by doing so." Throughout her paper, O'Connell stresses that all nations are bound by these same rules.

Though O'Connell was writing in anticipation of an unprovoked US attack on Iraq, the parallels to the current American and Israeli bellicosity toward Iran are obvious and identically relevant. "There is no self-appointed right to attack another state because of fear that the state is making plans or developing weapons usable in a hypothetical campaign," she states, elaborating that "a state may not take military action against another state when an attack is only a hypothetical possibility, and not yet in progress—even in the case of weapons of mass destruction" since even "possession of such weapons without more does not amount to an armed attack."

In her eerily prescient analysis, published eight months before the US bombing, invasion, and occupation of Iraq, O'Connell suggests that "if an official argument is given at all for an invasion of Iraq, it is likely to be 'preemptive self-defense'", and continues:

The preemptive use of military force would establish a precedent that the United States has worked against since 1945. Preemptive self-defense would provide legal justification for Pakistan to attack India, for Iran to attack Iraq, for Russia to attack Georgia, for Azerbaijan to attack Armenia, for North Korea to attack South Korea, and so on. Any state that believes another regime poses a possible future threat— regardless of the evidence — could cite the United States invasion of Iraq.

O'Connell even uses the specific example of the Israeli destruction of Iraq's Osirak facility to prove her point. "Many representatives were impressed by the testimony of the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency who testified that the IAEA had found no evidence of unlawful weapons development by the Iraqi government," she writes. "Not only did the IAEA find no diversion of nuclear material, but Israel put forward no evidence that an attack was imminent, let alone underway." With regard to the legality of such an unprovoked assault, she determines, "Permitting preemptive self-defense at the sole discretion of a state is fundamentally at odds with the [United Nations] Charter's design."

In defending Israel's "right" to commit what the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg described as "the supreme international crime" - namely, the willful initiation of a "war of aggression" - against Iran, Dershowitz also ignores the salient fact that the consequence of the Israeli bombing of Osirak was actually exactly the opposite of the stated goal of the operation. It was only after the Israeli attack that Iraq embarked on a nuclear weapons program.

The claims of Alan Dershowitz, in addition to being factually incorrect, legally unjustifiable and morally indefensible, are wholly unoriginal. Nuclear proliferation experts Leonard S. Spector and Avner Cohen, writing in the July/August 2008 edition of Arms Control Today, reveal that two days after the strike, "in a dramatic press conference in Tel Aviv, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin took full responsibility for the operation, praised its execution as extraordinary, and justified it both on moral and legal grounds. Begin referred to the strike as an act of “anticipatory self-defense at its best."

Mary Ellen O'Connell defines "anticipatory self-defense" as "armed responses to attacks that are on the brink of launch, or where an enemy attack has already occurred and the victim learns more attacks are planned." Clearly, as Israel was in no imminent danger of being attacked in 1981 by Iraqi nuclear weapons which didn't exist, Begin's triumphant boast was nothing more than a propagandistic lie. The neoconservative, AIPAC-driven rhetoric, echoed consistently by Dershowitz, warning of the existential threat now posed to Israel by Iran is an updated example of this very same falsehood.

Spector and Cohen continue:

The message that Begin conveyed was that the raid on Osiraq was not a one-time operation but rather a long-term national commitment. He ended his press conference with these dramatic words:

We chose this moment: now, not later, because later may be too late, perhaps forever. And if we stood by idly, two, three years, at the most four years, and Saddam Hussein would have produced his three, four, five bombs.… Then, this country and this people would have been lost, after the Holocaust. Another Holocaust would have happened in the history of the Jewish people. Never again, never again! Tell so your friends, tell anyone you meet, we shall defend our people with all the means at our disposal. We shall not allow any enemy to develop weapons of mass destruction turned against us.

A few days later, in a CBS News television interview, Begin reiterated this doctrinal point: “This attack will be a precedent for every future government in Israel.… [E]very future Israeli prime minister will act, in similar circumstances, in the same way.” (emphasis added)

The countdown to an imaginary Iraqi and Iranian nuclear bomb is a three-decade-old staple of Israeli and American fear-mongering. Naturally, the exploitation of Holocaust analogies and endless Hitler comparisons is all part of the routine, along with ad nauseum repetitions of long-debunked mistranslations of cartographic proportions.

In April 2010, Dershowitz, after following the lead of George W. Bush by accusing Obama of "appeasement", fulminated that, even if "the United States is prepared to accept a nuclear Iran...it has no right to require Israel to accept the risks posed by a nuclear armed country that has overtly threatened its destruction." He continued, "Every country in the world has the inherent right to protect its citizens from a nuclear attack. Israel, a nation that Obama has himself acknowledged was built on the ashes of one Holocaust, certainly has the right to take military action to prevent a second Holocaust, especially at the hands of a country that has explicitly threatened to wipe it off the map."

Still, Dershowitz wasn't finished:

The world ignored the explicit threats of one tyrant who threatened to destroy the Jewish people in the 1930s, and he nearly succeeded in the 1940s. Israel cannot be expected to ignore Hitler's successor, who while denying the first Holocaust, threatens a second one.

Dershowitz's own usage of Menachem Begin's "Never Again" nonsense should come as no surprise considering The Dersh's obvious affinity for plagiarizing propaganda.

It is no wonder that Dershowitz treats the Osirak attack as a successful and necessary mission to be emulated, if not overtly duplicated, with regard to Iran. The reason is that Israel never pays a price for its constant contravention of international law, denial of human rights, and indifference to, if not outright contempt for, any human life that doesn't fully support ethnic cleansing, apartheid, colonization, occupation, and institutionalized racism and discrimination against a displaced, dispossessed, devastated and demonized indigenous population.

Clearly, Israel has never followed through with its obligations as determined by the UN Security Council in 1981 and has continued to act aggressively and criminally ever since, with complete impunity and diplomatic protection from its superpower patron. The supposed "moral right" Dershowitz ascribes to an unprovoked and illegal Israeli attack on Iran - a sovereign nation of nearly 74 million people whose government consistently declares it has no intention of building a nuclear weapon or starting a war against the region's strongest military - isn't even worth discussing.

With his noxious comments in Tel Aviv, as with most everything else he says, writes, and does, Alan Dershowitz has once again revealed himself to be incapable of telling the truth or demonstrating even the most basic elements of reason or humanity in his obsessive determination to defend, and in this case encourage new, Israeli war crimes.


("Why are you laughing? This is my serious face.")
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* During a press conference on August 11, 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was asked repeatedly about the possibility of the United States waging a "preventive war" on the Soviet Union. In addition to the above quote, given in response to a question posed by NBC reporter Ray L. Scherer, Eisenhower elaborated on his attitude toward "preventive war" after being asked by Washington Post correspondant Chalmers M. Roberts whether his opposition to such an idea was based solely on "military reasons":

"It seems to me that when, by definition, a term is just ridiculous in itself, there is no use in going any further. There are all sorts of reasons, moral and political and everything else, against this theory, but it is so completely unthinkable in today's conditions that I thought it is no use to go any further."

Incidentally, during the same briefing, Eisenhower addressed the previous year's (CIA-run) overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, saying, "We were faced in Iran with a situation that was highly dangerous to the world. Mossadegh was using his power, and the party-I don't know exactly how you pronounce it, but the Communist Party, Tudeh I guess--that party was using their power to lead Iran further and further away from the Western World. It looked almost as if a break was imminent from day to day...In Iran the situation has been greatly ameliorated; it looks much better, and we are very hopeful that the new agreement will soon bring back income to Iran on the basis that they can continue to advance, raising the standards in that country."

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