Alan Dershowitz at Technion - Questions & Answers about Israel and the World

I will ask you some questions and the audience ask you questions and if you want to ask yourself some questions feel free and we'll let's see what happens okay let's start with the case for Israel why do we need a case for Israel book there is no case for France Canada even Yugoslavia which was pleaded into five countries nobody published a book a case for Slovenia it's a great great question in fact when I first proposed my book it was called the case for peace and I wanted to write a book arguing the virtues of peace talking about what the peace dividend would look like both for Israel for the Palestinians and for the world and then a student came to see me one day it was during the Asura Khmer Chuba the ten days of repentance and he was a first or second year Harvard student and he said I need to ask you for chuga I said I don't even know you how can you ask me for forgiveness say you've never done you've never wronged me he said no I've wronged you and I've wronged the Jewish people I said why he said I'm very knowledgeable about Israel said I went to Camp Ramah as a student I went to Jewish day school but I'm now at Harvard and I'm afraid to speak up on behalf of Israel I don't speak up in my classrooms when teachers make anti-israel statements based on ignorance or prejudice I don't speak up in the bull sessions after class I don't speak up at the dining room I said why not he said well I'm embarrassed to tell you I said please tell me he said if I am perceived to be too pro-israel to pro scientists I won't get dates women won't go out with me I won't be popular and I was shocked because I grew up at a time when being supportive of Israel was a key to popularity and of course the next asteroid campaign at Harvard support Israel day to Zionists tonight may have helped a few Zionists but it didn't help the cause for Israel and I decided I really had to write a book making outlining the case for Israel and look I believe particularly in a university setting that we have to acknowledge that Israel is not always right its policy decisions sometimes are mistaken that the arguments are nuanced on all sides that there is truth to both narratives the Palestinian narrative the Israeli narrative I don't believe there's a moral equivalence I do believe that Israel has the far stronger case the far a stronger argument but I thought I would write a book that set out a nuanced case for Israel and in writing it I decided to try to make the 80% case that is I wouldn't support all of Israel's policies I would support the 80% that virtually all Israelis and all american supporters of Israel agree on and when I finally did write my second book the case for peace interestingly enough I was looking for blurbs for the back cover and I wanted blurbs from people that represented all points of view in Israel and so I asked my dear friend Amos oz to do a blurb i massaged obviously represents a left-wing position in israel he's a Zionist but he's very very critical of Israeli policies and I also got another friend Erik Sharon to write a blurb and the idea that Sharon and oz would agree on anything they couldn't agree on lunch they very very stridently disagree on many of the policies but when they saw the case that I made which was the 80% case they agreed and they both wrote blurbs and that's the case I I try very hard to make I'll just tell one more story the rest of my answers will be shorter but I spoke at a school called University of california-davis and there was an audience of about a thousand students and on one side I saw students clearly who a promo wearing keep oat they blue and white and shirts that supported Israel some of them stand with us and on the other side clearly there were another maybe 100 Pro Palestinian students with green and flags and Arabic writing and I said before I begin my talk I want to first turn to the pro-israel students and ask you a simple question if Palestinian leadership this was before the split before the the joinder of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority if the Palestinian leadership in general were to give up terrorism and were to agree to two-state solution would you favor a two-state solution in which Israel would have to abandon much of the territory it captured in the 67 war most of the settlements would be ended it would be an agreed-upon two-state solution every single one of the pro-israel students raised their hand and said yes I then turned to the Palestinian pro Palestinian students I said I want to ask you a similar question would you support a non settlement non occupying two-state solution where Israel and Palestine live together they huddle together they mumble to each other not a single student raised his or her hand the president of the university was sitting next to me nudged me and said you can sit down now you've won the debate ah the 800 students in the middle clearly saw that this wasn't between pro-israel and pro-palestine it was between pro-israel and anti-israel that the students who purported to be pro palestinian students at least in that group were more concerned about their being a nation-state of the jewish people than they seem to care about there being a Palestinian state because they wouldn't accept the two-state solution so for me making the kinds of arguments that unify rather than divide is the key to what I've tried to do on