Dershowitz shops at Leviev, who funds settlement building in the West Bank.

When Hampshire College voted to divest from Israel a few weeks ago, it was predictable that Alan Dershowitz, a professed liberal and progressive, who invoke double-standards and cry “it’s anti-Semtism.”

The Global BDS Movement (BDS meaning Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) just reported that Hampshire College in Massachusetts has become the first college in the U.S. to divest from companies that support Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, now lasting over 41 years. During that time, numerous American, European, and Asiatic companies have directly supported Israel’s occupation/colonialism by selling Israel the implements of ethnic cleansing and settlement building and expansion. The most notorious of these companies is probably Caterpillar, whose bulldozers have been responsible for the demolition of thousands of Palestinian homes, farms, and orchards.
According to the Movement, this landmark decision was a direct result of a two-year intensive campaign on campus, led by the peace group, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

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Muzzlewatch, the anti-propaganda site run by Jewish Voice for Peace, just posted this article: Selective divestment at Hampshire College. Dershowitz brings administration to their knees. One gets the impression that Dershowitz is a “somebody” ready to throw out the anti-Semitism card (in this case, the synonym, “anti-Israel bigotry”) against anyone who opposes Israel’s march toward Apartheid, its unending occupation of the Palestinian territories, and the colonization (theft) of those territories, which now exceeds 40% of the land. Dershowitz is not a stupid man, and because he knows just what is going on, he is apparently a supporter of right wing Zionism, the right of Israel to colonize and presumably annex the Palestinian territories into Israel, eventually.

Hampshire College it may be noted was the first American institution to divest from companies doing business with South Africa during its Apartheid era. Now under similar circumstances with Israel practicing anti-Arab bigotry at home, and attempting to rid occupied land in the territories of its Palestinian population through colonialism, criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic.

Will this canard work? Here’s the full story.

February 27 2009

Recently the Students for a Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Hampshire college were instrumental in getting the board of trustees to disinvest in the State Street mutual fund as part of a campaign to divest from companies that benefit from Israel’s 40-plus year occupation of Palestinian Territories. Not surprisingly, right-wing defender of Israel’s occupation, Alan Dershowitz, immediately threatened not only the SJP, but Hampshire college with destruction by starting an international campaign to disinvest from the college.

Howard Friel has written a an in-depth (and thoroughly footnoted) analysis of Dershowitz’s pattern of scorched earth tactics in his unending efforts to destroy critics of Israeli policies, starting with his sadly successful campaign to bring Hampshire to its knees, even extracting a promise to punish the students in the SJP for bigotry ( it should be noted, included leader Matan Cohen, a young Isareli who lost partial vision in one eye after an Israeli soldier shot him with a rubber bullet at a nonviolent protest in the Palestinian town of Belin.)

In his “Double Standard Watch” column in the Jerusalem Post on February 15, 2009, Dershowitz referred to the SJP students at Hampshire as “a rabidly anti-Israel group,” “the virulently anti-Israel group called Students for Justice in Palestine,” “the anti-Israel group,” “the anti-Israel students,” and “the anti-Israel student group.” Meanwhile, Dershowitz invoked “bigotry” six times as the underlying motive of “the anti-Israel students,” while demanding that the college punish the SJP students for their “bigotry.” Here is what Dershowitz wrote in this regard: “There must be a price paid for bigotry”; “singling out only Israel for divestiture is bigotry plain and simple”; “this bigoted resolution” (describing the Hampshire students’ divestment initiative); “Students and faculty [at Hampshire] too must understand that bigotry has its cost”; “decency cannot survive with the kind of double standard bigotry directed only against the Jewish state”; and:

Hampshire is a small college without much influence. But those who are conducting the national [divestment] campaign see their “victory” at Hampshire as an opening wedge with which to get other more influential universities to follow suit by adopting similarly bigoted proposals. This is a cancer that is threatening to spread around the world, and it must be stopped where it began–at Hampshire.

The “cancer” here is the nonviolent SJP campaign to divest from businesses that contribute to Israel’s four-decade occupation of Palestinian territories in violation of international law.

Rather than defend the Hampshire College students from the charge of anti-Israel bigotry to which they were subjected, Hampshire’s Hexter and Roos began their letter to the Jerusalem Post as follows: “Dear Alan: We begin by affirming our high esteem for you, both as a legal scholar and a powerful voice against anti-Semitism.” And in response to Dershowitz’s incitement against the students–stating that “there must be a price paid for bigotry”–Hexter and Roos sought to reassure Dershowitz that the Hampshire administration will take “disciplinary action” against the students:

But we are also clear, and urge you to understand us clearly, when we say that students do not speak for the college and may not willfully misrepresent the school. It will be, and must be, the college’s task to undertake any disciplinary action, according to its established rules and procedures. Discipline is an internal process that is not shared with the public.

If “discipline is an internal process that is not shared with the public,” as Hexter and Roos wrote, why would they pledge to sanction the SJP students in an open letter to Alan Dershowitz, in order to pacify Dershowitz, but who is obviously not an administrator at Hampshire College? And immediately after ominously signaling that the Hampshire students would be thrown under the bus, Hexter and Roos concluded with a final plea for a stay of execution from the despotic Dershowitz:

Unbelievable that a college could conceivably fall to its knees before this anti-Palestinian bigot called Dershowitz.

Reproduced by permission.