Israel Matzav: Dershowitz challenges Carter to debate at Cardozo

Tuesday, April 09, 2013

Dershowitz challenges Carter to debate at Cardozo

Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz has challenged former President Jimmy Carter to a human rights debate at Yeshiva University's Cardozo law school on Wednesday.

During the course of the interview, the law professor recounted the widespread death and devastation caused by Carter’s efforts at “human rights.”

“What should be discussed is not Jimmy Carter’s role as a peacemaker, but instead it should be his role as a deal breaker,” said Dershowitz. He then proceeded to tick off the bases for his reasoning.

“First, it was Carter who advised Yassir Arafat not to accept the peace deal offered in 2000-01. That failure led to the deaths of more than 4000 Israelis and Arabs.”

“Secondly, by encouraging and supporting Hamas, and always placing the blame on Israel, Carter has guaranteed the continuation of terrorism.” Indeed, “Carter has embraced Arafat, he’s embraced Mashaal, why, he’s never met a terrorist he didn’t love, and never met an Israeli whom he did.”

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“The way human rights should be addressed is based on ‘worst, first,’ you deal with the most egregious wrongs, the worst kind of abuses committed by governments first,” Dershowitz explained. “He’s turned everything upside down. Instead of Israel, just look over a little to the south, “Saudi Arabia is the worst human rights violator in the world: sex segregation, gender preference discrimination, religious discrimination,” that’s where a real human rights activist would focus, said the law professor.

“But Jimmy Carter was bought and paid for by the Saudis. The Carter Center stopped criticizing the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia when the Saudis started funding it.”
So what should be the plan of action with respect to the Cardozo award?

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Dershowitz said:

I will come, at my own expense, to debate Jimmy Carter on Carter’s own human rights record. If Cardozo will have me, I will come and provide the students, the administration and anyone else that is interested, with a first rate debate about the meaning of human rights and they can decide whether what Jimmy Carter has done, constitutes human rights or human wrongs.
No doubt Yeshiva University, which today issued a statement about the controversial decision, will support the offer made by Dershowitz.

Richard Joel, president of Yeshiva University, under the auspices of which Cardozo operates, took pains to distance himself as well as the school from Jimmy Carter’s history of “statements and actions in recent years which have mischaracterized the Middle East conflict and have served to alienate those of us who care about Israel.”

But Joel concluded by emphasizing how seriously YU takes its obligation “to thrive as a free marketplace of ideas, while remaining committed to its unique mission as a proud Jewish university.”

So, on Wednesday, at Cardozo, what shall it be? Shall we have a true marketplace of ideas, or will only a single stall be open?

There is more of a chance that Carter will show up with Ismail Haniyeh in tow on Wednesday than there is that he will debate Alan Dershowitz. We've been down that road before six years ago at Brandeis. Carter will not agree to debate Dershowitz. And I doubt that Yeshiva University - which seems to have been taken over by the Leftists - will even try to convince him to do so.