university campuses not always with success it's a mixed picture on campuses around the world certainly a different picture in London and Paris than it is in Montreal and New York or Palo Alto but and part of it has to do with the BDS movement which I know we will talk about let's talk about that it's Israel looks like is losing ground in the academic institutions in the USA and certainly in Europe now how critical is it what can we do about it what can the Technion do about it it's a great question it is Israel as a brand Israel as an image of positive contributions to the world Israel is losing ground in American institutions it has already lost very considerable ground in European institutions and among European intellectuals I'll mention later on tonight a poll that was done by the BBC not so long ago in which they asked 30,000 people from 25 countries of naming countries have they contributed more good or bad to the world and the countries at the very bottom of the list were Iran Pakistan and then tied for third at the bottom of list Israel can you imagine Israel being cast in such company ironically the two countries at the top of the list alternated one year with the other with Germany and Japan who obviously 70 years ago would have been on the bottom of the list now when you compare what Israel has contributed to the world in 66 years to what Japan has contributed to the world in 66 years I know we have some Japanese guests here and I don't mean to single out Japan I'm only singling out Japan because it lists rates first in the world when you compare the number of Nobel Prize won by the two countries when you compare the number of high-tech innovations medical innovations there's just no comparison and so Israel is suffering BDS is not the cause it's the result and the symptom the phenomenon is much deeper the phenomenon is the phenomenon that drove me to write my book the case for Israel the students saying it's not positive to be identified with Israel when I was growing up everybody was pro-israel if you wanted to have a date you said I'm pro-israel you got a date you wanted to get tenure at a university you want to get a job you can't be anti-israel today that's changed dramatically so in the United States BDS itself does not pose a risk to Israel no American University will accept any divestment from Israel it would mean the death knell for that university I can give you a personal experience one of my children attended Hampshire College in western Massachusetts Hampshire is a very radical school and a couple of years ago the faculty voted to divest from Israel that is for the university to sell all of its stocks in all companies that have any dealings with Israel they didn't think about what that would mean but they just voted for it and as an alumni parent I started a campaign to divest from Hampshire College if they divested from Israel the president of the university called me basically on his hands and he's pleading me pleading with me to stop that counter campaign and he promised that they would rescind the resolution and that Hampshire would never divest from Israel just another anecdote to show the story one night at three in the morning I started to get a series of phone calls saying Harvard has a fund to invest its enormous endowment and one of the funds has just sold off all of its Israel stock call a friend of mine who is in fact very knowledgeable in the stock market he checks on the computer it's true and then I keep getting calls from alumni and alumnae what's going on as Harvard to vesting I waited a decent amount of time until about 7:30 in the morning and I called the president of Harvard I said is it true she said I know nothing about this let me check she calls back it's true and it's good I said it's true and it's good why is it true and it's good it said last night the world whatever voted Israel into the economic whatever it was a couple of years ago remember when they were voted into the European and that automatically changed Israel's status from a developing nation into a first world economy and there they have a fund to develop to invest only in developing nations and the fund automatically by computer sold the stock of all countries that were now promoted so Israel was promoted out of fact and of course within one hour that amount of money was invested in a fund that invested in first world investment so the sensitivities are very great and no American University would dream I believe of divesting certainly no American University would engage in an academic boycott one more story about that promised you my answers would be short I lied so a few years ago there were a group of students led by again language modern language modern language somehow just doesn't like Israel maybe there's no I'm Chomsky have something to do with it I don't know do his students have something to do with it I don't know but modern language just voted again to boycott Israel but this started a few years ago and there was a campaign so two of us Steve Weinberg who won the Nobel Prize in Physics some years ago from the University of Texas and I drafted a letter very simple letter both of us had honorary degrees at that point from an Israeli University and so we wrote letter saying we are alumnus of Israeli universities and for purposes of any academic boycott we want you to know we deem ourselves Israelis so if you boycott Israeli academics you must boycott us and we