It really is a shame that George W. Bush or Dick Cheney have never had to endure a grilling like this one by Steve Inskeep of NPR. Carter, whatever his shortcomings as a president, has certainly shown in the intervening years that he is a leader, a humanist--in the very best sense of the word, and an honest man.
Sadly, he's had to endure a great deal of shameful behavior by the likes of Alan 'It's Ok To Torture' Dershowitz and his ilk because Israel, and writing honestly about Israel in his new book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid
I'm not saying Carter is right or wrong. I'm simply observing that we can't even talk about it because many people, like Dershowitz, want it to be off limits.
What happened to all that freedom we have?
But I digress, the main point of this post was to note that Carter gets grilled for a book about a very real subject and our president and vice-president still get coddled by the media. There is something very wrong here.
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Comments: 78
Yeah at least he is honest enough to show his antisemitism side.
http://www.countercurrents.org/pa-abunimah270107.htm
If my outrage makes me antisemetic then YES. I AM.
I think Mr. Carter knew exactly what he was doing by including apartheid in his title. He was kicking the hornet's nest just to let us know who the hornets really are. (Or would killer bees be a better metaphor?)
In his infinite wisdom, does Carter mention who speaks for the Palestinians? Hamas, Fatah, or maybe Hezbollah or maybe even the Syrians or Iranians. Whom should the Israelis talk to?
Carter does not seem to have any better skills in solving problems now than he did when he attempted the rescue of the Iranian hostages.
The fact that the Palestinians are fighting a civil war is something that we and the Israelis engineered to keep them weak. Haven't you ever heard of classical power politics? Divide and rule? Divide and conquer? Ever read Machiavelli or Sun Tzu?
The Apartheid Wall is the perfect example of that principle in action: keep them divided from each other, that they cannot communicate, organize and thus resist.
In the same week that Israel announced new settlements on the West Bank, contradicitng promises made to the US and the proposed "Roadmap to Peace", Dershowitz publishes Part III of his inflamatory attack on Carter.
All that Professor D can allege so far is that Carter charities are the recipient of Arab monies.
Bill H. another cheap shot.
What does it matter who speaks for the Palestinians when 30% of West Bank settlements are built on land still owned by Arabs?
I have read "The Prince" , probably before you were born, and your blaming Israel for the poor choises the Palestinians have made in choosing leaders is ludicrous.
Where is the money that is supporting the populace coming from since we cut off support?
It seems to be irrelevant to some pontiffs here, but the fact Palestine was a British protectorate before Israel was carved out of it and Palestinians did not then and have never governed themselves is a very significant factor in the mess we have there. Arafat who was nothing but a terrorist/extortioner was the closest they have come to a national leader indicating a national compulsion to solve all problems with violence. Kidnappings, assinations, bombing civilians, this is the way they address problems. Can you deny that?
"I am not sure why liberals are so intent on the destruction of Israel these days, but I suspect it has to do with their fear of Islam, and their willingness to submit to it's will in hopes they will be spared the murder Islam intends for all "Un-Believers". "
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Just keep thinking irrational crap like that and you'll never have to drop your prejudices.
You first.
I'll refer to a recent sentiment expressed on another thread:
"If we are nice to him, he might let us use his time machine!" DMP
No, he didn't "dismiss" it, he completely debunked your mythology.
Not exactly a fan, but for the sake of establishing your credentials, here's your nest comment on that thread:
"Not a big porn consumer, but for the sake of this argument, I also have a large penis!"
Well, let's try reality for a change.
Well, I thought you were going to go first, but I'll give it a shot.
Israel is not a monolithic entity that is always right and fair.
Palestinians are human beings that are not always wrong.
If you agree to my two statements, you must realize the futility of picking an arbitrary point or two and pretending it is a simple situation. Hence the need to get beyond "apartheid-like" mentalities, and the constant blame game that goes with it, and proceed to serious attempts to alleviate the intolerable conditions the Palestinians live under. Otherwise, there can be no peaceful resolution to this intractable violence, and the dominance of violent leaders on both "sides". It is simply unrealistic to think people held in such prison-like circumstances will be able to suppress the most criminal members of their society.
