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The World According to Jimmy Carter by Alan Dershowitz
Posted by: "Jack L" yakovdov1@yahoo.com yakovdov1
Fri Dec 1, 2006 6:28 am (PST)
The World According to Jimmy Carter - by Alan Dershowitz
Posted: 11/25/2006 11:44:00 AM
Author: Alan Dershowitz - New York Sun
Source: http://www.standwithus.com <http://www.standwithus.com/>

The World According to Carter

(NOTE FROM STANDWITHUS: Jimmy Carter is traveling around the country to
promote his book. PRINT THIS ARTICLE OUT AND TAKE IT WITH YOU to the
local book signings, bring friends with you....distribute this and
please TAKE A STAND! StandWithUs is counting on YOU to educate your
local community when Jimmy Carter comes to town...)

BY ALAN DERSHOWITZ
November 22, 2006

Sometimes you really can tell a book by its cover. President Jimmy
Carter's decision to title his new anti-Israel screed "Palestine: Peace
Not Apartheid" (Simon & Schuster, 288 pages, $27) tells it all. His use
of the loaded word "apartheid," suggesting an analogy to the hated
policies of South Africa, is especially outrageous, considering his
acknowledgment buried near the end of his shallow and superficial book
that what is going on in Israel today "is unlike that in South
Africa—not racism, but the acquisition of land." Nor does he explain
that Israel's motivation for holding on to land it captured in a
defensive war is the prevention of terrorism. Israel has tried, on
several occasions, to exchange land for peace, and what it got instead
was terrorism, rockets, and kidnappings launched from the returned land.

In fact, Palestinian-Arab terrorism is virtually missing from Mr.
Carter's entire historical account, which blames nearly everything on
Israel and almost nothing on the Palestinians. Incredibly, he asserts
that the initial violence in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict occurred
when "Jewish militants" attacked Arabs in 1939. The long history of
Palestinian terrorism against Jews — which began in 1929, when the
Grand Mufti of Jerusalem ordered the slaughter of more than 100 rabbis,
students, and non-Zionist Sephardim whose families had lived in Hebron
and other ancient Jewish cities for millennia — was motivated by
religious bigotry. The Jews responded to this racist violence by
establishing a defense force. There is no mention of the long history of
Palestinian terrorism before the occupation, or of the Munich massacre
and others inspired by Yasser Arafat. There is not even a reference to
the Karine A, the boatful of terrorist weapons ordered by Arafat in
January, 2002.

Mr. Carter's book is so filled with simple mistakes of fact and
deliberate omissions that were it a brief filed in a court of law, it
would be struck and its author sanctioned for misleading the court. Mr.
Carter too is guilty of misleading the court of public opinion. A mere
listing of all of Mr. Carter's mistakes and omissions would fill a
volume the size of his book. Here are just a few of the most egregious:

- Mr. Carter emphasizes that "Christian and Muslim Arabs had continued
to live in this same land since Roman times," but he ignores the fact
that Jews have lived in Hebron, Tzfat, Jerusalem and other cities for
even longer. Nor does he discuss the expulsion of hundreds of thousands
of Jews from Arab countries since 1948.

- Mr. Carter repeatedly claims that the Palestinian Arabs have long
supported a two-state solution and the Israelis have always opposed it.
Yet he makes no mention of the fact that in 1938 the Peel Commission
proposed a two-state solution, with Israel receiving a mere sliver of
its ancient homeland and the Palestinians receiving the bulk of the
land. The Jews accepted and the Palestinians rejected this proposal
because Arab leaders cared more about there being no Jewish state on
Muslim holy land than about having a Palestinian state of their own.

- He barely mentions Israel's acceptance, and the Palestinian rejection,
of the United Nation's division of the mandate in 1948.

- He claims that in 1967 Israel launched a preemptive attack against
Jordan. The fact is that Jordan attacked Israel first, Israel tried
desperately to persuade Jordan to remain out of the war, and Israel
counterattacked after the Jordanian army surrounded Jerusalem, firing
missiles into the center of the city. Only then did Israel capture the
West Bank, which it was willing to return in exchange for peace and
recognition from Jordan.

- Mr. Carter repeatedly mentions Security Council Resolution 242, which
called for return of captured territories in exchange for peace,
recognition, and secure boundaries, but he ignores that Israel accepted
and all the Arab nations and the Palestinians rejected this resolution.
The Arabs met in Khartum and issued their three famous "no's": "No
peace, no recognition, no negotiation." But you wouldn't know that from
reading the history according to Mr. Carter.