sent it around to a few hundred of our colleagues hoping maybe twenty or thirty would sign and we get a letter in the New York Times well we were surprised twenty and thirty didn't 11,000 American academics signed a statement saying for purposes of any academic boycott we are Israelis Jews non-jews Zionist non Zionists people who had connections with Israel people who didn't have connections with Israel it immediately destroyed any effort because the end result would be you boycott Israel you're being boycotted essentially by 11,000 prominent academics and so they would be the victims essentially of their own boycott today by the way if the same thing happened and if Steve Weinberg and I sent that the same letter we would not get 11,000 signatures we might get 5 or 6 we would not get 11,000 signatures the situation has changed a boycott wouldn't get 11,000 signatures but more today would say not my issue I don't think I'm getting involved I'll stay out of this one and so no it's it is a serious issue and it's a long-term issue because my students and my grandchildren's generation today who will be the leaders when I look at my class at Harvard Law School I don't just see students I see the future president of the United States that they're the future Democratic candidates she sat there the future Chief Justice sat there this is all true of course all of those students pass through our classes so these are the future leaders and if they're being educated with an antipathy toward Israel today that may influence policies in the future there's no short-term danger in the United States there is a short-term danger in Great Britain and in France and in some European countries this is good to clean right it is very quit it is very critical one has to think about a long term yeah the BDS is also trying to boycott Israeli products and they they differentiate between product developed or manufactured in Israel and products of the territories I'm an industrialist and I find it difficult to differentiate sometimes which power come from well what's your take on that it's a tactic it's a tactic the BDS movement figured out if they can get the foot in the door and get some boycott they can then expand it so it starts by just boycotting products made in the territories and then they show these horror films about how deep into the territories some of these places are and you know you should then the next step is boycott products made in Israel until Israel ends the occupation but then you see what burgoo T and others who are the founders of the BDS movement are saying to their own people they're saying the boycott the divestment movement will continue until Palestine is free from the river to the sea that the boycott is aimed not at Israel's occupation of the West Bank but of Israel's occupation of Haifa and of Tel Aviv and of hood and so it is clearly the beginning of a tactical three-stage step and it's very complex because let's take the territories I can easily see an Israeli or even somebody outside of Israel saying look I don't want to support the settlements deep in the West Bank if I see product that's coming from that settlement maybe I can do something about encouraging Israel not to have settlements deep in those territories I won't buy that product but what is the center what is the focus of the campaign against products made in the territories SodaStream where is SodaStream in male adumim in the industrial part of Malaya demon but Malaya do men nonetheless what is smiley to me Americans don't know Europeans don't know Europeans don't know that Abbas himself has personally said that he and the Palestinian people have no expectation of male Adumim gielo ever being part of a Palestinian state so I have actually tried to bro a deal here I'm going to get political for a second but just descriptively political because I'm sworn to stay away from politics Technion has a great reputation for deep politicizing discussion among faculty and students and it's a great thing I don't want to interfere with it but my proposal has been to tell to ask a boss and I'm hopefully going to see him to ask a boss whether he would accept the following proposition I've already asked him previously and he has indicated in a different context of possible willingness to do that and that is if Israel agrees not to build any settlements or increase any settlements that are outside of the security boundary in areas that will clearly become part of a Palestinian state if a two-state solution is agree upon would you the Palestinian leadership agree not to protest or criticize Israeli building in areas that you know for sure will remain part of Israel in any two-state solution I don't know whether the Israelis would agree to that I don't know whether the Palestinians will agree to that but from a moral point of view to me there's an enormous distinction between products that come from areas that will remain part of Israel and products that come from areas outside of the what will become part of Israel now for those who believe in a one state solution either a Jewish one state solution or a Palestinian one state solution those distinctions nuance distinctions are meaningless but too many the distinctions would be I think a meaningful also I would never ever accept a boycott as moral that focuses only on the nation-state of the Jewish people for me that's always going to represent bigotry if you want to start boycott movements