Terror Tunnels The Case for Israel's Just War Against Hamas (23 page)

55
Some minor editorial changes have been made from the transcript to correct typographical errors and grammar and to avoid repetition. There has been no change in the substance of the debate.

56
Ian Deitch and Ibrahim Barzak, “Israel Vows to Destroy Hamas Tunnels, Deaths Spike,”
Yahoo News
, 31 July 2014:
http://news.yahoo.com/israel-vows-destroy-hamas-tunnels-deaths-spike-214755183.html
.

57
Hana Levi Julian, “IDF Kills Swarms of Terrorists Emerging from Tunnels near 2 Kibbutzim,”
The Jewish Press
, 21 July 2014:
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/hamas-terrorists-swarm-from-tunnel-towards-kibbutzim-idf-kills-dozens/2014/07/21/
.

58
“Chief Military Prosecutor Dani Efroni has ordered the Israeli Defense Forces’ investigative police unit to open 99 investigations into the army’s operation in the Gaza Strip over the summer….” Gill Cohen, “IDF to Open Criminal Probes into 5 Gaza War Cases,”
Haaretz
, 10 September 2014:
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.615089
. Needless to say, neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority has opened any probes into Hamas war crimes.

59
See footage from NDTV (
http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/news/watch-ndtv-exclusive-how-hamas-assembles-and-fires-rockets/332910
) and France 24 (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGOUXS7KPNI
).

60
Although I have long advocated, and continue to advocate, a two-state solution based roughly on the parameters outlined in the 2000–2001 Barak-Clinton proposals, and the 2008 offer by Ehud Olmert, I seriously doubt that any such resolution would solve the Gaza problem or would end the battle with Hamas, which continues to believe, and act on the belief, that the only solution is the destruction of Israel through terrorism.

61
Barak Ravid, “Israeli official: Hamas has begun repairing Gaza tunnels,”
Haaretz
, September 7, 2014:
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.614558
.

62
Herb Keinon, “Hamas already rearming, preparing for next round of fighting with Israel,”
The Jerusalem Post
, 7 September 2014:
http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Hamas-already-rearming-preparing-for-next-round-of-fighting-with-Israel-374674
. These reports have been disputed by other officials: Amos Harel, “As Gaza Rebuilding Lags, Risk of Renewed War Grows,”
Haaretz
, 10 September 2014:
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.615001
.

63
On September 10, 2014, President Obama delivered a major speech outlining the proposed military campaign against ISIS. He said that the US “will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country, wherever they are.” He continued: “If you threaten America, you will find no safe haven.” (Mark Landler, “Obama Promises Sustained Effort to Rout Militants,” the
New York Times
, September 11, 2014, p. A1.) This is precisely the approach Israel has taken against terrorists who threaten the nation-state of the Jewish people. Yet many of those who support US action condemn Israel when it seeks to protect its citizens from terrorism.

A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

Professor Alan M. Dershowitz of Harvard Law School was described by
Newsweek
as “the nation’s most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer and one of its most distinguished defenders of individual rights.” Italian newspaper
Oggi
called him “the best-known criminal lawyer in the world,” and
The Forward
named him “Israel’s single most visible defender—the Jewish state’s lead attorney in the court of public opinion.”

Born in Brooklyn, he was appointed to the Harvard Law School faculty at age 25 and became a full professor at age 28, the youngest in the school’s history. He has been a consultant to several presidential commissions, and has advised presidents, United Nations officials, prime ministers, governors, senators, and members of Congress. More than a million people have heard him lecture around the world. He is currently the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard.

Dershowitz is the author of 30 non-fiction works and two novels. More than a million of his books have been sold worldwide, in more than a dozen different languages. His recent titles include the bestseller
The Case For Israel
,
Rights From Wrong
,
The Case For Peace
,
The Case For Moral Clarity: Israel, Hamas and Gaza
, and his autobiography
Taking the Stand: My Life in the Law
.

