Jimmy Carter Demonizes Israel & Gets the Facts Wrong in New Book

by Lee Green

Former President Jimmy Carter has written an egregiously biased book called Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid and is currently doing numerous interviews to sell the book and its ideas.  Carter is attempting to rewrite history, and in Carter's alternate universe, the Arabs are blameless and Israel is at fault for almost all the conflicts in the world. One gets the feeling after reading just a few pages that if he could have blamed Hurricane Katrina on Israel, he would have. His main messages are that Israel is badly mistreating the Palestinians and that the cause of the conflict is Israel's refusal to return to what he calls its "legal borders" (sic), the pre-67 armistice lines.  

Because the Palestinian Arabs have been offered a viable state of their own numerous times, including with the same borders that Carter desires (right after the '67 War), but they turned it down since it meant recognizing Israel's legitimacy and permanence and ending the conflict, Carter either ignores or mischaracterize the offers.  He never lets the facts get in the way of his "must blame Israel" theories.  In Carter's twisted universe, it is the Arabs who have always been eager for peace, with Israel opposing it at every turn.  

 Professor Alan Dershowitz has written an excellent critique of the book. Read it by clicking here . We will not repeat the issues he covers, but many of them are key problems of the book, so please be sure to read his review.

In addition to the numerous errors and distortions pointed out by Dershowitz, there are many other problems in the book.  Almost every page is problematic, so this list is not complete.

*Carter claims Israel has been the primary obstacle to peace, that Arab leaders have long sought peace while Israel preferred holding on to "Palestinian land" over peace, and that if only Israel would "[withdraw] to the 1967 border as specified in the U.N. Resolution 242...", there would be peace.  

Aside from his obviously questionable opinions, Carter is factually wrong when he asserts that U.N. Resolution 242 requires Israel to withdraw to the 1949 armistice line. He has repeated this serious falsehood in many interviews, such as on the November 28 PBS NewsHour: 

"The demand is for them to give back all the land. The United Nations resolutions that apply, the agreements that have been made at Camp David under me and later at Oslo for which the Israeli leaders received the Nobel Peace Prizes, was [sic] based on Israel's withdrawal from occupied territories." 

He mischaracterizes UN resolutions and apparently has forgotten what he himself signed as a witness to the 1978 Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, which states in Section A1c: "The negotiations [concerning the West Bank and Gaza] shall be based on all the provisions and principles of UN Security Council Resolution 242. The negotiations will resolve, among other matters, the location of the boundaries and the nature of the security arrangements." 

To claim now that the very agreement he witnessed and signed specifies withdrawal to the 1949 armistice lines is outrageous. [While the 1979 Camp David document again mentions UN Resolution 242, it makes no further mention of the West Bank or Gaza Strip. It instead deals with Israeli-Egyptian relations, and includes a map of the Israel-Egypt International Boundary (Annex II). Tellingly, no maps demarcating any boundary between Israel and the Palestinians are appended to the Camp David documents, Resolution 242, the Oslo Accords, or the "road map".]

UN Resolution 242 does not require Israel to withdraw from all the land to the "1967 border", since there is no such border.  The "green line" is merely the 1949 armistice line and the drafters of 242 explicitly stated that this line was not a "secure border" -- which 242 calls for.  

The British UN Ambassador at the time, Lord Caradon, who introduced the resolution to the Council, has stated that, "It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial."  

The American UN Ambassador at the time, former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, has stated that, "The notable omissions - which were not accidental - in regard to withdrawal are the words 'the' or 'all' and the 'June 5, 1967 lines' ... the resolution speaks of withdrawal from occupied territories without defining the extent of withdrawal." This would encompass "less than a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied territory, inasmuch as Israel's prior frontiers had proved to be notably insecure."

The reasoning of the United States and its allies at the time was clear: Any resolution which, in the face of the aggressive war launched in 1967 against Israel, required complete Israeli withdrawal, would have been seen as a reward for aggression and an invitation to future aggression. This is assuredly not what the UN voted for, or had in mind, when it passed Resolution 242.  

For more details on the meaning of 242, click here.

