New York welcomes back its native son.

Alan Dershowitz may be from Williamsburg, but the famed legal mind steered clear of the hippest of hoods when it came time to buy a pied-a-terre in the city of his birth. Instead, Mr. Dershowitz headed straight for that stronghold of old money, purchasing a three bedroom, 2.5-bath co-op at 45  Sutton Place.

And after all, Cambridge, where the longtime Harvard law professor has a sprawling six-bedroom house, is also known for being rather tradition-bound, so we're sure he'll feel right at home enjoying all his civil liberties in the new apartment. Besides, what could be more perfect for Mr. Dershowitz than a dwelling overlooking the new Four Freedoms Park?

The celebrity lawyer paid just $1.68 million for the sunlit, 16th-floor spread, apparently using his prodigious verbal talents to talk sellers Alan and Danna Polikoff down from the $1.89 million they were asking most recently. But then, the couple, who originally listed the apartment for $2.29 million in January 2011, were eager to sell. The listing, held by Prudential Douglas Elliman broker Lawrence Rich comes right out of the gate in the manner of discount warehouse banner: "Major Price Reduction!"

The living room is nice and all, but we'd bet the legal contract to buy it is truly stunning.

Nonetheless, we'd expect at least a little arm-twisting talk from the man who helped get Claus von Bulow and OJ Simpson off the hook. Even if had he had no objections to the airy apartment and its plentiful river views (you can even take in the Williamsburg Bridge from the apartment, from a safe distance).

Mr. Dershowitz joins fellow Ivy Leaguer Chrsitina Paxson in snapping up a city getaway. We're inclined to commend these academic superstars for being savvy investors, but these days, investing in Manhattan real estate is really a no-brainer.

Best of all, the apartment isn't far from Mayor Bloomberg's Upper East Side townhouse so the Mayor and Mr. Dershowitz can easily schedule tête-à-têtes to discuss their shared distaste for the Second Amendment.

kvelsey@observer.com

BDS is no laughing matter. (Getty)

Israel and the Park Slope Food Co-op have a lot in common. Both were founded in part by Jewish socialists. Both are governed by a raucous democracy with laws and rituals to rival the Talmud. Both have a soft spot for hummus and couscous.

And now both are plagued by the Palestinian question.

Last week, the co-op held its first open discussion about whether or not to endorse B.D.S., an international movement that calls for the boycott, divestment and sanctioning of Israeli products and companies. Supporters see B.D.S. as a nonviolent way to attack Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, while critics claim the movement stinks of anti-Semitism. The issue has been batted around the co-op for years, from the bulk aisles to the letters section of the biweekly Linewaiters’ Gazette, house organ of the organic house.

It began in earnest during the Jan. 27, 2009, general meeting, when Hima B., a self-described queer-centric, intradependent filmmaker who eschews a last name, made a comment during the open forum that ran in the next issue of the newsletter: “I don’t know whether or not we carry Israeli products, but I propose that we no longer carry them.” Apparently there were some Sharon persimmons and organic red peppers in stock, but that was as far as the discussion went. It was followed by news of broken debt card machines on Christmas Eve.

Related: The co-op has a bomb scare. >>

The debate likely would have remained within the confines of 782 Union Street had someone at The Jewish Daily Forward not noticed those three innocuous paragraphs. The ensuring article got picked up by Ha’aretz and a million little blogs, setting off a media frenzy that consumed the co-op for months. The debate—angry letters, dirty looks—did not die down until the following fall. When the Gaza flotilla fiasco occurred last summer, it inflamed the issue yet again, which led a group of about 20 co-op members to push for a referendum on B.D.S., the subject of last week’s meeting. This being a democratic institution, everyone gets their say, but saying it takes time. It will be at least six months before the referendum can be taken up.

I wonder if these artichokes are free trade? Or anti-Semitic? (Getty)

“I think it was avocados,” Dennis James said of his entrée to the world of B.D.S. “I was putting stickers on avocados as part of my shift, and a couple of other people who were putting stickers on avocados got to talking about the fact that there was a B.D.S. movement. The issue had been very vigorously debated in the Linewaiters’ Gazette for about a decade, but we thought it should be put to a referendum so it could be decided in an orderly way.”

