So, Jimmy Carter.

[Grislygus]

One of my Jewish friends just emailed me, absolutely freaking out about some book Jimmy Carter wrote. Something about calling Israel "Afrikaaners". I wasn't entirely clear on this, the email was barely legible.

So I looked it up, Every news article I saw talked about how controversial his book was, while avoiding saying what he actually wrote. In fact, the only thing I could gather about the book was the title. It seemed like it was a bit inflammatory, but I didn't think the title alone was the reason fourteen advisors resigned from the Carter Center.

In the end, I found some extensive reviews of the book on Amazon.com, which cleared things up quite a bit. While it seems a bit like our fomer president has a somewhat one sided view of things (I'll still have to pick it up at some point), it seems like everyone in the political community is overreacting. Again.

Also interesting to look at the tags it recieved on Amazon.
carter (38), palestine (33), israel (31), peace (28), human rights (25), apartheid (7), propaganda (7), zionism (5), anti-semite (4), anti-semitism (4), anti-zionism (4), antisemitism (4), courage (4), excellent (3), false (3)


On a similar note, checking up on the book did allow me to find this freak's (http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/jimmycarter.htm) website, which is almost as amusing as godhatesfags.com.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Jimmy Carter is an idiot.

[Grislygus]

An undisputed point. I still feel that the book is getting a ridiculously overblown response.

[Ant10708]

So what did he write about?

[FartinMowler]

Jimmy Carter is an idiot.

I think he's by far one of the best ex-presidents you have still living. This guy has done so much to try and stop stupid wars. If he writes a book out of frustration because he's been dealing with bullshit then good for him. I'd rather golf with him than Boob

[Grislygus]

EDIT: Screw it, a bare bones summary just doesn't work. Here's one of the negative reviews.

Jimmy Carter tells a strange and revealing story near the beginning of his latest book, the sensationally titled Palestine Peace Not Apartheid. It is a story that suggests that the former president's hostility to Israel is, to borrow a term, faith-based.

On his first visit to the Jewish state in the early 1970s, Carter, who was then still the governor of Georgia, met with Prime Minister Golda Meir, who asked Carter to share his observations about his visit. Such a mistake she never made.

"With some hesitation," Carter writes, "I said that I had long taught lessons from the Hebrew Scriptures and that a common historical pattern was that Israel was punished whenever the leaders turned away from devout worship of God. I asked if she was concerned about the secular nature of her Labor government."

Jews, in my experience, tend to become peevish when Christians, their traditional persecutors, lecture them on morality, and Carter reports that Meir was taken aback by his "temerity." He is, of course, paying himself a compliment. Temerity is mandatory when you are doing God's work, and Carter makes it clear in this polemical book that, in excoriating Israel for its sins -- and he blames Israel almost entirely for perpetuating the hundred-year war between Arab and Jew -- he is on a mission from God.

Carter's interest in the Middle East is longstanding, of course; he brokered the first Arab-Israeli peace treaty between Egypt and Israel in 1979, and he has been rightly praised for doing so. But other aspects of his record are more bothersome. Carter, not unlike God, has long been disproportionately interested in the sins of the Chosen People. He is famously a partisan of the Palestinians, and in recent months he has offered a notably benign view of Hamas, the Islamist terrorist organization that took power in the Palestinian territories after winning a January round of parliamentary elections.

There are differences, however, between Carter's understanding of Jewish sin and God's. God, according to the Jewish Bible, tends to forgive the Jews their sins. And God, unlike Carter, does not manufacture sins to hang around the necks of Jews when no sins have actually been committed.

This is a cynical book, its cynicism embedded in its bait-and-switch title. Much of the book consists of an argument against the barrier that Israel is building to separate Israelis from the Palestinians on the West Bank. The "imprisonment wall" is an early symptom of Israel's descent into apartheid, according to Carter. But late in the book, he concedes that "the driving purpose for the forced separation of the two peoples is unlike that in South Africa -- not racism, but the acquisition of land."

In other words, Carter's title notwithstanding, Israel is not actually an apartheid state. True, some Israeli leaders have used the security fence as cover for a land-grab, but Carter does not acknowledge the actual raison d'etre for the fence: to prevent the murder of Jews. The security barrier is a desperate, deeply imperfect and, God willing, temporary attempt to stop Palestinian suicide bombers from detonating themselves amid crowds of Israeli civilians. And it works; many recent attempts to infiltrate bombers into Israel have failed, thanks to the barrier.

The murder of Israelis, however, plays little role in Carter's understanding of the conflict. He writes of one Hamas bombing campaign: "Unfortunately for the peace process, Palestinian terrorists carried out two lethal suicide bombings in March 1996." That spree of bombings -- four, actually -- was unfortunate for the peace process, to be sure. It was also unfortunate for the several dozen civilians killed in these attacks. But Israeli deaths seem to be an abstraction for Carter; only the peace process is real, and the peace process would succeed, he claims, if not for Israeli intransigence.

Here is Carter's anti-historical understanding of the conflict. He writes:

"There are two interrelated obstacles to permanent peace in the Middle East:

"1. Some Israelis believe they have the right to confiscate and colonize Palestinian land and try to justify the sustained subjugation and persecution of increasingly hopeless and aggravated Palestinians; and

"2. Some Palestinians react by honoring suicide bombers as martyrs to be rewarded in heaven and consider the killing of Israelis as victories."

In other words, Palestinian violence is simply an understandable reaction to the building of Israeli settlements. The settlement movement has been a tragedy, of course. Settlements, and the expansionist ideology they represent, have done great damage to the Zionist dream of a Jewish and democratic state; many Palestinians, and many Israelis, have died on the altar of settlement. The good news is that the people of Israel have fallen out of love with the settlers, who themselves now know that they have no future. After all, when Ariel Sharon abandoned the settlement dream -- as the former prime minister did when he forcibly removed some 8,000 settlers from the Gaza Strip during Israel's unilateral pullout in July 2005 -- even the most myopic among the settlement movement's leaders came to understand that the end is near.

Carter does not recognize the fact that Israel, tired of the burdens of occupation, also dearly wants to give up the bulk of its West Bank settlements (the current prime minister, Ehud Olmert, was elected on exactly this platform) because to do so would fatally undermine the thesis of his book. Palestine Peace Not Apartheid is being marketed as a work of history, but an honest book would, when assessing the reasons why the conflict festers, blame not only the settlements but also take substantial note of the fact that the Arabs who surround Israel have launched numerous wars against it, all meant to snuff it out of existence.

Why is Carter so hard on Israeli settlements and so easy on Arab aggression and Palestinian terror? Because a specific agenda appears to be at work here. Carter seems to mean for this book to convince American evangelicals to reconsider their support for Israel. Evangelical Christians have become bedrock supporters of Israel lately, and Carter marshals many arguments, most of them specious, to scare them out of their position. Hence the Golda Meir story, seemingly meant to show that Israel is not the God-fearing nation that religious Christians believe it to be. And then there are the accusations, unsupported by actual evidence, that Israel persecutes its Christian citizens. On his fateful first visit to Israel, Carter takes a tour of the Galilee and writes, "It was especially interesting to visit with some of the few surviving Samaritans, who complained to us that their holy sites and culture were not being respected by Israeli authorities -- the same complaint heard by Jesus and his disciples almost two thousand years earlier."

