Ah yes, the Committee for Accuracy in Mid-East Reporting in America--interesting folk--it will be harder for them to discredit a former president and nobel prize winner.

Interestingly, today's NYTimes has full-page advert 'Correcting Carter's Falsehoods' put out by Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. The 'inaccuracies' are quibbles, at least in my mind, but at least the debate rages on!

carpe: that is what G.W. is probably hoping for too....

Insp: I agree, the slogan "I did the right thing, even if it wasn't popular" can carry you far....

carter had some bad luck....the iranian hostage crisis.... bad economy...

if he'd started a war like bush...he might have boosted the economy enough to get elected for a second term...

he did end up being successful in the iranian hostage crisis...but because it got resolved so late.... it didn't help him in the election...but it did give him a launching pad for his post-presidency career...

Insp: so George W may redeem himself yet?

NOT!

In my humble opinion Carter was the last true statesman that US had, his credibility outside the US is higher than any president who came after him.

I have seen "they dare to speak out", but never got around to reading it.

That's the thing--every American has heard of Jimmy Carter, while not everyone has heard of Findley (i myself didn't know about him). I'm very curious to see how reactions to this book will play out.

Has anyone read the Findlley book? It looks very interesting--why didn't it get the same kind of press?--or, did i miss something?

But Carter is definitely way more high profile than Findley...

Actually, Carter is not the first mainstream politician to speak out against Israel. Paul Findley, a former congressman, has written two books

They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby
www.amazon.com s=books

and

Silent No More: Confronting America's False Images of Islam
www.amazon.com s=books

Published in the San Francisco Chronicle"

Published on Wednesday, December 20, 2006 by the San Francisco Chronicle
Jimmy Carter's Apartheid Charge Rings True
by Saree Makdisi

Former President Jimmy Carter has come under sustained attack for having dared to use the term "apartheid" to describe Israel's policies in the West Bank. However, not one of Carter's critics has offered a convincing argument to justify the vehemence of the outcry, much less to refute his central claim that Israel bestows rights on Jewish residents settling illegally on Palestinian land, while denying the same rights to the indigenous Palestinians. Little wonder, for they are attempting to defy reality itself.

Israel maintains two separate road networks in the West Bank: one for the exclusive use of Jewish settlers, and one for Palestinian natives. Is that not apartheid?

Palestinians are not allowed to drive their own cars in much of the West Bank; their public transportation is frequently interrupted or blocked altogether by a grid of Israeli army checkpoints -- but Jewish settlers come and go freely in their own cars, without even pausing at the roadblocks that hold up the natives. Is that not apartheid?

A system of closures and curfews has strangled the Palestinian economy in the West Bank -- but none of its provisions apply to the Jewish settlements there. Is that not apartheid?

Whole sectors of the West Bank, classified as "closed military areas" by the Israeli army, are off limits to Palestinians, including Palestinians who own land there -- but foreigners to whom Israel's Law of Return applies (that is, anyone Jewish, from anywhere in the world) can access them without hindrance. Is that not apartheid?

Persons of Palestinian origin are routinely barred from entering or residing in the West Bank -- but Israeli and non-Israeli Jews can come and go, and even live on, occupied Palestinian territory. Is that not apartheid?

Israel maintains two sets of rules and regulations in the West Bank: one for Jews, one for non-Jews. The only thing wrong with using the word "apartheid" to describe such a repugnant system is that the South African version of institutionalized discrimination was never as elaborate as its Israeli counterpart -- nor did it have such a vocal chorus of defenders among otherwise liberal Americans.

The glaring error in Carter's book, however, is his insistence that the term "apartheid" does not apply to Israel itself, where, he says, Jewish and non-Jewish citizens are given the same treatment under the law. That is simply not true.

Israeli law affords differences in privileges for Jewish and non-Jewish citizens of the state -- in matters of access to land, family unification and acquisition of citizenship. Israel's amended nationality law, for example, prevents Palestinian citizens of Israel who are married to Palestinians from the occupied territories from living together in Israel. A similar law, passed at the peak of apartheid in South Africa, was overturned by that country's supreme court as a violation of the right to a family. Israel's high court upheld its law just this year.

Israel loudly proclaims itself to be the state of the Jewish people, rather than the state of its actual citizens (one-fifth of whom are Palestinian Arabs). In fact, in registering citizens, the Israeli Ministry of the Interior assigns them a whole range of nationalities other than "Israeli." In the official registry, the nationality line for a Jewish citizen of Israel reads "Jew." For a Palestinian citizen, the same line reads "Arab." When this glaring inequity was protested all the way to Israel's high court, the justices upheld it: "There is no Israeli nation separate from the Jewish people." Obviously this leaves non-Jewish citizens of Israel in, at best, a somewhat ambiguous situation. Little wonder, then, that a solid majority of Israeli Jews regard their Arab fellow-citizens as what they call "a demographic threat," which many -- including the deputy prime minister -- would like to see eliminated altogether. What is all this, if not racism?

Many of the very individuals and institutions that are so vociferously denouncing President Jimmy Carter would not for one moment tolerate such glaring injustice in the United States. Why do they condone the naked racism that Israel practices? Why do they heap criticism on our former president for speaking his conscience about such a truly unconscionable system of ethnic segregation?

Perhaps it is because they themselves are all too aware that they are defending the indefensible; because they are all too aware that the emperor they keep trying to cover up really has no clothes. There is a limit to how long such a cover up can go on. And the main lesson of Carter's book is that we have finally reached that limit.

Saree Makdisi is a professor of English and Comparative Literature at UCLA and a frequent commentator on Middle East issues.

?2006 San Francisco Chronicle

I think what' s most noteworthy is that for what might be the first time, a 'mainstream' politician has said something blatantly against israel. these are things that others like noam chomsky, norman finkelstein, amy goodman, etc. have been charting, but these authors and journalists are stll on the margins of media and whose views are considered ultra-radical. enter jimmy carter, a known and 'credible' politician, and the facts take on a whole new meaning to the general public.

i plan on reading the book at some point, but just the fact that it's incited a very different kind of conversation about the israel/palestine conflict is remarkable. the israeli lobbyists are having a harder time discrediting carter's arguments as they have ordinarily done with more marginalized, lesser-known authors. the book is appearing on display shelves of bookstores everywhere and is bound to be more widely read than the lesser-known authors. all i can say is, mad props to jimmy carter!!

Funny you'd ask about this - was talking to someone about this very book yesterday. The title is meant to be provocative, and it needs to be: Palestine is a dormant issue these days in the USA. Unlike most other people on the topic, Carter has some credibity here: he negotiated the peace agreement with Egypt and has been a constant observer and participant on this issue. I haven't read the book yet, but hopefully one of these days when I get a minute or two to spare.....

By the way, you can hear Jimmy Carter defend his book on PBS, online here: www.pbs.org.

I think the apartheid label is actually key though...lots of people won't read the book...but everyone will hear about it...just the fact that a former president who has a respected reputation as a negotiator has a book that links israel and apartheid...despite all the bad press...serves as a form of eye-opening education in of itself I feel...