By Martin Gould and Ashley Martell
“I know Obama, I like Obama, I voted for Obama,” Dershowitz said in the exclusive interview. “I hope he is not remembered in history as the Neville Chamberlain of the 21st century, the person who didn‘t see the greatest evil, didn’t recognize the greatest evil of the 20th century, as Chamberlain did not.”
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Chamberlain was the British Prime minister who signed the 1938 Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler, ceding part of Czechoslovakia to Germany and failing to see the threat the Nazis posed.
“Without a doubt,” the Middle East will be a factor in voters’ minds when they go to the polls in November, Dershowitz said.
And he named four swing states — Florida, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania — in which fears about Iran and the administration’s lukewarm support for Israel could be a critical issue.
“If Iran were to develop nuclear weapons prior to the election, that would be a disaster for Obama’s reelection prospects,” Dershowitz said.
Obama himself generally has shown that he is friendly to the Jewish state, but some of his subordinates, including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, have not.
Panetta “has been talking with mixed messages,” while Dempsey “made the absurd statement that Iran should be considered a rational actor,” the lawyer said.
“Rational actors don’t kill their own people,” Dershowitz thundered. “Rational actors don’t slaughter and execute thousands of their own people; rational actors don’t deny the holocaust; rational actors don’t call for the state of Israel to be wiped off the map.”
Dershowitz said he accepts that Obama has the right to criticize some aspects of Israel’s policies, such as building settlements on the West Bank. “It’s fair to be critical of Israeli policies as you can be critical of American policies. I am a loyal patriot of this country and I criticize some of our own policies and I support many of our own policies.”
But he added, “The true test of Obama’s support for Israel will come over Iran. Iran poses an existential threat, not only to Israel’s existence, but to America’s safety.”
Dershowitz also called for Obama to cut ties with the left-wing website, Media Matters for America, because of the stance of its senior foreign policy fellow, M.J. Rosenberg, on Israel.
Calling Rosenberg a “bigot,” Dershowitz said the senior fellow “has crossed the line from anti-Israel, to anti-Zionism, to anti-Semitism.”
He quoted a tweet that Rosenberg issued last year in which he attacked the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) over alleged dual loyalty. “Saying AIPAC is guilty of dual loyalty is giving it credit for one more loyalty than it holds,” Rosenberg tweeted.
In another Twitter message, Rosenberg called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “terrorist.” In an article on the website, he called the country’s president, Shimon Peres “an uberhawk on Iran.”
“It essentially accuses AIPAC of treason, of being disloyal to the United States, as having no loyalty to the United States,” Dershowitz said. “It calls Benjamin Netanyahu a terrorist. It calls the president of Israel, Shimon Perez, who everybody knows is a peace-loving man, the hawk on Iran.”
Dershowitz denounced the George Soros-backed Media Matters as “a vicious organization” that depicts Americans who support Israel as putting that support over loyalty to their own country.
He pointed out that both Soros and Rosenberg are Jewish. “Let’s remember Jews voted for Mussolini, individual Jews voted for Stalin. Jews do things that everybody else does — they can act foolishly.
“Soros has said over and over again that he is very anti-Zionist, he would never support a Zionist organization. He doesn’t like Israel. He may have been born Jewish, but he turned against his own people even during the Second World War.
“I don’t have a lot of respect for George Soros, he makes a lot of money, but his political views are very, very hard left and often very, very, very, very antagonistic to American interests.
“I don’t believe Media Matters should be respected by the White House and by President Obama,” he said, adding that he is not sure how much Obama himself knows about the website’s views.
“But the White House is in close touch with Media Matters, and they have to disassociate themselves from Media Matters unless Media Matters fires this bigot, M.J. Rosenberg, distances itself from his statements, and apologizes for what he has said. Otherwise, this becomes a major election issue.”
Dershowitz said that Media Matters was first set up to be “a kind of offset to Fox News,” adding, “Media Matters claimed they weren’t really fair and balanced and they were going to attack Fox — they called it the Fox Hunt.
“They are violating their trust to Americans. They are not an objective organization and they have crossed the line into bigotry. George Washington said 200-and-something years ago, ‘To bigotry we will give no sanction.’ He said in America we are all equal and we do not tolerate bigots — and M.J. Rosenberg is a bigot.”
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