- Many media outlets have corrected erroneous characterizations of 242 (prompted by CAMERA), including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. The corrections clarify that 242 does not require Israel to give all the land acquired in the 67 War to the Palestinians. For example:

Correction (New York Times, 9/8/00): An article on Wednesday about the Middle East peace talks referred incorrectly to United Nations resolutions on the Arab-Israeli conflict. While Security Council Resolution 242, passed after the 1967 Middle East War, calls for Israel's armed forces to withdraw "from territories occupied in the recent conflict," no resolution calls for Israeli withdrawal from all territory, including East Jerusalem, occupied in the war. [emphasis added]

Correction (Wall Street Journal, 5/11/04): United Nations Security Council resolution 242 calls on Israel to withdraw "from territories occupied" in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, but doesn't specify that the withdrawal should be from all such territories. An International page article Friday incorrectly stated that Security Council resolutions call for Israel to withdraw from all land captured in the 1967 war. [emphasis added]

* Similarly, Carter repeatedly errs when he asserts that the West Bank is "Palestinian land," rather than disputed land whose (likely) division and designation will be decided through negotiations (as per Resolution 242).  

For example, Carter said on the Nov 28 Newshour:

"And I chose this title very carefully. It's Palestine, first of all. This is the Palestinians' territory, not Israel."

* In his book, Carter almost always presents Israeli leaders in a negative light, and they are frequently described as trying to impede the peace process. In contrast, Carter describes despotic Arab leaders in glowing terms, quotes them at length, without any comments about the accuracy of their statements.  He writes, for instance, 

"When I met with Yasir Arafat in 1990, he stated 'The PLO has never advocated the annihilation of Israel.' "

Carter fails to note that Arafat and the PLO have frequently called for the destruction of Israel and that the destruction of Israel is a key part of the PLO Charter - most explicitly in Articles 15 and 22) 

"Since the liberation of Palestine will destroy the Zionist and imperialist presence..." (from Article 22).    

Arafat regularly called for violence against Israel.  In a speech to Palestinian Arab leaders from Hebron, broadcast on official PA Television on January 26, 2002, Arafat urged:

"Jihad, jihad, jihad, jihad!"

Carter follows up the absurd quotation from Arafat by describing the PLO in admiring language, without mentioning the terror so central to their agenda.

* Carter spends much of the book conveying Arab grievances against Israel, while rarely providing any context from the Israeli perspective.  When he does, it is perfunctory and brief. While terror against Israel is mentioned, it is rare and sharply minimized.

* The vicious incitement against Israel and Jews by the Arabs is treated as a trivial complaint rather than as the fuel that keeps the flame of bigotry and violence alive. The only time Carter mentions incitement is to complain that the Israelis insisted on cessation of incitement against Israel, "but the Roadmap cannot state that Israel must cease violence and incitement against the Palestinians."  

Since there is no state-sponsored anti-Arab incitement in Israel, and incitement against Arabs is actually a crime in Israel, it would have been misleading to include a proscription against it in the Roadmap.  That would have made it seem that incitement in Israel was comparable to the massive,systemic incitement in Palestinian society. 

As for his reference to "Israel must cease violence...against the Palestinians," he appears to morally equate Israeli counter-terror measures with Palestinian terror against Israeli civilians. 

* In describing what led to the conflicts this year between Israel and the Palestinians and Israel and Hezbollah, Carter continues his pattern of minimizing Arab violence, thereby placing Israel's military responses into question due to the lack of context.  Carter mentions the abduction of the Israeli soldiers, but fails to inform his readers about the rockets from Gaza that were being fired daily at Israeli civilians in southwest Israel and omits that Hezbollah did much more than abduct 2 soldiers; before the abduction, they fired missiles at Israeli communities in northern Israel.  

* Carter obfuscates important aspects of history. Here's how he describes the British giving 76% of Mandate Palestine to Emir Abdullah after World War I to create Transjordan (later renamed Jordan): "Another throne was needed, so an emirate called Transjordan was created out of some remote desert regions of the Palestine Mandate..."  [emphasis added] 

* He writes of various Arab leaders accepting the two-state solution, and sometimes mentions that they also require the so-called right of return (of the millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees to Israel, as opposed to the future state of Palestine).  But Carter doesn't explain that due to the high Arab birthrate, the so-called right of return would quickly turn Israel into another Arab state, transforming the two-state (Arab and Jewish) solution into a two-Arab states solution. While he writes of the many items he feels are unreasonable deal-breakers demanded by Israel,he never addresses the Arab demands that are deal-breakers for Israel.  

