Professor Dershowitz Encounters a Worrying Future

Professor Dershowitz Encounters a Worrying Future – by Michael Scheuer,

On 25 March 2009, I participated in a “Doha Debate” held at Georgetown University under the auspices of the Qatar-Based Doha Foundation. The Oxford Union-style question before the house was: “This house believes that it is time for the U.S. administration to get tough with Israel.” The “no” team consisted of Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz and former Israeli foreign ministry adviser Dore Gold. On the “yes” team were myself and Avraham Burg, a former speaker of Israel’s Knesset. Each speaker made a 2-minute opening statement and then was question by the moderator, Tim Sebastian. Thereafter, the debaters fielded questions from the audience for about an hour, and then the audience voted. The “yes” team won 67-percent of the vote, the “no” team 33-percent.

Having seldom been on any winning team, I was more than a bit surprised by the result. On reviewing the debate in my mind it seems to me that the victory of the “yes” position probably was the result of the “no” team’s fundamentally age-old and well-scripted arguments, which were in summary: Washington must leave Israel to do what it pleases; the U.S. should not interfere with internal Israeli affairs; putting U.S. pressure on Israel will cause more not less bloodshed; and the U.S. must keep funding and arming Israel to the extent Israel deems necessary to defend itself against existential enemies, especially Iran.

via Professor Dershowitz Encounters a Worrying Future by Michael Scheuer — Antiwar.com.