start with the worst first list all the countries in the world not the way the branding studies that I talked about do it but in some objective way list countries in the world that have human rights violations and boycott in order of the seriousness of the human rights violations you know you can't get a demonstration today against Syria with the barbarity that's going on you couldn't get a demonstration even against what was going on with the kidnapping of the women in the Sudan and other horrible horrible violations any any effort to stigmatize Israel and only Israel outside of the context of a broad human rights approach is to my mind bigoted now I make a distinction between Israelis and non Israelis as an Israeli you're entitled to be much more critical of your own country than of any other country as an American I'm entitled to impose a double standard on my country but no Presbyterian from Minnesota has the right to vote to divest from Israel if he hasn't first voted to divest from Cuba Afghanistan I can go down a hundred and seventy nations that would come first a Presbyterian in Detroit cannot impose a double standard the Catholic Church in the Vatican cannot morally impose a double standard they cannot expect more of a country because it's the nation-state of the Jewish people because to do that is to expect less of other countries and that becomes a green light for human rights violations it says to the people of Rwanda or Darfur it's okay for you to slaughter each other you're not Jews but the nation-state of the Jewish people we expect more from you and that's not acceptable so for Israelis to do whatever it takes to change policies that they disagree with I have no quarrel with that my quarrel is that Israeli sometimes are so narrow viewed that they don't understand that the exaggerated criticisms they make of the policies of their own government don't stay in Israel they become grist for the mill of haters of Israel who then say see even in Israeli that's why I am so opposed to the students young people well-intentioned people who served in the Army and come back and come to America and say Oh our army is so brutal these kids have no idea about the comparative way in which the Israeli army acts with the way other armies act every country in the world could have people who served in the Army coming back and say my god we didn't realize war is really hell but when you have these students go around speaking on University campuses the impression is there's no army more brutal than Israel's there's no government more repressive than Israel's there's no occupation worse than Israel's because Israelis are so verbal and so articulate and so global that they make their domestic case internationally and therefore create the misimpression that Israel is the worst that's why another British poll showed that people were asked to rank the country in the world that is most dangerous to peace the most dangerous country in the world Israel one that won hands down over Iran over Iraq over Afghanistan you name it Israel was number one because if you ask Israelis who care deeply about Israel it's their number one problem and your number one problem gets extrapolated into the number one problem of the world and that's an issue that we have to deal with I forgot to mention that you received many quite a few honorary Doctorate for this is the most important one believe me it's not next question Israeli officers are being sued in many countries and for crimes and then the Interpol gets in and they there is an international one that's set up is that is there any advice that you can give us them I mean those are people who really do a lot we send them to do well first of all not only can I give advice I have given advice I will repeat here what I've said over and over again I will without charge without expenses represent any Israeli official arrested anywhere in the world for performing duties as an Israeli official I will do it and I will put together the best legal team that I am capable of putting together and I've already spoken to many lawyers in many parts of the world we stand ready I think it's no secret that when former General Shetty flew to England a few years ago and was threatened with arrest I was standing by Danny my friend here was on the phone ready to relate to me anything that happened to Eddie I was ready to get on a plane and appear we had a British lawyer standing by so far nobody has been subject to a full judicial proceeding we've gotten Britain to change its law and it's much much harder today in Britain for individual radicals to select selectively prosecute those they disagree with it's still a problem in Spain although the Spanish government's approach has now changed somewhat um if I were in Israeli I have to tell you I would take a different view from what I think some Israelis are taking if I were an Israeli I would march into Britain I would present myself at the police station I would have my hands out ready and say let's have a trial let's put Israel on trial let's see what it will look like when we do a comparative analysis between Israel and the rest of the world let's see how a judge or jury reacts when I can prove to a jury that no country in the history of the world none faced with threats comparable to those faced with Israel has ever had a better record of human rights a better record of being concerned with civilian life of its enemies and a better