Former President Jimmy Carter: Speaking Frankly about Israel and Palestine

Former President Jimmy Carter: Speaking Frankly about Israel and Palestine

  Read here Excerpts from Jimmy Carter's book "Palestine: Peace
Not Apartheid."

by

Jimmy Carter
(JIMMY CARTER was the 39th president of the United States. His newest book is "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," published last month.)

Quote:

".... Book reviews in the mainstream media have been written mostly by representatives of Jewish organizations who would be unlikely to visit the occupied territories.

Their primary criticism is that the book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" 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."

Out in the real world, however, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. I've signed books in five stores, with more than 1,000 buyers at each site.

I've had one negative remark — that I should be tried for treason — and one caller on C-SPAN said that I was an anti-Semite.

My most troubling experience has been the rejection of my offers to speak, for free, about the book on university campuses with high Jewish enrollment and to answer questions from students and professors.

I have been most encouraged by prominent Jewish citizens and members of Congress who have thanked me privately for presenting the facts and some new ideas."
- JIMMY CARTER

(Note: American Jewish commentators and Pro-Israel Lobby Groups are up in arms against former President Carter's book. )

The media attack-dogs (read here ) now demonising Jimmy Carter as they did to John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt (read here , and here ) are now on the loose.

Mitchell Bard is one of them.Read here Bard's offensive article. Mitchell Bard is the Executive Director of the nonprofit American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE). Dr. Bard is also the director of the Jewish Virtual Library. For three years he was the editor of the Near East Report, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC) weekly newsletter on U.S. Middle East policy. Prior to working at AIPAC, Dr. Bard served as a senior analyst in the polling division of the 1988 Bush campaign.

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 former president's "slightly goofy reliance" on his own religious faith as a way of judging Israeli society. (Peretz, in 1982, received the Jerusalem Medal) .

Alan Dershowitz,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." (Dershowitz was born in the Williamsburg neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, and grew up in Borough Park. His parents, Harry and Claire, were both devout Orthodox Jews.)

Jewish groups critical of Carter's book got together and wrote him a letter. Read here

Democrats are Distancing Themselves for Fear of Iraeli Lobby Backlash: Weeks before it hit the bookshelves, election-hungry Democrats were disavowing it because it used the word “apartheid” to describe the discrimination against Palestinians living in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. House Representative and soon-to-be Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi wrote: “It is wrong to suggest that the Jewish people would support a government in Israel or anywhere else that institutionalizes ethnically based oppression, and Democrats reject that allegation vigorously.” Read here for more

Jimmy Carter has written a book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid , that is guaranteed to make him a target of the Israel Lobby . All those who attacked John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt will use the same tactics against President Carter. There will be little that passes for discussion of the issue. Read here for more

Carter has departed from the accepted narrative that Israel's so-called friends in the United States insist on imposing on the Israeli-Palestinian narrative. Depart from it and expect to get called all kind of names, none of them nice.Read here for more

DECEMBER 8, 2006

Read here full article

I SIGNED A CONTRACT with Simon & Schuster two years ago to write a book about the Middle East, based on my personal observations as the Carter Center monitored three elections in Palestine and on my consultations with Israeli political leaders and peace activists.

We covered every Palestinian community in 1996, 2005 and 2006, when Yasser Arafat and later Mahmoud Abbas were elected president and members of parliament were chosen.

The elections were almost flawless, and turnout was very high — except in East Jerusalem, where, under severe Israeli restraints, only about 2% of registered voters managed to cast ballots.

The many controversial issues concerning Palestine and the path to peace for Israel are intensely debated among Israelis and throughout other nations — but not in the United States.

For the last 30 years, I have witnessed and experienced the severe restraints on any free and balanced discussion of the facts.

This reluctance to criticize any policies of the Israeli government is because of the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American-Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) and the absence of any significant contrary voices.

It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine, to suggest that Israel comply with international law or to speak in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians.

Very few would ever deign to visit the Palestinian cities of Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron, Gaza City or even Bethlehem and talk to the beleaguered residents.

What is even more difficult to comprehend is why the editorial pages of the major newspapers and magazines in the United States exercise similar self-restraint, quite contrary to private assessments expressed quite forcefully by their correspondents in the Holy Land.

With some degree of reluctance and some uncertainty about the reception my book would receive, I used maps, text and documents to describe the situation accurately and to analyze the only possible path to peace: Israelis and Palestinians living side by side within their own internationally recognized boundaries.

These options are consistent with key U.N. resolutions supported by the U.S. and Israel, official American policy since 1967, agreements consummated by Israeli leaders and their governments in 1978 and 1993 (for which they earned Nobel Peace Prizes), the Arab League's offer to recognize Israel in 2002 and the International Quartet's "Roadmap for Peace," which has been accepted by the PLO and largely rejected by Israel.

The book is devoted to circumstances and events in Palestine and not in Israel, where democracy prevails and citizens live together and are legally guaranteed equal status.

Although I have spent only a week or so on a book tour so far, it is already possible to judge public and media reaction. Sales are brisk, and I have had interesting interviews on TV, including "Larry King Live," "Hardball," "Meet the Press," "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," the "Charlie Rose" show, C-SPAN and others. But I have seen few news stories in major newspapers about what I have written.

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."

Out in the real world, however, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. I've signed books in five stores, with more than 1,000 buyers at each site. I've had one negative remark — that I should be tried for treason — and one caller on C-SPAN said that I was an anti-Semite.

My most troubling experience has been the rejection of my offers to speak, for free, about the book on university campuses with high Jewish enrollment and to answer questions from students and professors.

I have been most encouraged by prominent Jewish citizens and members of Congress who have thanked me privately for presenting the facts and some new ideas.

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.

The ultimate purpose of my book is to present facts about the Middle East that are largely unknown in America, to precipitate discussion and to help restart peace talks (now absent for six years) that can lead to permanent peace for Israel and its neighbors.

Another hope is that Jews and other Americans who share this same goal might be motivated to express their views, even publicly, and perhaps in concert. I would be glad to help with that effort.

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