Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid
by Jimmy Carter
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Book Reviews of Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid
Book Review: Jimmy "Peanut Farmer" Carter...loses Iran to Islamists; leaves chaos for Reagan to fix; now, writes an anti-Semitic tome!!!!!!!!
Summary: 1 Stars
Anytime you misleadingly and degradingly compare Israel's right to self-defense against Pali terrorism with apartheid, you're bound to be devastated by a torrent of criticism from all sides (even including fellow Democrats Clinton and Pelosi), and rightly so!!!!
This is the story of Jimmy Carter, the one-term cataclysm who lost Iran to Islamist fundamentalists while overseeing an oil crisis. At the risk of redundancy, I'll recap the notoriety of this book--which is distastefully short at barely 200 pages of readable print (but, with Carter blaming Israel repeatedly throughout the book while excusing Palis all day long, 200 pages is far too enormous for what amounts to his racist opinions.) This book was subjected to scorching criticism almost from the nanosecond of its release, and Carter apologists should particularly note that the criticism is just as intense from the normal Carter friends: Democrats and Jewish groups within the US, who normally vote Democrat by a large margin over Republicans.
Even Speaker Pelosi--whose Do-Nothing, Dem Congress has so far passed only ONE OR TWO lousy pieces of legislation key to their agenda, in total conflict with their bragging about what they'd do if they took power--and Bill Clinton are two prominent Democrats who've derided Carter. Additionally, the most damning implication against Carter's book's "credibility" was the resignation (read: renunciation of Carter) of 15 members of his Carter Center, all because of the historical and ideological injustices contained in said tome.
With all this withering criticism from Carter's own side, the few Carter apologists left (probably mostly Arabs!!!!) should ask themselves why they continue to whitewash Carter's revisionism--especially since an examination of the book will totally destroy their support of Carter.
The worst affront is the flagrant accusation that Israel's self-defense measures against the Palis amount to South African-style apartheid. To mortify and ruin Carter apologists' arguments, we only need to define apartheid and compare South Africa with the Israeli-Pali conflict.
a-part-heid (a-pärt'hit') n. 1. policy of racial segregation formerly practiced in South Africa, involving political, legal, and economic discrimination against nonwhites
With this definition, it's apparently obvious to all who practice intellectual honesty that Israeli, self-defense measures aren't meant to oppress or discriminate against Palis, only to protect Israelis against Arab terrorism!!!! When Israel builds their separation wall, or razes Pali neighborhoods, or assassinates Pali "leaders" (read: terrorists), these are praiseworthy acts of self-defense. Furthermore, on a purely technical level, while South African blacks were segregated politically, Palis can vote (though they fanatically and self-destructively choose Hamas) and Arab Israelis can hold office. By these indisputable truths alone, Carter's title is discreditable and only serves to be provocative.
Other factual predicaments plague Carter's book like a curse. For instance, Carter unrelentingly refuses to sentence or at the least acknowledge what Palis who kill Israeli civilians are: terrorists. Throughout his whitewash of Pali enormities disguised as a book, Carter refers to Arab terrorists as "militants!!!!" This feloniously tricks the ignorant into believing that Palis are fighting for a defensible cause instead of branding them what they really are.
Further antagonistic is Carter's refusal to condemn or at the least expose both Arafat's PLO and Hamas as Islamofascist, terror groups!!!! The closest Carter comes to admitting this is calling them a little "extreme." Yet, Carter perpetrates throughout his propaganda-book the prevarication that Arafat and his PLO were legitimate, instead of recognizing that the PLO was founded as a terror group to eradicate Israel; Arafat continued to support terror clandestinely despite claiming to the US/world that he wasn't; and Arafat rejected many licit, Israeli peace deals which actually granted Palis much of their demanded lands.
Another grievous poison of dishonesty in the book is Carter's insistence that UN Resolution 242 requires Israel to withdraw to the "border" line of 1949; in reality and fact, there is no such border as it only was an armistice line referred to in 242. Egregiously again, Carter's overwhelming favoritism of the invented territory of Palestine (renamed so by the Romans) comes into play, as he perpetuates the fra*d that Israel somehow has already recognized their own borders.
