ZOA asks Brandeis to cancel
Carter invitation
New York — Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, in his new book, Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid , “flatly condones mass-murder” of Israeli Jews by Palestinian Arab terrorists, in the words of the New York Post editorial (January 15, 2007). He made the following statement in his book which promotes terror, “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” (p. 213).
The Post editorial also states, “Carter isn’t calling on the Palestinians to give up terror and murder now as a way to convince Israel they are serious about peace. Rather, he says they can wait until they’ve achieved their goals at the bargaining table. No need, says Carter, to give up terrorism until then … He’s gone from failed president to friend of left-wing tyrants and global scold of anything that represents America’s legitimate interests. Now, in his bid to demonize Israel (recall that he secretly gave PR and political advice to Yasser Arafat), Carter has turned mythmaker — distorting history and misrepresenting facts, when he isn’t making them up altogether … It’s time for the Democrats to finally cut all their ties to Carter, who was rehabilitated as a party icon at the 2004 convention. If they don’t, Americans should consider the implications” (New York Post, January 15, 2007).
Also, Melvin Konner, MD, PhD, Dobbs Professor of Anthropology and Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology at Emory U niversity and a former strong admirer of Carter, who had been asked to be part of an academic group meant to advise the former president and the Carter Center on how to respond to criticism of the book, declined the invitation after reading the book, saying, “I cannot find any way to read this sentence that does not condone the murder of Jews until such time as Israel unilaterally follows President Carter’s prescription for peace. The sentence, simply put, makes President Carter an apologist for terrorists and places my children, along with all Jews everywhere, in greater danger” (New York Post, January 15, 2007).
Other comments by Melvin Konner on the Carter book:
- “I don’t recognize Carter any more. I am afraid of him now, for myself and for my children. He has not just turned his back on the balance and fairness that all peacemaking depends on. He has become a spokesman for the enemies of my people. He has become an apologist for terrorists” (Atlanta Journal Constitution, December 22, 2006).
- “Carter calls the Hamas leaders men of peace, a claim that flies in the face of every known reality. He wants Israel to back down unilaterally, to believe the promises of people who are its sworn enemy” (Atlanta Journal Constitution, December 22, 2006).
- Offended at “repeated public insinuations that the Jews control the media and the Congress – well-worn anti-Semitic slurs that, especially coming from President Carter, present a clear and present danger to American Jews” ( New York Post, January 15, 2007).
- “I have read with shock and sadness Carter’s biased, harmful book ’ Palestine: Peace not Apartheid.’ I have watched as Carter was interviewed in the media. He told CNN’s Larry King that President Bill Clinton and envoy Dennis Ross were misrepresenting their peace efforts in 2000, insisting that only he knew the truth, even though they were there and he was not” (Atlanta Journal Constitution, December 22, 2006).
In trying to understand at least part of Jimmy Carter’s hatred towards Israel and Jews and sympathy for Arabs, Rachel Ehrenfeld, the Director of the American Center for Democracy and a scholar specializing in the financing of terrorism , has pointed out that “a quick survey of the major contributors to the Carter Center reveals hundreds of millions of dollars from Saudi and Gulf contributors.” Jimmy Carter himself was the recipient of a loan to save his failing peanut farm which was renegotiated to his advantage by the Saudi Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), a bank whose founder, Agha Hasan Abedi, started it on the basis that it was “the best bridge to help the world of Islam, and the best way to fight the evil influence of the Zionists.”
It was BCCI which acquired the bank that originally lent Carter the money and which later became a major contributor to the Carter Library and Center. B y the time BCCI was shut down in July 1991, it operated in 73 countries with a deficit of $12 billion, which it had managed to hide with wealthy Arab shareholders and Western luminaries, including Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan of Abu Dhabi, who gave hundreds of millions of dollars to Yasser Arafat and Palestinian terrorist groups, and who branded the United States “our enemy number one” (Washington Times, December 21, 2006).
This troubling sympathy for enemies of Jews is not something new for Carter. Neal Sher, the former Director of the Office of Special Investigations, which is charged with identifying and prosecuting Nazi war criminals living in the U.S., has now produced a hand-written note he received from former President Carter in 1987 asking him to give “special consideration” for “humanitarian” purposes in a case involving the deportation of a former SS guard responsible for deaths of Jews at the Austrian concentration camp of Mauthausen. Sher says that “I never corresponded back. I kept a copy, but it always stuck in my throat. Why would he do this? I chalked it up to some misguided humanitarian gesture. And when I saw his book coming out, and the things he was saying, I was astounded. I said, ‘This is part of a pattern’ (Shalom TV, January 12, 2007).
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “This is a matter that goes beyond offensive views or distortions or falsehoods in President Carter’s book. Here is a former U.S. president condoning the on-going murder of Israeli Jews by Palestinian Arab terrorists. The resignation of 14 Carter Center board members and the devastating criticism of Carter and his book by Melvin Konner simply show that the bias and malice that drives Jimmy Carter is obvious even to people who once greatly admired him and served proudly on the board of the Carter Center. It is noteworthy that the liberal national group of Reform rabbis, the Central Conference of Reform Rabbis, has cancelled their plan to visit the Carter Center during their upcoming convention in Atlanta.
“Carter’s book will not surprise people who are already aware of his animus against Israel which has been confirmed from many reliable quarters. His Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, once revealed that if Carter had won a second term, he intended to sell Israel down the river. In The Unfinished Presidency, Douglas Brinkley wrote, ‘There was no world leader Jimmy Carter was more eager to know than Yasir Arafat,’ whom he befriended already in 1990, three years before Arafat supposedly accepted Israel’s right to exist and signed the Oslo Accords. But then what would you expect from someone who won a prize from Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates whose Zayed Center for Coordination and Follow-Up has promoted Holocaust denial?
“Now that Carter has explicitly condoned the murder of Israelis by Palestinian Arab terrorists, he should be shunned by universities, organizations, media, synagogues and churches and not granted any sort of platform to peddle his lies and hate propaganda. We also urge Brandeis University, where a group of professors and students have invited President Carter to speak on Tuesday, January 23 at 4.00 PM at the Shapiro Gymnasium inside the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center, to rescind the invitation. It would be grotesque if an honored university under Jewish auspices, of all places, now gives a platform to Jimmy Carter and helps legitimize his pro-violence and pro-terror views. We urge students and faculty at Brandeis to hold protests and demonstrations if the Jimmy Carter event actually proceeds.
“Former President Jimmy Carter, despite his Nobel Peace Prize credential, has become nothing less than a proponent and apologist for Arab terrorism and a danger to our country and the Western world at large.”