THAT QUINTESSENTIAL LIAR-LAWYER the Dersh is at it again, attacking some of the earliest victims of his client Jeffrey Epstein his pimpess and co-sexual criminal, Ghislaine Maxwell in the lowest end-American fascist media.
I don't really feel like writing this so here a long passage from Guilt by Accusation: Alan Dershowitz and Maria Farmer by Vernon Thorpe , August 12, 2020. After a summary of Dershowitz's smears against Maria Farmer (I won't actually quote that liar unless I have to) a more accurate version with analysis is given.
Most readers, on seeing these statements, would conclude that whoever uttered them was someone with very bigoted attitudes towards Jews in general and prone to the kind of conspiratorial thinking that takes hold in the minds of people with paranoid tendencies.
What happens if we actually listen to the interview, to which Dershowitz provided no link or reference? As there is no transcript of the interview I have transcribed the relevant sections of it myself, together with timings so that readers can check for accuracy.
Exhibit 1
“They think Jewish DNA is better than the rest of us.”
This is cited by Dershowitz as an example of the“bigotry Maria Farmer spewed during a recorded two-hour interview that can be heard online.”
What Farmer actually said, in the relevant section of the interview (a
“When I called Ghislaine [Maxwell] and asked why I couldn’t eat there [at a private and exclusive country club] she said “it’s a Jewish country club, you’re not Jewish, they’re not going to serve you.” This is how this woman spoke to me, yeah. This is how these people think Whitney. They, honest to God, think their DNA is better than everybody else’s, I swear to you. It was a theme all the time with them. With Eileen Guggenheim, with Jeffrey Epstein, with Ghislaine. It was a theme.”
It is quite clear from the context that Farmer, when she says “They”, is referring to the set of people she mentions and not all Jewish people. Yet Dershowitz, by stripping away the context of the quotation, leads the reader to assume that “They” is a universal ascription of certain views to Jews in general of the kind that might be made by a genuinely bigoted person.
Exhibit 2
“I had a hard time with all Jewish people.”
“I think it’s all the Jews”.
“All the Jewish people I met are pedophiles that run the world economy.”
The context of these quotations can be seen below.
“1hr 24.05 “I was actually glad I was in hiding in obscure hillbilly town. Like I’ve had to live in horrible places full of ignorant hillbillies and it was a relief because they weren’t elites, you know. It was just, it’s, for a long time I had a hard time with all Jewish people, I’m gonna be honest with you. For a long time I was like, I think it’s all the Jews. Like I don’t know, because my sister is like, “Maria, it’s just the ones you met, it’s these people.” It’s just unfortunate that all the Jewish people I met also happen to be pedophiles that run the world economy, you know. So it gives like a bad taste in your mouth. But David Icke has kind of helped me with that. I kind of understand it better now, but like er that looks hard. You know, they did a number on all of us. We’ve all had a hard time with, like, a lot of it because of the abuse, you know. So it’s hard to not then go, all these people are like this when it’s not true, not all of them, just a huge chunk of elites are like this.”
The first thing to notice here is that Dershowitz removes the words “For a long time” from both the first and second quotes. Had he kept the phrase in, this might have led readers to ask what Maria Farmer’s evolving attitudes were and whether she has distanced herself or is in the process of doing so from previous attitudes. Compare how you might react on hearing that someone had said, “For a long time, I thought, black people are inferior”, as opposed to hearing the person had simply said “black people are inferior”.
Farmer explicitly distances herself from a bigoted stance towards “all Jewish people” seeing herself as trying to recover from such an attitude. In this context, she refers to the advice of her sister and, alarmingly, that of David Icke who certainly has trafficked in wild conspiracy theories concerning lizards and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Not the best choice for a guide, to put it mildly, and a worrying sign of Farmer’s naivete – but the point here is that she is actively resisting a tendency to bigotry she presents as arising from her traumatic experiences.
