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I love Jimmy, Jews are not for peace.

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This article below has been dedicated to educate Mr. Jimmy Carter (ex-President, USA) because he definitely do not understand Islamic terrorism.

What is Islamic Terrorism and
How Could It Be Defeated?
by Syed Kamran Mirza

Syed_mirza@hotmail.com

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." (Blaise Pascal, mathematician, 1670)

"It would be nave to ignore in Islam a deep thread of intolerance toward unbelievers."-Andrew Sullivan

What is Islamic terrorism?

Islamic terrorism is the divine duty of pure Muslims for which they feel proud instead of feeling remorse. Pure Muslims do not call it terrorism they only call it Islamic Jihad against the infidel West. Killing non-Muslims are sacred duty of every devout Muslim for which Allah repeatedly commanded (in Qur'an) and declared unlimited reward in the after life. Muslims those who read Qur'an and understand it well always believe in the Islamic 'global agenda' that Islam has a sacred and mandatory God given duty to spread Islamic message (Din-e-Islam) to all the inhabitants of the world. Wars in Iraq or Afghanistan have nothing to do with Islamic terrorism. In American soil 9/11 attacks did happen before Iraq or Afghanistan wars. Please don't forget that.

Islam is the only religion which divides the whole world into two spheres: Land of Warfare "Darul harb" (non-Islamic nations) and "Darul Islam" (Land of Peace), and encourages the Land of "Peace" to fight against the Land of Warfare until it is completely "subdued" and peace is established in the entire world. Islam is the only religion that largely forbids the free practice of other religions in its midst. Saudi Arabia, the cradle of Islam never allows religion other than Islam to practice in their land. Their ulterior motive is to convert and bring entire mankind under the fold of Islam, the "Only true religion of Allah." To this end-two main groups are working very hard. These two groups are: (a) Militant/radical Mullahs (whom we know as the terrorists), (b) Educated/elite Western residing true believing Muslims (Muslims belonging to the ummatic groups in the West such as: AMC, CAIR, ICNA, ISNA, NABIC etc). Here we can exclude gullible God fearing innocent Muslims (group-C), who do not read Qur'an and Sunnah). But because those gullible majority Muslims also believe in the same religion Islam and do not object to pray in congregations behind those militant mullahs-Islamic terrorists get tons of support from all Muslims.

Causes of Terrorism:

Purely and solely-the real motivation behind the terrorism (Islamic Jihad) is the teachings of Qur'an and Sunnah. Western politicians erroneously and perhaps ignorantly call it "evil or distorted ideology." This is absolutely wrong statement by the politically correct western politicians. That ideology is nothing but the ideology of pure Islam, which are the holy teachings of the Qur'an. Therefore, Qur'an and Sunnah (prophetic instructions) are the true foundations of Islamic terrorism. Palestinian problems, wars of Iraq and Afghanistan etc. are only a plea to wage Islamic Jihad. Poverty or frustrations are not the cause of terrorism, because poverty and frustrations also exists amongst millions of poor people from other religions. Will any poor Hindu or a Buddhist bother to commit suicide to kill innocent Westerners?

We know conversion to other religion is a common phenomenon throughout the world. Many people convert to Islam or Christianity. But only Muslim converts turn into terrorists or Taliban. The Western born terrorists like John Walker Lindh, Zachariah Moussawi, Jose Padilla or James Uzzama etc. were converts and happened to be very pure and devout Muslims. If these guys were converted to Hinduism or Buddhism, they would never be the terrorists.

Poisonous tonic will cause poisonous effect whoever drinks it. Should we not analyze the tonic to determine the harmful ingredients, which causes the poisonous effects? Or should we start blaming those drinkers (instead of the tonic) for the ill effect of the tonic?

Likewise, whoever reads Qur'an and try to follow with its literal (verbatim) meanings, immediately becomes a bad human being (terrorist) for the society and for the nations. Wherever and whenever Islamic Shariaat (Laws of Qur'an and Sunnah) is being imposed, human misery ensues immediately. Is it not the time to analyze to determine exactly what causes this misery? Or, should we keep on blaming those hapless people who only try to follow the Qur'an and Sunnah with its literal instruction? Time has arrived to identify the real enemy of the Western civilization.

Western intelligence must not overlook 'Mosques-Islamic centers-Madrashas' connections to all Islamic terrorists in 100% time of their terrorists operation and success. If those 'Mosques-Islamic centers-Madras' are the so-called radicalized Islam then what is the real Islam? It's true that all Muslims are not terrorists, but all terrorists are pure Muslims as per the Qur'an.

Quite obviously, the cause of Islamic fanaticism and zealotry is rooted in the Qur'an and Sunnah (Hadiths). Terrorists like Osama bin Laden and others are the victims of Qur'anic scriptural teachings. Here are some Qur'anic teachings (out of hundreds), which those devout Muslims swallow every day (five times) so passionately only to become brainwashed in the Mosques and Islamic centers for committing suicide bombings in the midst of innocent gatherings.

Quran-5:51- "O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors. They are but friends and protectors to each other-.."

Quran-4:78: "Where ye are, death will find you, even if ye are in Towers, built up strong and tall" (Perhaps Twin towers was meant here?)

Quran-3:85, "If anyone desires a religion other than Islam (submission to Allah), never will it be accepted of him; and in the Hereafter He will be in the ranks of those who have lost (All spiritual good)."

Quran-9:29, Fight those who believe neither in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book (Christians and Jews), until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.

Lives of any human are precious and human beings definitely love their own life more than anything in the world. Nobody is ready to die or destroy his own life even for millions of dollars (except perhaps by Prophet Abraham). But a simple minded (otherwise a good man) but fanatically blind believer of religion Islam can eagerly give his life with a smile on his face. Why? Because he simply learned that if he dies for Islam, or killed others (infidels) for Islam-he will be given a sure suite in heavens of Allah, where he will enjoy plenty of hurries for unlimited sex, delicious foods forever and ever with no interruption, what so ever. This may sound silly to me or to any intelligent human being. But, this is the one and only truth to a blind-faith believer of the so-called holy book Qur'an, indeed! The Qur'an is the center of Jihadi inspiration.

It's a greatest lie to say that Qur'an prohibits suicide! That is the suicide (Qur'an referring) to kill one-self only for no good reason or out of frustrations. But to die (to kill the kaffirs) for the cause of Islam is mandatory good deeds for the believers, which has been directed 100 times with plenty of rewards in the Holy Qur'an.

In Amsterdam, Netherlands-Mohammed Bouyeri, the killer of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh confessed his guilt and showed no remorse for his dastardly act of Islamic slaughter. During court trial he made following remarks: "I don't feel your pain", he told the victim's mother. "Because I was driven by my religious conviction." He also said, "If I were released and would have the chance to do it again-I would do exactly the same thing." At one point he said to the victim's mother, "I have to admit I don't have sympathy for you. I can't feel for you because I think you are a non-believer."

How could we stop Islamic Terrorism?

Yes, Islamic terrorism could be stopped if the west be united and take the right measures. West must not weigh Islamic terrorism lightly. This is a more dangerous and deadlier phenomenon than communism. It took fifty years to defeat communism. But it may take only twenty years if the West takes the right course. But the menace may continue to grow if the West follows the fruitless policy of appeasing the Muslims, disseminating patronizing statements like: "Poisonous or perverted interpretation of peaceful Islam". Terrorists are not misinterpreting Islam; rather they are interpreting Islam very correctly. Islam is like cancer and Qur'an is the carcinogen, which causes cancer. We must know our enemy. We must fight the cause and not the symptoms. Unless scientists can subdue the HIV virus, the cause of AIDS, scientists can never control AIDS.

Spending billions of dollars in strong security or democratization tactics will not help. Sweet appeasing talks also will do no good. Almost 80% of world Muslims does support Osama's ideology in their hearts. They only talk false sympathy in front of Westerners to please Western govt. But when inside their house, they sympathize with those suicide bombers very much. In every suicide bombings when Western cities are in chaos, peoples die, and Western economy is in shambles-most Muslims all over the world gloat in their hearts.

The West must remember that as of now-no Islamic government, or any famous Islamic Imams or Mullahs have ever issued fatwa condemning Osama's barrage of suicide bombings. Just for writing a controversial novel Salman Rushdie was sentenced to death. As of now no Muslim country sentenced Osama to death. We must ask ourselves why?

Best way to solve Islamic terrorism:

Supreme enemy Islamic Arab imperialistic ideology must be fought in three fronts:

A. Enemy must be defeated with iron fist by waging all out war against Islamic terrorists all over the world. The West (Europe and America) must be united and declare war against Islamists. President Bush must issue personal letters to all government heads of Muslim world to cooperate, or face economic embargo. The West must ask all Muslim Governments to cooperate honestly and actively by issuing fatwa's against terrorists. It's not enough to say, "We despise terrorism", but must act to stop this madness by strongly disassociating with the Islamists, isolating them, arresting them, and imprisoning them without any mercy. All governments of the Muslim world must impose a strict ban on all Madrashas (religious schools) and terrorist organization formed by Islamic mullahs.

B. All Muslims living in the Muslim nations must condemn terrorists and they must stop any association with those Mullahs and Islamic Imams who condone Islamic terrorism. They must not pray behind those Imams/mullahs who incite Islamic hatreds, and they must isolate them socially and politically. All Western living gullible Muslims must cooperate with the Western intelligence (like FBI, CIA) and provide them all sorts of information about militant Muslim's activity. Or face the backlash of host country.

C. The West must fight the Islam ideologically. That is the West must form a multi-national committee to investigate, scrutinize, and extract the poisonous teachings of Qur'an, which do transform a simple young human into a monster. Those scholars must find out what those Muslim mullahs/Imams teach young Muslim students in the Madrashas and other religious schools all over the world. Their findings must be submitted to the governments and published in the newspapers. Open criticisms and debates of Qur'an and Islam must be permitted by all nations.

I am positive, within 10/20 years Islamic suicide bomber's madness will be evaporated for good. If we fail to take positive actions narrated above-our civilization will perish. Killing some terrorists, arresting and killing Osama bin Laden or spending billions of dollars to establish democracy in the Middle East will solve nothing. Because, to solve the terrorist problem, we must destroy the ultimate machine (Islam), which do create terrorists.

Mr. Carter,

Keep up the good work, I support you and the work of the Carter Center.

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It's a great achievement for Islamic leaders and scholars as well as Newsweek and the Washington post to present this imperative opportunity for inter cultural and global philosophical dialogue. What's important is that by exchanging our ideas and comments regarding inter religious relations and world events that affect our views of each other as fellow human beings. Since the advent of humanity, We strove to make sense of the world we live in and the lives we've experienced. Worldwide curiosities to learn the true nature of life and our universe is an exceptionally rare virtue upon life on Earth. In other words, we're the only known species on the planet who've pursued to unravel these great mysteries and developed written philosophies based upon our understanding of the world around us.
One such philosophy that lasted throughout the ages of humanity is commonly known as religion and spirituality. Ever since our early belief in the Sky God and the God Mother from ancient Pagan times, we vigorously pursued to unravel the truth about our most profound questions. As any educated person would know that religion and their core beliefs or faith have evolved over time. Paganism, Monotheism and Polytheism have been influenced by humanity as these great philosophies have influenced our perceptions and decisions in life over the ages. Over time humanity has embraced diverse religious faiths and spiritual convictions that continue to influence our behavior in our times and most likely beyond.
What's vital for humanity's progress and even survival is to know the true nature of faith itself. To understand the true origins of faith. But most of all, is to accept the truth for whatever it may be. Each one of us will learn the absolute truth once we die. But until that time comes for anyone of us to depart this world, we really don't know the answer to God's existence nor do we have the absolute truth in regards to the true nature of God. Besides if we did possess the truth, there would've been only one religion on Earth with no diversification of any way, shape of form. There would only be one holy scripture written throughout human history.
Considering one's religious faith to be absolute, while considering others to be false would be ethnocentric at best. While collectively searching to unravel the mysteries on nature, life and the universe through sincere reasoning and serious research would be enlightening at its worst. Most importantly, we must accept the fact is that none of us have conclusive evidence to confirm our core beliefs and there's always an immanent change that our most cherished beliefs could be wrong. Our greatest challenge would be to tolerate the truth no matter what it may ultimately be. With such an open mind, we would be able to overcome any future discovery that would contradict our faith regarding the true nature of life, spirituality and divinity.
Humanity does have the ability to achieve such a social achievement. However, it's solely up to humanity and not any other entity or groups of entities to decide our destinies. Each one of us has a choice to make; either hopelessly engaging into meaningless inter cultural conflicts or combine our scientific and cultural gifts to thrive into an enlightened global civilization that could ultimately expand beyond our solar system. The choice is yours, and the time to make it is now!

