[WCUSP] JCRC knocks Carter after he decries Israeli 'apartheid' again

[KATHARLOW at aol.com]

Whatever one thinks of Jimmy Carter's full position, there's no question  
that he's having a positive effect - opening people's eyes to the fact that  
Israel and apartheid are unquestionably linked, and that there are greater  
possibilities to broaden the Palestinian struggle well behind the confines in  which 
it has narrowly existed.

_http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/32447/forma
t/html/displaystory.html_ 
(http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/32447/format/html/displaystory.html) 

Friday May 11, 2007 
JCRC knocks Carter after he  decries Israeli ‘apartheid’ again 
by joe eskenazi
staff writer
J  Magazine
President Jimmy Carter very nearly committed a faux pas last week equivalent  
to showing up at a Board of Rabbis meeting outfitted in a coat made of pork. 
He  arrived for a speech at U.C. Berkeley wearing a red tie.  
That’s Stanford’s color.  
An alert student handed the author of “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” an  
aggressively blue and gold striped cravat. But even that may not have made much 
 of a difference. Judging by the worshipful response from the 
full-to-the-rafters  Zellerbach Theatre crowd, Carter’s controversial vision of what Israel 
must do  to achieve Mideast peace was reaching fertile ground — red tie or blue 
tie.  
Members of the organized Jewish community and student pro-Israel activists,  
however, were not so welcoming. But no one interrupted Carter’s unrepentant 
use  of terms such as “apartheid” and “colonization” during his May 2 speech 
as he  described Israel’s activities in the West Bank.  
Rabbi Doug Kahn, a U.C. Berkeley alum, did not have a good day. “I found the  
speech to be propagandistic and far more of an Israel-bashing presentation 
than  I expected,” said the executive director of the S.F.-based Jewish 
Community  Relations Council.  
“He made only the most passing of references to Palestinian terror. This is  
the man who brokered peace between Israel and Egypt, and he [never mentioned]  
the number of times Israel has tried to trade land for peace and the number 
of  times Palestinian leadership has rejected those offers.”  
As for his use of the word apartheid once again, Carter didn’t waver. “I  can
’t think of any word that more accurately describes [the plight] of the  
Palestinians,” the 39th president of the United States told Orville Schell, dean  
of U.C. Berkeley’s graduate school of journalism during a question and answer  
session following his speech.  
“Apartheid is defined in the dictionary as two people living in the same land 
 forcibly segregated from one another with one of the people completely  
dominating and persecuting the other. And that is an accurate description of  what 
is going on in Palestine. And I can’t deny the other reason I used that  
title was that it’s provocative. I think if I’d written ‘A New Idea for Mideast  
Peace’ I doubt I’d be here.”  
Prior to Carter’s appearance, a contingent of Hillel students and other  
Israel supporters waved Israeli flags and handed out literature, while leftist  
Jews bearing pro-Carter signs walked through Lower Sproul Plaza. It was a small  
demonstration by Cal standards; almost as many people gathered nearby to 
watch  the Men’s Octet sing doo-wop numbers.  
Carter’s position on the Middle East has continually been disavowed by  
Democratic leaders, and, by speaking on the U.C. Berkley campus, he appears to  
have clashed with them once again: A flier handed out by members of the  janitor’
s union calling for speakers to boycott campus appearances carried  
endorsements of that stance from presidential candidates Barack Obama and John  Edwards. 
 
During his speech, Carter emphasized that “apartheid” is not taking place in 
 Israel proper but only in the territories.  
Not all Jews disagreed with him. Matthew Taylor, a Berkeley senior and member 
 of Jewish Voice for Peace, claimed “what Carter says is hard to hear but 
true.  It’s hard for me to say this as a Jew, but apartheid [exists] in the 
occupied  territories.”  
Carter — invited to the U.C. Berkeley campus to be awarded the Berkeley Prize 
 by student leaders Ali Ansary and Aidan Ali-Sullivan — opened his address by 
 noting that it would not be a political speech.  
And yet, not a minute later, he told the crowd, “If the candidates for  
congress and the presidency won’t take this pledge, don’t support them. Let me  
read you the pledge: ‘If elected, I will do everything possible to promote  
balanced negotiations to achieve peace and security in Israel and a secure and  
contiguous state for the Palestinians.’ If they won’t make you that pledge,  don
’t support them.” That won him a round of raucous applause.  
Carter described conditions in the West Bank and Gaza as unlivable: Israeli  
roads, like “spider webs” crisscrossed the region, but Palestinians are not  
allowed to traverse them. Checkpoints and walls have created an outdoor jail.  
Heavily subsidized settlers “confiscate farmland” and water sources.  
He blamed the festering situation for inspiring terror against Israel and  
hatred of the United States; he believes an Israeli withdrawal from the West  
Bank will result in a vast reduction in terror attacks.  
And, in order to achieve peace, “America must not be seen as in the pocket of 
 either side … We cannot be peacemakers if American lawmakers are seen as  
knee-jerk supporters of whatever Israeli government happens to be in power at  
the moment. This essential fact must be faced and this country has not faced 
it.  
“Go see if I’m exaggerating,” he said. “I’d like to think I haven’t.”  
Maybe, maybe not. But, according to Yitzhak Santis, director of Middle  
Eastern Affairs at the JCRC, Carter has, unfortunately, taken the word  “apartheid”
 away from the bullhorn-and-kaffiyeh anti-Israel crowd and made it a  decent 
and respectable thing for so-called mainstream people to  say.




************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wilpf.org/pipermail/wcusp_wilpf.org/attachments/20070510/af2cec0b/attachment.html