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Just as Spain's National Court decided to shelve a phony war crime investigation of a 2002 Israeli air strike in Gaza, a group of lawyers and military experts assigned by the United Nations Human Rights Council continued its phony investigation of "the grave violations of human rights in the occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly due to the recent Israeli military attacks against the occupied Gaza Strip."

The UN Human Rights Council is a scandal. It's a successor to the defunct UN Human Rights Commission. Both organizations have a long history of singling out Israel for condemnation and of ignoring real human rights abusers by the world's worst offenders, several of which dominate the Human Rights Council and it predecessor.

As Hudson Institute scholar Anne Bayefsky recently noted: "The Council has adopted more resolutions and decisions condemning Israel than all the other 191 U.N. member states combined.... The more time the Council spends demonizing Israel, the less likely it becomes that it will ever get around to condemning genocide in Sudan, female slavery in Saudi Arabia, or torture in Egypt."

The very mandate that authorized the Gaza investigation reveals its bias against Israel. The council has already concluded, without any pretense to an investigation, that Israel is guilty of "grave violations of human rights... due to its... military attacks."

It has also concluded that the Gaza Strip "remains occupied," despite Israel having ended its occupation and having removed every single soldier and settler in 2005. Moreover, the Council's current president has limited the scope of the investigation to "violations committed in the context of the conflict that took place between 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009." Those are the dates of the Israeli response to more than seven years of rocket attacks by terrorists operating behind human shields in Gaza. During the period prior to 27 December 2008, Hamas and its terrorist allies fired thousands of rockets and mortar shells into civilian areas of Israel, killing, maiming and traumatizing Israeli women, men and children. But these attacks that provoked Israel's self-defense military actions are excluded from the investigation, according to the mandate and its interpretation by the president of the council. It would be as if the UN convened an investigation of the United States and terrorism but limited the investigation only to actions taken after September 12, 2001.

The very idea of the UN Council conducting an "independent" or objective investigation Israel is preposterous. It would be as if an all white Mississippi court were investigating a black man's self-defense in response to years of lynchings by whites and limiting its investigation to the event following the lynchings. There is simply no way of an investigation conducted under the auspices of the UN Human Rights Council and be fair. Its history of bias and bigotry should not be legitimated by men and women of decency who care about real human rights.

That is why it was so surprising and disturbing to see a good man like Richard Goldstone agree to head the investigation team appointed by the UN Human Rights Council. Goldstone is a South African who fought against Apartheid and led an important investigation into the causes of violence there, ultimately blaming the government itself for instigating violence through a "third force." Would he have succeeded if his commission had been limited to white members only, and if its mandate of his investigation was limited to the black violence and excluded the white violence that provoked it? Would he have been willing to lend his good name to legitimate the bad history of all white Apartheid courts? What if he were a black lawyer, deliberately selected by the all white court to be an "Uncle Tom" precisely because he was black?

Goldstone was selected to head this investigation precisely because he is Jewish. Let there be no mistake about that cynical reality. I don't blame the UN Council for selecting a Jew to legitimiate its kangaroo investigation of the Jewish state, but I wonder why a man like Goldstone would allow himself to be used in this manner. Does he not realize how he is being played? How his distinguished reputation is being exploited in the interest of bigotry? Oh yes, Goldstone will be "even-handed". That is precisely what the Council wants: equivalent condemnation of Israel and Hamas for unequivalent actions.

Hamas admits -- indeed boasts -- that it has committed multiple war crimes: first it boasts about firing rockets at Israeli school children; it fires its rockets primarily at times when Israeli children are on their way to and from school; it has hit several kindergartens, elementary schools and playgrounds (fortunately, the children had been sent home); it celebrates every civilian death and injury it causes. Targeting civilians is a war crime.

Second, Hamas boasts of hiding behind human shields, which is also a war crime. A prominent Hamas legislator has boasted of the fact that Hamas:

"...[has] formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: 'We desire death like you desire life.'"

Third, since Hamas is the elected government of Gaza, every rocket attack from Gaza is a violation of Article 51 of the UN Charter, which authorizes member nations to defend itself against "armed attack."

Fourth, these attacks are part of a long term strategy to destroy a member nation of the United Nations, as the Hamas charter clearly proclaims.

No "investigation" is needed to conclude that Hamas engaged in war crimes.

Israel, on the other hand, is engaged in legitimate self defense: as a leading British expert, Richard Kemp put it on the BBC during the Gaza War:

"I don't think there has ever been a time in the history of warfare when an army has made more efforts to reduce the civilian casualties and deaths of innocent people than the IDF is doing today in Gaza."

To be even-handed in the face of such uneven conduct, or to find moral equivalence where there is none, would be the worst sort of immoral bigotry. Yet moral and legal equivalence is precisely what this investigatory commission will "find," following its "independent fact-finding mission," unless it finds that Israel's conduct was worse than Hamas's because more people died from Israeli fire than from Hamas rockets. The investigators will ignore the law that holds murderers who hide behind human shields responsible for the deaths of these human shields, even when the bullets that killed them came from the weapons of those who engaged in legitimate self-defense. Consider the analogous situation of the Navy SEALs who killed the Somali pirates that had kidnapped American merchant captain Richard Phillips. Similar rescue attempts have sometimes resulted in the tragic deaths of the hostages. Would it be fair to try the SEALs for murder, instead of the pirates? That is exactly what the Gaza commission aims to do to Israel. It will also ignore the fact that Hamas always exaggerates the number of civilians killed by including in that category armed police (who double as terrorists), "civilians" who willing serve as human shields or who willingly allow their homes to be used to manufacture, store or fire rockets, "children" and "women" who have become terrorists, and even "collaborators" killed by Hamas.