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anti-semitism is alive and well in the Christian community. God forgive us.

anti-semitism is alive and well in the Christian community. God forgive us.

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I'm so sorry Mr. Carter calls himself a Christian. He needs to read his Bible more. It tells us what we should be doing about the Nation of Israel. We are to Bless them or be cursed ourselves.

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Carter at least can see clearly on the Palestine native suffering.

Nice job Carter.

You spoke truth.

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As it is now obvious that the Muslims seem to be involved in whatever is going on in the world and the USA it should now be quite obvious why the charge is always "anti-semitic".

President Carter, first of all, I love you brother!

Second of all....darn it if you were just a tad younger it would be wonderful if you ran for president again! Heck, run anyway! Perhaps you can run as a Christian Democrat. Yep, we've got 'em in America too. Check 'em out at http://www.cdusa.org. They're called the "Christian Democratic Union."

anonymous i dont believe a word you say

why would jimmy carter lower himself to a debate forum- hes not a young academic trying to prove himself- hes an ex PRESIDENT-

i will never take you seriously while you hide behind dishonest and cowardly anonymity

OUCH..

Carter's book prompts more resignations:

Fourteen members of an advisory board to Jimmy Carter's human rights organization resigned on Thursday to protest his new book, which has been attacked as unfairly critical of Israel and riddled with inaccuracies.

"You have clearly abandoned your historic role of broker in favor of becoming an advocate for one side," the departing members of the center's Board of Councilors told Carter in their letter of resignation.

The resignations came a day after Carter spokeswoman Deanna Congileo and officials at Brandeis University said Carter will discuss the book at the Waltham, Mass., campus. The Nobel Peace Prize winner will not, however, debate the book with outspoken Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, as Brandeis originally proposed.

maybe there was something in the wind that inclined some to reach political aspirations through obscurantist phony pseudo-religions

Victoria,

Just connecting dots. It would seem logical. The Book of Mormon would appear fabricated for a political reason(s). I haven't done the research but I have heard that the first version of the Book of Mormon was much worse than the current version.

Two political things using the same name would certainly appear to be related.

The techniques associated with the Book of Mormon and implementing the political movement would seem very similar to other 'religious' documents and undertakings.

Anyone that would believe the Book of Mormon was real as presented certainly has a weird (and programmable) mind. It certainly took and organization to do the Book of Mormon thing. It was also in the general time of Skull and Bones being started up.

STAN im not sure why you listed where zion occurs-

i spoke of the policial movement zionism before-

is there a connection?
peace

Dear President Carter:

You have made a big mistake by criticizing Israel's occupation of Palestinian land. Please, stop "unfairly" criticizing Israel. Criticism of Israel will not get you big dollars, fat speaking fees and other gifts that the Jewish lobby has in store for you.

You must correct your errors. Please follow the paths of other politicians such as John McCain, Rudi Juliani (former mayor of New York), Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Tom Delay, Hastert, and many others by remaining silent on Israel's brutal treatment of Palestinians because Jews give 60% of all campaign donations and most major TV networks and newspapers and Jewish controlled. You must preserve your "reputation as a mainstream politician" by selling out America's interest because of the Jewish Lobby.

If you remain silent about Israel's barbaric treatment of Palestinians, you will be admired by various Jewish controlled propaganda outlets such as Fox News, Drudge Report, CAMERA, Newsmax, Wolf Blitzer, Wall Street Journal, NY Times, Washington Post.

Yes, America's support for Israel has caused terrorist attacks on September 11. 2001, and many other attacks on Americans. America has paid a terrible price for its blind support of Israel. The Israel lobby was instrumental in pushing America into this war in Iraq. Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Ken Adelman, Wurmser, Bill Kristol, Krauthammer and many other American Jews went on TV to brainwash Americans why it was necessary to attack Iraq.

But, President Carter, don't worry about American lives or our national interest. Look at all the politicans who sold out America's interest and are doing just fine. And don't worry about the poor Palestinians. They do not own the media, so their suffering does not matter.

By breaking silence on the Palestinian issue, Mr. President you have done a great service to mankind. You are truly a saint. May God bless you in this world and in the world to come.

Sincerely,

Jim

To Steven Whitfield:

Why don't you go to those fishing holes yourself. I guess you would suggest fishing then too when Jews were being packed in trains and taken to camps. People like you are facilitators for all the genocides in the world, including the one that is being commited against Palestinians.

Mr. Carter is such a respctable man. I wonder what would the world look like with out such a man? May be a world full of lazy bunch sitting by fishing holes in Idaho.

Here are a few facts:

1- Israel earned the spot for most hated and disrespected country in the whole world recently. This pole was not conducted only in the middle east. It included EU, Africa and Latin countries too.

2- Any one who speaks against Israel's savage policies towards Palestinians is "Anti-semetized".

3- Israel is using holocaust to victimize Palestinians and grab some of the best real estate in the world. Unfortunately, it seems that holocaust has become a mean of economic prosperity for the Israel.

4- Israel has become a cancer for the peace in the world.

5- In todays world, there are no Hitler. Even jews are living safely in Iran. Unlike during the Hitler era, people will defend any one who is victimized based on their religion or race, jew or Palestinian. However, Israel and its supporter try to portray that any one who is against Israel actually want to harm jews. That is such a lie that people can see it now.

6- Israel say there is no partner in peace in Palestine. They said that about Arafat, and saying it now for Hammas. Peace for Israel means some one putting his signature on the paper which give them Palestinian real estate. If that is what Israel calls a peace partner, she will not find. That is GOOD.

7- You don't need complex negotiations for returning something which does not belong to you. Just quit the land of Palestinians. Is it too hard to do?

8- Israel first takes away lands from Palestinians and then wants to negotiate on something which does not belong to them. Israel returns Gaza and complains, look I gave them Gaza back and still no peace. Duh. Gaza was never yours. If a robber cant hide and returns a stolen car, do you expect you will not be prosecuted. It was never about Gaza only. What about the rest of the Palestine? including Jerusalem?

I hope Jimmy Carter is not the last man standing on this issue.

I don't believe that there can be peace in the middle east. But, I think you still have to try.
Mr Jimmy, come back to Idaho and I will show you some of the greatest flyfishin holes on the planet.

Steve

You go to peace with the situation you have, not the situation you wish you had.

President Carter, an intensely practical man, could never have been a nuclear engineer on a submarine if he didn’t have the ability to parse a problem logically and figure out how to fix it.

His book initiates serious dialog (some of the ignorant vitriol posted here notwithstanding), and represents a necessary step in the process of building understanding and ultimately action toward the solution of a problem.

Can you imagine a leak in a steam pipe on a submarine, and the course of action is to argue endlessly about who should have inspected the pipe, why the manufacturer should be held liable, whether or not the pipe was properly installed in the first place, and on an on while the ship is dead in the water and finally goes down? Of course not! The ship’s engineers will assess the problem and effect repairs – immediately.

It isn’t that history isn’t important. It is. There will always be blame and finger-pointing. But the interjection of such things fouls the process and keeps practical solutions to problems large and small at bay. Let’s stop this foolishness and look at the problem again, but with new rules – no holocaust, no anti-Semitic this that and the other, and no name calling.

You go to peace with the situation you have, not the situation you wish you had.

It is interesting to read some of the posts on here. Some look very familiar to those on amazon.com in reviewing the Presidents book "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid".

My only comment is that it is true, the virus is spreading. This virus I refer to is a group of individuals who have sought to plague internet blogs with their garbage. Yes, they are in fact a virus.

respectfully frozen1 there are very few actual survivors alive now-
i would instead say- people of israel-consider the psychological horrors that the innocent people of palestine have experienced to pay for your desire for revenge- and your desire for prime real estate-

Victoria,

According to a search of the New Testament, King James Version, the word zion does not appear.

A similar search of the Book of Mormon finds the word 45 times.

The New International Version of the New Testament has the word zion 7 times.

Dear Pope Benedict, if the Word of God has any meaning to the people of God, I would submit for your consideration President Jimmy Carter as worthy of Sainthood, regardless of this outcome. Consider the works Jimmy has given his life energy to long after leaving the Oval Office and in the face of political persecution. In my own humble opinion. Thank you for your consideration.
God Bless and keep you Always.

To the people of Hamas. Please consider the pathological remnants of Hitler's genocide upon these people. Please consider meeting them half of the half way that remains, even though concessions before negotiations imply weakness, it is not so in this case. In this case you would demonstrate true power, and wisdom, and understanding. Clearly, you are people of Allah. Please pray for Allah's guidance, and discuss it among yourselves. Please remember Saddam's sacrifice. This I beg of you, people of God, without hesitation. Please.

Most of the comments criticizing Carter's book are by professionals of Jewish Lobby groups whose job is to monitor any criticism of Israel and flood the posts with pro-Israel comments. Notice how much information some pro-Israel comments have - clearly indicating they are professionals creating a false image that there are many supporters of Israel.

In fact, tens of thousands lined up to buy Carter's book which is a best seller, but the Jewish controlled media claims that Carter's book was "widely criticized" and is "controversial." Carter's book was criticized by Alan Dershowitz, Abe Foxman, Rich Lowry, Mona Charen, David Horowitz, and Daniel Pipes, who are propagandist for Israel. Where is the controversy? Finally, Carter's book will be translated into many foreign languages.

Thank You President Carter for speaking the truth. You make us all proud to be Americans.

Shame on spineless politicians who are afraid to stand up to the Israel lobby. Reports indicate that although American Jews comprise less than 2% of the population, they give more than 60% of campaign money to major political parties. Combine that with the Jewish lobby's stranglehold on our media, politicians are scared to speak out on the injustice done to Palestinians.

President Carter is a blue whale in a sea of anchovies.

ReTURNING by Jennifer Berezan fades into Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday, and holds in call / response fashion
Israel, you employ deceit in your quests for peace to the extent that I am forced to ask if it is truly peace that you want or is it domination? You cite Hamas as the block to peace, yet you strengthen Hamas representation by splitting the vote of Fatah, and Abbas through your tacit promotion of Barghouti, and corruption. That ploy did not work on Hamas. Hamas perceived clearly your invisible hand and played it to their own advantage. That should tell you something very positive about these people and their relationship to God, but perhaps it is you Israel, who has stopped listening to God. Even the possibility of that saddens me greatly, children of Israel. [Note 1] Hamas is not the block in your road to ever lasting peace. [Note 2] Who is? Search deeply into the mirror for your answer. These details are really unimportant. As I have said again and again, now: Love thy neighbor as thy self. This is God’s Commandment unto you. If you wish to go old school, you have provided false witness against your neighbor just for starters, shall we go on? I do not think you would be pleased with the strange fruit borne of cluster bombs. I am quite certain that God is not. The next movement is yours children of Israel, do you concede God’s Victory, or not? I beseech you all children of Israel, in the name of our Brother Jesus, who died on your cross asking God for your forgiveness, I beseech you to pursue God’s Peace through God’s Word. Have you no Faith in even the Father? Will you allow yourselves to be instruments of Lucifer instead? Will you grant Adolph Hitler victory over you from the grave? Would you break Father’s Heart so??? What has happened to you since WWII? Have you not yet fully recovered? I think I can understand that. Peace my brothers, and sisters, and children of Israel. Faith. We await your answer....
Note 1: Palestine Peace not Apartheid page 179-182
Note 2: Palestine Peace not Apartheid page 184.

Jimmy Carter is probably the most honorable, decent and sincere statesman in the world. Carter is approaching saint-hood status. For all his good work, he certainly deserves the noble prize for the second time.

Carter is absolutely correct about the Apartheid is occupied Palestinian territories. Israel's occupation and brutal treatment of the Palestinians is rarely discussed in the media. We all know the reason behind this silence. It is a fact that the vast majority of US media (TV networks, newspapers) are Jewish owned or controlled where pro-Israeli propaganda is spread daily. For example, recently CNN's Wolf Blitzer, who is a former employee of the Jewish Lobby American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) interviewed Dennis Ross, who is the head of Washington Institute of Near Eastern Policy (WINEP) which is funded by AIPAC. Thus we have the Jewish Lobby interviewing the Jewish Lobby about various "inaccuracies" in Carter's book.

