For Alan Dershowitz, it’s what you might call a teachable moment. The J Street executive director parries Dershowitz’s dishonest offering by daring him to move past euphemism:

You expose your own distortion on your own by quoting what I’ve really said – “resolving the conflict is not only necessary to secure Israel’s future, but also critical to regional stability and American strategic interests.” You acknowledge that I don’t make the very statement that you attribute to me in your lead paragraph, but you then go on to knowingly state that my words are “code” for making that connection.

Really? Code? Who’s got the codebook, Alan? My words stand for themselves. If you disagree with President Obama and with J Street that it’s an American strategic interest to end the conflict, just say so. But just because you know that argument won’t fly doesn’t give you license to put words in my mouth.

Exactly. Everyone says they’re for peace and two states. But when one faction relentlessly calls for U.S. pressure on both sides to actually make that happen — and, yes, in reality, due to the objective imbalances of power in an occupation; the constructive roles played by Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad contrasted with the rejectionism of Hamas; and the realities of U.S. influence, that is going to mean the greater share of that pressure will have to fall on Israel —  and another faction opposes those concrete efforts for peace and smears the peacemakers, we learn who’s really who. By their works, etc. etc. Not everyone is going to want peace and justice.