It seemed like a good idea at the time: Have former president Jimmy Carter talk about his controversial new book "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid" at Brandeis University. But the idea ended, as many things on Carter's tumultuous nationwide book tour have, in disagreement and controversy.Brandeis president Jehuda Reinharz said he agreed with a trustee's suggestion to invite Carter last month, if Carter were willing to debate one of his most outspoken critics, Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz.
Carter, president from 1977-1981, vehemently rejected the idea. To Carter, the episode was proof that many in the United States were unwilling to hear an alternative view on what he says is the most taboo foreign-policy issue in the United States, Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory.
But others say it shows that Carter himself is unwilling to debate his own best-selling book, which has sparked allegations of errors and omissions, charges of anti-Israel bias, and protests at his book signings. "President Carter said he wrote the book because he wanted to encourage more debate; then why won't he debate?" Dershowitz said.
Silly man, he doesn't want you to debate, he wants you to agree with him.
Carter, who brokered the 1978 Camp David peace accord between Israel and Egypt and who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, has said the goal of the book, including its provocative title, is to provoke dialogue and action. "There is no debate in America about anything that would be critical of Israel," he said in an interview Wednesday night.
But a furor has erupted because of the use of the word apartheid, which seems to equate the oppression of Palestinians with that endured by black South Africans under that country's now-defunct system of state-mandated racial segregation.
It doesn't 'seem' to equate the two, it makes the comparison explicit.
Rabbi Marvin Heir, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish human rights organization, said Carter "should be ashamed of himself." And Kenneth W. Stein, one of Carter's former aides, dropped his association with the Carter Center in Atlanta, a human rights organization founded by the former president and his wife Rosalynn.
But Carter said: "Apartheid is the forced separation of two peoples in the same area and the forced subjugation of one to the other. No one can argue that that is not the situation in the Palestinian territories right now."
Others have praised the 39th president for raising important questions about the cost of the United States' unwavering support for Israel. His book tour is being chronicled by the same producer who made an "An Inconvenient Truth," which focused on global warming and featured Al Gore. The film about Carter will be titled "He Comes in Peace."
And it'll be an Oscar nominee, you heard it here first.
