Book Debate Guide: Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid

From PhiloWiki

Carter's Previous Views

I am opposed to an independent Palestinian state, because in my own judgement and in the judgement of many leaders in the Middle East, including Arab leaders, this would be a destabilizing factor in the Middle East and would certainly not serve the United States interests.
- Jimmy Carter at the United Jewish Appeal National Young Leadership Conference, February 25, 1980

...we oppose the creation of an independent Palestinian state. The United States, as all of you know, has a warm and unique relationship of friendship with Israel that is morally right. It is compatible with our deepest religious convictions, and it is right in terms of America’s own strategic interests. We are committed to Israel’s security, prosperity, and future as a land that has so much to offer to the world. A strong Israel and a strong Egypt serve our own security interests.We are committed to Israel’s right to live in peace with all its neighbors, within secure and recognized borders, free from terrorism. We are committed to a Jerusalem that will forever remain undivided with free access to all faiths to the holy places. Nothing will deflect us from these fundamental principles and committments.
- Jimmy Carter, First anniversary of the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty / White House joint conference, March 23, 1980

[edit]

Criticism

Book reviews in the mainstream media have been written mostly by representatives of Jewish organizations who would be unlikely to visit the occupied territories, and their primary criticism is that the book is anti-Israel. Two members of Congress have been publicly critical. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for instance, issued a statement (before the book was published) saying that "he does not speak for the Democratic Party on Israel." Some reviews posted on Amazon.com call me "anti-Semitic," and others accuse the book of "lies" and "distortions." A former Carter Center fellow has taken issue with it, and Alan Dershowitz called the book's title "indecent."

The book describes the abominable oppression and persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories, with a rigid system of required passes and strict segregation between Palestine's citizens and Jewish settlers in the West Bank. An enormous imprisonment wall is now under construction, snaking through what is left of Palestine to encompass more and more land for Israeli settlers. In many ways, this is more oppressive than what blacks lived under in South Africa during apartheid. I have made it clear that the motivation is not racism but the desire of a minority of Israelis to confiscate and colonize choice sites in Palestine, and then to forcefully suppress any objections from the displaced citizens. Obviously, I condemn any acts of terrorism or violence against innocent civilians, and I present information about the terrible casualties on both sides.

Speaking frankly about Israel and Palestine from LA Times Jimmy Carter

The title of Jimmy Carter’s latest book, “Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid,” really says it all. That Carter, a supposed “friend” of Israel, would liken our democratic ally in the Mideast to the apartheid state of South Africa is way beyond just provocative — it’s insane.

Carter no doubt thinks that because he once brokered peace talks between Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin at Camp David he has the moral and intellectual heft to pontificate on the Mideast’s ills. He doesn’t.

Fact is, Carter has long since joined the Israel-hating left — where true anti-Semitism resides today. In so doing, Carter has joined a long line of those who, like ex-Attorney General Ramsey Clark, linguist Noam Chomsky and faux-documentarian Michael Moore, see Israel as the root of all evil.

Any ill found in the Mideast — poverty, inequality, corruption, human rights abuses — can somehow be traced to Israel’s supposed mistreatment of Palestinians, they say...

Apparently, some Carter friends are fed up. One of them, Kenneth Stein, the first executive director of the Carter Center, severed his ties with the think tank this week in disgust over Carter’s book.

Stein, who is an expert on U.S.-Mideast relations and a professor at Atlanta’s Emory University, and who once mentored Carter on the nuances of Mideast politics, found Carter’s tome “replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments.”

Having been the “third man in the room” at many of the events Carter alludes to in his book, Stein charges that Carter simply fabricates some material. Not a flattering picture.

Carter’s Poison Pills from Investor's Business Daily Staff

This note is to inform you that yesterday, I sent letters to President Jimmy Carter, Emory University President Jim Wagner, and Dr. John Hardman, Executive Director of the Carter Center resigning my position, effectively immediately, as Middle East Fellow of the Carter Center of Emory University. This ends my 23 year association with an institution that in some small way I helped shape and develop. My joint academic position in Emory College in the History and Political Science Departments, and, as Director of the Emory Institute for the Study of Modern Israel remains unchanged.

Many still believe that I have an active association with the Center and, act as an adviser to President Carter, neither is the case. President Carter has intermittently continued to come to the Arab-Israeli Conflict class I teach in Emory College. He gives undergraduate students a fine first hand recollection of the Begin-Sadat negotiations of the late 1970s. Since I left the Center physically thirteen years ago, the Middle East program of the Center has waned as has my status as a Carter Center Fellow. For the record, I had nothing to do with the research, preparation, writing, or review of President Carter's recent publication. Any material which he used from the book we did together in 1984, The Blood of Abraham, he used unilaterally.

President Carter's book on the Middle East, a title too inflammatory to even print, is not based on unvarnished analyses; it is replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments. Aside from the one-sided nature of the book, meant to provoke, there are recollections cited from meetings where I was the third person in the room, and my notes of those meetings show little similarity to points claimed in the book. Being a former President does not give one a unique privilege to invent information or to unpack it with cuts, deftly slanted to provide a particular outlook. Having little access to Arabic and Hebrew sources, I believe, clearly handicapped his understanding and analyses of how history has unfolded over the last decade. Falsehoods, if repeated often enough become meta-truths, and they then can become the erroneous baseline for shaping and reinforcing attitudes and for policy-making. The history and interpretation of the Arab-Israeli conflict is already drowning in half-truths, suppositions, and self-serving myths; more are not necessary. In due course, I shall detail these points and reflect on their origins.

