Can you believe it? Alan M. Dershowitz wrote an article
under the title: “Poland Seeks to Censor History” and the subtitle: “Laws that
impose an official view––even those banning Holocaust denial––are pernicious.”
It was published in the Wall Street Journal on February 6, 2018.
So you want to know with what authority Alan Dershowitz
speaks. Well, he is a lawyer, which means he is a member of the Judicial branch
of government. He is also the member of a political party, which brings him
close to the Legislative branch of government. He interacts intensely with the
Executive, which is the third branch of government. And he has an intense
relationship with the media, which makes him a member of the Fourth Estate. In
short, Alan Dershowitz is the incarnation of officialdom.
Thus, when Dershowitz says that laws which impose an
official view are pernicious, he better be as clean as distilled water lest he
be caught saying he is as pernicious as cesspool water. But you know what, my
friend? When you probe what Alan Dershowitz has been saying and doing during
all of his professional life––and if you are asked to evaluate his lifelong
work––there is only one thing you can say about him. It is this: Alan
Dershowitz makes cesspool sludge look like distilled water.
The truth is that Dershowitz spent his entire professional
life attacking, denigrating and preventing people from saying the things he
doesn't like to hear. He lobbied against university professors being tenured,
against prominent people addressing political conventions, and against people
being appointed to positions of influence. He did all that because those people
refused to toe the Judeo-Israeli line. And he carried on with that personal
crusade in all the places where someone allowed him to speak – be that in North
America or Europe .
But now that the table has been turned against him, he
pretends he never took a position that restricted others from exercising their
right to free speech. What's that? Is he by chance atoning for his earlier
indiscretions or something? No, he is not. He is doing it because he wants to
condemn what Poland
is doing, which he says is tantamount to placing restrictions on free speech.
And you can be certain that when this tempest will be over, Alan Dershowitz
will go back to doing what he has been doing all his life. That is, he'll work
as hard as he can to prevent others from saying the things he doesn't like to
hear.
To get a feel for the depth to which this man has sunk in
terms of hypocrisy, go over his article and see how he presents his case. He
begins by telling what the Polish law intends to prohibit: “claims that the
Polish Nation or the Republic
of Poland Poland of
complicity in the murder of Jews.
In other words, the Government of Poland is saying to
politicians they will not be allowed to play games with the Holocaust at the
expense of the Polish nation. In the way that it is illegal to accuse someone
of murder on a whim, it shall be considered illegal to accuse the polish nation
of murder; and the offenders will be punished. But if you're an academic
searching for the truth, or you're an artist seeking to put the Holocaust in a
context that will shed light on what happened during the dark days of the
Second World War, you can purse any legitimate line of inquiry you deem
necessary, and you'll be protected.
Even though Alan Dershowitz admits it will be a good idea to
let “historians sort out the specifics, and moralists to apportion blame,” he
could not resist going against the grain. That is, he played politics with the
issues as can be seen in what he said:
“It is understandable that some American students and
faculty seek to stifle hate speech, micro-aggressions and ideas that make them
feel unsafe. To some Palestinians on campuses, Zionist speech creates an unsafe
space, while to some Jewish students, anti-Israel speech offends and frightens.
It is not the role of governments or universities to take sides in these
conflicts. So let the competing narratives regarding the role of Poland , the
Catholic Church and individual Poles continue to be debated without the hand of
governmental censorship and criminal punishment”.
But that's exactly what the Polish law intends to do
regardless of what happens on the campuses of America 's colleges. So why is
Dershowitz arguing against himself? He is because he wants to continue
intruding into the affairs of the campuses. He wants to go on silencing those that do not toe the Judeo-Israeli line, and he
wants to continue amplifying the voices of those who do.