A
LSO
B
Y
A
LAN
D
ERSHOWITZ

Taking the Stand: My Life in the Law

The Trials of Zion

The Case for Moral Clarity: Israel, Hamas and Gaza

The Case Against Israel’s Enemies: Exposing Jimmy Carter and Others Who Stand in the Way of Peace

Is There a Right to Remain Silent? Coercive Interrogation and the Fifth Amendment after 9/11

Finding Jefferson: A Lost Letter, a Remarkable Discovery, and the First Amendment in an Age of Terrorism

Blasphemy: How the Religious Right Is Hijacking Our Declaration of Independence

Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways

What Israel Means to Me: By 80 Prominent Writers, Performers, Scholars, Politicians, and Journalists

Rights from Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the Origins of Rights

America on Trial: Inside the Legal Battles That Transformed Our Nation

The Case for Peace: How the Arab-Israeli Conflict Can Be Resolved

The Case for Israel

America Declares Independence

Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge

Shouting Fire: Civil Liberties in a Turbulent Age

Letters to a Young Lawyer

Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000

Genesis of Justice: Ten Stories of Biblical Injustice That Led to the Ten Commandments and Modern Law

Just Revenge

Sexual McCarthyism: Clinton, Starr, and the Emerging Constitutional Crisis

The Vanishing American Jew: In Search of Jewish Identity for the Next Century

Reasonable Doubts: The Criminal Justice System and the O.J. Simpson Case

The Abuse Excuse: And Other Cop-Outs, Sob Stories, and Evasions of Responsibility

The Advocate’s Devil

Contrary to Popular Opinion

Chutzpah

Taking Liberties: A Decade of Hard Cases, Bad Laws, and Bum Raps

Reversal of Fortune: Inside the von Bülow Case

The Best Defense

Criminal Law: Theory and Process (with Joseph Goldstein and Richard Schwartz)

Psychoanalysis, Psychiatry and Law (with Joseph Goldstein and Jay Katz)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART I

1: Operation Protective Edge—The Historical Context

2: The Case Against the Goldstone Report—and Why It Still Matters

3: Finally, A Hamas Leader Admits that Israel Killed Mostly Combatants in Gaza

4: Goldstone Needs to Recant in Light of the New Evidence

5: How Goldstone is Making Peace More Difficult

6: The Phony War Crimes Accusation Against Israel

7: The Case Against “Universal Jurisdiction”

8: If Israel Killed Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, Did It Have the Right To?

9: Israel’s Actions in Intercepting the Turkish Flotilla Were Entirely Lawful though Perhaps Unwise

10: Why Israel Must Remain Strong

11: Hamas—Not Israel—Killed BBC Reporter’s Baby

12: UN Palestine Vote Poses Major Threats for Israel

13: A Settlement Freeze Can Advance Israeli-Palestinian Peace

14: Mideast Peace Talks Should Resume

15: Terrorists Win with Israel Prisoner Swap

16: Israel’s Right to Self-Defense Against Hamas

17: The Palestinian Leadership is Responsible for the Continuing Israeli Occupation of the West Bank

18: Some Hard Questions about the Western European Double Standard Against Israel

PART II

Introduction: Operation Protective Edge

19: Israel Defends Entire Civilized World

20: The Current Conflict between Israel and Hamas Shatters Myths

21: Israel Must Maintain Its Weapons Siege of Gaza

22: Media Death Count Encourages Hamas to Use Human Shields

23: Netanyahu, the Reluctant Warrior

24: Gazans’ Real Enemy Is Hamas, Not Israel

25: Why Doesn’t J Street Support Israel?

26: Hamas’s Threat to Israel’s Airport Threatens a Two-State Solution

27: Accusing Hamas of Using Human Shields Is Not Racist

28: UN Probe of Israel Will Only Encourage Hamas War Crimes

29: The “Occupation of Gaza” Canard

30: Qatar and Other American “Allies” Are among the Villains in Gaza

31: Hamas Uses Cease-Fire to Kidnap

32: What Should Israel Do? What Would the United States Do?

33: The Empty Spaces in Gaza

34: Hamas Exaggerates Civilian Deaths

35: Supporting Hamas Is Anti-Semitic

36: Did Israel Have the Right to Destroy Hamas Terror Tunnels?

37: ISIS is to America as Hamas is to Israel

38: No One Should Be Surprised at Isis’s Brutality because the World Rewards Terrorism

39: Ten Reasons Why BDS Is Immoral and Hinders Peace

40: Debate between Alan Dershowitz and John Dugard

Conclusion

Endnotes

About the Author

Also By Alan Dershowitz