Cornel West & Alan Dershowitz Engage In Explosive Israel-Palestine Debate

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Cornelius Hamelberg

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Oct 16, 2023, 11:43:51 AM10/16/23
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Must-See TV: Cornel West & Alan Dershowitz Engage In Explosive Israel-Palestine Debate
Fox host Sean Hannity says this conversation wouldn't happen at anti-free speech Ivy League schools

Fox News hosted a fiery debate between Independent presidential candidate Cornel West and liberal attorney Alan Dershowitz on Thursday.
Fox host Sean Hannity hosted the two men, who engaged in a passionate conversation about the controversial feud between Israel and Palestine.


West began by saying Hamas must take responsibility for killing innocent people and that they “engaged in barbaric acts.”
He continued, noting hateful attacks by both Hamas and Israel are “all wrong,” are “all war crimes” and are “all to be condemned.”

Defending Israeli strikes on Gaza, Dershowitz said Hamas is responsible for the deaths of innocent Palestinian children, and that they use women and kids as human shields.
Next, Dershowitz claimed Hamas purposely parades dead kids in front of CNN cameras to gain sympathy from Western citizens and to make people like Cornel West “engage in crocodile tears.”
West answered, “They aren’t crocodile tears. I have the same outrage when Palestinian babies are killed as when Jewish babies or Israeli children… I want you to have the same indignation when Palestinians are killed.”
Dershowitz refused to agree with West, arguing people should be more outraged by the deaths of Israeli babies than they are with the deaths of Palestinian babies.
Dershowitz explained he didn’t have the same sympathy for “Nazi kids” who were killed in the bombings of Dresden, Germany during WWII as he did for “Jewish kids who were gassed in crematoriums.”
“It shouldn’t be the same outrage!” Dershowitz stated.
When Hannity asked West what he’d do if he were president of the U.S., the presidential candidate said he wouldn’t send troops to engage in a genocidal attack on the people of Gaza.
This statement threw both Hannity and Dershowitz into an uproar, with the attorney screaming, “It’s not a genocidal attack when you’re killing terrorists!”
“Where are they supposed to go?” West asked, referring to non-terrorist Palestinians stuck in the warzone.
Dershowitz laughably told West the civilians could “go to the UN” or to Egypt.
The suggestions by Dershowitz are absurd considering eleven UN staffers have been killed in this week’s Israeli strikes on Gaza after at least 18 UN buildings were struck by rockets.
Additionally, Egypt won’t let Palestinians enter the country and Israel recently bombed an Egyptian border checkpoint after telling Gazans to go there.



Popular political commentator Jack Posobiec suggested Egypt won’t let Gazans into the country because they know they’ll never leave.


In a bizarre portion of the Fox debate, Dershowitz refused to acknowledge one single Israeli soldier has ever purposely targeted and killed a Palestinian child.
When the segment came to an end, Hannity pointed out the debate would likely not be accepted at a top university like Harvard.
The Fox host suggested the trio defy the anti-free speech mob of Harvard students and hold an official debate at the university over the Israel and Palestine issue.
Perhaps we’ll get a Round 2 of this epic discussion.
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Harrow, Kenneth

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Oct 17, 2023, 5:47:23 AM10/17/23
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I can’t read all this, not w equanimity. Cornel west is completely right, dershowitz is not. If he were the father of the german baby, he’d see it differently, i hope.
We need adepoju’s kant here. Any moral principal has to apply not just in a specific instance, but to all. How could anyone possibly say killing one baby is worse than another; in this case, the hamas killing of israeli babies was worse than israeli bombs that kill babies.
He is totally wrong,
Arthur miller understood that when he titled his first play “All My Sons.” It was about a capitalist during world war two who didn’t want to go bankrupt, and so would tolerate that some airmen who die in his mis-manufactured planes. He didn’t understand that they were “all his sons” until his son died too….

They are all our children, all of them.
Ken
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Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornel West & Alan Dershowitz Engage In Explosive Israel-Palestine Debate
 
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cornelius...@gmail.com

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Oct 18, 2023, 3:20:56 AM10/18/23
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Obviously, Dershowitz does not look down upon himself as an anti-Semite or a racist. God forbid. 


What I see at play here is that he is importing wholesale all the determinations and arguments from his magnum opus The Case For Israel which was of course viciously shot down by pro-Palestine and anti-Zionist critics . 


Professor Dershowitz probably doesn’t even think that he is biased and halachically speaking is perhaps consciously or unconsciously making his own pious distinction between those who like himself he considers according to exalted Hebrew poetry ”the children of God” ( the Jews) and the more ordinary mortals such as those who according to Professor Harrow , “are all our children, all of them ” 


Son of a dog is of course a dog, and the daughter of a dog , a bitch. The son of a crocodile is supposed to shed crocodile tears.


The Quran is very clear about this “children of God” business in this short surah which every Muslim knows by heart : Surah Ikhlas


Has Dershowitz ever debated “the case for Israel” with someone like Noam Chomsky for example  who has more nuanced views about Israel ?


We can take it as for granted that if only they could , with all their might,  in their kingdom where might is right, the yahoos would like to do to the Islamic Republic of Iran what they are currently doing to little Gaza.


By extension little joe would like to do ditto to Russia, North Korea , and China

Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Oct 21, 2023, 11:48:42 AM10/21/23
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Thanks for this.

The Devil is alive and well in pro-Israel extremism.

I wonder why Harvard's name is being negatively brought up in this.

The Harvard President and colleagues have struggled to be even handed in this wahala, apart from the President being compelled to criticise Hamas' inhumanities, while maintaining silence on Israeli atrocities, state generated horrors which is taboo for her to mention.

She has successfully resisted efforts to condemn the student groups who brought out a wholly pro-Palestinian response to the Hamas attack, even in the face of wealthy donors to the university who have publicly distanced themselves from the school for that and powerful figures in industry and various firms who have either demanded the names of those students who signed that response be made public  so they can be redlisted and made unemployable or who have already withdrawn letters of appointment from students whom they understand as signing that pro-Palestinian response.

The pro-Israel culture has successfully facizised large segments of US society, making it dangerous to be a critic of Israel or pro-Palestinian or even to try to be even handed in addressing the subject.

Right wing Jews, as part of a  people who have suffered so much persecution over the centuries, might need to look more carefully in the mirror on this subject.

Jews were expelled from Spain after Spain gained it's independence from the Moors after generations of colonization in revenge for Jewish integration into the colonizing govt, one view holds.

Jews have been among the most powerful economic forces in Europe, even lending money to govts, an economic height reached in defiance of European anti-Semitic practices.

I've read that discomfort with such ethnically centralized power was one orientation feeding anti-Jewish pogroms in Europe.

Now we are observing the overwhelming power of right wing Jews and of identifications with the extremist Israeli govt in shaping inhumane policies in the US.

I realize many Jews in the US, Israel, UK and elsewhere do not share such supremacist and inhumane orientations but those who do are the most powerful and influential in the US and Israel.

The future is not looking good for this abuse of power as people, including fellow Jews,  are increasingly crying out about it.

Thanks

Toyin



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cornelius...@gmail.com

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Oct 26, 2023, 4:17:39 AM10/26/23
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Of relevance : 


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