Whose Agenda?
I recall, so many years ago, upon hearing that a born-again Christian was elected president of the United States how aghast I felt, how unbelieving I was that the great population of the United States of America could somehow see a leader in anyone who billed themselves as a "born again". Of course I felt great distaste for the appellation, and actually knew very little about what that signified (nor am I more enlightened now) other than someone who might perforce be confusedly Christ-ridden, looking for personal salvation, whatever that meant.
And how could someone who was so confused about their Christianity that they would have to undergo a process of re-imagining themselves and their place in the firmament of god and his emissaries, conceivably be the chief administrative officer of a country of some 240 million strong? And what did this possibly say about the group intelligence of all those people, let alone their expectations. Stranger things have happened, I likely thought to myself at the time. Great wisdom is allotted sparingly.
Well, it didn't take all that long for me to re-adjust my opinion. I became, in a sense, born-again in opinion. I realized that this appeared to be a good man, with a great social vision, sense of duty and purpose and above all, his honesty rang true and who could possibly find fault with all of that? His later years out of office just seemed to clarify that born-again vision of him with his association with the wonderfully practical yet idealistic Habitat for Humanity. I thought highly of what I identified as his humbleness, his humility, his humanitarian idealism.
When I was in Atlanta I visited the Ebeneezer Baptist Church where Martin Luther King preached on occasion. I also visited the Martin Luther King memorial building, viewed a film of the great man orating his passionate belief in equality and felt my chest throb in response. I walked through the exhibits and stopped before one group of photographs of Mr. King logging his mission in life. Somehow, I began to relate the Reverend Mr. King with Mr. Carter in their purity of mission in life.
In another museum, don't recall which one, but dedicated as I recall, to various presidents of the United States, I came across a display related to then-President Carter's initiative striving to attain a peaceful settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. This was the legendary, Nobel-Peace-prize-winning initiative to have former implacable enemies, Israeli Prime Minister Menacham Begin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat agree to begin implementing a peace accord.
Former President Carter went on, after his disastrous failure as a president, in view of his inability to move forward post-Iranian revolution when the Ayatollah Homenei and his Islamic storm troopers invaded the American Embassy in Tehran, holding hostage U.S. embassy personnel to assert American outrage over the intolerable Islamic flaunting of universally-recognized safety and security normally accorded to international diplomatic missions abroad.
He lost the already tentative trust of the American public and lost the presidency in the next election. He continued finding his own place in the world of politics and human rights at home and abroad, by founding the Carter Centre for Conflict Resolution, and lending the aura of a former president of the United States, along with his avowed commitment to the advancement of human rights wherever he could to this enterprise. By so doing, the man finally earned great respect at home and abroad.
The recent much-publicized publication of his latest book, a tract on the failure of the State of Israel to solve its ongoing dilemma with the needs of the state and its population versus that of the Palestinian people living alongside the Jewish state, gives one pause for second, third and fourth thought. In an interview on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Mr. Carter asserted his feeling that a handful of powerful Israeli interest were responsible, through land-greed, of prolonging the war of words and deeds inimical to both sides of the issue.
His opinion appears fairly cut-and-dried, he delivers his statements of condemnation against the State of Israel with great confidence, displaying the manner of one who professes to offer the truth, the sole truth. He has become smugly sanctimonious, the righteous Christian in his insistence that his direct observations of the intolerable plight of the Palestinian population is the direct result of Israeli intolerance, a refusal to recognize the Palestinians as equals.
In a television interview in Canada, where he is flogging his book, Mr. Carter responded to a question put to him by indicating that the Canadian government - by imposing sanctions against the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, withholding the funds normally allocated by it to the PA - is behaving in a criminally offensive manner. Mr. Carter appears to believe that Hamas, identified as a terrorist organization by most western countries because of its implacable Islamist jihadist attitude toward Israel, should be accorded the respect due any democratically elected government.
