Jimmy Carter vs. the People of the Book

Jimmy won’t debate him, so Alan Dershowitz goes on the attack:

Listen carefully to what Carter says about the media: the plight of the Palestinians is “not something that has been acknowledged or even discussed in this country.” …

He then goes on to say that the only reason his book–which has been universally savaged by reviewers–is receiving such negative reviews is because they are all being written by “representatives of Jewish organizations” (demonstrably false!).  So much for the media.

Now here is what he says about politicians:

“It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine, to suggest that Israel comply with international law or to speak in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians.” …

Each of these claims is demonstrably false, as I have shown in detail elsewhere. …

[T]he big story that the media and political figures in America have missed is how grievously they, themselves have been insulted and disrespected by our self-righteous former president.  Carter is lecturing The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, CNN, and the major networks about how they are incapable of reporting the news objectively because they are beholden to some Jewish cabal.  He is telling Pulitzer Prize winning writers such as Tom Friedman and Samatha Power that they did not deserve their prizes.  He is telling George Will that his reporting is controlled by his Jewish bosses (sound a little bit like Judith Regan?).  And he is denying that Anderson Cooper is capable of filing an honest report from the West Bank. 

As far as our legislators are concerned, he is accusing Barack Obama, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Patrick Leahy of being bought and paid for by the Israeli lobby. 

At the bottom, Carter is saying that no objective journalist or politician could actually believe that America’s support for Israel is based on moral and strategic considerations and not on their own financial self-interest.  Such a charge is so insulting to every honest legislator and journalist in this country that I am amazed that Carter has been let off the hook so easily. 

Dershowitz may be surprised. I certainly am not. It’s this same premise that’s at the foundation of Walt and Mearsheimer’s “Israel Lobby” paper too, as I have said before.

Back then, I quoted David Verbeeten’s detailed study of the power of AIPAC, which I urge anyone with an interest in this matter to read. He acknowledges the influence of AIPAC, but says that it’s the pro-Israel sympathies of the American people that drive politicians to allow that influence:

Groups such as AIPAC may not be able to determine executive policy, but they are at times able to constrain or modify it, especially through those institutions sensitive to the pulse of the American people—such as the U.S. Congress, which controls federal allocations. Knowing that for four decades, a plurality if not majority of Americans sympathized with Israel (Table 3), congressmen and senators are inclined to back the Jewish state.

Verbeeten elaborates on the American people’s natural sympathy for Israelis:

Support for Israel is the expression of an emotional and ideological attachment to the Jewish state on the part of diverse segments of the American people. It is a reflection of “a widespread fund of goodwill toward Israel that is not restricted to the Jewish community.”[30] In the words of scholar William Quandt:

The bond between the United States and Israel is unquestionably strengthened because of the congruence of values between the two nations. Americans can identify with Israel’s national style … in a way that has no parallel on the Arab side. Neither the ideal of the well-ordered Muslim community nor that of a modernizing autocracy evokes much sympathy among Americans. Consequently, a predisposition no doubt exists in American political culture that works to the advantage of the Israelis.[31]

This is what’s so pernicious about Jimmy Carter (and also the reason he will fail to gain converts to his cause). In a What’s the Matter with Kansas?-type attack, he is trying to persuade the American people that they’ve got the totally wrong idea about Israel.

Only, Carter is not only willing but eager to use the nastiest anti-Semitic canards to gain attention for his foul accusations, and he’s doing it with Saudi money, says Dershowitz:

It now turns out that the shoe is precisely on the other foot.  Recent disclosures prove that it is Carter who has been bought and paid for by anti-Israel Arab and Islamic money.

Journalist Jacob Laksin has documented the tens of millions of dollars that the Carter Center has accepted from Saudi Arabian royalty and assorted other Middle Eastern sultans, who, in return, Carter dutifully praised as peaceful and tolerant (no matter how despotic the regime). And these are only the confirmed, public donations. 

Judgment is coming for James Earl Carter, Jr., and I hope he gets his on earth.*** He will certainly have deserved it.

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*** I noted with the appropriate amount of Schadenfreude that Carter was totally marginalized during the Washington, D.C., part of the pomp and circumstance surrounding Gerald Ford’s death. Even Tom Brokaw got to speak at the National Cathedral, but not Jimmy Carter. He got to give a euolgy in Michigan, I hear. If there were cameras there, I’m not aware of it.