Goldstone will try his best to be even-handed. But he knows that unless his report condemns Israel, at least as forcefully as it condemns Hamas, it will never be accepted by the UN Human Rights Council and his work will come to naught. He is an experienced international diplomat. He knows who appointed him. He understands his mandate. He will try to expand it to include Hamas war crimes, so as to be "even-handed," even though Hamas already boasts of its crimes.

Israel too knows this. They know Goldstone. They know that his appointment was calculated to make it difficult for Israel to refuse to cooperate with a Jewish investigator who has had close ties with the Jewish state. Their refusal to cooperate with this distinguished group of investigators, they will be seen by some as afraid of the "truth." Had they cooperated, they know that "the truth" produced by this investigation will be a lie. They are in a no-win situation, precisely because Richard Goldstone accepted an appointment he should never have agreed to accept.

Israel should conduct its own thorough investigation and let the chips fall where they may.

Richard Goldstone should resign in protest if the Human Rights Council finds moral or legal equivalence between the multiple war crimes deliberately committed by a terrorist and the inadvertent deaths caused by the use of human shields to protect terrorists from legitimate self-defense actions taken by a democracy to protect its citizens.

Irwin Cotler, the former minister of justice and attorney general of Canada, member of Canadian parliament and co-author of this piece, is introducing legislation in Canadian parliament today called the "Iran Accountability Act." While it expressly holds Iran to account - for its genocidal threats, nuclear ambitions and domestic repressions - it can also function to hold any signatory to the Genocide Convention to account. All signatories to the 1948 Genocide Convention (including the United States) have a responsibility to prevent genocide - and to punish incitement to genocide - that they have largely ignored in the case of the world's greatest threat. The IAA, while a Canadian initiative, is a template model as to how to fulfill these responsibilities and take a stand against Iranian criminal actions.

We were in Geneva when the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, stepped to the podium at the United Nations and delivered an address at a conference ostensibly aimed at fighting racism. With that speech - fettered with anti-Semitic comments and rooted in the very intolerance the Durban Review Conference was supposed to be combating, the whole delivered on the day of Holocaust remembrance in Geneva - the use and abuse of the United Nations reached a new, shameful low.

President Ahmadinejad is a man who incites to hatred and genocide in violation of the Genocide Convention's prohibition; who is engaged in the massive repression of the rights of his own people--particularly the Baha'i religious minority of Iran; who pursues the most destructive of weaponry in violation of UN Security Council Resolutions; who is complicit in crimes against humanity through genocidal terrorist proxies; who assaults the basic tenet of the UN Charter; who presides, as president, over the parading in the streets of Tehran of a Shahab-3 missile draped in the emblem "Wipe Israel off the Map" while exhorting the masses with cries of "Death to Israel"; who denies the Holocaust as he incites to a new one; who warns Muslims that if they recognize Israel, they will burn in the umma of Islam; and who has used the podium of the United Nations General Assembly to invoke classic anti-Semitic tropes reminiscent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Such a person belongs in the docket of the accused, not the podium of the United Nations.

And yet the danger of a genocidal, nuclear and rights-violating Iran did not begin with President Ahmadinejad and will not end simply with the completion of his tenure. The supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, stated that "it is the mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to erase Israel from the map of the region."

Indeed, when he delivered his most infamous incitement - that Israel should be "wiped off the map" - President Ahmadinejad made it clear that he was simply repeating what "the Imam said"--at once grounding his hateful prescription in the words of former supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and invoking religion to confirm the obligation.

Let us be clear, however, that the great civilization of Iran - and the peoples of Iran - are not the ones targeted by this legislation. To the contrary, the bill takes as its premise that these peoples are increasingly the object of Iran's human rights violations. It is in their best interest that the international community hold Iran's leaders to account.

As Edmond Burke cautioned, it is clear that this evil will triumph unless good people do something to stop it. This template Iran Accountability Act would ensure precisely that.

The IAA divests Canada from investment in Iran. It establishes a mechanism to monitor incitement to hate in Iran, and would render the most virulent inciters inadmissible to Canada. It freezes the assets of those that contribute to Iran's nuclear or military infrastructure -as well as its machinery of hate. It uses the framework of the international community - Canada's bilateral relationships and the United Nations - to bring Iran to justice through recognized principles of international law. And, similar to a recent American legislative proposal, it targets Iran's dependence on imported petroleum - so long as the incitement continues.

The IAA makes it clear that diplomacy targeted solely at Iran's nuclear threat mistakenly ignores the terrifying and vilifying context in which that threat operates and, however inadvertently, sanitizes the genocidal incitement at its core.

We hope that the US government and Congress look closely at this bill. A dual statement from both Canada and the United States would send a clear signal to Iran that while we are open to engagement, we will not acquiesce in incitement to genocide and other crimes against humanity.