overall record of proportionality in the State of Israel none and when I go and I speak doesn't mean Israel's perfect doesn't mean it can't do better but when I go and I speak at universities anywhere in Paris in London and Italy no matter what is you the same challenge I stand up and I point and I say any one of you in the audience name a country faced with comparable threats that ever had a better record on these regards and occasionally a hand will go up and people will laugh at the student when you look and see what those countries have done and how brutal they've been including my own give you an example from general schedule he became head of the Air Force the ratio of civilians to Israelis I'm sorry civilians to combatants who were killed was among the best ratios in the world that is for every civilian for every terrorist who was killed there was one collateral death of a civilian the United States the ratio was about one to thirty that is for every terrorist killed there were approximately thirty non-combatant death so serious injuries and in the United States that was regarded as an acceptable ratio to stop terrorism by the time schedule EFT just before the warrant in Gaza the ratio he insisted on changing the munitions changing the intelligence requirements and of course there was some there was a price to pay for it you'll recall that when they tried to get the Hamas military leadership that was all together in a building they used a very small bomb thus mom hit target but because it was such a small bomb everybody escaped had they been able to use the munitions that they had previously used every one of them would have been disabled so a price is paid for it and you don't know how to measure that price and deaths of innocent Israelis or rockets that traumatize innocent Israeli children by the time sketti left the ratio was for every 29 terrorists killed there was one fatality that's how how much he improved and that by the way comes from Haaretz not the best friend of the Israeli military under all circumstances Land of Israel well you know they think they're friends of Israel and you know having said that let me just make another point look criticism of Israeli policy is not anti-semitic I've never suggested that I don't believe it because if criticism of Israeli policies were anti-semitic the largest concentrate of anti-semites in the world would be in Tel Aviv and and readers of hearts and other such newspapers no that's not what the point I make the point I make is that you cannot understand the fervor of the hatred of Israel among some Europeans particularly some Europeans without recognizing that Israel's the nation-state of the Jewish people and Israel is the Jew among nations the discussion in Europe is utterly without nuance there's not a conversation about Israeli policies it's a criticism of the very concept of a nation state for the Jewish people and it's done with this fervor and hatred that anything associated with Israel even something like the Technion which produces so much good for the world helps cure so many illnesses helps feed so many hungry people even that gets tainted even despite the Technion is wonderful globalization and movement to so many areas of the world the technion is fighting it fighting it in the best way you can fight it by making Israeli science indispensable to the world making it impossible to boycott Israeli products and that's the essential way to do it the Technion does more to fight the BDS movement by it's brilliant innovations than any speaker and any husband can ever do so believe me three cheers for for the Technion and one of the reasons I'm so honored to accept your honouring of me is because you do so much for the world and you do so much without being political to fight the BDS movement we are in Israel so let me be going to a little bit of a critical issue you know we have a finance minister and a president in jail we have Prime Minister I know they generally people are in jail generally call me so I'm fully aware of how many people you have in jail now but you're not the only country I was called by Bill Clinton called me and he was in trouble I represented the president of the Ukraine a couple of years ago president Kuchma recently got a lot of phone calls from the Ukraine so I'm now representing the former president of Ecuador so you're not the only country that has that problem but but we do excel in something we have a prime minister on the way to jail we have a chief of stuff your prime minister still still wait a minute there's still an appeal yeah well he's not going to jail yet okay I'm trying and the chief of staff is under investigation right now so during the last election I don't know if you follow this Friday president okay so there were quite a few candidates who withdrew because questions were started to be asked now what is wrong with us with our system with our leaders well okay it's a very it's a very deep question and it's a question about which I am not particularly qualified to answer I will try to answer it within the limits of my expertise I can tell you this that in Israel more political leaders are indicted in general and fewer are convicted that is there's an enormous disparity between indictment and conviction when it comes to public figures we go back 20 or 30 years you will see how many Israeli public officials have been subject to indictment and how many of them were either cleared or