Carter's Peace not Apartheid
I just finished Jimmy Carter’s Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (Simon & Schuster, 2006). The main thrusts of the book are that the US should become a neutral broker in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and that Israel should begin to abide by several UN Resolutions, including returning to more or less the 1967 borders – something that looks more and more unlikely as they continue to build the new "security wall" and expand settlements into the West Bank. The use of the word “apartheid” in the title and a few times in the body of the book were probably ill-advised, and Carter is taking a beating for it in the press, although to be fair to Carter he was not the first to make the claim and in many ways the comparison is not completely without merit.
Naturally, there have been many scathing reviews of Carter's book. One can find an example here, or here, or here, or just Saturday in WaPo here. Some members of the board of the Carter Center have even stepped down in protest of the book and in their resignation letter they called Carter "malicious." Jimmy Carter may be a lot of things, but malicious isn't one of them.
If you read the reviews you'll see that most are attacking him for using the word apartheid in the title, many are pointing out erroneous "facts" or his "plagiarism" of maps, some criticize him for not taking into account Jewish feelings in light of the Holocaust (as if the Palestinians should suffer for what the Germans and Russians did), some play the anti-Semitic card or say that he's playing into the hand of anti-Semites, others point to comments made by "radical" Arabs or Muslims in other parts of the region such as Iran's Ahmadinejad (as if this also justifies mistreating the Palestinians in the occupied territories), and yet others say that the Israelis are willing to exchange land for peace, but not the Palestinians or Arabs/Persians. In addition, there has long been the claim that other countries in the region such as Jordan were created out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire and World Wars I and II, so why not Israel too? Of course this ignores the little inconvenient fact that the other countries were by and large carved out of existing local populations, whereas modern Israel was created mainly by displacing the existing local population and bringing in outsiders from around the globe. This displacement was brought home to me when I was playing a pick-up game of basketball around 1989-1990. On my team there was a guy who was wearing a t-shirt with a black, white, green and red flag. He played just about every day like me, and he almost always wore the same shirt so finally I asked him whose flag it was, and he said it was the Palestinian flag. I asked him what the colors meant and so forth, and he gave me a very fulsome answer. I then said something to the effect that I imagined he must not be terribly happy with the situation in Israel at that time and he agreed, adding that his parents were some of the Palestinian refugees who lost their home and land. He then said, "If someone broke into your house and took the best rooms and then said, 'Let's just split it now that we're here,' would you be happy?" I've never forgotten that conversation, and have since heard other Palestinians make a similar point.
A couple of things I found useful about the book were the historical chronology at the beginning and the appendices in the back, the latter of which included copies of UN Resolution 242 (1967), UN Resolution 338 (1973), The Camp David Accords (1978) and The Framework for Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty (1978), UN Resolution 465 (1980), Arab Peace Proposal 2002 (I didn't even know the Arab League had even made and passed a peace proposal), and Israel's Response to the Roadmap for Peace (May 25, 2003). It's hard to read all the resolutions without coming to the conclusion that Israel is blatantly breaking or frustrating many of them. I'm sure they feel justified because some Palestinian militants aren't abiding by some of the provisions either, but it's bad form for the US to be the only one on the Security Council standing by Israel so often and to be selectively enforcing UN Resolutions only when it suits our domestic politics.
This brings up another thorny issue, which is how long an historical claim is valid? After all, it was the Romans almost 2,000 years ago in AD 135 who kicked the Jews out of the province of Judea and renamed it Syria Palestina (names which were already in existence). Is that the Palestinians' fault 2,000 years later? And if 2,000 years ago is a legitimate cut off point, why not 4,000 years ago? By that I mean that the Jewish sacred story explicitly tells us that Abraham came from elsewhere (from Ur, wherever this was – probably modern Iraq or Turkey) and settled the area of the Levant and his later descendents warred with the Canaanites and Philistines who were already there (never mind that the Arabs also say they are the descendents of Abraham). The latter group, who inhabited the area of what is now known as the Gaza Strip, are considered by some to be the ancestors of the Palestinians (Palestine comes from Philistine via Greek and Latin – I don't put much stock in tying modern peoples to such distant relatives). Many Israelis and Evangelicals, in fact, feel that Gaza should be the limits of modern Palestine, while Israel should extend into the West Bank as it did at the height of the kingdoms of David and Solomon (it's no coincidence in my mind that Israel has voluntarily withdrawn from Gaza but is settling the West Bank).