Irwin Cotler, a Montreal MP, is the former minister of justice and attorney general of Canada. Alan Dershowitz is Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard University.

Rahm Emanuel is a good man and a good friend of Israel, but in a highly publicized recent statement he linked American efforts to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons to Israeli efforts toward establishing a Palestinian state. This is a dangerous linkage.

I have long favored the two-state solution, as do most Israelis and American supporters of Israel. I have also long opposed civilian settlements deep into the West Bank. I hope that Israel does make efforts, as it has in the past, to establish a Palestinian state as part of an overall peace between the Jewish state and its Arab and Muslim neighbors.

Israel in 2000-2001 offered the Palestinians a state in the entire Gaza Strip and more than 95% of the West Bank, with its capital in Jerusalem and a $35 billion compensation package for the refugees. Yassir Arafat rejected the offer and instead began the second intifada in which nearly 5,000 people were killed. I hope that Israel once again offers the Palestinians a contiguous, economically-viable, politically independent state, in exchange for a real peace, with security, without terrorism and without any claim to "return" 4 million alleged refugees as a way of destroying Israel by demography rather than violence.

But the threat from a nuclear Iran is existential and immediate for Israel. It also poses dangers to the entire region, as well as to the United States. The dangers come not only from the possibility that a nation directed by suicidal leaders would order a nuclear attack on Israel or its allies, but from the likelihood that nuclear material could end up in the hands of Hezbollah, Hamas or even Al Qaeda. Recall what Hashemi Rifsanjani said to an American journalist:

[Rifsanjani] boast[ed] that an Iranian [nuclear] attack would kill as many as five million Jews. Rafsanjani estimated that even if Israel retaliated by dropping its own nuclear bombs, Iran would probably lose only fifteen million people, which he said would be a small 'sacrifice' from among the billion Muslims in the world.

Israel has the right, indeed the obligation, to take this threat seriously and to consider it as a first priority. It will be far easier for Israel to make peace with the Palestinians if it did not have to worry about the threat of a nuclear attack or a dirty bomb. It will also be easier for Israel to end its occupation of the West Bank if Iran were not arming and inciting Hamas, Hezbollah and other enemies of Israel to terrorize Israel by rockets and suicide bombers. In this respect, Emanuel has it exactly backwards: if there is any linkage, it goes the other way -- defanging Iran will promote the end of the occupation and the two-state solution. Threatening not to help Israel in relation to Iran unless it moves toward a two-state solution first is likely to backfire.

After all, Israel is a democracy and in the end the people decide. A recent poll published in Haaretz concluded that 66% of Israelis favored a preemptive military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities, with 75% of those saying they would still favor such a strike even if the United States were opposed.

Israel's new government will accept a two-state solution if they are persuaded that it will really be a solution -- that it will assure peace and an end to terrorist and nuclear threats to Israeli citizens. I have known Prime Minister Netanyhu for 35 years and I recently had occasion to spend some time with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. I am convinced that despite their occasional tough talk, both want to see an end to this conflict.

Israelis have been scarred by what happened in Gaza. Israel ended the occupation, removed all of the settlers, and left behind millions of dollars worth of agricultural and other facilities designed to make the Gaza into an economically-viable democracy. Land for peace is what they sought. Instead they got land for rocket attacks against their children, their women and their elderly. No one wants to see a repeat of this trade-off.

Emanuel's statements were viewed with alarm in Israel because most Israelis, though they want to like President Obama, are nervous about his policies toward Israel. They are prepared to accept pressure regarding the settlements, which are not related to Israel's security, but they worry that the Obama Administration may be ready to compromise, or at least threaten to compromise, Israel's security, if its newly elected government does not submit to pressure on the settlements. Most Israelis strongly believe that these issues must not be linked.

Making peace with the Palestinians will be extremely complicated. It will take time. It may or may not succeed in the end, depending on whether the Palestinians will continue to want their own state less than they want to see the end of the Jewish state. Israel should not be held hostage to the Iranian nuclear threat by the difficulty of making peace with the Palestinians. Recall again that Israel offered such a peace in 2000-2001, only to be rebuffed. It may be rebuffed again, especially if Palestinian radicals believe that such a rebuff will soften American action against Iran. In the meantime, Iran will continue in its efforts to develop nuclear weapons. That cannot be allowed to happen, regardless of progress on the ground toward peace with the Palestinians. These two issues must be delinked if either is to succeed. There are other ways of encouraging Israel to make peace with the Palestinians. Nuclear blackmail is not one of them.

Last week I came face to face with evil, as I stood just a few feet away from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. We were both staying in the same hotel in Geneva. He was there to be the opening speaker at Durban II, a review and reprise of Durban I, the United Nations sponsored conference on racism that had turned into a racist hate fest against the Jewish people and the Jewish state. I was there--along with Elie Wiesel, Irwin Cotler and others who have devoted their lives to combating bigotry--to try to prevent a recurrence of Durban I.

I first set eyes on Ahmadinejad when he walked into the hotel and waved in the general direction of where my wife and I were standing. We looked back contemptuously as my wife let out an audible hiss. He was about to be welcomed to Geneva by the Swiss President who made a special visit to the hotel in order to greet a man who denies the Holocaust while threatening another one, this time with nuclear weapons.

