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4.2.12
WC: 191694

What changed? In Waterstones one day I found myself in the Israel and Palestine section.
To this day I don't know why I actually pulled it off the shelf, but I picked up a copy of
Alan Dershowitz's The Case for Israel.

In my world view the Jews and the Americans controlled the media, so after a brief look at
the back, I scoffed thinking "vile Zionist propaganda".

But I decided to buy it, eagerly awaiting the chance to deconstruct it so I could show why
Israel had no case and claim my findings as a personal victory for the Palestinian cause.
As I read Dershowitz's systematic deconstruction of the lies I had been told, I felt a real
crisis of conscience. I couldn't disprove his arguments or find facts to respond to them
with. I didn't know what to believe. I'd blindly followed for so long, yet here I was
questioning whether I had been wrong?

I decided to visit Israel to find the truth. I was confronted by synagogues, mosques and
churches, by Jews and Arabs living together, by minorities playing huge parts in all areas
of Israeli life, from the military to the judiciary. It was shocking and eye-opening. This
wasn't the evil Zionist Israel that I had been told about.

After much soul searching, I knew what I had once believed was wrong. I had to stand
with Israel, with this tiny nation, free, democratic, making huge strides in medicine,
research and development, yet the victim of the same lies and hatred that nearly consumed
me.

Not all people were so positively influenced, a woman in England asked the manager of a large
book store for a copy of The Case For Israel. He responded, “there is no case for Israel.”

I have devoted much of my 7th decade to the defense of Israel (while continuing to criticize many
of its policies, especially regarding settlements.) This has earned me the title of “the Jewish
State’s lead attorney in the court of public opinion” and “America’s most public Jewish defender.”
It has also earned me the title of “Ziofascist,” “Jewish Nazi,” “tool of the Likud,” and “Israel
Firster.”

It is these latter titles that have brought about the most recent change in my life during my 8th
decade. Until recently, I was always known as a liberal Democrat aligned politically with the likes
of Senator Ted Kennedy, President Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Senator
Hubert Humphrey, Justices Arthur Goldberg and William Brennan, the Reverend Martin Luther
King, and Judge David Bazelon. The organization with which I have been most closely
associated has been the American Civil Liberties Union, on whose national and local boards I
have served. The causes with which I have been most often associated were freedom of speech;
opposition to the death penalty; due process for criminal suspects and defendants; the separation
of church and state; racial, gender, religious, wealth and sexual orientation equality; and political
accountability . Indeed, when I have been considered for judgeships and other government
positions requiring Senate confirmation, I was generally regarded as “too liberal” to be confirmed.

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