For opponents of the B.D.S. campaign, there is nothing orderly about this push. “From reading their letters from the past two years, they don’t seem to have a terribly sophisticated understanding of the situation there, of the group that they’re representing,” Barbara Mazor, one of the leaders of the anti-B.D.S. movement, told The Observer. “I think they’re latching onto it like slogans. Like true believers, it’s the cool thing to do. You know, ‘I’m a progressive, and it’s a progressive cause,’ so I think that’s how it’s coming through, very thoughtlessly.”

It is not clear how many Israeli products the co-op carries. Ms. Mazor said there are only bath salts and the occasional peppers or lychee. Emily Damron, a pro-B.D.S. member, said there were many more products, which would be impossible to know without a full accounting of suppliers and manufacturers. Ultimately, the movement’s aims go beyond the Israeli economy. “I welcome sending a strong message to Washington this way,” Ms. Damron said.

Senator Charles Schumer, who lives a few blocks from the co-op—though he does not belong—and is a staunch supporter of Israel, could not be reached for comment due to the debt ceiling vote Tuesday.

While last week’s meeting seemed surprisingly orderly to many of those in attendance, opponents like Ms. Mazor feel B.D.S. could alienate many co-op members. Already there are dueling blogs, psfcbds.wordpress.com and stopbdsparkslope.blopgspot.com—part of an emerging genre—and should a vote be held, it could divide granola-munching families and friends. There is fear of an exodus of Jews.

To this end, the pro-B.D.S. camp is calling for a referendum, “to protect against bullying and intimidation,” as Mr. James put it. This would be far from the first such action taken by the co-op, which has launched boycotts against products from South Africa (apartheid), Nestlé (bad baby formula in Africa) and Coca-Cola (murder of union leaders in Columbia). Contentious fights are nothing new either, as the co-op has experienced backlashes over the decisions to sell meat, beer and bottled water. “I like that you can shop with your conscience,” said Keisha Haines, a co-op member shopping Monday night in a batik dress.

Others feel this particular boycott goes too far. One co-op member, who said he grew up shopping there with his parents and was thus unwilling to give his name, called it anti-Semitic and unfounded. “We don’t have any shoppers here from South Africa or Nestlé. But this is different—this is Chaim town,” he said, referring to the Jewish name that has not been much in vogue since his grandparents were living on the Lower East Side. “This is the heart of Chaim town. So to come in here and try and push this boycott against Israel goes against everything the co-op is about, everything it was founded on.”

How many people died for your organic corn? (Getty)

A boycott could lead to divisions not only within the institution, but without as well. “It reminds me of what one great historian once said about the Puritans: they were opposed to bear-baiting not because of the harm it did to the bear but because of the pleasure it gave the viewers,” Harvard law professor and self-appointed defender of Israel Alan Dershowitz told The Observer. “And that’s what these people are, they’re bigots. Many of them are anti-Semites. Some of them don’t know they’re anti-Semites. That doesn’t give them a pass.”

Mr. Dershowitz vowed to shut the co-op down if the B.D.S. effort succeeds. “You have to fight fire with fire,” he said. When it was pointed out that this might be difficult because the co-op is a members-only operation, he remained undeterred. “We will stop at nothing to make them pay an extraordinarily heavy price for their bigotry.”

Related: Mr. Dershowitz fears BroBos circumcision paroxysms. >>

The Israeli Consulate was also wary of a boycott, though Consul General Ido Aharoni warned that it would backfire in the end. “We take it very seriously because we know our own history,” he said. “If you look at Jewish history, we do not have the luxury of ignoring these kinds of movements.” He then pointed to efforts in Toronto and throughout Europe to combat anti-Israel boycotts. Pro-Israel supporters would go into the stores and buy out their Israeli stocks to bolster demand. “The best thing that ever happened to Israel was the Arab boycott in 1945,” Mr. Aharoni said. “It caused us to be more competitive.

