Anti-Israel sentiments force Virginia Bar to cancel trip to Jerusalem
Well-known New York Attorney Alan Dershowitz told the Times that President Obama himself has sparked an anti-Israel culture among liberals, pointing to his ongoing feud with Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I think President Obama has set the tone, I think by himself boycotting Netanyahu and, through his silence, encouraging congressmen to boycott Netanyahu, he has implicitly encouraged others to do the same thing,” Mr. Dershowitz said.
“I wold never hire a lawyer or would never refer a case to a lawyer who would engage in that kind of bigotry,” Mr. Dershowitz said. “It’s immoral, it’s bigoted, it’s un-lawyerly.”
In a phone call with The Washington Times, Mr. Martingayle denied that the trip cancellation was the result of any anti-semitic views, and said the issue occurred when the bar association realized that many of its members would not be allowed to go on the trip because of Israel’s strict border laws.
“We are absolutely not making a political point we are making the point that we have to care about every single one of our members,” Mr. Martingayle said. “We are a large bar, we have over 30,000 members within the state bar and we have to meet the needs of all of them.”
According to Mr. Martingayle, Israel’s border policies, combined with a U.S. Department of State travel advisory kept many people from even signing up for the trip at all.
“If we didn’t have a significant improvement in the number of people signed up for the trip by April first then we wouldn’t have been able to go anyway,” he said.
But an online petition against the trip suggested that some Virginia lawyers chose to boycott the trip over political views.
As of Saturday, 37 members of the VSB had signed an open letter on change.org commenting on Israel’s discriminatory policies.
via NorthEast Calling http://ift.tt/1F4CmX3
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