Dershowitz blames 15-year old victim in child trafficking case; a 'prostitute' who 'made her own decisions'

Phillip Weiss
Mondo Weiss
via Sott.net

Dershowitz’s comments are ‘shockingly vicious and sexist,’ says Harvard Law Record

Dershowitz’s comments are ‘shockingly vicious and sexist,’ says Harvard Law Record article - See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/02/dershowitzs-comments-shockingly?utm_source=Mondoweiss+List&utm_campaign=c27dcfdfdd-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b86bace129-c27dcfdfdd-398519477#sthash.1aekpdqe.dpuf

We have picked up news about the sexual allegations against Alan Dershowitz because Dershowitz is such an outspoken defender of Israel and the matter has inevitably affected his influence in the foreign-policy arena. And Dershowitz will surely always get a forum, this piece on the case in the Harvard Law Record that came out yesterday, titled "Harvard Law Professor Blames Victim in Child Trafficking Case," is another sign that the Harvard Law professor emeritus is being criticized in venues that he might once have considered home turf.

An excerpt from the article by Kerry Richards and Anna Joseph:

Dershowitz denies abusing the child trafficking victim; yet instead of acknowledging the gravity of the crime and showing compassion - even while denying involvement - Dershowitz's response has been shockingly vicious and sexist. In a recent interview, Dershowitz said his accuser was "a prostitute," and questioned her fitness as a mother. He went on to admit he had no qualms about calling a 15-year-old girl a prostitute, claiming "[s]he was not victimized ... she made her own decisions in life." Those are decisions that the law says no 15-year-old is old enough to make. One day after that interview, 38 Harvard Law School professors joined the many well-connected people who have tried to protect Dershowitz and [convicted sex offender Jeffrey] Epstein, releasing an open letter lauding Dershowitz's "courage."
Where is the focus on the plaintiff's courage? On her horrifying experience, and on the experiences of the millions of other minors bought and sold for sex each year? When rape victims do come forward, where is the focus on ensuring we don't re-victimize them in the media?

Brutalized by Epstein, betrayed by federal prosecutors who refused to pursue justice, Jane Doe #3 was then publicly shamed by Dershowitz. Shaming rape and human trafficking victims compounds injustice, violating those who report and discouraging others from doing so.

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Norman Finkelstein: On the origins of Israel's modern propaganda (and Alan Dershowitz's legal troubles)

Adam Horowitz
Sott.net via Mondoweiss

 Joan Peters, the author of the book From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict over Palestine, died on January 5th, at 78. As David Samel wrote following her death,"The bizarre chapter of Joan Peters's contribution to the Middle East debate does not end with her death. Her arguments, both those she adopted from others and those she formulated herself, still constitute a huge portion of the go-to hasbara repertoire." I interviewed Norman Finkelstein and asked him to reflect on her work and legacy, as he played a central role in debunking much of her work as described in his book Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. 

Adam Horowitz: Could you start by saying a bit about how From Time Immemorial was received? 

Norman Finkelstein: First of all the important primary factor is the context. Israel in 1982 took its first major public relations hit since the 1967 war. It was a public relations disaster for Israel. One of the reasons being I think, as Robert Fisk pointed out in Pity the Nation he said unlike all other Arab states Lebanon did not control the press and so mainstream reporters were able at that time to roam freely throughout Lebanon.

Mainstream reporters, I should say who had credibility, were able to roam freely through Lebanon during the Israeli attack, and what they were reporting was quiet horrifying. It's forgotten now but even against the Israeli attacks in recent years on Lebanon, on Gaza, they all pale in comparison to what Israel did in Lebanon in 1982. The usual figures are between sixteen and twenty thousand Lebanese and Palestinians, overwhelmingly civilians, were killed during the Israeli attack. All the Lebanese killed in 2006 plus the three massacres in Gaza that doesn't even come to half of the figure that happened in Lebanon.

So now you had credible reportage of what Israel was doing and it was a major public relations setback for Israel. You could say the first layer of Jewish support for Israel, the first layer, peeled away and that was the layer of what you would call the Old Left, mainly those were identified with the Soviet Union and therefore identified with Israel because the Soviets supported the creation of the state of Israel in '48 and also because a lot of the signature institutions of Israel in that era were of a socialist leftist orientation, most famously the kibbutzim.

And so before 1982 the pro-Soviet, pro-Communist Old Left even those who were disaffected from the Soviet Union which still fell within the umbrella of the Old Left, they were still pretty much pro-Israel, there were just really a tiny handful of exceptions. The best known being of course Professor Chomsky. There was also Maxime Robinson in France, but in general the support was totally for Israel, overwhelmingly for Israel. 

And so the first layer of support was peeled off, peeled away, but overall Israel took a public relations hit. There were the usual characters, and the usual liars, people like Martin Peretz who went on the Israeli army tour of Lebanon and famously said at the time that everything you have read in the newspapers and heard in the media about what happened in Lebanon just didn't happen, it didn't happen. 

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Watch them squirm: Clinton and Dershowitz listed on pedophile Epstein's flight logs

Nick Bryant
Gawker / Sott.net

Bill Clinton took repeated trips on the "Lolita Express" - the private passenger jet owned by billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein - with an actress in softcore porn movies whose name appears in Epstein's address book under an entry for "massages," according to flight logbooks obtained by Gawker and published today for the first time. The logs also show that Clinton shared more than a dozen flights with a woman who federal prosecutors believe procured underage girls to sexually service Epstein and his friends and acted as a "potential co-conspirator" in his crimes.

Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 in Florida to one count of soliciting underage girls for sex (and one count of adult solicitation), for which he served just over a year in county jail. But sprawling local, state, and federal investigations into the eccentric investor's habit of paying teen girls for "massages" - sessions during which he would allegedly penetrate girls with sex toys, demand to be masturbated, and have intercourse - turned up a massive network of victims, including 35 female minors whom federal prosecutors believed he'd sexually abused. He has reportedly settled lawsuits from more than 30 "Jane Doe" victims since 2008; the youngest alleged victim was 12 years old at the time of her abuse.

Who is Jeffrey Epstein? Click here for our primer about the billionaire pedophile.

Epstein's predatory past, and his now-inconvenient relationships with a Who's Who of the Davos set, hit the front pages again earlier this month when one of his victims, Virginia Roberts, claimed in a federal court filing that Epstein recruited her as a "sex slave" at the age of 15 and "sexually trafficked [her] to politically-connected and financially-powerful people," including Prince Andrew and attorney Alan Dershowitz. (The latter, the filing claimed, had sex with the victim "on private planes"; Dershowitz vigorously denies the charges, as does Prince Andrew.)

Two female associates of Epstein - the socialite Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein's former assistant Sarah Kellen - have been repeatedly accused in court filings of acting as pimps for him, recruiting and grooming young girls into their network of child sex workers, and frequently participating in sex acts with them. Kellen in particular was believed by detectives in the Palm Beach Police Department, which was the first to start unraveling the operation, to be so deeply involved in the enterprise that they prepared a warrant for her arrest as an accessory to molestation and sex with minors. In the end, she was never arrested or charged, and federal prosecutors granted her immunity in a 2007 non-prosecution agreement that described her as a "potential co-conspirator" in sex trafficking. 

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