More Carter Commentary

Enjoy the following review of Carter's screed by a Shalom Achshavnik (Peace Now), of all people. Carter would seem to be really out of his depth.

A Partial Fisking of the 'Carter Letter'

The magalomanaical Jimmy Carter has come out with a letter justifying his recent screed blaming Israel and exonerating Palestinians everywhere (Check out the following analysis of Carter's misrepresentation of Camp David and the Clinton Proposals. Hat Tip to both links: Martin Kramer, who has been covering this from day one). I thought I might give a try at a (partial) fisking:

There are no significant countervailing voices (emphasis added) (to pro-Israel outfits such as AIPAC)

Has Carter been living on Mars over the past few years (then again, that would explain a lot...)??? What about the constant attacks in the New York Review of Books, the "evenhandedness" of the New York Times and NPR, not to mention the bile coming out of British outlets such as the BBC, the Guardian, the London Review of Books? Heck, what about the English version of Ha'Aretz? What about the "expert" analysis of MESA members such as Juan Cole and Charles Smith, which is very pro-Palestinian?

I am familiar with the extreme acts of violence that have been perpetrated against innocent civilians, and understand the fear among many Israelis that threats against their safety and even their existence as a nation still exist. I reiterated my strong condemnation of any such acts of terrorism.

WTF?? Who were these extreme acts of violence commited by - Eskimos? Aliens? Is it so hard to admit that acts of terrorism and political violence have been commited by Palestinians (and supported by many Palestinians) against Jews? Is it that hard to admit that Palestinians sin, or that they are largely responsible for their own predicament, by rejecting, time and again, partition plans - in 1937, in 1948 etc?

When asked my proposals for peace in the Middle East, I summarized by calling for Hamas members and all other Palestinians to renounce violence and adopt the same commitment made by the Arab nations in 2002: the full recognition of Israel's right to exist in peace within its legally recognized 1967 borders (to be modified by mutual agreement by land swaps). This would comply with U.N. Resolutions, the official policy of the United States, commitments made at Camp David in 1978 and in Oslo in 1993, and the premises of the International Quartet's "Roadmap for Peace."

I see...what about the demand for the 'right of return', also enshrined in UNresolutions according to Palestinian pressure groups??

In addition, I pointed out that the Palestinian people were being deprived of the necessities of life by economic restrictions imposed on them by Israel and the United States because 42% had voted for Hamas candidates in the most recent election. Teachers, nurses, policemen, firemen, and other employees are not being paid, and the U.N. has reported that food supplies in Gaza are equivalent to those among the poorest families in sub-Sahara Africa with half the families surviving on one meal a day. My other request was that American Jewish citizens help to alleviate their plight.

Why, may I ask, is this solely the fault of Israel? What about Hamas, committed to Israel's destruction and spending oodles on arms and weapons procurement? Also, what about Israelis right to life, that most basic right, which, if we removed all restrictions now without a renouncement of violence from Hamas and others, would be constantly denied by suicide bombers and the like? Why, also, is there no mention of the Qassam rockets and munitions constantly rained on Sderot and Ashkelon?

that I acknowledge the deep concern of Israelis about the threat of terrorism and other acts of violence from some Palestinians (emphasis mine)

Now we acknowledge that some Palestinians engage in violence. Hows about the fact that one such organization now runs the parliament?

Jimmy Carter declared that he won't debate Alan Dershowitz. Maybe Norman Finkelstein would be a better choice.

Tidbits - Book Reviews

• Mitchell Bard rips Jimmy Carter a new one for his putrid piece of pro-Palestinian propaganda. The book has clearly demonstrated that Carter is a complete pro-Arab tool. If the links provided by Martin Kramer are any indication, it is also a very poorly written tract.
• Efraim Karsh takes Rashid Khalidi to the cleaners.

That's all for now, folks.

Throw the Jews Down the Well!

Well, it's official. If anyone ever doubted it, comes the Iraq Study Report and makes clear that we are to be sold down the river. This report is the culmination of years of anti-Israel propaganda which deligitamized Israel and Zionism from every angle, and in which, frustratingly, Jews played a major role.

Myself and my family are beginning to feel what the Jews in Israel felt right after the invasion of Israel in '48 and during the hamtana in '67 - palpable existential dread, the fear that we are going to be wiped off the face of the earth. Even during the worst times of the past intifada the main fear was that any of us would be killed individually. Now it look like we will all go together when we go, only it's not funny.

