Carter’s Critics Warp the Debate He Hoped to Create (Zogby)

[UndertheOcean]

Posted on Monday January 22, 2007

Former US president Jimmy Carter has written a little book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – a little book that has created a big storm.

In describing his effort, Carter noted that he set out to accomplish two major objectives: to collect his personal reminiscences and observations based on his early years as a peace negotiator and later as an observer of three Palestinian elections and also to provoke a debate within the US about the issues that must be addressed for there to be a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace.

~SNIP~

Knowing the typology of the West Bank and seeing, first hand, the impact of the wall on Palestinian daily life, Carter makes clear that if Israel persists with its current plan, the result will be akin to establishing a non-viable Palestinian Bantustan or worse. It will be like a reservation in which Palestinians are locked into poverty, despair and anger, denied the freedom to grow their economy and even travel easily from place to place.

This is what which Carter aptly refers to as apartheid.

If Carter’s depiction of the logical end of Israel’s policies has irked his critics, what caused outrage, is his observation that Israel’s policies cannot be freely debated in the US. And here, and in the way they have vented their anger, Carter’s critics have only served to make his point.

~SNIP~

What emerges from all of this is the sad and inescapable reality that just as Israel demands peace on its terms, defining its non-negotiable “red-lines” and declaring everything else off-limits, it appears that its supporters follow suit, only tolerating political discussion of the conflict on terms they deem acceptable.



http://www.aaiusa.org/washington-watch/2730/carters-critics-warp-the-debate-he-hoped-to-create

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

1. "...it's (Israel's) supporters follow suit...

...only tolerating political discussion of the conflict on terms they deem acceptable."

You better sit down, UndertheOcean, I'm afraid this is gonna come as quite a shocker and I hate to be the one to break it to you, but I guess you might as well know, there are actually political discussion/message boards on the web that engage in this very practice.

[Shaktimaan]

2. I like the part about how

Carter's critics warp the debate he hoped to create.

This article makes the point that Carter's critics sought to silence discussion and isolate Carter. The fact that people and organizations have denounced his findings and the language he chose to use is not an example of "silencing discussion." It IS the discussion! Far from trying to silence and isolate Carter, his critics have engaged in a lively critique of his book, invited him to speak and defend his premises and in the case of Dershowitz, invited him to participate in a debate over the content of the book.

What does "only tolerating political discussion of the conflict on terms they deem acceptable" mean? How has anyone refused to tolerate this political discussion? If anything, it looks like Israel's supporters have risen to the occasion and are having a field day of a political discussion over the book. What has anyone deemed off-limits? They are questioning the facts Carter cites, his motives, his accuracy and his impartiality. Does this organization think that people vocally disagreeing with Carter's assessment is the equivalent of silencing him?

This article states that the reaction to Carter's book proves that a debate over Israel's policies is not going to happen anytime soon in America. I say the reaction proves the opposite. The debate is going on right now. People are coming out both for and against the book's content. The fact that his book did not debut to universal acceptance without any negative reaction is not evidence that his critics have special terms for discussing the conflict. It means they disagree with him.

If anyone is guilty of "isolating Carter from the mainstream of political discourse" it would not be his critics, but Carter himself.

[UndertheOcean]

3. So you agree that there is a "mainstream of political discourse" regarding Israel in the USA .

And anyone who flows against the "mainstream" is ridiculed.

Carter is actually very mainstream , even centrist , when what he wrote is compared to Israeli and European press discourse.