Picture LA Times.

Get Carter

by CHRIS HEDGES

[from the January 8, 2007 issue]

Jimmy Carter, by publishing his book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, walked straight into the buzz saw that is the Israel lobby. Among the vitriolic attacks on the former President was the claim by Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, that Carter is "outrageous" and "bigoted" and that his book raises "the old canard and conspiracy theory of Jewish control of the media, Congress, and the U.S. government." Many Democratic Party leaders, anxious to keep the Israel lobby's money and support, have hotfooted it out the door, with incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announcing that Carter "does not speak for the Democratic Party on Israel."

Carter's book exposes little about Israel. The enforced segregation, abject humiliation and spiraling Israeli violence against Palestinians have been detailed in the Israeli and European press and, with remarkable consistency, by all the major human rights organizations. The assault against Carter, rather, says more about the failings of the American media--which have largely let Israel hawks heap calumny on Carter's book. It exposes the indifference of the Bush Administration and the Democratic leadership to the rule of law and basic human rights, the timidity of our intellectual class and the moral bankruptcy of institutions that claim to speak for American Jews and the Jewish state.

The bleakness of life for Palestinians, especially in the Gaza Strip, is a mystery only to us. In the current Israeli campaign in Gaza, now sealed off from the outside world, almost 500 Palestinians, most unarmed, have been killed. Sanctions, demanded by Israel and imposed by the international community after the Hamas victory last January in what were universally acknowledged to be free and fair elections, have led to the collapse of civil society in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as widespread malnutrition. And Palestinians in the West Bank are being encased, in open violation of international law, in a series of podlike militarized ghettos with Israel's massive $2 billion project to build a "security barrier." This barrier will gobble up at least 10 percent of the West Bank, including most of the precious aquifers and at least 40,000 acres of Palestinian farmland. The project is being financed in large part through $9 billion in American loan guarantees, although when Congress approved the legislation in April 2003, Israel was told that the loans could be used "only to support activities in the geographic areas which were subject to the administration of the Government of Israel prior to June 5, 1967."

But it is in Gaza that conditions are currently reaching a full-blown humanitarian crisis. "Gaza is in its worst condition ever," Gideon Levy wrote recently in the Israeli paper Ha'aretz. "The Israel Defense Forces have been rampaging through Gaza--there's no other word to describe it--killing and demolishing, bombing and shelling, indiscriminately.... How contemptible all the sublime and nonsensical talk about 'the end of the occupation' and 'partitioning the land' now appears. Gaza is occupied, and with greater brutality than before.... This is disgraceful and shocking collective punishment."

And as Gaza descends into civil war, with Hamas and Fatah factions carrying out gun battles in the streets, Ha'aretz reporter Amira Hass bitterly notes, "The experiment was a success: The Palestinians are killing each other. They are behaving as expected at the end of the extended experiment called 'what happens when you imprison 1.3 million human beings in an enclosed space like battery hens.'"

In fact, if there is a failing in Carter's stance, it is that he is too kind to the Israelis, bending over backward to assert that he is only writing about the occupied territories. Israel itself, he says, is a democracy. This would come as a surprise to the 1.3 million Israeli Arabs who live as second-class citizens in the Jewish state. The poverty rate among Israeli Arabs is more than twice that of the Jewish population. Those Israeli Arabs who marry Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank are not permitted to get Israeli residency for their spouses. And Israeli Arabs, who do not serve in the military or the country's intelligence services and thus lack the important personal connections and job networks available to veterans, are systematically shut out of good jobs. Any Jew, who may speak no Hebrew or ever been to Israel, can step off a plane and become an Israeli citizen, while a Palestinian living abroad whose family's roots in Palestine may go back generations is denied citizenship.

The Israel lobby in the United States does not serve Israel or the Jewish community--it serves the interests of the Israeli extreme right wing. Most Israelis have come to understand that peace will be possible only when their country complies with international law and permits Palestinians to build a viable and sustainable state based on the 1967 borders, including, in some configuration, East Jerusalem.

This stark demarcation between Israeli pragmatists and the extreme right wing was apparent when I was in the Middle East for the New York Times during Yitzhak Rabin's 1992 campaign for prime minister. The majority of American Jewish organizations and neoconservative intellectuals made no pretense of neutrality. They had morphed into extensions of the right-wing Likud Party. These American groups, to Rabin's dismay, had gone on to build, with Likud, an alliance with right-wing Christian groups filled with real anti-Semites whose cultural and historical ignorance of the Middle East was breathtaking. This collection of messianic Jews and Christians, leavened with rabid American imperialists, believed they had been handed a divine or moral mandate to rule the Middle East, whether the Arabs liked it or not.

