Israel Matzav

Dhimmi's Indecent World

Harvard Professor and lawyer Alan Dershowitz did what needed to be done to Dhimmi Carter's new book in a New York Sun review yesterday: he tore it to shreds for being the one-sided piece of garbage that it is:

Sometimes you really can tell a book by its cover. President Jimmy Carter's decision to title his new anti-Israel screed "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" (Simon & Schuster, 288 pages, $27) tells it all. His use of the loaded word "apartheid," suggesting an analogy to the hated policies of South Africa, is especially outrageous, considering his acknowledgment buried near the end of his shallow and superficial book that what is going on in Israel today "is unlike that in South Africa—not racism, but the acquisition of land." Nor does he explain that Israel's motivation for holding on to land it captured in a defensive war is the prevention of terrorism. Israel has tried, on several occasions, to exchange land for peace, and what it got instead was terrorism, rockets, and kidnappings launched from the returned land.

In fact, Palestinian-Arab terrorism is virtually missing from Mr. Carter's entire historical account, which blames nearly everything on Israel and almost nothing on the Palestinians. Incredibly, he asserts that the initial violence in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict occurred when "Jewish militants" attacked Arabs in 1939. The long history of Palestinian terrorism against Jews — which began in 1929, when the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem ordered the slaughter of more than 100 rabbis, students, and non-Zionist Sephardim whose families had lived in Hebron and other ancient Jewish cities for millennia — was motivated by religious bigotry. The Jews responded to this racist violence by establishing a defense force. There is no mention of the long history of Palestinian terrorism before the occupation, or of the Munich massacre and others inspired byYasser Arafat. There is not even a reference to the Karine A, the boatful of terrorist weapons ordered by Arafat in January 2002.

Mr. Carter's book is so filled with simple mistakes of fact and deliberate omissions that were it a brief filed in a court of law, it would be struck and its author sanctioned for misleading the court. Mr. Carter too is guilty of misleading the court of public opinion. A mere listing of all of Mr. Carter's mistakes and omissions would fill a volume the size of his book.

Dershowitz goes through a lengthy list of misstatements, deceptions and out-and-out lies contained in Carter's book. None of which are all that surprising - they are consistent with the way Yasser Arafat would want the story told. Given this story at the end, it's not surprising either that Carter tells the story the way Arafat would want it told:

And it's not just the facts; it's the tone as well. It's obvious that Mr. Carter just doesn't like Israel or Israelis. He lectured Golda Meir on Israeli's "secular" nature, warning her that " Israel was punished whenever its leaders turned away from devout worship of God." He admits that he did not like Menachem Begin. He has little good to say about any Israelis — except those few who agree with him. But he apparently got along swimmingly with the very secular Syrian mass-murderer Hafez al-Assad. Mr. Carter and his wife Rosalynn also had a fine time with the equally secular Arafat — a man who has the blood of hundreds of Americans and Israelis on his hands:

Rosalynn and I met with Yasir Arafat in Gaza City, where he was staying with his wife, Suha, and their little daughter. The baby, dressed in a beautiful pink suit, came readily to sit on my lap, where I practiced the same wiles that had been successful with our children and grandchildren. A lot of photographs were taken, and then the photographers asked that Arafat hold his daughter for a while. When he took her, the child screamed loudly and reached out her hands to me, bringing jovial admonitions to the presidential candidate to stay at home enough to become acquainted with is own child.

There is something quite disturbing about these pictures.

Dershowitz ends off with the one paragraph in the entire review with which I must disagree:

"Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" is so biased that it inevitably raises the question of what would motivate a decent man like Jimmy Carter to write such an indecent book. Whatever Mr. Carter's motives may be, his authorship of this ahistorical, one-sided, and simplistic brief against Israel forever disqualifies him from playing any positive role in fairly resolving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. That is a tragedy because the Carter Center, which has done much good in the world, could have been a force for peace if Jimmy Carter were as generous in spirit to the Israelis as he is to the Palestinians.

And here I must disagree. Dhimmi Carter is not a 'decent man'. He is an old-style WASP anti-Semite, who would quietly sell Israel down the river while all the while trying to appear decent. For those who have forgotten, have a look at this interview with Der Spiegel during this summer's war in Lebanon:

I don't think that Israel has any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon. What happened is that Israel is holding almost 10,000 prisoners, so when the militants in Lebanon or in Gaza take one or two soldiers, Israel looks upon this as a justification for an attack on the civilian population of Lebanon and Gaza. I do not think that's justified, no. [Holy moral equivalence, Batman! Dhimmi is equating two Israeli soldiers who did nothing to anyone, and who were kidnapped at the border with the likes of Samir Kuntar, who by the way committed his crime while Dhimmi was sitting in the White House. CiJ]

In fact, this description of Rachel Corrie's parents (written by Kesher Talk) would probably fit Dhimmi as well):

Mr and Mrs Corrie are just about the WASPiest WASPs you ever saw. They are very polite and well-groomed and caring. They are the American Gothic of the appeasement movement. They sincerely believe that they are - as Mr Corrie said - fighting for "the human rights of Israelis as well as Palestinians" by sadly tut-tutting over anything Israel does to kill terrorists or keep them from killing Israelis. **** Perhaps you have seen videos of really nutty moonbats like Ward Churchill or Noam Chomsky. Folks, what I saw Tuesday night is the soft sell, and it's way more scary.

Dhimmi Carter is the soft seller of anti-Semitism. And he's way more scary - and effective - than the Mahmoud Ahamdinadinnerjacket's and Thuggo Chavez's of the world. He sounds authoritative rather than ranting. We must know how to answer him.

Read the whole thing.

P.S. There's a slightly different version of Dershowitz's review at The Huffington Post, a left-wing blog. These are the first few paragraphs (which are different than in the right-wing New York Sun) of the (still critical) left-wing version of the review:

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, which just today recognized gay marriages performed abroad. Arabs serve in the Knesset, on the Supreme Court and get to vote for their representatives, many of whom strongly oppose Israeli policies. Israel has repeatedly offered to end its occupation of areas it captured in a defensive war in exchange for peace and full recognition. The reality is that other Arab and Muslim nations do in fact 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. Even in the Palestinian authority, the increasing influence of Hamas threatens to create Islamic hegemony over non-Muslims. Arab Christians are leaving in droves.

With all due respect to Dershowitz, no wonder he thinks Dhimmi Carter is a 'decent man.' He also thinks that Israel's governance of Judea and Samaria is 'occupation.' The shoe fits....

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:46 AM