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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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 Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 12:57 am Post subject: Carter has written a book - Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid |
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Israel, Palestine, peace and apartheid
Americans need to know the facts about the abominable oppression of the Palestinians
Jimmy Carter
Tuesday December 12, 2006
The Guardian
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The many controversial issues concerning Palestine and the path to peace for Israel are intensely debated among Israelis and throughout other nations - but not in the United States. For the past 30 years, I have witnessed and experienced the severe restraints on any free and balanced discussion of the facts. This reluctance to criticise policies of the Israeli government is due to the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American-Israel Political Action Committee and the absence of any significant contrary voices.
It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine, to suggest that Israel comply with international law or to speak in defence of justice or human rights for Palestinians. Very few would deign to visit the Palestinian cities of Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron, Gaza City or Bethlehem and talk to the beleaguered residents.
What is even more difficult to comprehend is why the editorial pages of the major newspapers and magazines in the US exercise similar self-restraint, quite contrary to private assessments expressed forcefully by their correspondents in the Holy Land. |
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The ultimate purpose of my book is to present facts about the Middle East that are largely unknown in America, to precipitate discussion and help restart peace talks (now absent for six years) that can lead to permanent peace for Israel and its neighbours.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1970058,00.html
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It will be interesting to see whether someone of his fame will be able to make some inroads into giving the American public a less censored understanding of what is going on in the occupied territories. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 1:10 am Post subject: Apartheid? |
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Two American editorials on the book. I've not read the book myself.
It's not Apartheid
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| In the six decades since the founding of Israel, there have been about one and a half new ideas for solving the most intractable problem on the map of the world. In fact, ever since Britain's Balfour Declaration (1917) made incompatible promises to Jews and Arabs struggling over the same tiny plot of land, most would-be solutions have counted on an outbreak of good will among the Middle East's warring parties. This tradition continues in the Iraq Study Group report, which declares, "There must be a renewed and sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace on all fronts," as a small warm-up for tackling the problem of Iraq. |
What would Jimmy do?
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Why is Carter so hard on Israeli settlements and so easy on Arab aggression and Palestinian terror? Because a specific agenda appears to be at work here. Carter seems to mean for this book to convince American evangelicals to reconsider their support for Israel...
...In a short chapter on the Clinton years, Carter blames the Israelis for the failures at Camp David. But I put more stock in the views of the president who was there than in those of the president who wasn't. "On the ninth day, I gave Arafat my best shot again," Clinton writes in My Life. "Again he said no. Israel had gone much further than he had, and he wouldn't even embrace their moves as the basis for future negotiations." Clinton applied himself heroically over the next six months to extract even better offers from Israel, all of which Arafat wouldn't accept. "I still didn't believe Arafat would make such a colossal mistake," Clinton remembers, with regret. According to Carter, however, Arafat made no mistakes. The failure was Israel's -- and by extension, Clinton's. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 9:12 am Post subject: |
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Same issue as calling the United States "banana republic" or Castro "Hitler." There are a million other examples.
The Arab-Israeli Conflict is already inflammed beyond all proportion. People should get their rhetoric under control and talk responsibly. I am disappointed in Carter. This is unworthy of him. He should be elevating the debate and not sinking down to the level of the propagandists and their bills of particulars. And there are more options than "peace" or "Apartheid," in any case. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 6:57 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
Same issue as calling the United States "banana republic" or Castro "Hitler." There are a million other examples.