When the Swiss President was widely criticized for his warm and uncritical embrace of one of the worlds most evil and dangerous tyrants, he offered two justifications. First, because Switzerland was the host nation for the conference, he was obliged, as the president of the host nation, to greet a fellow head of state. This is patent nonsense. American presidents do not greet heads of states invited by the United Nations, unless they have also been invited by the United States. No American president has greeted Ahmadinejad when he spoke at the UN. Nor would President Obama--certainly without publicly and privately expressing disdain for his bigoted and dangerous views.

This leads to the Swiss President's second purported justification, namely that Switzerland represents the United States interests in dealing with Iran, with whom it has no formal diplomatic relations. In other words, when the president of Switzerland extended a hand to Ahmadinejad, it was not only the hand of Switzerland, but also the hand of the United States. This too is nonsense compounded by overreaching. The United States had no interest in extending a hand of legitimacy to Ahmadinejad. Indeed the Obama government--along with many other democratic governments--refused to legitimate this conference by its attendance. Other democracies, which chose to attend, publicly walked out of Ahmadinejad 's bigoted tirade.

The Swiss president had no authority or right to act on behalf of the United States in the way that he did. The US should find another government--one that understands the difference between good and evil and knows how to confront the latter--to represent it in its dealings with Iran. By his craven actions, the Swiss president has disqualified himself from serving in this important role. Neutrality should not be confused with legitimating evil and being complicit with bigotry, as the Swiss have been guilty of since they served as Hitler's banker during World War II.

Not only did the Swiss president legitimate, the Swiss security services protected him from the media. It was certainly appropriate for security to protect Ahmadinejad from physical threats, but they also sought to protect him from being embarrassed by difficult questions from the press, as evidenced by the following incident.

A bank of television cameras and reporters were waiting to interview Ahmadinejad's after his meeting with the Swiss president. He was still in the meeting, and so I approached the reporters and suggested that they put several specific questions to him. The press was anxious to hear from me, but the security services physically removed me from the hotel, even though A was nowhere to be seen.

My second encounter with evil occurred on the day of Ahmadinejad's speech. We, who were there to respond to Ahmadinejad's bigotry, were told that we could listen to his speech in a special room set aside for those who could not enter the actual room in which he was speaking. Several hundred people watched on a television screen as he walked up to the podium to rousing applause by many of the delegates. But the UN purposely decided not to translate his speech into English. All other speeches were translated but we were required to listen to Ahmadinejad in Farci. I complained that the right of free speech goes both ways: it not only includes Ahmadinejad's right to express his horrendous opinions, it also includes his critics' right to listen to his words so that we can rebut them in the marketplace of ideas. When the UN authorities refused to translate his speech, I led a walkout from the overflow room toward the room in which he was speaking. I entered the room and took a seat several rows away from where he expressed some of the most horrendous views I had ever heard. To their credit, many of the European delegates walked out in disgust. I joined them, urging other delegates to leave as well and telling them that "silence in the face of evil is complicity." But most of the delegates remained and applauded Ahmadinejad when he made his extreme statements calling not only for the end of Israel but the end of all liberal democracies around the world.

It was then that I understood better how Hitler had come to power. Hitler rose to a position where he could commit genocide not as the result of anti-Semites, but rather because otherwise decent people put their own self interests before the need to condemn his bigotry. As Edmund Burke observed many years ago, "all that is required for evil to succeed is for good men [and women] to remain silent." In that room, on that day, I came face to face with Ahmadinejad's evil. I expected that, but I also came face to face with a different kind of evil: the evil of a president of a great nation extending a hand of friendship to Ahmadinejad; and the evil of delegates of many nations applauding some of the most bigoted statements ever uttered from a United Nations lectern.

In the end, the forces of hate and bigotry were confronted by students, professors and political figures who stood against Ahmadinejad and everything he represents. Ahmadinejad and the conference that reflected his world view lost this round, but the battle against bigotry never stays won.

Those who successfully challenged the nomination of Charles W. Freeman, Jr. to become chairman of the National Intelligence Council should be praised for an act of high patriotism. It would have been disastrous for the United States to have, as the person responsible for overseeing "policy-neutral intelligence assessments" for the president, a zealot who is anything but policy-neutral when it comes to two of the most important areas of international conflict.

Freeman not only has extremist views regarding the Middle East and China, but he has been beholden to lobby groups that are anxious to influence intelligent assessments regarding Saudi Arabia and China. Freeman bowed out when it became clear that his highly questionable financial ties to the Saudi and China lobby would be deeply probed by inspectors general, congressional staffers and the media. He couldn't handle the truth about his financial ties to these lobbies which do not serve the interests of the United States. The heavy thumbs of the powerful Saudi and Chinese lobbies would have subtly, and perhaps invisibly, weighed on Freeman's intelligence assessment.

Freeman is an ideologue who apparently believed that China should have been more aggressive in its crackdown on the peaceful Tiananmen Square protestors. At the same time, he has been critical of American support for Israeli efforts to stop violent terrorists from blowing up Israeli schools buses and firing rockets at Israeli kindergartens. There is only one rational explanation for why a smart intelligence official would be so irrational as to express more sympathy for brutal Chinese repression of peaceful dissent than for Israeli self-defense against violent terrorism: Freeman has been bought and paid for by lobbies that he does not wish to alienate. He has a long history of playing the tunes selected for him by those who have paid him. He is an ideological zealot when it comes to the Middle East. Senator Charles Schumer correctly characterized his views as "over the top" and an "irrational hatred of Israel."

