Hedges is exactly right: there is an even better case against Israel than Carter presents in his book. But Carter is restrained from using it because the Israel lobby is so potent. What Carter does say is quickly and easily proven by reality so the lobby is merely spouting lies per the Bush example. Nancy Pelosi's worst fault is kowtowing to the big money potency of the Israel lobby. Most of the world's violence problems are created by the Bush/Olmert war criminal duo.

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President Carter got it right. The Palestinians, just like the Israelis, are entitled to their own homeland, territories, and statehood. People who fight for their own homeland have always been labeled as terrorists by the occupiers/invaders, but they will win in the end and be hailed as national heroes.

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I have so much admiration for Jimmy Carter and his dogged determination to speak out on the most difficult issues of the day. Let us not forget that he brokered a peace between Israel and Egypt against tremendous odds, so it's not that he's some novice blowing smoke. No one has benefitted from the Bush Administration's neglect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Healing it would give us a moral leg to stand on in the Middle East.

More than 25 years ago, Carter begged this nation to confront its dependence on oil, to look for alternative energy sources, and to live more simply. Then Reagan swept into office and dismissed Carter's views as needlessly pessimistic.

It is afternoon in America now, and we'd better address our difficult problems while there's still some light and some chance of success. Here's to Jimmy Carter and Chris Hedges for helping us frame the issues.

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Carter's basic premise is correct. He has shown great courage in voicing it. But ,as many have pointed out, his book is filled with factual errors. This failure to do quality scholarship unfortunately diminishes his important basic message.

Dr. Rick Lippin
Southampton, Pa

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When America finally moves from a petroleum based economy, we will no longer need Israel to watch the Middle East for us, and we will allow them to sink or swim on their own. Israel will then be forced to work with their neighbors and accept what terms they are offered by whatever group is most powerful at the time. It's kind of like the white American's future acceptance of non-white influence in our own society. The hand writing is on the wall. Read the census demographics. We whites won't run things within 50 years, just as we won't be using oil as an economical base. The longer we hold out, the harder it will be on all concerned.

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It's been said that a political gaffe is when a politician accidently speaks the truth. In American politics, only retired politicians "accidentally" tell the truth about Israel. As the author notes ironically, the errors in Carter's book his fulsome praise about Israel's democracy, e.g., Carter said there is no discrimination against Arabs in Israel. Really?

But the greater point is that Jimmy Carter has called the occupation what it is, a soul-destroying apartheid. He should be thanked. He should be commended. And for God's sake, buy his book!

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thepeoplesvoice.org posted

The Wall, Senator Clinton and Bob Marley
eileen fleming on 12/23/06

On November 15, 2005, Senator Hillary Clinton stood on the Jerusalem side of The Wall and was quoted in Ha'aretz, expressing support for The Wall because it "is against terrorists" and "not against the Palestinian people."

Senator Clinton did NOT visit the Little Town of Bethlehem, which is Occupied Territory, to see what The Wall has done to the Bethlehem economy. But I have....

.......For twelve days around Christmas 2005, I lived in the Little Town of Bethlehem, which is occupied territory. For twelve days I walked "through streets that were dead" [Bob Dylan] in the morning, noon and night and everywhere I did go, shops were closed, restaurants empty. A few locals would be around and tour buses would quickly come and go at the Church of The Nativity.

But stores remain closed and restaurants empty because tourists don't want to see, hear or know about occupied territory. The Terminal is not The Way tourists in buses and taxis go;

The Terminal is the way only Palestinians and the curious go, who want to know what's really going down in the Holy Land, which is in pieces........




.....The Israeli government and Senator Clinton both claim The Wall is all for Security. The International Court of Justice in The Hague has deemed The Wall illegal and that it must come down.

The concrete boa constrictor and electrified fence is a master plan to divide, separate, humiliate, dominate, control and deny inalienable human rights to the indigenous people of the Holy Land.......


.......At The Terminal in Bethlehem, upon the thirty foot high Wall, a hundred square foot sign from The Minister of Tourism hangs and proclaims in Orwellian doublespeak, "Peace be with you."

Photo by Meir Vanunu and rest of story at:

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/indx.php

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Jimmy Carter may not speak for Nancy Pelosi, but he certainly speaks for me. I have not read Carter's book, but he has earned my trust. We are so fortunate to have spokespeople like Jimmy Carter, Bill Moyers, Howard Zinn and other moral giant to speak for people of conscience everywhere whose voices are being ignored.

