Jimmy Carter is not an anti-Semite!
Now that may come as a shock to the chair of the Anti-Defamation League or the Israeli prime minister, but then it would also be quite shocking if either deigned to read Palestine: Peace not Apartheid before jumping to their conclusion.
Carter's latest, most controversial book is mostly history - with a touch of memoir - but it is decidedly not screed. If the critics must quibble, they'd be wise to do so with the facts of Carter's presentation. Indeed, he invites them to do just that with a collection of appendices, seven-strong, that trace the problematic Middle East peace process across a 35-year arc - from U.N. Resolution 242 (1967) through Ariel Sharon's response to the Roadmap for Peace (2003).
Attacking the former president's integrity, though, and applying a very technical term with all the grace reserved for wielding a sledge hammer will profit the critic very little.
What is of interest to many readers wading into Palestine: Peace not Apartheid as a crash course in Middle East affairs is a question of blame. "Who is responsible," they wonder, "for the mess over there?" A careful read of Carter's book would generate a laundry list of an answer. Owing to some of its more draconian policies, Israel would be included. But the author frequently notes the disastrous contributions of the Palestinians, other Arab countries, a wide variety of paramilitary factions, and, of course, the United States government. Everyone is responsible, and Jimmy Carter would be the first to acknowledge that.
Of course, responsibility is not the former president's interest. Peace is. Very little of the text is opinion - mostly delivered in the book's final two chapters and almost wholly concerned with how to work out a lasting peace between Israel, Palestine, and the Arab world. To Carter, a man who tasted it at Camp David in 1978, peace does not seem a faraway goal. And what's more, it would be a tragedy were peace not to prevail.
I worry that I, too, made up my mind about this book before I cracked the spine. Even if that were true, though, I would still say this much to recommend it: Jimmy Carter knows of what he speaks. His stories from the region - even the most dreadful - exactly coincide with my own.
1 comment:
Everybody can blame, and responsibility is important, if only to prevent a relapse if peace can be achieved. The most impressive credit you offer Carter is recognition of his solutions. Offering a solution is stretching one's neck out quite far and far too many fear the ax so much that they are content simply to wield it, so they can, at the very least, ensure that if they can't develop a solution then the situation must be conveniently complex and unsolvable.
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