On November 6th, 2019, Professor Dershowitz spoke on Defending Israel at Temple Emmanuel in Newton. The speech was sponsored by CAMERA.
Dershowitz complimented CAMERA, which called out Fake News about Israel long before fake news became a rallying cry. He believes in free speech, urging people to drive out bad speech with good, true speech. He gave a road map for defending Israel.
He pointed out that “Academic Freedom” concerns the freedom of students from being indoctrinated and not the freedom of teachers to teach their ideology. He stated that students are being indoctrinated in colleges in anti-Zionist myths and urged all of us to pay attention and to fight back.
Dershowitz recommended that we point out when we defend Israel the contributions that Israel has made to the world in its short 71 years of history to medicine, high tech, agriculture, and water conservation and water recovery; advancements that Israel has generously shared around the world.
Also, Israel’s respect for women’s rights and gay rights is unique in the Middle East. Israel is a bastion of liberal values; e.g. religious tolerance, free speech and free press and due process.
We should point out that Israel is a democracy and that the U.S. cannot just order it around without an appreciation for its democratic values and processes. Israel abides by the rule of law and has an independent judiciary. He pointed out that the BDS movement is only against Israel. Thus, it is for bigotry and not for human rights.
He made a rousing plea in closing; use your power and your voices to support justice.