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How can the USofA be backing loan guarantees for Israel's 30' barrier/wall while being fully cognizant of it's illegality by International Law and at the same time we're borrowing from China to help finance the Iraqi war/occupation? Also, where does Israel's lobbying money come from? What some paradoxical BS, does anything make sense?

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Jimmy Carter....A reputation of integrity....a legacy of swindle. Sums up the worst President I've had the misfortune to live under fairly well (including Bill Klintoon). To credit this man with much of anything positive would be a gross injustice. He continually demonstrates that he will support wholeheartedly any despotic regimes in existence. A friend to criminals and political lowlifes and a historical revisionist on a scale only rivaled by the Clinton's (Hill and Bill). An anti semite that only takes notice of alleged crimes of humanity when its the Jews being accused but is surprisingly silent when it comes to crimes against the Jews. Jimmy Carter would get my vote as the one POTUS with credentials certified by the Politburo of the former USSR. In other words....a card carrying Commie. The man should be deported to a country where they can appreciate his pinko views. Someplace like Venezuela. He and Hugo Chavez could take turns trashing American and Israel and throwing parties for the likes of Castro and Maqmoud Iminneedofjihad. Fortunately I don't think he plans on being here much longer since he seems concerned where he'll be buried and that is something that I think he should continue to pursue instead of plagirizing others work and undermining his country's interests.

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I guess this country has come full circle on this issue. The world stood by and 6 million Jews were murdered by thye Nazis. Now, the state of Isreal keeps the Palestinians in ghettos just as Jews were in Europe prior to and during World War II. Our allies are aware that we are our worst enemy in our one sided approach in the Isreali-Palestinian issue. Our politicians are cowards and our media stands mute.

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You can't condemn the poisonous waters of hatred and oppression that are drowning the Palestinian people and yet ignore the river of Zionism from which these waters flow.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15977.htm

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I am glad that Alternet was willing to post Chris Hedge's article, a strong criticism of Israeli policies originally published in The Nation with the title "Get Carter". Yet I wonder how Hedges would feel about the the title Alternet chose for the article, particularly "Palestinian Apartheid"?

This is the first time I've seen the phrase "Palestinian Apartheid" used. Most writers label the situation "Israeli Apartheid."

Alternet's title, "Palestinian Apartheid", might be read to suggest that Palestinians are practising racial discrimination on themselves, or perhaps against Jews. The title, and even the sub-title below it, desperately avoid using the word Israel or Israeli, thus avoiding any assertions of Israeli responsibility or agency.

A google search for "Palestinian Apartheid" turns up a total of 774 hits for this odd phrase, mostly from obscure sources. So "Palestinian Apartheid" is not 100% new. A google search for "Israeli Apartheid" turns up 262,000 hits.

Perhaps the term "Palestinian Apartheid" also reflected an effort to avoid suggesting that Israel practices discrimination within its recognized borders, another taboo topic. Yet Hedges says that Israel does in his article, "In fact, if there is a failing in Carter's stance, it is that he is too kind to the Israelis, bending over backward to assert that he is only writing about the occupied territories. Israel itself, he says, is a democracy. This would come as a surprise to the 1.3 million Israeli Arabs who live as second-class citizens in the Jewish state."

It's sad and humorous to imagine Alternet editors, showing a recognition of some of the problems created by Israeli policies, liking elements of the article, perhaps feeling it's a bit "shrill," but desperate to tone down some of Hedge's forcefulness by avoiding the term "Israeli Apartheid", much like a politician checking the poll numbers, thinking about their constituencies, and shying away from controversy.

What is disappointing is that, rather than leaving readers with the clarity of Hedge's article, Alternet's ambivalent position led to the coining of this confusing and bizarre new term in the title, "Palestinian Apartheid" which to some readers will suggest that, once again, the Palestinians are to blame.

Pat

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On illegal israeli settlements in Gaza, Carter wrote "Living among 1.3 million Palestinians...8,000 israeli settlers were controlling 40 percent of arable land and more than one-half the water resources...[with] 12,000 troops...required to defend their presence." (pg 168)

On israeli suppression of Arab voting, "It quickly became apparent that the israeli officials had voters lists that were completely different from the names of people who came to cast ballots, and by noon there had been practically no voting....at the main polling site, the only post office larger than a mobile home, there were 3,500 names on the list, with one israeli clerk checking credentials of potential voters and methodically turning them away." (pg 171)