Can the Israel firsters be any more predictable? I think not. Not one of them seems to be able to speak to the fundamentals of Carter's book. Namely the permanent residential occupation of land that is *not* Israel by a small fraction of the Israeli population. Instead of a counter-argument, they do what they always do, call people names (mostly anti-semite), bring up unrelated issues, and generally twist words. They know talking about the subject at hand is a loser, so they avoid it all cost. Lucky for the rest of us that more and more people are not buying it. What we need is a Clean Break from this nonsense.

Anthony Polankski writes:

No need for the UN to go into this again. The UN partioned the British Mandate for Palestine into a Jewish state and a Palestinian state way back in 1947. The Palestinian portion of the state is still occupied and large parts colonised by Israeli settlements. ALL THAT IS REQUIRED IS FOR ISRAEL TO END ITS OCUPATION (SIC) AND ILLEGAL SETTLEMENTS - the basic requirement for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

*******************************************

Absolutely. I see how Israel's complete withdrawal from Gaza brought peace - NOT!

In his 1976 presidential debate with Ford, Carter said:

"Also in 1975, we almost brought Israel to their knees after the uh - Yom Kippur War by the so-called reassessment of our relationship to Israel. WE IN EFFECT TRIED TO MAKE ISRAEL THE SCAPEGOAT FOR THE PROBLEMS IN THE MIDDLE EAST."

you'll find it all here, in the transcript of the Ford Carter debate:

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/showdebate.php?debateid=7

Thirty years later, and 100s of millions in Arab money later, Carter has changed his mind - what a surprise.

Thirty years later, and unreasoning, blind bias still rules - it's all Israel's fault.

When there is a partner for peace in the Middle East, there can be peace - and not until then.

o im sorry- one of the sites is jews against zionism
still though letting jewish people speak for themselves

i am sorry mr kuchinsky- i was relating a real experience with real people- it was a lawyers and doctors organization in pittsburgh and i worked for the lawyer who took me for a long time

i was shown a map of israel and told that the arabs wanted to push them into the sea and i genuinely felt sorry for them and was kind of disgusted by the stated victory through deception

i cannot attest to the validity of the people who ran that meeting

ועה ברוב יועץ, "14"For lack of guidance a nation falls, but many advisers make victory sure." - Proverbs XI, 14). [1]
this is what wikipedia states is the current slogan
i noticed you left out the common word victory but maybe you were like me working from memory

STAN THESE ARE THE DEINITIVE BEGINNINGS OF ZIONISM AS DEFINED BY ZIONISTS-

conjecture about moses is purely your own idea-

lan Shalgi, initiated the Herzl Law in 2004, establishing the 10th of Iyar, Herzl's birthday, as a national holiday on which Israeli schools, public institutions and the Israel Defense Forces are required to honor the legacy of Israel's founder. israels founder sir- this is a statement by the government of israel-

it is a political movement with nothing to do with religion- it only becomes quasi-religious when zionists try to convince christians and the world that they deserve to steal land and kill the indigenous peoples in the process of stealing real estate
peace

MRS VICTORIA ANTIKACI

THANK YOU FOR THE COMPLIMENT MR JONES

Zionism did not spring full blown from a void with the creation of the Zionist movement in 1897
taken from zionist website zionism-israel.com

2. A descriptive term - The term "Zionism" was apparently coined in 1891 by the Austrian publicist Nathan Birnbaum, to describe the new ideology. It is also used to describe anyone who believes Jews should return to their ancient homeland.

3. A political movement - The Zionist movement was founded by Theodor Herzl in 1897, incorporating the ideas of early thinkers as well as the organization built by Hovevei Tziyon ("lovers of Zion").
from mideastweb.org zionist website

True Torah Jews Against Zionism

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Use our on site search engine to locate information on your selected keywords


What is Zionism?
One of our most oft-asked questions is "what is Zionism?"

Theodor Herzl
Theodor Herzl

Zionism is a movement founded by Theodor Herzl in 1896 whose goal is the return of Jews to Eretz Yisrael, or Zion, the Jewish synonym for Jerusalem and the Land of Israel.

The name of "Zionism" comes from the hill Zion, the hill on which the Temple of Jerusalem was situated.
jewsagainstzionism.com

TIME MAGAZINE
Posted Monday, Nov. 24, 1975

"The United States," said Ambassador Daniel P. Moynihan with controlled fury, "rises to declare before the General Assembly of the United Nations and before the world that it does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act." The target of Moynihan's scorn —and a chorus of bitter outrage throughout the Western world last week —was a General Assembly resolution declaring that "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination."

SHALEM.ORG

The State of Israel's second annual Herzl Day, celebrated on Monday, May 8, 2006, was a resounding success. The Shalem Center's vice president Yishai Haetzni, in partnership with Knesset Member Ilan Shalgi, initiated the Herzl Law in 2004, establishing the 10th of Iyar, Herzl's birthday, as a national holiday on which Israeli schools, public institutions and the Israel Defense Forces are required to honor the legacy of Israel's founder. In February of this year, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appointed the Shalem Center's president, Daniel Polisar, to chair the council of 21 leading public servants, military officers, and academics responsible for carrying out the provisions of the legislation-which includes taking the lead in promoting Herzl's legacy throughout the year, in Israel and around the world.

The celebration of Herzl Day was accompanied by the ceremonies familiar from Israel's other civic holidays. The Knesset devoted a special session to the discussion of Herzl's vision and legacy, which featured an address by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert emphasizing the importance of preserving the Jewish character of the State of Israel, followed by a speech by Benjamin Netanyahu highlighting Herzl's legacy

In accordance with the Herzl Law, the education ministry issued a national order requiring elementary, middle and high schools to devote class time on Herzl Day to the study of his life

Prime Minister's Office (www.pmo.gov.il/herzl),

On May 8, 2006, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert delivered a landmark speech at the Knesset in honor of Herzl Day.

IN THE INTEREST OF ABSOLUTE FAULTLESS FAIRNESS- I HAVE ONLY PASTED ISRAELI-ZIONIST SYMPATHETIC WEBSITE DEFINITIONS HERE

ONLY TIME MAGAZINE IS A "NEUTRAL" OFFERING

I HAVE LET THE ZIONISTS DEFINE THEMSELVES FOR YOU HERE
the addresses are provided

An element of the situation that has been overlooked in the previous posts is that of persecution. If the Jewish people of Europe had been accepted in the host contries with rights similar to those of other subjects or citizens, they would not have identified a need for a homeland. They were, however, considered a foreign element, largely because of their refusal to accept the divinity of Christ. The influence of the churches (Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant) was very strong on the governments and public of every European country. So the Jews were denied basic rights to education, property, professional employment, etc. They were required to live in locked ghettos, and,in some countries, required to wear pointed hats for easy identification. (The Nazis updated this with yellow stars of David.) To sustain this foreign identity, many countries considered "Jewish" a nationality, rather than a religion.

This lack of opportunity in host countries, including the opportunity to move elsewhere, obviously gave rise to the need for their own homeland, where their rights would not be so abridged. And this, dear readers, was the justification for Zionism, a movement to return the Jews to whence they came: Zion.
(A present-day parallel: Kurds yearning for a Kurdistan.)

This "go back where you came from" concept was quite acceptable to the European public. Unfortunately, Muslims, whose faith was the only one to respect the Jewish religion and allow Jews their faith and their basic rights, were the ones who had come to occupy this land during the nearly 2000 years of the Jewish diaspora.

Because of the efficiency of the Nazis in their genocide, some 6 million Jews were reduced to a few hundred thousand who could make the trip after the UN partition. Some posters have alluded to American (Brooklyn) Jews emigrating to Israel, this number is extremely small, limited to zealots both of the Zionist political persuasion and the ultra religious orthodoxy. American Jews, by and large are Americans by nationality who profess the Jewish faith. They enjoy the full rights and privelages afforded by the Constitution as do those who profess any (or no) religion. They are under no compulsion to emigrate to another homeland, though they sympathize with those who were.

It is an unfortunate fact that most (but not all) of the Muslim residents of what was then "Palestine" chose to move away from the newly defined State of Israel and that their leadership declined to accept the two-state division afforded by the UN resolution. And that Yassir Arafat who "never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity" failed to take advantage of the many peace proposals offered him. If he had, the Palestinians would today be living in a prosperous land of opportunity and enlightenment, instead of one of self-inflicted refugee camps with rockets their only means of self expression.

Jimmy Carter you are a couragous man. I applaude your courage. I pray your effort will help bring peace to the world

Victoria, you rock. Are you married?

President Carter, you are a great American. Thank you for your service.

However, I don't agree that an Israeli withdrawal to pre-1967 borders would solve the problem.

Palestine must be returned to the Palestinians. They will accept nothing less, nor should they.

Fortunately, the oppressed majorities are finally learning how to combat the previously overpowering air superiority of the US and Israeli military machines, as evidenced in Iraq and Lebanon.

Robert:
You say: "The return of millions of Arabs to Israel will obliterate it as a demographic fact. ... The Israelis, acutely aware of the demographic problems they already face in a sea of Arabs, will never aquiese in this." Sea of Arabs??
But this seems quite a strange way to put things. By that logic, South Africa could not have ended Apartheid. Would you say that the white South Africans were entitled to continue the oppression of Blacks, because they faced "a sea of Blacks' or that a white state would have been "obliterated as a demographic fact."
If Arabs were to return, then they would exist as citizens of Israel on an equal par with Jews and all others. What is wrong with that? Or do you think Arabs are incapable of it? Clearly you think the Jews of Palestine (aka Israeli Jews) cannot tolerate it? And is that true?

I am afraid that your comments betray an underlying racism. Sad - and the same unexamined attitudes seem to characterize many defenders of Israel. And for some, the racism is not at all implicit but explicit and virulent. As an example, see:"Neocon Advocates Civil War in Iraq as 'Strategic' Policy:
Daniel Pipes Finds Comfort in Muslims Killing Muslims
http://www.counterpunch.org/walsh03092006.html
Pretty disgusting.
jw

Regarding Victoria's assertion about the "motto" of Mossad she was taught at an alleged "Mossad meeting"...Actually, their motto is: "The Guardian of Israel Neither Slumbers Nor Sleeps."

President Carter is a national treasure and a true Christian. Most Republicans publicly embrace the name of Jesus, although very few endorse Jesus’ values. Republicans, seem to be the first to throw stones, are more intolerant of other religions and races and worship money and power. Many of our citizens have been fooled over-and-over by their one-liners and labeling of American citizens. Divide and conquer is their mantra.

What is a “Conservative” any way? It used to mean a person that embraces fiscal responsibility (on the backs of the poor) and smaller government (so evil men would have little opposition to their un-American activities). In the past, I would enjoy a debate on these principles, but today “Conservative” seems to mean just means ‘arrogant and intolerant’ and is not worth my intellect.

What so amazing to me, is that Republicans have a SOLID base of 27% of Americans. Although 26.99% of that base will never enjoy the spoils of the Republicans’ political fortunes, they are still unwavering in their support. I realize that this 26.99% are not the most highly educated and that these folks have FOX News (which is owned by a foreigner) and Rush Limbaugh constantly inundating them with messages that all Democrats are evil. I would have thought that once they lost their jobs to another country, they would realize the Republican Party does not represent their best interests.

But I digress, I agree with President Carter’s assessment of the Middle-East situation. Still I feel that peace is simple. Tell Israel that unless peace is quickly attained, the US will no longer provide weaponry to them or any other Middle-East country. Being that they already have our 2nd-tier weaponry, it will give them a little time to evaluate their situation and make the right decision. That decision should include, equal access to sea ports and water, equal numbers of places of worship, limits on the numbers of all new citizens and equal status for those now living in Israel territories. I am a Christian. However, I know that Jerusalem is big enough for all of us, Jews, Christian and Muslims alike.