Freeman acknowledged that he is deeply and emotionally committed to a fundamental change in US policy toward Israel. That is certainly his right as a private citizen or even as an elected official. But his extremist views would not have served him, or our nation well, as the person responsible for what are supposed to "policy-neutral intelligence assessments." An ideologue with such heavy financial baggage is simply incapable of policy-neutrality, and he should have known that.

If there was ever any doubt about his neutrality, he eliminated it by his over-the-top reaction to those who challenged his qualifications for the job based on his record. He railed against "the Israel lobby" blaming it, and it alone, for his failure to get the job. He ignored those human rights advocates who were outraged by his defense of the Chinese repression of the Tiananmen demonstrators and his unwavering support for the most repressive regime in the Middle East. He ignored environmentalists who worried that he was far too beholden to oil interests. And he ignored patriotic Americans who support the U.S. policy in the Middle East because they believe it is good for America, for democracy and for the war against terrorism.

Freeman was not alone in invoking the "power" of the Israel lobby and accusing it of unpatriotic actions. He teamed up with Stephen Walt, the discredited academic who has recently made a career of blaming all of America's ills on "The Lobby." Here is how Walt gleefully put it: "For all of you out there who may have questioned whether there was a powerful 'Israel Lobby' or admitted that it existed but didn't think it had much influence...think again." Walt ignored the fact that the powerful Saudi, China and foreign oil lobbies were supporting Freeman because they believed, quite correctly, that his assessment of intelligence would be anything but neutral when it came to protecting their interests. He also ignored the fact that AIPAC--which Walt considers the puppet master of the Jewish Lobby--took no position on the Freeman nomination, and that those who opposed it included critics of Israeli policies.

So let me understand the Freeman-Walt position. When the Saudis, the Chinese and foreign oil lobbies (with a small "l") exercise their influence, that is freedom of speech and the right to petition the government. But when the Israel Lobby (capital "L") challenges an appointment, such action is "dual loyalty," "un-American" and "unpatriotic." Their other position is that any time people of diverse backgrounds and views independently challenge a government decision that relates to the Middle East, this represents the collective action of the notorious and powerful Israel Lobby, rather than the heartfelt views of individual patriotic Americans.

The truth is that the Freeman appointment was bad for America, bad for peace in the Middle East, bad for human rights in China, bad for Tibet, bad for the environment, and bad for "policy-neutral intelligence." Those who challenged it performed a patriotic duty. They should be praised for helping the Obama administration avoid a serious blunder that threatened to compromise the president's ability to act in the interest of the United States on the basis of policy-neutral intelligence. All Americans owe them a debt of gratitude.

Those who successfully challenged the nomination of Charles W. Freeman, Jr. to become chairman of the National Intelligence Council should be praised for an act of high patriotism. It would have been disastrous for the United States to have, as the person responsible for overseeing "policy-neutral intelligence assessments" for the president, a zealot who is anything but policy-neutral when it comes to two of the most important areas of international conflict.

Freeman not only has extremist views regarding the Middle East and China, but he has been beholden to lobby groups that are anxious to influence intelligent assessments regarding Saudi Arabia and China. Freeman bowed out when it became clear that his highly questionable financial ties to the Saudi and China lobby would be deeply probed by inspectors general, congressional staffers and the media. He couldn't handle the truth about his financial ties to these lobbies which do not serve the interests of the United States. The heavy thumbs of the powerful Saudi and Chinese lobbies would have subtly, and perhaps invisibly, weighed on Freeman's intelligence assessment.

Freeman is an ideologue who apparently believed that China should have been more aggressive in its crackdown on the peaceful Tiananmen Square protestors. At the same time, he has been critical of American support for Israeli efforts to stop violent terrorists from blowing up Israeli schools buses and firing rockets at Israeli kindergartens. There is only one rational explanation for why a smart intelligence official would be so irrational as to express more sympathy for brutal Chinese repression of peaceful dissent than for Israeli self-defense against violent terrorism: Freeman has been bought and paid for by lobbies that he does not wish to alienate. He has a long history of playing the tunes selected for him by those who have paid him. He is an ideological zealot when it comes to the Middle East. Senator Charles Schumer correctly characterized his views as "over the top" and an "irrational hatred of Israel."

Freeman acknowledged that he is deeply and emotionally committed to a fundamental change in US policy toward Israel. That is certainly his right as a private citizen or even as an elected official. But his extremist views would not have served him, or our nation well, as the person responsible for what are supposed to "policy-neutral intelligence assessments." An ideologue with such heavy financial baggage is simply incapable of policy-neutrality, and he should have known that.

If there was ever any doubt about his neutrality, he eliminated it by his over-the-top reaction to those who challenged his qualifications for the job based on his record. He railed against "the Israel lobby" blaming it, and it alone, for his failure to get the job. He ignored those human rights advocates who were outraged by his defense of the Chinese repression of the Tiananmen demonstrators and his unwavering support for the most repressive regime in the Middle East. He ignored environmentalists who worried that he was far too beholden to oil interests. And he ignored patriotic Americans who support the U.S. policy in the Middle East because they believe it is good for America, for democracy and for the war against terrorism.

