Posted on 01/14/2007 6:43:08 AM PST by SJackson
Shortly after Jimmy Carter's "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" began appearing in bookstores, the former president stated that one ultimate goal of the book was "to help restart peace talks (now absent for six years) that can lead to permanent peace for Israel and its neighbors."
One might assume, then, that Mr. Carter might be troubled by the signal lack of interest and comment the book has stirred in Israel.
Unless Carter's beef was not really with Israel. Unless, that is, Carter's true intended target was the organized American Jewish community.
If Carter's intent had been to foster a revival of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, then - as scathing critics Alan Dershowitz and Abraham Foxman have both explicitly remarked - the book can indeed be judged by its cover, and written off as a failure.
Carter's use of the word apartheid, going so far as to say in an interview broadcast on Israel Radio that Israeli policies on the West Bank were worse than those which held sway in the former South African regime, assured that Israelis would associate his stance with that of Yasser Arafat at the close of his career, and dismiss the book out of hand.
In Israel, the Carter issue remains a non-issue. His words - by any measure, in America, fighting words - merit barely a passing nod in the Israeli national discourse.
In fact, even if Carter's intent, as some observers have suggested, was to curry favor with the Palestinians and be seen and celebrated as an honest broker on the Middle East, even that effort has fallen short.
(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
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Hard to believe Ha'aertz found a radical leftist they don't agree with. For now anyway.
One of the fallout effects of Carter's high profile attacks on Israel is it will (hopefully) force the Dem presidential candidates to distance themselves from him and his remarks. Does he come to the nominating convention in 2008? etc., etc.
Apparently, 14 of Carter's staff have quit over this book.
They can always snuggle up to Michael Moore. They are hopeless.
I will be surprised if this happens. There may be a few Democrats from areas with significant Jewish populations who will object weakly, but for the most part the Left and the Democrats are becoming more and more anti-Israel and anti-Jewish.
Ignorant people the world over hate the Jews.
I don't know. If Carter has managed to get the mostly liberal Reform Jewish community up in arms against him, that could produce significant fallout for the Dems. I mean the guy is an ex-President who is all over TV.
Further, Jimmy Carter is a real malcontent. I mean the Democratic Party nominated him twice for President. So his way of saying "thank you" is to go out his way to screw up and weaken the Democratic nominee in 2004 and now 2008.
I'm not Jewish, and so, not very knowledgable about the currents within the various branches of American Jewry. My impression, though, after years of observations of Jews I know is that they are mostly liberals first and Jews second. They are feckless. They may have had it with Carter, but they won't make any connection between the views of Carter and the views of the liberal world he represents.
I didn't know Carter was all over TV. Is he treated respectfully? Does he tone down his rhetoric?
I saw his stupid book on sale at BJ's last weekend. I took a look at the price that was marked on it, and was disappointed to see that it had not been marked down to $1.50 as I expected (I think it was around $12).
It may be that Carter's book and appearances will not affect Jewish voters who vote overwhelmingly Democratic (I think it was 75% to 25% in the last presidential). It just seems to me he is going out of his way to be confrontational.
Personally I suspect Carter used the loaded term "apartheid" in his title just to stir up controversy and get hinself noticed again so that he might pretend to be relevent, well that and that he has always been something of a sanctimonious jerk, but I'm not sure it's fair to pronounce him an anti-semite. His interpretation of his Christian beliefs takes on a distinctly liberal flavor that is more in tune with those liberal Christian congregations outside of the Bible Belt, than with his fellow Southern Baptists who generally take a much more judeophilic view of things. These various jewish groups might do better to ignore him or at least moderate their criticism of him as their attempt to assasinate his character by portraying him as a hateful anti-semite might backfire on them by making them look a little hysterical. Why put him back in the limelight, ignore him and let him go back to building houses for Habitat for Humanity, or whatever it was he was into before he used this book tour to make himself part of the public discourse on mideast policy again.
Israeli Moon Purchases Denounced
Jan. 12, 2007
Last December over one thousand Israelis purchased land on the moon. The price of each one-eighth-acre plot of land is about $60. Each buyer gets an ownership certificate and a photographed map of the purchased area. So far some 55.5 million acres of land on the moon have been sold to people all over the world.
Daniel Yaron, CEO of Crazyshop, the company which markets moon property in Israel, said that the typical rationale for such a purchase is as a “gag gift.” “It makes for an unusual gift for those ‘hard-to-buy-for’ friends and relatives,” Yaron explained.
Yaron’s explanation was denounced as “Zionist lies” by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “People laughed when I tried to warn of the Jews’ plan for world domination,” Ahmadinejad said. “I hope this news awakens them to the encroaching dangers Jews present to our world. Not only are they plotting to dominate the Earth, but they’ve set their eyes on other planets, as well. They must be wiped off the face of the Earth before they succeed in their evil plan.”
In Pakistan, rioting and looting broke out in Lahore, as angry mobs shouted “death to the Jews.” Ameer ul-Azeem, spokesman for the Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal, an Islamist movement the country declared the purchases “offensive to Muslims.” “Jews know very well that the moon has great significance to Muslims,” ul-Azeem complained. “The moon is on our flag and the flags of many brother Muslim lands. Land on the moon is Muslim land. The Jews are deliberately insulting us—it’s like they are rubbing pork in our wounds.”
Former president Jimmy Carter declared that this latest revelation validates everything he said in his book (“Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”) about the Jewish quest for world hegemony. “The Jewish lust for land is greater than I thought,” Carter claimed. “When I wrote about the Israeli apartheid regime I thought it applied only in Palestine, but apparently, the Jews intend to extend their hegemony to the moon.”
Carter insisted that more personal diplomacy is needed to calm the region. “I’ve seen photos of President Bush holding hands with Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Abdullah,” Carter said. “This is a good start, but he must go further. I kissed Arafat. Bush needs to do at least as much. In today’s more intense relationship he may need to be even more receptive to input from the heads of state in the region and be ready to go all the way for the sake of peace. I know that’s what I would do if I were the president.”
In related news, 14 more academics resigned from the “Carter Center” in response to his book, calling it the “malicious babblings of a senile nincompoop.” Carter shrugged off the criticism. “Every one of them is a Jew,” Carter asserted. “Need I say more? The evidence of a Zionist conspiracy couldn’t be clearer. Ahmadinejad doesn’t sound so crazy now, I bet?”
read more...
http://www.azconservative.org/Semmens1.htm
carter does quite a bit of anti-American agitation(i.e. facilitating Chavez' election)that isn't connected to jews or israel-good thought you have there-let him slide into the obscurity he deserves
President Carter isn't smart enough to come up with this strategy. He is angling for some kind of relevance and having a tough time. Throwing Israel beneath the bus seems to trouble him not at all.
As far as the antisemitism the problem for Jews and Israel is they are hated not for being failures but for being successes. This means envy will be the dominant emotion. Envy has one characteristic (at least in Christian Societies) that is noteworthy--it pleads for the destruction of the envied object.
Envy has always been considered the second deadly sin for its destructiveness and its lack of a "normal" referent. Antisemitism here in the US, then, begins as a spiritual defect before it becomes institutionalized in belief and law.
Always difficult to come to terms with but quite necessary to do so. A good reference is "The Parson's Tale" in Chaucer.
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