We Hold These Truths received this note via BlackBerry:
From:  “Alan Dershowitz”  (deleted)@harvard.edu
To:   ccarlson@whtt.org
Date:  Wed, 4 Feb 2009
Subject: Re: “Would Jesus Concur or Weep?”1

“These deaths (Gaza children) were not collateral. They were deliberately intended by Hamas by its willful use of human shields. Anyone  who supports Hamas is complicit in the death of these babies–you included!”
A review of our emailing list reveals that Alan Dershowitz was added to the list on Feb. 2, 2008; therefore, he has received some 40 editions of Pharisee Watch.  We cannot be more pleased to learn from this, his first response, that he is watching.  It appears significant that he chose this time to answer.
Alan Dershowitz, a professor at Harvard Law School, is one of the most famous Zionist  spokesmen of our time, at least among those who call themselves Americans.  His name brings more than 300,000 matches on a Google search.  Wikipedia says in part:
“Professor Alan M. Dershowitz is a Brooklyn native who has been called “the nation’s most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer” and one of its “most distinguished defenders of individual rights,” “the best-known criminal lawyer in the world,” “the top lawyer of last resort,” “America’s most public Jewish defender” and “Israel’s single most visible defender… He has also published more than 100 articles in magazines and journals such as (big list) and his articles have appeared in syndication in 50 national daily newspapers.”
Professor Dershowitz’s latest campaign appears to be to convince the world that Hamas is evil– not just a little evil, but terminally so.  He wants us to believe Hamas is so wicked that Israel must exterminate it even if it means killing everyone in the Gaza gulag.  He makes this clear in one of his many stories found in the quite Jewish Zionist Miami Herald, entitled, “Using Civilians As Weapons: The Lack Of Moral Clarity About Hamas”2:
“The war in Gaza is as pure a conflict between good and evil as I have experienced. An anti-Semitic terrorist group whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel and whose leaders incite genocide against the Jewish people are employing a new weapon in a cynical effort to obtain international support for their bigoted aims: their new weapon is the use of civilians as both targets and shields.”
Dershowitz offers no evidence for his claim.  Beware of Harvard graduate lawyers, if they follow  this Professor’s tactic of all bluster and no facts.  Leaning on his credentials he states:
“What Hamas is doing should be evident to anyone with an objective eye and common sense.”

Lacking facts, he tells us it is all too obvious to require facts.  What is obvious is that the  war in Gaza has as its goal the extermination of Hamas.  This was also publicly called for in plain English by Shahar Azani, the Israeli Consul for Culture, Media and Public Affairs at the Israeli consulate Los Angeles, at a January 9th rally in support of Israel at the Ina Levine Jewish Community Campus in Phoenix.  The local Jewish News omitted mention of Azani’s indiscreet remark calling for “extermination,” which drew embarrassed applause from the crowd, and fortunately, was aired on local TV news.  Yes, “extermination.”  Israel’s leaders openly discuss the liquidation of Palestinians.
The Hamas government is obviously popular with the Gazans, and it would not be popular if there were any truth to Dershowitz’s claim that Hamas uses children as shields.  Are we supposed to believe that every mosque, market, apartment house, UN shelter, hospital and ambulance that Israel has destroyed from afar was a hangout for members of Hamas?  If this were true, Hamas would be hated by the Palestinians. In fact, the opposite is true.
On January 1st, whtt.org published “The Lie That Justifies Mass Murder: ‘Hamas Hit Us First’,”3 by this author.  In it we refuted several big lies about Gazans that I was able to observe five years ago by going there, and that Jimmy Carter updated upon the election of Hamas:
“Hamas is the lawfully elected government of Gaza and the West Bank as well. It still has the respect of the people.”

“Gazans do not train their children to be suicide bombers any more than Americans do; “human bombs” are the product of lost dreams and the frustrations of 40 years of occupation.”

“Gaza children are considered a blessing. Most families have lots of them and half the population is sixteen or under. As an example, abortion is practically unknown in Gaza, but in Israel it is a government provided utility. It is fair to say the Gazans practice a life culture; Israelis practice a death culture.”

