National Review Online’s Rod Dreher

National Review Online’s Rod Dreher reports that a California-based Muslim legal group has filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Bar requesting disciplinary action against Alan Dershowitz. The essence of the complaint is that Dershowitz advocated war crimes in an op-ed piece in which he supported leveling Palestinian villages known to have harbored terrorists, after giving residents 24 hours to evacuate. Dershowitz denies that the Geneva Accords prohibit what he’s advocating. However, it is not unlikely that the International Criminal Court would disagree if a case involving Israel were before it. Dershowitz proclaims, reasonably enough, that he is not frightened. He notes that the “Massachusetts bar lives by American law, not by Islamic law.” However, the issue down the road is going to be the extent to which American institutions, including the Massachusetts bar, live by American law or by international law. If international law gains a foothold here, a future Dershowitz may have cause to be less sanguine.