There are, of course, no references to "Israeli authorities" in the Christian Bible. Only a man who sees Israel as a lineal descendant of the Pharisees could write such a sentence. But then again, the security fence itself is a crime against Christianity, according to Carter; it "ravages many places along its devious route that are important to Christians." He goes on, "In addition to enclosing Bethlehem in one of its most notable intrusions, an especially heartbreaking division is on the southern slope of the Mount of Olives, a favorite place for Jesus and his disciples." One gets the impression that Carter believes that Israelis -- in their deviousness -- somehow mean to keep Jesus from fulfilling the demands of His ministry.

There is another approach to Arab-Israeli peacemaking, of course -- one perfected by another Southern Baptist who became a Democratic president. Bill Clinton's Middle East achievements are enormous, especially when considering the particular difficulties posed by his primary Arab interlocutor. Jimmy Carter was blessed with Anwar al-Sadat as a partner for peace; Bill Clinton was cursed with Yasser Arafat. In his one-sided explication of the 1990s peace process, Carter systematically downplays Clinton's efforts to bring a conclusion to the conflict, with a secure Israel and an independent Palestine living side by side, and repeatedly defends the indefensible Arafat. Carter doesn't dare include Clinton's own recollections of his efforts at the abortive Camp David summit in 2000 because to do so would be to acknowledge that the then-Israeli prime minister, the flawed but courageous Ehud Barak, did, in fact, try to bring about a lasting peace -- and that Arafat balked.

In a short chapter on the Clinton years, Carter blames the Israelis for the failures at Camp David. But I put more stock in the views of the president who was there than in those of the president who wasn't. "On the ninth day, I gave Arafat my best shot again," Clinton writes in My Life. "Again he said no. Israel had gone much further than he had, and he wouldn't even embrace their moves as the basis for future negotiations." Clinton applied himself heroically over the next six months to extract even better offers from Israel, all of which Arafat wouldn't accept. "I still didn't believe Arafat would make such a colossal mistake," Clinton remembers, with regret. According to Carter, however, Arafat made no mistakes. The failure was Israel's -- and by extension, Clinton's.

Carter succeeded at his Camp David summit in 1978, while Clinton failed at his in 2000. But Clinton's achievement was in some ways greater because he did something no American president has done before (or since): He won the trust of both the Palestinians and the Israelis. He could do this because he seemed to believe that neither side was wholly villainous nor wholly innocent. He saw the Israeli-Palestinian crisis for what it is: a tragic collision between right and right, a story of two peoples who both deserved his sympathy. In other words, he took the Christian approach to making peace.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Goldberg
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Jimmy Carter is an idiot.

I think he's by far one of the best ex-presidents you have still living. This guy has done so much to try and stop stupid wars. If he writes a book out of frustration because he's been dealing with bullshit then good for him. I'd rather golf with him than Boob

He's also covered in Saudi blood money, so spare me.

What are some things Carter has done that you like so much, Mowler?

[FartinMowler]

The dude is cleary a humanitarian. He is old and still lives in his hometown, why the hell would he care about money? :rolleyes

[Courage the Cowardly Dog]

An undisputed point. I still feel that the book is getting a ridiculously overblown response.

I agree with both those posts.

[Abcdxxxx]

Here's why Carter is an idiot.... he writes a book under the premise that the Israeli-Arab conflict is one which is never gets discussed for politically correct reasons (or Jews control the media) ...and.... wait, stop there. What planet does he live on?

Then when Alan Dershowitz breaks down his book, lists the blatant mistakes and challenges him to debate the material, Carter, who claims he wrote the book to stir debate, refuses to debate it.

If that's not enough, you have one of Carters long time mid-east advisors quiting, a map in the book which was plagerised, and Carter himself can't seem to stand behind the title of his book when challenged in interviews. So what you have is an idiot who published an inflammatory bookk full of sophomoric mistakes he copied from anti-semitic websites, because he was hoping he'd become the hero of the Code Pink/New Left crowd.

Edit: 14 more Carter Center advisots quit. Not because Carter dared to talk about Israel, but because the hateful manner in which he did it.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116852889902273906.html?mod=home_whats_news_us

[FartinMowler]

The guy is old...do you really think if he wrote a book that didn't have something to stir up a debate anyone would pay attention. Maybe hes doing the Janet Jackson thing except you already have an exposed boob so it couldn't possibly work :(

[kahljorn]

When will the world learn not to take old people's opinions seriously? He probably has a thyroid condition and is teetering his way through Alzheimers.

[sspadowsky]

The only opinions not to be taken seriously are your own. Oh, and everyone else's.

[sadie]

peanuts.

[FartinMowler]

He has really nice teeth and a drunken brother :) How more american can you get?

[Abcdxxxx]

http://www.adl.org/main_Israel/carter_center_resignations.htm
January 11, 2007
Dear President Carter,

As members of the Board of Councilors each one of us has been proud to be associated with the Carter Center in its noble struggle to repair the world. However, in light of the publication of your latest book Palestine; Peace Not Apartheid and your subsequent comments made in promoting the book, we can no longer in good conscience continue to serve the Center as members of the Board of Councilors.

In its work in conflict resolution the Carter Center has always played the useful and constructive role of honest broker and mediator between warring parties. In your book, which portrays the conflict between Israel and her neighbors as a purely one-sided affair with Israel holding all of the responsibility for resolving the conflict, you have clearly abandoned your historic role of broker in favor of becoming an advocate for one side.

The facts in dealing with the conflict are these: There are two national narratives contesting one piece of land. The Israelis, through deed and public comment, have consistently spoken of a desire to live in peace and make territorial compromise to achieve this status. The Palestinian side has consistently resorted to acts of terror as a national expression and elected parties endorsing the use of terror, the rejection of territorial compromise and of Israel's right to exist. Palestinian leaders have had chances since 1947 to have their own state, including during your own presidency when they snubbed your efforts.

Your book has confused opinion with fact, subjectivity with objectivity and force for change with partisan advocacy. Furthermore the comments you have made the past few weeks insinuating that there is a monolith of Jewish power in America are most disturbing and must be addressed by us. In our great country where freedom of expression is basic bedrock you have suddenly proclaimed that Americans cannot express their opinion on matters in the Middle East for fear of retribution from the "Jewish Lobby" In condemning the Jews of America you also condemn Christians and others for their support of Israel. Is any interest group to be penalized for participating in the free and open political process that is America? Your book and recent comments suggest you seem to think so.

In the past you would inject yourself into this world to moderate between the two sides in the pursuit of peace and as a result you earned our admiration and support. Now you repeatedly make false claims. You wrote that UN Security Council Resolution 242 says that "Israel must withdraw from territories" (p. 38), but you know the word "must" in fact is not in the resolution. You said that since Mahmoud Abbas has been in office there have been no peace discussions. That is wrong. You wrote that Yassir Arafat told you in 1990 that, "The PLO has never advocated the annihilation of Israel" (p. 62). Given that their Charter, which explicitly calls for Israel's destruction, was not revised until the late 1990s, how could you even write such a claim as if it were credible?

