Jimmy Carter likes Jews. Or at least that’s what he wants you to
believe.
Speaking to a packed auditorium of over a thousand at The George
Washington University on Thursday, the poet, peanut farmer, and
former president was hell bent on convincing the audience that he’s
pro-Semitic.
Carter opened his speech by discussing the efforts during his
presidency to help Soviet Jewish dissidents, to set up a commission
to create a Holocaust museum (“Elie Wiesel served as chairman”),
and to broker the Camp David peace accords between Israel and
Egypt.
Of course, more recently, he has been in the news for writing a
book describing Israeli policy toward Palestinians as
“apartheid.”
“I realize that this has caused some concern in the Jewish
community,” Carter said. But there’s no need to overreact, because
he wasn’t referring to policies within Israel, only policies in the
Palestinian territories. “Let me make clear that the forced
segregation and domination of Arabs by Israelis is not based on
race and should give no aid or comfort to those who attempted to
equate racism with Zionism.”
Apartheid, of course, has a very specific connotation, and
refers to a policy in Africa of state-imposed racial segregation
and oppression. The United States withdrew from the notorious 2001
UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban precisely because
words such as “apartheid” were being used to describe Israeli
policies in an effort to equate Zionism with racism. At the time,
Carter criticized the Bush administration for leaving the
conference.
“The driving force for the terrible oppression and persecution
in Palestine comes from a minority of Israelis and their desire to
confiscate and colonize Palestinian lands,” Carter said Thursday. A
trade of land for peace would be acceptable to most Israelis, he
said, “but not to a minority of the more conservative leaders who
have intruded into Palestine and who are unfortunately supported by
AIPAC and most of the vocal American Jewish communities.”
Following the publication of his book, Carter has received a lot
of criticism, both for his inflammatory title, numerous errors, and
failure to include footnotes or citations. Outside GWU’s Lisner
auditorium, about a dozen protesters held signs, passed out flyers,
and chanted: “Carter Is A Liar.”
In an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, Carter elaborated on why he’s been criticized: “Book
reviews in the mainstream media have been written mostly by
representatives of Jewish organizations who would be unlikely to
visit the occupied territories…”
Lest anybody get the wrong idea from such comments, in his
speech to GWU students, Carter was sure to explain that he doesn’t
buy into old stereotypes.
“I am personally familiar with the management of major news
organizations,” he said, naming Cox Enterprises, Knight-Ridder, and
Gannett. “I have never claimed, nor believed, that American Jews
controlled the news media.”
In the question and answer period, one student asked Jimmy how
he felt about the 14 members of the Carter Center advisory board
who resigned in protest over his book. Though Carter said he
regrets their decision to resign, he was gracious to them: “They
all happen to be Jewish Americans, I understand the tremendous
pressures on them.”
One questioner asked Carter how he thinks the United States
should deal with an emboldened Iran.
“After the Shah fell, I was still president, and we established
very quickly diplomatic relations with Iran,” he reminded the
audience. “They opened an office in Washington, and we opened an
office in Tehran, and it was those members of our ambassadorial
staff who were taken hostage.” He failed to specify that 52
Americans remained captive for 444 days.
Carter said his policy during this period “was that we should
have diplomatic relations and discussions with Iran, if not with a
full ambassador there, at least with a large staff so we could
communicate with each other, and I think that would still be the
preferable approach to Iran, and also, by the way, to Syria.”
Who can argue with success?
Another questioner asked Carter why he refused to debate the
content of his book with figures such as Harvard Law Professor Alan
Dershowitz and former Ambassador Dennis Ross, especially given that
one of the supposed aims of his book was to provoke debate.
“I don’t see any reason for me to debate a man from Harvard who
knows very little of anything about present circumstances in the
West Bank,” Carter responded. He also provided the audience with
some autobiographical details.
“I’ve never been afraid of debates,” Carter said. “As a matter
of fact, when I was a peanut farmer I debated the President of the
United States three times…and, of course, I debated my
challenger, President Reagan.”
God Bless the Gipper.
