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Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 2007, pages 68-69 Waging Peace Is Jimmy Carter an Anti-Semite?
“IS JIMMY AN Anti-Semite?” was the topic of a Feb. 11 Peace Café at Busboys and Poets in Washington, DC. Prof. Robert Pastor, of American University’s International Studies Department spoke to the mostly Jewish audience regarding charges that former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is a bigot due to the content and title of his latest book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Pastor’s response to the accusation was a resounding “no.” Pastor has known President Carter for over 30 years, he said, having served in the Carter administration, and been founding director of the Carter Center’s Latin American and Caribbean Project, as well as of the center’s Democracy and China Election Projects. Carter made a personal journey when it comes to the Middle East peace process, Pastor said. “Jimmy Carter feels a deep frustration, he wanted to accomplish a true peace in the Middle East,” he explained. “He has always felt he had to do everything that he could do to bring a lasting peace to the region.” Carter has felt this way ever since he worked to bring a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt at Camp David in 1977, Pastor noted. Describing Carter as “a compassionate listener,” Pastor said the former president approaches a problem by accepting both narratives, and listening to both sides. Carter’s research concluded that the Israeli government was imposing on the Palestinians of the occupied territories a form of apartheid—not one based on race, but based on a land grab. Defining apartheid as a system which imposes separation between two people, Pastor noted that both Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, who lived under South Africa’s apartheid system, have called the Israeli occupation an example of apartheid. Carter views the construction of settlements as “a major obstacle to peacemaking,” Pastor said. Ten percent of West Bank land has been confiscated for the construction of Israeli settlements, and Israel has appropriated another 30 percent to support and protect the settlements. As for its so-called security wall, Pastor said, “It does not separate the Israelis from the Palestinians, but separates Palestinians from Palestinians. It’s a way to keep the Palestinians from forming a community.” Many American reviewers of Carter’s book have focused on the title of the book without really going deeper into the book’s content, Pastor said. Noting that “Opponents have torn the book apart, and all they could find was one sentence which was written in a sloppy manner that seems to condone terrorism in any form,” Pastor pointed out that “Jimmy Carter has apologized for his oversight and has directed his publisher to change the wording.” Pastor said that Ken Stein, the most vocal of the 14 Carter Center board members who resigned in protest of the book, had not been involved in any projects or programs at the Carter Center for over 13 years, and was a board member in name only. Reiterating that the charge that Carter is an anti-Semite is without foundation whatsoever, Pastor added that he recently had been on a discussion panel with former Republican Sen. Howard Baker who, when asked if he thought Carter was a bigot, responded that these charges have no bearing. Baker further stated that to call Jimmy Carter an anti-Semite is unspeakable. According to Pastor, Carter was neither critical of Israel nor the U.S., but is critical of their policies in the Middle East. “Israel and the U.S. are democracies,” Pastor explained, “and that is why he [Carter] holds them to a higher level.” Pastor concluded his remarks by stating that Carter “should be honored, not guillotined.” The audience then gathered into small discussion groups to give their opinion of the book as well as Pastor’s remarks. This reporter sat with a group comprising mostly American Jews. The group discussion focused on Carter’s use of the word apartheid, which many Jews find offensive, rather than on the suffering of Palestinians living under occupation. As each person told how they were outraged by the use of the word apartheid, this reporter asked if he or she actually had read the book. The majority either had read only excerpts or had not bothered to pick it up at all. Afterward, everyone returned to the larger group and was given a chance to ask questions of Professor Pastor, who was joined by Hal Saunders, a negotiator at Camp David during the Carter administration. Asked if Carter wrote the book because the Carter Center has received funding from Arab counties, Pastor pointed out that while the center has received money from the Arab world, it has received far more funding from the Jewish community. Noting that it was the role of politicians to simplify complex issues, Saunders argued that this is what Carter has done with his book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Saunders went on to recall that everyone on the Carter administration team had posed one question when faced with a problem or a decision that had to be made: “Was it right?” “What is going on in the occupied territories is not right,” Saunders asserted, “and that is what people are scared of.” —Jamal Najjab |
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