Carter… and Carter
More on Jimmy Carter, or more precisely his book.
Some links to readable articles:
Leonard Fein at the Jewish Daily Forward, “There Is Virtue, President Carter, in Self-doubt
Alan Dershowitz asks in the Boston Globe, Why won’t Carter debate his book?
Shmuel Rosner at Haaretz tries to answer the question: Is Carter an anti-Semite?
And “a letter-to-the-editor by AJC Executive Director David Harris on former president Jimmy Carter’s book” which appeared in Friday’s International Herald Tribune. The letter responds to an op-ed article by Carter in the IHT. This is the latest AJC published opinion piece on Carter’s book, Palestine: Peace or Apartheid.”
Full text:
The Mideast dilemma
Jimmy Carter has forfeited any claim to objectivity in the Arab-Israeli conflict. His opinion article “Reiterating the keys to peace” (Views, Dec. 21) reveals why.
He has essentially bought the Palestinian narrative hook, line and sinker. In his view, while Palestinians (and their Arab neighbors) allegedly yearn for coexistence with Israel, Israelis are too busy subjugating Palestinians to give a darn about peace.
President Carter, wake up and smell the coffee. Three consecutive Israeli prime ministers – Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon and now Ehud Olmert – have openly supported a viable two-state settlement. Each was rebuffed by Palestinian leaders unwilling, or incapable, of abandoning their maximalist demands and meeting Israel halfway.
Israel does not require lectures on the need for peace. The Jewish people introduced to the world the prophetic vision of a world in which “nation shall not lift up sword against nation.” No country yearns for peace more than Israel, which has not known a single day of true peace since its founding in 1948 – and today faces the combined forces of Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Iran, all calling for Israel’s annihilation.
When a genuine peacemaker like the late Anwar Sadat comes along, Israel will be ready, as it was in 1979. At the time, as Carter knows better than anyone, Israel made enormous territorial concessions for peace. But a country just one-seventh the size of Carter’s native Georgia, living with the likes of Syria, not South Carolina, as its neighbor, doesn’t have much margin for error, a key point that Carter fails to acknowledge in his haste to “solve” the problem.
David A. Harris, New York, Executive Director, American Jewish Committee
As always, h/t to Holly.
17 Responses to “Carter… and Carter”
I am disappointed in this on going gang bang of Carter. He should have chosen a different name for the book and he should have presented a more balanced discussion of the obstacles to peace. But the constant bashing also drowns out the more reasonable aspects of his argument.
I am Jewish with an aunt and cousins living in Jerusalem and I believe that Hamas is clearly the main obstacle to peace. But this participation in one sided character assassination of a proven peacemaker is unbecoming a blog called the Moderate Voice.
This has all been very predictable. Anyone that comes out publicly against the atrocities of the Israeli government is immediately attacked and labeled as an antisemite.
These chumps need to get it through their thick skulls that opposing the actions of the Israeli government is not antisemitism. By the same token, opposing Iran or Saudi Arabia is not antimuslim.
Paul, why should one engage in argument with someone who is clearly not interested in being reasonable? If there’s a reasonable case to be made to change some aspect of our policies towards Israel and Palestine, let’s argue about it with somebody who presents a reasonable argument, rather than a hostile title and a one-sided, unbalanced (by your own admission) point of view, without acknowledging ANY of the compelling arguments on the other side?
Would you ever say of David Duke, yeah, he’s too provocative and one-sided, but he’s got some good ideas about ending welfare and affirmative action, why don’t we talk about those?
I mean, should somebody post, you know, President Carter presented a one-sided argument, which, if adopted as U.S. policy would result in the annihilation of Israel by Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran, but here’s some better arguments which he should have made? Or, here’s his book with all the stupid parts edited out?
There will be no peace until Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Muslim world at large acknowledge Israel’s right to exist and stop supporting, condoning, and celebrating suicide bombers and other terrorists. For someone of President Carter’s stature to write a major book on the subject without saying so, without fully attacking the real enemies of peace, is the height of irresponsibility, and he deserves no credit or thought even if he did manage to sneak in a couple of decent ideas into a perverse book.
There’s a lot of debate all over about Carter and it isn’t unbefitting The Moderate Voice to debate it with passion because his book is arousing passions on both sides. If we say it’s unbefitting The Moderate Voice then it’s saying that this site’s writers can’t show their feelings about a controversial book or that they can only take one side of it. So I see nothing wrong with people who write here expressing their views on the Carter book…which has been defended passionately and come under fire passionately in many quarters. In fact, many topics on this site have people who don’t give the same take on it.
