Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz offered to lecture – for free – at three major Norwegian universities, and they all turned him down. Aftenposten editor Knut Olav Åmås questions the wisdom of disseminating only the anti-Israeli narrative.
This editorial is from yesterday. Unauthorized translation below:
The star lawyer defending Israel
Not invited. Alan Dershowitz is the most célèbre defense attorney in the West. However, his defense of Israel has contributed to no Norwegian university having seen it fit to invite him to lecture on the Middle East.
The celebrity Harvard attorney has defended O.J. Simpson, Mike Tyson, Patty Hearst and Claus von Bülow. Barack Obama is a former student; he has easy access to political top leaders when traveling.
Almost certainly, excuses and trivial explanations will be presented, yet I am certain his acute and visible profile in the debate on Israel is what makes the professional environs at the universities in the three largest cities of Norway abstaining from inviting Harvard’s best known professor. He is in this country to lecture at the ICEJ Christian conference Oslo Symposium today and tomorrow.
As an American fundamentalist in the free speech issue, Dershowitz (72) has recently been appointed to the defense of Wikileaks leader Julian Assange. The lawyer has the opinion today’s new journalism must be as well protected concerning free speech as the traditional journalism.
All of this should make him highly actual to be a guest lecturer in Norway; monthly, he lectures in prestigious universities worldwide.
(And giving them their due: The University of Bergen wished him to lecture on criminal law, but not on Israel and international law)
Top lawyer Dershowitz is visibly disappointed on the lukewarm interest displayed by the universities, claiming these are environs where anti-Israeli attitudes are strong. A number of recent events prove this to be a relevant description- of political monoculture and lack of openness.
Thankfully, student association in Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim have grasped the opportunity to invite him; I received a positive surprise as 200 young, critical, questioning law students squeezed into the Breakfast Cellar at the Oslo Law Faculty last evening, to listen to him defending the existence of Israel. Never the less, I am certain leftist Noah Chomsky would have gathered 2000.
Dershowitz, well known for his book “The case for Israel”, is critical towards Norwegian suggestion on academic and cultural boycotts of Israel, and has the opinion Norway is to closely aligned with Hamas. H refers to himself as pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian; insisting on this being a possible combination. He is a strong opponent of illegal settlements, having the opinion a two state solution demanding the Palestinians to negotiate and the Israelis to surrender their settlement policy is the way further.
One of the reasons for it being a shame Alan Dershowitz is not lecturing at a university institute is that there is a need for him to correct the often biased negative image of Israel in Norway, in debates where terms like “undemocratic”, “the Apartheid state”, and comparisons to Nazi Germany, showing total lack of judgment.. And why no boycott proposals directed at countries like China, Iran and Cuba (Darling of the Norwegian left wing)?
Because Israel as a symbol of disgust receives all attention.
The critics of Israel draw a picture of Israel which has little basics in knowledge. Yet, the country is the most ethnic heterogeneous in the Middle East, one of the world’s leaders in science, technology and culture. 88 percent of Palestinians living in Israel state their intention to stay in the country if a Palestinian state is established,
Facts like this have problems perpetrating the minds of many Norwegians in their relation to Israel.
I always had this suspicion that the Limousine Leftist Norwegian government was a nasty hypocritical and racist anti-Semitic government.
No doubt there would have to be a few Norwegians who are not racists and not anti-Semite,and don’t hate Jews,Israelis,or themselves.
Where are they?????????????????????????
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