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Friday January 19, 2007

Jews quit Carter Center board

by ben harris
jta

new york | Fourteen Jewish members of the Carter Center’s board of councilors have resigned to protest the former president’s new book blaming Israel for the failure of Middle East peace efforts.

In a letter to President Carter obtained by JTA, the group wrote that the former president had abandoned his role as a peace broker in favor of malicious partisan advocacy, portraying the complex Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a “purely one-sided affair” which Israel bears full responsibility for resolving.

The letter also cites a “disturbing” passage from Carter’s book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” which appears to call for Palestinians to end acts of terrorism only if Israel abides by its obligations under international law and under the “road map,” a peace plan guided by the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia. The passage appears to condone violence against Israelis, the signatories said.

Among those resigning were a number of prominent members of the Jewish community in Atlanta, where the center is located.

Hours later, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the umbrella organization of Reform rabbis, announced it was canceling a visit to the Carter Center planned to coincide with its March convention in Atlanta.

The mass resignation adds to the firestorm of criticism that has engulfed the center since the publication of Carter’s book. Critics have blasted the book as biased, inaccurate, misleading and missing key historical facts.

On Jan. 11, the Associated Press reported that Carter had agreed to defend his book at Brandeis University, though he will not debate Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz as originally proposed.

Dershowitz said he would attend anyway and would be among the first to raise his hand to question Carter.

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