John Walsh:

About the "right of return:" for the individual, there may be no difference, but for the receiving countries there is a big difference between the return of some hundreds of thousands of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, and the return of millions of original Arab inhabitants and their decendants ro the territory that is now Israel proper. A Europe of many hundreds of millions could have easily absorbed and recompensed the Jewish remnants of the prewar population. The return of millions of Arabs to Israel will obliterate it as a demographic fact. That may seem fair to some, and they are entitled to their opinion, but the Israelis, acutely aware of the demographic problems they already face in a sea of Arabs, will never aquiese in this. I merely recounted the history of the Arab emigration from Palestine. Whatever reason you give for it, it is a fact now whose consequences cannot be reversed without ending the sovereignty of the Israelis in the territory they call Israel. This is a fact- right or wrong, it's past history and is relevant today only in so far as it motivates the emnity between peoples that is the core of the problem in the area.

It is insulting to be fed such garbage as the "Jewish history" so excrucatingly and interminally outlined above re the founding and actions of Israel. Were these posters fed these absurdities in their Temple classes (or whatever) or is it an ad hoc attempt to tank the obvious that we see daily?
The ugliness, the name calling, against each other and everyone else, is telling. The crux of the matter. The tenor, the real history. The reason in miniature. The whole post is incredibly anti semitic in total. AND is a mirror of that blog chat recently in the NYT, on the same subject. And Israel started a new 100 home settlement last week...

Zionism seems to have been around at least since the Book of Mormon, so it started before 1895.

Did it start with the writings attributed to Moses? Or are real questions not allowed?

Romney is being touted for the GOP and Barack is being touted for the Democrats. How many data points is needed to draw a straight line? or to connect the dots?

Hirwa Biswas's comments above seem at first to be more objective than the obvious calumnies hurled at Carter.
But Biswas gives himself away with the canard: "When the Arabs left Israel, many did so at the urging of the Arab leaders in the surrounding countries..." So what? Many Jews in Europe deserted their property at the behest of Jewish leaders, as the Nazis advanced. Does that mean they have no right of return? Does that mean they are not owed compensation for their loss? The answer is no in both cases. The same is true of the Palestinians.
Note also that the writer cannot bring himself to say Palestinian - only Arab or at most Palestinian Arab.
Then their is the inevitable put-down of Carter. Carter and Sadat got on quite well. It was clearly Begin who double-crossed the peace process. And today in Haaretz we have Begin's lieutenant, Moshe Aarens, still alive and kicking, and warning that making peace with Egypt was a mistake not to be repeated, for example in the case of Syria. Aarens clearly prefers conquest to peace.
I could be wrong but it appears that with the piece above the Lobby is mounting a more sophisticated put-down of Carter than the over-the -top harangues posted earlier.
BUT CARTER'S BOOK. BUY MANY COPIES. GIVE IT TO FRIENDS. LET EVERYONE DECIDE. BESIDES IT MAKES A GREAT, ALBEIT DELAYED, HANUKAH OR XMAS OR NEW YEAR'S GIFT.

070102_ltwp blog re carter book 3
Hira Biswas:

What I meant is that the "country" or national home of "Palestine" is an artificial historical construct. As to the "Levantine" Arabs who resided in the 8,000 square miles of Israel within the borders that existed between 1949 and 1967, they were made refugees, something like a million or more of them in 1949. Natural increase has ensued since. but they were ethnically and culturally indistinguishable from the Arabs in the adjacent lands of Syria, Lebanon, and Trans Jordan. The Hashemites in Jordan were a tribal group, or clan, that were seated in power by the British under Allenby during the fight against the Ottoman Turks in the First world War. But the Arabs of Palestine were evicted, moved out in a war with Jews, mostly newly arrived from Europe, beginning in the last quarter of the 19th century. In that sense, the Jews who settled in Palestine were non native to the area, and could properly be called colonists, or interlopers. The Sephardic Jews, residing, for the most part peacefully, in the Arab lands of North Africa and elsewhere in the Middle East, were not in the picture. They only began to emigrate in the 1950's.

So we are left with the bitter legacy of this history. When the Arabs left Israel, many did so at the urging of the Arab leaders in the surrounding countries who intended a war to take back what they believed the Jews had stolen from them. That war, called called a war of independence by the Jews, and a catastrophe by the Arabs, resulted in a displaced population, ethnically very much the same as that in the Trans Jordan and Lebanon. It is true there were some differences, Allawites north of Palestine, and other local clans in the mountains of Syria and Lebanon, but these were in no sense national groups, and could more properly be thought of as part of the large Arab nation. The Arab countries surrounding Israel supported the establishment of refugee camps by the United nations to accommodate the displaced people. This was not only because they wanted to maintain them in opposition to the Israelis, with the intention that they would eventually return and take back their lands, but because these Arab states, newly establish after the withdrawal of the british and French, were separately poor and underdeveloped, and were not well situated to take in these refugees. So the economic underdevelopment of the area is as much responsible for the refugees as anything else. If there were vibrant growing economies such as we have seen in East Asia, the Palestinian Arabs would have resettled more easily. That said, many did manage to emigrate to other Arab lands. Their high literacy and cultural strengths have made them one of the most economically advanced and productive populations wherever they settled. But ironically they have in some of these countries in the Middle East been treated much the same as the Jews were in Europe- as interlopers, and people profiting off the lands and resources of the native peoples in these countries.

This is just a small glimpse of of the tragic history of this area. If you had to sum it up, you could say that this is a confrontation between culturally advanced and economically developed peoples from Europe, set against poorer, less well organized indigenous people, and so we have all the appearances of displacement and domination of one people by another. That's a gross simplification, but it does explain some of the political aspects of the problem. What this is is complex and rooted in a history that can't be rewritten. History may not be fair, but it is what it is and the peoples of the Middle East must come to terms with it. Begin understood this, and Sadat died for it. But they were much bigger men than Jimmy Carter. There have been many great leaders in the area in recent times- Ataturk, Ibn Saud, Gemayel, Sadat, and others. Until others come on the scene, until the people can make peace with each other, and not at the behest of outsiders, there won't be any solution. Like it or not, the Israelis are now a part of that area, even if they are wealthier and more of the 'first world." I have no doubt, with their cultural strengths and capabilities, the Arabs will catch up.

israel is not a religious state

the motto of the mossad is VICTORY THROUGH DECEPTION

i learned this at a mossad meeting in the early 90s

THIS IS NOT A RELIGIOUS ISSUE
IT IS A POLITICAL ISSUE
POLITICAL
COMPLETELY

people bring religion into it becasue they are misinformed deliberately by obscurantist zionists

there are christian zionists and jewish zionists

Israel occupation is not justified by any jewish doctrine or philosophy
the philosophy of zionism is political but tried to appeal to religious sentiments of its adherents to succeed in its political agenda

RON why werent the ROMA (gypsies) repeatriated to INDIA where they were from originally?
over 1 million ROMA were killed in WWII

have the jewish people done anything to help their fellow sufferers?
NO
THE MERCY YOU SHOW OTHERS IS THE MERCY WITH WHICH YOU SHALL BE JUDGED

rabbis against zionism
Gently RON- go there and rediscover what your religion tells you

YES PEDRO- i have 2 magic words- iran contra

jimmy carter has proven himself to be a consistent an honest practioner of his faith
the man is not a hypocrite

in 1974 the UN declared ZIONISM = RACISM

the same UN that israel agreed with when it was created in 1948

however israel has conveniently ignored the 65 RESOLUTIONS BROUGHT AGAINST IT BY THE UN

RESOLUTIONS AGAINST PALESTINE? 0
thats right 0

amount of money GIVEN to israel in the past 50 years? 113 BILLION DOLLARS

1 million dollars a day for 15 years

the reasoning for israel to exist?
land grab

RABBIS AGAINST ZIONISM
clearly elucidates the issue from the jewish religious perspective

current situation?
ariel sharon wiping his muddy shoes inside the mosque while the people were at prayer accompanied by 1000 armed guards

zionism=racism
jewish does not equal zionism

zionism is a modern philosophy 1895

criticism of zionism does not equal criticism of the jewish people a people to be respected and admired
its enough for now
peace and god bless you president carter

Mr. President, lets get a few things straight here. What's happening in "Palestine" is not apartheid. The occupied territories are not the pocket states like those the Boers attempted to inflict on the blacks in South Africa. They aren't even properly "Palestine" by any stretch of any definition, they're parts of neighboring states that at one time attempted to conquer Israel. Those territories dont' belong to the Palestinians, they "belong" to the Egyptians, Jordanians, and Syrians. The idea that these pieces of conquered territory somehow comprise a "state" is ludicrous. With the rise of Hamas to power, they've become a proving ground for the empowerment of Arab dregs, and they're proving time and again their complete lack of trustworthiness.

What's happening between Israel and the territories isn't racism, its survival, and the Israelis are proving time and again, despite their missteps, they're fit to survive moreso than those who would wish them dead.

Religion cannot solve the Middle East problem. Religion created the problem in the first place.

The Jews invented religious nationalism. Then refusing to accept the dubious claims of the Christians they became the victims of religious nationalism. They returned to the Middle East to start the whole terrible process over again.

WE "of faith" surely do subscribe to 'DO UNTO OTHERS... the old didcate. And it suggests a solution to the SETTLEMENTS! Recall that the Jews, this summer in Lebanon...
first destroyed much of the infrastructure, then spread, by air, leaflets to the civilians
warning
that they'd better move out or they'd be bombed. And then the Israelis bombed the H
out of them. Children, women, old men, mostly. And should anyone survive, there were cluster bombs. Still are,over there in Lebanon.
Another old dictate followed by the Israelis, always, is 'eye for an eye'. For those of us "of faith".

Dear President Carter,

Two thumbs up! It took a lot of courage to approach this issue from a new angle. The internet blogs have been full of pretty nasty criticism; but there has been a lot of praise too. In a nutshell, the criticism amounts to this, Mr. President: you have been nominated to the candidacy of anti-Semite. On that note, allow me to offer my opinion to the public. Classifying a person "anti-Semitic" for criticizing a nation-state is dangerous for at least two reasons. First, it halts conversation and adds fuel to deviant organizations (i.e., skinheads) who are already hoping to be labeled anti-Semitic. So, for example, giving Jimmy Carter to David Duke (and some critics – like Dershowitz – have done this), gives Duke a degree of legitimacy. These deviant groups notice these things. They noticed, too, what Dershowitz did or tried to do to Professor Walt at Harvard. This labeling is profoundly insane; it is a blessing to radical supremacist organizations all over the world. Second, it sets the bar too low, so low that pretty much the entire world would therefore have to be called anti-Semitic to some degree because most countries are not keen on Israel's policies. I am well-traveled and absolutely sure of this. So, if planet earth's population finally accepts the title of anti-Semite given to them, pretty soon they will not care. Worse yet, they will accept it and run with it. I am a gentile and, trust me, I have been hearing growing discontent from other gentiles on this matter - and it is scary. But at this point they keep it low - if they have a public position - or they use anonymous internet blogs as a blasting cap. It is important to approach these issues now, as Carter did, before this sort of thing descends into murkier water. Yes, Carter was provocative. And yes, it was probably startling and even offensive for some Jewish men and women. But it was absolutely necessary. Best wishes.

Mr. President,

Respectfully, the fallacy with your approach is that an Israeli pullback to pre-1967 boundaries is no solution. The illegal 1948 partition of Palestine is an aggression that cannot be allowed to stand.

It's funny how those who bash the UN for opposing our ill advised adventure in Iraq, are so eager to cite the UN as the source of legitimacy for the state of Israel.

We should have given New Jersey to the Jewish Refugees after the war. At least it was ours to give.

After Iraq, the partition of Palestine stands as the worst foreign policy mistake of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Some people argue that Jews people dream about returning to Jerusalem after driven out of there centuries ago. This is such a silly argument. If any Jew had right to return to Jerusalem are those who were native Jews of Palestine. Not the Jews from Brooklyn and Russia. Think about billions of Muslims and Christians decide to live in Mecca and Bethlehem and leave their native country and converge there, driving out the local population out of their homes and farms. It is non sense. The local Jews has right to live in Jerusalem. But not the Jews who left their homes around the world and converged on Palestine, driving out local Palestinians from their homes.

Having said that, it is terrifying to know that Jews all over the world are in pursuit of some kind of ages old relegious fantasy to return to Israel. In this age and time, pursuing religious fantacies could bring tragic results (which we are already seeing in Palestine since last 60 years) to the whole world. There are 3 major religions and it is scary to imagine that they all start acting to materilize their religious fantacies as each one has their own fantacies which leaves no room for other religion.
Much has been said about Iran and its mullah ism but not much has been said the "mullah ism" that is pervailing in Israel since its start. Israel is a state based on religion, just like Iran or Taliban. Just like Iran and Talibans are threat to the world peace, Israel is too. Actually it has proven as threat to world peace many times over. With a huge nuclear arsenal, who knows what is to come from aparthies state of Israel.

