Jimmy Carter Update

1.  “Ed Lasky, Jimmy Carter, and al Qaeda” — which summarizes the religious background to Jimmy Carter’s criticisms of Israel (and includes a link to a masterful interview by the American Thinker News Editor on Israel National Radio yesterday) — is worth reading.

2.  Jimmy Carter sent a handwritten note on January 26 to Rabbi Marvin Hier at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, after receiving 25,000 signed petitions from the Center’s web site.  The petitions read as follows:

Dear President Carter:

We respect your historic achievement in forging peace between Egypt and Israel in 1979 which only deepens our disappointment and concern over your one-sided book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid."

President Carter there is no Israeli Apartheid policy and you know it.  I join with the Simon Wiesenthal Center in respectfully reminding you that the only reason there is no peace in the Holy Land is because of Palestinian terrorism and fanaticism.

In 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak went to Camp David and offered Yasser Arafat 95% of the West Bank, 100% of Gaza and part of the Old City of Jerusalem, along with $30 billion in compensation for Palestinian refugees.  Arafat’s response was the launching of the bloody Intifada which targeted innocent civilians in restaurants, malls, schools, and religious services with suicide terror attacks. Had Arafat accepted Israel’s offer at Camp David there would have long been a Palestinian State alongside Israel.

Mr. President, when the Palestinian people repudiate their fanatics in favor of a course of moderation, then there will be peace in the Middle East.

Here is President Carter’s response:

(Hat tip:  Boker tov, Boulder!)

3.  Professor Ruth Wisse, writing at the COMMENTARY blog, on the question of accusations of anti-Semitism against Jimmy Carter:

It was not Jimmy Carter who formed the Arab League to prevent the emergence of Israel and who then dedicated the work of the League to Israel’s destruction. It was not Jimmy Carter who refused partition and insisted on maintaining generations of Palestinians as refugees. Neither was it Carter who instituted the economic boycott of Israel, introduced the UN resolution equating Zionism with racism, or sponsored terrorism as an “unsponsored” weapon against Israel. Carter did not translate, disseminate, and dramatize the Protocols of the Elders of Zion for audiences in the multi-millions. He did not generate the anti-Semitism that sweeps and informs the Arab world. He is not an active anti-Semite. But he became its apologist, he echoes its accusations, using its terminology and advancing its cause.

Carter’s letter to Rabbi Hier — non-responsive, gratuitously insulting, small and ungracious in tone — is not necessarily evidence of anti-Semitism.  It may simply be another exhibit in support of Joshua Muravchik’s thesis.