cleared of most of the charges now that's not been the recent experience the recent experience has been those charts have been convicted so maybe there's a change but when there was an enormous disparity between the charging and the conviction there was something wrong with the system every democratic system convicts about between 80 and 90% of those people who are charged you know people complain to me all the time you represent guilty people of course I represent guilty people I'm a criminal lawyer thank God for the fact that I represent guilty people if I represented innocent people all the time that might be Iran or China the vast majority of people indicted in America are guilty thank God for that and the same thing is true generally in Israel which has an eighty to ninety percent conviction rate but not when it comes to corruption when it comes to corruption at least until very recently the rate was more around forty or fifty percent that's too low now I don't know enough to know whether too many people are being indicted or too few people are being convicted whether there is too low a threshold for indictment or two higher threshold for conviction but the disparity was troubling in the last couple of years of course the President of Israel the reason the President of Israel is in jail is because he made a stupid stupid legal mistake I'm not talking about the ultimate crime itself which if he committed it is is beyond being despicable but he's in jail because he made a stupid legal mistake whether he did it with the advice of his lawyer or without the advice of his lawyer I don't know but he was offered a deal to avoid imprisonment if he simply pleaded guilty to lesser offenses that would not have carried a prison term and the Attorney General was criticized or the director of public prosecution was criticized for giving him that deal and in defending their decision they went in court and they said we had to give him that deal we couldn't prove the more serious crime of rape so cuts ear says Wow the prosecutor said publicly they couldn't convict me of rape why should I have pleaded guilty to the lesser offense I'm now going to withdraw my plea of guilty to the lesser offense and stand trial for rape they can't put me on trial for rape they've already said that they have no evidence of course they weren't bound by that they developed more evidence and as the result of trying to outsmart the system he ended up in jail for a significant period of time a a sentence he could have avoided on the Olmert matter former Prime Minister Olmert is a close friend of mine and I'm I'm knocking at this point comment I don't know enough except to say that the issue is still pending on appeal there are some very serious issues in the case from the press reports including reliance on a witness who died without having been cross-examined and the legal system of Israel is a very good legal system and I'm confident that it will produce a just result but it's a tragedy because you know the old notion going back 2,000 years to being pure than Caesar's wife that when you're elected to high office you have an obligation you have an obligation to the people you have an obligation and of course there are two kinds of things one when you commit the crime after you've been elected and that's something that people can't know about and when you're elected after it's widely known or widely suspected that you've done things like that and that in part the people deserve some blame for that when they elect public officials who have reputations for corruption or dishonesty I hope this marks a watershed in Israel's history and I hope the election of the new president who people you know had all kinds of things positive and negative but everybody seemed uniformly to acknowledge that this is a man who is beyond any suspicion of any kind of either corruption or sexual misconduct or anything of that kind I hope that marks a watershed in the end of this Shanda which is what my grandmother would describe it as and it's not only a Shanda for the State of Israel it's a Shanda for the Jewish people to have highly elected officials who even come close to lines of that kind so I hope we're talking about past history and I hope the future will be better I think you're right different subject what can we learn from the Arab Spring what we can learn from the Arab Spring is that the Talmud was right when it said that prophecy ended with the destruction of the Second Temple we have no ability to predict the future Yogi Berra once said prediction prediction is difficult especially about the future and the Arab Spring caught everybody off guard everybody was caught off guard there wasn't a single intelligence agency in the world who anticipated either the spring or the conversion of the spring into winter um and we you have to make decisions based on Bayesian analysis and I would hope that the Technion would teach courses in decision-making based on uncertainty and probability and how you weigh the various costs of a type one error versus a type two error this is the kind of thing that statesmen and diplomats and states women have to understand that you have to make decisions without being in any way sure of what will be happening in the world six months from now twelve months from now eighteen months from now certainly not two or three years from now yesterday we took a wonderful trip my wife my friends and I to the Golan and you stand