Carter on Israeli "Apartheid"

[Tom Odom]

While acknowledging that the word "apartheid" refers to the system of legal racial separation once used in South Africa, Carter says in his book that it is an appropriate term for Israeli policies devoted to "the acquisition of land" in Palestinian territories through Jewish settlements and Israel's incorporation of Palestinian land on its side of a separating wall it is erecting.

He criticizes suicide bombers and those who "consider the killing of Israelis as victories" but also notes that "some Israelis believe they have the right to confiscate and colonize Palestinian land and try to justify the sustained subjugation and persecution of increasingly hopeless and aggravated Palestinians."

Apparently former President Carter's book is causing a dust up according to the Washington Post.

It is one of the strengths of the ISG report that they resurfaced this issue as a core element in US foreign policy on the Middle East.

Best
Tom

[Steve Blair]

It's also interesting to note that one of Carter's longtime associates quit working for him after this book came out. I first saw mention of that at Cox & Forkum, and then checked the story here.

A longtime adviser to former President Jimmy Carter has resigned his position as a Carter Center fellow for Middle East Affairs in response to Carter's new book.

"Being president doesn't give one the prerogative to bend the facts to reach a prescribed reality," said Kenneth Stein, the first executive director of the Carter Center.

From the Atlanta Journal Constitution article.

[Tom Odom]

Roger that, Steve. The WP article hits the same point.

[Uboat509]

Why won't Jimmy Carter go away?

SFCW

[Tom Odom]

Having dealt with a Carter visit in Rwanda and seen the effects of a visit to Cairo, I fully agree that he can be a challenge.

That said, I am glad that he used the words that he did because they are quite accurate and seldom heard from the lips of any American statesman or politician. In this case, Carter enjoys the additional and substantial legitimacy of being the architect of the Camp David accords. Although I believe those accords are more than 10 years past their useful (and costly) shelf life, Carter did play a key role in bringing 2 very hostile sides into an agreement.

Aside from a flurry of brief reality in the early Reagan years, no US president has done that on the Palestinian issue. Clinto sailed that way; Sharon dismasted the ship and set off the 2nd intifadah. Since then and especially after 9-11, we have allowed the Israelis to call the shots on issues that directly affect our national interests. Gratefully, the ISG report despite all the bashing raised that issue as central to our interests in the region.

Best
Tom

[carl]

I wholeheartedly agree with Tom. How we got into the position of considering our national interests to be precisely consonant with those of Israel is a puzzlement. Incidents over the past 40 years ranging from the U.S.S. Liberty to the South African a-bomb program to the latest Chinese fighter looking exactly like the Lavi project to the spectacle of the I.A.F. using American equipment and money to blast apart Lebanon's infrastruture to no good purpose should have taught us otherwise.

It is in our national interest to lean on Israel rather harder than we have been doing.

As an aside, I think we have little if anything to learn from the Israelis on the strategic prosecution of a small war. They have had decades to make life under their authority preferable to life in an Arab police state (the only alternative in the neighborhood), and they haven't been able to do it.