I thank president Carter to start to look into the policy of Israel. However, he is so polite in tackling this issue that it almost on the border of minimizing the threat the world peace faces from state of Israel. I wish he was a little more vocal to say the truth. He is like a person who is saying the truth in a very apologetic manner. I still wait for an American George Galloway to tell as it is.

I just wanted to thank the Post for finally printing an editorial that criticizes Israel. The frequency of pro-Israel editorials published here was becoming disturbing--thank you for finally presenting the other side of the issue.

Robert postulated a strange theory which, in a nutshell, is: there are no Palestinian people. These people are Arabs because speak Arabic. Also, there is no Palestine. If there is Palestine, it is included in Jordan. Therefore, based on this theory, Carter is wrong to even address the Israeli/Palestinian issue because there is really no Palestine or Palestinian. Unlike the Iranian President, Roberts theory does not wipe away the Palestinian people, merely transports them to Jordan or other Arab countries without incurring any transportation costs. This clever theory makes the Palestinian merely invisible, thus instantly solving a huge problem.

In this context, one issue President Carter has been raising every time he is on Television: US Media’s complete silence about Palestinian situations. In affect, our media did not make the Palestinian people invisible; our media pundits made them less than human by constantly demonizing them. I see why our politicians are so silent about it. They are silent because media exposure is the oxygen of their political life. Our press freedom does not mean a thing if the media ownership is so concentrated. Look around, many of our best reporters are out of sight. We truly live in a topsy-turvy world, special interests are attempting to get our most admired President into the gutter.

carter center and bush forum.
jimy carter and georgey bush get their mental and soul supply from the( prince of peace).the only difference is that jimy is gentel and pacific ,while bush is arrogant and warrior.with all love and respect to the prince of peace ,global peace is way beyond the ability of the prince of peace .the one who sets the rule for global peace is the creator of the prince of peace .the funy thing is that ,at carter center and bush forum,they belive that the prince of peace died and nailed on the cross,such myth would take the world backword.

Ron, your posts are filled with absurdities and ad-hominem attacks on Paul. First you resort to calling him a self-loathing Jew because he does not support the US funding Israel when it commits constant massacres against Palestinians (which it calls "mistakes" and which fuel huge amount of anger and are simply not necessary). Then you say he will stand by and watch another Holocaust of the Jews.

For you to say this to him, another Jew, I myself find deeply offensive and unwarranted by anything he actually said. I am a Jew too, and I will definitely not stand by and "watch another Holocaust". But as it stands, 26x the number of Palestinians relative to Jews were killed in 2006. The Jews have peace treaties with most of their neighbors, and face no threat from the US, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, etc. Stop hijacking my religion and pretending we're constantly on the verge of annihilation and persecution, at the very same time that Israelis actually are persecuting Palestinians. It's shameful and giving me, as a Jew, a bad name.

Am I saying that Palestinians are right to use the specific tactics they use against Israelis? No. Suicide bombing is wrong, as are rockets sent into civilian areas. But how are they supposed to act, to resist occupation? Perhaps you could tell us what the acceptable methods of resistance are.

My point is, that people like you, Ron, believe that it is stupid to reach any resolution with the Palestinians or Syrians until they totally cease resisting Israel's occupation. You're asking them to give up before they get what they want. While I don't support the methods they use to resist, what you're saying is deeply unrealistic and means that Israel will never give back land, as it will always face resistance against occupation. This can only lead to a cycle of more violence from Arabs, more retaliation from Israelis, and so on, until Israel is completely unstable and a horrible place to live. So stop pretending that you're a friend of Israel or even a good Jew, because the policies that you advocate put us in direct harm and threaten the viability of the Israeli state.

TO: Paul

Hi again. It's so nice of you to let me know that people in a chatroom are talking about my posts. Should I thank them or just hope they agree with me?

Frankly, I'll do neither. It just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy that folks out there are discussing what needs to be discussed, hopefully on a more logical level and less simplistic approach than you.

And by the way, I just took my blood pressure which indicates 118/72. Not bad for a frenzied Jew trying like hell to engage in the sport of spotting supporters of a culture of madness.

Who am I to judge you? A 66-year-old retired Jewish man who can easily discern the difference between right and wrong, good and bad, awareness and indifference, hatred and love.

By the way, this is not an intellectual exercise whatsoever. It doesn't take a Nietsche or a Kant to solve the problems that exist in the Middle East. All they did was think, not act. It does take focused thinking, reading and some common sense to understand the dynamics of that area, and to know that Israeli Jews and most of their fellow Jews around the world will NOT stand idly by and experience another Holocaust while people like you just stand by and watch the terror.

Happy New Year.

Let me tell you exactly why US and Israeli interests are not the same, and are in fact widely divergent. The reason is that as long as the US is completely one-sided and does not support a resolution, it will be widely hated and scorned in the Arab and Muslim world. We might think (falsely) that we're doing Israel a favor by not pushing them to make peace, but really we're harming our own interests and giving support to the hardliners and others who denounce the US presence in the Middle East and make our exit from the region more hasty. For instance, as long as the US considers to pass stupid UN resolutions against a country which has no nuclear weapons according to the CIA or a plan to develop them (Iran), while blatantly ignoring other countries whose leader, Olmert, admits that he has nuclear weapons (Israel), we will have no legitimacy in the Middle East and are harming our own interests.

I consider it very obvious and very clear how US and Israeli interests are not the same at all, and how we're harming our own interests by being so one-sided, rather than honest arbitors of peace. But right now, many in the US are so blinded by this rhetoric about "Islamofascists" (one of the most deeply offensive and idiotic and hate-fuelling terms I've ever heard applied to ANY religion), and so the US cannot pursue its own interests and retain legitimacy in the ME.

Carter is an honest man who is and has been dedicated to peace, even at the cost of alienating himself from these ideologues who are so blinded by their own rhetoric that they cannot see what is in Israel's own interest (peace, not deterrence).

Well, Mr. Carter, you sure have smoked out a lot of folks with partisan axes to grind, willing to pass off one-sided biases as fact or at least as wisdom. Few,if any, took an operational view of the problem , citing the pro and con of each side of the issue, and of each approach to a solution.

I make no pretense to have a solution, but would hope that broader viewpoints be taken by those who would make judgements.

I would like to offer a few facts that have not been introduced:

In Rome, the Arch of Titus celebrates the conquest of Israel/Judea with a bas-relief of legionaires carrying off a menorah and ark of the law (Torah).
The Romans subsequently drove most of the Jews out of the land to wander the earth for centuries in the so-called "Diaspora". This was their punishment for daring to rebel against that occupation. Their international persecution began therewith, not later in the 14th or 15th century as alleged in a previous post.

For nearly two millenia, the Jews have pined for their lost homeland. Their hymns include "Jerusalem, the Golden", their Passover service concludes with "Next year in Jerusalem." It is not arbitrary that the nations of the world, in atonement for the persecutions culminating in the Holocaust, chose the area which the Britts had dubbed "Palestine" under the Mandate, and which was Israel of old, as the one appropriate homeland to which the wandering Jews should be returned.

Now that is the mindset of the Jewish nation. And this should be considered by anyone taking sides on this issue. And this accounts for the firmness, the determination and to some obstinacy of the Israeli position in both negotiations and hostilities.

The threat to the continuance of this homeland is real. Hamas publicizes it. Arafat demonstrated it by declining to accept the peace offer that met all his demands but one: That one, allowing the return of all Arabs and their families who had fled Israel in 1948 rather than live as Israeli Arabs, would have automatically ended the Jewish State and replaced it with Arab rule.

When these facts are considered, the issue can be recognized as having dimensions that Mr. Carter, and many of those who have posted here, have not addressed in recommending solutions.

On a lighter note, to the poster who predicated giving New Jersey to the displaced Jews of Europe:
Baron Rothschild of France once purchased land in southern New Jersey for the establishment of a Jewish farming community. He paid for passage for numerous persecuted Jews and established them as farmers and chicken ranchers. Their town of Woodbine is still thriving.

And please don't be so free with our real estate.
New Jersey, while the butt of many jokes, is the finest example of democracy and tolerance in the entire Union. Our communities are racially and ethnically and religiously diverse and we all live together in mutual respect.

TO: STEVE

Au contraire, my friend. I have no problem whatsoever with Muslims in the Middle East. Only their murderous and vicious ways of dealing not only with Israelis, but with their own people who dare to have an independent opinion. Apparently, you don't read history current events or even watch TV once in a while. Just think, you might even get informed if you engage in just one of those activities.

If you think for a second that I would choose those kinds of people as my friends over Israelis who represent one of the most productive, cultured, civil and ethical countries in the world
I would suggest you get a lobotomy.

I choose to support the Jewish World because some of my relatives still have tattoo numbers on their arms; others were thrown in open pits. I choose to support the Jewish World because of the hatred toward us over the millennium. I choose to support the Jewish World because of its universal approach to other cultures and societies. I choose to support the Jewish World because of their many significant contrubutions in medicine and the sciences, psychology, arts, music, technology, medicine -- and yes, even giving the Christian world Jesus.

What perplexes me is your not understanding that the Jewish people originated in the land that they now live on. Do you think they have no right to live in the birthplace of the Jewish people?

Based on your perspective, everything would be hunky dory if the Jews just left. Which tells me you honestly believe the Arab and Muslim countries would get along just grandly. Have you completely lost your faculties or have you lost any level of awareness?

How quickly you forget 9/11. How quickly you forget the Madrid bombings. How quickly you forget Kohbar Towers, the USS Cole, the kidnapping of Americans in 1979 Tehran. How quickly you forget the Munich massacre. I guess all of this is Israel's fault.

And exactly where do you think the Jews should go if they left Israel? Ln your case, I think the answer would be back in the ovens.

There is a lot of talk regarding the power of the Jewish lobby. If more and more people believe that the Jewish lobby's interest is increasingly becoming detrimental to the U.S overall interest, then then is only one thing(and I believe a very powerful one) that the American people can do and that is to vote out of office those politicians who are succumbing to the Jewish lobby's influence.

As far as I am concerned, whoever is not looking out for the U.S interest first should be looked at as anti-american(it does not matter whether that person is Christian, Jew, Muslim, etc.)

To Ed:

I would remind you that Anwar Sadat paid for Carter's "peace" between Egypt and Israel with his life.

And not since the Athenians threw King Cyrus' emissairies into the pit had such an outrage been committed against diplomats as under Carter.

Ron:

I am heartened by your response to me. Whether its six million or one million or even three thousand, it is still horrible and evil. This includes Darfur. Doing a body count will not solve this problem and will not advance civilization. You may be right about some aspects of education in the Middle East, however this happens in the regimes we have nurtured and have often created from whole cloth. In some cases policies of these regimes is a direct reaction to the intractability of the Israel-Palestine problem. This is the central issue, without its resolution we cannot more forward and are sadly destined to hundred years of war. We cannot allow this to happen.

Ron:

Your venom is coming through my plasma screen.

And who declared you anything to describe me a,"self loathing Jew"?

If youn are a true Jew, you would have been more intelligent in your responses. I just left a chat room and people are talking about your posts. Please calm down.

President Carter is misunderstood because his long range political views are not the type of views we usually hear. He has the courage to speak his mind in an intelligent and wise manner. The diatribe and insults of his retractors just makes his voice and mind sound louder and cleaner. I never thought of him as been anti-jew, on the contrary, I think that his position and advice to Israel is the only position, in my view, that will bring a lasting peace in the Middle East and protect the survival of the State of Israel... To gloss over the injustices perpetrated by Israel just because the Palestinians do it more does not excuse Israel for its deeds and makes us look unfair and not credible.To continue the present course is the most dangerous one for Israel; time is not on her side. President Carter, please continue your excellent work.

Jon:
You have a tiney mind that you use to call names. Mr. Carter has served the country in tough situations and has support of millions of voters who voted for him. He has Nobel prise and a foundation which has spent billions on providing shelters to homeless in the world. He has brought peace between Egypt and Israel that holds today.

Your tiny mind cant fathom the greatness of such a giant and a living legend. So better not open your mouth.

