Troublemaker’s Journal

Former President Jimmy Carter’s Palestine: Peace not Apartheid has become a bestseller. At the same time, it’s the target of a coordinated campaign to denigrate the book and discredit the author. What a strange response to what is such a simple, straightforward and in many ways commonplace book. Had it not been written by a former president, a Nobel Prize laureate with a reputation for projects such as Habitat for Humanity, it might well have disappeared into oblivion. Instead, it’s a sensation.

And how odd. The book contains almost no new information. It advocates no novel political position. It uses no new language to discuss Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.

Everything found in this book has been debated in Israel, Europe and the rest of the world for decades, including the issues of apartheid.

Why, then, the readers’ rush to get the book and the critics’ campaign to condemn it? Because Americans have never been well-informed or allowed to have this debate.

The tremendous interest in this book and the vicious attack upon it are the result of its mild-mannered but serious challenge to the Zionist establishment in the United States that’s long had an inordinate influence on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. American Zionism, a powerful force in the Jewish community, has done everything possible to prevent a discussion in this country of the morality and the politics of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Any attempt to discuss Israel’s policies has been branded anti-Semitic. That claim will no longer wash, not when many Jews themselves cannot justify and no longer accept Israel’s occupation.

Many American Jews recognize that Israel and world Jewry can’t be safe and secure as long as Palestinians are oppressed in their own homeland. The very history of Jewish oppression — the Pale, the quotas, the pogroms and above all the Holocaust — make Jews sensitive to charges of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. More than anything else, the continued oppression of the Palestinians jeopardizes Israel’s security.

Many have wanted for decades to be able to discuss these issues in their synagogues and schools. This desire has been thwarted by the American Zionist establishment, which has demanded of Jews a “my country right or wrong” mentality that’s precluded honest examination of the issues. Carter’s book is being attacked precisely because he has touched that nerve.

At the same time, since 9/11 and then the fiasco of the Iraq War, Americans of all backgrounds have a much greater desire to understand the Middle East. The U.S. policy of virtually uncritical and unconditional support of Israel now appears to be bound up with our entire misguided Middle East politics. In order to understand Iraq, Iran, Lebanon and Syria, we now realize that we need to know more about Israel and Palestine. Carter’s book has an appeal to the American public precisely because there is such a craving to understand the Arab world.

Carter has done something that, sadly, no one else in American politics has had the stature and the courage to do since the 1950s. He urges all Americans, including American Jews, to look squarely and honestly at Israel’s occupied Palestinian territories and the conditions that exist there. He reminds us that Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian territory violates U.N. resolutions and defies U.S. policy under presidents from Eisenhower to George W. Bush.

Carter insists that we examine the expansion of Israeli settlements, a practice that constitutes not only apartheid but also ethnic cleansing. He points out to us and makes us ponder the consequences of Israel’s building of a wall between Israeli and Palestinian territories and peoples. He explains that the wall not only divides communities but has also been used to seize land and water, to break Palestine up into micro-Bantustans and to make impossible a viable Palestinian state.

Like the recent Baker Report, The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward: A New Approach, Carter argues that peace in the Middle East region is impossible without dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian issue. The Palestinian situation, a long-festering wound, will continue to generate future tensions and conflicts if left unresolved. The Palestinian problem, however, can’t be resolved if we’re not willing to critically examine the role of Israel.

Carter insists on Israel’s right to exist within secure borders, but at the same time he challenges the American people and government to reconsider unconditional support for Israel. The United States continues to give billions of aid to Israel even though its policies — occupation, settlements and the wall — violate U.N. resolutions and U.S. policy. Carter calls upon the American people to ask that their government push for a peace that provides both security for Israel and justice for the Palestinians.

Critics have said the book contains errors of fact, and so it might, but not substantial ones. The critics have also made ad hominem attacks, suggesting that Carter is ignorant and naíve, was a weak leader and bad president, etc. He might be all of those.

Critics, however, should not forget that Carter knows well the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, having brokered the first Camp David peace accord; during his presidency he was also a strong supporter of Israel. Personally, I have never agreed with Jimmy Carter on much and do not necessarily agree with him on Israel, Palestine and the Middle East.

All that is beside the point. The book is important. Our country needs to read and discuss it.

Hebrew Union College, Xavier University and the University of Cincinnati should invite Carter to come here to present his book and to discuss the issues. The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County should make this a “book of the year” for discussion in our community.

If you know nothing about Israel, Palestine and the Middle East, begin by reading this book. It doesn’t necessarily have all the answers, but it raises the right questions. And that’s quite enough.

This article appears in Jan 24-30, 2007.