The courage of President
Carter
By Linda S. Heard
When former U.S. President Jimmy Carter penned his
latest book “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid” he
must have anticipated the storm it would cause.
Yet he bravely went ahead and published anyway.
He was certainly aware of the hatchet job the
pro-Israel lobby had carried out on two respected
university professors Stephen Walt and John
Mearsheimer in response to their essay “The
Israeli Lobby”.
And he must have known about the vilification and
sacking of the prominent academic Tony Judt
following his essay published in The New York
Review of Books calling for the dismantling of
Israel as a Jewish state.
But the 82-year-old former leader of the free
world and Nobel Laureate was undeterred in his
determination to stand up to the counted and was
prepared to fend off the brickbats certain to be
hurled in his direction.
No-one, let alone Carter, could have imagined he
would have been labeled a “thief”, “plagiarist”,
“liar”, “coward”, and even an “anti-Semite”.
Writing in The New Republic Martin Peretz
predicted that Carter would for ever be known as
“a Jew-hater”.
Speaking at an American university on January 23,
Carter admitted that he was personally hurt by
some of the harsh invective.
“I’ve been through political campaigns for state
senate and for governor and for president, and
I’ve been stigmatized and condemned by my
political opponents and their stories. But this is
the first time I’ve been called a liar and a bigot
and an anti-Semite and a coward and a plagiarist,”
he said.
During a recent interview Carter said he knew the
words “Palestine” and “Apartheid” in his book’s
title would be provocative. ‘I hope it provokes
people to actually read the book and to find out
the facts,” he said.
For a President whose reputation was just about as
unblemished as it gets, publishing a book that
equally champions the Israeli and the Palestinian
points of view in a climate where Israel is
sacrosanct, could either be considered naïve in
the extreme or amazingly courageous.
Perhaps he believed his record of good works
coupled with the unflinching respect Americans
traditionally afford to ex-Presidents rendered him
immune from ugly criticism.
A leader who had brokered the Camp David peace
accords between Israel and Egypt could not
possibly be labeled an anti-Semite, he may have
thought. If anyone in the US could get away with
telling it as it is then Carter may have believed
that he, more than anyone else, was the person to
do it. If so, he was wrong.
That would have been spot on if Carter had leveled
his criticisms at any other country in the world
except Israel.
If the topic of his book had been, say, the
fraught relationship between India and Pakistan or
even the Bush administration’s foolhardy blunder
in Iraq, he would have been roundly lauded for
using his First Amendment right of free speech.
In that case, he would have been commended for
opening up debate, offering another point of view
and he would certainly have been safe from
personal attacks.
The controversy may have damaged Carter in some
quarters but it has also thrust the book into the
public consciousness. Just three months subsequent
to publication “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid” was
number six on the New York Times’ list of
bestsellers.
Bringing to the fore the need for a two-state
solution was Carter’s prime motive for writing the
book.
“If I have had one burning desire in my heart and
mind for the last 30 years, I would place peace
for Israel on the top of the list,” said Carter,
“and commensurate with that has to be justice and
human rights for the Palestinians next door”.
Although Carter was psychologically prepared to
face the wrath of his detractors and the
pro-Israel Lobby he must have wounded by the
resignation of 15 of his friends; all advisors on
the Board of the quarter-of-a-century-old Carter
Center, internationally known for its charitable
good works.
In their resignation letters the cut-and-run
advisors had this to say. “We can no longer
endorse your strident and uncompromising
position,” adding, “This is not the Carter Center
or the Jimmy Carter we came to respect and
support”.
Kenneth W. Stein, one of the 15 who tendered their
resignations, accused his former boss and friend
of manipulating information, redefining facts and
exaggerating conclusions. Stein also criticized
the book saying it contained “egregious errors of
both commission and omission”.
Apart from the word “Apartheid” in the title,
echoing dark and cruel days in South Africa when
it was ruled by white bigots, Carter’s critics
fiercely objected to a sentence suggesting
Palestinians should quit blowing themselves up as
soon as they have their own state.
When challenged on this, Carter profusely
apologized, saying, “Of course, they ought to
abandon such tactics right now. That sentence was
worded in a completely improper and stupid way.”
In reprints of the book that sentence is to be
excised.
Nobody in the public spotlight can get away with
any suggestion that Palestinians are driven to
suicide bombing by their long-term miserable
plight.
If you recall, in 2002, Tony Blair’s wife Cherie
was forced to say she was sorry after telling
attendees at a Palestinian fundraiser “As long as
young people feel they have got no hope but to
blow themselves-up you are never going to make
progress.”
One of Carter’s fiercest critics was his former
friend and colleague Alan Dershowitz, a law
professor and pro-Israel political commentator,
who defends the use of torture, shows disdain for
the Geneva Conventions and champions the Israeli
military.