It may be worth quoting from the Bible itself to recall God's instructions to the early "Jewish" immigrants and how they first came into possession of their lands. I will bypass all the promises to Abraham c. 1900 BC in the Book of Genesis about how God would give him the land of the Canaanites and Perizzites (who were already inhabiting the region) and how God would multiply his descendents, and instead focus on the point in the Book of Deuteronomy at chapter 20 (NET Bible) when c. 1200 BC the Israelites, led by Moses, had come out of Egypt back to the promised land, which was still populated by Canaanites and Perizzites:
Laws Concerning War with Distant Enemies
20:10 When you approach a city to wage war against it, offer it terms of peace. 20:11 If it accepts your terms and submits to you, all the people found in it will become your slaves. 20:12 If it does not accept terms of peace but makes war with you, then you are to lay siege to it. 20:13 The Lord your God will deliver it over to you and you must kill every single male by the sword. 20:14 However, the women, little children, cattle, and anything else in the city – all its plunder – you may take for yourselves as spoil. You may take from your enemies the plunder that the Lord your God has given you. 20:15 This is how you are to deal with all those cities located far from you, those that do not belong to these nearby nations.
Laws Concerning War with Canaanite Nations
20:16 As for the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is going to give you as an inheritance, you must not allow a single living thing to survive. 20:17 Instead you must utterly annihilate them – the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites – just as the Lord your God has commanded you, 20:18 so that they cannot teach you all the abhorrent ways they worship their gods, causing you to sin against the Lord your God.
Well there you have it. It's hard to read a passage like this and not be jarred by the sentiments expressed therein. It's even harder to square this advice with anything approaching acceptable morality: God orders the new arrivals to steal others' land and personal property, to enslave, and to commit murder, ethnic cleansing and rape (the Israelites weren't allowed to intermarry with these people so the reference to take the women as plunder and spoils clearly points to sexual slavery and rape) because the Israelites are his chosen people and the other groups have the wrong religion. Somehow I think that if there is a God, and he is good, he never would have condoned any such thing. But I digress.
Another thing that struck me about Carter's book was that it lacked any discussion about the rational reasons as to why any US support for Israel is even in the interest of the US. I've often heard Israel is so important to us because "they are our closest allies in the Middle East", but I suspect we'd be a lot closer to a handful of other allies in the region, many of whom are sitting on piles of oil that we so crave, if we distanced ourselves a bit more from Israel. Then there's the more powerful reason why we support Israel so much; namely because of the need for US politicians to assuage the powerful Jewish and Evangelical Christian vote here in the US (note, I think Evangelical Christians in the US are more powerful than the so-called "Jewish Lobby"). Domestic politicking doesn't seem a very good enough reason to me for us taking sides in this ancient dispute, although for politicians I suppose it is practical.
And practical is where I'll end. At this point the state of Israel is a fact on the ground – they have nuclear weapons and aren't going to pushed off the land anytime soon whatever the US does. On the other hand, Israel will turn 60 next year and it seems to me that it's about time they acted more like mature adults and stood on their own two feet. Did we expect the French to continue to coddle us 60 years after we declared independence? Do good friends really involve others in their deadly quarrels when there's nothing really in it for them? So, I say put Israeli foreign aid on par with our other allies in the region. Nor do I mind if the US once again decides to be a broker in the peace process, in fact I hope we do, but peace and a cessation of terror threats won't be on the table any time soon as long as the US isn't neutral and Israel continues to build the wall and settlements in the West Bank. And these were Carter's overall points, and with them I agree. Indeed, I think they're unassailable.
posted by Paul @ 9:55 AM
13 Comments:
Can we really just ask the Jews to forget about the Holocaust, especially when they're surrounded by Arab despotisms who have been trying for sixty years to drive every last Jew into the sea?
