Criminal law expert Alan Dershowitz to take on Dee family lawsuit against CNN

Dershowitz says he will work pro bono, cites host Amanpour's ‘long, deliberate pattern of moral equivalence’

Leading U.S. constitutional law and criminal law lawyer Alan Dershowitz announced that he will take on the Dee family court case against CNN and host Christiane Amanpour regarding her on-air comments about the tragic deaths of Rabbi Leo Dee’s wife and daughters.

Rabbi Leo Dee’s wife Lucy 48, and daughters Maya and Rina were killed when a terrorist attacked their car at close range in the West Bank settlement early last month. Maya, age 15, and Rina, 20, were killed in the shooting, and Lucy died from her injuries a few days later.

When announcing Lucy Dee's death, CNN host Amanpour said the women died “in a shootout,” implying that both the attackers and victims were actively shooting.

According to Dershowitz, Amanpour’s comments were not a mistake.

“They are not mistakes,” he said. “They are part of a deliberate pattern. There's no moral equivalence between people who shoot families in cold blood and people who suffer as a result of terrorism.”

Dershowitz also referenced the findings of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), an NGO which tracks anti-Israel bias in U.S. media. He said CAMERA had “documented a long pattern by CNN and Amanpour of constantly citing against Israel and trying to create a moral equivalence between innocent victims of terrorism.”

While Amanpour did eventually issue an apology to Rabbi Dee and his family, saying she “misspoke,” Rabbi Dee said the apology was “not worth the paper it’s printed on.” CNN must “change their attitude towards Israel,” Rabbi Dee said.

In his announcement, Dershowitz said he will take on the Dee case pro bono, as the family’s “emotional distress and harm” would be easy to prove in court.

“Amanpour hasn’t apologized for years of misleading the world about the Israel-Palestine conflict and about terrorism,” Dershowitz said. “They [the Dee family] have suffered enormous harm, and you can’t take that back. An apology doesn't undo defamation.”

“Let's wait to see what Amanpour says, not in a scripted apology, but under my cross-examination,” Dershowitz said.