When Rabin, who had come to despise what the occupation was doing to the citizenry of his own country, was sworn in as prime minister, the leaders of these American Jewish organizations, along with their buffoonish supporters on the Christian right, were conspicuous by their absence. On one of Rabin's first visits to Washington after he assumed office, according to one of his aides, he was informed that a group of American Jewish leaders were available to meet him. The surly old general, whose gravelly cigarette voice seemed to rise up from below his feet, curtly refused. He told his entourage he did not have time to waste on "scumbags."

http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20070108&s=hedges

Jewish Criticism Of Carter Intensifies

Charge of anti-Semitism from one leader as ex-president deepens his critique of Israeli policy in West Bank.

James D. Besser - Washington Correspondent

(12/15/2006)

Former President Jimmy Carter has crossed the line into outright anti-Semitism as he promotes his controversial new book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” according to at least one major Jewish leader.

Facing attacks from pro-Israel heavyweights, Mideast analysts and book reviewers for what many see as a one-sided, factually flawed analysis of the conflict, Carter has upped the ante by claiming that Israeli policies in the West Bank are “even worse” than the apartheid policies of the former government in South Africa—and accusing pro-Israel groups of stifling legitimate debate on U.S. Mideast policy.

Speaking in an Israel Radio interview, Carter cited roads connecting more than 200 Jewish settlements in the West Bank and rules prohibiting Palestinians from crossing the roads, which he said “perpetuates even worse instances of apartness, or apartheid, than we witnessed even in South Africa.”

That has led to an escalating response from the Jewish side as the book, Carter’s 21st, climbs the charts to No. 7 on the New York Times best-seller list, up from No. 11 last week.

“I believe he is engaging in anti-Semitism,” said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. “For a man of his stature and supposed savvy to hold forth that the issues of Israel and the Middle East have not been discussed and debated because Jews and Zionists have closed off means of discussion is just anti-Semitism.”

Foxman particularly objected to Carter’s claim in a Los Angeles Times op-ed that while issues of peace are hotly and freely debated in Israel, “for the last 30 years, I have witnessed and experienced the severe restraints on any free and balanced discussion of the facts. This reluctance to criticize any policies of the Israeli government is because of the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American-Israel Political Action Committee [sic] and the absence of any significant contrary voices.”

That, Foxman argued, is anti-Semitism because it reinforces the anti-Semitic canard that “our power is so great that you can’t even talk about these issues.”

Foxman said that Carter’s success in promoting the book refutes his claims about Jewish control of the debate.

“If we’re so powerful, why is he traveling across the country, appearing on every television show in the world?” he asked.

On Tuesday Carter met with the Phoenix Board of Rabbis and repeated his criticisms of Israeli policies in the West Bank.

But he also promised to be “more vocal” about his admiration for Israel as a democracy while speaking during his book tour, according to one participant. Carter also promised to be clearer in his denunciation of Palestinian terrorism.

The group presented Carter with a copy of a siddur for Jewish military service personnel. The meeting concluded with the group holding hands in a circle and praying.

Initially, Jewish leaders worried mostly that the use of the word “apartheid” in the title would serve as a rallying cry for anti-Israel forces in this country and damage Israel’s standing around the world.

Since the book’s release and Carter’s appearance on the talk show circuit, some leaders now worry more that he will provide added legitimacy to the chorus of voices claiming that Israel and the pro-Israel lobby here are skewing U.S. foreign policy in ways contrary to the national interest.

“What’s particularly worrisome is the accretion factor,” said David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee.

Harris said Carter’s charges come “on the heels of Walt and Mearsheimer,” the two prominent foreign policy academics whose April article accusing the pro-Israel lobby of distorting U.S. foreign policy continues to gain traction with groups on the right and the left.

Harris said Carter’s views could give added and unwarranted credibility to claims the pro-Israel lobby is damaging U.S. national interests and squelching the views of those who publicly make that case.