 * In his conclusion, Carter accuses the American government of being "submissive," claiming that due to "powerful political, economic, and religious forces in the United States, Israeli government decisions are rarely questioned or condemned, voices from Israel dominate in our media..."  

Perhaps our politicians don't frequently criticize Israeli government decisions because Israel shares our values of democracy, pluralism and the sanctity of life, and its decisions are, on the whole, fair and just. Since Carter is prone to demonizing Israel, that possibility likely never occurred to him.

*Apparently admiringly, Carter writes: "At the same time, political leaders and news media in Europe are highly critical of Israeli policies, affecting public attitudes.  Americans were surprised and angered by an opinion poll, published by the International Herald Tribune in October 2003, of 7500 citizens in fifteen European nations, indicating that Israel was considered to be the top threat to world peace, ahead of North Korea, Iran, or Afghanistan." That Carter apparently feels this is a more realistic, helpful worldview is revealing.

In general, Carter holds Israel to an unreasonably high standard of almost pacifist behavior, while holding the Arabs to no standard at all.  In his world, the terror against Israel has been minimal, hardly worth mentioning and certainly not important enough for Israelis to respond to or for the world community to condemn.  The Arabs should suffer no consequences for continuing to attack and terrorize Israel, for continuing to indoctrinate their population to see Jews as sub-humans who deserve to be murdered. Carter advocates having the Arabs' maximalist demands rewarded. It is Israel who must make all the concessions and sacrifices.  The Arabs' bigotry and supremacist attitudes regarding non-Muslims and the west - attitudes central to the conflict -- are entirely ignored by Carter. 

Since Carter is a former president, and because he is well known for his work on Habitat for Humanity, interviewers are for the most part being entirely deferential to him, while rarely pointing out that his book and statements are filled with inaccuracies and distortions.  Carter cannot be allowed to rewrite history and erase decades of Arab bigotry, rejectionism and terror, while inventing Israeli intransigence and opposition to peace.

THE NEWSHOUR WITH JIM LEHRER

NOVEMBER 28, 2006

SPEAKERS: JAMES E. CARTER,
FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

JUDY WOODRUFF,
"NEWSHOUR" SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

WOODRUFF: The former president and Nobel Peace Prize-winner has just written his 21st book. It is called "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid."
That title has brought some sharp critiques from Americans sympathetic to Israel, and its publication comes amid both renewed tensions and some peaceful gestures between Israelis and Palestinians.President Carter, it's good to see you. Thanks for being with us.

CARTER: It's nice to be with you. Thank you, Judy.

WOODRUFF: The title, you chose, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." Did you mean to be provocative, because this immediately calls to mind South Africa, the repression of blacks by whites?

CARTER: Yes. But I don't consider the word "provocative" to be negative. I wanted to provoke...

WOODRUFF: The word "apartheid."

CARTER: The whole title, I wanted to provoke discussion, debate, inquisitive analysis of the situation there, which is almost completely absent throughout the United States, but it's prevalent every day in Israel and in Europe. This is needed, I think, for our country to understand what's going on in the West Bank.
And I chose this title very carefully. It's Palestine, first of all. This is the Palestinians' territory, not Israel.Secondly, the emphasis is on peace. And the third thing is not apartheid. I don't want to see apartheid.  [not sure if the Newshours' transcript is inaccurate here or if Carter simply didn't make a coherent statement.]

And since now the entire peace process is completely dormant, there hasn't been one day for good faith substantive negotiations in the last six years to bring peace to Israel, I wanted to rejuvenate this process.

WOODRUFF: And you say it's dormant, and yet today Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announcing she's going to meet with the leader of the Palestinians, Mr. Abbas, later this week. Isn't that a sign of progress, potential progress?

CARTER: Well, a sign of progress -- to talk to one side and then talk to the other is very nice. But I'm talking about there hasn't been a day of negotiation orchestrated or promoted by the United States between Israel and the Palestinians in six years.
And for all practical purposes, it is dormant. I don't mean that the United States has not visited Israel; I don't mean that the secretary of state hasn't talked to the Israelis and the Palestinians.