The pro-B.D.S. movement has its own powerful supporters. Nobel Prize winner—Nobel Prize winner!—Archbishop Desmond Tutu pioneered the boycott movement in South Africa, and he has openly supported B.D.S. movements worldwide, including a successful one last summer at a co-op in Olympia, Wash. (The city’s total population is just over 46,000, or about one-tenth the number of Jews living in Brooklyn.) “The archbishop has spoken in support of B.D.S. on several platforms,” a spokesman wrote in an email, suggesting he could support this one as well.

In the end, like so many other co-op controversies, this could be a crisis of conscience and little else. “Would I leave the co-op?” said one anti-B.D.S. organizer. “Did I leave the country when a certain president spent eight years in office?”

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

To begin with, there is hypocrisy in the ranks of the co-op.

Any group that considers itself committed to human rights should be going after Syria, Zimbabwe, Iran, Cuba. It shows a perverse bigotry that more closely resembles apartheid than anything Israel has ever committed. So the people who are behind this boycott ought to understand they are on the wrong side of morality, the wrong side of history, and they're on the wrong side of economics, because I assure them they will be out of business if they pull off this boycott.

They hate Israel. It's not that they love Palestinians. You never see them advocating on the part of Kurds, you never see them campaigning on behalf of Armenians, on behalf of Chechnians. They don't care about people who are oppressed, they only care about the alleged oppressors.

Should a boycott come to pass, who knows what disasters could beset the humble borough.

The next thing they'll be doing is calling for an end to circumcision. And the first thing you have to do is have all these guys who are circumcized demand it back, go to the hospital, and have it sewn back on. That'll make them complete pricks, instead of the pricks that they are, O.K.?

What pains Mr. Dershowitz as much as anything is, being a native son, this is happening in his own hometown, and he will not stand for it.

I have a particular interest in Brooklyn, because that's where I'm from, and I will be there to make sure that the people who start this will pay a heavy price. We can't allow good and decent people to think this is the right thing. This is the wrong thing.

And let's be clear. It's not happening in Brooklyn. It's happening in what's the neighborhood again? [The Observer: Park Slope] It's happening in Park Slope, and Park Slope is not Brooklyn. That's like San Francisco.

And The Observer thought Portland was bad.

Apparently, the powder was non-hazardous, "probably flour or a food-based substance, police officials said, citing preliminary tests."

Ms. Ovide says the F.B.I. will still investigate the mailings since there may be a connection to a similar powder-filled card sent to attorney and Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz:

"Tony Judt is in favor of the complete dissolution of the state of Israel... the total dissolution of the state of Israel," said Dershowitz.

Two comments. First, that Dershowitz should bring this up shows that those who favor a single state in Palestine have gotten the issue on the agenda. Dershowitz's line is is now the talking point. Leon Wieseltier made a similar statement about Judt, with a similarly-angry tone, in the New Republic a few weeks back.

Second, Dershowitz's characterization doesn't seem fair to me; he is using eliminationist rhetoric to suggest that Judt is a kind of Nazi or antisemite, who would sweep Jews into the sea. In fact, if you read Judt's groundbreaking essay, you understand that his position is being caricatured. Yes, Dershowitz is right; Judt's vision would result in the end of the Jewish state. But his tone is pained, realistic, and even idealistic: it is a recovery of the old Judah Magnes/Elmer Berger/Anglo-American Inquiry Commission position that partition is racialist, that Arab and Jew should learn to live together in historic Palestine—because god knows, they haven't done a very good job of living with partition.

For another point of view on this, read Elik Alhanan's two-state position (near the end of this long post). Meantime, below is an excerpt of Judt's piece:

On first reading, my chief response is (surprise) positive: the paper humanizes Walt and Mearsheimer, the voice is warmer and more intimate than their stunning original of last March. You have the feeling here of two minds struggling through a difficult subject. For instance, the authors say that it was former Harvard Dean Walt's decision—not Harvard's—to remove the Harvard logo from the on-line Kennedy School version of the original after newspapers began referring to the paper as "the Harvard study," but that given the great symbolism attached to this gesture, it was a mistake, and illustrates the saying, no good deed goes unpunished.

