On the Consequences of Carter's Palestine

In The American Conservative, Philip Weiss looks at the political and cultural impact of Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace not Apartheid:

The conventional wisdom seemed to be that Carter had damaged himself [by writing the book], and badly.

But the fury has masked a quieter trend —nodding support for the president’s views across the country. The book still ranks sixth on the New York Times bestseller list three months after publication, and Carter has taken on a moral halo among progressives and realists, the shotgun marriage of the Bush years. Film director Jonathan Demme, who mainstreamed gay rights with “Philadelphia,” is making a documentary on the book tour. “NBC Nightly News” featured the former president breaking down in tears on a panel at the Carter Center when relating a story of praying to God to give him strength before he confronted Anwar Sadat at Camp David in 1978, when Carter forged an historic peace accord between Israel and Egypt.

“I think the attacks in some ways have made the book more effective,” says Michael Brown, a fellow at the Palestine Center. “It’s extraordinary, but when people oppose a book or a movie, and make a big fuss out of it, most Americans will say, ‘I want to know what this is about.’”

Some of the fury hides an old-fashioned power struggle. For the first time since the State of Israel was created in 1948, a prominent American politician has publicly taken up the cause of the Arabs, describing Israel’s practices as oppressive. Such voices are common in Europe and in Israel itself. But they are uncommon here, where staunchly Zionist voices routinely assert that Israeli and American interests are identical, a view uniformly reflected in our politics and policies. The Carter groundswell seems to represent a real political threat to that claim. A recent batch of letters to the Houston Chronicle ran three-to-one in Carter’s favor. “Can’t Israel defend itself without subjecting all Palestinians in the occupied territories to such shameful conditions?” one asked. “Nothing justifies treating an entire group of people as if they were second-class human beings.”

Comments

[Simply Delicious]

I'm voting Jimmy Carter for president in 2008, who's with me?

[JonJ]

"The Carter groundswell seems to represent a real political threat to that claim."

Let's hope so. To evaluate the truth value of this statement, we first need to come up with a method for measuring the degrees of reality of political threats.

[fred lapides]

Plain stupid! The piece tells us how the book is doing well in its dales as though that makes it a worthwhile work. In fct nowhere does this post suggest that the book has been soundly condemned for its inaccuracies by those in a positionm to be aware of those inaccuracies. And yet because it is anti-Israel, we get comments here praising the author. Suggetion: read the book and then read those who point out the numerous errors in the book.Then applaud the author if you will. I like Carter but I think the book is nonsense.

[godzilla]

Carter speaks with tremendous moral authority, and his critique of Israel’s colonial efforts resonates with all who can see injustice when it rears its ugly head. The tragedy is the lack of support Carter has received from neoliberals or any candidate seeking the presidency in 2008.

Like the error of the neoliberal support for Bush's rush to war in '03, future recapitulation will be necessary for those would-be 'leaders' whose current calculated silence betrays a fundamental neglect of the left's ethical compass.

[wah]

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To evaluate the truth value of this statement, we first need to come up with a method for measuring the degrees of reality of political threats.
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Evaluate all you see and hear with an open, disinterested mind. One big sign...there was a rather lengthy (full page) editorial in USA Today a few weeks backs from a pastor who fully supported Carter's criticism. We are barely at the point where one can criticize Israel's policies and not be called an anti-semite. Progress takes time, particularly with such a touchy issue that has such powerful domestic support.

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In fct nowhere does this post suggest that the book has been soundly condemned for its inaccuracies by those in a positionm to be aware of those inaccuracies. And yet because it is anti-Israel, we get comments here praising the author.
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Most of the "factual" clarifications that I've seen regarding the book have a few things in common. 1) They come from staunch Zionists (the kind that claim "Palestine" never existed anyway, so what does it matter if it gets wiped of the map). 2) Tend to focus on minutiae that is disputed anyway and 3) Trend toward ad-hominem attacks on (that lying/liberal/communist) Carter, and not the statements themselves.

Much like your comment here that the book is "anti-Israel". It isn't, it is very much anti-some-of-the-things-Israel-has-done, but calling such things "anti-Israel" is inaccurate.