On Gaza, Carter wrote that its "population has soared in recent years as Palestine refugees have poured in from other areas occupied by Israel. In 1948 there were 90,000 natives...there are now more than 1.4 million...more than half its people are less than fifteen years old. They are being strangled...by a seperation barrier that is penetrated only by israeli controlled checkpoints...There have been no moves by Israel to permit transportation by sea or by air. FISHERMAN ARE NOT PERMITTED TO LEAVE THE HARBOR, WORKERS ARE PREVENTED FROM GOING TO OUTSIDE JOBS, THE IMPORT OR EXPORT OF FOOD AND OTHER GOODS IS SEVERELY RESTRICTED AND OFTEN CUT OFF COMPLETELY, AND THE POLICE, TEACHERS, NURSES, AND SOCIAL WORKERS ARE DEPRIVED OF THEIR SALARIES...poverty has reached 70 percent...acute malnutrition in Gaza is already on the same scale as that seen in the poorer countries of the Southern Sahara..."(pg 176)

On the wal-mart/home depot/walgreens type death grip of the Arab economy, "...no opportunity for a Palestinian leader to participate in peace talks for the past five years, as the israelis confiscate more and more land in the West Bank and impose increasingly severe restrictions...making it an exclusive market for many israeli products even among the local Palestinian citizens..." (pg 183) [just like the Americans, they are forced to buy from psychopathic corporations that have monopolized the markets...which finances their own doom]

Key points to remember;
1-"Only 1 percent of the people are in favor of Hamas's imposing Islamic law in Palestine." (pg 185)
2-"...citizens in fifteen European nations indicated Israel was considered the top threat to world peace, ahead of North Korea, Iran, or Afghanistan." (pg 208)
3-"The United States has used its UN security council veto more than forty times to block resolutions critical of Israel. Some of these vetoes have brought internatinal discredit on the United States..."(pg 209)

Carter is polite (as usual) but the point is clear....Israel is a rogue nation, provoking Palestians into a war, financed by you, the US taxpayer...This war caused the 9/11 attacks here and is the reason we are in Iraq now bankrupting the nation and getting kids from your neighborhood in Milwaukee or Columbus or wherever, KILLED...
Last point to remember is that Jews in the US are now overwhemlingly voting Republican...unfortunately, the time has come to re-evaluate the politically correct postion of automatic sympathy for the Jews worldwide...sos

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Evil is evil regardless of who is the perp. The Zionism that modern Israel was founded upon was and is an immoral act predicated upon complete disregard for the native populations of the region. That in no way excuses the generations of violence that have followed, much of it a response to the Israeli insult.

What amazes me to this very day is that a people so completely abused, persecuted and mistreated as European Jewry could so quickly ignore the immorality of their takeover of Palestine and the subjugation and repression of it's people. One evil does not justify another, nor does it ever solve the original problem.

The Potemkin Village constructed in the minds of America by AIPAC and it's supporters will not stand over time, just as all propaganda efforts by unjust regimes. The unprovoked attack and systemic destruction of civilian infrastructure of Lebanon by Israel this summer was one big war crime and will echo through the region for decades. The Israelis are doing nothing more than sewing the seeds of their own, and the Middle East's, misery.

We need to cut Israel off, just like an intervention with an addict. With a little mental clarity they just might find a path to peace. Without it, they are dragging us ever deeper into a mess that we do no want or need.

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Jimmy Carter's Glossary

Often touted by progressives as one of our best Presidents ever, Jimmy Carter has been given a free pass for the egregious international behaviors of his administration. Though he has redeemed himself to a certain extent through his humanitarian efforts since retiring from public life, he still has a great deal of amends to make for his foreign policy initiatives while in office. The United States is an imperialist nation. Our presidents are instruments of that paradigm. But some of them have been more reckless than others.

During his term as President, Mr. Carter ordered the CIA to train death squads (benignly labeled "contras") based in Honduras to oppose the Sandinistas after they overthrew the dictator Somoza in Nicaragua. Nice... After a coup in El Salvador, Carter sent aid and weapons to the El Salvadoran military who proceeded to massacre tens of thousands of civilians. Good work Mr. Carter.

His generous foreign policy initiatives weren't limited to Central America. Carter increased the supply of arms and munitions to the Indonesian government despite their invasion of East Timor. More than 200,000 civilians were slaughtered there, nearly a third of the population. Remember the Islamic fundamentalist Mujahideen? Carter funded their military buildup in order to entice the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan. This resulted in the complete devastation of that country which led to the rise of the Taliban, friends of Osama Bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the attacks of 9/11...

Okay. So maybe we shouldn't attack the messenger. People grow and change over time. Perhaps Mr. Carter is ready to tell us the whole truth now. Let's consider comments he has made concerning Israel while promoting his new book.