The sense of intellectual engagement here is thrilling. The tone is, Here is what our critics have said, here's our response. W&M itemize a wide range of critical arguments, and detail them, including the Forward's assertion, "In Dark Times, Blame the Jews." And while they don't give an inch, really, the respectful debate they are pursuing ennobles them and honors the contributions of Benny Morris and even Alan Dershowitz—far more than Dershowitz, who slimed these guys, deserves. For instance, there is a shocking quote in here from Dershowitz on MS/NBC, saying that W&M "copied" their words from neo-Nazi websites. Thus vilified, some people would threaten to sue. These scholars take the argument on calmly. God bless America.

Something else that humanizes the document is the section at the end titled, "Our Mistakes." O.K., a number of these are penny-ante, still the tone is humbling. "...there are places where our choice of words could have been clearer or more nuanced... although we went to some lengths to demonstrate that we harbor no animus towards Israel or its more ardent defenders in America, it is possible that some of our discussion did not make this point as forcefully as would have liked. First and foremost, we regret having capitalized the word 'Lobby' in our original article..." Etc.

The paper concludes with a moving statement about the controversy. The ferocity of the attacks "offers additional evidence of he lobby's efforts to create a climate that discourages questioning of its actions, Israeli policies, or the U.S.-Israeli relationship. This situation is not healthy for American democracy." Hear, hear.

But now the anger over their publication seems to be dissipating, and what they had hoped for is coming to pass: a discussion of the ideas on their merits. Myself, the March day that a friend first emailed me W&M's paper and I read it through at my desk with my eyelids glued open was a great day. I had long felt constrained by the lobby, it had limited my work and freedom. W&M had a liberating effect.

The Boston Herald reports that the Dershowitz act was dreamed up by Brandeis trustee Stuart Eizenstat, a former Carter adviser, along with Brandeis Prez Jehuda Reinharz. Just like when the New York Theatre Workshop decided it could only put on Rachel Corrie's show last spring if it was suitably "contextualized," with pro-Israel voices. These paroxysms speak to the same lesson: the Israel lobby isn't a control room in Washington, it's a general climate of fear about Israel's future that clouds the minds of goodthinking liberals who are empowered—with the ability to shut off debate. Even a former president lacks standing.

But watch out. The success of Carter's book, the contract to Walt/Mearsheimer, the Corrie run at the Minetta Lane, the Iraq Study Group's hail Mary to Syria—the world is changing.

I say shocking because when Walt and Mearsheimer published their bombshell paper on the power of the Israel lobby in March, the Harvard Law Professor was their leading attacker. He said the scholars had "destroyed their professional reputations" (a disgraceful statement that Zbig Brzezinski would appear to include when he talks in Foreign Policy of "self-demeaning" attacks by critics of Walt and Mearsheimer) and three weeks after their paper was published, rushed a response onto Harvard's Kennedy School website, saying that speed was "essential" "because of the attention the original paper has received."

In fairness to Dershowitz, a good part of his rebuttal focuses on what he regards as bad research methods by Walt and Mearsheimer and their allegedly false view of Israeli history, which leads him to question their motives and imply that they are antisemitic. "I challenge Mearsheimer and Walt to look me in the eye and tell me that because I am a proud Jew and a critical supporter of Israel, I am disloyal to my country," the rebuttal ends throbbingly.

But in criticism of Dershowitz, a lot of his rebuttal rejects the idea of a vaunted Israel lobby. "The so-called lobby," he calls it, and asks, contemptuously, "Who belongs to 'the Lobby?'" He says that "there are many lobbies that support diverse approaches to the Arab-Israeli conflict," and generally, "thousands of other groups that maintain powerful lobbies in Washington." Yes, AIPAC "to its credit, has been an influential lobby." But he presents AIPAC as the Israel lobby. Everyone else who supports Israel in government and the press and thinktanks does so because they all independently believe that Israel and the U.S. share interests.

Oh, and also: "the most powerful lobby is AARP." But I guess it's not "perhaps the most effective lobbying and fund-raising effort in the history of democracy".

