Alan Dershowitz is not normally an amusing fellow, but his column at the Huffington Post today certainly had a comic quality as he struggled mightly to maintain a respectful tone which criticizing Jimmy Carter for raping the truth on a subject dear to Mr. Dershowitz's heart--Israel.

I like Jimmy Carter. I have known him since he began his run for president in early 1976. I worked hard for his election, and I have admired the work of the Carter Center throughout the world. That's why it troubles me so much that this decent man has written such an indecent book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

When faced with a contradictory proposition, one of the premises must in fact be wrong. Either Jimmy Carter is accurate in his assessment of Israel as an apartheid state, or he isn't a decent man.

Dershowitz goes on to specify Carter's errors of fact in considerable detail, and he's right on the facts.

Which means of course that Carter is not the man he thought he was. Carter's carefully crafted image of "decency" was always a little tattered around the edges, but power and influence were enough to keep most of the witnesses silent. Bob Shrum was a notable exception, castigating Carter's selfishness in his resignation letter.

"I don't believe you stand for anything other than yourself."

Carter has such a bottomless need to be loved and respected, that whoring he went after Europe's anti-Americans, offering his stature as a former president for 30 pieces of silver.

Now he sells Israel and the Jews, offering the same trade.

Dershowitz perhaps contemplated that a respectful treatment of this icon of the left would get a hearing for his defense of Israel. He had it bassackwards--respect the anti-Israel, anti-semite, anti-capitalism point of view and you could call Jimmy Carter a pedophile and no one would even blink.