Zach LarkinsJIMMY CARTER
An editorial in today's paper caught my eye. It should catch the eye of everyone who believes Jimmy Carter is right about Israel and Palestine.
"Since its release more than two months ago, Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace not Apartheid has been subject to two basic criticisms: 1 It presents a highly biased rewriting of Arab-Israeli history to support Mr. Carter's view that Israeli aggression is behind all the region's ills, and 2 it carries a tone some regard as anti-Semitic. Of the two critiques, the second is the more serious." It is Jimmy's book and he can rewrite all the history he wants. It won't change any facts. But as the editorial points out, the accusation of anti-Semitism is very serious.
I saw Jimmy on a TV interview the other day, and like all skilled politicians, he had a nice way of putting a spin on every question that was asked of him. The thing he skated over first was that so many of his former aides have quit since the book was published. Why? The editorial says, "In December, Ken Stein, the long-time Middle East fellow at Mr. Carter's centre for peace and development in Atlanta, resigned his post, alleging that he had brought several falsehoods in Palestine: Peace not Apartheid to the author's attention, but that Mr. Carter refused to correct them before the book went to press. Mr. Stein, who co-authored an earlier book by president Carter on the Middle East conflict, accused his former friend and boss of "egregious errors of both commission and omission," and of manipulating information, redefining facts, and exaggerating conclusions "to suit his desired ends." Mr. Stein even insisted Mr. Carter had copied large sections of his book from other sources."
"Monroe Freedman, speaking with The Online News Service World Net Daily, claimed that after he had been appointed by Mr. Carter in 1980 to be the first executive director of Washington, D.C.'s Holocaust Memorial Council, he received a note from the president saying the council's board had "too many Jews," and that he should seek to replace some with gentiles. Mr. Freedman also claimed that a senior White House official told him not to appoint a particular historian as a director because the man's name was too Jewish sounding, even though the professor was a Presbyterian. When Mr. Freedman asked to appeal the official's "absurd" decision to the president himself, he allegedly was told not to bother since "it wouldn't matter to Carter." Does that sound anti-Semitic to you? Jimmy pooh poohs the idea by saying that he sees "two Israels", one religious, the other secular. "The former represents "the ancient culture of the Jewish people, defined by the Hebrew Scriptures." The latter operates the military and political machine that denies the "basic human rights" of Arabs in "the occupied Palestinian territories." Even giving him the benefit of the doubt, it does not explain his actions while in office.
"Last week, the New York Sun uncovered a U.S. State department document on which Mr. Carter, in his own hand, had appealed for the U.S. government to re-admit Martin Bartesch, a confessed S.S. officer who had been deported to Austria for his war crimes. Mr. Carter argued that the mistakes of one's youth should not plague one all his life, even though the State Department had told the former president it possessed "extraordinary evidence" to the effect that Bartesch had not only been a guard at the Mauthausen death camp near Linz during the Second World War, but that he had been an active participant in firing squads that murdered Jewish prisoners," the editorial goes on to say.
The last few lines of the article give us this insight. "It is possible that at 82, Mr. Carter has become even softer in the heart and in the head than he was 30 years ago as president. Perhaps all of this is merely age exaggerating his natural liberal tendencies. We'd like to think the best of this international humanitarian. But regrettably, the pattern of Mr. Carter's behaviour points in the wrong direction."
Seems like they hit the nail on the head.
"Since its release more than two months ago, Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace not Apartheid has been subject to two basic criticisms: 1 It presents a highly biased rewriting of Arab-Israeli history to support Mr. Carter's view that Israeli aggression is behind all the region's ills, and 2 it carries a tone some regard as anti-Semitic. Of the two critiques, the second is the more serious." It is Jimmy's book and he can rewrite all the history he wants. It won't change any facts. But as the editorial points out, the accusation of anti-Semitism is very serious.
"Monroe Freedman, speaking with The Online News Service World Net Daily, claimed that after he had been appointed by Mr. Carter in 1980 to be the first executive director of Washington, D.C.'s Holocaust Memorial Council, he received a note from the president saying the council's board had "too many Jews," and that he should seek to replace some with gentiles. Mr. Freedman also claimed that a senior White House official told him not to appoint a particular historian as a director because the man's name was too Jewish sounding, even though the professor was a Presbyterian. When Mr. Freedman asked to appeal the official's "absurd" decision to the president himself, he allegedly was told not to bother since "it wouldn't matter to Carter." Does that sound anti-Semitic to you? Jimmy pooh poohs the idea by saying that he sees "two Israels", one religious, the other secular. "The former represents "the ancient culture of the Jewish people, defined by the Hebrew Scriptures." The latter operates the military and political machine that denies the "basic human rights" of Arabs in "the occupied Palestinian territories." Even giving him the benefit of the doubt, it does not explain his actions while in office.
The last few lines of the article give us this insight. "It is possible that at 82, Mr. Carter has become even softer in the heart and in the head than he was 30 years ago as president. Perhaps all of this is merely age exaggerating his natural liberal tendencies. We'd like to think the best of this international humanitarian. But regrettably, the pattern of Mr. Carter's behaviour points in the wrong direction."
Seems like they hit the nail on the head.
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