Carter Unlimited

There have been some interesting developments surrounding former President Carter's book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid.

1. Alan Dershowitz is publishing a series of (6) articles at gather.com about Carter's connections to Arab "dirty blood-money." The first one, Ex-President for Sale was posted yesterday.

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.

Carter has also accepted half a million dollars and an award from Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan , saying in 2001: "This award has special significance for me because it is named for my personal friend, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan." This is the same Zayed, the long-time ruler of the United Arab Emirates, whose $2.5 million gift to the Harvard Divinity School was returned in 2004 due to Zayed's rampant Jew-hatred. Zayed's personal foundation, the Zayed Center, claims that it was Zionists, rather than Nazis, who “were the people who killed the Jews in Europe” during the Holocaust. It has held lectures on the blood libel and conspiracy theories about Jews and America perpetrating Sept. 11.

Another journalist, Rachel Ehrenfeld, in a thorough and devastating article on "Carter’s Arab Financiers," has meticulously catalogues Carter’s ties to Arab moneymen, from a Saudi bailout of his peanut farm in 1976, to funding for Carter’s presidential library, to continued support for all manner of Carter’s post-presidential activities. For instance, it was the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), founded in Pakistan and fronted by a Saudi billionaire, Gaith Pharaon, that helped Carter start up his beloved Carter Center. According to Ehrenfeld:

BCCI's origins were primarily ideological. [Agha Hasan] Abedi wanted the bank to reflect the supra-national Muslim credo and ‘the best bridge to help the world of Islam, and the best way to fight the evil influence of the Zionists.’

2. Carter's book has finally been reviewed in the New York Times. See "Jews, Arabs and Jimmy Carter" by Ethan Bronner, deputy foreign editor of The Times. Bronner starts out by saying "This is a strange little book..." and it seems to me he wrote his review to match. This photo of poorpalestinian children was chosen to accompany the review online:

Palestinian children at a closed checkpoint in the West Bank town of Hebron in November 2005. Photo by Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times

You get the picture, as they say.

3. CAMERA relays this bit about the position being taken by the publishers of Carter's book, Simon & Schuster.

An article entitled "S&S Stand Behinds Carter" appeared in Publishers Weekly on January 2nd, 2007, about CAMERA's ad in the New York Times concerning the many errors in Jimmy Carter's new anti-Israel book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid. CAMERA's ad was an open letter to the book's publisher, Simon & Schuster, urging them to publicly correct the book's many inaccuracies.

In the Publishers Weekly article, Adam Rothberg, head of Simon & Schuster's corporate communications, was asked whether S&S will "change the book", and Rothberg replied tellingly:

"We're going to stick with the president's version."

Notice he doesn't say that the "president's version" is accurate, just that they're going to "stick with" it.

UPDATE:

See also Yid with Lid: Jimmy Carter is a Big Fat Liar: UPDATE :) about the op-ed in today's New York Times, Don't Play With Maps... by Dennis Ross.

And for more, see Jewish Current Issues: Carter's Maps: Worse Than Plagiarism and Carter Map Update.

Comments

[RR]

From a comment by Lee Green at the "S&S Stands by Carter" article: "Carter is also guilty of double standards. His Carter Center receives millions of dollars from Arab donors, yet I'm sure he would not say that their money influences him (and I don't think it does. I think he is in total agreement with the Arab despots.) Yet he writes that the money donated to politicians from pro-Israel donors unduely influences the politicians. So does Carter think that Jewish money somehow has magical powers that Arab money doesn't? Or that only he magically has integrity and all other politicians absolutely cannot? Why is it so hard for Carter to imagine that American politicians tend to agree with Israel most of the time because Israel shares our values of democracy, pluralism and the sanctity of life, whereas the Arab countries absolutely do not? Why call for America to be "even-handed" with a despotic terror-sponsoring state versus democratic Israel??"