Falsehood pertaining to recent circumstances concerns the summer war of 06, where Israel was provoked into self-defense by the Hezbollah kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers and the shelling of civilian towns in northern Israel. In reference to this, Carter remorselessly downplays the atrocities of Hezbollah (using Arab civilians as human shields and firing directly into Israeli communities) while demonizing Israel's response as somehow being the catalyst of unrest.
The bottom line why Carter has deservedly earned the blistering criticism of his book from even his own side (Dems) and former staffers is poignantly clear. Despite his underperformance as a one-termer, he's still a former president so his wildly menacing statements of irresponsibility carry some weight on the international stage. Rhetoric denouncing Israel actually only emboldens the Arab terrorists to become even more unabashed in their terrorism, as they feel Carter's sentiments give them moral justification--or at least a plausible excuse. Since Israel IS incontrovertibly America's best friend in the Middle East--since Israelis don't target US civilians in terrorist acts and fight the common foe in Islamist extremists--it's perilous for Carter to ostracize them.
On a presentational level, Carter's book also arrives at the same, reprehensible level as the ideology and "arguments" contained within. The book is severely double-spaced, the indentations are more than an inch on all sides of each page, and the chapters are pitifully short.
Book Review: I've witnessed the Occupation
Summary: 5 Stars
If only Americans could begin with a tabula rasa, our mental slates wiped clean of the clutter of propaganda that we have absorbed from our news media, we could read Jimmy Carter's "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid" and finally understand the source of the problem in the Middle East: Israel's relentless theft of Palestinian land, and its collective punishment of the entire population. If only. Alas, most supporters of Israel will not read this book (but that won't prevent them from posting one-star reviews on Amazon).
President Carter, of course, is more diplomatic in discussing the history of the conflict, preferring words like "confiscation" instead of "theft." While he mentions the destruction of 420 Palestinian villages in the war of 1948, Carter doesn't mention what Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former Foreign Minister of Israel, called "the atrocities and massacres it [the Israeli army] perpetrated against the civilian Arab community."
Nonetheless, Carter's Palestine is an amazingly succinct and compelling account of the conflict, especially the events since his election in 1976. Particularly fascinating are his accounts of conversations with Arab leaders such as Yasir Arafat, Hafez al-Assad (Syria), Anwar Sadat (Egypt), and King Hussein (Jordan), which allow the reader to see the conflict from the Arab leaders' perspectives. President Assad's interpretation of the conflict, on pages 72-80, presents the most concise version I have seen of the other side of the story, the side rarely seen in the United States. Readers who desire a more detailed and scholarly history should consider "Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict" by Charles Smith, or "The Gun and the Olive Branch", by David Hirst.
While many Americans will be shocked by Carter's declarations about Israel's deplorable treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, I can personally attest to many of the facts. Carter writes, "In addition to punitive demolitions, Israel had razed even more Palestinian homes in `clearing' operations, plus houses that Israel claimed were built without a permit." While visiting the West Bank last year, I saw the Israeli military bulldoze three Palestinian homes because of the planned construction of what President Carter calls - in the most accurate description I have seen - the "imprisonment wall". Euphemistically termed the "security barrier" by a compliant American press, the wall is used to imprison Palestinians in bantustans that are separated from the rest of Palestine and often from their own land. Palestinians in Bethlehem, surrounded by the wall, cannot travel the five miles to Jerusalem, while foreigners like me visit from 5,000 miles away.
According to Carter, international rights organizations estimate that 20 percent of the Palestinian population has been imprisoned at some time by the Israelis. My taxi driver, a Christian Palestinian, said that he was imprisoned at age 16 for throwing stones, a symbolic act of protest during the first intifada. A year later, Israeli soldiers broke his arm after stopping him and finding out that he had been in prison.