The Arab-Israeli Conflict is already inflammed beyond all proportion. People should get their rhetoric under control and talk responsibly. I am disappointed in Carter. This is unworthy of him. He should be elevating the debate and not sinking down to the level of the propagandists and their bills of particulars. And there are more options than "peace" or "Apartheid," in any case. |
I would argue that there are many parallels between South African Apartheid and the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and so in fact do some Israelis themselves. Some Israeli journalists regularly point to this. I don't see any problem with him using that comparison/reference point as a way to get his readers to understand the very ugly situation there. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2007 10:41 pm Post subject: |
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Carter's Real Sin is Cutting to the Heart of the Problem
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Apartheid Analogy
No aspect of Carter's book has evoked more outrage than its identification of Israeli policy in the Occupied Palestinian Territory with apartheid. Michael Kinsley in the Washington Post called it "foolish and unfair," the Boston Globe editorialized that it was "irresponsibly provocative," while the New York Times reported that Jewish groups condemned it as "dangerous and anti-Semitic." (1)
In fact the comparison is a commonplace among informed commentators. From its initial encounter with Palestine the Zionist movement confronted a seemingly intractable dilemma: How to create a Jewish state in a territory that was overwhelmingly non-Jewish? Israeli historian Benny Morris observes that Zionists could choose from only two options: "the way of South Africa"--i.e., "the establishment of an apartheid state, with a settler minority lording it over a large, exploited native majority"--or "the way of transfer"--i.e., "you could create a homogeneous Jewish state or at least a state with an overwhelming Jewish majority by moving or transferring all or most of the Arabs out." (2)
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Former Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Apartheid in the Holy Land
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I've been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.
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Slep
Joined: 14 Oct 2006
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| Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2007 12:02 am Post subject: |
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| Apartheid is a neccessary part of this occupation. I'm not sure if that excuses it, but it's definetly a logical conclusion. Yu have military rule that applies to one set of people (those in the west bank and palestine) and another set of laws that apply to those in Israel proper. Not to mention the Israeli only roads as well as citizenship laws that preclude spouses of israeli arabs. Not to mention the difference in funding you see depending on the ethnic make up of hte population. I"m not sure how many of you have been to Israel or Palestine, but you can tell which neighborhoods are Jewish and which are Arab based on how many parks are there or what conditions the schools are in. Again, these can be justified based on security demands (and i believe its legitimate to make this claim), but i think that for intellectual honesty, we should at least call it what it is, a form of apartheid/separation, etc.. |
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endo
Joined: 14 Mar 2004
Location: Seoul...my home
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| Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2007 4:43 am Post subject: Re: Apartheid? |
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Why is Carter so hard on Israeli settlements and so easy on Arab aggression and Palestinian terror? Because a specific agenda appears to be at work here. Carter seems to mean for this book to convince American evangelicals to reconsider their support for Israel...
...In a short chapter on the Clinton years, Carter blames the Israelis for the failures at Camp David. But I put more stock in the views of the president who was there than in those of the president who wasn't. "On the ninth day, I gave Arafat my best shot again," Clinton writes in My Life. "Again he said no. Israel had gone much further than he had, and he wouldn't even embrace their moves as the basis for future negotiations." Clinton applied himself heroically over the next six months to extract even better offers from Israel, all of which Arafat wouldn't accept. "I still didn't believe Arafat would make such a colossal mistake," Clinton remembers, with regret. According to Carter, however, Arafat made no mistakes. The failure was Israel's -- and by extension, Clinton's. |
I read President Clinton's autobiography and he went into depth into how frustrted he was with the peace process.
The thing is, he didn't really go into specifics on the deal offered to Arafat. And it was a horrible deal in my opinion.
Several settlements inside the West Bank would remain; and Israel would still retain authority over water and transportation in certain areas of the West Bank.
That deal is crap!
I beleive Clinton was more concerned with leaving legacy. Therefore when Arfat rejected the Israeli offer at Camp David (in the final days of Clinton's second term) Clinton lost out on a chance to be behind something meaningful and historic. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2007 5:17 pm Post subject: |
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Seen this story, Big_Bird?
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ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Former President Jimmy Carter's controversial book and subsequent remarks about the Israel-Palestinian conflict have prompted the resignations of 14 people from an advisory board of the Carter Center, the 25-year-old Atlanta-based humanitarian organization.
The 14 explained their concerns, which reflect an uproar in the U.S. Jewish community over Carter's Mideast stance, in separate letters sent Thursday to fellow Board of Councilors members and Carter.
"We can no longer endorse your strident and uncompromising position," the letter to Carter said. "This is not the Carter Center or the Jimmy Carter we came to respect and support..." |
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