If they sought the real truth they would know enough about what is going on with the wall, the check points, the loss of ancient olive orchards, the complete disrespect for human beings, and on and on ad infinitum ... apartheid IS what it is !!!
but after all these years I just don't give a shit anymore what happens in the Middle East as long as we keep them out of the 'civilized world'.
"The Jews… agreed to the partition plan, even though the tiny state was far too small for their needs. There are indications that the leaders had dreams for the aggrandizement of this very skimpy state of Israel.
When Weizmann was asked if he were really satisfied with the very modest little state proposed in the partition plan, he replied: "The Kingdom of David was smaller, under Solomon it became an empire. Who Knows" C'est le premier pas qui compte.
Ben-Gurion spoke more bluntly at a Zionist meeting" "I favor partition of the country because when we become a strong power after the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and spread throughout Palestine. The following year he wrote to his son:
"We shall organize a sophisticated defense force –an elite army. I have no doubt that our army will be one of the best in the world. And I am sure that we shall not be prevented from settling in all the other parts of the country, whether through mutual understanding with Arab neighbors or by other means." -Karen Armstrong, "Holy War: the Crusades and Their Impact On Today's World"
What Carter has pointed out is what the Israeli government has always tried to deny, that "other means" have always been the plan from the beginning. It's just too bad that the Arabs couldn't "mutually understand" that they were just in the way.
What did the Sharon decree to remove settlements accomplish?
The present government is too weak -especially after the fiasco in Lebanon- to actually fight the settler movement which is why settlements are still being built -sorry, I mean "expanded"- on land that Israel has no right to.
The "state" that Olmert envisions for the Palestinians is no more than that offered by Barat in that famous deal which Arafat turned down to the everlasting delight of the right wing. That so-called state woulld have had to power over it's own borders, air-space, or water, and "included continued Israeli military control over large segments of the West Bank, including almost all of the Jordan Valley; codified the right of Israeli forces to be deployed in the Palestinian state at short notice; meant the continued presence of fortified Israeli settlements and Jewish-only roads in the heart of the Palestinian state; and required nearly 4 million Palestinian refugees to relinquish their fundamental human rights in exchange for compensation to be paid not by Israel but by the "international community."
Not what you would call a real "country" wouldn't you say?
Even Sharon's famous withdrawal from the handful of settlements in Gaza had a alterior purpose. As Israeli journalist writes:
"Gaza is still a prison and its inhabitants are still doomed to live in poverty and oppression. Israel closes them off from the sea, the air and land, except for a limited safety valve at the Rafah crossing. They cannot visit their relatives in the West Bank or look for work in Israel, upon which the Gazan economy has been dependent for some 40 years. Sometimes goods can be transported, sometimes not. Gaza has no chance of escaping its poverty under these conditions. Nobody will invest in it, nobody can develop it, nobody can feel free in it. Israel left the cage, threw away the keys and left the residents to their bitter fate.
We did everything we could to undermine their society and leadership, making sure as much as possible that the disengagement would not be a new chapter in our relationship with the neighboring nation, and now we are amazed by the violence and hatred that we sowed with our own hands." -http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=736009
And to accomplish this agricultural fields, orchards, and pastures of the Palestinians have been confiscated, hundreds of homes crushed by tanks –881 during the March-April invasion alone-, their inhabitants moved on at the point of a gun. Factories and anything resembling a native economy have been destroyed to create dependency among an all ready impoverished people. In the Gaza strip alone 16 million square meters of agricultural land have been razed by the Israeli army, destroying the inhabitant's ability to feed themselves or grow anything for trade.
And now we are amazed at the violence all this treachery engenders. Perhaps the words of Rachel Corrie -killed by an Israeli bulldozer while defender Palestinian homes- says it best in a letter to her mother:
"If any of us had our lives and welfare completely strangled, lived with children in a shrinking place where we knew, because of previous experience, that soldiers and tanks and bulldozers could come for us at any moment and destroy all that we had cultivated for however long, and did this while some of us were beaten and held captive–do you think we might try to use somewhat violent means to protect whatever fragments remained?... I think I would."
