US Middle-East Expert Speaks Out for Nonviolence: Pres. Jimmy Carter

[m~dgray]

The 39th US President, Jimmy Carter, usually considered mild mannered, if not too soft on war, by both his advocates and critics, respectively, is being accused by Jewish anti-defamation leagues of being an "anti-Semite," due to his strongly outspoken opinions in his latest nonfiction book: Peace or Apartheid in Palestine by Jimmy Carter (2006).

I am a literary and cultural critic of every kind of supremacism, most especially religious supremacism, and what this text of Pres. Carter's is not is anti-Semitic. While readers may not agree with or like Carter's expert perspective of the history and future of Palestinian-Israel conflicts and peace, Carter is due credit for taking a stand that was bound to be as controversial as Galileo writing that the planets revolve around the sun! I believe his strongly stated mediating position has surprised those who viewed Pres. Carter as a wimp.

What his more scathing critics aren't appreciating about Pres. Carter's well experienced and studied knowledge of this primary Middle-East source of violence, is that he has a consistent older age history of being a man of nonviolence, a man of peace. It is flat out wrong to consider Jimmy Carter, of all Americans, a supremacist of any kind, let alone, a religious supremacist against Jewish people and Israel. What is unfortunate is that his well written opinions are an uncommon telling of one Middle East negotiator's truth about why there is no peace in the Middle East.

Because he's a key expert, a former US President, a Nobel Peace Prize winner on the topic, Jewish anti-defamation leagues are throwing tantrums because Carter dared to tell it like it is in his deliberately revolutionary text. I'm sorry that Jewish people and Israeli's are reading his text as anti-Semite, and feel for them, since Carter is speaking about Israel in a way that Israel is not used to hearing from any US President or key US diplomat in the Middle East.

Here's what they're having fits over Carter putting into print: “Israel’s continued control and colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land.” President Clinton has taken that position, as a mediator too, but not as directly as Carter has done now.

If I write here, I believe his statement is right on point, am I too an anti-Semite? Israel has domineered with violence. Israel has acted as a colonizer. Israel has acted supremacist towards Palestinians and like an imperialist empire exercising extreme power-over an oppressed people. Israel should know better since that's how they've been mistreated throughout history. Now they are the imperialists who do have the ultimate power to put a stop to the violence.

Here's another excerpt from Carter's insightful and refreshingly honest wide-visioned text: “The bottom line is this: Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law, with the road map for peace . . . .” Israel is the super power so to speak, (even if it cannot view itself that way, and is reacting in more fearful ways instead) with the moral obligation to lead the way to peace through negotiation that will create reconciliation between itself and Palestine. There is nothing anti-Semite about Carter or me voicing that truth.

Carter goes on to be self-critical of our own nation's complicity and cooperation with the Middle East violence: “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.”

It is not anti-Semite to speak a well known fact that the US media and government exercises pro-Israeli activities in everyday US social interactions that do influence individuals as well as US institutions. There is no balance in the projected US media's or government's actions and words.

We have much to learn from President Carter's mediating expertise in the Israeli-Palestinian crisis in this treasure trove of a text. kindly, m~d