Jimmy Carter has written a book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid", that seems to be the worst sort of Socialist Worker "we are all Hizbollah now" drivel, riven with factual errors, reinforcing anti-semitic stereotypes of Jewish control of the media, and written by a man whose own Carter Center receives massive donations from the Arab world. Too much to quote, go read, starting with the excellent-as-ever Dershowitz.
Has Carter crossed the line?
Dec. 21, 2006 9:19
Alan Dershowitz
Ex-President for Sale
by Alan M. Dershowitz
January 08, 2007
About the Carter Center's Arab funding
Jimmy Carter and the Arab Lobby
By Jacob Laksin
FrontPageMagazine.com
December 18, 2006
Clinton's Middle East envoy reveals how Carter misprepresents the Camp David talks
Don't Play With Maps
Dennis Ross
9/1/07
--------------------
Actually I'll just permit myself one interesting quote from the first Dershowitz article that has a more general application than the narrow discussion of Carter's book. I've read the book it's from and recommend it:
In my book, The Case for Peace, I argued that criticism of Israel - even unfair and strident criticism - should not be equated with anti-Semitism. I went on to list a series of criteria for determining whether the line had been crossed into the abyss of anti-Semitism. Among these criticisms are:
* Employing stereotypes against Israel that have traditionally been directed against "the Jews."
* Characterizing Israel as "the worst," when it is clear that this is not an accurate comparative assessment.
* Singling out only Israel for sanctions for policies that are widespread among other nations, or demanding that Jews be better or more moral than others because of their history as victims.
* Emphasizing and stereotyping certain characteristics among supporters of Israel that have traditionally been used in anti-Semitic attacks, for example, "pushy" American Jews, Jews "who control the media" and Jews "who control financial markets."
* Accusing Jews and only Jews of having dual loyalty.
* Blaming Israel for the problems of the world and exaggerating the influence of the Jewish state on world affairs.
* Falsely claiming that all legitimate criticism of Israeli policies is immediately and widely condemned by Jewish leaders as anti-Semitic, despite any evidence to support this accusation.
* Seeking to delegitimate Israel precisely as it moves toward peace.
* Circulating wild charges against Israel and Jews.
8 comments:
Devastating review from a man who knows Carter to the extent of having collaborated with him on his only previous book about the Middle East.
My Problem with Jimmy Carter's Book
by Kenneth W. Stein
Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2007
Jimmy Carter's engagement in foreign affairs as a former president is unprecedented in U.S. history. Because he regards the Arab-Israeli conflict as among Washington's most important foreign policy topics, he has written more than two dozen articles and commentaries about the conflict, eight in the past year alone. In these publications, Carter uses his credibility as a former president, Nobel laureate, and key player in the September 1978 Camp David accords and the Egypt-Israel peace treaty to unfold his set of truths and often to criticize U.S. policy. He relishes the role of elder statesman and believes that with his accrued wisdom and experience, he can contribute to solutions.
But Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, Carter's twenty-first book and his second to focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict, is deficient. He does what no non-fiction author should ever do: He allows ideology or opinion to get in the way of facts. While Carter says that he wrote the book to educate and provoke debate, the narrative aims its attack toward Israel, Israeli politicians, and Israel's supporters. It contains egregious errors of both commission and omission. To suit his desired ends, he manipulates information, redefines facts, and exaggerates conclusions. Falsehoods, when repeated and backed by the prestige of Carter's credentials, can comprise an erroneous baseline for shaping and reinforcing attitudes and policymaking. Rather than bring peace, they can further fuel hostilities, encourage retrenchment, and hamper peacemaking.
Carter - a profile in incompetence
IBD Editorials
Carter-Hamas meeting achieved nothing: Palestinians
AFP
23/04/08
Peter Hitchens on Israel
Vanessa Redgrave in an open letter to The New York Review of Books calls for Israeli Films to be show at the Toronto Film Festival. She is one of three signatories opposing the protests against the Festival's decision to celebrate Tel Aviv in their 'City to City' section.
Here's a quote from her letter:
"The protesters use the term "apartheid regime." We oppose the current Israeli government, but it is a government. Freely elected. Not a regime. Words matter.
[...]
If attitudes are hardened on both sides, if those who are fighting within their own communities for peace are insulted, where then is the hope? The point finally is not to grandstand but to inch toward a two-state solution and a world in which both nations can exist, perhaps not lovingly, but at least in peace."
Beautiful satire from this guy Tuvia Tenenbom. Here he gently mocks a J Street gathering of "Self-denying Jews".
J Street: The Bash-Me Bunch or Beat Them and They Will Thank you, Thank Them and They Will Beat You
Hudson NY
by Tuvia Tenenbom
March 9, 2011
...
But there is not much time to ponder Qadafi and other Jews in Cairo: an actual student goes to podium to speak. He wears a yarmulke, says he was born in Israel, and talks about how bad he felt during the Gaza War that so many Palestinians died. Perhaps he is right: maybe he would have felt better if more Jews had died. The audience applauds. At the press area, journalists applaud as well. Two hundred members of the media, I am told, registered. They must love Js.
Racial profiling or not, you need a magnifying glass to find Arabs here. Maybe they all went to A Street. But I do spot Muhammad, a well-clad man who tells me that he is from Ramallah, that he is a student, and that it takes him six hours every day to ride from Ramallah to Tel Aviv University.
"Six hours? Every day?"
"Yes, every day."
"When was the last time you were there?"
"Last week."
"Took you six hours?"
"Six hours."
"Well, I was there and it took me less than ten minutes to cross from Ramallah to Jerusalem."
"Impossible! You were part of a delegation?"
"Part of a bus…"
"When was that?"
"Tell me, Muhammad. How did you get here?"
"Get here?"
"Where was the plane that brought you here, Muhammad? In Ramallah?"
"I come from Bir Zeit U."
"Did the plane fly you from Ramallah to DC?"
"From Nebraska."
"Nebraska, not Ramallah?"
Muhammad looks at me. He laughs. "Truthfully," he says to me, "I have more respect for the settler who spits in my face and tells me the truth than all the people here who say they are peace lovers and know nothing about me and my culture. These people here, they just need a cause. That's all."
Muhammad and I leave J Street; he has a big smile on his face as he walks out.
As I wander about in J Street on the second day, a former Israeli minister rises to speak in classic Israeli English, which at times sounds like Hebrew. He says that Israel must negotiate with everybody: Syria, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the alphabet. He knows everything. I guess this is why he is no longer a minister: He does not want to be, he says. He will be one again, he says, but only when he wants to be. The Js believe him. They clap.
...
"Muhammad looks at me. He laughs. "Truthfully," he says to me, "I have more respect for the settler who spits in my face and tells me the truth than all the people here who say they are peace lovers and know nothing about me and my culture. These people here, they just need a cause. That's all.""
I've only skimmed the article so I may be hugely missing the point, but the paragraph above leapt out at me as the kind "at least you know where you stand with them" defence that is so often used to justify racism (whereby the object of racism claims that s/he prefers it because it's more 'honest'). I remember similar "quotes" from blacks being used to justify Apartheid. I think I may even have read something anti-semitic where a Jewish character respects the anti-semite for his honesty and his understanding of the 'truth' about Jews, but I can't remember where. But anyway, faulty memory aside, I'm not hugely comfortable with this line of argument.
Actually I think Muhammed (who has just himself been caught out as a fraud) is simply shrugging his shoulders and saying people on both sides are basically all c**ts, albeit for different reasons.
Post a Comment