Blood Libel-Palin absolutely right:Dershowitz, Krauthammer, Boteach

In an exclusive statement, famed attorney and Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz defended Sarah Palin’s use of the term “blood libel” from multiple detractors. As the Media Matters/MSM/Democrat narrative on the Tucson tragedy unravels, they are getting a lot more desperate in their attacks on Palin. Fortunately, there are still plenty of honest liberals around:

The term “blood libel” has taken on a broad metaphorical meaning in public discourse. Although its historical origins were in theologically based false accusations against the Jews and the Jewish People,its current usage is far broader. I myself have used it to describe false accusations against the State of Israel by the Goldstone Report. There is nothing improper and certainly nothing anti-Semitic in Sarah Palin using the term to characterize what she reasonably believes are false accusations that her words or images may have caused a mentally disturbed individual to kill and maim. The fact that two of the victims are Jewish is utterly irrelevant to the propriety of using this widely used term.



Massacre, followed by libel

Gallery
The aftermath of the Tucson tragedy
The shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others Saturday in Tucson brought out an outpouring of emotion for the victims. Six people were killed, including a 9-year-old girl who went to the casual meet-and-greet because of her interest in politics. Giffords was among 13 wounded. The suspect, Jared Lee Loughner, 22, was taken into custody at the scene.

1. By Charles Krauthammer
Wednesday, January 12, 2011

The charge: The Tucson massacre is a consequence of the "climate of hate" created by Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Obamacare opponents and sundry other liberal betes noires.

The verdict: Rarely in American political discourse has there been a charge so reckless, so scurrilous and so unsupported by evidence.

As killers go, Jared Loughner is not reticent. Yet among all his writings, postings, videos and other ravings - and in all the testimony from all the people who knew him - there is not a single reference to any of these supposed accessories to murder.

Not only is there no evidence that Loughner was impelled to violence by any of those upon whom Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, the New York Times, the Tucson sheriff and other rabid partisans are fixated. There is no evidence that he was responding to anything, political or otherwise, outside of his own head.

A climate of hate? This man lived within his very own private climate. "His thoughts were unrelated to anything in our world," said the teacher of Loughner's philosophy class at Pima Community College. "He was very disconnected from reality," said classmate Lydian Ali. "You know how it is when you talk to someone who's mentally ill and they're just not there?" said neighbor Jason Johnson. "It was like he was in his own world."

His ravings, said one high school classmate, were interspersed with "unnerving, long stupors of silence" during which he would "stare fixedly at his buddies," reported the Wall Street Journal. His own writings are confused, incoherent, punctuated with private numerology and inscrutable taxonomy. He warns of government brainwashing and thought control through "grammar." He was obsessed with "conscious dreaming," a fairly good synonym for hallucinations.

This is not political behavior. These are the signs of a clinical thought disorder - ideas disconnected from each other, incoherent, delusional, detached from reality.


These are all the hallmarks of a paranoid schizophrenic. And a dangerous one. A classmate found him so terrifyingly mentally disturbed that, she e-mailed friends and family, she expected to find his picture on TV after his perpetrating a mass murder. This was no idle speculation: In class "I sit by the door with my purse handy" so that she could get out fast when the shooting began.

Furthermore, the available evidence dates Loughner's fixation on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to at least 2007, when he attended a town hall of hers and felt slighted by her response. In 2007, no one had heard of Sarah Palin. Glenn Beck was still toiling on Headline News. There was no Tea Party or health-care reform. The only climate of hate was the pervasive post-Iraq campaign of vilification of George W. Bush, nicely captured by a New Republic editor who had begun an article thus: "I hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it."

Finally, the charge that the metaphors used by Palin and others were inciting violence is ridiculous. Everyone uses warlike metaphors in describing politics. When Barack Obama said at a 2008 fundraiser in Philadelphia, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun," he was hardly inciting violence.

Why? Because fighting and warfare are the most routine of political metaphors. And for obvious reasons. Historically speaking, all democratic politics is a sublimation of the ancient route to power - military conquest. That's why the language persists. That's why we say without any self-consciousness such things as "battleground states" or "targeting" opponents. Indeed, the very word for an electoral contest - "campaign" - is an appropriation from warfare.

When profiles of Obama's first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, noted that he once sent a dead fish to a pollster who displeased him, a characteristically subtle statement carrying more than a whiff of malice and murder, it was considered a charming example of excessive - and creative - political enthusiasm. When Senate candidate Joe Manchin dispensed with metaphor and simply fired a bullet through the cap-and-trade bill - while intoning, "I'll take dead aim at [it]" - he was hardly assailed with complaints about violations of civil discourse or invitations to murder.

Did Manchin push Loughner over the top? Did Emanuel's little Mafia imitation create a climate for political violence? The very questions are absurd - unless you're the New York Times and you substitute the name Sarah Palin.

The origins of Loughner's delusions are clear: mental illness. What are the origins of Krugman's?

letters@charleskrauthammer.com


Rabbi Boteach Defends Palin's Use of 'Blood Libel'
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EmailPrint..Elspeth Reeve Elspeth Reeve – Fri Jan 14, 12:34 pm ET
WASHINGTON, DC – Sarah Palin was right to use the term "blood libel" in defending herself from accusations that her heated political rhetoric had something to do with the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach argues in The Wall Street Journal, because the term refers to Jews being falsely accused of murder--the important part is the innocence, not the Jewishness. Boteach is continuing a debate that has raged since Palin's video discussing the violence in Tuscon was posted early Wednesday morning. In defending Palin Boteach joins Jewish academic and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who spoke out earlier this week. It seems that nearly every public Palin statement generates controversy of some sort, but this is the first time the culture warrior has gotten caught up in a hot-button issue from the Dark Ages.

Boteach writes:
Murder is humanity's most severe sin, and it is trivialized when an innocent party is accused of the crime—especially when that party is a collective too numerous to be defended individually. If Jews have learned anything in their long history, it is that a false indictment of murder against any group threatens every group.


But not everyone agrees with Boteach, who happens to find himself in the limelight quite often.



'Boteach Got It Right' Israel Matzav writes. "We Jews don't have a monopoly on being smeared with blood libels. But many of us can empathize with what Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and other conservatives have gone through this past week."
He's Spot On, Sheya agrees. Blood libel "is an expression used for when someone is innocently accused of participating in a murder or being an accessory of. Jews don’t own the exclusive rights of this term. Jews would gladly get rid of it, anyone who wants it can have it. In fact we’ll even throw in the Holocaust for good measure."
About Time, Politico's Ben Smith writes. "It's not a celebrity controversy until Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has injected himself."


Palin Is Just Edgy, Paul Mirengoff insists at Power Line. "Palin may be the first prominent politician to have charged others with a 'blood libel' in the broad, modern sense of the term. This shows her, once again, to be 'edgy.' But being edgy doesn't necessarily mean acting improperly. Once a certain usage gains acceptance in mainstream political discourse... I see no obligation on the part of politicians to steer clear of that usage."

A Red Herring, The National Review's Jonah Goldberg says. Her intent was honorable and her point was right. ... She wasn’t even talking about 'the blood libel' but warning against the creation of 'a blood libel,' which is exactly what Krugman, Olberman & Co. were doing."