2008 Woodie Awards
Carter's new book gives prescription for Palestinian peace
Daniel Black
Issue date: 1/25/07 Section: Opinion
Another recurring claim from Carter's critics is that he attributes blame for the region's instability exclusively to the Israelis, a critique that is simply untrue. As a matter of convention, President Carter links the diminishing prospects for peace with those individuals who, through the employment of sectarian violence, routinely derail collective efforts to establish such a peace, and he notes that these activities are not specific to any religion or ethnicity but are observable in a small, fanatical portion of each.
Carter never espouses the use of violence taken by some Palestinians as a means of conflict resolution. Early in the book, in fact, Carter expresses in plain English that some Palestinians respond to Israeli occupation by attacking Israeli civilians, describing such behavior as "morally reprehensible and politically counterproductive" (pg. 15). He revisits, as necessary, this sort of criticality of the Palestinians throughout his book while apportioning similar criticism to Israeli politics and behavior with greater frequency, a style I did not find inappropriate considering how underrepresented the latter is in the literature that our culture is accustomed to seeing.
Implicit but clear, Carter's overarching conclusion from reviewing the historical record and assessing the present state of affairs is that baseless aggression, originating from sentiments reducible to mere hate, fear, intolerance, and ignorance, will deter efforts toward peace, independent of which side that aggression comes from, and it certainly comes from both. Carter deplores the inclusion of violence in any stratagem that aims for stability and identifies the process as inherently counterproductive, a standard that some Israeli sympathizers, it appears, find unpalatable when applied not strictly to the oppressed, but when applied to themselves, as well.
The final oft-heard shot against President Carter I will address is his highly publicized refusal to debate the Israel/Palestinian conflict with Alan Dershowitz. Considered by many to be a leading scholar and an authority on Israel's history and politics, Alan Dershowitz, a law professor of Harvard University, was Brandeis University's choice to debate Jimmy Carter after the president accepted an invitation to lecture there. Carter declined the offer to debate Dershowitz, expressing that he had no inclination to converse with a man who "knows nothing about the situation in Palestine". Although this chain of events has evoked varied analyses of Carter's motives and merits, I find it unfair to discount him solely because of whom he will and will not talk to. A man who insults the memory of a deceased holocaust survivor, accusing her of Nazi collaboration, simply because her son writes books exposing his plagiarism and scholarly misconduct is not a man I'd like to debate with either.
Carter never espouses the use of violence taken by some Palestinians as a means of conflict resolution. Early in the book, in fact, Carter expresses in plain English that some Palestinians respond to Israeli occupation by attacking Israeli civilians, describing such behavior as "morally reprehensible and politically counterproductive" (pg. 15). He revisits, as necessary, this sort of criticality of the Palestinians throughout his book while apportioning similar criticism to Israeli politics and behavior with greater frequency, a style I did not find inappropriate considering how underrepresented the latter is in the literature that our culture is accustomed to seeing.
Implicit but clear, Carter's overarching conclusion from reviewing the historical record and assessing the present state of affairs is that baseless aggression, originating from sentiments reducible to mere hate, fear, intolerance, and ignorance, will deter efforts toward peace, independent of which side that aggression comes from, and it certainly comes from both. Carter deplores the inclusion of violence in any stratagem that aims for stability and identifies the process as inherently counterproductive, a standard that some Israeli sympathizers, it appears, find unpalatable when applied not strictly to the oppressed, but when applied to themselves, as well.
The final oft-heard shot against President Carter I will address is his highly publicized refusal to debate the Israel/Palestinian conflict with Alan Dershowitz. Considered by many to be a leading scholar and an authority on Israel's history and politics, Alan Dershowitz, a law professor of Harvard University, was Brandeis University's choice to debate Jimmy Carter after the president accepted an invitation to lecture there. Carter declined the offer to debate Dershowitz, expressing that he had no inclination to converse with a man who "knows nothing about the situation in Palestine". Although this chain of events has evoked varied analyses of Carter's motives and merits, I find it unfair to discount him solely because of whom he will and will not talk to. A man who insults the memory of a deceased holocaust survivor, accusing her of Nazi collaboration, simply because her son writes books exposing his plagiarism and scholarly misconduct is not a man I'd like to debate with either.
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