You denied on Denver radio on December 12 that Palestinian Prime Minister Haniyah said he would never accept or negotiate with Israel. However the BBC monitoring service reported just the opposite. In fact Haniyah said: "We will never recognize the usurper Zionist government and will continue our jihadist movement until Bayt al-Maqdis (Jerusalem) and the Al-Aqsa Mosque are liberated. When presented with this fact you said, "No he didn't say that, no he did not do that, I did not hear that." These are not points of opinion, these are points of fact.

And finally, it is a disturbing statement to write: "that it is imperative, that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel." In this sentence you clearly suggest that you are condoning violence against Israelis until they do certain things (p.213). Your use of the word "Apartheid," regardless of your disclaimers, has already energized white supremacist groups who thrive on asserting Jewish control of government and foreign policy, an insinuation you made in your OPED to the LA Times on December 8, 2006: "For the last 30 years, I have witnessed and experienced the severe restraints on any free and balanced discussion of the facts." According to Web site monitoring by the Anti-Defamation League, U.S. white supremacists have enthusiastically embraced your suggestion that the Israel lobby stifles debate in this country, saying it confirms Jewish control of government and foreign policy as well as and the inherently "evil" nature of Jews. If you doubt the support you are giving and receiving, please refer to the Anti-Defamation League web site.

From there you can get to the postings of four different White Supremacist organizations that both support and make use of the contents of your book and what you have said in public.

As a result it seems that you have turned to a world of advocacy, including even malicious advocacy. We can no longer endorse your strident and uncompromising position. This is not the Carter Center or the 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.

[Geggy]

Playing skittles with Saddam
The gameplan among Washington's hawks has long been to reshape the Middle East along US-Israeli lines
Brian Whitaker
Tuesday September 3, 2002
Guardian Unlimited

In a televised speech last week, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt predicted devastating consequences for the Middle East if Iraq is attacked.

"We fear a state of disorder and chaos may prevail in the region," he said. Mr Mubarak is an old-fashioned kind of Arab leader and, in the brave new post-September-11 world, he doesn't quite get the point.

What on earth did he expect the Pentagon's hawks to do when they heard his words of warning? Throw up their hands in dismay? - "Gee, thanks, Hosni. We never thought of that. Better call the whole thing off right away."

They are probably still splitting their sides with laughter in the Pentagon. But Mr Mubarak and the hawks do agree on one thing: war with Iraq could spell disaster for several regimes in the Middle East. Mr Mubarak believes that would be bad. The hawks, though, believe it would be good.

For the hawks, disorder and chaos sweeping through the region would not be an unfortunate side-effect of war with Iraq, but a sign that everything is going according to plan.

In their eyes, Iraq is just the starting point - or, as a recent presentation at the Pentagon put it, "the tactical pivot" - for re-moulding the Middle East on Israeli-American lines.

This reverses the usual approach in international relations where stability is seen as the key to peace, and whether or not you like your neighbours, you have to find ways of living with them. No, say the hawks. If you don't like the neighbours, get rid of them.

The hawks claim that President Bush has already accepted their plan and made destabilisation of "despotic regimes" a central goal of his foreign policy. They cite passages from his recent speeches as proof of this, though whether Mr Bush really knows what he has accepted is unclear. The "skittles theory" of the Middle East - that one ball aimed at Iraq can knock down several regimes - has been around for some time on the wilder fringes of politics but has come to the fore in the United States on the back of the "war against terrorism".

Its roots can be traced, at least in part, to a paper published in 1996 by an Israeli thinktank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. Entitled "A clean break: a new strategy for securing the realm", it was intended as a political blueprint for the incoming government of Binyamin Netanyahu. As the title indicates, it advised the right-wing Mr Netanyahu to make a complete break with the past by adopting a strategy "based on an entirely new intellectual foundation, one that restores strategic initiative and provides the nation the room to engage every possible energy on rebuilding Zionism ..."

Among other things, it suggested that the recently-signed Oslo accords might be dispensed with - "Israel has no obligations under the Oslo agreements if the PLO does not fulfil its obligations" - and that "alternatives to [Yasser] Arafat's base of power" could be cultivated. "Jordan has ideas on this," it added.

It also urged Israel to abandon any thought of trading land for peace with the Arabs, which it described as "cultural, economic, political, diplomatic, and military retreat".

"Our claim to the land - to which we have clung for hope for 2,000 years - is legitimate and noble," it continued. "Only the unconditional acceptance by Arabs of our rights, especially in their territorial dimension, 'peace for peace', is a solid basis for the future."

The paper set out a plan by which Israel would "shape its strategic environment", beginning with the removal of Saddam Hussein and the installation of a Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad.

With Saddam out of the way and Iraq thus brought under Jordanian Hashemite influence, Jordan and Turkey would form an axis along with Israel to weaken and "roll back" Syria. Jordan, it suggested, could also sort out Lebanon by "weaning" the Shia Muslim population away from Syria and Iran, and re-establishing their former ties with the Shia in the new Hashemite kingdom of Iraq. "Israel will not only contain its foes; it will transcend them", the paper concluded.

To succeed, the paper stressed, Israel would have to win broad American support for these new policies - and it advised Mr Netanyahu to formulate them "in language familiar to the Americans by tapping into themes of American administrations during the cold war which apply well to Israel".

At first glance, there's not much to distinguish the 1996 "Clean Break" paper from the outpourings of other right-wing and ultra-Zionist thinktanks ... except for the names of its authors.

The leader of the "prominent opinion makers" who wrote it was Richard Perle - now chairman of the Defence Policy Board at the Pentagon.

Also among the eight-person team was Douglas Feith, a neo-conservative lawyer, who now holds one of the top four posts at the Pentagon as under-secretary of policy.

Mr Feith has objected to most of the peace deals made by Israel over the years, and views the Middle East in the same good-versus-evil terms that he previously viewed the cold war. He regarded the Oslo peace process as nothing more than a unilateral withdrawal which "raises life-and-death issues for the Jewish state".

Two other opinion-makers in the team were David Wurmser and his wife, Meyrav (see US thinktanks give lessons in foreign policy, August 19). Mrs Wurmser was co-founder of Memri, a Washington-based charity that distributes articles translated from Arabic newspapers portraying Arabs in a bad light. After working with Mr Perle at the American Enterprise Institute, David Wurmser is now at the State Department, as a special assistant to John Bolton, the under-secretary for arms control and international security.

A fifth member of the team was James Colbert, of the Washington-based Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa) - a bastion of neo-conservative hawkery whose advisory board was previously graced by Dick Cheney (now US vice-president), John Bolton and Douglas Feith.

One of Jinsa's stated aims is "to inform the American defence and foreign affairs community about the important role Israel can and does play in bolstering democratic interests in the Mediterranean and the Middle East". In practice, a lot of its effort goes into sending retired American military brass on jaunts to Israel - after which many of them write suitably hawkish newspaper articles or letters to the editor.

