EclectEcon

This past Sunday evening I attended a dinner in honour of Paul Davenport, president of The Univesity of Western Ontario. He was being honoured by the Jewish National Fund for his continued strong support of openness, freedom, and tolerance. For more details, please see this.

The guest speaker was Alan Dershowitz, a man with a strong presence and a brilliant mind, and author of The Case for Israel. At one point during his address, he said (loosely paraphrased, with apologies):

Some time ago, I spoke at the University of California at Irvine. There were 1200 people there to hear me. Of course most of them were there to see if I would say that OJ really did it. But there was a small group over on one side who were strong supporters of Israel, and there was a small group on the other side who were strong supporters of the Palestinians....

I asked the supporters of Israel how many would be willing to accept a negociated, secure two-state solution, and they all raised their hands. I asked the supporters of Palestine the same question, and not one of them raised their hands.

And that example says more than you might imagine about why so many of my postings are pro-Israel. Two-state solutions of various forms have been offered intermittently for over 70 years, and Israel (even before it existed as a country) has always been willing (albeit sometimes reluctantly) to accept them. The Arabs living in Jordan, Syria, and Egypt were, for the most part, unwilling to accept them.

And then Dershowitz dropped a bombshell: he said he suspects that Yassir Arafat eventually rejected the negotiated settlement of 2000-2001 on the advice of ex-president, Jimmy Carter. If his suspicions are correct, Carter has even more to answer for.

There were perhaps 30-50 usual-suspect protestors outside the venue where President Davenport received his honour and Professor Dershowitz spoke. Before the ceremonies began, and in keeping with the spirit of the evening, Dershowitz went out to speak with some of the protestors and gave them a copy of his book.

.