Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Back to Opinion

Bash-J Street Audience Turns on Dershowitz

The Philadelphia screening of the anti-J Street film “The J Street Challenge” by the Jewish federation and the regional Hillel council reportedly turned into a rowdy right-wing roast in which the audience turned its fury on Alan Dershowitz.

So reports Matthew Berkman, a University of Pennsylvania Ph.D. candidate writing a doctoral thesis on American Jewish politics, in an account in the Cairo Review of Global Affairs, published by the American University in Cairo. Dershowitz, a critic of J Street who is featured in the film, was present at the screening. After the film ended he joined the film’s producer, Boston gadfly Charles Jacobs, for a question-and-answer session with the audience. According to Berkman,

Speaker after speaker stepped to the mic to lambaste Dershowitz, often in the most abusive terms, for a wide variety of crimes: for referring to the “West Bank” instead of “Judea and Samaria”; for Dershowitz’s anti-Semitic denial of the right of Jews to colonize the Palestinian city of Hebron; for encouraging his followers to vote for the Jew-hater Barack Obama; and, of course, for his failure to comprehend the savage, homicidal nature of Islam. Dershowitz attempted to defend himself, comparing his assailants to Meir Kahane and denouncing their racism. But his appeals were barely audible over the shouted cross talk and frenzied cheers of the audience. “If you don’t want people like me defending Israel,” he told them, “then you’re in serious trouble.”

Dershowitz went through a similar roasting in New York from some folks in the audience at the Jerusalem Post Conference in April 2012 and again, much more fiercely, in April 2013. This one sounds even worse. It might be time for him to consider finding a new bunch of friends to hang out with.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.