Jews control american meida, they own ny times, washington post, most CNN anchors are jews, no wonder americans have no idea about what is happening in palestine. Mel Gibson is right and americans cannot do any thing about it.

Ron,

You seem to be not very comfortable with Muslims in the middle east. That I understand. What I dont understand is why you support the jews, who came from foreign lands, to continue to live among the Muslims that you don't like very much. Don't you see the conflict?

I think Hammas or Nasarallh or poped up because of Israel. If Israel was not ther, there would be no bin laden or Nasarallah. If there was no Israel in the middle east, there would have been no terrorism in the world.

I have read Carter’s new book and totally agree with his short column. I am not an atheist but I do not subscribe to a “personal” god. Having said that, I have the greatest respect for Carter’s right to his religious views and how he conducts his political life vis-à-vis his beliefs. Carter has stated the obvious truth concerning the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Now the hateful and revengeful goons will try to tear this honest man of peace to shreds. The abused from Europe have become the abusers in Palestine and the Israeli lobby uses American Middle Eastern foreign policy like an attack dog on a leash. In the long-run, Carter’s star will continue to rise because he speaks the truth while Bush’s will fade into ignominy.

TO: Paul

I think I just spotted a self-loathing Jew. Or is it Semite?

Jimmy Carter's shameful and gutless temerity - when international law and the sanctity of diplomatic protection was violated in 1979 by the Ayatollah Khomeni's minions - has led directly to the attack on the WTC. The takeover of the American embassy was an overt act of war; Carter had the entire American people behind him. But instead of defending the interests of the United States and the principles of international diplomatic immunity, Carter chose instead to grovel and dawdle.

The man was simply incapable of making the big decisions required of the President of the United States. His small town mentality - viewing the Islamofasicsts in the same vein as errant Methodists in the church across the street from his own Baptist Church in Plains, GA - indicates just how an incompetent and clueless president he was.

By not understanding the ideology of the Islamofasicsts and thinking they could be used as pawns in the Cold War struggle with the Soviets, the groundwork was laid for a new fasicst threat against the entire West. Because of his failure to act aggressively and forcefully towards Iran and Islamic terrorism nearly thirty years ago, the blood of 3000+ Americans on 9/11 should be laid at the feet of Jimmy Carter. All Americans should repudiate this inexcusable and unbeliveable dupe as he wallows in his neo-Marxist pablum, and condign him to join the Quislings and the Chamberlains of the world.

TO: MBA

Thanks for your post. I'm glad you made your response brief and tactful. If you'll permit me, let me respond:

I am not angry and do not hate people based on their religion, color, ethnicity or nationality. You can believe that or not; you're certainly entitled to your opinion, as am I.

I do think the Israeli/Palestinian conflict must be solved intelligently, peacefully and with great vision. Yet I find a strong anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli spate of hate within the context of religious zealots especially in the Middle East. This hatred is not limited to Muslims but Christians as well. Most are either historically ignorant people or those who really desire to see the elimination of the Jewish People.

Islam, in and of itself, is obviously a respected and much-followed religion by mostly peace-loving people, but one cannot deny that the religion has been "kidnapped" by thugs, murderers and tyrants. I assure you "brainwashing" is not part of the Jewish culture or education. Can you say the same about Muslim education in the Middle East?

I'm also quite aware that many, many other peoples have been brutalized and persecuted, including Muslims in Darfur who are being macheted to death by their own Muslim brothers. And what are the Muslim nations doing about it? Do I hear the word "nothing"? I thought so.

The fact still remains that the Jews have been the single, most-butchered group in history. That's a fact no one can, or should, deny.

Jimmy Carter's book has opened up the only significant debate on the one-sided US policy on the Israel-Palestine issue since George Ball, a former Under-Secretary of State. Ball, unfortunatel,y was a voice in the wilderness then and was essentially "anti-semitized" out of existence. Full page ad hominem (and defensive) advertisements in NYT directed against Pres. Carter demonstrate what an impact he is having.

Thank you President Carter for your new effort to bring piece to Palestine. If America has listened to Carter and the Palesinian-Israeli conflict have been solved, there would have not been 9/11 and the current mess in Iraq.

What an honor it has been to periodically review the comments on this blog on New Years day, January 1, 2007. Thank you Mr President for your thoughts. And thank you to all who have commented here. So many support President Carter's interpretation of the state of affairs between Isreal and Palestine. All these comments, for or against Carter's statements, shine more light on the real truth. Something our representatives in Congress are coerced from doing for fear of getting thrown out of office. "We the people" must keep this momemtum moving forward and let our representatives know. Congress acts on pressure, as all lobbyists know. I intend to email my representative next. Who knows, maybe if they get enough emails maybe they will break there chains of silence and address the real issues for once. Contact your representative at http://www.house.gov/writerep/

Ron,

You are such an intellectual disgrace to every true semite. Your anger is very obvious. Intellectuals do not get angry.

True, the Israeli government has never justified the killing of children. In fact, it promoted, condoned and perpetrated such killings, and we US tax payers paid for that financially and politically.

Having said the above, today's State of Isreal, does not represent the true and great face and teachings of Judaism.

Please, let us have a real fruitful dialogue, where we all promote peace and co-existence.

Shalom.

Ron,

I agree only one thing that you said, I need to work on my spell check. But the facts remains that Palastine has nothing to do with mass graves of Jews or your bitterness towards the whole world. I did not in the past nor in the future want to happen want to happen to any one, including jews, what is happening in Palastine to the Palastinians. I feel you are filled with fear and hate. You dont seem to have shred of humanity otherwise you will feel the pain of people other then Jews.

Like some one said, Jews are not the only one who has suffered in the past or suffering in the present. May be you dont read any thing outside Jews history. Ther non-jews people may not be human enough for you. If you have to settle scores, why dont you take your aparthied state of Israel to Germany or Poland and settle the score? Why you have to support the killings of innocent Palastinians?

I am a proud american and I refuse to be played to shed my blood and money for the aparthied state of Israel.

When you write, it seems that you are bone head person who will never try to see out side his tunnel vision.

It's interesting to see how often leftist responses contain the stock phrase 'you can't criticize Israel without being called an atntisemite'. Ironically, I find that it is far more often the case that you cannot attack the leftist worldview without being called a fascist or a Nazi -- or a partisan of apartheid.
How is it that those who claim to care so very much for Palestinian lives and freedom care so very little for democracy in Iraq, and want the US to get the hell out, so they can show us what a real mutual religious massacre looks like?
Why is it that the Left forgives the Hamas charter, which treats the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" as fact, and ignores Nasrallah statements such as: "There is no more disgusting human than a Jew...Notice I did not say Israeli; I said Jew." Oh, because they have a right to go overboard because they've been made very angry? If you had witnessed the results of the intentional (not to mention Palestinian-celebrated) massacre of children and babies at Sbarro's in Jerusalem, as I have, or been the intended recipient of some nearby Katyusha rockets, you might begin feeling that the Israeli Army is actually very restrained in its responses and extreme efforts to avoid civilian casualties on the other side.

I think former president Carter is spot on in his assessment of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Just finished the book Sunday. I highly recommend it. Keep up the excellent work, Sir.

To Sara Lekmish and Ron,

I was born to a Jewish father. So let us cut it off right here and do not label me as anti semite since I am a semite.( by the way, Arabs are semites too and if you disagree, then you should not be taking part in this debate.

Your posts show one thing. ARROGANCE! Arrogance that no longer serves the interests of Israel. Please have a substance for your posts, not just rhetoric and name calling. Such is backfiring.

Carter's book is setting a new era, not in the Arab-Israeli conflict, but also in the way Americans will view their future support of Israel. No thank to Israel's intoxication with arrogance for taking America for granted.

To the poster who responded to my post:

1. Learn how to spell.

2. I agree. No one can justify the killing of children, not even the Palestinians. The Israeli government has NEVER justified an act like that either so I wonder why you would even bring up that issue, unless of course, you too hate Jews and would like to revise relatively current history.

3. I do not think the Holocaust and the Palestinian issue are linked at all. I do think the Palestinians and their fellow travelers would like to create a holocaust of their own.

4. You readily admit the world has persecuted the Jews; it sounds as though you're very willing to let it continue.

5. "All the European Jews" are NOT in the Middle East. Most of them are buried in mass graves. The ones who did survive are scattered throughout the world, including the United States, thanks to the world at large which did nothing to put out the flames of the crematoria. If you live in the U.S., be careful or we'll drink the blood of your children.

6. Learn how to spell properly; it might improve your communications skills. It might also teach you how to read history, especially as it relates to the Middle East.

7. Thank God I live in the U.S. where free speech allows me to respond to a moron like you. Do you really think I could do this in Saudia Arabia, Syria, or on Palestinian land?

And on the next post, please be courteous enough to post your name. Or are you fearful that the Jewish/Zionist conspiracy is going to find out who you are and go after your ignorant skin?

All the best...

Ron: So much anger and hate. Jews have not been the only ones persecuted in history. Let's get real. By the way, you are really quite brainwashed about Islam.

Carter is a person who have deep committment to justice.
Israel is a cancer in the body of Middleeast. There will be no peace in the world unless israel is removed.
The revolitions and resistance movements in that part of the world is directly linked to the attrocities committed by that state, with the supporting nations, the british created it and backed by the america and france. ir is bent on
mentality of
Remove israel as a state there will be peace.
what is happening in the middle Eastis a direct result of creation of a political zionest body in the midest of Muslim countries and people.
It is absolutly ignorant and lackes political forsight, to create a body that has no historical and ethical connection with the neighbours, and keep forcing it on them. They will rebell and their logic and rational is marginalized.
That is what we see is Middle East.

President Carter:

What a refreshing change of air to hear that you welcome an open debate in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict...too many of us have felt that we can't even mention the subject without being accused of bigotry.

Although I'm not a religious person, I am an ethical person - an ethical atheist perhaps - and I appreciate honesty, as well as free speech, which is an integral principle upon which our nation is founded.

Ron,

We have heared it before that Jews justify the killing of Palastinian children, men and women becuse Jews has been prosecuted elsewhere. It is such an idiot excuse to do what Israel is doing in Palastine. All the European Jews dont belong in the middle east. They should go back where they came from or create a state in Europe or any other place where you dont have to kill children to create your own state. Stop these moronic excuses that makes you bring holucast on Palastine.

You have a twisted mind and you can not see clearly. Palastine has nothing to do with Jews plight elswhere. They are victims of your fear and hate. When are you going to stop this? Are you trying to destroy the whole world because the whole world has prosecuted the Jews? It seems to me thats what you are like to do.

Mr. Carter has the courage now to say it like it is. He could not do it while he was in office.
It is a fact that we americans suffer in our international out look by the total bias and support for all the imorals of the state of Israel. Supporters and lobby groups for the state of Israel, however immoral and unlawfull, move around the world to infelunce the powerfull government to affect its policies. It used to be France, and England, Now it is the America.
No power stays the same. Who ever reads the history of the conflict, based on the UN records, will see the hypocracy that prevailed at the time after the 1919 conference in paris.
What presedent carter is trying to tell us is that Israel was built on a lie, no matter how long it lives, it has no moral base. Nations live and survive if tey are built on morals that makes them strong and legitmate.

Mr. Carter is the greatest american president alive. I salute him for his character. Jews has tried to stick labels of hatered on any american who tries to be even handed and fair towards middle east problem. Now those labels dont work. American people refuse to be played by Israel. America has learned that her interests are conflicting with Israel. I wish president Carter was more blunt in telling the truth.

From Berlin to Buenos Aires, Rome to Ravensbruck, Los Angeles to London, it has been quite OK -- and in some cases applauded -- to see Jews slaughtered by tyrants, military machines, maniacal civilians and those who just plain hate the thought of Jewish people living their lives in peace and with a sense of equal justice and humanity. Clearly, the outright murder of Jews is not a new phenomenon, but stretches back even before the time of Christ. There has been virtually no period of time in written history during which Jews have not suffered being slaughtered at the hands of heathens, Christians, Muslims, fascists, communists and bands of other miscreants.

Which leads me to ask why the State of Israel, which has ceded more than 90% of the land it captured in 1967, should give even one more square inch of land or sand to a religion whose adherents think civil rights is an oxymoron.