Jinsa's activities are examined in detail by Jason Vest in the September 2 issue of The Nation. The article notes some interesting business relationships between retired US military officers on Jinsa's board and American companies supplying weapons to Israel.

With several of the "Clean Break" paper's authors now holding key positions in Washington, the plan for Israel to "transcend" its foes by reshaping the Middle East looks a good deal more achievable today than it did in 1996. Americans may even be persuaded to give up their lives to achieve it.

The six-year-old plan for Israel's "strategic environment" remains more or less intact, though two extra skittles - Saudi Arabia and Iran - have joined Iraq, Syria and Lebanon on the hit list.

Whatever members of the Iraqi opposition may think, the plan to replace Saddam Hussein with a Hashemite monarch - descendants of the Prophet Muhammad who rule Jordan - is also very much alive. Evidence of this was strengthened by the surprise arrival of Prince Hassan, former heir to the Jordanian throne, at a meeting of exiled Iraqi officers in London last July.

The task of promoting Prince Hassan as Iraq's future king has fallen to Michael Rubin, who currently works at the American Enterprise Institute but will shortly take up a new job at the Pentagon, dealing with post-Saddam Iraq.

One of the curious aspects of this neo-conservative intrigue is that so few people outside the United States and Israel take it seriously. Perhaps, like President Mubarak, they can't imagine that anyone who holds a powerful position in the United States could be quite so reckless.

But nobody can accuse the neo-conservatives of concealing their intentions: they write about them constantly in American newspapers. Just two weeks ago, an article in the Washington Times by Tom Neumann, executive director of Jinsa, spelled out the plan in clear, cold terms:

"Jordan will likely survive the coming war with US assistance, so will some of the sheikhdoms. The current Saudi regime will likely not.

"The Iran dissident movement would be helped enormously by the demise of Saddam, and the Palestinians would have to know that the future lies with the West. Syria's Ba'athist dictatorship will likely fall unmourned, liberating Lebanon as well.

"Israel and Turkey, the only current democracies in the region, will find themselves in a far better neighbourhood." Would anyone like to bet on that?

http://newamericancentury.org/

[Abcdxxxx]

Well there you have it. The Geggys think Carter's the coolest President ever.

Does he think that article from 2002 with all it's prophetic failures gives Carter vindication from running around the country pushing David Duke's platform against Israel?

[Geggy]

I don't understand you. A lot of things said in the article has come and might as well will come true with the military build up in a strike against iran. Do you suffer from full blown amnesia and have forgotten what has happened in the last 6 years??

[Abcdxxxx]

Israel hasn't stopped trading land for peace, Oslo was never reversed, Israel is no more secure, Jordan holds little influence on Iraq...And I could keep going but...

Let's jump to the big prediction and stop goose stepping around it.... Jews still don't run the world, and Israel doesn't dictate Americas foriegn policy.

If you want to deduct anything else from the article then feel free to post again....otherwise, you're a worthless Jew hater who needs to learn some shame.

p.s. What's happened since 2002? Did Iran elect a hardliner as their President by chance?

[Geggy]

Before I go on, I need to know one thing for the sake of my own security...do you work for jack abramoff to say things like these? Did he shower you with drugs, sex and free game of golf?

[Grislygus]

Uh, Geggy... most people don't find the idea of sex with Jack Abramoff appealing.

I'm not judging, I'm just sayin'.

[Abcdxxxx]

Ex-President For Sale (Dershowitz on Carter)
familysecuritymatters.org ^ | 1/10/2007 | Alan Dershowitz
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1765265/posts?page=16
It now turns out that the shoe is precisely on the other foot. Recent disclosures prove that it is Carter who has been bought and paid for by anti-Israel Arab and Islamic money.

Journalist Jacob Laksin has documented the tens of millions of dollars that the Carter Center has accepted from Saudi Arabian royalty and assorted other Middle Eastern sultans, who, in return, Carter dutifully praised as peaceful and tolerant (no matter how despotic the regime). And these are only the confirmed, public donations.

Carter has also accepted half a million dollars and an award from Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, saying in 2001: "This award has special significance for me because it is named for my personal friend, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan." This is the same Zayed, the long-time ruler of the United Arab Emirates, whose $2.5 million gift to the Harvard Divinity School was returned in 2004 due to Zayed's rampant Jew-hatred. Zayed's personal foundation, the Zayed Center, claims that it was Zionists, rather than Nazis, who “were the people who killed the Jews in Europe” during the Holocaust. It has held lectures on the blood libel and conspiracy theories about Jews and America perpetrating Sept. 11.

Another journalist, Rachel Ehrenfeld, in a thorough and devastating article on "Carter’s Arab Financiers," meticulously catalogues Carter’s ties to Arab moneymen, from a Saudi bailout of his peanut farm in 1976, to funding for Carter’s presidential library, to continued support for all manner of Carter’s post-presidential activities. For instance, it was the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), founded in Pakistan and fronted by a Saudi billionaire, Gaith Pharaon, that helped Carter start up his beloved Carter Center. According to Ehrenfeld:


“BCCI's origins were primarily ideological. [Agha Hasan] Abedi wanted the bank to reflect the supra-national Muslim credo and ‘the best bridge to help the world of Islam, and the best way to fight the evil influence of the Zionists.’
As Ehrenfeld concluded:

“[I]t seems that AIPAC's real fault was its failure to outdo the Saudi's purchases of the former president's loyalty. There has not been any nation in the world that has been more cooperative than Saudi Arabia," The New York Times quoted Mr. Carter June 1977, thus making the Saudis a major factor in U. S. foreign policy.
”Evidently, the millions in Arab petrodollars feeding Mr. Carter's global endeavors, often in conflict with U.S. government policies, also ensure his loyalty.”

It is particularly disturbing that a former president who has accepted dirty blood-money from dictators, anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, and supporters of terrorism should try to deflect attention from his own conflicts of interest by raising the oldest canard in the sordid history of anti-Semitism: namely, that Jews have dual loyalty and use their money improperly to influence the country they live in, in favor of the country to which they owe their real allegiance. Abraham Foxman responded to Carter’s canard as follows:

As disturbing as Carter’s simplistic approach is, however, even more disturbing is his picking up on the Mearsheimer -Walt theme of Jewish control of American policy, though in much more abbreviated form and not being the focus of his work. Referring to U.S. policy and the “condoning” of Israel’s actions, Carter says: “There are constant and vehement political and media debates in Israel concerning its policies in the West Bank but because of powerful political, economic, and religious forces in the U.S., Israeli government decisions are rarely questioned or condemned, voices from Jerusalem dominate our media, and most American citizens are unaware of circumstances in the occupied territories.” In other words, the old canard and conspiracy theory of Jewish control of the media, Congress, and the U.S. government is rearing its ugly head in the person of a former President.

As noted above, the most perverse aspect of Carter’s foray into bigotry is that as he pours this old wine into new bottles he is himself awash in Arab money. When a politician levels these kinds of cynical accusations against others, it would seem incumbent on him to show that his own hands are clean and his own pockets empty.

