Just weeks after the conclusion of Operation Protective Edge, Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan M. Dershowitz’s book eloquently defending Israel’s actions against Hamas in Gaza this summer was released as an e-book.
Now Terror Tunnels: The Case for Israel’s Just War Against Hamas is being released in hardcover Nov. 18 by publisher RosettaBooks.com. In the book’s introduction, Dershowitz warns that “unless Hamas’ ‘dead baby strategy’ i denounced and stopped – by the international community, the media, the academy and good people of all religious, ethnicities and nationalities – it will be coming ‘to a theater near you.’”
He compares Israel’s battle against Hamas to the new international coalition created to battle ISIS. In publicizing the book, he wrote: “President Obama’s threats against ISI are indistinguishable from the threats made by Prime Minister Netanyahu against Hamas. The United States is following Israel’s lead in going after terrorists who threaten their citizens wherever these terrorists may be. We are using targeted killing of ISIS leaders and other tactics for which Israel has been criticized by some of the very countries that are part of the American coalition.”
In Chapter 37, he writes, “The Hamas Charter does not limit its murderous intentions to one country. Like ISIS it calls for a worldwide ‘caliphate,’ brought about by violent Jihad.”
Dershowitz, who retired from teaching in December 2013, has been described by Newsweek as “the nation’s most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer, and one of its most distinguished defenders of individual rights.” The Forward calls him “Israel’s single most visible defender – the Jewish state’s lead attorney in the court of public opinion.” He has advised presidents, United Nations officials, prime ministers, governors and members of Congress.
In Terror Tunnels, Dershowitz provides both a historical context and current overview of terrorism punctuated by the real-time analysis and reactions in his op-eds, which were
originally published as events unfolded and now appear as many of the chapters in the book. The juxtaposition of immediate reactions and sections written after the end of Protective Edge provide a consistent perspective that Israel’s actions are both justified and necessary The book’s title refers to the multitude of tunnels Hamas built from Gaza into Israel. In June, before Operation Protective Edge began, Dershowitz toured one of the tunnels, which had been discovered by a Bedouin tracker in the IDF. He writes, “The tunnel was a concrete bunker that extended several miles from its entrance in the Gaza Strip to its exit near an Israeli kibbutz kindergarten.
“The tunnel had one purpose: to allow Hamas death squads to kill and kidnap Israelis.” The majority of the book details Israel’s obligation to defend its citizens and places the blame for the disproportionate number of deaths on the Palestinian side squarely on the shoulders of Hamas. He calls Hamas’ practice of putting civilians at risk by firing rockets from, and building tunnels
starting in, urban areas instead of from open spaces (which do exist in Gaza) and reserving their shelters for terrorists and not for civilians a “double war crime.”
He boldly devotes the final chapter to his Skype debate with John Dugard, who is widely regarded as “the world’s mos distinguished accuser against Israel.” Dugard gives voice to
arguments employed by Israel’s detractors, with Dershowitz countering each argument. “I say this categorically, no country in the history of the world faced with threats comparable to those faced by Israel has ever complied better with the rule of law, has ever done more to protect civilians, and has ever done more to protect human rights and human liberty,” Dershowitz says during the debate. In his conclusion, he reflects that blaming Israel for the civilian deaths only encourages Hamas to use its “dead baby strategy” in future conflicts, and encourages other terrorist groups to adopt the same strategy of maximizing civilian deaths in their wars elsewhere in the world