Israel's ethnic cleansing of Christians and Muslims from Jerusalem is camouflaged in a blanket of legalese such as "building permits" and "identification cards." The Palestinian Christian who cleaned my room at the hotel had been imprisoned for working in Jerusalem "without a Jerusalem ID." Though his wife and children were born in Jerusalem, he grew up in a small nearby town where there are no jobs. At the time of his arrest, on the day his third child was born, he was working in the Christian quarter of the Old City, which is in Occupied Territory.
This important book solidifies Jimmy Carter's standing as the most honest and forthright statesman of our time. While he feels he did the right thing in settling for a separate peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, rather than a comprehensive agreement that included the Palestinians, he presents Assad's opposing view that Sadat betrayed the Arabs. Carter admits that his biggest mistake at Camp David was "failure to clarify in writing Begin's verbal promise" to cease building settlements in the Occupied Territories. Begin soon broke that promise.
Although most of the facts presented by Carter are readily verifiable, I wish that he had presented footnotes for the source of some specific details. For example, on page 206 he states that 708 Palestinian children and 123 Israeli children were killed between September 2000 and March 2006. However, B'tselem, the respected Israeli human rights group, reports that Israeli security forces killed 801 Palestinian children, while Palestinians killed 39 Israeli minors from 9/29/2000 to 11/15/2006.
I also wish that Carter had included some photographs in the book. The photograph on the front cover, depicting a peaceful protest at the three-story high imprisonment wall, says more than any description can accomplish. Israeli police routinely attack and disperse with tear gas such demonstrations at the wall, beating and arresting protestors. According to a witness at one demonstration, organized as non-violent, a protestor began throwing stones. When a leader of the protest tried to stop it, he was arrested -- by the stone-thrower, who was an undercover Israeli policeman.
"Palestine" is a short book of facts, devoid of sermonizing and analysis, easily digestible in a few hours. The book merely relates what happened in the recent past and what is happening now - facts that are only controversial because they haven't been reported by the mainstream news media. The facts lead to the obvious conclusions that Carter makes on the final page: "Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when Israel is willing to comply with international law," and the United States is encouraging anti-American terrorism by "condoning or abetting the Israeli confiscation and colonization of Palestinian territories."
Jimmy Carter's "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid" gives me optimism that more people will learn the truth. If only people will read it.
Book Review: The title isn't the only part of the book that's a distortion...
Summary: 1 Stars
Mr. Carter's "Palestine" is populated by people who don't seem to be peace lovers: Hamas, Hizbullah, Fatah, and loads of Saddam and bin Laden Supporters. Also, for some strange reason, he ignores the fact that a total apartheid exists in Saudi Arabia: No Jews are allowed in at all! And they paint Israel black on their maps of the Middle East. In 1948 most Arab countries forced the Jews to leave, another action far worse than the fictional apartheid he accuses Israel of perpetrating. But stranger, by far, is the funny fact that the Carter Center is funded primarily by...Saudi Arabia and the Bin Laden family! Oh, no wonder he blames all the trouble in the Middle East (and probably the world) on Israel, as did Mein Kampf, David Duke and Carters friend, the world terrorist leader and murderer, Arafat. Would Carter's peace plan succeed in a world filled with leaders like Nasrallah, al Sadr, Zawahiri, Ahmadinejad, and the Taliban? The main thing preventing them from attacking poor tiny Israel is the fact that they're too busy oppressing, torturing and killing their own people, as Saddam so famously did.
Mr. Carter's words are utterly dishonest and biased. For example: He says: "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." Get off the peanut farm, Jimmy-they most certainly are! He continues: "This reluctance to criticize any policies of the Israeli government is because of the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American-Israel Political Action Committee and the absence of any significant contrary voices." Oh, so you agree with David Duke, Father Coughlin, and the Protocols- a total fabrication! Noooooobody speaks contrary to Israel?!?! What planet are you on? Is anybody in the world more criticized than Israel? Oh yea, Bush...
Jimmy is concerned for the "human rights for Palestinians." First of all, his friend Yasser Arafat stole over three billion dollars from these "poor" Palestinians, and Suha is redecorating her Paris mansion with some of it. Secondly, how do these people so bereft of human rights have the ability to amass continuous bombs, suicide belts, guns, mortars and knives with which to terrorize Israel continuously since 1948 and before? Would voting, college and indoor plumbing curtail that? Sorry, it hasn't yet...