Accordingly I now call upon Carter to make full public disclosure of all of his and the Carter Center’s ties to Arab money. If he fails to do so, I challenge the media to probe deeply into his, his family’s, and his Center’s Arab ties so that the public can see precisely the sources and amounts of money he has received and judge whether it has corrupted the process of objective reportage and politics by Carter and others who have received such funds. Finally, I ask the appropriate government agencies to conduct an investigation into whether Carter should be required to register as a lobbyist for foreign interests.

Let’s stop invoking discredited ethnic stereotypes, look at the hard facts, and actually see who’s being bought and sold.

[NightOfTheLivingDon]

Maybe I'm just one of those types of people, but considering the source of that article, I doubt that it's 100% accurate. Mainly because the Right is/will rip any democrat they possibly can when thinking about recent events. The obvious one being the newly elected democrats, the death of the now "underrated" Gerald Ford, and Bush's latest Iraq policy. Anytime the right finds anything linking anyone to the "towelheads" they claim unamericanism and the hatred of freedom.

Also, The only explanation – and one that Carter tap dances around, but won’t come out and say directly – is that Jews control the media and buy politicians.

I really couldn't even take the article in any remote seriousness after reading that. Yeah, the Jews run the media, the Free Masons run the government, and aliens built the pyramids. What was this article about anyway, Carter's ties with Arab dictators or the jewish plot to ruin America? This is just right wing muckracking, which is nearing the point of getting worse than the left.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

So what is it that you doubt, Carter's ties to Saudi cash, or Carter's anti-semitism? The former is an undeniable fact.

[Abcdxxxx]

Since when does supporting Israel make you right wing?

U R Dumb. Kewl.

[NightOfTheLivingDon]

Alright, let me rephrase what I mean so that we can avoid getting personal about politics, the u r was cute by the way:

The problem I have is with the article itself. It is true that Carter has ties to Arab money and he is not the friendliest of people when it comes to the Jews. I never said that supporting Israel was right wing, though that is the tendency. Any ties, supposed or actual, with money coming from the Middle East is met with the harshest of criticisms from the right side. See also Cynthia McKinney (2004) who did get Arab money, but her opponent's funding came from Israeli groups. Again this is not too strictly, black and white, say supporting Israel is right wing, however it was overlooked that Denise Majette ran an overly racial campaign and whose money came from equally as anti-other Israeli groups. Going back to Gus' original point, the response is a bit over exaggerated and it is the article that I don't like. Maybe it’s because Free Republic is a breeding ground for ultra-conservatism or maybe because the article, in so many words, completely denounces Carter for anything and everything he ever did to the point were we should sell him as a former president. Also that his book, which may be somewhat factual (really, none of us can make claim that we know for sure), is nothing more than a "Jews control the media" diatribe. I just felt as if the article is one of those that tell you how to feel by painting Carter as a blood money washed icon for anti-Semitism. Is that kewl wit u?

[Abcdxxxx]

Say what you want about Alan Dershowitz, but he doesn't represent the Right Wing. Free Republic was one of many outlets to reprint this editorial.

"Also that his book, which may be somewhat factual (really, none of us can make claim that we know for sure) , is nothing more than a "Jews control the media" diatribe."

1) You would have to be arguing that there's no such thing as a "fact" then. His book contains factual errors, and 15 Carter Center fellows including his long term advisor on Mid-East affairs quit as a result. Simply put, the Jews who worked for Carter would disagree with your summation of the situation. The Carter Center has also come under attack from non-Jews who were invited to consult on ways to ease tensions with the Jewish Community. Alan Dershowitz was the first to publish a break down of facts, and then challenged Carter to debate the errors contained in his book.

2) Carter's been making a point of feeding a " Jews control the media diatribe" in every interview he's done to promote the book. He has continously said:


http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0611/27/lkl.01.htmlAnd it's not something that has been acknowledged or even discussed in this country. The basic purpose of... KING: Why not?

CARTER: I don't know why not. You never hear anything about what is happening to the Palestinians by the Israelis. As a matter of fact, it's one of the worst cases of oppression that I know of now in the world


And I think what's happening in the West Bank and in the occupied territories is completely contrary to the basic principles of the Israeli religion and completely contrary to the basic principles of Israel as a nation when it was founded.

KING: Do you think it will continue to be as pro-Israel as this past Congress?

CARTER: I would guess so, Larry. It's almost inconceivable for any members of the House and Senate to take any position that would be critical of Israel.

That's one reason I wrote my book, is just to precipitate some controversy, to use your word, or provocation, that is to provoke debate on the issue and to let the people of America know that there are two sides to many issues in the Middle East, and that in order ever to have peace for Israel, Israel will have to comply with international law.

If that wasn't clear enough, on December 8th, the Los Angeles Times published Carters letter which said:

For the last 30 years, I have witnessed and experienced the severe restraints on any free and balanced discussion of the facts. This reluctance to criticize any policies of the Israeli government is because of the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American-Israel Political Action Committee and the absence of any significant contrary voices.

It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine, to suggest that Israel comply with international law or to speak in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians. Very few would ever deign to visit the Palestinian cities of Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron, Gaza City or even Bethlehem and talk to the beleaguered residents. What is even more difficult to comprehend is why the editorial pages of the major newspapers and magazines in the United States exercise similar self-restraint, quite contrary to private assessments expressed quite forcefully by their correspondents in the Holy Land...

Book reviews in the mainstream media have been written mostly by representatives of Jewish organizations who would be unlikely to visit the occupied territories, and their primary criticism is that the book is anti-Israel.

Now we all know that's bullshit. It's outright false. So what is he implying?

As for Cynthia Mckinney... she had plenty of problems going for her, so if you're insinuating a witch hunt out of Israeli interests was responsible for her downfall , you should probably check yourself, or just call yourself Geggy2 and leave it at that. Also - please don't bother to respond unless you've read these various articles, and editorials in full. K, thx. p.s. Fuck John Carpentar and your latex friends. Put your posts in the right forum you retard.

[Preechr]

CARTER: I don't know why not. You never hear anything about what is happening to the Palestinians by the Israelis. As a matter of fact, it's one of the worst cases of oppression that I know of now in the world

To say it's the WORST? I disagree, though maybe he doesn't know of any other cases of oppression... I think there are a helluva a lot of Israelis that would agree Palestinians actually have been oppressed by Israel, and there's an argument to made as to whether doing so at times was warranted and even abusive. Was it as bad as their oppression by Egypt or Jordan? Probably not... I would say that Israeli oppression and occupation, when combined with the freedoms offered by living in and around the state of Israel, was instrumental in the evolution of Palestinian nationalism.

And I think what's happening in the West Bank and in the occupied territories is completely contrary to the basic principles of the Israeli religion and completely contrary to the basic principles of Israel as a nation when it was founded.

Again, he's partially correct. In the religious sense, it's my understanding that the Chosen were commanded to remain in diaspora, which pretty much rules out the establishment of a Jewish State. This is an open debate, however, and Carter looks like a fool (again) for throwing that into his rhetoric. Politically, Zionism has three requirements, and it seems Israel will only ever be able to achieve two of them at any given point: A Jewish state that encompasses all of Israel and that is based in freedom. It's clear Israel's current intention is to give up on allowing further settlements in favor of a smaller and freer Jewish state, so again, Carter is just a fool.