Freeman was not alone in invoking the "power" of the Israel lobby and accusing it of unpatriotic actions. He teamed up with Stephen Walt, the discredited academic who has recently made a career of blaming all of America's ills on "The Lobby." Here is how Walt gleefully put it: "For all of you out there who may have questioned whether there was a powerful 'Israel Lobby' or admitted that it existed but didn't think it had much influence...think again." Walt ignored the fact that the powerful Saudi, China and foreign oil lobbies were supporting Freeman because they believed, quite correctly, that his assessment of intelligence would be anything but neutral when it came to protecting their interests. He also ignored the fact that AIPAC--which Walt considers the puppet master of the Jewish Lobby--took no position on the Freeman nomination, and that those who opposed it included critics of Israeli policies.

So let me understand the Freeman-Walt position. When the Saudis, the Chinese and foreign oil lobbies (with a small "l") exercise their influence, that is freedom of speech and the right to petition the government. But when the Israel Lobby (capital "L") challenges an appointment, such action is "dual loyalty," "un-American" and "unpatriotic." Their other position is that any time people of diverse backgrounds and views independently challenge a government decision that relates to the Middle East, this represents the collective action of the notorious and powerful Israel Lobby, rather than the heartfelt views of individual patriotic Americans.

The truth is that the Freeman appointment was bad for America, bad for peace in the Middle East, bad for human rights in China, bad for Tibet, bad for the environment, and bad for "policy-neutral intelligence." Those who challenged it performed a patriotic duty. They should be praised for helping the Obama administration avoid a serious blunder that threatened to compromise the president's ability to act in the interest of the United States on the basis of policy-neutral intelligence. All Americans owe them a debt of gratitude.

Dear President Hexter:

Hampshire has now done the right thing. It has made it unequivocally clear that it did not and will not divest from Israel. Indeed, it will continue to hold stock in companies that do business with Israel as well as with Israeli companies, so long as these companies meet the general standards that Hampshire applies to all of its holdings.

As I previously wrote to President Hexter, if Hampshire did the right thing and made its position crystal clear I would urge contributors to continue to contribute to this fine school. I now do so. Indeed, I plan myself to make a contribution to Hampshire and to urge that my contribution, and perhaps others, be used to start a fund to encourage the presentation of all reasonable views regarding the Middle East to the college community.

Debate about the Middle East is essential and criticism of any of the parties, when warranted, is healthy. What I condemned and continue to condemn is the singling out of Israel for divestment, unwarranted condemnation or any other sanction.

I look forward to working together with Hampshire to assure that the marketplace of ideas remains open to all reasonable views on this important issue, and that students feel comfortable expressing views that may not represent the majority view on the campus.

Alan Dershowitz

Several months ago, a rabidly anti Israel group on the Hampshire College campus began a campaign to try to get the college to divest from six companies that they claim helped "the Israeli occupation of Palestine." Those who came up with this formulation regard all of Israel, including Tel Aviv, Haifa and Ben Gurion Airport, as "occupied Palestine." In other words, their goal is to end the existence of Israel. This divestment effort is part of an international campaign against Israel. Until now, every American university administration has categorically rejected this attempt to single out Israel in a world filled with massive human rights abusers. But Hampshire caved in to student and faculty pressure and as Board of Directors agreed to divest from these six companies along with a series of others that did not meet the standards of Hampshire College. The student group, supported by many faculty members, claimed total victory, issuing a press release that boasted that Hampshire has become the first college in the United States to divest from Israel. It urged other universities to follow its lead.

Those supporting the petition include the notorious anti-Semite Cynthia McKinney, America and Israel basher Noam Chomsky and other Israel haters. The six companies include General Electric, ITT, Motorola and other corporations that employ thousands of American workers. The divestment campaign applies to Israel and Israel alone. Hampshire will continue to deal with companies that supply Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, Cuba, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Belarus and other brutal dictatorships around the world that routinely murder civilians, torture and imprison dissenters, deny educational opportunities to women, imprison gays and repress speech. Indeed many of those who support divestiture against Israel actively support these repressive regimes. This divestment campaign has absolutely nothing to do with human rights. It is motivated purely by hatred for the Jewish state. As New York Times columnist Tom Friedman put it: "Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vial. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanctions -- out of proportion to any other party in the Middle East--is anti-Semitic and not saying so is dishonest."

The petition itself mentions nothing about terrorism directed against Israeli civilians, rocket attacks aimed at its kindergartens, and the unwillingness of Hamas even to recognize Israel's right to exist. It seeks to express "solidarity with Palestinian students whose access to education is severely inhibited by the Israeli occupation." It fails to add that Palestinian students have more and better access to education than Arab students in nearly every other part of the Middle East. It fails to mention that students are routinely arrested for expressing dissenting views in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and other Muslim nations. It fails to mention that Israel has affirmative action programs for its Palestinian students. It fails to mention that when Israel ended the occupation of Gaza in an effort to trade land for peace, all it got in return was more than 6,000 rockets fired from Gaza at its children. It fails to present any balance concerning the Israel-Palestine conflict.