Correctly stated above: opposing the actions of the Israeli government is not antisemitism.
What’s all this straw-man yammering about opposing Israel not being anti-semitism? That’s true, but who on this thread called Carter an anti-semite? He’s an idiot, and his proposals would probably result in the destruction of the state of Israel, but nobody said that makes him an anti-semite.
If you want to defend President Carter’s book, then do so. Stop hiding behind that straw-man accusation.
In the interest of fairness, would you also say that there will be no peace until Israel and the United States acknowledge Palestine’s right to exist and stop supporting, condoning and celebrating the terror being visited upon the occupied territories?
I read the Rosner article. As he states, it depends what “Anti-Semitism” is. Israel definitely has too much influence on America’s foreign policy. And in particular, the Jewish-American Community has too much influence on America’s intervention in Israeli-Palestinian matters. With a Neo-Con in the White House, PNAC and other such groups are definitely shaping American’s foreign policy (i.e. starting immoral and illegal wars). If Republicans and PNAC want war so badly, give ‘em a GD gun!
I’ll repeat what I have said often on this site in posts and comments. Jimmy Carter was one of the most incompetent in my lifetime. I was overseas in Spain when he was elected. In Oct. 1976 I was writing for the Christian Science Monitor as its Special Correspondent (which one editor said they felt was a “full time contributor,” but it basically meant I was not staff but in charge of all of their Spain coverage and given partial expenses for travel on special assignments to the Basque Country..and they never sent a staffer in during my stint for them covering the post-Franco transition to democracy). I became friends with some Madrid University students and we watched the Ford/Carter debates shown via video at the American Embassy.
Once Carter took office the Madrid-based diplomats with whom I’d often talk on stories were besides themselves because of what they said was the incompetence of the Carter administration. I also read about the long gas lines. His inability to work with Congress. In short: he was the classic example of someone who was able to make a “sale” but when consumers got his product they felt it was not as advertised. He seemed to take his sweater on and off for image purposes more than Al Gore later changed make-up artists during the 2000 Presidential debates.
Camp David was a major achievement, but he proved to be a classic case of someone who could get himself elected but fell far short. He was basically fired by the American people. I voted against him — in my stint as a Reagan Democrat (I have since been in both parties and a permanent independent starting abut 6 years ago). Since leaving office Carter has been a thorn in the side (or, rather a pain in the posterior) for all Presidents who followed him including Bill Clinton. He has shown his giving spirit with his housebuilding, etc. But that has not transformed him into a cherished senior stateman with a balanced and wise perspective.
He has been judged and will be judged to be one of the weakest Presidents of the 20th century and a gadfly on foreign issues to Presidents who followed him. I buy lots of books; I have NO desire to buy one by Jimmy Carter. A LOT of indepedents, centrists and moderates couldn’t STAND Carter; otherwise he would have WON a second term…and you would not have heard the term “Reagan Democrats”…who this year reportedly returned to retest the waters of the Democratic party. On the Middle East issue, he rightfully was hailed for the Camp David agreement because he managed to get the two sides together without them beating each other up. But going into his term and during it some analyists had suggested he was more sympathetic to the Palestinians than most American Presidents. Now, that’s a GOOD THING if you feel that our policy has been too lopsidded; and a BAD THING if you feel the U.S. must above all support Israel. But his book suggests to many not a sympathy but an outright BIAS and is being taken apart due to specific things contained…and not contained..in his analysis. His problem has not been his flawed character. It has been his job performance and his THINKING.
resonse to (Joe 3:06)
Well, I was born only a few years before Carter took office. I admit that Carter wasn’t a great president, and probably not even a good one. But he and Clinton have done some good things to advance peace in the Middle East, and peace in general. Before becoming president, Jimmy Carter seems to have been not much more than a simple, honest, peanut farmer. After waste-of-space Nixon, in theory that’s probably a case of overcomensation. In any case, being reelected isn’t an indication that a president is a “good” one. Reagan was reelected, and other than ending Communism, he was one of the worst of all time. Come to think of it, he reminds me of George W. Bush: alot of talk and conviction, but not much substance. I don’t want to comment too much about Carter’s book, since I haven’t read it. But I certainly wouldn’t not read it, because Carter wasn’t a particularly successful or good president. Carter may have done more good after leaving the White House, than any other president in recent history.
