Jimmy Carter has a very weird conception of how one starts a debate:
Former President Carter turned down a request to debate Alan Dershowitz about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying the outspoken Harvard law professor “knows nothing about the situation.”
Carter, author of a new book advocating “peace not apartheid” in the region, said he will not visit Brandeis University to discuss the book because the university requested he debate Dershowitz.“I don’t want to have a conversation even indirectly with Dershowitz,” Carter said in Friday’s Boston Globe. “There is no need … to debate somebody who, in my opinion, knows nothing about the situation in Palestine.”
The school’s debate request, Carter said, is proof that many in the United States are unwilling to hear an alternative view on the nation’s most taboo foreign policy issue, Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory.
I’m not entirely positive how requests that both sides be heard shows that “many…are unwilling to hear an alternative view” on Israeli policy. Indeed, it seems to show just the opposite.
Of course, President Carter is under no obligation to accept debate requests, and is free to set his schedule as he chooses. But he can’t duck debates and claim to want to start a debate at the same time.
Carter brokered the 1978 Camp David peace accord between Israel and Egypt and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. He said the goal of his book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” is to provoke dialogue and action.
“There is no debate in America about anything that would be critical of Israel,” he said.
[…]
“President Carter said he wrote the book because he wanted to encourage more debate; then why won’t he debate?” said Dershowitz, a vocal First Amendment advocate who has worked for O.J. Simpson and other high-profile clients.
Well, at the moment, there is no debate because Carter refuses to have a debate (didn’t Walt & Mearsheimer also refuse requests to debate their thesis as well?). So it’s not our fault this time.
My theory is that he won’t debate because he knows he’ll get crushed. [Crushed harder than The Debate Link is getting crushed by Blue Gal? Shut up.] But that’s just me.
Oh and one more line that caught my eye:
The reference to “apartheid,” the word for South Africa’s former system of state-sanctioned racial segregation, has angered some rabbis because it appears to equate that system with the treatment of Palestinians.
First of all, it doesn’t just “seem to”, it does — Carter’s weak attempts at distinguishing notwithstanding. But more importantly: “some rabbis”? I’ll have to check, but I’m reasonably sure I’m not the only non-rabbi who has an issue with President Carter’s characterization here. Indeed, if one looks hard enough, you might even find some non-Jews who find the misuse of “apartheid” to be appalling as well.