Several Jewish leaders said sales of the Carter book have been boosted by growing interest in the Walt-Mearsheimer analysis—and in the report of the Iraq Study Group, released last week, which links progress in getting U.S. troops out of Iraq to renewed efforts to push Israel and her neighbors to the bargaining table.

“The surprise is that Tim Russert [host of NBC’s Meet the Press] and others are taking this book so seriously,” said Jennifer Laszlo-Mizrahi, founder and president of The Israel Project, a group that does pro-Israel outreach work. “But it’s not just because of Jimmy Carter; it’s the timing, at a time when the Baker report was just about to come out, when there were rumors about recommendations to put more pressure on Israel. From Carter’s perspective, he got lucky.”

Laszlo-Mizrahi called Carter’s analysis “lazy,” but said it gains currency because “he is a former president, because he is someone who, after leaving the presidency, went out and did very good work on behalf of Habitat for Humanity. He has a very clean image, but now he’s selling a very dirty rag. And he has a very large megaphone.”

Laszlo-Mizrahi said Jewish groups need to counter both specific assertions in the book—such as Carter’s claim that Israel did not make a credible offer to the Palestinians during the 2000 Camp David peace talks—and the broader charge that the pro-Israel lobby is at the center of a conspiracy to shut down legitimate debate on Mideast issues.

Some Jewish groups are mounting an aggressive counterattack to do just that.

Foxman said his group will “follow President Carter as he criss-crosses the country to bring attention to his skewing of the Middle East.” ADL’s primary weapon: ads in major newspapers claiming that “there’s only one honest thing about President Carter’s new book: the criticism.”

Others are working quietly, behind the scenes, to line up prominent political figures to speak out against Carter’s harsh view of Israel.

One top Jewish leader said that he is hoping former President Bill Clinton can be enlisted to speak out against the apartheid charge—and “speak the truth about what happened at Camp David in 2000.”

Former Carter administration officials and associates of the former president after he left office in 1981 have also been approached.

Stuart Eizenstat, Carter’s domestic policy chief, said in an e-mail that he has “expressed my strong views to President Carter privately about his book,” but declined public comment.

Last week Kenneth Stein, a longtime fellow at the Carter Center in Atlanta and its former director, resigned, calling the book “replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments.”

Stein, a top Mideast scholar, said that his “continued association with the Center leaves the impression that I am sanctioning a series of egregious errors and polemical conclusions which appeared in President Carter’s book. I cannot allow that impression to stand.”

AJC director Harris said Jewish groups face a difficult strategic choice in dealing with the outspoken former president at a moment when pro-Israel forces are already being accused of stifling debate.

“We don’t want to be silent as he says these things,” Harris said. “He is getting tremendous attention from the media; I’ve never seen so many softballs thrown to a guest on the talk shows.”

At the same time, he said, the 2004 controversy surrounding Mel Gibson’s controversial film “The Passion of the Christ” offers a cautionary tale about how an aggressive campaign to counter anti-Israel or anti-Jewish slurs by prominent public figures can backfire.

“It’s tricky,” Harris said. “The Mel Gibson story should be a reminder to those whose intentions are good, but whose actions may only lead to an increase in book sales.”

Although Carter uses the word “apartheid” in the title, he does not say in the book that Israel is an apartheid state. “I am referring to Palestine and not to Israel,” he writes. “Arabs living in Israel are citizens of Israel and have full citizenship, voting and legal rights, and so forth.”

That led Harris to accuse Carter’s use of the word apartheid to be “false advertising.”

While the Carter book has roiled Jewish organizational boardrooms across the country, its footprint in Washington has been almost undetectable.

“It’s not having a significant impact here,” said Jess Hordes, ADL’s Washington director. “For people in the political world, these are not particularly new positions for Carter, and they are easily discounted.”

Hordes pointed to the top Democratic leaders who quickly and forcefully distanced themselves from Carter’s views, including incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) -- a longtime critic of Israel’s policies.

And he said Carter’s perspective is largely discounted by Washington’s political and foreign policy elites, as well as by the vast majority in Congress.

Not all Jewish leaders have rallied around the anti-Carter flag.

In an op-ed, Rabbi Michael Lerner, leader of the Tikkun Community, called the attacks on Carter “astounding” and repeated Carter’s claim that he is not calling Israel an apartheid state, but merely referring to the “de facto apartheid situation” in the West Bank.

“Jimmy Carter is speaking the truth as he knows it, and doing a great service to the Jews,” he wrote.

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