'Courageous' book should spur objective discussion

You really need to get out more. Fourteen members of the leadership at the Carter Center just resigned recently, saying the book is full of lies and is too one-sided. These are people who have worked for and with Carter for years, saying in part that the book...

"portrays the conflict between Israel and her neighbors as a purely one-sided affair with Israel holding all the responsibility for resolving the conflict."

So even Carters friends and supporters say he's lost it. Carter's legacy has become a hollow shell of anti-Israel fervor that benefits no one, least of all the US.

"No American is better informed or has worked harder for peace in the Middle
East than Jimmy Carter. He has spent the past 30 years striving for peace."
Exactly right. Maybe he ought to go back to growing peanuts and stay out of the Middle East. His meddling in other parts of the world is telling also. How about North Korea and Iran?
Not exactly success stories for Carter
there either. No thanks, the less Carter does ousside of Georgia the better off the United States will be.

And bravo to the brave letter writer who dares step up to bat after Jimmy Carter's home run... to try to win the game !

However, just as Jimmy Carter only goes so far with his book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid so does anyone who only sees Israel's lobby today. Yeah it is great that political Zionism is FINALLY being noticed and questioned in part... but lets do this right and seriously look at the whole history of how modern Israel has been pushed into place right on top of Palestine.

An Israeli made apartheid is on BOTH sides of that monstrous land and rights grabbing wall and Israeli crimes against the people of Palestine are not confined to the illegally occupied territories.

Wake up and notice that one very racist Israel continues to destroy Palestinian homes and communities- continues to push more and more Palestinians into exile and despair. Israel also continues to ignore UN Resolution 194 from 1948 specifically spelling out the importance of respecting the Palestinian refugees right of return.

As Martin Luther King Jr once said " The time is always right to do what is right" : Let us seriously work on bringing real justice and true return to the many Palestinians who want to return to their original homes and lands to live in peace and hopeful prosperity.

We talk about the importance of dialogue now- but what about dialogue then. Isn't a huge part of the problem today simply the fact that Zionists used terror and bully tactics before, during and after the emergence of the (misnamed) Jewish State. And in fact they still use terror and bully tactics. Nothing has changed, so why must the conversation stop with the apartheid wall ?

Shouldn't we be questioning the wisdom of investing in "Israel" period !

In a recent article,"Muhammad's Sword", the Israeli scholar and peace activist, Uri Avnery says, "The treatment of other religions by Islam must be judged by a simple test: how did the Muslim rulers behave for more than a thousand years when they had the power to 'spread the faith by the sword'?"For many centuries, he says, the Muslims ruled Greece. "Did the Greeks become Muslims? Did anyone try to Islamise them? On the contrary, Christian Greeks held the highest positions in the Ottoman administration."The Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians and other European nations lived at one time or another under Ottoman rule and clung to their Christian faith. Nobody compelled them to become Muslims and all of them remained devoutly Christian." Then he points to a fact that when the Crusaders invaded Palestine, the majority had remained Christian in spite of 400 years of Muslim rule. Then "in the name of gentle Jesus", he says, the Crusaders "massacred its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants".He adds: "There is no evidence whatsoever of any attempt to impose Islam on Jews. As is well known, under Muslim rule, the Jews of Spain enjoyed a boom the like of which the Jews did not enjoy anywhere else until almost our time Mr. Avnery says, "In Muslim Spain, Jews were ministers, poets, and scientists" and "Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars worked together and translated ancient Greek philosophical and scientific texts. "How would this have been possible had the Prophet decreed the 'spreading of the faith by the sword'?" Then he refers to the re-conquest of Spain by Catholics and says: "The Jews and Muslims were presented with a cruel choice: to become Christians, to be massacred or to leave."Then he asks, "Where did the hundreds of thousands of Jews … escape? Almost all of them were received with open arms in the Muslim countries. The Jews settled all over the Muslim world, from Morocco … to Iraq, from Bulgaria (then part of the Ottoman empire)… to Sudan. Nowhere were they persecuted. They knew nothing like the tortures of the Inquisition … and the terrible mass expulsions that took place in almost all Christian countries up to the Holocaust."He asks, "Why?" and then he answers, "Because Islam expressly prohibited any persecution of 'peoples of the book'. In Islamic society, a special place was reserved for Jews and Christians …" Is this fascism?Then he says something touching: "Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for 50 generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many times 'by the word' to get them to abandon their faith". The story about "spreading the faith by the sword", he says "is an evil legend, one of the myths that grew up in Europe" during the many wars with Muslims.

The denial of the Holocaust is an extremely cruel and inhuman statement.

In fact, the Jewish ordeal began at the end of the 14th century when most of Europe started killing and expelling Jews and usurping their property. This ideology continued until the Holocaust.

At the time, Jews yearned to settle themselves in a safe land. This Promised Land was offered to them by the Islamic Ottomans, who welcomed the migrating Jews, protected them, granted them communal autonomy and tolerated their religious practices.

The Ottomans, in turn, benefited from economic activities of Jewish merchants, bankers, and doctors, as well as from the skills and technology they brought with them.

Muslims appreciate the fact that Jews played a significant role in speaking out against ethnic cleansing in Bosnia.

What will bring peace to the world is not a denial of the Holocaust but an interfaith dialogue among religions and a call for the supremacy of human rights and dignity.

Similarly, an open dialog initiated by President Carter's book should be welcomed by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike.

President Carter is an outstanding peace activist. Calling him an anti-Semite does not make him any less credible but leaves his accusers with no credibility.

Jay's comment about 14 members resigning is ridiculous. These board members only had an advisory role and played no significant role in the activities of the Carter Center. Then, what is 14 out of 200 board members? only 7 per cent. It is obvious that these 14 individuals were no friend of President Carter.

All that is needed to bring peace to Israel is for the Palestinians to stop attacking Israelis, and negotiate in good faith. Does anyone else remember the Camp David talks, where Israel offered the Palestinians virtually everything they had been asking for, yet Arafat turned it down and started the intifada?

Jimbo wrote:

All that is needed to bring peace to Israel is for the Palestinians to stop attacking Israelis, and negotiate in good faith. Does anyone else remember the Camp David talks, where Israel offered the Palestinians virtually everything they had been asking for, yet Arafat turned it down and started the intifada?

Congratulations, you fall in line with 99% of all other Americans who have no realistic idea of how Jews treat Palestians in the region. Stop believing what the media says. Carter speaks the truth. There are extremists on both sides, yet the Palestians are the only ones to be attacked in the media.

What is this guy McKinney smoking? I have been to Israel and I see very little effort from the Palestinians in making Israel the great nation that it has become. Jimmy Carter is not only the worst President our country ever had, but he is also the worst ex-President. The negative results of his work is for all to see.

Truth Seeker wrote:

<quoted text>
Congratulations, you fall in line with 99% of all other Americans who have no realistic idea of how Jews treat Palestians in the region. Stop believing what the media says. Carter speaks the truth. There are extremists on both sides, yet the Palestians are the only ones to be attacked in the media.

You didn' answer a very good question from Truthseeker. Why did Arafat turn down what the Palestinians claimed they wanted all along? It's a good thing actually that Arafat turned it down because the "extremists" would have only continued shelling civilian areas from closer range. When you hear of a Jew placing bombs on Palestinian school buses, let me know.