We've got some pretty sizable disagreements here, but let me first say that the Brits didn't just invent Israel out of thin air "by displacing the existing local population and bringing in outsiders from around the globe." The Jews had been flooding into the area since the late 19th cent., a trend that understandably hastened in the 1940s. When the Brits left in 1947, the UN tried to partition in a way that gave both groups significant territory. The Jews were content to accept coexistence; the Palestinans (and their allies in neighboring Arab despotisms) were not. They attacked in 1948 and were preparing another all-out assault in 1967. They lost decisively both times, and now they want to pretend that none of that ever happened. And do you really expect the Arab governments who slaughtered or expelled their own Jewish populations to restore them now in the name of 1948 or 1967 restorationism? Please.
Finally, from a foreign policy standpoint, thank God we stand by our Israeli friends. They're the region's only democracy, and our lack of petroleum interest should be testimony to our virtue in choosing friends for non-utilitarian purposes, not an indictment. The anti-Israel critique doesn't gel very well with the left's other line about "no blood for oil." We have a policy driven largely by historical and ethical affinities, and the left gets upset b/c they've decided the Palestinians have better victim chic than the Israelis. Ack.
I respect Jimmy C, and I know you're not arguing for Auschwitz, part Deux here, but I'd appreciate a bit more coherence from the left on this issue. I especially worry that leftist views are driven by European biases, biases influenced by the "Arab lobby" and unmatched by any European "Jewish lobby" (incinerated as it was by the millions half a century ago). The Palestinians may have their victims, but they are not innocents. Not in 1948 or 1967, and not now. They're paying the consequences for bad leadership and bad friendships. I'll happily extend a hand, but only when I'm good and convinced that something has changed in the Palestinian culture and politics.
Jimmy Carter is right, and that's why there has been so little engagement with his actual argument and evidence and so much ad hominen attack instead. The US policy is unbalanced. And Israel's arbitrary and often cruel policies in the occupied territories impose enormous injustice and terrible suffering, which greatly contribute to the troubling "Palestinian culture and politics" that TMcD decries.
I'm not influenced by the European left. Sadly, the only foreign newspapers I ever read are the Guardian and the Globe and Mail.
It's simply a fact that in the US meaningful political pressure is only brought to bear on one side, for the Israelis. And US policy has gotten progressively more and more out of whack, adjusting to that underlying political reality.
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TMcD,
For population statistics in the "Holy Land" over the last century, see here. I would only add that if accurate (see their explanations) those demographic increases prior to 1948 were in no small part aided by British colonial rule -- you know the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and all (which by the way stipulated that local populations were not to have their rights violated as they systematically have been; Carter should have included this in his primary documents too). At any rate by 1914 the Jews apparently comprised only 7.5% of the population of current day Palestine/Israel -- hardly a 19th-century flood. The real flood began right after WWII and the Brits tried to stop it by decree but then gave up their "mandate" and sensibly got out of there.
While you've trucked out the old trite statement that Israel is the only democracy in the region, actually that's not even true anymore. Why just recently Iraq had democratic elections, so did Lebanon and also the Palestinians. Or, is it that when they elect people we don't like is it somehow no longer a democracy because demo-cracy is the power of the people and they ain't really human? Be that as it may, you still give no real reason why we're so close to the Israelis other than some pious thing about us standing by our friends and them having a democracy. I suspect that behind your "Thank God" lies the real "pious" reason we're so close -- religious identity. Well, I'm tired of paying all my tax dollars and watching our country risk its own ass on crusades for a bunch of holier-than-thou-Gawd-promised-me-this-land-so-its-mine BS. Any sheister can say that.
