Carter attacked for linking "Israel" and `apartheid`

Source: AFP, 16-12-2006
WASHINGTON: Former US President Jimmy Carter has met with a storm of criticism in the United States over his latest book, which uses the word "apartheid" in describing the "Israeli"-Palestinian conflict. The book, "Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid," has raised a furor among Jewish (Zionist) groups who accuse the architect of the 1979 Arab-"Israeli" peace treaty and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize of racism and anti-Semitism.
One of Carter`s former colleagues, Kenneth Stein, has resigned as a fellow of the Carter Center, a human-rights organization, citing errors in the book, and former US Middle East envoy Dennis Ross has accused the former president of copying maps from one of his books without proper attribution.
Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, meanwhile, charged in a widely published editorial that Carter`s book was "indecent" and error-filled.
In the book, which has shot up to number seven on the New York Times bestseller list, Carter criticizes the Palestinians, "Israelis" and the United States for failing to move the peace process forward. "Israel", however, comes under stinging criticism for implementing policies in the Palestinian territories linked in the book title to South Africa during apartheid.
Carter has defended his book as an attempt to provoke a debate in the United States, where he says "there is reluctance to criticize any policies of the "Israeli" government" because of the powerful pro-"Israel" lobby group AIPAC and the absence of any significant contrary voices.
"I wanted to stimulate a debate on this issue because we don`t have a real national debate on this in the US," he said in an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times. "I have made it clear that the motivation is not racism but the desire of a minority of "Israelis" to confiscate and colonize choice sites in Palestine."
He added that the separation wall "Israel" is building in the West Bank "in many ways is more oppressive than what blacks lived under in South Africa during apartheid."
Carter charged that it would be almost "politically suicidal" for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position on the "Israeli"-Palestinian conflict.
Even before the book came out, Representative Nancy Pelosi, soon to be speaker of the House, distanced herself from Carter, saying he does not speak for the Democratic Party.
James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute in Washington, said it was "shameful" that Carter was being pilloried for trying to prompt a discussion on a critical issue.