Again she refers to the specific people she came across in the Epstein set, who she claims are powerful pedophiles that run the world economy. And she suggests that as a result of the abuse she says she suffered at the hands of people within this elite set, she developed an attitude towards Jews that was bigoted and which she is trying to resist. She does not deny that she has sometimes blurred the line between Jews generally and the arrogant criminal conduct of the elite set, but it must be recalled that she was a young woman at the time of the alleged abuse and has since struggled with her prejudice, hoping to overcome it.
It is hardly unusual for abuse victims to develop negative and irrational attitudes to groups of people who share features with their abusers. Female rape victims not uncommonly struggle not to have negative attitudes to all men, or to all men who share certain physical characteristics with the men who raped them. Very often such victims know that such attitudes are irrational and struggle with them. Or think of the attitudes to ‘all Germans’ of some Holocaust victims, or to ‘the Japanese’ of British prisoners of the Japanese in World War II, or of the attitudes of Jewish and Palestinian victims of Palestinian and Israeli terrorism to those they identify with the terrorists. To quote Maria Farmer in a way that deliberately suppresses her struggles with past attitudes and depict her as a straightforward bigot to be excoriated is to suppress the voice of someone who may simply be trying to recover from damage inflicted upon her.
Exhibit 3
“These people truly believe they are chosen every one of them.”
Maria Farmer does not actually say what Dershowitz has her saying (by combining two clauses in different sentences). Again, “every one of them” clearly refers to a specific group, the Epstein set.
1hr 32.04-1hr 32.47
“You wouldn’t believe the way Jeffrey and Ghislaine spoke about African-Americans. It was like, it made my skin crawl. Anybody who was not Jewish, and you should write about this, but the way they spoke about them, it was really horrifying and it showed me a great deal about how these people truly believe that they are chosen to do something here. I don’t know, it’s unbelievable to me. I mean, and it was every one of them, the way they spoke. And one time I heard Isabelle say to her mother Eileen [Guggenheim] “Mommy, why do you call Maria a nobody” and she said “Honey, Isabelle, Maria is not a Jew, she is a nobody. So you can see why, for about 20 years…”
Exhibit 4
“They are “Jewish Supremacists”
1hr 33.45-1hr34.04
“This is a problem, this elitism is very deep and these are the people pushing racism, these are the people saying, pushing white, saying there is White Supremacy, which maybe there is in some ignorant Southern hillbilly groups, but I don’t know any White Supremacists but I know a lot of Jewish Supremacists they’re all elites and they are all connected. And they are the biggest Supremacists I have ever met. And the things they said about Black people made me cry. Honest to God. It made me sick.”
Note that Dershowitz completely misquotes Farmer here and again, by stripping the quotation of context leads his readers to assume that “They” refers to all Jews, rather than Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and their set. Presumably for Dershowitz, someone condemning White Supremacists they had met, and referring to that particular group as ‘they’, could be condemned as having a bigoted attitude to all white people – even if they said in the same interview that they know this isn’t about white people as a group.
It is worth now quoting Farmer at length to gain an insight into the levels of dishonesty Dershowitz is to employ.
PART 2
34.19 – 37.27
“So Jeffrey and Ghislaine they were at the estate, they came like three times to visit Wexner while I was there. And they would go meet with him and then they would come back. And Ghislaine said they were working on all these Israeli charities for students and for,you know,Jewish people. And I remember thinking, oh that’s weird. And she was like, she was like “you don’t understand our loyalty to Israel, Maria. You don’t understand our loyalty.” She’s like, “unless you’re a dual citizen you just don’t get it”. She’s like “your people could never understand.” She would say “My people, your people, The Chosen Ones”, all that bullshit. And I’m just like…Let me tell you something, if I walk out of here not at all racist it’s a freaking miracle. Because I struggle every day with it. I’m like urgh I was so abused. I guess it could have happened from any group but because they are the ones that happen to control the world. It’s hard, it’s really hard, like this specific group of elites. It’s really hard to not just hate them, you know. So I haven’t gotten over hating that Ghislaine and the way she…
WW: I think they try and lump everyone in by design too, you know, in order to give themselves protection.