Yes the Holocaust was terrible, but the pre-WWII peoples of Palestine/Israel were not responsible for that. Furthermore, Carter is a friend of the Jewish people and he's giving them sound advice as a friend: stop building your goddamn wall and settlements in the West Bank and withdraw to the 1967 boundaries -- which by the way the Arab League proposed and endorsed in 2002 -- and you'll have a good shot at peace. If you persist in blatantly encroaching on the West Bank, you won't. Funny how our media doesn't really report on the Arab proposal.
Grievances often have a basis in fact, and that Right is rarely, if ever, on one side of a long-standing conflict. Hereditary guilt is a fallacy, and treating a whole people as renegade outlaws abd refugees for at least forty, if not sixty years, is indefensible.
Paul, thanks for the handy dandy demographics. As luck would have it, they help my case more than yours. What they demonstrate is that Jerusalem was predominantly Jewish as early as 1910, and that, although Jews were only about 8% of the total population of the thinly populated larger region (modern Israel/Palestine), those numbers rose rapidly well prior to statehood, doubling in the 1920s, and tripling in the 1930s. Hmm. . . I wonder why. Gosh, it sure would have been better if all those dirty Jews just stayed in Europe where they belonged!
By 1944, Jews were approximately 1/3 of the total population, a number that understandably grew once WWII was over and the full devastation of the Holocaust became well-known. By the time of UN partition in 1948, Jews made up 1/2 of the total population of the region (having almost doubled once again), making a fairly equitable division of the land somewhat reasonable.
Now, of course, you can argue that the Jews had no right to peacefully emigrate to a land populated predominantly by Arabs (and Muslims), but that's not a very "liberal" argument, and if applied consistently would also suggest that Muslims have no rights of emigration in situations where the circumstances are reversed.
Of course, as we also know, Arab populations continued to expand in Jerusalem, Israel, and the greater Israel/Palestine over the second half of the century, although that's largely a matter of high birth rate. The one point of real decrease occurs after 1967. The expulsions that took place were surely regretable. But then again that's what happens when you start a war to destroy your Jewish neighbors and lose.
OK, how about that "democracy" point? Well, by your definition, Iraq appears to count as a "democracy" too--having had elections. For my part, I'll consider a country a democracy once they've institutionalized a democratic electoral system and culture and used it for more than just one or two elections of dubious credibility and effect.
As for the rest of your analysis ("all you damned crazy Christians think alike"), I'll leave it for what it is: a confused misreading of the argument I made above, which, if you'll review, never mentions crusades or apocalypses.
It ought to be possible to talk about US policy toward Israel and the Israel/Palestine conflict without accusations of bad faith and anti-semitism. Unfortunately, the Likudniks and Israeli maximalists won't give up their political trump card. But even if reasonable discussion on the merits of these issues can't happen in Congress, in the university, or in the US news media, I'd hope it could happen here.
Heard this morning on NPR that Shiite militias are forcibly driving all the remaining Palestinian refugees out of Iraq. Saddam had allowed many into the country and had permitted them to join the Baath party. Now, it's time for revenge, of course. Estimates are that 20,000 of the 40,000 have already fled. More than 600 Palestinians in Iraq have been murdered so far, many having been tortured with electric drills. No country will accept these poor people, just as no one wants the other hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees.
Of course, this is just a small small piece of the vast human suffering unleashed by this reckless, stupid, immoral war, a war that ought to be (but apparently isn't) humbling to anyone who contemplates the use of American military power for "humanitarian" regime change.
TMcD,
I don't want to get sucked down in the mud of statistics (I've discovered it's pointless to argue with anyone over statistics), rather I’d like to back away and look at the bigger picture, which is that something like over 500,000 Palestinians have been displaced from their homes by Israeli encroachment. Your arguments in favor of this appear to be, or could be:
1. The Holocaust makes this OK.
You'll never persuade me of this, so let's not even go there. I'll only say this has to be one of the lamest arguments of all time.
2. The Arabs displaced Jews, so all is fair in love and war.
This may be true, but it in no way justifies the US to take sides on the matter.
3. No Palestinians were displaced -- it's all propaganda.
I really hope you don't believe this.
