Leaving aside his tiresome, and by now self-discrediting, reductio ad Chamberlinum argument, Alan Dershowitz’s op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal is a useful reminder that his tendency toward dishonesty isn’t limited to the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He’s dishonest about Iran, too:

Regardless of his passage of health-care reform and regardless of whether he restores jobs and helps the economy recover, Mr. Obama will be remembered for allowing Iran to obtain nuclear weapons. History will not treat kindly any leader who allows so much power to be accumulated by the world’s first suicide nation — a nation whose leaders have not only expressed but, during the Iran-Iraq war, demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice millions of their own people to an apocalyptic mission of destruction.

Without downplaying the risks of a nuclear weapons-capable Iran, this is just nuts. Generally accepted estimates put war-related casualties for both sides in the Iran-Iraq war (a war initiated by Iraq, not an “apocalyptic mission of destruction” by Iran) at about one and a half million. I’m not sure where Dershowitz got the idea that Iran sacrificed “millions” of its own people. (Someone should probably check the footnotes of Joan Peters’ From Time Immemorial, just in case.)

While a million and a half casualties is certainly a tragedy, Global Security puts this in historical perspective:

Without diminishing the horror of either war, Iranian losses in the eight-year Iran-Iraq war appear modest compared with those of the European contestants in the four years of World War I, shedding some light on the limits of the Iranian tolerance for martyrdom. The war claimed at least 300,000 Iranian lives and injured more than 500,000, out of a total population which by the war’s end was nearly 60 million. During the Great War, German losses were over 1,700,000 killed and over 4,200,000 wounded [out of a total population of over 65 million]. Germany’s losses, relative to total national population, were at least five times higher than Iran. France suffered over 1,300,000 deaths and over 4,200,000 wounded. The percentages of pre-war population killed or wounded were 9% of Germany, 11% of France, and 8% of Great Britain.

And then, a few years later, Europe had another huge war, in which millions more people were killed. But the West is civilized, whereas in Iran they wear turbans.

As for Dershowitz’s repetition of the irretrievably stupid “Iran as suicide nation” talking point, this provides a good opportunity for me to cite my former colleague Andy Grotto’s recently published article, “Is Iran A Martyr State?.”

“The martyr state view rests on bold, even radical claims about Iran’s goals and behavior that defy conventional expectations of states’ actions,” Grotto writes, “but no government in recorded history has willfully pursued policies it knows will proximately cause its own destruction“:

Given the novelty of the martyr state argument, its major implications for policy, and how unequivocally its proponents present it, one would expect to encounter an avalanche of credible evidence.

Yet that is not the case. References are scarce in this line of writings, and certain references are cited with striking regularity.

Grotto determines that the “martyr state” view essentially rests upon a few neoconservative op-eds and a laughably shoddy report by a right-wing Israeli think tank, whose claims have been repeated again and again such that they now represent an article of faith for the “Bomb Iran” set.

The Iranian regime has demonstrated repeatedly that it’s primary goal is regime preservation. As Grotto writes, “there are vivid episodes in Iran’s history where it has confronted a clear choice between absolute fealty to religious ideals such as martyrdom and exporting the revolution, and regime survival,” such as its decision to accept a U.N.-brokered ceasefire in its “apocalyptic mission of destruction” war with Iraq.

“If and when Iran crosses the nuclear threshold,” Grotto concludes, “there is nothing inherent about the Islamic Republic to suggest that it cannot be deterred from using nuclear weapons or transferring them to its terrorist proxies.”

The main risk of a nuclear Iran is not religiously-motivated nuclear war, but the traditional-and very grave-problems posed by the spread of nuclear weapons, including regional arms races, crisis instability, miscalculation, and the fact that nuclear weapons would reduce the ability of Israel and the United States to project conventional military power over it.

In other words, the prospect of a nuclear weapons-capable Iran is troubling enough without bringing in hysterical claims about it being a “suicide nation.”

This past weekend, 200,000 people representing a broad coalition of labor, faith, progressives, and conservatives peacefully marched on the National Mall in support of comprehensive immigration reform. Roy Beck, director of the anti-immigrant group NumbersUSA, decided to bring himself, his cameras, and his bodyguards to the march as part of his organization’s counter campaign, S.T.O.P. Amnesty in 4 Days.