“Gazans co-exist side by side, race and religion, Muslim and Christian, church beside mosque.  A massive USA/Israeli propaganda campaign has the objective of convincing Christians that Muslims hate them.”
Professor Dershowitz has fostered the “human shield” sham while we helped punch holes in his previous one.  He is shamefully selling Israel’s transparent excuse for why Israel murdered more than 1400 Palestinians, most of whom were civilians, including three or four hundred children like the little girl in our story.  This latest lie is the most shameful one of all, because Dershowitz and others who support this war in Gaza do not offer any proof of the human shielding.
A political party does not become popular by killing the children of its supporters, which is the notion Dershowitz is trying to sell.  Hamas is popular because it found a way to keep 1.5 million people alive through a one year blockade…by expanding and administrating hundreds of miles of underground tunnels that brought not weapons, but food, fuel, cigarettes, medicine and even animals into Gaza.  How do I know the tunnels did not bring weapons?  Because Hamas did not use any anti-tank or anti-aircraft weapons when it was invaded.  If they had them they would have used them.
Israel is desperately attempting to close this network of tunnels in order to starve Gaza.  Without the tunnels, Gaza dies.  Without Hamas, the tunnel network would not function.  Hamas is order amid chaos; Hamas is an imperfect political party, like all parties, but it is the one chosen by Gazans because it governs.
A question we now ask is, why did Alan Dershowitz answer We Hold These Truths on his BlackBerry?  What nerve did we strike?
It is not hard to see the rift in the American Jewish community over Palestine. As one critical observer put it to us, “the barbarity has reached the point where Jews feel driven to either distance themselves from what Israel is doing or to try to justify what they’re doing – neither of which work.”
Bob Simon of CBS 60 Minutes is a case in point.  He stated on the Charlie Rose Show4 recently that Israel has gone too far in the war process to go back to a “two state solution.”  Asked what was left, Simon stated painfully, “Apartheid.”  Simon, himself a Jew with a home in Israel, did not say the “extermination” word, but the film he made, all but tells us that apartheid, Israeli style, means continued internment and systematic execution of the Palestinians.  Simon’s 60 Minutes presentation is entitled “Time Running Out For A Two-State Solution?”4
Dershowitz’s job is to sell the Israeli program, and he does not shirk from it. Perhaps the nerve we hit in him is one of fear that an estimated 70 million evangelical Christian Zionists, who have been asleep for a half a century, are waking up to the fact that Israel’s barbaric slaughter of Palestinian men, women, and children, and the destruction of their homes and villages cannot be condoned.  Perhaps he fears they will realize they’ve been lied to by the very people their Zionist, Scofield Bible told them to trust.  What will happen when the first powerful, media Christian leader decides he must come clean before God and confess that he, too, was fooled by Zionists like Dershowitz?
World Zionism cannot proceed without the continued financial and political support of Christian Zionists.  For every bloodthirsty Jewish Zionist, there are 20 to 50 totally misguided, but equally bloodthirsty evangelical Zionist “Christians.”  What the Dershowitzes of the world should fear, if they do not already, is the awakening conscience of the millions of Christians who went astray, morally and theologically.
Dershowitz accuses those like us, who insist on telling the truth about Hamas, of being child killers. This is false. We refuse to look the other way about Hamas. Our job is to tell the  truth about Democrats, Republicans, Likud and Hamas.  We can see that none are perfect.  But to deny that Hamas is the elected party in Palestine is the same as denying that the Democrats are in control here.  We defend no one’s crimes, but we will not back away from the truth because of condemnation from the likes of Alan Dershowitz.  Jesus Christ did not back away from the Pharisees of his day, either.
All we need to know about Hamas in order to support it’s right to exist is that it has the support of Gazans, the people the Israeli forces have been slaughtering.  Hundreds of Palestinian leaders have been assassinated–some with their entire families at their sides; they have paid the high cost.  Many are in Israeli prisons without being charged.
Paul Larudee, a co-founder of the Free Gaza Movement, told me he estimates the support for Hamas is very high, perhaps 70-75% of Gazans. He was one of several organizers of the USS Dignity, humanitarian ship (there have now been four), that ran the Israeli sea blockade in December, and he was on the first to dock in Gaza in many years. Larudee and a boatload of foreign writers and humanitarians did not fear Hamas.6
Jimmy Carter, who Dershowitz condemns, has confirmed Larudee’s views of Hamas popularity.
There is no indication that Hamas is less respected and supported after 6000 casualties were inflicted on Gaza’s civilians at the hands of Israel. Typical is an Arab Press TV, broadcasting a Jan 31 rally, announced: “Gazans pour into streets to back Hamas.”7  “Palestinians wave red Turkish and green Hamas flags in a rally in support of Hamas and its call for democracy.”
We are grateful that Professor Dershowitz found his way to the We Hold These Truths mailing list, and that he has been receiving our stories for the last year.  From his reply we know he has read and rejected some of them; his reply to us about the tragic death of one little girl proves he knows the Israelis have gone too far; his effort to justify their barbarity fails.
Followers of Christ should consider Alan Dershowitz as an incurable and unrepentant Pharisee of our day.  And he should dread the day when America’s 200,000 churches come to realize what World Zionism has done to the children of Gaza with the aid of Evangelical Christian Zionism.
Jesus said this to the Pharisees of his day:
“You serpents, you generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of Hell?”  And, “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross the seas and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, you make him twofold more the child of hell than you yourself.” (Matthew 23:15 & 33)
1 “Would Jesus Concur or Weep?”, Tom Compton, We Hold These Truths,  Feb 01, 2009: https://whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=2832
2 Alan Dershowitz, “Using Civilians As Weapons: The Lack Of Moral Clarity About Hamas”:  http://www.alandershowitz.com/publications/docs/civilians_as_weapons.htm

3 “The Lie That Justifies Mass Murder: ‘Hamas Hit Us First'”: http://cp.whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=2770
4 Charlie Rose Show on PBS. Jan.7, 2009:  http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9900
5 CBS 60 Minutes, Jan. 25, 2009, “Time Running Out For A Two-State Solution?”:  http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/23/60minutes/main4749723.shtml
6 “Scottish activist seized from Gaza aid boat held in Israeli prison”:  https://whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=2860

7 “Gazans pour into streets to back Hamas”, Press TV, Jan. 31, 2009: http://www.presstv.ir/Detail.aspx?id=84231§ionid=351020202

For a printable pdf file click:  https://whtt.org/images/PW-20090209-Dershowitz-email.pdf