I think we all would. If such a thing happened in this country there would be violence to make the middle east look like Disneyland. And that is the most amazing thing to me, that Americans, probably the most violently proud people on earth, can expect another people to bear that kind of treatment and not fight back????
Mr. Carter's book is very least we can do, and I do mean least.
As to the hate-filled grilling and attacks he's been receiving, SPK makes a extremely prescient point: why him and not this administration? Why hasn't this administration taken on the Palestinian-Israeli issue in six years? And why have the likes of Dick Cheney escaped an even remotely similar grilling when it comes to things like secret energy meetings that shaped policy - or his involvement in the Plame affair for which he should be testifying now?
Carter seeks to heal at his own expense; this administration seeks to protect itself at ours.
How prosperous are the impoverished colonies who won their independence in the fifties and sixties?
The same bleeding heart pleading heard here has not resulted in any improvement in African lives nor has it kept them from killing each other en masse.
Do you think Israel would suffer a different fate than Rhodesia, if Palestinians are given the land occupied by Israel?
Why have the Palestinians not prospered while Israel has? The knee jerk answer is the Israelis have received so much aid from us. That will not wash.
The Iranians, Syrians, Egyptians, Saudis, and even the Jordanians pored money in to help the poor Palestinians? How have they spent the money? Arms, militias, Swiss bank accounts for Arafat etc.
The Palestinians do not deserve sympathy. They can not control their proclivity for violence and subsequently are not candidates for democratic governance. They should be fully supplied with enough arms to kill each other off and then perhaps we can deal with survivors.
Anyone care to comment on the news today. First suicide bomber in nine months blows himself up in Israel. Announcement from Fatah(?) says the attack was to provoke Israel into retaliating so Fatah and Hamas would unite to fight a common foe.
How do you negotiate with people whose logic is so skewed?
http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/67584.pdf
September Organization (BSO) terrorists seized the Saudi Arabian
Embassy in Khartoum as a diplomatic reception honoring
the departing United States Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) was
ending. After slightly wounding the United States Ambassador
and the Belgian Charge d'Affaires, the terrorists took these
officials plus the United States DCM, the Saudi Arabian Ambassador
and the Jordanian Charge d'Affaires hostage. In return
for the freedom of the hostages, the captors demanded the release
of various individuals, mostly Palestinian guerrillas,
imprisoned in Jordan, Israel and the United States.
The Khartoum operation was planned and carried out with
the full knowledge and personal approval of Yasir Arafat,
Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and
the head of Fatah. Fatah representatives based in Khartoum
participated in the attack, using a Fatah vehicle to transport
the terrorists to the Saudi Arabian Embassy.
Initially, the main objective of the attack appeared to
be to secure the release of Fatah/BSO leader Muhammed Awadh
(Abu Da'ud) from Jordanian captivity. Information acquired
subsequently reveals that the Fatah/BSO leaders did not expect
Awadh to be freed, and indicates that one of the primary goals
of the operation was to strike at the United States because
of its efforts to achieve a Middle East peace settlement which
many Arabs believe would be inimical to Palestinian interests.
Negotiations with the BSO terrorist team were conducted
primarily by the Sudanese Ministers of Interior and of Health.
No effort was spared, within the capabilities of the Sudanese
Government, to secure the freedom of the hostages. The terrorists
extended their deadlines three times, but when they
became convinced that their demands would not be met and after
they reportedly had received orders from Fatah headquarters
in Beirut, they killed the two United States officials and
the Belgian Charge. Thirty-four hours later, upon receipt
of orders from Yasir Arafat in Beirut to surrender, the
terrorists released their other hostages unharmed and surrendered
to Sudanese authorities.