With all due respect to a former president and the Office of the Presidency, Mr. Carter should publicly display the charters of the PLO, Hamas, Hizbollah and every other terrorist group throughout the world that exists in the name of Mohammed. These wretched, fanatical people of "faith" deserve nothing more than obscurity, just as the nazis deserved it, based on their written, undeniable, singular objective of destroying the Jewish People, whether they be Israelis, Americans, English or any other nationality.

These cutthroats, many of whom are Palestinians, belive it's perfectly acceptable to behead individuals based solely on their Jewish faith. They believe it's honorable to strap bombs on the bellies of their pre-teen and teen-age children to blow up other children so they can reach their heavenly paradise. They believe the Middle East should be Jew-free, which would then allow all Muslims to exist in peace with one another.

Do the supporters of Mr. Carter's historically mistaken diatribe really believe these very real acts are valid, or are they really Jew-haters who hide behind their empty and shallow words as written in their posts?

The Jews have been forced to be a nomadic people for thousands of years because of their beliefs, but have thrived whenever and wherever democracies exist. And Israel is as close to a democratic state one can find. It is NOT a theocracy, but is guided by the highest moral and ethical principles of great and lasting civilizations. They are a people who, while perhaps making mistakes, will no longer allow their lives and the lives of their children to be threatened by religious zealotry or venomous hate.

And while Mr. Carter berates the Israeli government's policies of building walls and creating settlements for its citizens, the Palestinians and their brethern still yearn to annihilate the Jewish People from the face of the planet.

Despite Ukrainian pogroms, the nazi Holocuast during which the Catholic Church and the U.S. State Department remained silent, Martin Luther's Reformation and whose writings were included in Hitler's philosophies, the Spanish Inquisition, the blood libels of the Middle Ages, the massacres at the hands of the blood-thirsty Mohammed in the 7th century, slavery at the hands of the Egyptians, and on and on and on, the Jewish People will remain a light unto the nations because their very soul is steeped in the traditions of tikun olam, of helping repair the world.

Say what you will, Mr. Carter, but you will not alter the course of democratic Jewish history through your own religiosity, biases and ignorance.

This is one Jew who will stand with his brothers and sisters to not let that happen.

Judging by the content of some of the posted messages, it appears the rabid right wing "Swift Boat Veterans" mob is alive and kicking. Smear, lie, Smear, Smear...same old tactics.

President Carter, you are an honourable man well deserving of respect and I thank you for your lifetime of thoughtful work and service to this country. All the best for 2007 and beyond to you and Mrs Carter.

Ex-Presidents don't lie. They don't have any political interests to watch. Altough I appreciate Mr. Carter's "coming out of the closet", However, I wish he had acted when he had powers, to curtail the aparthied state of Israel. It is better late then never.

Dear Mr. President

Honesty is considered among the greatest virtues in all three Abrahamic faiths and traditions. You have opened up a very powerful debate that has the potential to correct wrongs and injustices and move us to a semblance of peace in the Middle East. This might be beginning of a true dialogue which the Israeli-Palestine issue has lacked for 50 years. All people of good faith need to join and support you. Realistic solutions,which are not based on creation of bantustans, are out there (many of which you have spelled out). But what is required is a spirit of true honesty and a stop in the demonization of the other.

Good luck to you in taking your courageous position.

Sara,

You should be ashamed that you did not have any good arguments to offer except calling names. This is the president who helped Israel sign peace with Sadat. I think you tiny mind can not fatham the great service that Jimmy Carter has done to humanity, including jews, during his 80 + years of life. Sahme on you.

Thank you President Carter,

Your insightful books are a pleasure to read.

Having the moral courage to be a peace maker as well as a peace keeper has made you one of my heroes. You have used your stature as an ex-president well.

Peace to you, and all the best to you and your family in the new year.

Perhaps someday a critical mass of humanity will understand that morality does not require religious faith, and also that so-called religious faith alone is one of the greatest threats to morality. Nowhere is this more obvious to someone with open eyes than in the Middle East. Only someday when we can love each other. Do you love them ? What did Jesus say again ?

Dear Mr. ex-President,
thank you for your unique gift to the world, to prove to all mankind still in command of their rational capacities, that a preachy bigot and anti-Semitic hatemongerer like you, thriving on liberally supplied Saudi money, and who would have made Homer Simpson look an unprejudiced intellectual compared with your mental faculties,that thus such a memorable gentleman like you, at the age of 82 yrs., voluntarily confesses his impertinent oafishness to a flabbergasted global audience.

Thereby posterity will owe you their sincerest thanks for not abandoning anybody to any ambiguity as regards the texture of your Simpsonian mind.

The post above by Hambono contains the best explanation yet of the why of the Iraq War.

The American people just don't seem programmed to deal with total religious and political fraud, and well meaning people are highly manipulated.

President Carter should be highly commmended for his efforts and those of us who want to maintain the United States as compromised to in the Constitution, and not a religious state based on fraudulent writings, should be very appreciative.

John Walsh,

you are a decent man; solution of the Palestinian question guides your posts. Carter, as you stated, deserves our respect and thanks for bringing more awareness to the conflict in the middle east.

I like your suggestion which goes: A secular state in all of historic Palestine, with equal rights for Jews, Christians, Muslims, atheists and everyone else is the desirable and only humane outcome.

Thank you, President Carter for being a man of faith who tries to follow that faith. You are absolutely right on what is happening to the Palestinian people, and I hope you keep speaking out for their cause. This madness has to end and the apartheid wall must come down. Israel will never live free of fear until this happens, and neither will Palestinians.

Logging in once again after a day of postings, I see a clear difference between the haters who use the most venomous invective against Jimmy Carter (It is hard to fathom their hatred, extending from Carter to all Arabls.) and those who look for peace. For those in doubt scan the postings. The pro-Israeli ones are marked by an almost rabid hatred of Carter and numerous self-serving distortions of the hisorical record.
Another book worth reading after Carter's is "The One State Solution" by Virginia Q. Tilley. (You can also google her and find articles by her on CounterPunch.com.) It is too late to have a two state solution. The Israelis have been so succsessful with establishing "facts on the ground" in the West Bank that it is hopelessly divided into bantustans separated by the Isreali colonists' posh "settlements." It is now an apartheid state as Tilley documents so well and Carter points out in the most benevolent possible way to the Israelis.
So now there are only two possible outcomes - a secular state in all of Palestine or an Israeli apartheid state already in existence.
For secularists a Christian state is no longer acceptable anwhere in the world, as Jews in America have long argued much to their credit. By the same token neither a Jewish state nor an Islamic state ought to be accepted. They are all throwbacks to medieval times and should all be condemned.
A secular state in all of historic Palestine, with equal rights for Jews, Christians, Muslims, atheists and everyone else is the desirable and only humane outcome.
And congratulations to President Carter for his courageous stand and to all those like Mearsheimer and Walt who have advanced the discussion.
Let us hope that 2007 marks the demise of the influence of the Israeli Lobby which should be considered as the representative of a foreign power, and not a Jewish lobby since most Jewish Americans, much to their credit, do not agree with the barbaric policies of the Lobby.
Happy New Year and Congratulations to Jimmy Carter.
jw

I have a question for Mark C. who said that, "Perhaps the UN can create an agreement to carve out a section of some other nation - Saudi Arabia? Egypt? Jordan? Libya? - as the new home for the Palestinians."
Why should another nation carve out land for the Palestinians? It was Palestine before Jerusalem existed. It was Palestine when the Jewish people lived there and it was Palestine during the Roman empire's occupation, etc., etc.

It seems to me that this Iraq adventure probably was more to protect Israel's interests than America's. Iraq, if it had WMDs, certainly posed a greater threat to Israel than America.

So the Israel lobby got the USA to do the dirty work.

The following is an excerpt from a letter to the editor I submitted to my local paper in November 2004. The letter was in response to a piece of graphic artwork that appeared in the Veterans Day edition of the newspaper. The paper usually prints my letters, but refused to print this one. Wonder why?

"In the Veterans Day artwork of the Stars and Stripes, the artist replaced the 50 stars with 100 Christian crosses and 11 Stars of David, implying, probably unintentionally, that Jews comprise about 10% of the U.S. military.

In reality, only about 2% of Americans are Jewish. And of the 250,000 graves at Arlington National Cemetery, only about 2500, or 1%, are marked with a Star of David. Of the 230,000 U.S. troops deployed in the Middle East currently, only about 600 are Jews, according to the Jewish Community Center Association. If true, that's less than 0.27%.

The level of Jewish participation in the U.S. military is truly shameful, especially considering America's so-called 'special relationship' with Israel. The Jewish community, by and large, sends its kids off to college, preparing them for lucrative professional careers, while poor and middle-class Christian kids are primarily the ones fighting and dying in the Middle East, doing the dirty work for Israel."

Wouldn't you think that, if the American Jewish community really cared so much about Israel, young Jewish boys and girls would be enlisting in *droves* into the US armed forces? I guess Israel is only important as long as you can get all Americans to pay for its defense and get *the goyim* to die for it.

I wonder: Of the 3000 US dead in Iraq, how many were Jewish? Anyone know?

President carter deserves a courage award, I read his book, and he is asking why the issue of two states, Palestine and Israel is not disscussed and debated in the US media. The politics that does not allow a healthy debate on the issue, are a blow to our US democracy. We hear the one sided Jewish view on why Israel should belong to the Jews, but what about the Palestine people, who have been displaced ? Let us hear both sides of this issue, in the news, in the print media, everywhere. We can make up our minds.

Was it only last year that more than a million Hispanic illegal as well as legal immigrants marched on cities across the US? The result of this was the average American waking up to the seriousness of our problem, and now Congress May do something about our porous borders. I have heard Capitol Hill referred to as TelAviv on the Potomac, or something like that. The Israeli lobby is incredibly strong and more powerful than that of tobacco. Some of these postings have made reference to that as well. By reading through many of these postings you can tell who has posted in favor of Israel and quite aggressively so. Perhaps now America will wake up to the seriousness of this delima and take America back into the hands of Americans and honest hard working legal immigrants and out of the hands of the lobbies.

***pg*** means a paragraph break
***pg***
Sorry this is so long but so is this tragic conflict which has lasted way too long.
***g***
It took great courage for President Carter to break the taboo in American politics and media against criticism of Israel's oppression of the Palestinians, a taboo, which I might add, does not apply in Israel itself. And Carter is, of course, quite right in saying that there will never be peace in the Middle East - not only in Israel/Palestine, but anywhere in the ME - until this central conflict is resolved.
***pg***
Why, first of all, does Israel exist? God, contrary to the opinion of Zionist fundamentalists, had nothing to do with it. It was the resultant of two factors. The first, of course, was the Holocaust, and the other was the persistence of anti-semitism in the Western democracies, INCLUDING the United States, in the post WWII era. That anti-semitism [which, by the way, was quite openly expressed in those days] made it politically hazardous for Harry Truman to give more than a very few Holocaust survivors refuge in the U.S. With every Western door slammed in their faces, and with its British overlords barring Jewish immigration into Palestine, the Holocaust survivors had nowhere to go. But Truman found a very clever solution to this problem. Although, as we now know, he shared the anti-semitism of his small-town origins, he became an ardent Zionist, and forced the British, who, exhausted by WWII, were then almost totally dependent on the U.S., to permit Jewish refugees to entire Palestine in laarge numbers. The UN - again due to U.S pressure - then partitioned Palestine, giving the Jewish immigrants the big cities of the Mediterranean coast and the Palestinins the impoversihed hinterland. The 1948 war in which the Zionists routed both the Palestinians and their Egyptian and Syrian allies, followed by the expulsion of most of the non-Jewish population, completed the process of the establishment of the Jewish State.
***pg***
I'm reviewing this well-known history in order to emphasize one unpleasant - but undeniable - fact, that Israel owes its existence not only tho the Holocaust but to anti-semitism in the United States.
***pg***
So now what's to be done? Zionism hasn't worked; Israel is still insecure, surrounded by hostile neighbors and with the Palestinians in open, permanent rebellion against the Israeli occupation. Can Jews find refuge elsewhere? Given the prevailing hostility in Western Europe to all immigrants, including, no doubt, Jews, it appears not. The only alternative is, as Carter points out, a peaceful settlement. Hamas says it won't recognize Israel but it has abandoned suicide bombings and offers israel a ten year truce and an exchange of prisoners. Israel should respond by ending its occupation and abandoning its plan to force the Palestinians to live in isolated enclaves reminiscent of the South African Bantustans of the apartheit era. Hamas has to renounce violence, but the Israeli occupation IS violence. Both sides have to move, but the history of this long agony for both makes it quite clear that Israel won't unless the U.S. tells it to. And Carter is telling us Americans that that's what we have to do if we want peace in the Middle East.
***pg***
That and, of course, getting the hell out of Iraq where we have no business being in the first place.

