ninme

I found this, by Alan Dershowitz, on Damian Thompson’s Holy Smoke blog on the Telegraph site. He says that the Oxford Union is dead, that it’s “become a Potemkin village where a façade of fairness serves as a cover for the reality of bias.” Which is fabulous. Politicians don’t debate anymore (they just stand up in front of empty seats and C-Span cameras and talk about how great debate is), so the only thing debating does anymore is put awkward public speakers like myself in a difficult position in debating situations in school. Ah, but soon it will be a think of the past. Rejoice, ye shy rather-write-it-down masses!

The motion for Tuesday’s debate is: “This house believes that one state is the only solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict”:

A one-state solution would produce yet another Islamic fundamentalist state in place of the secular democracy that is now Israel. The resolution is simply another way of presenting an anti-Israel side (the one-state solution) and a pro-Israel side (the two-state solution). Not surprisingly the three debaters on the anti-Israel side are three well known anti Israel extremists. No problem there, because the one state side is the anti-Israel side. As Leon Wieseltie the literary editor of the New Republic put it: “A bi-national state is not the alternative for Israel. It is an alternative to Israel.”

Now let’s turn to the pro-Israel side. One of three speakers on the pro-Israel side is Peter Tatchell who is a member of the gay rights group called Out Rage! and of the extreme Left wing of the Green Party. He too is virulently anti-Israel and favors boycotts of the “the oppressive Israel state.” Yet the Oxford Union picked him to represent the pro Israel side, probably because he once opposed boycotting a gay rights march in Israel. I couldn’t find any record of Tatchell proposing boycotts of “oppressive” Muslim states, even those that execute gays. And he’s the pro-Israel advocate!

Yet compared to the next debater for the pro Israel side, Tatchell sounds like David Ben Gurion. Readers of this article will probably not believe it when I tell them who else was picked to represent the pro-Israel side by the benighted Oxford Union (after I turned down an invitation because of the “when did you stop beating your wife” terms of the debate and my proposed teammates). The pro Israel debater is none other than Norman Finkelstein [author of The Holocaust Industry]…

Yet by the standards of the Oxford Union, Norman Finkelstein is regarded as a pro Israel “scholar” – at least in this debate. Just last May, the same Finkelstein was selected to debate the anti-Israel side of the proposition: “This House believes the pro-Israeli lobby has successfully stifled Western debate about Israel’s action.” …

Will Oxford’s next debate be on whether the Holocaust occurred? And will they select as their debater in favor of the occurrence of the Holocaust the [British revisionist historian], David Irving? … Wait! The Oxford Union just announced that David Irving has been invited to participate in a future debate.

Interestingly, Mr Thompson edited out a lot of the spicier stuff (his ellipses) about Finklestein, because of Britain’s stricter libel laws. So even if he’s not writing it himself, he isn’t even able to quote it?