MF: Yes.
WW: I think it’s very intentional.
MF: It is very intentional.
WW: I can’t blame you for feeling that way considering what you had to go through so.
MF: Right. Well I don’t really feel that way. Let me tell you my background. Every boyfriend I’ve ever had was very Jewish, like 100 per cent, and never, I mean I had the best relationships in New York, I mean these were like the most patient guys, I don’t know why they put up with me, I think back on it and like those were the nicest guys. So there were the four boyfriends I had and everybody who got in touch with them says you know what Maria your boyfriends loved you so much and say nothing but nice things. So I have had very good experiences.But it was the Eileen Guggenheim thing and the Ghislaine all of that really soured me on like the religious, on religion in general, if you wanna know the truth. Like religion being used against people. And erm just all of it. It just really soured me. And I don’t, I don’t totally trust people, even though I have friends that are Jewish, like I still have fraught trust issues because, and it’s so unfair to them – rationally I know it’s unfair, but I was so, you know, scalded by the hot water, you know, I just can’t, I just can’t, I just can’t stick my hand back in. Like it’s too hard right now.
WW: That’s ok, it makes sense.
MF: But I don’t totally feel that way. I’m just being honest. I’m like a really honest person Whitney. And so, most people will never talk about that stuff. And I’m not…and the other thing that pisses me off is this whole anti-semitic bs because they call Bernie Sanders anti-semitic.
WW: Oh yeah, I know.
MF: I’m like, when is it going to end.
WW: It’s out of control. And the whole dual loyalty thing, you can’t say that even though you just mentioned what Ghislaine told you, right? Sheldon Adelson, he’s on video saying, all I care about is being a good citizen of Israel and he’s the top political donor in the United States. So the fact you’re not allowed to talk about is I think very troubling, right so…”
Whatever one makes of Farmer’s claims, there can be no doubt that Dershowitz has concocted a grotesque smear, depicting her as something she is not to a wide readership who will never hear the interview. Perhaps, using his own standards, we should begin to question his own reliability as a witness, using his actual – not fabricated or misleadingly presented – words.
It is not as though Dershowitz doesn’t have an impressive track record when it comes to smears and character assassination; in particular, blaming victims is something he has shown himself very willing to do.
Just a few examples will suffice here, but those looking for more documentation on Dershowitz’s reliability should consult, for starters, David Samel; Norman Finkelstein and Tim Wilkinson.
Dershowitz falsely claimed that Norman Finkelstein suspected his mother of being a ‘kapo’ by distorting a moving account of her experiences Finkelstein had recalled. He falsely and without evidence claimed that Walt and Mearsheimer drew from “neo-Nazi” websites for their work on the Israel Lobby. He called Richard Goldstone a “moser” and accused Robert Fisk of anti-Semitism when he attempted to look for the possible motivational causes of the hijackers of 911, telling listeners that Fisk was anti-American and that “anti-Americanism is the same as anti-Semitism”.
Readers can look up Finkelstein’s thorough refutation of Dershowitz’s book The Case for Israel in Beyond Chutzpah, for examples of his deeply biased, deeply unreliable approach and well-documented attempts to justify numerous war crimes and his defence of torture.
