by alan dershowitz
I like Jimmy Carter. I have known him since he began his run for president in early 1976. I worked hard for his election, and I have admired the work of the Carter Center throughout the world. That’s why it troubles me so much that this decent man has written such an indecent book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
His bias against Israel shows by his selection of the book’s title: “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid.” The suggestion that without peace Israel is an apartheid state analogous to South Africa is simply wrong.
The basic evil of South African apartheid, against which I and so many other Jews fought, was the absolute control over a majority of blacks by a small minority of whites. It was the opposite of democracy.
In Israel, majority rules. It is a vibrant secular democracy. Arabs serve in the Knesset, on the Supreme Court and get to vote for their representatives, many of whom strongly oppose Israeli policies.
The reality is that other Arab and Muslim nations do practice apartheid. In Jordan, no Jew can be a citizen or own land. The same is true in Saudi Arabia, which has separate roads for Muslims and non-Muslims. In the Palestinian Authority, the increasing influence of Hamas threatens to create Islamic hegemony over non-Muslims. Arab Christians are leaving in droves.
Even Carter acknowledges — although he buries this toward the end of his book — that what is going on in Israel today “is unlike that in South Africa. It is not racism, but the acquisition of land.”
Israel’s motive for holding on to this land is the prevention of terrorism. It has repeatedly offered to exchange land for peace and did so in Gaza and southern Lebanon only to have the returned land used for terrorism, kidnappings and rocket launchings.
I don’t know why Carter, generally a careful man, allowed so many errors and omissions to blemish his book. Here are some of the most egregious.
• Carter emphasizes that “Christian and Muslim Arabs had continued to live in this same land since Roman times,” but ignores the fact that Jews have lived in Hebron, Jerusalem and other cities for even longer. Nor does he discuss the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab countries since 1948.
• Carter repeatedly claims that the Palestinians have long supported a two-state solution and the Israelis have always opposed it. He does not mention that in 1938 the Peel Commission proposed a two-state solution with Israel receiving a mere sliver of its ancient homeland and the Palestinians receiving the bulk of the land. It was accepted by the Jews and rejected by Palestinians.
• He claims that in 1967 Israel launched a pre-emptive attack against Jordan. The fact is that Jordan attacked Israel first, Israel tried to persuade Jordan to remain out of the war, and Israel counterattacked after the Jordanian army surrounded Jerusalem, firing missiles into the center of the city.
• Carter repeatedly mentions Security Council Resolution 242, which called for return of captured territories in exchange for peace, recognition and secure boundaries. He ignores the fact that Israel accepted it, and all the Arab nations and the Palestinians rejected it.
• Carter faults Israel for its “air strike that destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor” without mentioning that Iraq had threatened to attack Israel with nuclear weapons if it succeeded in building a bomb.
• Carter faults Israel for its administration of Christian and Muslim religious sites. In fact Israel is scrupulous about ensuring every religion the right to worship — consistent, of course, with security needs.
• Carter blames Israel and exonerates Arafat for the Palestinian refusal to accept statehood on 95 percent of the West Bank and all of Gaza pursuant to the Clinton-Barak offers of Camp David and Taba in 2000-‘01. He accepts the Palestinian revisionist history, rejects eyewitness accounts of President Clinton and Dennis Ross and ignores Saudi Prince Bandar’s accusation that Arafat’s rejection of the proposal was “a crime” and his account “not truthful.”
• Carter’s description of the Lebanon war is misleading, beginning with his assertion that Hezbollah “captured” two Israeli soldiers. They were kidnapped and have not been heard from since. The rocket attacks that preceded Israel’s invasion are largely ignored.
• Carter gives virtually no credit to Israel’s superb legal system, falsely asserting (without any citation) that “confessions extracted through torture are admissible in Israeli courts,” that prisoners are “executed,” and that “accusers” act “as judges.”
• Carter blames Israel for the “exodus of Christians from the Holy Land,” ignoring the Islamization of the area by Hamas and the comparable exodus of Christian Arabs from Lebanon as a result of the increasing influence of Hezbollah and repeated assassination of Christian leaders by Syria.
• Carter blames every American administration but his own for the Middle East stalemate.
I hope he will seriously consider addressing these omissions and mistakes. Carter begins his book tour soon and will have an opportunity to correct the record.
Alan Dershowitz is a Harvard Law School professor whose most recent book is “What Israel Means to Me.”
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California