Jimmy Carter’s Belated Apology to the Jewish Community
Posted: Sunday, January 31, 2010
by Joel Kontinen
http://joelkontinen.blogspot.com/
In 2006 former US president Jimmy Carter wrote a book entitled Palestine Peace Not Apartheid. Its very title proved to be a source of controversy as readers associated the erstwhile South African racist system with what the Israelis were doing with their wall that soon became a symbol of injustice.
Three decades earlier , President Carter's efforts had managed to entice Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat to talk to each other . Eventually, all three signed the 1978 Camp David Agreement that at least on paper ended the long-drawn hostilities between Egypt and Israel.
Later in 2006, Jimmy Carter wrote an op-ed in The Boston Globe, repeating his views on the stalled peace talks. "The Palestinian people are now being deprived of the necessities of life by economic restrictions imposed on them by Israel and the United States", he wrote. He made a big issue of Israeli settlements, checkpoints and especially the wall that he saw as the root of all kinds of evil.
However, while the wall is not pretty, it has probably prevented tens if not hundreds of would-be suicide bombers from blowing up Jews. Palestinians have not always been known for restricting the more unruly individuals who still dream of getting rid of Israel for good.
Last December, Carter sent the US Jewish Community an open letter in which he wrote: "We must not permit criticisms for improvement to stigmatize Israel. I offer an Al Het for any words or deeds of mine that may have done so." Al Het is the Jewish Yom Kippur prayer for forgiveness.
It now seems that he has at last realised that associating one party of a long regional conflict with apartheid has backfired.
Sources:
Carter, Jimmy. Reiterating the keys to peace. The Boston Globe. 20 December 2006.
Galloway, Jim. The people behind Jimmy Carter's letter on Israel. Political Insider. 30 January 2010.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Not the first time I have heard visitors to Israel compare the segregation to Apartheid. One friend who went there two years ago told me he watched as a Jewish woman dumped a pot of dirty water out the window on the Arab family that worked in a shop below. Apparently this is emblematic of the diffraction that is going on in Israel, Carter's apology notwithstanding.Thanks. Actually, I've been to Israel a few times and I haven't ever seen anything like that. I have seen Arabs misbehaving, though. But perhaps its better to avoid generalisations.I guess if you're of the mind that Israeli Jews are the entitled class, then you're not likely to interpret their arrogance as anything unusual.I'm afraid you have misunderstood my article. I have not said a single word about "class". Of course, you're entitled to disagree with me. BTW, your name is rather interesting. It suggests that you are not entirely unbiased. I would say that Berstein is a typical Jewish family name but Al Jazeera is something else.
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