As Finkelstein points out, Dershowitz asserts in Chutzpah,
“Anti-Semitism is the problem of bigots…Nothing we do can profoundly affect the twisted mind of the anti-Semite”. As Finkelstein puts it, “In sum, Jews can never be culpable for the antipathy others bear towards them: it’s always of their making, not ours.” (p81 Beyond Chutzpah)
Such a point is worth remembering when examining Dershowitz’s book The Case Against Israel’s Enemies. In this later book, he argues that the dispossession of the Palestinians was deserved because of their support for Hitler during World War II (in this he differs from Joan Peters whom he heavily relied on in writing his earlier The Case for Israel which largely adopted her debunked conclusions). He states that “The truth is that the Palestinian leadership, supported by the Palestinian masses, played a significant role in Hitler’s Holocaust.” (p. 196) There is, of course, not the slightest evidence of this ‘significant role’, but Dershowitz thinks it acceptable to smear an entire people and use such statements to justify ongoing human rights abuses against that same people to this day.
It’s a familiar story. Ignoring the historical context, the Occupation, “they” deserve what they get because, well, they are bigoted towards Zionists for no reason whatsoever. And as a result, we can safely ignore their testimonial authority with regard to what Dershowitz calls the “so-called Palestinian Nakba” (p.206).
Maria Farmer is only the latest victim of Dershowitz’s smears. Before you throw people under the bus, it’s best to dehumanise them, ignoring the harms done to them in order to justify your character assassination (or, when it comes to Israel, the ‘targeted’ assassinations Dershowitz supports).
Dershowitz’s latest article is of a piece with his advocacy for Israel’s crimes over the years. Blaming the victim, while making oneself invulnerable to criticism by demeaning those who dare to criticise, is a hallmark of Dershowitz’s career.
I can't say that my early disgust over Dershowitz which centered on his support for torture as much as his practice of getting millionaire wife murderers off as I was seeing through his and the general pose of lawyers who made a reputation as a "civil liberties" lawyer - a lot of that has to do with thinking through the ACLU and the Nazis at Skokie - has much to do with my far more recent disgust with the legal profession in general. That came to a head with watching lawyer after lawyer covering his ass during the hearings leading up to Trump's first impeachment. But he is a quintessential example of what's wrong with everything from the teaching of law at elite institutions, its embedded practices of and elevation of lying as what that profession holds as an ethical obligation, the successful practice of which is often tied to success in the profession. He is, in fact, one of the foremost examples of everything that is evil about that profession. And, look, I haven't mentioned his deputed association with Judaism once. I would, of course, add his many clients who are millionaire murderers he's gotten off by duping juries and wearing down or exploiting judges' all too lawyerly weaknesses (Ito, I'm thinking about you). In this case, anyone in the world would be entirely justified to believe he's lying, as the article makes clear. He's smeared all kinds of People whose reputations are real, not based on lawyerly lying and being promoted by the gutter media in America Babylon, Here from an article at Mondoweiss about his smearing the victims of his client and friends Epsteine and Maxwell:
For many years, Dershowitz has unleashed a torrent of vitriolic accusations of anti-Semitism against those who dared stray from the exceptionally narrow boundaries of Dersh-approved “legitimate” criticism of Israel. Some of these targets are almost universally admired as human rights icons, such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, whom Dersh describes as “one of the most evil men in the world”; Daniel Berrigan, who was “an evil, evil man”; and Jimmy Carter, for whom there is a “special place in Hell” (where people who build houses for the poor into their 90’s are themselves housed). And of course, that’s just a tiny sample of Dershowitz’s targets. Apparently, Dershowitz’s theory is that these men, and Richard Goldstone, Jeremy Corbyn, Roger Waters, etc., who have led very public lives for many decades, are secretly consumed with hatred for the Jewish people but in a transparent attempt to camouflage their bigotry, they express their anti-Semitism only with criticism of Israel.
As you can see from the dates on these articles, he's been at it for years now. And now that he is appearing in more and more of the sloppily suppressed Epstein material, he's doubling down on it. I would expect that Harvard Law and Yale Law are still proud of their association with him. I wouldn't expect that he, like Roy Cohn was, will finally, far, far too late, suffer professional consequences for his life of lying and, I fully believe he fears being exposed soon, far more. He lied when he claimed the Epstein didn't pay him for his legal services, that's already come out.
No comments:
Post a Comment