The Alan Dershowitz Diet Plan

If you are ever in a situation where you need to induce vomit or curb your appetite, just read anything written by Alan Dershowitz. Literally, anything! I promise you, part of you will die after reading his garbage.  Take this excerpt from his WSJ article for example:

The claim that Israel has violated the principle of proportionality — by killing more Hamas terrorists than the number of Israeli civilians killed by Hamas rockets — is absurd. First, there is no legal equivalence between the deliberate killing of innocent civilians and the deliberate killings of Hamas combatants. Under the laws of war, any number of combatants can be killed to prevent the killing of even one innocent civilian. (400+ children killed were combatants?) 

Second, proportionality is not measured by the number of civilians actually killed, but rather by the risk posed. (Oh boy! where have I heard that before?) This is illustrated by what happened on Tuesday, when a Hamas rocket hit a kindergarten in Beer Sheva, though no students were there at the time. Under international law, Israel is not required to allow Hamas to play Russian roulette with its children’s lives. (not to sound insensitive, but did he just say that no one was killed or hurt in this attack? I suppose by his logic, Hamas shouldn’t allow Israel to play Mercenaries with its children’s lives either.  Self-defense goes both ways!)

While Israel installs warning systems and builds shelters, Hamas refuses to do so, precisely because it wants to maximize the number of Palestinian civilians inadvertently killed by Israel’s military actions. Hamas knows from experience that even a small number of innocent Palestinian civilians killed inadvertently will result in bitter condemnation of Israel by many in the international community. (if that’s the case then why would Israel give Hamas exactly what it wants? Moreover, how does one inadvertently shell the UN headquarters? Or drop white phosphorous on a densely populated area? Or allegedly use  depleted uranium weapons? )

Israel understands this as well. It goes to enormous lengths to reduce the number of civilian casualties — even to the point of foregoing legitimate targets that are too close to civilians.

I wonder what the potential number of victims would have been so we can add it to the toll.  Since we’re counting “potential” victims now.  If Dershowitz claims that Israel has practiced restraint, then I am scared to know what not practicing restraint would have looked like.  I understand that Dershowitz’s job  has been to defend high profile criminals.  But defending war crimes is a whole different ball game.