Alan Dershowitz's Awful Law & Terrorist Friends

I know I shouldn't waste my time on this buffoon, but I simply can't help myself.

This is real.

Alan Dershowitz - Attorney General of Hasbara and Warmongering - has once again taken to the pages of the Wall Street Journal (along with an extended cut-and-paste job in David Horowitz's neocon rag FrontPageMag) to advocate for an Israeli or American military attack on Iran.

It appears that Dershowitz is now attempting to claim that a "preventative" attack on Iran is actually merely "reactive" on the part of Israel (or the U.S.) and goes to great disingenuous lengths to paint Iran as the aggressor - casting nuclear-armed Israel and its super-power patron, as usual, as mere victims of Iranian violence based upon allegations made by Benjamin Netanyahu blaming the Iranian government for recent terrorist attacks in Georgia and Thailand.

After using intellectually dishonest tactics to paint Iran as an aggressor against Israel (and, bizarrely, all Jewish people worldwide) and citing Article 51 of the UN Charter to argue for legal retaliatory military actions if Iran attacks a foreign country, Dershowitz writes, "This is not to argue against such an attack if Iran decides not to go after soft American targets. It may become necessary for our military to target Iranian nuclear facilities if economic sanctions and diplomatic efforts do not succeed and if the Iranian government decides to cross red lines..."

To say that his understanding, invocation, and defense of "preventative" military action is totally incorrect would be an understatement.  He is expressly advocating a first strike by the U.S. (and later expands this advocacy to an Israeli assault) which is - by any stretch of international law - a wholly illegal action that has long been considered "the supreme international crime."

It is additionally ironic for Dershowitz to invoke the UN Charter in making his grotesque arguments that absolve Israel and the U.S. of all past and potential violations of international law yet holds the Iranian government and people collectively accountable for any blog post suggesting Iran itself use military force. Whereas he uses Article 51 to make his case, he suggests the US explicitly violate Article 2 of that very same document. Article 2, as we know, states that all UN members "shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state..." Yet, what does Dershowitz call for? He insists the US government attempt to deter Iran from weaponizing its nuclear program (note the unstated admission that Iran has no nuclear weapons program!) by providing a "credible" "threat of military action."

While it is becoming clear that Dershowitz is increasingly (and rightly) seen as not only a serial liar and a reflexive and shameless apologist for anything Israel does (or wants to do), but also as a completely morally bankrupt person, that doesn't mean his influence is irrelevant. Speaking in opposition to a recent human rights conference held at the University of Pennsylvania, Dershowitz claimed that he is in regular contact with both Netanyahu and Obama. Indeed, Dershowitz is an attention-seeker and self-aggrandizer, but I still wouldn't be surprised if his boast were partially true.

Most notably, however, is the fact that Dershowitz has recently taken up the mantle as a defender of the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK). Speaking in Washington DC earlier this month (fresh from decrying the PennBDS Conference), Dershowitz called himself a "human rights activist" and called for the MEK to be delisted as a terrorist organization. This alone, as Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project affirms, is tantamount to "material support" for a designated terrorist group. That Dershowitz was surely paid for his endorsement puts him in league with Howard Dean, Mike Mukasey, Rudy Giuliani, Lee Hamilton, and Wesley Clark, along with numerous former government officials and current members of Congress as defending a known terrorist cult which has recently been implicated in the murders of Iranian scientists, with substantial backing and training from Israel. If true, a more perfect definition of Israel as a "state sponsor of terrorism" could not be found.

Nevertheless, on behalf of the MEK, Dershowitz declared, "We know there's no evidence of terrorism. We know there's no terrorism." He continued, "The fact you call somebody a terrorist doesn't, however, make them terrorists. There is no evidence. We know that, that any military action or terrorist action has occurred, certainly not in the last decade." (Pointing out that Dershowitz frequently refers to Iran's alleged involvement in bombings in Argentina and Saudi Arabia in the mid-1990's would be too obvious, wouldn't it?)

He even invoked the Holocaust in his plea for ensuring the "physical safety" of MEK members in Iraq and declared that the US government and its citizens "are friends with people at Camp Ashraf" and are bound to "protect them."

So, at what point will Alan Dershowitz be charged with aiding a foreign terrorist organization?

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