Don't give me BS about how the world's sympathy will prevent it from happenning. The world's sympathy did not stop Auschwitz. It did not stop Rwanda, the boat people of Vietnam or the killing fields of Cambodia. I don't believe that Olmert, the most venal, corrupt (morally and legally) and unprincipled bum we have ever had the displeasure of representing us has the guts to order a strike or push the red button when the time comes.

God help us all.

Kudos to Prof. Kenneth Stein...

for resigning his position at the Carter Center in protest of Jimmy Carter's recent screed which, a la Prof. Stein, is a parody of academic standards (Hat Tip: Martin Kramer). Prof. Stein is known to be on the left wing of the political spectrum, which makes his stand even more admirable. Thank God there are still people of principle in this world...

I've said it before, I'll say it again...

Israeli scholars are highly critical and engage in debate, Palestinian and pro-Palestinian scholars don't. This last is confirmed by Shalom Lappin's response to Jacqueline Rose's response to his excellent review of her book. Money quote (emphases are mine):

In response to my statement that no significant element of Palestinian society has challenged the official myths of the Palestinian narrative in a way comparable to that in which the official Israeli version of history has been subject to fierce debate among Israelis, Rose ‘is left wondering whether he reads any Palestinian writing’. She cites the work of several Palestinian (and Israeli Arab) writers and poets as evidence of such a challenge. Given this list it seems that Rose has seriously misunderstood the question at issue here. While the writers whom she mentions have certainly expressed empathy for Israeli Jews and, on occasion, criticised Palestinian terrorism, none of them, to the best of my knowledge, has questioned the view that Jews came to Palestine as European colonialists with a program for dispossessing its Arab inhabitants and establishing a western enclave of imperialist power. Quite the contrary, Mahmoud Darwish is a nationalist poet who promotes this idea. In fact, he resigned from the executive of the PLO in 1993 in protest when Arafat signed the Oslo Accords with Rabin. Similarly, Ghassan Kanafani was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and a close associate of George Habash. [8] Anton Shamas, although he writes in Hebrew, is a militant advocate of this approach to Israel and Zionism. Elias Khoury (who is actually Lebanese, born in Beirut in 1948 to a Christian family) does indeed seek to overturn stereotypes of Israelis dominant in the Arab world. Moreover, to his credit, (together with Darwish and Edward Said) he publicly opposed the convening of a Holocaust denial conference, planned in Beirut for 2001. However, like Darwish he does not question the official Palestinian understanding of the history of the conflict.

Palestinian intellectual life is vibrant, and it has produced political theorists and historians of considerable distinction. But when one reads the work of some of its most notable representatives, such as Edward Said, Ahmed Khalidi, and Rashid Khalidi, one generally finds that moderation consists in the grudging acknowledgement of Israel’s non-eliminability. In historical terms Palestinians are portrayed as passive victims who have been the blameless targets of relentless Zionist aggression. The decisions, political programs, and military initiatives of the Palestinian leadership throughout the period leading up to 1948 (and, often, well beyond) are rarely if ever subjected to serious critical evaluation, even from the narrowest perspective of national self-interest. The fact that, in many cases, the solutions that these thinkers now suggest were previously proposed by the leadership of the Yishuv (or by the international community), and rejected by the Palestinians themselves, is rarely, if ever, acknowledged. Bi-nationalism, partition, and a federated state were all originally Zionist ideas that the Palestinians turned down in their time as incompatible with their political aspirations. The intense controversies over the facts of the 1948 war are being conducted entirely by Israeli historians, on the basis of recently opened Israeli public archives. Palestinian and Arab archives remain closed, and historical debate and revision is not part of the Palestinian public discussion. One can see this state of affairs as, at least in part, due to the fact that the Palestinians remain under a deeply repressive occupation within the territories beyond the Green Line. Unfortunately, the absence of critical debate is itself a factor that prevents the emergence of viable political strategies for ending this occupation.

QED. The last point bears repeating. When, and only when Palestinians acknowledge that Jews have right and justice on their side as well, can we have true peace and co-existence. As long as they keep viewing "justice" solely in Palestinian terms or adding "rights" of refugees, or "peace with (their) justice" as a price tag, peace will remain an impossiblity. It takes two to tango.