Chris, Israel and the United States have both acknowledged Palestine’s right to exist, as a separate state. The Palestinian leaders have rejected several Israeli and American proposals to actually accomplish statehood. The Israelis have not elected a political party/militant organization who has the destruction of Palestine as a prime goal. The Palestinians have. When the Israelis have given up actual territory in an effort to reach peace, they have generally been met on the other side by the use of that territory to stage additional attacks against innocent Israeli citizens.
For that matter, Muslim Arabs are allowed to exist and vote and practice their faith and otherwise exercise all the rights of citizenship on the Israeli side. Jews are not afforded the same rights on the Palestinian side, nor indeed in most of the Muslim world. In most Arab nations, it’s illegal to physically bring into the country any religious book besides the Koran. You can be arrested for possessing either the Torah or the Bible.
My concernes as the first commenter on this post is not the legitimacy of the criticiams of Carter but that it keeps getting brought up without adding new information. Carter screwed up. I get it. Now can we move on?
Pat,
Your response betrays your lack of fairness on the Israel/Palestine issue. Why is it that for you Israel has a undeniable “right to exist,” but Palestine has a “right to exist” only if the United States and Israel agree?
If Statehood is a right, what proposals are necessary? And have you actually read the proposals? If you do a little research, you’ll see why the Palestinians might not have been enamoured with Israeli’s supposed “generosity”
You sure about that? The Israelis carry out frequent attacks inside the occupied territories. They have killed and intimidated thousands of Palestinians, forcing them off their land. They’ve built a wall inside of Palestinian territory, as well as roads that can’t be crossed without Israeli approval. Seems like they are destroying Palestine, even if it’s not their party platform.
Moreover, the Israeli government has, for decades, actually opposed and rooted out moderate nationalist movements in the occupied territories. The Israelis have wanted the Palestinian state movement to be radical, so that it would be easily dismissed as being run by fanatics. The Israelis have paid for the policy with the predictable rise of Hamas and suicide bombings.
Do you mean when the Israelis gave up land in Gaza? Did you know they took even more land (and good arable land) from the Palestinians in the West Bank at the same time? Don’t fall for the fairy tale that the Israeli government is spinning.
Then Israel should just incorporate the Palestinian land into Israel and offer the Palestinians full rights as citizens.
Oh wait! The Israelis are xenophobic too! They are concerned about “The Demographic Problem.” They don’t mind having Arabs in Israel, but just not enough to have any political power.
Pat said “There will be no peace until Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Muslim world at large acknowledge Israel’s right to exist and stop supporting, condoning, and celebrating suicide bombers and other terrorists.”. This is true, of course.
But it is also true that while Israel states in theory that they believe there should be a Palestinian state they refuse to do the only things that in fact would make a viable Palestinian state possible, which is to rid the West Bank of the settlements. There cannot be peace so long as the settlements and the roads and infrastructure to support them prevents a contiguous territory for a Palestinian state.
I never said Israel has done no wrong. But they do not have, as the stated goal of any of their major political parties, the destruction of Palestine. The Palestinians do. The Palestinians find common cause and take support from people like the Iranian president, who openly preaches of wiping Israel off the map. When was the last time Israel threatened to wipe the Palestinians off the map? Israel, despite being surrounded by neighbors who hate them and constant suicide attacks, has focused on working and building a healthy economy. The Palestinians (and their Arab neighbors) have mostly focused on Islamic theocracy and keeping political power by demonizing Israel more and more.
Are some of the Palestinian grievances just? Undoubtedly. Am I going to bother listening to them before they stop trying to wipe Israel off the map and recruiting children and mothers to be suicide bombers, targeting Israeli and American innocents? Nope.
As for your last point, don’t be silly. Palestinians don’t WANT to be incorporated into the Israeli state. And if they were so incorporated, they would undoubtedly quickly take over the government and impose some form of Sharia law. In short, they would turn Israel into Palestine.
You might find it interesting that the Israelis have managed to kill far more Palestinians than vice versa.
And just a few decades ago the ratio was almost 10 Palestinians killed for each Israeli.
So does this mean it’s okay for the Palestinians to not to listen to the Israeli grievances until the Israelis stop recruiting military personnel to target innocent Palestinians?
Be fair.