Alan M. Dershowitz -- Another Absurd Comment

Many Florida Jews Express Doubts on Obama

NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/22/us/politics/22jewish.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1211468464-h6/RiOTLnGncbjfRaWiUoA

If you haven't already read this article please do. It's very telling how closed-minded people are in their perceptions of Middle Easterners. More importantly, it illuminates the very sad, sad notion of acceptance of comments made by certain individuals that are down right offensive towards people of a certain region:

Israelis fear Iran “could be the first suicide nation, a nation that would destroy itself to destroy the Jewish nation,” Mr. Dershowitz said.

According to Harvard law professor, former O.J. Simpson attorney, and author Alan Dershowitz, the Iranian regime will martyr itself to destroy Israel. I'm not going to waste my time discussing the baseless and illogical statement made by Dershowitz. Instead, I want to address the culture of accepting offensive and absurd comments directed toward an individual or a to group.

Many articles, blogs, and books have been published on the culture of fear that has dominated the U.S. for many years. Countless U.S. administrations have used fear as a tool to promote and legislate certain policies that are not in the best interest of our country. This fear instilled in us has given rise to a new phenomenon that is governing who we are: acceptance. Fear is used to promote negative stereotypes of any given "enemy" (i.e., Native Americans, African slaves, Japanese, communist, Arab and Muslim terrorist, etc). Once the fear is established, acceptance begins to overtake our reason and our humanity, thus marginalizing specific groups of people. "Islam is a religion of hate. It breeds terrorist. Arabs want to kill all Jews." These horrid statements told and retold from officials and the media begins to slowly sway the perceptions of people. You hear it in the news, you read about it in the op-eds, Hollywood begins to produce films and made-for-tv series about terrorist sleeper cells in the U.S., and tons of books are published glorifying these negative images.

After being exposed to these negative images from all angles, acceptance creeps in. You are reminded of your “fear” when coming across absurd and offensive comments directed towards a specific group of people. This fear leads to accepting statements or the nature of events as true. Dershowitz's statement is an example of fear turned into acceptance. The media attention on Iran in the last thirty years has not been a favorable one. Bush has labeled Iran as part of an axis of evil and some in the media have even compared Iran's president Ahmadinejad with Hitler (this blog does not endorse Ahmadinejad nor does it agree with his policies, but to compare him with Hitler- the architect of the holocaust- is illogical and absurd). It plays into the fear card that is constantly being used and reused against Iran. Therefore, it becomes acceptable (and sadly by some, believable) to hear statements that imply Iran's, as a nation, willingness to attain martyrdom by destroying the state of Israel.

I use the word acceptable to explain this phenomenon because of the consequences (or lack thereof) of publicly making offensive comments. Very few, if any, public apologies have been given when comments of these sorts about Middle Easterners are made. When offensive comments about African Americans and Jewish Americans are made, public apologies are quick to follow. This happens when offensive and absurd comments are unacceptable by the public. Yet, I want to remind the reader that even though such comments become unacceptable, it does not mean the negative stereotypes have ceded to exist.

This way of governing, vis-a-vis fear of specific groups is a cycle that needs to be broken. It does nothing but divide people and create an atmosphere of hate that is neither desirable nor productive. The next time an offensive and absurd statement is made about any specific group (American, Arab, Black, Iranian, Jewish, etc.), it is vital that we all take a step back and really listen and decipher to what is being said. It's time to stop accepting insidious statements and start making an effort not to reinforce negative stereotypes and marginalizing specific groups.