4. Yes, some Palestinians were displaced, but its OK because the Jews started migrating to Jerusalem in the 1880s and they're the ones who improved the land...
The logic of point 4 is ridiculous. Here's what it means. You can pick any geographical city on the earth and start migrating to it (in 1880s), and then once you get enough of your people there 65 years later, you can declare statehood and take the rest of the surrounding region too and eject some inhabitants and take their lands and homes too. And then when others in the area don't like this and attack you, it gives you the green light to take even more land from those who attacked you.
While it is obvious that in the end, "might makes right," we should not be surprised that conflict would ensue. There's nothing we can do about it – what’s done is done. The larger issue is whether in such a situation is it wise and just for the US to pick sides? Carter's point is that it is not. In a sane world this would be obvious.
But you apparently think it sane for us to side with Israel because Israel is a democracy. What can this mean but that as long as you're a democracy, your actions must automatically be better than those people who are not democracies, or being friends with democracies is automatically more in the interests of the US, or being a democracy gives you special license to steal others' land? This seems to me to be the lizard brain argument of Bush. I might point out, however, that of all the stable democracies in the world, all the others aren't too happy with what the Israelis are doing, nor our unqualified support of them doing it (see Frances' post on current views of US involvement in the ME). But of course America has a corner on the market of conferring the good seal of righteous approval upon any democracy.
Finally, I never had a confused misreading of your argument. What I said was that I suspected that lurking under the words "Thank God" was the ideological underpinning driving your other conclusions. So I'll be more explicit. While I can never prove it, I suspect that your Christian religious beliefs play a large role in your looking the other way on Israeli outrages and taking a pile of statistics and from them weaving a moral monstrosity. Were we to switch around the actions of Palestinians and Israelis, I would suspect you would still back the Israelis, because they are Israelis and not Muslims. In the same vein, I think the pro-Israeli slant in this country is a direct result of religious beliefs that color most of the US views of justice in this conflict. In short, religion is the "non-utilitarian" basis of our foreign policy on the Palestinian-Israeli question. You apparently think having such a “non-utilitarian” view is OK (not that religion doesn’t serve other abstract utilitarian values), but I think it foolish and dangerous for us. And yes, I do not deny that being an atheist has a huge impact on my view that in this instance religion is being used as a cover for a multitude of sins – by both sides. Interestingly enough, Carter himself makes the point over and over that current US actions are actually un-Christian.
But to get back to the main thrusts of Carter's book:
1. America must be more neutral in this conflict
2. Israel should stop building the wall and settlements in the West Bank and come back to the table and be willing to follow the pan-Arab plan of returning to the 1967 borders.
You've argued with #1 by basically saying because Israel is a democracy we shouldn't be more neutral. I think this is BS, but at least you made your point.
You haven't argued with #2 -- specifically whether you support Israel building the wall and settlements in the West Bank and how this furthers US (or even Israeli) long-term interests, including a prospect for peace. By the way, those two actions of building the wall and settlements in the West Bank go against the specific stated public policy of the United States by all recent presidents, including Bush. I think the stated policy should have more muscle -- our level of support should be tied to its implementation. You apparently think the US should ignore its own stated policies. Or maybe you support deceptive public policy statements that are belied by facts on the ground.
At any rate, to really argue against the important theses of Carter’s book and stated US policy, you must in fact believe that it's a good idea for the US and Israel if Israel builds its wall and settlements in the West Bank. I can't wait to hear how this is a good idea for us and prospects for peace in the region.
Paul, there's a lot here to argue with, so I'll just hit the big points.
First, Israeli injustice: does it exist? Sure. Were a lot of Palestinians displaced after 1948 and 1967? Yes. But this takes one small piece of a huge puzzle and magnifies it completely out of proportion. Why does no one on the left decry the Arab massacres and displacements of Jews all across the Middle East in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s? Because those Jews could just go to Israel and resettle. Except that you lefties don't seem to think Israel should exist. So where exactly all those Jews were supposed to go is left a mystery. Maybe you prefer Marx's solution to "the Jewish problem": stop being Jews! Religion, after all, being your all-purpose bogeyman.
