Just 30 minutes after former President Jimmy Carter left the podium, Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard Law professor and Middle East pundit, took the very same stage, albeit to a much smaller audience."I did not come on my own," said Dershowitz, who was invited by a student-faculty committee to address what he said were inaccuracies and oversimplifications in Carter's recent book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Because Carter rejected the University's initial suggestion that he share the stage with Dershowitz, the committee instead invited Dershowitz to rebut Carter on his own.

After discussing what he said were blatant inaccuracies regarding the Middle East in Carter's book and speech, Dershowitz added tension to the atmosphere when, in response to a student's question, he told her that she would have supported keeping Adolf Hitler in power because he was democratically elected by the German people.

Dershowitz, who had previously called Carter a "coward" for not agreeing to the debate format, expressed regret that the two never faced off.

"I think a debate would have been better," Dershowitz said. "It would have been more informative for students."

He contended that the views Carter espoused Tuesday were different from the positions he takes in his book and what he has said in interviews. He called him "the Brandeis Jimmy Carter."

"Had he written a book that was similar to what he said from the stage, I don't think there would have been much controversy," Dershowitz said. He was referring in part to Carter's apology during the question and answer session for a sentence in his book that could be read as an endorsement of terrorism as an effective political tool. Carter said the sentence was poorly written, untrue and would be removed from future issues of his book.

Dershowitz said that while he and Carter share different visions for how to achieve peace in the Middle East, they also share many of the same views: Both believe in a two-state solution and both want to end Israeli control of the Palestinian Territories.

"We are both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine," Dershowitz said. "We want an unmilitarized state, Israel, that doesn't have to worry about anti-Semitism."

But he also highlighted several of Carter's positions as troubling and implementation of his ideas as detrimental to peace efforts.

Dershowitz said it is "extremely likely" that former PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat did not accept Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's land-for-peace offer in 2000 because Carter advised Arafat against it.

If Israel had at that time conceded 96 to 97 percent of the West Bank and 100 percent of the Gaza Strip, Palestinians would have their own state, Dershowitz said. He claimed this would have been political suicide for Arafat. "The fact that Arafat refused to accept the offer at Camp David is a crime to Palestinians," he said.

Dershowitz called on the students in the audience to e-mail Carter and ask him about whether he played a role in the plan's failure, which he called, "a tragedy for hard-working Palestinian men and women."

He also said Carter's suggestion that Israel accept the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which would mean Israel's return to its 1967 borders, is impractical and would only infringe upon the country's security.

The Palestinians have failed time after time to make their dream of statehood a reality, he argued, making Carter's continued support of a "land for peace" philosphy unrealistic.

"President Carter makes it seem so simple: Just give land for peace," Dershowitz said. "When Israel gave back the Gaza [in the summer of 2005], it increased rocket attacks and increased terrorism. It's not as simple as President Carter suggests."

Dershowitz then discussed what he said were critical omissions from Carter's address and book. For example, he said Carter doesn't take attacks from Hezbollah, a terrorist group based in Lebanon, into account when analyzing the complexities of Israeli security.

Hezbollah uses civilians as human shields, he said, making Israeli retaliation look like the killing of innocent civilians.

Dershowitz also jumped on Carter's omission of Iran as a threat to Israel, drawing a comparison between the current Iranian regime and Adolf Hitler's Nazi government. It was a comparison some audience members appeared uneasy about.

Though he was greeted with a standing ovation, his reception was hardly as warm as the former President's, and his question-and-answer session was not without its confrontational moments (Unlike at Carter's talk, questions were not preselected.)

In response to an assertion by Meredith Ives '09 that the Hamas government was democratically elected by the Palestinian people, and therefore shouldn't be toppled, Dershowitz boiled down the difference between he and the sophomore: He would have opposed Hitler, while Ives would have supported the democratically elected leader.

Another tense moment came when Abeer Musleh, a Palestinian student from the Heller School of Social Policy and Management, responded to Dershowitz's argument that security checkpoints for Palestinians are a successful strategy for keeping Israelis safe right now from terrorist attacks.

The checkpoints are humiliating for Palestinians who have to wait in line to be searched by Israeli soldiers, she said.

Dershowitz argued that the benefit to Israel's security is worth the small inconvenience of waiting in line.

"You're complaining to the wrong people," he said, adding that she should be talking to her Palestinian government because as soon as they stop attacking Israel, the checkpoints could easily be done away with.

Rachel Marder contributed reporting.