The ex-president was pilloried for his characterisation of the Palestinians’ plight but some say an apology is in order
Chris McGreal at The Guardian:
Jimmy Carter’s terminal illness reignited a bitter dispute over accusations the former president was antisemitic after he wrote a bestselling book likening the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories to South African apartheid. Prominent American supporters of Israel lined up to denounce Carter and the book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, when it was published in 2006. Abe Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, called the former president a “bigot”. Deborah Lipstadt, who is now the Biden administration’s special envoy against antisemitism, accused him of having a “Jewish problem”. Alan Dershowitz, the US constitutional lawyer and ardent advocate for Israel, said Carter set out to offend Israelis and Jews. “Jimmy Carter’s sensitivities seem to have a gaping hole when it comes to Jews. There is a term for that,” he wrote.
Others did not beat around the bush and called Carter an antisemite. Pro-Israel pressure groups placed ads in the New York Times accusing Carter of facilitating those who “pursue Israel’s annihilation” and claiming he was “blinded by an anti-Israel animus”. But nearly two decades later, the book looks prescient given that leading Israeli politicians and major human rights organisations now accuse Israel of imposing a form of apartheid on the Palestinians in breach of international laws. News that Carter had entered hospice care at the beginning of the year prompted calls for critics to apologise for the abuse, drawing an admission from at least one critic. Among those outraged by Carter’s book in 2006 were members of the former president’s own foundation, which has built an international reputation for its work on human rights and to alleviate suffering. Steve Berman led a mass resignation from the Carter Center’s board of councillors at the time. Earlier this year, Berman revealed that he later wrote to Carter to apologise and to say that the former president had been right. “I had started to view Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians as something that started in 1967 as an accident but was now becoming an enterprise with colonial intentions,” Berman said in his letter to Carter. Shortly before Carter’s death, Peter Beinart, described as “the most influential liberal Zionist of his generation”, said the time had come for the former president’s critics to apologise for the “shameful way that the book was received by many significant people”.
When the late Jimmy Carter released his Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid book in 2006, the book’s release drew a lot of controversy because it called out Israel’s occupation of Palestine and compared their situation to South Africa’s highly controversial and racist Apartheid policies aimed at non-Afrikaner South Africans, especially the Blacks.
Turns out that Carter was well ahead of his time in calling out Israel Apartheid before it became a mainstream issue in some parts of the left in the US.
