MOUNT PLEASANT — Just a week before Israel’s historic June 12 strike on Iran’s nuclear sites and scientists, one of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trusted advisers spoke to a local audience at the Chabad of Charleston.
Harvard legal scholar Alan Dershowitz, also adviser and lawyer to President Donald Trump, spoke at the Chabad last year and mentioned that Netanyahu had wondered whether attacking Iran’s nuclear capability would be “Churchillian” or mistaken.
In his latest visit, Dershowitz focused on the grueling war on Gaza (begun in response to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks on Jewish communities) and overall antisemitism around the world.
Even as Iran began striking back at Israel, the war on Gaza continued. On June 13, the Associated Press reported that 21 Palestinians were killed walking to the only food distribution center Israel allows. That death toll reached at least 58, Aljazeera reported.
Still, the Israel Defense Forces on June 14 said that fighting with Iran is the military’s top focus now, with what is going on in Gaza downgraded to a secondary front, reported Haaretz, Israel’s oldest newspaper. A United Nations effort by France and Saudi Arabia to try to find a two-state solution between Israel and Palestinians was paused after the Iranian attacks. Likewise, talks scheduled June 15 between the U.S. and Iran over its nuclear program appear all but off, with Iran officials now calling them “meaningless.”
Dershowitz has a unique perspective as the adviser to two of the most powerful men in the world. Last year, Dershowitz was introduced to the Chabad as the “Hebrew hammer” for his unwavering defense of Israel. The audience responded as warmly during his recent visit, even when he said: “I love Israel and support Israel. But I’m going to criticize Israel when it makes mistakes.”
Talking about Gaza
Dershowitz said “innocents,” including babies, were being killed in the continued bombing of Gaza. “Palestinians who are completely, totally, unequivocally innocent. People who’ve been apolitical. There are totally innocent Palestinians,” he said.
Statistically, 47.3 percent of Gaza’s population is under age 18, too young to vote in the 2007 election that gave Hamas power.
Asked if the Gaza war would ever end, Dershowitz replied, “We’re never going to see another war like WW II that ends with V Day. It’s the last time we celebrated a total, unequivocal victory. We’re not going to see a great declaration of victory with admission of defeat on the other side.”
His insights resonate in a turbulent time for public opinion about Gaza with influential Israelis calling for war to end. In a June 11 letter to Netanyahu and other top officials, 41 IDF officers and reservists said they refused to fight in the “unnecessary, eternal war” in Gaza they described as “designed to preserve the rule of Netanyahu.” They accused the government of issuing “clearly illegal” orders, said that “many hostages have already been killed by IDF bombings” and accused the government of committing “war crimes” against “innocent civilians,” according to The Guardian, quoting from the letter written in Hebrew.
Dershowitz praised the IDF military accomplishment of killing Hamas leaders in Gaza.
He described IDF efforts to decrease civilian deaths as “very, very, very good.”
In the U.S. and elsewhere, however, there is widespread disagreement with that latter assessment.
A Gallup poll in March found 55 percent of Americans disapproved of Israeli action in Gaza. Humanitarian organizations Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented what they call IDF “war crimes,” such as shooting and killing unarmed civilians waving white flags (including three Israeli hostages after they escaped from their captors), and attacks on volunteers for World Central Kitchen — a nonprofit that served thousands of free meals to Israelis displaced and wounded in the Oct. 7 attack.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in a May 27 column published in Haaretz, called the Gaza war “pointless” and classified IDF blocking civilian access to water, electricity, medicine, hospitals and food as a war crime.
For context, Dershowitz observed how, historically, intel failures may shape war strategy.
“When disaster occurs, (leaders) overreact,” he explained.
“October 7 was the greatest disaster in modern intelligence history,” he continued. “Israel with all its satellite technology and tech intelligence screwed up really big time because of the sexism of its military.”
Dershowitz described how young female soldiers on the border warned “macho men who were in charge of the military.”
“Reasonable people can agree or disagree about whether Israel overreacted after the entirely preventable October 7,” he added.
He compared the Israeli government’s reaction to U.S. leaders after Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 attacks, conceivably preventable if prior warnings by U.S. intelligence agencies had been heeded.
“That happened obviously with Pearl Harbor. We put 110,000 innocent Japanese Americans in camps, none of whom had committed any crimes, an absolutely inappropriate response,” Dershowitz continued. “We could have prevented 9/11 and didn’t. As a result, we had the Patriot Act, waterboarded and tortured suspects.”
“Was there overreaction in Gaza?” he mused. “I’m not a military expert.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