CARTER: I would guess so, Larry. It's almost inconceivable for any members of the House and Senate to take any position that would be critical of Israel.

That's one reason I wrote my book, is just to precipitate some controversy, to use your word, or provocation, that is to provoke debate on the issue and to let the people of America know that there are two sides to many issues in the Middle East, and that in order ever to have peace for Israel, Israel will have to comply with international law.

Here I can almost entirely agree with him, and I don't think I'm the least bit anti-semitic and I know I support Israel fully. Where I disagree completely is in what he didn't say but he obviously believes: The Jews control America.

I think the harder pill to swallow is much closer to the truth: Americans for the most part truly do not care enough to sort fact from fiction, preferring instead to simply pick one side or the other for essentially the same reasons they root for their favorite baseball team or apple pie baker. We are just an incredibly self-centered and reading averse people. We like our conflicts black and white. Good guys and bad guys. Cowboys and Indians, baby.

Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are evil, and neither are either morally pure as the driven snow. The thing is, they both know this, and Carter isn't adding a damn thing to the discussion.

Of course, he has a long history of pointlessness. He is the quintessential progressive, and he is as rabidly useless as the movement he represents.

[Abcdxxxx]

Preechr, I agree with most of your response, but the contention is that Carter not only labels the Palestinian case “the worst” but that he claims it’s some hush hush issue when we know it recieves far more scrutiny in the media, and at the UN then any other attrocity today. I think we agree on that one.

Zionism, especially political Zionism, doesn’t have three requirements, just one - a Jewish homeland. The rest would all depend on which particular Zionist you were speaking to. As it’s not a theocracy, there is no such thing as an “Israeli Religion”, and since you can be a multitude of religions as an Israeli, Carter is incorrect. It’s not just a matter of poor terminology. He’s talking about the modern population of Israel, not the Israelites mentioned in the Bible. His book also claims that Israel has targeted it’s Christian population, which we know is false.


“It's almost inconceivable for any members of the House and Senate to take any position that would be critical of Israel. “

So has any member in the House or Senate ever taken a position critical of Israel? The question can be answered yes or no. Why can't Carter conceive of this?

[Preechr]

Well, of course he can. That's why we call it rhetoric.

I do agree that the level of condemnation directed at Israel by the media and the UN is ridiculous, but I also admit that Israel does actually deserve special recognition as the only modern, Western Democracy that is involved in the sort of occupation/conflict it has maintained for the last 20 or so years... and I'm really only counting the period of time since the intifada began.

It's a unique situation all around, and it deserves special attention. I think it's sad that the anti-Israeli factions have such a developed and time-tested series of arguments they can apply to condemn Israel's every move while the pro-Israel factions seem to operate on a system based much more in something like faith than anything resembling moral rectitude.

Yes, I know how much they have bent over to end the conflict, but I am also a little less willing to give Israel a lot of leeway for the kind of abstract and uninformed public debate we enjoy here in the states. They have a mandatory service requirement and a pretty much militarized lifestyle. Maybe this conflict has dragged on just a little longer than it ever should have, and maybe Israel, being the bigger man by far, should have warmed up to the idea of peace and true freedom in a more fruitful way something more like 20 years ago... The level of organization and spirit of nationalistic unity was there, though what was missing, in my opinion of course, was a healthier measure of respect for the rights of the Palestinian people... the castoffs of the Arab world... for the rest of you, their version of our Mexican Illegals, basically.

By working harder to win them over, the Israelis could have made everything much easier. It would have been possible, but they chose a more arrogant or maybe old-fashioned, more colonialistic path, again, in my opinion and with all due respect. I fully admit I am just an arm-chair quarterback here, and that the best I can do is only most likely gonna insult the hell out of anyone that's actually directly involved in this on either side.

This has gone way past any sort of discussion of Jimmy Carter's idiocy and hypocrisy, but I think dismissing anyone's attempt to shine a more honest and thoughtful light on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict... even if it's Jimmy Carter's and it's ill-intentioned... shouldn't be so quickly discarded as unbearable before it's completely milked for any honest and positive debate it might inspire.

[Abcdxxxx]

Well that sounds like you're arguing in favor of a double standard imposed on Israel's role in a two way war, because you hold them to the standards of a Westernized nation. Okay. The problem with that is it's a war that Israel has reluctantly taken part in, and the truth is, they weren't all that Westernized even 20 years ago....and still today, they are a melting pot that hasn't melted so cohesively, and add to this the fact that the majority of their citizens do not come from Western socities. I doubt this changes who you feel deserves the majority of burdern for peace. The problem with the notion of peace, and the suggestion that Israel can do or say anything to provide peace, is it disregards the history and the truth about these Arab people in question, which we now call Palestinians. They have had many opportunities to coexist, and that's about as much as Israel can offer them, right? What do you think would appease Israel's enemies realistically?

I don't think there's a shortage of debate on the topic so much as a shortage of honest and INFORMED debate.....neither of which Carter offers up with his book. I'm sure if we counted up the many threads in this forum concerning Israel it would be a disproportionate number, and that's all fine.... but it's a complex topic and it's easy to be tripped up in the rhetoric. If the information comes from someone like Carter, who spends his time as a humanitarian, then it shouldn't be biased, nor should it be malicious. That serves no good purpose - not even in bettering the Palestinian Arabs.

[Preechr]

Well that sounds like you're arguing in favor of a double standard imposed on Israel's role in a two way war, because you hold them to the standards of a Westernized nation. Okay. The problem with that is it's a war that Israel has reluctantly taken part in, and the truth is, they weren't all that Westernized even 20 years ago....

Well, sure I am, at least in one respect. I'm talking about their conflict with the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank primarily, which is the intifada. For anybody else that's reading this, intifada is not the same as jihad. It roughly translates to something like "separation," not war. The intifada was not a product of the larger Arab world... not even Yassir Arafat. If it was a war at the beginning, it was as much a war against Palestinians against themselves as it was against Israel's occupation.

Once Arafat got involved, however, a larger war that had been pretty much diffused since Israel's (and our) first foray into Lebanon began to re-ignite. Arafat's refusal to accept any deal that recognized Israel's right to exist was rooted largely in his self-proclaimed leadership position over ALL the people pf Palestine, including those displaced by Israel's existence that were and are living in the refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. The refugees wanted their homeland back, and that could not happen as long as Israel continued to be.

For Arafat to claim ownership of the intifada, he finally had to recognize Israel as something other than "the Zionist Entity." The intifada actually softened his position. The intifada shook Israel awake to the realities of their occupation of the Palestinian territories and the settlement mentality of some of their people. The Gazans and West Bankers divorced themselves from Israel. They had become Israeli Palestinians, much as their parents had once been Jordanian or Egyptian Palestinians, and they rejected that.