on the top of the go on and you remember the Syrian shooting down and you think about what would have happened if Israel had returned to go on in exchange for a promise from Assad of real peace and then you look at what's going on in Syria today I'm not saying that's an argument for not making a peace that would require surrendering the sovereignty of the Golan but maintaining a presence for the next fifty or hundred years I'm not here to make political decisions or Mattila military and strategic decisions but I am here to say that anybody who thinks that they know what the Syrian regime or the Syrian government will look like a year from now is me my friend here today who's with us Michael Miller is a very distinguished psychiatrist in America and he should move here permanently if people are making decisions based on what they think they know about what Egypt will look like what Turkey will look like what Jordan will look like 10 or 15 or 20 years from now we cannot know we were not endowed by our Creator with the ability to think forward we're very good at thinking backward we're very good at analyzing our mistakes and perhaps even learning from them but that to me is the major lesson of the Arab Spring between Jews even the past is changed it's changing well I think it was Martin Buber I'm gonna quote him later tonight who said the truth isn't what it was used to be so you know when I look at the results of American foreign policy I'm not excited I get very excited and different meaning lower opinion I mean Iraq what's happening now Egypt Syria Iran first of all look who we elect to be presidents without getting involved with Democrats or Republicans a lot of people think Bill Clinton was a great president he's a friend of ours we like him a lot he was really qualified to be President he had been governor of Arkansas you know what Arkansas is I mean I think I would even mention a city in Israel that's comparable but I mean being governor of Arkansas how does that qualify you to be present United States Barack Obama a couple of years before he was elected President was a street organizer in Chicago who had never been elected even to a single office had never had any experience in foreign policy both of them are very very smart on the other hand George W Bush the first George Bush was the most highly qualified person to be elected he had had every position in America had been the head of the CIA head of the Republican Party he had been the ambassador to China and he screwed up every single job he ever had but that qualified him to be President in the United States a job which he also screwed up so you know it least in Israel with all the disadvantages of the Israeli system the craziness of the parties and how you the very least before you get elected Prime Minister which is really just the prime among the ministers you have to be a member of the Knesset you have to have been in the Knesset for some years you have to work your way up the same thing is true in England you have to start as a backbencher you eventually work to the leadership of the party you are in the foreign ministry you do all of these things at least there's a way of qualifying you we have presidents by luck presidents by luck and presidents by charisma and particularly foreign policy suffers as the result of it I suspect most of our foreign policy decisions are made without real experience so it doesn't surprise me but you know let's remember how ironic some of the issues are so we think of Shimon Peres as a man a great man of peace I love Shimon Peres he's a fantastic wonderful president I've known him since he was director general of the Ministry of Defense back 100 years ago that's how long long ago we know each other but but remember that he urged the United States to go into Iraq and who urged the United States not to go into Iraq the former prime minister sharone who was regarded as a hawk so uh you know you never know who who makes the right decisions who makes the wrong decisions Shimon Perez argued against the Osirak reactor was in the end was that a good decision I think it was some people think it wasn't but you have to look back and judge your leaders not only based on what they advocated but what they opposed and look at history and see what we can learn from that I think again what we what we can learn is one has to be very modest not have great expectations I worry very much about American foreign policy I worry that they are Iranian don't believe our president when he says that he will not allow them to develop nuclear weapons and he will take whatever means are necessary I he's tell the truth the president he looked me in the eye I know him very well we sat like I'm sitting next to you even closer and he said to me Alan you know me you've known me for a long time I don't Bluff you can take it to the bank when I'm telling you that I will not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons I will not allow Iran develop nuclear weapons he would pass a lie-detector test he was telling me the truth the problem is no president can anticipate what the future will hold you would have also told me sitting at that table we didn't have that conversation you can take it to the bank I guarantee you that if Syria develops and uses chemical weapons against their own people there will be a military response he was telling the truth when he said that he wanted there to be a military response Congress