Carter mentions "the only possible path to peace: Israelis and Palestinians living side by side within their own internationally recognized boundaries." Well you're alone on this, J.C. Hamas and Fatah both have in their covenants official policy that they don't recognize Israel at all, and support armed terror against all of it. Their actions have never run contrary to that. Carter brings up "the Arab League's offer to recognize Israel in 2002 and the International Quartet's "Roadmap for Peace," which has been accepted by the PLO and largely rejected by Israel." It's not even worth debating the fact that Israel constantly struggles and sacrifices for peace, while the Arabs constantly reject every peace offer that doesn't end up with a piece of land the size of Rhode Island for the Jews and the rest of it open to all of the worlds terror organizations, which is their dream of "Palestine". Saddam, Khomeini, Bin Laden and Ahmadinejad, who wants Israel blown off the map, all have done their best to make that dream come true.
Mr. Carter says "The book is devoted to circumstances and events in Palestine and not in Israel, where democracy prevails and citizens live together and are legally guaranteed equal status." Actually, sorry, Palestine does not exist. Israel, however, has existed since the Bronze Age, over 4000 years ago (3000 years before Islam existed). The Romans changed the name to "Palestine", Arabs have come and gone, and never even referred to themselves as "Palestinians" until the 1960s! Those "Occupied Territories" that everyone talks about are Judea, Samaria and Gaza, (doesn't the name Judea give it away? It's not called "Abdulla") which has been God-given Jewish land since Abraham, and if anyone is illegally occupying it, it's Arabs, not Jews. Jews are simply living in Judea, etc. in their homes, and Arabs, who have 22 other huge Muslim nations to live in, are occupying Jewish land. And again J.C: "The book describes the abominable oppression and persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories, with a rigid system of required passes and strict segregation between Palestine's citizens and Jewish settlers in the West Bank." Did Arabs murdering Jewish children, women and innocent people in markets, busses and malls have anything to do with them becoming the slightest bit suspect? Israel is too nice to them-a healthier country would deport them! And of course " An enormous imprisonment wall...snaking through what is left of Palestine to encompass more and more land for Israeli settlers." That wall, as most people should know, was built after Arabs entered Israel daily with suicide bombs, machine guns, grenades and knives butchering innocent children, women and men. How do you, Jimmy, suggest they be stopped?
Carter says "this is more oppressive than what blacks lived under in South Africa during apartheid." Once and for all, Jim, the Arabs are utter racists against the Jews, and the Jews bend over backwards (way too much in my opinion) to live in peace and harmony, which is generally universally rejected in all Muslim nations, including the fictitious "Palestine". Finally, he refers to " ...the desire of a minority of Israelis to confiscate and colonize choice sites in Palestine." Again, please change that to read "the Islamic Jihad dream of confiscating, colonizing and oppressing the west and butchering the infidels, and attempting to repeat Hitlers dream"
Carter's book belongs in the trash heap along with Mein Kampf, Protocols and Time magazine.
Book Review: If I would have written this it would not have been published
Summary: 2 Stars
If I would have written the book and submitted this text for publication, or some other person less prominent than Former President Carter would have done so, I have serious doubts that it would have been published in its format - unless we call this an essay.
I admire Mr. Carter for his courage to speak out for the Palestinian people, and I understand his frustration with the current situation, which transpires from the text.
The plight of the Palestinian people is not well described in this book. It is sufficient for the reader who knows about it (that reader does not need to read this book, though). The average person living in the United States would need more detail to comprehend the dire situation of the Palestinians under occupation and their abuse. More detail would have helped here to get a better picture. One example would be the notion of distances: the dimensions of pieces of land we are talking about, distances between military checkpoints - they are much, much smaller than the average American and even European can think of.