Certainly, not enough can be said about how wonderful it is to hear a former President of the United States use the word apartheid in relation to Israel. One has to appreciate Carter for having the courage to speak the truth about the theft of Palestinian lands, the colonization of the West Bank, and other crimes being committed against the Palestinian people by Israel. Especially since this particular former president is one who opposed Palestinian statehood, refused to meet with Palestinian leaders and was a strong supporter of Menachem Begin. Mr. Begin was Prime Minister of Israel at the time, but he was formerly wanted by the British Government as a "terrorist" for his work with the Irgun, a Zionist militia responsible for countless acts of terrorism in Palestine prior to the creation of the state of Israel. After Israel became a state, Begin's label of "terrorist" curiously morphed into "freedom fighter."

Carter fans keep reminding us that he is a huge international celebrity and that we couldn't buy this kind of publicity to expose the horrors being perpetrated by Israel in the West Bank and Gaza. But before we become too enamored of Mr. Carter, we need to ask some important questions. Since when isn't apartheid racism? According to Jimmy Carter's new glossary, it isn't. In his recent piece in the Los Angeles Times, in reference to the segregation of Palestinians by Israel's apartheid wall, Carter writes "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, and then to forcefully suppress any objections from the displaced citizens."

This statement is breathtakingly surreal. We are expected to believe that even though the segregation of Palestinians in the West Bank is based solely on their racial and ethnic origin, somehow this particular version of apartheid isn't racism. Instead, it's only the confiscation and colonization of their land and resources. Oh, and by the way, when Palestinians resist this theft, Israel's suppression of that resistance isn't racially motivated.

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Continuing to peruse Carter's glossary, one notices his definition of democracy seems to be different than any we are familiar with. He claims democracy is thriving in Israel. He says his book "...is devoted to circumstances and events in Palestine and not in Israel, where democracy prevails and citizens live together and are legally guaranteed equal status." I suspect the Bedouin people in the Negev desert in southern Israel would view this statement with some degree of skepticism.

The Negev is considered to be Israel's "land bank" for future expansion of their population. Consequently, the Bedouins who happen to live on that land need to be removed. Israel has been kind enough to set up seven Bedouin "Settlements" where these primarily rural-agrarian people are forced to live under extremely crowded urban conditions. They suffer chronic unemployment, economic despair and social dysfunction due to the disruption of their cultural underpinnings. In order to receive funding from the state, schools in these townships are required to teach Bedouin children Hebrew as well as Jewish history. No funding is provided for curriculum related to their own history and culture. But they are generously allowed to teach these subjects as after school electives.

Half the Bedouin population, about 70,000 people, live in these townships, while the other half live in dozens of what are cleverly designated "unrecognized villages." Because Israel wants the Bedouin's land in order to expand Jewish population centers, they refuse to provide municipal services such as water, electricity, sewage, and roads to these villages. By withholding basic services from tens of thousands of Israeli citizens, issuing home demolition orders and forcibly relocating Indigenous populations based solely on race, Israel has certainly put democracy in motion in the Negev. This is also another example of Carter's new definition of apartheid. Remember, it's not racism, just land and resource theft.

Then there is the housing situation in places like the central Galilee, home to about 25,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel. Jonathan Cooke, a British journalist based in Nazareth, writes about luxury Jewish communities known as "mitzpim." These "mitzpim" are surrounded by extensive areas of land zoned for construction of new residential housing. Residents of these communities are required by law to screen the applications of anyone who wishes to build there. Surprise, surprise; also by law, non-Jews are not allowed to apply to join these communities. Very clever. The Jewish residents of the "mitzpim" can claim they don't discriminate against Palestinians because no Palestinians ever apply. Why? The law prohibits them from doing so. Plausible deniability is everything.

Meanwhile, in Palestinian villages like Sakhnin, also in the central Galilee, Palestinians are denied permits to build on their own land because Israel's Planning and Building Law has rezoned the property in a way that prohibits new construction. I wonder if "by law," Israel would permit Jimmy Carter to build a home in Sakhnin. I wonder if "by law," they would allow him to submit an application to one of the "mitzpim." Maybe someone will ask him those questions at his next book signing.