And let me get to the word "apartheid." Apartheid doesn't apply at all, as I made plain in my book, anything that relates to Israel to the nation. It doesn't imply anything as it relates to racism. This apartheid, which is prevalent throughout the occupied territories, the subjection of the Palestinians to horrible abuse, is caused by a minority of Israelis -- we're not talking about racism, but talking about their desire to acquire, to occupy, to confiscate, and then to colonize Palestinian land.
So the whole system is designed to separate through a ferocious system Israelis who live on Palestine territory and Palestinians who want to live on their own territory.

WOODRUFF: Well, again, your book comes out at a moment when, not only you have Dr. Rice saying she's going to meet with the Palestinian leader, you have the Israeli prime minister, Mr. Olmert, announcing just yesterday that he is putting a proposal on the table.
He's saying, "We will give back most of the West Bank. We will get out of most of the West Bank." He's saying, "We will release prisoners, if there will be a good-faith effort on the part of the Palestinians." Is this the kind of progress you're looking for?

CARTER: I think that's a minor first step, yes, to give back some of their land. The demand is for them to give back all the land.
The United Nations resolutions that apply, the agreements that have been made at Camp David under me and later at Oslo for which the Israeli leaders received the Nobel Peace Prizes, was based on Israel's withdrawal from occupied territories.
And the present only game in town -- that is, the international quartet's road map -- calls for the withdrawal of Israel from occupied territories. That road map, by the way, all of the terms of it have been adopted by the Palestinians. All the major terms of the road map have been rejected officially by the Israeli government.
So this is what's created this quagmire and what I consider to be a total inaction for the first time in the history of Israel. We've been six years now without any negotiations for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

WOODRUFF: But are you dismissing what Mr. Olmert is proposing as of yesterday?

CARTER: Well, the New York Times said it was a non-substantive speech that didn't bring anything new to the table. I haven't read the entire speech, so I haven't analyzed it that thoroughly.
But when he says we're going to withdraw from part of the process, part of the land that we're occupying, and keep the rest, we're going to keep our wall there, which surrounds the remnant of the Palestinians' land that they're going to be permitted to live on, where we're going to keep Israeli settlements all over the land even that the Palestinians will retain, and keep the wall around Gaza, all of these things need to be changed and not just a token withdrawal from some of the land that the Israelis have acquired.

WOODRUFF: So you're saying it's not nearly enough?

CARTER: No, it's not nearly enough, and everybody knows that. In fact, the international community, all the policy of the United States' government since Israel was founded as a nation, the agreements that the Israelis have adopted -- a strong majority of the Israeli people all agree that, in order to have peace, Israel has got to withdraw from the occupied territories, not just from token withdrawals from a few settlements leaving about 150 other settlements on Palestinian land.

WOODRUFF: President Carter, people would listen to what you're saying here, and they would read your book, and they would say, "He's putting the onus here on the Israelis." And many would return that by saying, "But wait a minute. It's the Palestinians who continue to fire rockets into Israeli land. It's the Palestinians who have kidnapped Israeli soldiers. It's the Palestinians that continue to perpetuate terrorist acts against the Israelis."

CARTER: Sure, that's what you say, and that's the general consensus in the United States. The fact is that, when the Palestinians dug under the Israeli wall from Gaza and captured the Israeli soldier, one soldier, at that time, Israel was holding 9,200 Palestinians prisoner, including 300 children, almost 300, 293 children, some of them 12 years old, and holding almost 100 women prisoner.
And immediately, the Palestinians who took that soldier said, "We want to swap this soldier for some of our women and children." And the Israelis rejected that proposal and refused to swap at all with the Palestinians in the West Bank. That was the key to the issue.
So it's right that the Palestinians took a soldier, which they should release. But for Israel to keep 9,000 Palestinians and not release any of them is something that you don't mention in the question, and it's generally not even known in this country.

WOODRUFF: And we want to give you the opportunity to give that side of the story...

CARTER: That's why I wrote the book.

WOODRUFF: ... as well, and that's why we're here talking to you about it.