The Khartoum operation again demonstrated the ability of
the BSO to strike where least expected. The open participation
of Fatah representatives in Khartoum in the attack provides
further evidence of the Fatah/BSO relationship. The
emergence of the United States as a primary fedayeen target
indicates a serious threat of further incidents similar to
that which occurred in Khartoum
the full knowledge and personal approval of Yasir Arafat,
Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and
the head of Fatah. Fatah representatives based in Khartoum
participated in the attack, using a Fatah vehicle to transport
the terrorists to the Saudi Arabian Embassy.
The terrorists
extended their deadlines three times, but when they
became convinced that their demands would not be met and after
they reportedly had received orders from Fatah headquarters
in Beirut, they killed the two United States officials and
the Belgian Charge. Thirty-four hours later, upon receipt
of orders from Yasir Arafat in Beirut to surrender, the
terrorists released their other hostages unharmed and surrendered
to Sudanese authorities.
Now, this fellow was Jimmah best friend..
"The bombing of British headquarters at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem by the Irgun on 22 July 1946, killing ninety-one British, Jewish and Arab civil servants, was only the most infamous of the assaults carried out against the occupying power. British soldiers opened fire on civilians in the streets of Tel Aviv and when –after the British went ahead with the hanging of three Jewish Irgun fighters- the Irgun hanged two British army hostages, there were anti-Semitic attacks across Britain. Intelligence Corps sergeants Mervyn Paice and Clifford Martin spent days hidden underground by their captors in the city of Netanya while the Irgun repeatedly threatened their execution. Paice's father wrote a pleading letter to the Irgun Leader Menachem Begin –later, the prime minister of Israel who would order the brutal invasion of Lebanon in 1982- just as the relatives of Western hostages would appeal to Iraqi kidnappers in 2003 and 2004. "
"In Haifa… they have opened a ghetto for the Arabs. Four of the meaner streets have been wired off and, just like the Jews in medieval Cracow, Christian and Muslim Arabs must sleep and live here under guard. Business men can apply for passes if they wish to emerge during the day… it would be hard to visualize a more subdued and frightened population than the Arabs left in Israel… " -The Scotsman, 14 July 1948 "
"… when Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli army reserve officer in uniform, decided to massacre Palestinian worshippers in the mosque at Abraham's tomb in Hebron on 25 February 1994, we –journalists, Americans, Europeans, Israelis- did not know how to react. The "terrorists" were supposed to be Arabs. But Goldstein was an educated man, an American-born doctor –for heaven's sake- who must have known that his mission was suicidal. The survivors of the slaughter literally beat, and strangled, and tore him to death…. First reports spoke of more than fifty Palestinians dead in Hebron –the figure was accurate. After Goldstein had cut down more than two dozen Palestinians and wounded up to 170 others in the blood-spattered mosque, Israeli troops shot and killed at least another twenty-five enraged Palestinians outside who pelted them with stones and tried to break through the military cordon that was supposed to protect the sacred area –though it had failed to protect the worshippers."
"If Palestinians had willfully destroyed the homes of 200 Israelis, I wrote in my report to The Independent that night, there would be talk of barbarism, of "terrorism," grave warnings to Arafat from the new American president, George W. Bush, to "curb violence." But it was the Israelis who destroyed the homes of a least 200 Palestinians in Gaza on that Easter Sunday morning of 2001, bulldozing their furniture, clothes, cookies, carpets and mattresses into the powdered concrete of their hovels until one end of Khan Younis looked as though it had been hit by an earthquake. So, of course it was not "terrorism." It was security."
"When Ariel Sharon ordered the killing of a Hamas official in Gaza, an Israeli jet flattened an apartment block, killing seventeen civilians, including nine children. Sharon regarded the attack as a victory against "terror."
- Robert Fisk, "The Great War for Civilization"
"The IDF murdered hundreds of Egyptian prisoners of war in both the 1956 and 1967 wars, while in 1967, it expelled between 100,000 and 260,000 Palestinians from the newly conquered West Bank, and drove 80,000 Syrians from the Golan Heights… The IDF fired one million bullets in the first days of the uprising. Since then, for every Israeli lost, Israel has killed 3.4 Palestinians, the majority of whom have been innocent bystanders; the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli children killed is even higher (5.7:1). It is also worth bearing in mind that the Zionists relied on terrorist bombs to drive the British from Palestine, and that Yitzhak Shamir, once a terrorist and later prime minister, declared that 'neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat."
