Carter Refuses to Debate Dershowitz

After going on and on about the alleged lack of debate in the United States regarding the Mideast conflict, former President Jimmy Carter is now refusing put his own ideas to the test.

According to the Associated Press:

Former President Carter has decided not to visit Brandeis University to talk about his new book "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid" because he does not want to debate Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz as the university had requested.

"I don't want to have a conversation even indirectly with Dershowitz," Carter told The Boston Globe. "There is no need ... for me to debate somebody who, in my opinion, knows nothing about the situation in Palestine."

That's interesting that Carter would accuse Dershowitz of knowing "nothing about the situation in Palestine" when he himself seems to know nothing of the true history of the region. Instead, he simply repeats the same false talking points that have been promulgated through years of anti-Israel propaganda.

David Horowitz sets Carter and the real history of the Mideast straight in his latest column at Frontpagemag.com:

It is a lie that Palestinians “had their own land, first of all, occupied.” This is like saying that Texans had their own land occupied by Hispanics, ignoring the fact that Hispanics were there first. The very word Palestine is a Roman appellation for the people called Philistines, who were not Arabs but red-haired sailors from the Aegean. The Jews were there as well.

In short, first of all the Jews were in the land before the Arabs.

Second of all, the Arabs who inhabited the Palestine Mandate in 1948, at the time of the creation the state of Israel, considered themselves Syrians.

Third, the Palestine Mandate was not created on land taken from the Syrians or the Arabs. It was taken from the Turks.

It was not taken from the Turks by the Jews, but by the British and the French. They took it because Turkey sided with Germany in the First World War and, of course, lost. The Turkish empire had ruled the entire region including Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan for four hundred years before Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan were artificially created by the English and the French. Jordan – a state whose majority is Palestinian – occupies 80% of the Palestine Mandate. So it is a preposterous lie to say that the Palestinians had their own land and that it was occupied by the Jews.

Fourth, the individual plots of land that Jews now own were in the first instance bought from the Arabs who regarded themselves as Syrians and who lived in the area of Israel. The only property that was confiscated was confiscated as a spoil of the aggressive war that five Arab states waged against Israel from the day of its birth. Five Arab armies invaded Israel, a sovereign state, with the declared intent of “pushing the Jews into the sea.” The cry today of the Muslim majority in the Middle East is to “liberate Palestine from the river to the sea.” In other words push the Jews into the sea.

By the standards of occupation and legitimacy Jimmy Carter invokes, Israel has more legitimacy as a Jewish state than Texas does as an American state, rather than a Mexican province.

Read the entire article. And pass it on to the legions of Israel's critics who know not of what they speak.

Cross-posted at Kesher Talk.

Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism, And Carter's Fans Prove the Point

The barrage of hatemail in response to my Jimmy Carter column, not to mention some of the comments in the thread below, have proven that anti-Semitism, spurred on by the rise of so-called anti-Zionism, is alive and well among Carter's devotees. Indeed, much of the feedback has had little to do with Carter and everything to do with the alleged Zionist/Neocon/Jewish Lobby/AIPAC plot to take over the world.

Of course, such writers always go to great lengths to deny the connection between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. But it's funny how one can vociferously claim not to be anti-Jewish (for those who like to quarrel about the term "anti-Semitism"), all the while spewing said hatred.

Despite the pitiful attempts to deny the obvious connection, the authors of these missives give themselves away. As I wrote in an earlier SFGate column:

Never mind the fact that to be "anti-Zionist" is to oppose the existence of Israel. What else besides anti-Semitism explains the single-minded obsession with a country the size of New Jersey? Israel's alleged human rights offenses are given disproportionate attention, even as countless other nations commit crimes more heinous than anything seen in the Middle East's only democracy. Equality for women, gay rights, democratic institutions, tolerance of various religions and ethnicities are ignored in favor of the misguided view that Israel is the root of all evil in the world.

Increasingly, the myth that if the Middle East conflict were solved (i.e., if Israel were to cease to exist as a Jewish state), Islamic terrorism would come to a halt has made its way into many liberal and some conservative circles -- Pat Buchanan and other isolationists come to mind. But the fact is that Jews were hated before they had a state, and now they're hated for having a state. The very persecution that led Jews to flee Europe after World War II and help rebuild the nation of Israel is now directed at them for having survived the Holocaust. The insistence that Israel stop defending itself against Islamic terrorism also reeks of hypocrisy. Could it be that the very reason people despise Israel so much is because it's a Jewish state? No other explanation holds up under examination.

I thank the Carter acolytes for proving my point.

Cross-posted at Kesher Talk.

Jimmy Carter's Legacy of Failure

My new column at SFGate:

Jimmy Carter's Legacy of Failure

As expected, this one's stirring up a lot of controversy, and also a lot of agreement.

That's the beauty of it all.

My Interview with Karel on KGO

Just finished up an interview on local radio station KGO with the flamboyant, left-of-center but refreshingly politically-incorrect, Karel. For the first couple of segments, it got a little heated. But I kept my cool and when we continued, I found that Karel and I agreed on a thing or two. Who knew?

The show will be archived for 24 hours, from midnight to midnight (12/11-12/12) and can be heard by clicking here.