Mr. Carter addresses himself to the fact of Israel facing ongoing assaults by her neighbours by agreeing that Israel has a right to protect itself and its citizens. However, he adds, Israel goes much beyond what is acceptable in her response to assaults, and this is his considered opinion, an immovable opinion, based on his experience in conflict situations and his direct observations on the constricted life of Palestinians.
Nowhere does he appear to address the issue of a state that has been assaulted militarily by neighbouring states time and time again. Nor does he appear to give much consideration to the ongoing fact that Israel finds itself without a reasonably-minded, fair representative of the PA, imbued with authority and committed to the peace process, willing to meet Israel half-way, to accept concessions from Israel and offer some in response for the purpose of ultimately reaching a workable accord.
Mr. Carter's just-released book, "Palestine - Peace Not Apartheid" has received shocked attention and poor reviews for its inflamatory title equating the State of Israel with that of Apartheid South Africa. Let alone its content which directs blame one-sidedly at Israel, decrying the condition of the Palestinians, without seeming to look at historical, territorial, cultural and religious antecedents and motivations all of which complicate a truly troubling and seemingly-insolvable problem.
The co-author with former President Carter of a previous book about the Middle East, Professor Kenneth Stein, has resigned from Mr. Carter's Atlanta-based Carter Centre, effectively ending a 23-year association with the institute. Professor Stein, apart from his 10-year stint as director of the institute, teaches MidEast history at Emory University, and is diretor of Emory University's Middle East Research Program and its Institute for the Study of Modern Israel. Clearly, well endowed with professional integrity and knowledge about the region and its ongoing divisive problems.
As a reason for his resignation Professor Stein cites many instances of Mr. Carter having "simply invented segments" in the publication, that the book "is replete with factual errors", and that the book's content and conclusions are completely inflammatory in nature, not at all helpful, it would appear, to the resolution of any conflict in opinion, outreach and conclusion. Furthermore, Mr. Carter is also accused of plagiarism, Professor Stein charging that the book is "replete with...copied materials not cited".
It is profoundly sad and disappointing that Mr. Carter would choose to end a long and meritorious career in championing human rights in this manner. We would have expected better of a man of his perceived integrity and honesty; two ingredients which now appear to be missing from this unbalanced, biased publication.
And how could someone who was so confused about their Christianity that they would have to undergo a process of re-imagining themselves and their place in the firmament of god and his emissaries, conceivably be the chief administrative officer of a country of some 240 million strong? And what did this possibly say about the group intelligence of all those people, let alone their expectations. Stranger things have happened, I likely thought to myself at the time. Great wisdom is allotted sparingly.
Well, it didn't take all that long for me to re-adjust my opinion. I became, in a sense, born-again in opinion. I realized that this appeared to be a good man, with a great social vision, sense of duty and purpose and above all, his honesty rang true and who could possibly find fault with all of that? His later years out of office just seemed to clarify that born-again vision of him with his association with the wonderfully practical yet idealistic Habitat for Humanity. I thought highly of what I identified as his humbleness, his humility, his humanitarian idealism.
When I was in Atlanta I visited the Ebeneezer Baptist Church where Martin Luther King preached on occasion. I also visited the Martin Luther King memorial building, viewed a film of the great man orating his passionate belief in equality and felt my chest throb in response. I walked through the exhibits and stopped before one group of photographs of Mr. King logging his mission in life. Somehow, I began to relate the Reverend Mr. King with Mr. Carter in their purity of mission in life.
In another museum, don't recall which one, but dedicated as I recall, to various presidents of the United States, I came across a display related to then-President Carter's initiative striving to attain a peaceful settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. This was the legendary, Nobel-Peace-prize-winning initiative to have former implacable enemies, Israeli Prime Minister Menacham Begin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat agree to begin implementing a peace accord.
Former President Carter went on, after his disastrous failure as a president, in view of his inability to move forward post-Iranian revolution when the Ayatollah Homenei and his Islamic storm troopers invaded the American Embassy in Tehran, holding hostage U.S. embassy personnel to assert American outrage over the intolerable Islamic flaunting of universally-recognized safety and security normally accorded to international diplomatic missions abroad.