While it was once true that the Palestinians weren't really a people themselves, the intifada changed that. Without the intifada, there would never have been peace, in my opinion. Once the Gazans and West Bankers became self-aware and unified into a real Palestinian community, the two-state solution became a reality for both Israel and the Arab world, and we are now on the doorstep of that transition to peace.

Now, Israel is also involved in a jihad, just as we are now. That's a different thing altogether, though it does affect the roadmap to peace between Israel and Palestine. I believe they can and should be treated as two separate things, and not doing so only muddies the waters of an already murky discussion.

...and still today, they are a melting pot that hasn't melted so cohesively, and add to this the fact that the majority of their citizens do not come from Western socities.

The same can be said of Japan, yet Japan is a Westernized nation and it too is held to a higher standard than, say, North Korea.

I doubt this changes who you feel deserves the majority of burdern for peace. The problem with the notion of peace, and the suggestion that Israel can do or say anything to provide peace, is it disregards the history and the truth about these Arab people in question, which we now call Palestinians. They have had many opportunities to coexist, and that's about as much as Israel can offer them, right? What do you think would appease Israel's enemies realistically?

The reality as I stated it above. The peace process is messy, but it is still alive. Let me ask you, what are the chances for peace down any other path?

I don't think there's a shortage of debate on the topic so much as a shortage of honest and INFORMED debate.....neither of which Carter offers up with his book. I'm sure if we counted up the many threads in this forum concerning Israel it would be a disproportionate number, and that's all fine.... but it's a complex topic and it's easy to be tripped up in the rhetoric. If the information comes from someone like Carter, who spends his time as a humanitarian, then it shouldn't be biased, nor should it be malicious. That serves no good purpose - not even in bettering the Palestinian Arabs.

He's no humanitarian. He's an egalitarian and an altruist that has always rejected reality and sought to attain his goals for the world through unrealistic and dishonest means.

Other than that, I agree with that last bit entirely.

[mburbank]

"Code Pink/New Left crowd"
-Alphaboy

That's why he's MY hero.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

So Max, one of your bigger gripes with President Bush seems to be his business relationship with the Saudis.

Would you say Carter's relationship with that regime shades your opinion of him as well?

[mburbank]

Yes. It's prominent on my list of Carter's Cons, above even his micromanagement. In my lifetime, no one capable of being elected President has been anything I was happy with. They've all had serious strikes against them.

But some of them have had lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots more strikes than others.

[Girl Drink Drunk]

Didnt the Carter administration also provide financial support to the Khmer Rouge regime when they were defending themselves from Vietnam, when they were also initiating mass genocide?

[Abcdxxxx]

Preechr, Here's the problem with you breakdown of the conflict: It hinges on a 25 year period where the Palestinians united simply to play for the cameras, and manipulate the history books...and as a result, I guess you're buying into the mythology they've laid out for you.

Your timeline between the Intifada (1987) and our first "foray" into Lebanon (Sabra Shatila, 1982. Beirut barrack bombings, 1983) is way off. Arafat represented at best only 20,000 Arabs calling themselves Palestinians in 1973 when Israeli peaceniks first called for talks.

The meaning of intifada is to shake off, awake, or if you stretch it, they'll say it means the struggle, or ultimately "uprising". The was no true desire to "seperate" so much as milk the system. Their jobs, and social care was provided by Israel well into the Oslo era. Even today, Israel provides them with utilities without pay. These are Arabs who never had such ammenities before Israel's existance. Most importantly, there weren't millions of Palestinians living in the conquered territories 20 years ago.

That first intifada was a Fatah affair with Arafat organizing it from Tunisia, using Iraqi and Saudi money. Additional support came from the Arab League which made the PLO a member in the 70's. It was the first time they sent children to the front lines, and don't mistake it, even the rocks were imported. Hamas came on the scene just before that first Intifada, when they refused to take part in the planned strike days and organized their own attacks. There was nothing honorable or organized about it. Four Palestinians in Jabalya got hit and killed by a car, and the rumor was it was revenge for an Israel that had been stabbed the day before. Three days later, Palestinian teens were throwing Molotov cocktails, and the IRA were teaching pipe bomb making classes. The Unified Leadership of the Intifada, as the organization was called, was the PLO.

Anyway I guess we can pretend that Mel Gibson sparked debate too, eh?

[Preechr]

Intifada should be broken down to it's three letter root: nun, fa', dad, or nafada. Nafada means to shake off, dust off, or in conversational terms, to shake off one's laziness or to end a relationship that should not be. The Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic translates intifada as a "tremor, a shudder or a shiver." It should be noted that the word "thawra," as in the popular PLO guerrilla song, " Thawra, thawra, hat al-nasr," - Revolution, revolution, until victory - was not the choice to describe the uprising that emerged spontaneously from within the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

You want to talk about mythology and manipulation of history? I would love to see you provide some evidence that Arafat had anything to do at all with the emergence of the intifada. He was in Tunis, following the news via fax machine along with the rest of the PLO leadership. For some reason, it is convenient for you to paint with a broad brush here and label all of the Palestinians with the same sticker despite the historical fact that Arafat had only ever represented the refugees up until this point. He never even publicly uttered the word Israel before he shoved himself in front of the intifada movement. He had to, as the intifada began in Israel, not anywhere else, and he realized that this was where he needed to be in order to remain the face on the Palestinian cause.

Arafat only began to be concerned with the Palestinians living in Israel when those Palestinians began their own uprising. Before that time, he had rarely even been there, and since he'd left Beruit, his power and importance had been steadily waning. Hell, he'd just been rejected almost entirely at the 87 Arab Summit... This was the point in time at which the pendulum shifted. Here was where it became evident that the Palestinian movement had two factions, one that could never recognize Israel and one that was willing to deal, and the PLO leadership most definitely began to add weight to the constituency that happened to allow some sort of hope for peace.

Why do you need to avoid this very important distinguishing characteristic of the conflict? I will nail it down for you, and I want to hear your answer to just this one question before we go further: Is there a difference, in your opinion, between the causes of the Palestinian refugees, the Palestinians living in Israel, and the jihadis fighting a proxy war against the West via the Palestinian conflict? If so, how so?

[Preechr]

Oh, and by the way, it was a truck, not a car. A big ol, semi-truck.

[Abcdxxxx]

Uh. You sure you should be fact checking anyone?

Arafat only began to be concerned with the Palestinians living in Israel when those Palestinians began their own uprising

FALSE. Read transcripts of Arafat's address to the UN General Assembly in November, of 1974.

Arafat "And still, the highest tension exists in our part of the world. There the Zionist entity clings tenaciously to occupied Arab territory; Zionism persists in its aggressions against us and our territory. "

http://electronicintifada.net/bytopic/historicalspeeches/305.shtml
http://www.mideastweb.org/arafat_at_un.htm

Then there's the PLO charter circa 1968:

Article 1: Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation. http://www.iris.org.il/plochart.htm

Let's stop there. If you don't have the basic timeline down, then there's no reason to debate Arafat's activity in Tunisia. Most accounts accept that at worst, the PLO was directing the the first Intifada using leaflets, early on if not from the get-go.