You want a "neutral" broker? OK, then stop acting like the Israelis invented "injustice," or "stole" Palestine, a country that never actually existed as a political entity or even as a subject of nationalist desire until the late 20th century.
Or maybe you'll say that you support Israel's right to exist, just not its "oppressive" actions. I've never heard you say anything so moderate, of course, but maybe you'll find this a useful fall-back position. So, how then can you support Israel's right to exist and yet deny it the power to defend itself? The Palestinians, after all, have a nasty little habit of strapping bombs under their garments and 'splodin themselves in public places filled with children and civilians. Hey, why not? It's not like they've ever acknowledged Israel's right to exist (Arafat's occasional rhetorical feints not to the contrary).
Simply put, if you recognize that Israel has a right to exist (as I do), you have to allow them the means of reasonable self-defense. For me, this includes a wall--which, incidentally, has proven quite effective to date at reducing suicide bombing--but not settlements, a point I've made here before. Still, it's ultimately a practical consideration, and the Israelis deserve a little flexibility since they're the ones whose lives are on the line.
Finally, US neutrality. Sounds good in principle. But it is a rhetorical con. Do you want everyone else with interests in the region to be equally neutral? Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, the Saudis, the French? Why is it that Israel must divest itself of its one and only useful ally, while the Palestinians get to keep all their angry, exterminationist friends (we'll exclude the French from that description)? This is nuts. Israel is our ally, from history, circumstance, and moral affinity. Maybe we should be more willing to criticize their policies in the name of a lasting peace that would serve diverse interests. I'm all for that. I prefered Clinton policy to Bush, after all. But don't pretend we have no stake in how this turns out or that Israel's destruction wouldn't be a major defeat for all those moral values we Democrats hold dear.
One of the things I hate about extremists, right and left, is that they live in an uncomplicated world. All our problems would be solved if we just invaded Iraq, nuked Iran, or got rid of Israel. Well, that's not the way the world works. Negotiated peace was given a really good chance by the Israelis in 2000. Arafat told them to screw off, and his people cheered him. The current "apartheid" is far from ideal, but under the circumstances, it's not clear there's a practical alternative.
TMcD,
I specifically asked, and Carter' book specifically criticises, building the wall and settlements IN THE WEST BANK (if the wall were truly just defensive, why is it necessry to build it IN THE WEST BANK? If Israel really wants there to be a viable 2-state solution, why build settlements IN THE WEST BANK?).
I'm less enthusiastic about the wall IN the West Bank than its other manifestations. But if the setttlements are already there, they need protection. I'd prefer a negotiated peace agreement in which settlements were withdrawn in exchange for credible security guarantees, but since the Palestinians have shown no interest in honest negotiations, I don't know that they've left the Israelis much real choice. If things change in the future, they can always tear down the wall.
BTW, I've never openly criticized Jimmy Carter in this string--although I do think he earned some flack for picking the highly charged word "apartheid." Israel is NOT S. Africa, as that term cannot help but imply. What I've been criticizing is Paul's intemperate argumentation, which suggests not a "balanced" approach but rather one with a thumb on the scale for the Palestinians.
A final note: I might take your arguments more seriously if you expressed any sign of outrage regarding suicide bombing, the problem a wall is designed to address. I'm no fan of the settlements, but morally, suicide bombing is far worse than building homes. No one on the left seems to recognize this. Maybe Carter does, but your posts don't seem to.
What is it about the word "neutral" and "not taking sides" that you do not understand? Of course the reason I haven't pointed out all the blood on the Palestinians' hands, including suicide bombers, is because the US isn't favoring the Palestinians. Rather a key point, no? As for you, you're advocating taking a side in a dispute where both sides have blood on their hands in a quarrel not our own. Talk about intemperate and lacking common sense -- in fact, it's exactly why we must brace for more terrorist attacks.
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