Review of Jimmy Carter Book on Israel

See this review of Jimmy Carter's book on Israel from the New York Review of Books.

Thank You Jimmy Carter

It takes someone with courage to criticize Israel. You will be branded an anti-Semite and get full page attacks in the New York Times. The NY Times book review of Jimmy Carter's book on Israel and the Palestinians didn't get quite that personal, but it was certainly defensive about Israel. Many of the criticisms of Carter's book have been somewhat nit-picky, but touted as if they meant that the whole thrust of his book was wrong. The NYT review followed that tack.

American Jews should welcome Carter's book, as well as the critique of the Jewish lobby by the two professors, because Israel is in danger of going off the deep end. It has serious international, domestic, and religious problems. It is perceived by many, with justification, as an evil state. It doesn't have to be, but it needs to make changes, just as America has to make changes. I worry that America's decision to embrace torture in Iraq, Guantanamo, and other places is built on the Israeli model.

Israelis and American Jews should be thanking Carter, rather than criticizing him, because if they don't make changes now, they will pay for it later.

International Jewry Attacks Carter for Palestine Book

A former director of the Carter Center, Kenneth Stein, has attacked former President Jimmy Carter's new book about Palestine, according to The New York Times. It sounds like Carter's book is critical of Israel, and therefore Israel will gin up its global propaganda machine to oppose it. I don't know, but Ken Stein sounds Jewish. On CNN or some news channel, I saw that he has also enlisted Dennis Ross, the State Department's old Middle East negotiator, who is definitely Jewish. They claim that Carter lifted maps from Ross' book. I could be, but I'm sure that if it is so, Carter did not do it deliberately. One of his researchers may have found the maps and thought they were in the public domain, which in fact they may be, depending on where they came from originally. The NYT article also carries criticisms from Alan Dershowitz, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center (surprise, surprise). Wouldn't it just be easier to run some kind of joint statement like, "Jews hate Jimmy Carter for his book on Palestine."