http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21194124-7583,00.html

09feb07

In the past year, a stream of thinkers across the West – from Australian writer Antony Loewenstein to US academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt – has punctured the usual parameters of debate about Israel. I, for one, welcome any effort to prevent ideas from calcifying into ideologies. As a Muslim refusenik, that’s what I do by defying the conventional prejudices of my fellow Muslims. Why would I resent refuseniks of a different kind?

It’s precisely because I embrace intellectual pluralism that I respectfully challenge Jimmy Carter’s recent critique of Israel as an apartheid state. To be sure, I’ve long admired the former US president. In my book The Trouble with Islam Today I cite him as an example of how religion can be invoked to tap the best of humanity. In no small measure, it was Carter’s appreciation of spiritual values that brought together Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, compelling these former foes to clasp hands over a peace deal.

Which is why Carter’s new book disappoints so many of us who champion co-existence. Entitled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, the book argues that Israel’s conduct towards Palestinians mimics South Africa’s long-time demonisation of blacks. Of course, certain Israeli politicians have spewed venom at Palestinians, as have some Arab leaders towards Jews, but Israel is far more complex – and diverse – than slogans about the occupation would suggest. In a state practising apartheid, would Arab Muslim legislators wield veto power over anything? At only 20per cent of the population, would Arabs even be eligible for election if they squirmed under the thumb of apartheid? Would an apartheid state extend voting rights to women and thepoor in local elections, which Israel didfor the first time in the history of Palestinian Arabs?

Would the vast majority of Arab Israeli citizens turn out to vote in national elections, as they’ve usually done? Would an apartheid state have several Arab political parties, as Israel does? In recent Israeli elections, two Arab parties found themselves disqualified for expressly supporting terrorism against the Jewish state. However, Israel’s Supreme Court, exercising its independence, overturned both disqualifications. Under any system of apartheid, would the judiciary be free of political interference?

Would an apartheid state award its top literary prize to an Arab? Israel honoured Emile Habibi in 1986, before the intifada might have made such a choice politically shrewd. Would an apartheid state encourage Hebrew-speaking schoolchildren to learn Arabic? Would road signs throughout the land appear in both languages? Even my country, the proudly bilingual Canada, doesn’t meet that standard.

Would an apartheid state be home to universities where Arabs and Jews mingle at will, or apartment blocks where they live side by side? Would an apartheid state bestow benefits and legal protections on Palestinians who live outside of Israel but work inside its borders? Would human rights organisations operate openly in an apartheid state? They do in Israel.

For that matter, military officials go public with their criticisms of government policies. In October 2003, the Israel Defence Forces’ chief of staff told the press that road closures in the West Bank and Gaza were feeding Palestinian anger. Two weeks later, four former heads of the Shin Bet security service blasted the occupation and called on Ariel Sharon to withdraw troops unilaterally, which later happened in Gaza. Would an apartheid state stomach so much dissent from those mandated to protect the state?

Above all, would media debate the most basic building blocks of the nation? Would a Hebrew newspaper in an apartheid state run an article by an Arab Israeli about why the Zionist adventure has been a total failure? Would it run that article on Israel’s independence day? Would an apartheid state ensure conditions for the freest Arabic press in the Middle East, a press so free that it can demonstrably abuse its liberties and keep on rolling? To this day, the East Jerusalem daily Al-Quds hasn’t retracted an anti-Israel letter supposedly penned by Nelson Mandela but proven to have been written by an Arab living in The Netherlands.

Even the eminence grise of Palestinian nationalism, the late Edward Said, stated flat out that “Israel is not South Africa”. How could it be when an Israeli publisher translated Said’s seminal work, Orientalism, into Hebrew? I’ll cap this point with a question that Said himself asked of Arabs: “Why don’t we fight harder for freedom of opinions in our own societies, a freedom, no one needs to be told, that scarcely exists?”

I disagree: some people still need to be told that Arab “freedoms” don’t compare to those of Israel. The people who need reminding are those who now push the South Africa analogy a step further by equating Israel with Nazi Germany. To them, Zionists are committing hate crimes under the totalitarian nightmare that they dub “Zio-Nazism” (like neo-Nazism).

When it comes to granting citizenship, Israel discriminates in the same way as an affirmative action policy, giving the edge to a specific minority that has faced genocidal injustice. Does this amount to Nazism? Spare me. As a Muslim, I could become a citizen of Israel without having to convert. After all, Israel was one of the few countries anywhere to grant shelter, then citizenship, to the Vietnamese boatpeople who sought political asylum in the late 1970s. I don’t have to wonder how Syria compares on that score.

Now for the ultimate proof of Israel’s flimsy credentials as a bunker of Hitlerian hate: It’s the only country in the Middle East to which Arab Christians are voluntarily migrating. And they are also thriving there, notching much higher university attendance rates than the Arab Muslim citizens of Israel, and enjoying better overall health than Jews.