Robert Erickson, an activist from Minneapolis, was one of the demonstrators who Beck interviewed. Erickson satirically presented himself as a sympathetic activist concerned about “European illegal immigration.” By employing the charged rhetoric of immigration restrictionists, Erickson successfully engaged Beck in an extended conversation that highlighted the hypocrisy and inconsistencies that encompass the anti-immigrant movement. He even riled Beck up about the supposed dangers of “illegal European immigration” that date back to the days of Columbus:

ERICKSON: I want to say that illegal European immigration is one of the worst things we have going in this country. It’s not a new problem, it’s been going on for hundreds of years. Illegal European immigrants have committed some of the worst crimes in history, including slavery, genocide, and theft of indigenous lands. Have you thought about this at all Roy?

BECK: Yeah, in fact, our very open immigration system in the 1880s and 1890s very much helped finish off the Indians in terms of pushing them into the reservations…

ERICKSON: Colombus go home?

BECK: Ok. [...]

ERICKSON: I’m not sure if E-verify is enough, when we’re talking about murder…

BECK: Now you’re into the organized crime. You are exactly right. Some of the worst organized crime in this country are white Europeans.

Watch it:

At first, Beck appeared happy to find someone who he thought was a like-minded supporter. Rather than realizing that the joke was on him, Beck seemed intent on trying to find some common ground with Erickson. While condemning the actions of European explorers like Columbus, Beck goes out of his way to draw an implicit parallel when he points out that “They [Native Americans] got overrun, they lost their country, they lost their land, they lost their societies, and, for the most part, they lost their culture…No nation should allow themselves for that to happen.” Several minutes into the interview, once Beck realizes that Erickson is sarcastically advocating the deportation of all white Europeans, Beck brings the conversation to an embarrassing halt.

Last fall, Erickson managed to get on the speaking list of an anti-immigrant tea party protest. Erickson orated on the perils of illegal European immigration and led a crowd of counter-protesters in his chants of “Columbus go home!” and “Europeans out!”

Speaking to thousands of attendees at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) gala dinner last night, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu offered this response to the Obama administration’s request that Israel halt settlement expansion on occupied territory in and around Jerusalem:

The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 year ago and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today. Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital.

Watch it (Jerusalem comments begin at 8:05):

The AIPAC audience responded to this with two rounds of applause that went on for over a minute.

It’s quite true that Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is an ancient city to which both the Jewish and Palestinian people have legitimate historic claims. But while Jerusalem itself is not a settlement, it is ringed by settlements, such as the now-infamous Ramat Shlomo, built by Israel for the specific purpose of consolidating Israeli control of the city and cutting off future Palestinian access. Arab neighborhoods of occupied East Jerusalem, such as Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan, are also deeply infiltrated by settlements, for the same purpose: To embed Israel in all areas of the city, and to re-engineer its demographic character in order to preclude its division under future negotiations.

How can Israel continue to flout both international law and its own U.S.-brokered agreements at no immediate cost? Listen to that wild applause again.

Interestingly, Netanyahu also offered a veiled rebuke to Gen. David Petraeus, who last week told the Senate Armed Services Committee (pdf) that the Israel-Palestinian conflict “foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of US favoritism for Israel,” and that “Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of US partnerships with governments and peoples” in the Middle East.

Implicitly rejecting this analysis, Netanyahu insisted that “Our soldiers and your soldiers fight against fanatic enemies that loathe our common values”:

In the eyes of these fanatics, we are you and you are us. To them, the only difference is that you are big and we are small, you are the Great Satan and we are the Little Satan. This fanaticism’s hatred of Western civilization predates Israel’s establishment by over one thousand years. Militant Islam does not hate the West because of Israel. It hates Israel because of the West, because it sees Israel as an outpost of freedom that prevents them from overrunning the Middle East. When Israel stands against its enemies, it stands against America’s enemies.

The idea that “Israel’s war is America’s war” is a long-time favorite of the neocons. Which is to say that it’s a politically useful fiction that will end up getting lots of Americans killed. Sure, many Islamic extremists who hate Israel hate America too, but casting the various Islamist groups and movements of the Middle East together under the heading “these fanatics,” and asserting that we’re involved in a war of civilizations that “predates Israel’s establishment by over one thousand years,” is not only analytically sloppy, but a pretty transparent attempt to absolve Israel for policies and behaviors that drive extremism and undercut American credibility.