- Mr. Carter faults Israel for its "air strike that destroyed an Iraqi
nuclear reactor" without mentioning that Iraq had threatened to attack
Israel with nuclear weapons if Iraq succeeded in building a bomb.

- Mr. Carter faults Israel for its administration of Christian and
Muslim religious sites, when in fact Israel is scrupulous about ensuring
those of every religion the right to worship as they please —
consistent, of course, with security needs. He fails to mention that
between 1948 and 1967, when Jordan occupied the West Bank and East
Jerusalem, the Hashemites destroyed and desecrated Jewish religious
sites and prevented Jews from praying at the Western Wall. He also never
mentions Egypt's brutal occupation of Gaza between 1949 and 1967.

- Mr. Carter blames Israel, and exonerates Arafat, for the Palestinian
refusal to accept statehood on 95% of the West Bank and all of Gaza
pursuant to the Clinton-Barak offers at Camp David and Taba in
2000–2001. He accepts the Palestinian revisionist history, rejects
the eyewitness accounts of President Clinton and Dennis Ross, and
ignores Saudi Prince Bandar's accusation that Arafat's rejection of the
proposal was "a crime" and that Arafat's account "was not truthful"
— except, apparently, to Mr. Carter. The fact that Mr. Carter
chooses to believe Arafat over Mr. Clinton speaks volumes.

- Mr. Carter's description of the recent Lebanon war is misleading. He
begins by asserting that Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers.
"Captured" suggests a military apprehension subject to the usual
prisoner of war status. The soldiers were kidnapped, and have not been
heard from — not even a sign of life. The rocket attacks that
preceded Israel's invasion are largely ignored, as is the fact that
Hezbollah fired its rockets from civilian population centers.

- Mr. Carter gives virtually no credit to Israel's superb legal system,
falsely asserting (without any citation) that "confessions extracted
through torture are admissible in Israeli courts," that prisoners are
"executed," and that the "accusers" act "as judges." Even Israel's most
severe critics acknowledge the fairness of the Israeli Supreme Court,
but not Mr. Carter.

- Mr. Carter even blames Israel for the "exodus of Christians from the
Holy Land," totally ignoring the Islamization of the area by Hamas and
the comparable exodus of Christian Arabs from Lebanon as a result of the
increasing influence of Hezbollah and the repeated assassination of
Christian leaders by Syria.

- Mr. Carter also blames every American administration but his own for
the Mideast stalemate with particular emphasis on "a submissive White
House and U.S. Congress in recent years." He employs hyperbole and
overstatement when he says that "dialogue on controversial issues is a
privilege to be extended only as a reward for subservient behavior and
withheld from those who reject U.S. demands." He confuses terrorist
states, such as Iran and Syria, to which we do not extend dialogue, with
states with whom we strongly disagree, such as France and China, but
with whom we have constant dialogue.

And it's not just the facts; it's the tone as well. It's obvious that
Mr. Carter just doesn't like Israel or Israelis. He lectured Golda Meir
on Israeli's "secular" nature, warning her that "Israel was punished
whenever its leaders turned away from devout worship of God." He admits
that he did not like Menachem Begin. He has little good to say about any
Israelis — except those few who agree with him. But he apparently
got along swimmingly with the very secular Syrian mass-murderer Hafez
al-Assad. Mr. Carter and his wife Rosalynn also had a fine time with the
equally secular Arafat — a man who has the blood of hundreds of
Americans and Israelis on his hands:

Rosalynn and I met with Yasir Arafat in Gaza City, where he was staying
with his wife, Suha, and their little daughter. The baby, dressed in a
beautiful pink suit, came readily to sit on my lap, where I practiced
the same wiles that had been successful with our children and
grandchildren. A lot of photographs were taken, and then the
photographers asked that Arafat hold his daughter for a while. When he
took her, the child screamed loudly and reached out her hands to me,
bringing jovial admonitions to the presidential candidate to stay at
home enough to become acquainted with is own child.

There is something quite disturbing about these pictures.
"Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" is so biased that it inevitably raises
the question of what would motivate a decent man like Jimmy Carter to
write such an indecent book. Whatever Mr. Carter's motives may be, his
authorship of this ahistorical, one-sided, and simplistic brief against
Israel forever disqualifies him from playing any positive role in fairly
resolving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. That is a
tragedy because the Carter Center, which has done much good in the
world, could have been a force for peace if Jimmy Carter were as
generous in spirit to the Israelis as he is to the Palestinians.
Read this article at: http://www.nysun.com/pf.php?id=43958

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MiddleEast Political Expressions