- John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, "The Israeli Lobby" http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/print/mear01_.html
"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."
These are the steps in the experiment: Imprison (since 1991); remove the prisoners' usual means of livelihood; seal off all outlets to the outside world, nearly hermetically; destroy existing means of livelihood by preventing the entry of raw materials and the marketing of goods and produce; prevent the regular entry of medicines and hospital supplies; do not bring in fresh food for weeks on end; prevent, for years, the entry of relatives, professionals, friends and others, and allow thousands of people - the sick, heads of families, professionals, children - to be stuck for weeks at the locked gates of the Gaza Strip's only entry/exit."
"It is the good old Israeli experiment called "put them into a pressure cooker and see what happens," and this is one of the reasons why this is not an internal Palestinian matter."
"The success of the experiment can be seen in the miasma of desperation that hangs over the Gaza Strip"
– Amira Hass, Israeli journalist, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/770053.html
Yep, we can do this forever.
"and writing honestly about Israel "
Honestly? That's a joke. The book is filled with factual mistakes as well as total misrepresentations of events. Don't know you SP but your article on Iran was ok, here you're way off base.
If you want to talk about what happened in the region prior to 1948 I have no problem with that. However that did not seem to be the point of your article above. What I took issue with is the following...
"writing honestly about Israel in his new book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid is simply a taboo topic in contemporary American culture"
Taboo? Not really. There are 1000's of comments on Gather alone about the subject. In fact I would say many are more then obssesed with this subject. It's all over the internet., where Israel is held to a much different standard then the Palestinians, Saudi Arabian, Iranians, etc...
In addition I disagreed with the the "honestly" part of your comment. As I said "The book is filled with factual mistakes as well as total misrepresentations of events."
I'll be more then happy to provide you with articles that detail both. Including those from Dennis Ross....And what was more then interesting to me last week when I watch 2 hours cspan of a forum from the Carter Center last week, that even his friends are distancing themselves from this book...
"Jerry K. is someone who believes the Protocal of the Elders of Zion is legitimate."
"In addition I disagreed with the the "honestly" part of your comment."
BTN, IF you had any "honesty", you would have made neither of those two statements. That is a fact !
You have taken it upon yourself to distort, spin, twist and just be disingenuous. Either that ... OR ... you are not as smart as you think you are.
You most likely watch Faux for your "news" and daily "learning".
C'mon now, a Jewish conspiracy to control the world? The only thing close to that is your irrational fears that there is a conspiracy of people who believe there is a Jewish Conspiracy to Control the world. Is that it?
But based upon what you have written here and other places, I suspect that you would cherry-pick for best effect to just prove the point that 'you' prefer to attempt to make ...
If 'your' fair and balanced is no different than Bill O'Reilly's ... then do not bother ...
Amira Hass, the daughter of Holocaust survicors, is an Israeli journalist who chose to live in Gaza to record the lives of the Palestinians in that virtual "concentration camp."
Of course, according to you, you would know so much more than her.
Good luck with that delusion there boy.
As for Facts it's clear Fisk could care less about them...
"Israeli historian Efraim Karsh, in a Commentary Magazine book review, commented on what he saw as Fisk's carelessness with facts:
It is difficult to turn a page of The Great War for Civilisation without encountering some basic error. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, not, as Fisk has it, in Jerusalem. The Caliph Ali, the Prophet Mohammed's cousin and son-in-law, was murdered in the year 661, not in the 8th century. Emir Abdallah became king of Transjordan in 1946, not 1921. The Iraqi monarchy was overthrown in 1958, not 1962; Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, was appointed by the British authorities, not elected; Ayatollah Khomeini transferred his exile from Turkey to the holy Shiite city of Najaf not during Saddam Hussein's rule but fourteen years before Saddam seized power. Security Council resolution 242 was passed in November 1967, not 1968; Anwar Sadat of Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, not 1977, and was assassinated in October 1981, not 1979. Yitzhak Rabin was Minister of Defence, not prime minister, during the first Palestinian intifada, and al-Qaeda was established not in 1998 but a decade earlier. And so on and so forth.[21] "
It's amazing to me how close minded people on this site are. They all operate within their comfort zone and refuse to believe anything other then what they're indoctrinated with.