CARTER: I know.

WOODRUFF: But what would you say, President Carter, to the Israeli public who would, again, listen to what you're saying, and they would say, "Wait a minute. You're asking us to put our faith in a people, in a government that doesn't even recognize our right to exist?" Isn't that the posture of the Hamas government and the Palestinian territories?

CARTER: Well, we were there -- the Carter Center was there, and we monitored the election in January when Hamas did win a victory. They won 42 percent of the vote. It was an open, free, fair, safe election, as certified by the Carter Center, and National Democratic Institute, and the European Union observers. Nobody questioned the integrity of it.
That was an expression of will by the Palestinian people on whom they wanted to serve in their parliament. Well, at that time, I thought that this would be a matter of a unity government. But immediately, the United States and Israel said, "We will not accept a government that has Hamas leaders in it."
And so, as a result of that, all financial aid to the entire population of Palestine was cut off just because they expressed their will in a free vote. And as a matter of fact, Hamas, whom everyone criticizes -- the fact is that Hamas, since August of 2004, has not committed a single act of terrorism that cost an Israeli life, not a single one.

WOODRUFF: I think many Americans would be surprised to hear that.

CARTER: I know. They would be surprised, but it's an actual fact. And Hamas...

WOODRUFF: But what about not recognizing Israel's right to exist?

CARTER: The day after the election, I went and met with Mahmoud Abbas, who is the leader of the Palestinians. He's their president. He's the head of the PLO, which is the only organization, by the way, that the United States or Israel recognizes, the PLO, in which there's not a single Hamas member. Hamas has nothing to do with the PLO.
And after I met with Abbas to talk about a unity government, which he rejected, then I met with a Hamas leader. He's a medical doctor who was elected. He's now in prison, by the way. But he said -- when I insisted that they recognize Israel, he said, "Mr. President, which Israel are you talking about? Are you talking about the Israel that's occupying our land? Are you talking about the Israel that has built a wall around our people? Are you talking about an Israel that deprives us of basic human rights to move from one place to another in our own land?" He said, "We can't recognize that Israel."
But later, the prime minister of the Hamas government, Haniyeh, said, "We are strongly in favor of direct talks between Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the PLO and the head of the government, and the prime minister of Israel, Olmert." And he said, "If they reach an agreement in their discussions that's acceptable to the Palestinian people, we will accept it, also. Hamas will."
Those things are not even known in this country; they're a matter of record.

WOODRUFF: And you're saying that, if the U.S. doesn't get involved, then...

CARTER: Then there won't be much progress. You know, it's been proven in the past that some outside group needs to get involved. And in 1978 and '79, I got involved and negotiated a peace treaty between Israel and its only formidable opponent, that is Egypt.
In 2003, the Norwegians concluded an agreement, the Oslo Agreement. In both cases, the Israeli leaders won the Nobel Peace Prize for adopting the principles that Israel would withdraw from the territory in order to get peace. That has been abandoned now under the last three leaders of Israel.
And as I said earlier, a majority of Israelis, in every public opinion poll that's been done since 1967, have favored exchanging the confiscated Palestinian land for peace. But there's a small minority in Israel, a substantial minority, that says we would prefer the land, and we will not relinquish it in order to get peace.

WOODRUFF: Very quick final question about Iraq. Can you have peace in Iraq without fixing the Israeli-Palestinian problem, or is it vice versa? Do you must -- you first need to fix Iraq?

CARTER: There is no way to separate the two. President Bush is over there now trying to harness supporters among the moderate Arabs. He just was in Jordan, and in Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, and others that I need not name right now.
To get them to support us enthusiastically in Iraq means that he's going to have to alleviate their deep concern and their animosity -- with less than 5 percent of Jordanians and Egyptians looking with favor on our government -- because the main obstacle for their full support of the United States now in Iraq and other places is because we have not shown any interest for the last six years in alleviating the horrible plight of the Palestinians.
We've made no effort in the last six years to bring peace to Israel or to their adjacent neighbors, the Palestinians.

WOODRUFF: President Jimmy Carter, with some passionately held views. We thank you very much for being with us on "The NewsHour." We appreciate it.

Originally Published on 11/20/2006 for CAMERA