I've two responses to Dershowitz's hypocrisy. The first is that he's an advocate, and a great one, a verbal swordsman. He intimidates people (I remember talking to a pro-Palestinian professor of the Classics not long ago who begged me not to use his name, lest Dersh go after him), but he's not reflective. The guy was a high school and college debating star in Brooklyn; he's still that, rushing a thrown-together argument to the public within days of Walt and Mearsheimer's 18-months-long-prepared article, so he can do his flamenco in their spotlight. I have that disconnect with Dersh one has with many lawyers: The contradiction in his statements makes me wonder what he really thinks when he's not making a heated righteous argument. (Apropos of that lack of subtlety, I'd note that elsewhere in his book, he states that two uncles of his did emigrate to Israel. Yet he says his generation was too American to do so. It's not thought-through.)

Was he really trying to get people to the truth about the Israel lobby, an important issue? Or was he venting his anger?

That's my second point about Dershowitz; I think anger fed his attack on Walt and Mearsheimer. Read Chutzpah (I'm on page 100 or so now) and you see how much his views were shaped by the antisemitic discrimination he experienced on leaving the Brooklyn nest in the late 50s. Notwithstanding his great grades at Yale Law School, Dershowitz was rejected by white-shoe law firms in New York again and again, including Cravath and Paul, Weiss (the latter wouldn't accommodate his Sabbath-observance). Despite his subsequent achievements, in 1991, when he wrote the book, he was still extremely angry at all the Harvard deans and presidents who thru the 20th century rationalized discrimination against Jews. Again and again he calls these liberal leaders "bigoted." "A pack of dishonest bigots unworthy of respect or emulation... awful men whose names are memorialized [on buildings]..." Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell "should be honored by no one other than the Ku Klux Klan." He insists that President Derek Bok (soon-to-be-interim President again) sees Dershowitz as a "shtetl Yid" whose "breath smells of herring."

Later in the book he says that Shaw, Mencken, Henry Adams, Dreiser, and T.S. Eliot suffered "a disease of the soul": antisemitism, which can only be explained by the study of "abnormal psychology."

This is high-school rhetoric. It's the same moral vehemence that would erase all Jefferson's or Washington's achievements because they owned slaves. Grownups who study history should be a little more sophisticated. Think about it, how should people who dismissed Palestinian human rights be regarded a generation on?

The support underscores something Alan Dershowitz says—that universities are hotbeds of leftwing thought. I agree. The question is why? Why are leftwing ideas that are marginalized elsewhere in the culture doing fine at universities?

I think the answer is, There's nowhere else for these ideas to go; and they are less dangerous in universities than, say, in Washington. Consider the alternatives. It's virtually impossible to be a leftwing intellectual in the Washington thinktank community: you don't get funded. Yes there's George Soros, but he's the exception that proves the rule. It's fine to be a leftleaning liberal in the Maistream Media, where everyone is a Democrat who supports abortion and has murmurous questions about Iraq; but you can't be too outspoken about it, or again you'll get marginalized. Weekly opinion magazines are also not very hospitable to lefties, and it can't be easy to be a leftwing analyst in the Executive Branch staff positions that help form policy. All those Arabists at State, for instance, keeping their heads down. Colleges are the only game in town.

It is a conservative-dominated country. Big business plays a huge role in our public life. It funds the thinktanks and the media. It funds campaigns. There are tons of privileged Americans with leftwing views, but not many places for them to actually apply their thinking. The universities are deemed harmless enough. There these thinkers will only educate young people, in places far from Washington.

The sad part for the left is that its braintrust is so unengaged in the real world. Its idea-people are alienated, and don't have a practical bone in their bodies. They get to hold forth at dinner parties.

PLEASE CIRCULATE. THE UNIVERSITY HAS DECLINED OUR REQUEST TO HAVE THE
STATEMENT AND THE LIST OF SIGNATURES MAILED OUT TO THE FACULTY.

Brandeis University
May 8, 2006

To: Jehuda Reinharz, President
Marty Krauss, Provost

Statement regarding the removal of Lior Halperin's ('09) exhibit from the
university library.