Mr. Carter is focusing on the aggressive acts of the Israelis which are described very well. Mr. Carter makes no attempt to describe why the Israelis have taken the approach he is criticizing. He could have tried that, without necessarily having to approve the reasoning. Suicide bombing does not kill many people, but it has a strong psychological effect on the population and there is pressure on the leaders "to do something about it". Mr. Carter does not try to look into the psychology of the Israeli aggressor but has the courage of getting into the psychology of the oppressed Palestinians who would become violent up to committing suicide to harm others. Again, I admire Mr. Carter for his willingness to look into the latter, but I am very dissatisfied for not including the whole picture here.
Some omissions of facts make this book as incomplete and biased as listening to one side only when judging a divorce case. Some examples:
Mr. Arafat is described as a leader who relinquished terrorism and was willing to pursue peace. Unfortunately, that shift probably never happened. He has inflamed the spirits in 2000 on the Palestinian street, leading to the second Intifada. This is exactly what Mr. Sharon wanted to achieve when he visited the Temple Mount: to stir up a reaction, and to get elected prime minister. Mr. Arafat should have known that. We know the consequences of that: no peace talks, the oppression, the Wall.
Mr. Carter states that in 1996 there were two suicide bombings in Israel. There were more than that, and Mr. Shimon Peres, a pacifist, was not elected prime minister - mainly because of the security situation.
Mr. Carter did not tell us in his book that at some point in the 90's there was a cycle of violence followed by travel (including commute and work)restrictions for the Palestinians and whenever there was a goodwill gesture to remove some military checkpoints to ease life for the Palestinians, this was followed in short time by another suicide bombing in Israel. Actually the infamous and ugly wall was built out of frustration to stop the suicide bombings and it pretty much did so.
Mr. Carter oversimplifies the 2006 conflicts between Israel and Gaza or Lebanon by defining a cycle of kidnapping of a small number of soldiers that triggered an exaggerated reaction from the Israeli military. What we do not hear from Mr. Carter is that in the Gaza episode of 2006, the kidnapping was a highly sophisticated attack into Israel coming after weeks in which hundreds of rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel. The response of Israel was not to the kidnapping but to the combination of the events. The conflict with Lebanon was started by Hezbollah without any provocation as they fired rockets into a city first (civilians) and by creating this diversion and subsequent diversion of Israeli troops they managed to kidnap the soldiers on the border. In fact in both conflicts there was aggression of the Israeli population first, which was graciously overlooked by the author. I would kindly invite Mr. Carter to give us an example of a country that would tolerate this kind of agression.
Mr. Carter omits that the timing of the Hezbollah attack on Israel in 2006 was during the G-8 summit where there were planned discussions on the Iran nuclear program. Iran is the sponsor of Hezbollah. That attack was supposed to divert attention from Iran. In fact, it was the first time ever Hezbollah attacked when the Palestinian front was active. They never did so in the past (because there is so much media bandwith to cover the events). The Lebanese were very critical of their situation - being hostages to foreign interests, namely Iranian interest. This was covered by the American media and I find it impossible that Mr. Carter did not have knowledge of that.
The Hezbollah stated that they were trying to help their Palestinian brothers. Mr. Carter should have used better judgment not to include this lie in the book. In fact, as Mr. Carter noted in the book, with Hezbollah shifting the attention to Lebanon, the Israeli forces had the chance to operate in Gaza without much media coverage.
The conclusion part of the book does not summarize what was said before; it goes on with new facts - which are also debatable (just a small technical issue).
In conclusion, this book, written out of frustration, does not offer a lot of information for people who have read before on the subject or have witnessed the problem on-site. Since it is biased it can be considered merely another point of view. It is not the first book one should read on the subject of the Palestinian conflict, since additional information is needed to comprehend the complexity of the situation.
Book Review: When will Israel recognize Palestine's right to exist?
Summary: 4 Stars
Carter's book shows clearly that both the cause of the Palestine/Israel conflict and its cure are very straightforward: Israel refuses to acknowledge Palestine's right to exist, and considers all Palestinian land up for grabs. The conflict would be resolved if Israel withdrew to its legal 1967 borders in accordance with international law.
However, right from the start, Israel has demonstrated over and over again that it has no intention of doing so.