When protests over Hampshire action began, the administration issued a statement of clarification, which did not mention Israel but claimed, obliquely, that "the decision expressly did not pertain to a political movement or single out businesses active in a specific region or country." [To read the entire statement go here]

But Hampshire President Hexter acknowledged that "it was the good work of SJP" -- the virulently anti-Israel group called Student For Justice in Palestine -- "that brought this issue to the attention of the committee."

They can't have it both ways. They undertook no action based on alleged violations by any country other than Israel, which allowed the anti-Israel group to claim victory, as they have been doing even after the "clarification." Virtually every media report was headlined "Hampshire First College in United States to Divest From Israel."

Before writing this article, I spoke to the President and the Chairman of the Board. They denied that this divestment action was directed against Israel. I asked them to issue a statement which made that clear: namely, "Hampshire rejected an attempt by Students for Justice in Palestine to divest from companies supporting the occupation of Palestine, and instead applied existing principles, requiring them to divest from companies which failed to meet certain standards." They refused to issue any such statement, obviously because they didn't want to alienate the anti-Israel students. Like most universities, they do want to have it both ways. They want to appear to be saying one thing to the anti-Israel students and another thing to those who would be appalled at singling out Israel for divestment. But on an issue of this kind, they simply can't have it both ways: either they rejected efforts to single out Israel for divestiture, in which case they should say so, or they accepted these efforts, and covered it up with a cosmetically-broader divestiture, which appears to be the case.

It may well be that the anti-Israel student group has hijacked the voice of the college, but if so the hijacking has not been strongly resisted. The voice of the student group has become the voice of the college because it has been clearer and less ambiguous.

My son, who went to Hampshire College, has urged me to take this action. We have supported the college through tuition payments and occasional gifts. No more! I now call on all decent people -- supporters and critics of Israel alike -- to make no further contributions to a school that now promotes discrimination and is complicit in evil. There must be a price paid for bigotry, and the actions of Hampshire College in singling out only Israel for divestiture is bigotry plain and simple. Silence is not an option. Inaction is not an option. Fighting back against the likes of Cynthia McKinney is mandatory for all people of good will.

The goal is not to harm the students or faculty of Hampshire College, but the petition claims that sentiment in favor of this bigoted resolution is overwhelming among students and faculty. Students and faculty too must understand that bigotry has its cost.

Hampshire College will survive its self-inflicted wound, but decency cannot survive with the kind of double standard bigotry directed only against the Jewish state.

Hampshire is a small college without much influence. But those who are conducting the national campaign see their victory at Hampshire as an opening wedge with which to get other more influential universities to follow suit by adopting similarly bigoted proposals. This is a cancer that is threatening to spread around the world, and it must be stopped where it began--at Hampshire.

Until and unless the Hampshire administration clarifies its ambiguous "clarification" to make it unequivocally clear that it rejects any and all efforts to single out Israel for divestment, contributions to that otherwise fine school should be placed on hold.

Alan M. Dershowitz is a professor of law at Harvard. He is the author of many books, including, most recently, "The Case Against Israel's Enemies."

There are efforts now underway to try to bring Israel before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague on charges of alleged war crimes. Neither Israel nor the United States has signed on to this court, primarily out of fear that its power would be used against democracies that try their best to avoid war crimes, rather than against dictatorships and terrorist nations that routinely engage in them. This has certainly been the experience with many United Nations organizations, even including the International Court of Justice, which is largely a sham when it comes to Israel and other democracies under attack.

There has been high hope among some human rights experts that the ICC would be different for two reasons: First and foremost it is not a United Nations court. It was established by the Rome Statute, a treaty adopted in 1998 after years of negotiations, and is largely independent of the United Nations, though not completely so. Cases can be referred to it by the UN Security Council under Article 13(b) of the treaty. The second reason the ICC has encouraged optimism is that the person appointed as the court's Chief Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocompo, has a sterling reputation for objective law enforcement and basic fairness.

The ICC has rightly opened up investigations of genocide in Darfur, Sudan,. (It is now under pressure to suspend any prosecution of President Omar al-Bashir). It has not opened investigations with regard to Russia's alleged war crimes in Chechnya and Georgia, where thousands of innocent civilians were killed. Nor has it opened investigations with regard to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, the Congo and other places where civilians are routinely targeted as part of military and terrorist campaigns. Nor -- to its credit -- has it opened an investigation of Great Britain and the United States, whose armed forces have inadvertently caused the deaths of thousands of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Were it now to open an investigation of Israel, ICC would be violating the cardinal principle that must govern all international prosecutions: namely, that the worst must be prosecuted first. It would also be violating its own rules which mandate that the International Criminal Court will not become a substitute for domestic courts. If there are processes within the State of Israel to consider allegations against the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), then those processes must be allowed to move forward unless Israel is "unwilling or unable genuinely to carry out the investigation or prosecution," according to the Rome Statute. There is no country in the world -- literally none -- that has a judicial system that is more open to charges against its own government. Not the United States, not Great Britain, and certainly not Russia, Zimbabwe or Pakistan! Moreover, Israel has a completely open and very critical free press, which is constantly exposing Israeli imperfections and editorializing against them. Third, the IDF has legal teams that must approve of every military action taken by the armed forces. There are obviously close questions, about which reasonable experts can disagree, but there is no country in the world that goes to greater lengths in its efforts to conform its military actions to international law. Listen to retired British Colonel Richard Kemp -- a military expert who, based on his experience, concluded that there has been "no time in the history of warfare when an Army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties...than [the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza]."