The Holy Land is gut-wrenching and complicated. As much as I applaud Israel’s efforts to foster pluralism, I condemn its illegal Jewish settlements and less visible crimes such as the diversion of water away from Palestinian towns. These contradictions of the Israeli state should be exposed, discussed, even pilloried. And they are: openly as well as often. So there’s little point in deciding whose camp is the paragon of vice or virtue. The better question might be: who’s willing to hear what they don’t want to hear? That’s the test of whether a country is more than black or white.

Irshad Manji is author of The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith (Random House Australia).

©The Australia

Carter Center Board Members Resign Over Palestine Book

By RICK BROOKS and BETSY MCKAY

January 11, 2007 2:20 p.m.
ATLANTA—Fourteen members of an advisory board at the Carter Center resigned today, concluding they could “no longer in good conscience continue to serve” following publication of former President Jimmy Carter’s controversial book, “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid.”

“It seems that you have turned to a world of advocacy, including even malicious advocacy,” the board members wrote in a letter, a copy of which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “We can no longer endorse your strident and uncompromising position. This is not the Carter Center or Jimmy Carter we came to respect and support. Therefore it is with sadness and regret that we hereby tender our resignation from the Board of Councilors of the Carter Center effective immediately.”

RESIGNATION LETTERS

Read the text of two letters1 sent Thursday, Jan. 11, by members of
the Carter Center Board of Councilors.The advisory board is comprised of more than 200 members, including representatives from leading businesses and other groups in the Atlanta area.

Some of the Carter Center board members who quit in protest have known Mr. Carter for decades. William B. Schwartz Jr., whose name is on the list of those resigning today, was U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas during the Carter administration. S. Stephen Selig III, chairman and president of Atlanta real-estate developer Selig Enterprises Inc., was a top White House aide to Mr. Carter who led outreach to the business community. Mr. Selig was chairman of the host committee for the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta.

Steve Berman, 51 years old and one of the board members who quit, said in an interview that the departing members “were greatly concerned that the book was not steeped in fact. It departed radically from his role and went to one-sided advocacy.” Recent media comments by Mr. Carter “have been most disturbing,” he added.

The resigning board members also include: Michael J. Coles, chairman and chief executive of Caribou Coffee Co., Minneapolis; Barbara Babbit Kaufman, founder of Chapter 11 Discount Bookstores, a bookstore chain based in Atlanta; and Liane Levetan, former DeKalb County, Ga., chief executive. That is the top elected position in a county that includes a sliver of Atlanta.

Ms. Levetan, who is Jewish and served on the Carter Center board for several years, told The Wall Street Journal in an interview that she decided to quit because “you can’t sit back and know something isn’t the truth.” While she hasn’t read President Carter’s controversial book, Ms. Levetan said her background is a factor in her criticism of the book’s contents. Ms. Levetan was born in Vienna and fled to London with her parents in 1939, moving to the U.S. in 1951.

Ambassador Schwartz said the letter speaks for itself, declining further comment.

In a written statement, John Hardman, executive director of the Carter Center, said the organization is “grateful to these Board of Councilors members for their years of service and support for The Carter Center in advancing peace and health around the world. The Carter Center’s Board of Councilors is an advisory body of community leaders and business people who are briefed quarterly on the Center’s work and serve as emissaries of the Center to the greater community. They are not engaged in implementing work of the Center and are not a governing board. There are more than 200 members of the Board of Councilors. The Center’s governing board is the Board of Trustees.”

Mr. Carter couldn’t be reached to comment. Deanna Congileo, head of public information at the Carter Center, responded to an interview request with the written statement from Mr. Hardman, adding that it is “the only response I anticipate,” according to an email.

“Palestine” has sparked outrage among some critics who claim it is unfairly harsh toward Israel and contains historical inaccuracies. Mr. Carter’s use of the word “apartheid” has been particularly controversial, with critics saying it evokes unjust comparisons with South Africa’s former system of racial segregation.

Mr. Carter’s book was published Nov. 14 by CBS Corp.’s Simon & Schuster imprint. It has gone back to press five times, and now has 450,000 hardcovers in print. The book debuted at No. 11 on the New York Times best-seller list and reached as high as No. 5. By means of comparison, Mr. Carter’s last book, “Our Endangered Values,” published Nov. 1, 2005, debuted at No. 1 and now has 760,000 hardcovers in print. There are also 200,000 copies of the paperback edition of that title in print.

The Carter Center was founded in 1982 by Mr. Carter and his wife Rosalynn. The nonprofit organization, closely associated with Emory University in Atlanta, has a staff of about 150 and has worked on human rights, disease control and prevention, antipoverty and democracy-related projects in more than 65 countries. In November, Carter Center representatives monitored the presidential election in Nicaragua that was won by former Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega.