Let's take a look what Carter considers "equal status." Israel's High Court recently upheld a law denying Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza who are married to Israeli citizens the right to live in the country with their spouses. This law applies only to Arab spouses. Anyone from any other ethnic group married to an Israeli citizen is entitled to residency. Israelis married to Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza will either have to move to the Occupied Territories or live apart from their spouses...
Full article:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15977.htm

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Someone will have to break down the powerful Iraeli lobby and cut off its support or set up a rival lobby on behalf of true Israeli and Palestinian people who want to co-exist in peace and justice. We must hold those Dems who would ignore the truth on the ground and wrap themselves around the Isreali lobby accountable. We must show grassroot power in this country. I just don't understand why those people are so blindly loyal to Israel. What happens to human reasoning and a sense of justice and common sense?

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is that those in the bantustans did not hold on to the dream of killing all the white South Africans. They weren't egged on continually by the entirety of black Africa to hold on such a dream, and black Africa didn't start four or five wars against white South Africa (and lose them all). Mandela didn't tell his followers to be suicide bombers.

Gandhi didn't tell his followers to be suicide bombers.

Martin Luther King didn't tell his followers to be suicide bombers.

And in case you haven't noticed, we don't have Iroquois suicide bombers in Albany or Ojibwa suicide bombers in Minneapolis.

Get a grip, people. Why must lefties romanticize the insanity of the Palestinians?

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Logically, the idea of a Jewish supremacist state must be abandoned in favour of a democratic Palestinian state, but so much Arab blood has been spilled, so many atrocities committed, and so many political careers compromised for the sake of the zionist empire, that The Lobby is resorting to increasingly brazen acts of slander to vilify anyone who advocates political reform, even for Israel’s own good!

New York University historian Tony Judt, who is Jewish, was due to give a talk at the Polish consulate on the stifling effect of the Israel Lobby, yet the American Jewish Congress and the Anti-Defamation League forced the consulate to rescind the invitation.
This censoring of Judt was gratuitous because the substance of his talk, the previously published essay “The Israel Lobby” by American academics Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, was already in the public domain...

A similar fate befell Baroness Jennifer Tonge, a Liberal Democrat in Great Britain’s House of Lords. Speaking at Edinburgh University, she remarked: “The pro-Israeli lobby has got its grips on the western world, its financial grips. I think they’ve probably got a grip on our party.”

Like Judt, she deemed her remarks unremarkable because they had already been made by Walt and Mearsheimer.

The intelligent thing for The Lobby to do would have been to ignore her comments, but no. An all-party group of Lords accused Tonge of “evok[ing] a classic anti-Jewish conspiracy theory” that was symptomatic of the rise of anti-Semitism in the U.K.

The knee-jerk recklessness of this charge is obvious, and served only prove Tonge’s thesis that The Lobby manipulates British politics...

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour also paid the price for speaking honestly about the cause of suffering in Palestine. On Nov. 29, 2006, she visited the Gaza Strip in the wake of Israel’s massacre of Beit Hanoun:

“The human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory is grave and worsening, within a general climate of impunity. Overall I was struck throughout my visit by the sense of vulnerability and abandonment that was expressed to me by virtually all the civilians that I met, both in Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territories.”

It’s hard to argue with first-hand evidence, but that didn’t stop B’nai Brith Canada’s Vice President Frank Dimant from shooting his mouth off:“[This was] yet another attempt by the UN body to delegitimize the Jewish state.”

However self-destructive the Lobby’s tactics have been in these three cases, they cannot match the hysterical depravity that has greeted Jimmy Carter because of his new book Palestine—Peace not Apartheid.

The Lobby has seen to it that Carter has been marginalized and his views rubbished:

The most ignorant and incompetent of these came from David Horowitz, who writes for a right-wing website. He saw fit to libel Carter as a Jew-hater, genocide enabler and a liar. Throughout his tirade, Horowitz collectively libeled Palestinians as racists and Jew haters, but saw nothing wrong with condemning Carter for having committed a “blood libel” on Jews.
Horowitz’s screed defies analysis because it is devoid of intellect. It is so brazenly, even proudly, dishonest that destroys his own credibility. Horowitz actually said: “[It] is a preposterous lie to say that the Palestinians had their own land and that it was occupied by the Jews,” as if he thought nobody had read Moshe Dayan’s infamous remark!:
“Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either."

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Let me get this straight...

Israel can murder innocent people daily, stealing thier homes and land, raping children. And even bomb Lebanon, murdering thousands more.

Iran cannot have a nuclear power plant, which it negotiated with the world in good faith, even if it passed all IAEA inspections and, I noted, the CIA report flatly stated there was "no indecation" Iran has any nuclear weapons program in any way.

Right. Just getting things in perspective.

Man, I need a drink.

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Watching m