Jimmy Carter Is Losing It

Actually he may have lost it a long time ago. For instansce his 44 state loss to Ronald Reagan in 1980. Joel Himelfarb discusses his interview in 1990 with Carter and Professor Ken Stein who recently resigned from the Carter Center over the publication of Carter's book Palestine:Peace Not Apartheid.

Nobody was more surprised than I was by the news that Professor Ken Stein resigned his position at the Carter Center because he could no longer abide the reflexive Israel-bashing and fact-twisting engaged in for decades by former President Jimmy Carter, who has just written a book likening Israel to the former apartheid regime in South Africa. Back in March 1990, I had the moderately unpleasant duty of interviewing Carter together with several other journalists; the former president was accompanied by at least one Secret Service agent and by Stein, who worked at the center. Stein seemed to function as Carter's political handler/bodyguard on Middle East issues -- there to assist him in a worst-case scenario to spin his way out of any trouble he got himself into, and to help him fend off questions from pesky journalists who questioned Carter's analysis of the Middle East -- not that there are very many of them interested in doing so.

With publication of Carter's book interest seems to be up. Unfortunately such interest has not reflected well on Carter, especially given Professor Stein's resignation from the Carter Center.

It quickly became very apparent what kind of interview this was going to be: Wolf would ask the relatively soft questions. ( I'm sure Wolf's gentle approach to Carter helped him land his 1994 "scoop" -- yet another great Jimmy Carter achievement -- the nuclear agreement with North Korea.) My job, on the other hand, was to be the proverbial skunk at the garden party -- asking the former president the tough questions -- like why 99 percent of his criticisms were directed at Israel, a pro-Western democracy, when the Arabs were dictatorships, generally sided with the Soviets during the Cold War, and had consistently been the aggressors. I also wanted to ask Carter why he had virtually nothing negative to say about the brutal killings of Palestinians by other Palestinians.

As the afternoon wore on, Carter and Stein seemed to become increasingly agitated with my questions. For example, I pressed Carter over his suggestion that Israel could afford to consider taking a more conciliatory negotiating position because its Arab neighbors were prepared to negotiate a peace settlement with it. When I asked Carter about warlike statements by Assad, he seemed to back off, saying he could not judge the Syrian leader's "sincerity" about making peace with Israel.

Assad still seems to be making war like statements except it is the son carrying on in the traditions of his father.

Outside of a college campus or the State Department, I don't think I have met an adult American more viscerally, instinctively hostile to Israel than Jimmy Carter. Even when he spoke of his support for freer emigration for Soviet Jews, Carter needled Israel for settling them in "occupied territory" -- making it clear that he wasn't just talking about the West Bank and Gaza, where Arabs are in the majority, but also the eastern part of Jerusalem -- where Jews compose a majority. When I asked Carter whether he had criticized the growing problem of Palestinian-on-Palestinian violence, he became agitated. He noted defensively that human rights groups such as the Carter Center and Amnesty International have focused their attention almost exclusively on government actions that violate human rights (as opposed to actions by individuals or terrorist organizations). "You can read all my statements," Carter told me, his face reddening. "If you want to quote me saying it's an abominable situation for Palestinians to kill Palestinians...Yes, it's an abominable act," he added almost grudgingly.

Carter must be furious at the Palestinians because of their civil war undermining his position. If the critiques of his book haven't destroyed Carter's position the news of the ongoing Palestinian civil war certainly has.

Then we have this report of the Syrians developing a Hizballah like organization to take on Israel in the Golan. Which puts a hole in the Carter thesis that Syria can be helpful re: Israel.

There is so much wrong with the Carter book. Critiques abound.

However, the worst critique is facts on the ground. Reality does not match well with the Carter map of it.