So Ron I assume you've haven't live in the ME. Have you ever visited? Have you ever read a book on the subject that you didn't agree with? I doubt it.
"Ah, I see BTN: you smeared Jerry because you didn't have an adequate reply to what he said."
Are you eating your words now Sean-Paul since Jerry has made it clear once again, here, that he believes there is a Jewish plot! Here in case you missed it.
"look deeper to see if the Protocols are not the blueprint for what has been, and is still being done in this world "
What do you think about that? Do you agree with this?
And congrats for visiting Iran. I agreed with some of your observations in your previous article, though not all. And as I'm sure you ware aware if you put 10 Iranians in a room, all of whom live there, they would still not all agree. Though most of the Iranians I know, and I know many, would agree that Iran is a real threat.
As for me I have been to the Middle East. How about you Ron?
And somehow it doesn't surprise me that you could find a right wing journalist to smear a left wing journalist. Not real hard to do, don't hou think? Couldn't you find anyone with low enough principles to smear Amira Hass? How about Rachel Corri, Karen Armstrong, or Harretz?
I'm surprised you're not calling Weizmann and Ben-Gurion liars. And if Fisk has a few dates wrong I'm not worried. I'll take his first hand reports of what he's seen with his own eyes over your "studies" any day. He's gotten his pessimism the old fashioned way. He's earned it.
I think Carter is flat out wrong in many of the assertions he makes in his new book. I used to have respect for Jimmy Carter for many years, but that is gone. He is either misinformed or senile as far as I can tell.
Many do not consider Turkey part of the Middle East. Regardless it's like saying I've been to Mexico so I know what the United States is like...
"And if Fisk has a few dates wrong I'm not worried."
Oh it's more then a few dates. As for me if an author cares so little for the obvious facts I cannot believe he cares at all for the not so obvious facts.
"BTN, show me where I say that the Protocols are a Jewish plot "
"look deeper to see if the Protocols are not the blueprint for what has been, and is still being done in this world "
Sorry I thought the Protocols were about a Jewish plot. I must be mistaken. Is it a Chinese plot they're talking about? Can you count how many times it says Jews for me please? I seem to have misplaced my copy and since you've admitted to studying it...
And the comparison between Mexico and the US is very inept. Laughable in fact.
So that means they're Middle Easterners? How racist! Though I expected as much from Ronnie. I guess if they're Muslims it's the Mid-East? Where exactly is Indonesia genuis? But Sean-Paul I expected more from you. I can see I've given you more credit then you deserve. You do at least know that Iranians are not Arabs, don't you?
Now since I've been studing this region a long time, and can remember among other things when the Jews in Israel were called Palestinians and the "Palestinians" were called Arabs, I shouldn't expect you guys to be really familar with details. So feel free to do some research about Turkey. As I said many (including Turks) don't consider it part of the Middle East...Here is an explanation, if you do a search you'll see countless other sources that say similar...
"Other countries of the Middle Eastern countries speak Indo-European languages (Iran for example) or have a Christian majority (Cyprus), but are still considered Middle Eastern. Turkey possesses neither of these European traits, but is partly geographically in Europe and it was the site of the Byzantine Empire and the Ottoman Empire that included large parts of Europe. Turkey distanced itself from Islamic law via Atatürk's Reforms during early 20th century and the Turkish Constitution puts strong emphasis upon the principles of laïcité and democracy. It is a long-time member of NATO and the Council of Europe, is currently in accession talks to join the European Union and has a Latin alphabet. Even so Turkey is in some contexts considered Middle Eastern, because of its Muslim population and geographic proximity."