wouldn't let him we don't know how Congress would respond if the president tried to use military action against Iran if the president believe that Iran across certain red lines and so Israel can never ever outsource its defense to any country no matter how close the Alliance is Israel must always have the ability to defend itself and I said that to the president and he agreed with me I said mr. president you cannot expect Israel to outsource its defense and to rely on the word of an of an ally I quoted as I've done in writing many times Elie Wiesel who said that for him the lesson of the show as always always believe the threats of your enemies over the promises of your friends and Israel has to a believe the threats of its enemies and B it has to not count on the promises of its friends it must have the capacity to do everything necessary to defend itself and believe me if it comes to that the Technion will have played a central role in Israel's ability to defend itself and that's a good thing don't let anyone ever ever frighten the Technion or any other Israeli institution into not doing its duty of how putting to defend the country from the horrors that it could face without a strong defense those of you who go to go to shul will remember that how many times a week do we repeat the phrase Hashem owes liam oh you tain Hashem evaru that the mobis Shalom God will first give the Jewish people as strength and only then will there be peace the one lesson of being a Jew and of being the Jew among nations is there can never be peace without strength the lesson of the Holocaust is we thought that having morality on our side was enough it wasn't imagine how different the world would have been if there were an Israeli Air Force in 1941 and 42 if Israeli troops could have warned the citizens of Rhodes could have helped try to protect the people of of Hungary who walked to their deaths without knowing what faced them there will never again be a show up because of Israel and because of the Technion they will never again be a situation where Jews are unable to defend themselves and to deter and prevent the kinds of horrors that the world has once or more than once inflicted on the Jewish people and many in the world would like to see inflicted on the nation-state of the Jewish people so never be ashamed of strength use it morally use it properly but never be ashamed of strength I'm taking you to a different issue run this said that and I know you respect him that we can have democracy or concentrated financial power but not both if one this would have a live been alive today what would we say about the US and about this world by the way we're very similar in that respect I think Brandeis would be very much opposed to what is going on in the United States where the wealthier getting wealthier and the poor are getting poorer and the disparity between wealth and poverty is increasing dramatically it turns out the trickle-down theory has not worked that it was believed by some that enhancing the wealth of the very wealthy would increase not only the relative wealth of the poor the absolute strength of the the absolute wealth as well that just hasn't proved to be true in the where it shows most is in education and that's the tragedy because education is money and education is power education is money in two ways one in the United States unlike in Israel you need money to have an education I mean to its credit if you're a brilliant young student here in Israel comes from a very poor family you could you can get into the Technion you can graduate with distinction here you can't do that in the United States for the most part the United States we start our discrimination at the earliest level at kindergarten and it operates through the entire system and money determines whether you will get a good education and money determines whether you will become computer literate technologically literate genetically literate all the kinds of tools that are required I teach my students at Harvard Law School if you want to be a good lawyer you have to know science you have to know genetics you have to know technology and and we're getting wealthier and wealthier people excelling at universities and it's money in another way if you obtain the tools educationally you can be very very wealthy and be very successful and if you don't you will drop further and further down if you if you graduate wherever you graduate from and don't have computer technology available to you you cannot be successful and so I see the problem getting worse and Israel which is among maybe it is the most computer literate country in the world computer user country in the world technologically technological computer country in the world has an obligation to to spread that knowledge as deeply as possible that's it's a real national security threat when a country has lots and lots of people as its own citizens who are not able to really operate within the economy so Brandeis as usual about so many things right

Channel: Technion

Views: 22,173

Rating: 4.1288891 out of 5

Keywords: Alan Dershowitz (Academic), Technion - Israel Institute Of Technology (College/University), Israel (Country), Israeli--Palestinian Conflict (Film Subject), Boycott Divestment And Sanctions (Organization), Board Of Governors (Board Member Title), zohar zisapel, RAD group

Id: pmu5R1JZHBo

Length: 50min 42sec (3042 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 16 2014