In 1947 the United Nations proposed dividing Palestine, giving 55% of the land to the Jews, despite the fact that they were only one third of the population, and only 45% to the Arabs, although they comprised two thirds of the population at that time.
Not content with getting the larger portion of land, the Jews seized no less than 78% of Palestine in 1948 by terrorism, leaving the Arabs with only 22% of their former land. I use the word terrorism deliberately, as the word `terrorist' was first coined by the British to describe the early Jewish terrorist groups, the Irgun Zvei Leumi and the Stern Gang, who committed terrorist acts such as blowing up the King David Hotel by posing as Arab delivery men and smuggling explosives into the basement. Some of the leading terrorists, such as Menachem Begin, were to become future leaders of the state of Israel.
The myth that Israel was created on a land without people for a people without a land ignores the fact that over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled from their homes in terror in 1948. Some left dinner still on the table, such was the haste in which they had to get out. For more details on this, Ghada Karmi gives a very vivid and heart-rending account of her flight from her home in Palestine as a child in her book, `In Search of Fatima'.
Amazingly, terrorism won the day and the international community accepted this unfair division of the land, and the state of Israel was born, with the Palestinians being left with the remaining 22% as their territory.
Not content with this 78% of what was formerly Palestine, Israel has, over the years since, been steadily stealing more and more of the Palestinians' territory by building illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian land. I cannot understand why Carter, and many others, refer to this land theft as `confiscation'. When you confiscate something from somebody, the intention is to give it back again at a later date. Israel obviously has no intention of returning Palestinian land to its rightful owners. Therefore Israel is not confiscating land, it is stealing it.
As well as the illegal settlements, Israel is now building the apartheid wall, in flagrant violation of international law, slap through the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, with the goal of grabbing all the Palestinian land on the west side. To create maximum misery, this wall even passes through the middle of a school, as well as imprisoning some villages, and cutting farmers off from their lands. Carter's description of the devastation caused by the wall to the Palestinian people is one of his best chapters.
Israel is also illegally occupying the Jordan valley, not to mention the Golan Heights that it stole from Syria so that they could control the water supply.
Carter shows the Israeli government's policy of stealing as much land as possible from other people by quoting Ariel Sharon:, "Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours ...Everything we don't grab will go to them."
As Carter shows so clearly that tension in the Middle East is caused by Israel's illegal acquisition of Palestinian land, why don't I give his book 5 stars instead of 4?
- Partly because the extreme suffering of the Palestinian people never cries out from the pages as it does in Raja Shehadeh's book, "When the Birds Stopped Singing", Robert Fisk's book, "The Great War for Civilisation" and in the children's book, "A Little Piece of Ground" by Elizabeth Laird. Carter's style is very matter-of-a-fact, and in my opinion he is far too lenient on Israel, considering the atrocities they are committing against the Palestinian people on a daily basis. Carter makes no mention of Israel's use of poison gas against Palestinian children: (see the film documentary, `Gaza Strip', and the excellent article by James Brooks ); Its use of the indigenous Jews as guinea pigs in radiation experiments, where many of them died: its checkpoints that prevent women in labor from getting through to their hospitals, so they are obliged to give birth right there on the ground, so that many of these babies die; (see John Pilger's documentary, `Palestine is Still the Issue'); the use by Israeli soldiers of Palestinian children's eyes as target practice; (see 'If Americans Knew' website); the demolition of Palestinian homes, sometimes with the people still inside them (see Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions website), and `The donkey treatment', where Israeli soldiers refuse to let a Palestinian man through a check point with his donkey; if he complains, they tie him to the back of his animal, and then spook the donkey, so that it goes wild and runs off, dragging its owner behind him, to his death.
Still, Carter's book is a step in the right direction, and a good `starter book' for readers new to the issue, who will hopefully be motivated to read more on the subject, such as the books written by Finkelstein, Shehadeh, Ilan Pappé and Laird.
Not until Israel recognizes Palestine's right to exist as an independent state, totally free from Israeli control and domination, will peace in the Middle East be possible.