He lost the already tentative trust of the American public and lost the presidency in the next election. He continued finding his own place in the world of politics and human rights at home and abroad, by founding the Carter Centre for Conflict Resolution, and lending the aura of a former president of the United States, along with his avowed commitment to the advancement of human rights wherever he could to this enterprise. By so doing, the man finally earned great respect at home and abroad.
The recent much-publicized publication of his latest book, a tract on the failure of the State of Israel to solve its ongoing dilemma with the needs of the state and its population versus that of the Palestinian people living alongside the Jewish state, gives one pause for second, third and fourth thought. In an interview on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Mr. Carter asserted his feeling that a handful of powerful Israeli interest were responsible, through land-greed, of prolonging the war of words and deeds inimical to both sides of the issue.
His opinion appears fairly cut-and-dried, he delivers his statements of condemnation against the State of Israel with great confidence, displaying the manner of one who professes to offer the truth, the sole truth. He has become smugly sanctimonious, the righteous Christian in his insistence that his direct observations of the intolerable plight of the Palestinian population is the direct result of Israeli intolerance, a refusal to recognize the Palestinians as equals.
In a television interview in Canada, where he is flogging his book, Mr. Carter responded to a question put to him by indicating that the Canadian government - by imposing sanctions against the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, withholding the funds normally allocated by it to the PA - is behaving in a criminally offensive manner. Mr. Carter appears to believe that Hamas, identified as a terrorist organization by most western countries because of its implacable Islamist jihadist attitude toward Israel, should be accorded the respect due any democratically elected government.
Mr. Carter addresses himself to the fact of Israel facing ongoing assaults by her neighbours by agreeing that Israel has a right to protect itself and its citizens. However, he adds, Israel goes much beyond what is acceptable in her response to assaults, and this is his considered opinion, an immovable opinion, based on his experience in conflict situations and his direct observations on the constricted life of Palestinians.
Nowhere does he appear to address the issue of a state that has been assaulted militarily by neighbouring states time and time again. Nor does he appear to give much consideration to the ongoing fact that Israel finds itself without a reasonably-minded, fair representative of the PA, imbued with authority and committed to the peace process, willing to meet Israel half-way, to accept concessions from Israel and offer some in response for the purpose of ultimately reaching a workable accord.
Mr. Carter's just-released book, "Palestine - Peace Not Apartheid" has received shocked attention and poor reviews for its inflamatory title equating the State of Israel with that of Apartheid South Africa. Let alone its content which directs blame one-sidedly at Israel, decrying the condition of the Palestinians, without seeming to look at historical, territorial, cultural and religious antecedents and motivations all of which complicate a truly troubling and seemingly-insolvable problem.
The co-author with former President Carter of a previous book about the Middle East, Professor Kenneth Stein, has resigned from Mr. Carter's Atlanta-based Carter Centre, effectively ending a 23-year association with the institute. Professor Stein, apart from his 10-year stint as director of the institute, teaches MidEast history at Emory University, and is diretor of Emory University's Middle East Research Program and its Institute for the Study of Modern Israel. Clearly, well endowed with professional integrity and knowledge about the region and its ongoing divisive problems.
As a reason for his resignation Professor Stein cites many instances of Mr. Carter having "simply invented segments" in the publication, that the book "is replete with factual errors", and that the book's content and conclusions are completely inflammatory in nature, not at all helpful, it would appear, to the resolution of any conflict in opinion, outreach and conclusion. Furthermore, Mr. Carter is also accused of plagiarism, Professor Stein charging that the book is "replete with...copied materials not cited".
It is profoundly sad and disappointing that Mr. Carter would choose to end a long and meritorious career in championing human rights in this manner. We would have expected better of a man of his perceived integrity and honesty; two ingredients which now appear to be missing from this unbalanced, biased publication.
posted by Pieface | 6:13 PM
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