Is there a difference, in your opinion, between the causes of the Palestinian refugees, the Palestinians living in Israel, and the jihadis fighting a proxy war against the West via the Palestinian conflict? If so, how so?

Can you rephrase that question? I have no idea what you're asking. Maybe I'm slow tonight, or maybe you worded that wrong. Are there different Arabs with different ideals and beliefs? If that's the distinction you want me to make, then sure.

[Preechr]

Nice sourcing, but am I suddenly supposed to accept the words of Yassir Arafat as credible... from you?

I mean, seriously... No offense, BUT!

Am I now supposed to accept Arafat as a man of his word?

Come on.

Arafat was a salesman, and he was most interested in selling what was easiest to sell. The Palestinians living in Israel had always pretty well off, as you indicated before. Who built those settlements? Who ran the stores? I compared the Israeli Palestinians to the American Mexicans, and I stand by that. I addressed that comparison to the other readers because I thought you had an understanding of the reality of Israel. The West Bankers and the Gazans had become the functional backbone of the Israeli state, but they did so by essentially becoming Israelis. They spoke Hebrew for Christsakes! They built the settlements!! Come on!!!

The Israeli Palestinians were not what Arafat was holding up to the world as the representation of the evil that was the Zionist Entity. He stood for the right of RETURN, not the right of shrugging off the coil of oppressive occupation.

Are you really going to sit here and try to tell me that the occupied territories were the hotbeds of MidEast violence prior to 1987?

Here's your clarified question, and I will pose it in two parts: Is there any difference at all between the demands of the Palestinians that live in the occupied territories and anybody else that opposes Zionism? The second part is this: Whether yes or no, why do you think so?

[Abcdxxxx]

I don't know if you're fucking around or what....

If the question is wether Arafat was interested in Israel pre-Intifada, then you can't get a more credible source then the PLO charter, and Arafat's own coming out party at the UN. If anything, the Intifada marked the first time Arafat started to disguise his intentions, and formed spin off divisions of the PLO to play good cop bad cop. It also marks the first time Palestinians played to the media in an organized fashion, and his "driving Jews into the ocean" rhetoric was traded in for talk of Peace and a two state solution.

The settlements were built under Jordanian, and Egyptian rule, so that all pre-dates Israel. Prior to 1987 the conquered territories were full of turmoil - Americans, and Israelis wouldn't go into many villages out of fear of starting an international incident. There wasn't much there for one thing, and attacks on Israeli civilians, along with other more political terror activities were fairly common. Not as frequent as today, but they still happened. Remember, "Palestinians" had already turned neighboring nations into warzones, and took credit for terror attacks all across the globe. Bus bombings, airplane hijackings, assissinations, truck bombings.... what am I leaving out?.....all that stuff pre-dates the Intifada. The big difference is the world view was that this was a small group of wingbuts who didn't represent the Arabs, and who were actually disliked as a result. If the intifada acomplished anything, it was to sell the myth. Jean Luc Godard tried to make a film on the Palestinians in the 70's so there was fringe interest....but you didn't see theater companies in the US doing award winning productions which were sympathetic to the PLO and the Palestinian "plight" till around 87. It's also the first time these people wanted to start calling themselves Palestinians, and the territories were flooded with Saudis, Jordanians, Iraqis, Kuwaitis, Egyptians...etc.

See, Arafat was irrelevant by the time Oslo came around, in terms of who and what the Israelis should have been dealing with - but on a street level, the PLO had redefined their stronghold on these communities. Arafat declared the West Bank "Palestine", and the PLO started killing off Arabs who didn't cooperate.

Is there any difference at all between the demands of the Palestinians that live in the occupied territories and anybody else that opposes Zionism?

Wouldn't that depend? There are Palestinians who oppose Israel because they want their olive tree back....and there are some who hate Jews. The opponents of Zionism are making a larger statement, and that is one against a Jewish state anywhere for any reason. Wether they know it or not, that is what it means to oppose Zionism. There are Palestinians who would be fine with a two state solution, I'm told....in that case, the anti-zionist would hold far more extreme seperatist goals. Unfortunately, while you're asking me to make a distinction between an anti-Zionist, and a run of the mill peace seeking Palestinian, I don't think Palestinians make the same distinction themselves.

[Abcdxxxx]

You asked me to source Arafat's direct involvement in these uprisings.... check the UNLI's own communiques as summed up by this fairly sympathetic report:


An assessment of other communiques, particularly beginning with Communique No. 15 (30 April 1988) would indeed tend to support this. In addition to tone and content, a more simple "index" might be used, that being the number of references to the "PLO," "PNC," "Mr. Arafat," and so forth. The early communiques, developed from within the OT acknowledged the role of the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of all Palestinians, usually through a single reference in the preamble. Israel was, after all, attempting to fictionalize the Palestinians, and to separate Palestinian voices inside from those outside the OT. For this reason alone, the local UNLU was careful to open no cracks for Israeli manipulation. In Communiques No. 1-14, the average number of references to the PLO is one. With Communique No. 15 there is a subtle change in tone and perspective and in the number of references to the PLO itself. Five or six paragraphs focus on external, international issues and speak of "thwarting the U.S.-reactionary conspiratorial schemes;" of the "joint Soviet-Palestinian agreement to render successful the convening of an international conference;" of the "UN Security Council Resolution No. 605;" of the "Palestinian, Algerian, Libyan, and Soviet efforts;" of using "Syria to embody a relationship of militant alliance with the PLO;" and of "the sons of our steadfast people in the Lebanese arena." By contrast, in Communique No. 13 (10 April 1988) there is a single paragraph which states in fairly indefinite terms, "Now we can feel the increase in the international support of our cause and of our legitimate rights." Moreover, Communique No. 15 makes reference to the "PLO" a total of seven times and mentions "Brother Abu 'Ammar" by name; Communique No. 13 refers to the "PLO" twice, and makes no mention of Arafat. Communique No. 16 (11 May 1988) refers to the "PLO" no less than ten times, in conjunction with phrases such as: "The originator of our snuggle, the PLO;" "the presence of the PLO and the continuation of the Palestinian struggle within its framework;" "declaring the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people everywhere" (stated twice in the communique); "through a commitment to the PLO;" "toward developing the unity of the PLO;" and, "to realize a national consensus within the PLO." There seems to be a clear attempt at bolstering the position of the PLO vis-a-vis the events of the Intifada within the Territories, with the apparent intention of wresting the internal policy-making function from the UNLU, through factional representatives on the outside. This trend of more frequent references to both the "PLO" and "Mr. Arafat" continues, as does the change in tone and the concern with world events external to the OT. www.essaypool.com/...Blueprint+for+a+democratic+Palestinian+state+UN LU+communique.html

There's also a bitter irony in describing it as a people's uprising, in that it marked the beginning of the end for what had been a largley Marxist Palestinian movement.

The truth is the uprisings had more to do with Jordan's witholding of funds from the Palestinians, and freezing their accounts in preperation for cutting all ties with the WB and Gaza.

[NightOfTheLivingDon]

Hey man, say what you want about me, but can't we leave John Carpenter out of this?

http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m58/nightofthelivingdon/carterjewyoureye.jpg