A group of concerned faculty decided last night, Sunday, to collect signatures
from the faculty on the statement below. We circulated the list through
colleagues, who in turn sent it on to their colleagues. In less than 24
hours, we have collected some ninety signatures. It is our hope that the
university will very quickly find a way to do as the faculty members, who
have signed the statement, have urged, namely find a suitable way to
re-exhibit Lior's project.

We did not use a university-generated mailing list, and there may well be many
members of the faculty who have not seen the statement or had a chance to
submit their names. For this reason, we request that the university
circulates the statement and the list of signatures by email to the entire
faculty.

STATEMENT
We, the undersigned, regard the removal of Lior Halperin's ('09) exhibit from
the university library as a mistake, and we expect the university to find a
suitable way for Lior to exhibit her project.

Mark Adler (MATH)
Silvia M. Arrom (HIST)
Robert A. Art (POL)
Mark Auslander (ANTH)
Lisette Balabarca (SPAN)
Marc Brettler (NEJS)
Bernadette Brooten (NEJS)
Seyom Brown (POL)
Joan Bryant (AAAS)
John Burt (ENG)
Steven L. Burg (POL)
Mary Baine Campbell (ENG)
Anne Carter (ECON)
Stephen Cecchetti (ECON)
Bulbul Chakraborty (PHYS)
Ruth Charney (MAT)
Trenery Dolbear (ECON)
David Engermen (HIST)
Irving Epstein (CHEM)
Gordon Fellman (SOC)
William Flesch (ENG)
Dian Fox (ROCL)
Bruce M. Foxman (CHEM)
Gregory Freeze (HIST)
Richard Gaskins (AMST)
Anne Gershenson (CHEM)
Michael T. Gilmore (ENG)
Nance Goldstein (WSRC)
Jane Hale (ROCL)
Karen V. Hansen (SOC)
Erica Harth (ROCL)
Michael Henchman (CHEM)
James Hendrickson (CHEM)
Donald Hindley (POL)
Eric Hill (Theater Arts)
Eli Hirsch (PHIL)
Mark Hulliung (HIST)
Caren Irr (ENG)
Ray Jackendoff (PSYCH)
Paul Jankowski (HIST)
Gary Jefferson (ECON)
Patricia A. Johnston (CLAS)
Jackie Jones (HIST)
Peter Jordan (CHEM)
Jane Kamensky (HIST)
Edward Kaplan (ROCL)
Thomas A. King (ENG)
Jytte Klausen (POL)
Ann-Olga Koloski-Ostrow (CLAS)
Daniel Kryder (POL)
Robert V. Lange (PHYS)
Susan S. Lanser (ENG, WGS)
Richard Lansing (ROCL)
Blake LeBaron (IBS)
Henry Linschitz (CHEM)
Marya Lowry (Theater Arts)
Harry Mairson (COSI)
Jim Mandrell (ROCL)
Rachel McCulloch (ECON)
Robert B. Meyer (PHYS)
Chris Miller (BIOL)
Laura J. Miller (SOC)
Paul Miller (PHYS)
Robin Feuer Miller (GRALL)
Paul Monsky (MATH)
Leonard Muellner (CLAS)
Jeremy Ravi Mumford (HIST)
Carol L. Osler (IBS)
Richard J. Parmentier (ANTH)
Daniel Perlman (PHYS)
Gregory A. Petsko (CHEM)
Susan Sondej Pochapsky (CHEM)
Bonit Porath (NEJS)
David Powelstock (GRALL)
David Rakowski (MUS)
Michael Randall (ROCL)
Esther Ratner (COMP)
Mary Ruth Ray (MUS)
Art Reis (CHEM)
Timothy L. Rose (CHEM)
George Ross (POL)
Ellen Schattschneider (ANTH)
Gerald W. Schwarz (MATH)
Aurora M. Sherman (PSYCH)
Dawn Skorczewski (ENG)
Richard Slaven (PHYS)
Marion Smiley (PHIL)
Faith Smith (ENG, AAAS)
Jennifer Stern (Fine Arts)
Ibrahim K. Sundiata (HIST, AAAS)
Andreas Teuber (PHIL)
Cheryl L. Walker (CLAS)
David Wilson (Theater)
Aida Yuen Wong (Fine Arts)
Bernie Yack (POL)