Despite deliberate efforts by Hamas to maximize Palestinian civilian casualties by firing rockets from behind human shields, Israel has succeeded in its efforts to minimize civilian casualties. Hamas has a policy of exaggerating civilian casualties, both by inflating the total number of people killed and by reducing the number of its combatants included in that total. A recent study conducted by the Italian Newspaper Corriere della Sera disputed Hamas figures and put the total number of Palestinians killed, including Hamas terrorists, at less than 600. And this week, the UN withdrew claims made during the war that Israel had shelled a school run in Gaza by the UN Relief and Works Agency.

The same Rome Statute that established the ICC also describes many of Hamas's actions during the war, such as attacking Israeli civilians and using Palestinian civilians as human shields, as war crimes. Any fair investigation by the ICC would have to conclude that Israel's efforts to prevent civilian casualties, while seeking to protect its civilians from Hamas war crimes, rank it at the very top of nations in compliance with the rule of law. It would also conclude that efforts to brand Israel's actions as war crimes are crassly political, based on ideology and not law. If anything, Hamas belongs in the dock, not Israel.

One of the most sordid legacies of the Bush administration has been the pressure the Bush White House put on the Justice Department to prosecute its political enemies and give passes to its political allies. The Justice Department, under former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, submitted to that pressure and engaged in a policy of selective investigations and prosecutions.

The prosecutor of the ICC must resist pressures -- from the United Nations, from radical ideologues and from other biased sources -- to apply a double standard to Israel by singling the Jewish state out from among law-abiding democracies for a war crimes investigation. No international court can retain its credibility if it inverts the principle of "the worst first" and instead goes after one of the best as one its first.

Every time Israel seeks to defend its civilians against terrorist attacks, it is accused of war crimes by various United Nations agencies, hard left academics and some in the media. It is a totally phony charge concocted as part of Hamas' strategy -- supported by many on the hard left -- to delegitimate and demonize the Jewish state. Israel is the only democracy in the world ever accused of war crimes when it fights a defensive war to protect its civilians. This is remarkable, especially in light of the fact that Israel has killed far fewer civilians than any other country in the world that has faced comparable threats. In the most recent war in Gaza fewer than a thousand civilians -- even by Hamas' skewed count -- have been killed. This, despite the fact that no one can now deny that Hamas had employed a deliberate policy of using children, schools, mosques, apartment buildings and other civilian areas as shields from behind which to launch its deadly anti-personnel rockets. The Israeli Air Force has produced unchallengeable video evidence of this Hamas war crime.

Just to take one comparison, consider the recent wars waged by Russia against Chechnya. In these wars Russian troops have killed tens of thousands of Chechnyan civilians, some of them willfully, at close range and in cold blood. Yet those radical academics who scream bloody murder against Israel (particularly in England) have never called for war crime tribunals to be convened against Russia. Nor have they called for war crime charges to be filed against any other of the many countries that routinely kill civilians, not in an effort to stop enemy terrorists, but just because it is part of their policy.

Nor did we see the Nuremburg-type rallies that were directed against Israel when hundreds of thousands of civilians were being murdered in Rwanda, in Darfur and in other parts of the world. These bigoted hate-fests are reserved for Israel.

The accusation of war crimes is nothing more than a tactic selectively invoked by Israel's enemies. Those who cry "war crime" against Israel don't generally care about war crimes, as such, indeed they often support them when engaged in by country's they like. What these people care about, and all they seem to care about, is Israel. Whatever Israel does is wrong regardless of the fact that so many other countries do worse.

When I raised this concern in a recent debate, my opponent accused me of changing the subject. He said we are talking about Israel now, not Chechnya or Darfur. This reminded me of a famous exchange between Harvard's racist president, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, and the great American judge Leonard Hand. Lowell announced that he wanted to reduce the number of Jews at Harvard, because, "Jews cheat." Judge Hand replied that "Christians also cheat." Lowell responded, "You're changing the subject. We are talking about Jews."

Well, you can't just talk about Jews. Nor can you just talk about the Jewish state. Any discussion of war crimes must be comparative and contextual. If Russia did not commit war crimes when its soldiers massacred tens of thousands of Chechnyans (not even in a defensive war) then on what basis could Israel be accused of accidentally killing a far fewer number of human shields in an effort to protect its civilians? What are the standards? Why are they not being applied equally or selectively? Can human rights endure in the face of such unequal and selective application? These are the questions the international community should be debating, not whether Israel, and Israel alone, violated the norms of that vaguest of notions called "international law" or the "law of war."

If Israel, and Israel alone among democracies fighting defensive wars, were ever to be charged with "war crimes," that would mark the end of international human rights law as a neutral arbitrator of conduct. Any international tribunal that were to charge Israel, having not charged the many nations that have done far worse, will lose any remaining legitimacy among fair-minded people of good will,

If the laws of war in particular, and international human rights in general, are to endure, they must be applied to nations in order of the seriousness of the violations, not in order of the political unpopularity of the nations. If the law of war were applied in this manner, Israel would be among the last, and certainly not the first, charged.