The Carter Center had revenue of $149.9 million and expenses of $121.4 million in the year ended August 31, 2005. It received contributions of $41.4 million during fiscal 2005, the latest year for which financial figures were immediately available.

According to a Carter Center annual report, the advisory board was founded in 1987 and is a “leadership group that promotes understanding of and support for the Carter Center in advancing peace and health around the world.” Members meet quarterly and “act as advocates” for the organization.

The Carter Center’s governing board of trustees currently is comprised of 21 members and two trustees emeritus, and is led by John Moores, owner of the San Diego Padres. Mr. and Mrs. Carter hold seats on the board, and 10 of the slots are filled through appointments by Mr. Carter and trustees not affiliated with Emory’s board.

—Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg contributed to this article.

Write to Rick Brooks at rick.brooks@wsj.com4 and Betsy McKay at betsy.mckay@wsj.com5

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116852889902273906.html

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Re. the Carter book: tomorrow (Sat.) night at 21:00, the program Ro’im Olam (IBA TV Channel 1) will broadcast an interview by Yaron Dekel, IBA US correspondent, w/Carter. I don’t imagine that Dekel will tear Carter to shreads like he ought to, but the interview’s probably worth watching in any case.

I haven’t looked carefully at the NYT or Fox News articles you link to yet, but there might be information in this detailed post on the maps in the book that isn’t in those pieces:

http://jpundit.typepad.com/jci/2006/12/carters_maps_wo.html

What I don’t get at a v. basic level, is why Carter felt such a pressing need to write his book. Or why there weren’t checks at some point along the way, people–friends, colleagues, advisors, the publisher, the guy who resigned from the Carter Center, _anyone_–who could tell him either a) not to go through with writing a book which I gather is, more than anything, v. stupid, or at least b) not to plagiarize Ross’s maps. I mean, for crying out loud: he’s an ex-Prez. has he no sensible advisors at all? Is the publishing house not concerned about its reputation?

Larisa
as Don Lapre is da Man
larisa@larisajoyreilly.com
http://www.larisajoyreilly.com

Hi there. First of all “Kol Hakavod” (all the honour to you) for this blog. Pertaining to your piece on the three Israeli soldiers that have not yet been freed. As it happens, during the last days of the war I was up on the northern border when I heard on the news (between the lines) that Olmert was going to sign an agreement/pullout before getting our soldiers back.

I was camped up there in a field of tanks that were waiting to go in – was serving the soldiers hot coffee, cake, and such. Anyway, when I understood what was about to unfold I drove home and made some signs and then went back up and set up my own “protest.”

What was interesting is that I was interviewed by many foreign media entities, including Reuters and AP – however -the only ones that did not have an interest in what I was doing were – surprise – the Israeli news teams.

I had hoped that the Israeli news would actually find an interest so that people would come up and join me before the Olmert’s signing process became irreversible. That didn’t happen of course.

I did, however, make use of the opportunity and made a video myself of the destruction in Kiryat Shmona, interviewing people that had suffered direct hits on their homes, as well as life in the bomb shelters.

I did this because of the lack of footage being shown by the international media, of the damage sustained in Israel by the Katyusha rockets being fired indiscriminately into Israeli cities. I just finished editing it today (it took so much longer that I had hoped), as a matter of fact and will be putting it on “youtube” hopefully sometime next week, though it is quite big and I may have to put it up in parts.

The reason why I feel so strongly on this issue is that this same thing happened back in 1982 when 3 Israeli tank crew members – “ZACHARY BAUMEL” “ZVI FELDMAN” “YEHUDA KATZ” – were captured after the battle at Sultan Ya’akov in the Northern Bakka Valley, paraded that afternoon in the streets of Damascus, and then never heard from or seen again. So, on the 11th of this last August, I could already hear between the lines over the radio, that history was about to repeat itself, or at least the Israeli government would act in the same manner (and indeed it has). I thought that if I moved fast enough that the other people would join in, right there on that field where the tanks were, just this side of the border. Well, I guess I am naive. Or who knows.

Tomorrow, I am on my way down to Shderot to interview the people that are living daily in that war zone. This too I will put on YouTube – the hope being that it might help the “outside world” understand a bit better what is happening here.

But that is just a hope. The truth is that I believe that we (not just Israel and the Jews – but the entire world) are on our way into a very dark period in time for mankind -darker than this world has never seen before. I do not believe that any “written word” or “moving pictures” will sway this momentum – it is irreversible.

Well, I could go on and on here. But I will save your readers’ the trouble. I have to get packed up for my trip down to the “Gazan Twilight Zone.” Why ” Twilight Zone”? Simply because when “those” civilians get kassam rockets shot onto their city daily for the last 5 years we hear nothing from the U.N. – No resolutions. No condemnations. No concerns from Europe over Jewish civilians being bombed. Nothing.