The decade I spent at the Carter Center (1983-1993) as the first permanent Executive Director and as the first Fellow were intellectually enriching for Emory as an institution, the general public, the interns who learned with us, and for me professionally. Setting standards for rigorous interchange and careful analyses spilled out to the other programs that shaped the Center's early years. There was mutual respect for all views; we carefully avoided polemics or special pleading. This book does not hold to those standards. My continued association with the Center leaves the impression that I am sanctioning a series of egregious errors and polemical conclusions which appeared in President Carter's book. I can not allow that impression to stand.

Through Emory College, I have continued my professional commitment to inform students and the general public about the history and politics of Israel, the Middle East, and American policies toward the region. I have tried to remain true to a life-time devotion to scholarly excellence based upon unvarnished analyses and intellectual integrity. I hold fast to the notion that academic settings and those in positions of influence must teach and not preach. Through Emory College, in public lectures, and in OPED writings, I have adhered to the strong belief that history must presented in context, and understood the way it was, not the way we wish it to be.

Errors, omissions, inventions and falsehoods from Powerline Blog Dr. Kenneth W. Stein, Professor of Contemporary Middle Eastern History, Political Science, and Israeli Studies, Director, Middle East Research Program and Emory Institute for the Study of Modern Israel

At 247 pages, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" is a brisk read, offering a primer on Middle Eastern history and the roots of the bloody conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. The author, who contracted to write the book two years ago and finished it only recently, assigns responsibility for the conflict to both sides. But his bottom-line sentiments are clear: The so-called road map for peace has failed, he writes, because "Israel has been able to use it as a delaying tactic with an endless series of preconditions that can never be met ... and the United States has been able to give the impression of positive engagement in a 'peace process' which President Bush has announced will not be fulfilled during his time in office."

Carter, who won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, has earned international praise for his post-presidential work; the Carter Center, which he founded after losing the 1980 presidential race to Ronald Reagan, has monitored elections and campaigned against disease in 65 nations. It would be easy for him to simply bask in goodwill, but several of his efforts to negotiate cease-fires have raised the hackles of sitting presidents. And he conceded that his push for a debate on his book tour might be hopelessly quixotic, given Israel's strong support here. It is "almost impossible" for politicians to criticize Israel, Carter noted, adding that media coverage of the issue is "abominable."

Not surprisingly, several prominent critics have attacked Carter's book. Martin Peretz, editor in chief of the New Republic, called it "a tendentious, dishonest and stupid book" in an online commentary; he was critical of the ex-president's "slightly goofy reliance" on his own religious faith as a way of judging Israeli society.

Alan Dershowitz, who said he has admired Carter's post-presidential work, commented online at the Huffington Post.

"This decent man has written such an indecent book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," Dershowitz wrote. "I don't know why Jimmy Carter, who is generally a careful man, allowed so many errors and omissions to blemish his book."

Carter has gotten more favorable reviews, however. Booklist said his writing was "grounded in knowledge and wisdom" and "delivers a worthy game plan." Publishers Weekly called the book "informed and readable."

Simon & Schuster "accepts the fact that not everyone will agree with him on this issue," said Alice Mayhew, the veteran editor who worked with Carter.

"But we felt it was a topic that should be publicly addressed."

Carter's frontal attack from LA Times Josh Getlin

Carter looks a little different. His new book, "Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid" lays all the blame on Israel for the Palestinian conflict in an interpretation worthy of a Cairo coffee shop. It is so extreme — and so seemingly out of character — that a top staffer at the Carter Center resigned in disgust.

It may be easy to dismiss Carter's nutty statements about Israel as the ranting of a bitter man in his twilight years. But it's not so easy to look the other way as Arab cash flows into the Carter Center from people known to demand something in return. It is worth noting that the center's anticipated contributions receivable and Carter's anti-Israeli diatribes have both increased dramatically.

Carter's foundation has a $200 million endowment, according to Rachel Ehrenfeld, an expert on terrorism, writing in the Washington Times, and the center's own 2004-05 statement says it took in $172 million in donations, with some as high as $25 million.

Fat cats who've given $1 million since the center's founding in 1982 (and in the hazy disclosures we don't know how much more) include the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Sultanate of Oman, the Saudi Fund for Development and the Government of the United Arab Emirates.

Among individuals who donated more than $100,000 in 2004-05, there is His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said of Oman, in addition to bin Talal. Among listed "founders" of the center are the king of Saudi Arabia, BCCI scandal banker Agha Hasan Abedi and Arafat pal Hasib J. Sabbagh.

All of these contributors have virulently anti-Israel elements, and most have medieval records of opposing and obstructing democracy in their own countries. Maybe someday, in one of those softball interviews he gives, Carter will be asked to reconcile what he supposedly stands for with those from whom he gets his money.

Jimmy Carter's Li'l Ol' Stink Tank from Investor's Business Daily Josh Getlin

[edit]