“I like Jimmy Carter,” is the way Dershowitz
prefaces one of his back-stabbing columns. “I have
known him since he began his run for president in
early 1976. I worked hard for his election and I
have admired the work of the Carter Center
throughout the world. That’s why it troubles me so
much that this decent man has written such an
indecent book about the Israel-Palestine
conflict”.
Democratic leader of the House Nancy Pelosi and
former Democratic presidential candidate Howard
Dean have also gotten into the bash Carter act by
condemning the latter’s reference to the
“abominable oppression and persecution” of
Palestinians by Israelis.
Whether this represents the left-wing pair’s
genuine outrage or is simply a sop to pro-Israel
voters in light of a looming presidential election
is impossible to know. I would suspect the latter.
In his book Carter certainly does come down hard
on Israel. He calls Israel’s policy “a system of
apartheid with two peoples occupying the same land
but separated from each other, with Israelis
totally dominant and suppressing violence by
depriving Palestinians of their basic human
rights”.
He further maintains that “Israel’s continued
control and colonization of Palestinian land have
been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive
peace agreement in the Holy Land.”
The pro-Israel Lobby in the US doesn’t get a free
pass in Carter’s book either. “Because of powerful
political, economic, and religious forces in the
United States, Israeli government decisions are
rarely questioned or condemned”, he writes.
Critics have slammed the above statements, all of
which are perfectly and undeniably true.
Israelis and Palestinians are separated from one
another by a wall (Israelis like to call it a
fence) that cuts through the West Bank and also by
check points and roads reserved for the dedicated
use of Israelis only. Most Israelis would freely
admit they’ve never even spoken to a Palestinian.
Israel’s expansion of settlements and construction
of new ones in contravention of UN Security
Council resolutions even as peace talks were
underway in the past, were obstacles to a
settlement, as Carter rightly says.
And the fact that Carter has come under so much
personal attack attests to his assertion that due
to the power of the Lobby the Israeli government’s
decisions are rarely condemned.
For instance, the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC)
is attempting to use Carter’s words to smear
Democratic election chances.
Indeed, the RJC has launched a massive campaign
against the Democrats in the media using an image
of the former President saying “I don’t think
Israel has any legal or moral justification for
its massive bombing of the entire nation of
Lebanon.”
It’s certainly a credit to President Carter that
he’s still smiling that famous warm smile. It
could be that at his age he doesn’t much care what
people think. Moreover his committed Christian
beliefs no doubt give him strength along with his
ethical character and conviction that the most
important thing in life is doing the right thing.
Some are saying the former President has lost his
marbles but when one looks at his record he’s been
consistent in his efforts to be a peacemaker all
along. One of his very first acts in office was to
order a cut back on US troops stationed in South
Korea and the removal of American nuclear weapons
from that country.
In 1978, Carter pushed for a comprehensive peace
accord between Arabs and Israelis and succeeded in
negotiating peace between Israel and Egypt in
1978.
Carter’s foreign policy goals were always focused
around human rights, and he was fervent in his
opposition to dictators such as Augusto Pinochet
of Chile and Alfred Stroessner of Paraguay as well
as the apartheid system of governance in South
Africa.
His greatest mistake in the eyes of the American
public was his inability to bring an end to the
1979 Iranian hostage situation. It was his failure
to negotiate or effect the release of 52 American
hostages held at the US embassy in Tehran that
contributed to his loss of office in 1980 to
President Ronald Reagan.
Since leaving office Carter has grown in the
estimation of most Americans due to his sincere
efforts in conflict resolution, peace-making,
human rights and the promotion of democracy, which
has included the monitoring of overseas elections.
Today, Jimmy Carter lectures at Emory University
and teaches Sunday school at his local Baptist
church. He is known to be an honorable,
kind-hearted man who enjoys such simple pleasures
as woodworking.
Those who slandered him so ruthlessly in recent
months should analyze their true motives. If they
are honest they should ask themselves whether
President Carter is an anti-Semitic bigot or
merely a simple man driven to put injustices to
rights.
Whether you think “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid”
is a flawed historical account or a truthful
treatise written with the best intentions to stir
our consciences depends on your personal belief
system.
However, it has succeeded in triggering a healthy
debate over whether Israel is, in fact, an
apartheid state, something that was vehemently
denied at the 2001 UN Conference on Racism held in
the South African city of Durban from which the US
and Israeli delegations walked out in protest.
President Jimmy Carter should be credited with
pushing the genii out of the bottle once and for
all. Only when the US starts to hold Israel up to
the same standards as every other nation on the
planet will Carter achieve his life-long dream of
peace in the Middle East along with the accolades
this rare courageous man so richly deserves.
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