After reading President Carter's brief remarks and noting the probably unprecedented WaPo Opinion page invitation for comments, I began scanning the comments believing that the WaPo was simply offering a forum for Israel's apologists, who monitor every forum on the www looking for criticism of Israel, to do a Dershowitz and attack and discredit President Carter, his book, and his brave efforts to force Americans to look truth in the face and acknowledge that we give unqualified support to a terrorist (there is no other way to describe it) country that brutalizes the people it occupies in a manner that would call down world opprobrium and sanctions it it were any other country.

I was not disappointed, the usual "anti-Semite," "Jew Hater," blame the victims group did their duty and attacked President Carter, personally and politically, unmercifully. Such is the fate of anyone that criticizes Israel.

But I was most pleasantly surprised to read multiple comments, perhaps a majority, from people who understood the truth behind what President Carter was saying. This leads me to believe that while the Israeli Lobby and ADL have been able to intimidate our politicians and media into silence, indeed subservience to Israel, there is a silent majority or silent large minority of Americans who have been able to see the truth behind the Orwellian lies that prop up the state of Israel.

We prefer anonymity to being smeared as anti-Semites but more and more public figures, such as President Carter and Professors Walt and Meirshiemer, have summoned the courage to tell the truth. Hopefully, enough of us will someday become as courageous and not worry about being labeled anti-Semites, ad nauseum, and force our politicians to act in America's interests rather than Israel's.

I don't know of anyone of any substance who does not accept or is resigned to a Jewish state established at the expense of their semitic cousins. However, we do not have to accept our government becoming accomplices to religious ethnic cleansing and make us enemies of everyone else in the Middle East.

Jimmy Carter has merely stated the facts as they appear to Muslim Americans and the rest of the world. Israel is a colonial outpost of Europe. Why the US should back this is incomprehensible even though I have reason to believe that there are darker motives. But this is neither the time nor the place for that.

Perhaps one day another nation will restore the US to the Native Americans. Would that not be consistent and in keeping with the wishes of the Great Spirit?

President Carter deserves the nation's thanks and commendation for his courage and willingness to place Middle East issues at the head of the nation's agenda for 2007.

The first step in policy making in America's interest, in this one of perhaps three most important strategic areas in the world, is to understand the history and reasons for the Middle East region's remarkable change in attitude toward the U.S.-- from unbounded admiration to distrust, hatred, and yearning for our demise.

Given the interests involved, to date any effort to even offer an even-handed discussion of the facts always meets with a false cry of anti-semite and/or Arabist!

In fact the speaker is more often than not simply an American who only seeks what is best for the United States and is in keeping with ou long cherished values and reputation around the world.

In the past ten years or so we have lost our place as an admired society in the Middle East and become its oft-denounced worst enemy aka Great Satan. The record speaks for itself. The result has been the present growing national disaster.

We must at least indentify the sources of this radical change in views and then address the steps needed to correct them. Otherwise 2007 will be simply repeating the same mistakes we have made in the past at even greater cost.

Surely at long last a genuine, national debate of U.S./Middle East relations crys out for the nation's attention as our most critical issue since slavery.

Please don't attack Mr. Carter but rather provide substantive, thoughtful, suggestions which will enable the debate to begin and so be conducted in a civilized manner. We are either a democracy or a minority-mobocracy.

The choice is yours my fellow Americans.

Carter, one of the worst presidents in our history, or should I say the worst. Carter brought us Islamic Iran and much of the problem we suffer through today in the mideast, and now he is going to fix it?

Even the most cursory reading of history will show one thing inarguable: the Jewish people always act like Jews, every country, every century. And alwasy with the same results. A great consistancy.

We have been discussing President Carter's vision. Let us see what an Israeli peace activist has to say:

The Israeli is Mr. Uri Avnery, a scholar and peace activist and once a Knesset member. In a recent article, Mr. Avnery says, "The treatment of other religions by Islam must be judged by a simple test: how did the Muslim rulers behave for more than a thousand years when they had the power to 'spread the faith by the sword'?"

For many centuries, he says, the Muslims ruled Greece. "Did the Greeks become Muslims? Did anyone try to Islamise them? On the contrary, Christian Greeks held the highest positions in the Ottoman administration.

"The Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians and other European nations lived at one time or another under Ottoman rule and clung to their Christian faith. Nobody compelled them to become Muslims and all of them remained devoutly Christian."

Then he points to a fact which perhaps most Christians do not know. When the Crusaders invaded Palestine, the majority had remained Christian in spite of 400 years of Muslim rule. Then "in the name of gentle Jesus", he says, the Crusaders "massacred its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants".

He adds: "There is no evidence whatsoever of any attempt to impose Islam on Jews. As is well known, under Muslim rule, the Jews of Spain enjoyed a boom the like of which the Jews did not enjoy anywhere else until almost our time."

Then giving the names of some great Jewish poets and scholars, Mr. Avnery says, "In Muslim Spain, Jews were ministers, poets, and scientists" and "Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars worked together and translated ancient Greek philosophical and scientific texts. That was indeed the Golden Age.

"How would this have been possible had the Prophet decreed the 'spreading of the faith by the sword'?" Then he refers to the re-conquest of Spain by Catholics and says: "The Jews and Muslims were presented with a cruel choice: to become Christians, to be massacred or to leave."

Then he asks, "Where did the hundreds of thousands of Jews … escape? Almost all of them were received with open arms in the Muslim countries. The Jews settled all over the Muslim world, from Morocco … to Iraq, from Bulgaria (then part of the Ottoman empire) … to Sudan. Nowhere were they persecuted. They knew nothing like the tortures of the Inquisition … and the terrible mass expulsions that took place in almost all Christian countries up to the Holocaust."

He asks, "Why?" and then he answers, "Because Islam expressly prohibited any persecution of 'peoples of the book'. In Islamic society, a special place was reserved for Jews and Christians …" Is this fascism?

Then he says something touching: "Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for 50 generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many times 'by the word' to get them to abandon their faith".

The story about "spreading the faith by the sword", he says "is an evil legend, one of the myths that grew up in Europe" during the many wars with Muslims.

Muslims are mindful that Islam shares common roots with both Judaism and Christianity - the belief in the God of Abraham, Old Testament prophets, and the virgin birth of Jesus, the Messiah.

To those getting angry at President Carter,

Let us perform a thought experiment. Just imagine, UN recognizes the Indian Cherokee Nation in upstate New York and declares all the land from Lake Champlain to Albany as Indian land. All the Black and White people living in that part of the New York state are made to move out of their homes and a wall is erected to keep them out with permit required to move accross a road even.

In such a case, how do you think the American population will react? If you can think of this situation for yourself and can swear that ordinary Americans, being law abiding people, will accept this Indian Nation and let the Indians live in peace then I would say you are full of......

President Carter has understood the conflict very well and proposed his solution. If America wants a peaceful world, it will need to understand middle east as a land with people living on it and not as the land with lot of oil under its ground. It is time we wake up and try to understand the Palestinians' side of the picture.

"For instance, if an Israeli and Palestinian engineer start discussing religion, politics, or history, there is not much chance of a productive conversation. But if they are talking about providing water to a location in West Bank, they should be on same side of table, talking as engineers, making reference to the same engineering codes and standards, and the same code of ethics."

Comments?
Yes, Joe Carson

I can tell you what DID happen- The Israelis took the Palestine water and pumped their filth back into Palestine UNTREATED. Also some wanna be Settlers often raid Palestine towns and s--- and p--- in the Arab wells.

And when they can't throw filth on Arabs, they throw it on other Jews trying to pray.

It is remarkable how gaining a homeland has destroyed a once great people.

Monte Haun
Bulls Gap, TN

President Carter : an amazing life and achievement
President of the United States of America.
Winner of the Noble prize.
Widely respected world wide (95% of mankind).
I find most amazing he is the author of 23 books. Inspite of old age he is still involed in national and international activities.
Godspeed and a happy new year.

Joe Carson, your effort and others like it are the only paths to peace. The average Jewish Israeli and the average Palestinian would like only to live comfortably with one another. This is obvious from the statements of Israeli pacifists (who have free speech in their political structure) but hard to get at from the Palestinians. Middle Eastern muslims appear to have very few opportunities for free speech or other democratic rights, and it is not chiefly Israel who denies them. It is contrary to the agendas of the other Arab leaders and to their own self-appointed spokesmen.

Mr. President,

Respectfully, the fallacy with your approach is that an Israeli pullback to pre-1967 boundaries is no solution. The illegal 1948 partition of Palestine is an aggression that cannot be allowed to stand.

It's funny how those who bash the UN for opposing our ill advised adventure in Iraq, are so eager to cite the UN as the source of legitimacy for the state of Israel.

We should have given New Jersey to the Jewish Refugees after the war. At least it was ours to give.

After Iraq, the partition of Palestine stands as the worst foreign policy mistake of the 20th and 21st centuries.

President Carter's latest book reflects deep knowledge and understanding of Middle Eastern history and the conflict that rages there. He is truly an honorable man and a good example of faithful honest Christian should be not the blood thirsty war mongering oil lusting so called Christian Right.

His new book I think is a must read for those who seek understanding and knowledge as to how deal best with the never ending conflict in the Middle East.

nek:

nek nek nek..
Let me give you a more realistic scenerio then that of a cat on your desk.

Think a gun slinger is in your bed room, another in your kitchen and yet another in your bath room. They dont allow to move unless they feel like it. They dont let you go to your job and they killed your children, you dong and your cat on the desk. Think about it now... nek

John Walsh:

A holocaust is when 3.5 million Polish Jews in 1942 become 20,000 in 1945. When about 1.5 million Arabs in the mandated territories of Palestine and Trans-Jordan in 1949 become 8 to 9 million in 2006, whatever has happened to them, it was not a holocaust. Your ostensibly evenhanded rhetoric is belied by the bias implicit in your misuse of language.

I had the opportunity of working in Israel for a 3-week period. I was shocked at how the Israelis used the Palestiniens to do their manual labor. It was obvious that the Jews considered themselves superior to the Arabs. I also had extensive interaction with heads of manufacturing and utilities. I was hired to help improve their operation. I was disgusted with their basic philosopy, which in their own words, they liked to argue, often at a shouting volume, even amongst themselves. It became obvious to me why the Jew had been chased around the world for the past several thousand years. The world has given them a piece of land that they can call home, but they have chosen to take additional land away from their Arab neighbors. There will never be peace in the Middle-East until the US quits siding with Israel. Carter is correct.

Mr. Carter, you have my full support and you are doing this nation a great service by speaking out on this very important issue. Notice that the people who support a settlement and return of occupied lands and just treatment of Palestinians, are labelled "anti-Israeli," when in fact their policies, if followed through, would reduce support for extremists and would result in Syria stopping support for people like Hezbollah and Hamas. Demonization does not lead us anywhere, folks, and it most certainly does not make Israeli one bit safer. "Terrorism," while indeed practiced by some Palestinians, is also practiced by the Israeli state, which clearly holds the upper hand and segregates Arabs from Jews in its territories, stopping freedom of movement, equal access to water and resources, constant detention without trial, detention of very young children, etc. The list goes on and on. Note that the "pro-Israeli" people here do not actually address this, but instead reply with their criticisms of Arabs and terrorism. Which means that they implicitly support these policies, and think they are justified.

What if the Ghost of Jesus of Nazareth is real and active in the world?? Then:

WSBD, what should Bush do, with the Middle East??

If the Ghost of Jesus of Nazareth is not real and not active in the world what should Bush do??

If Bush doesn't think he knows, then why did he convert Iraq to Shiite? If the purpose of the Iraq War was to convert Iraq to Shia then why? Or did he not know what he was doing and just took direction?

Why when Bush appears to be supporting Israel should that be assumed to be his ultimate goal? Or when the Lobby supports Israel is that the ultimate goal of those that support the Lobby??

Or is Bush making USA and world policy based on the Book of Revelation?? Or some other book or document? public? private?

Things sometimes are a lot different from what they sometimes appear to be; Things appear to be and are not; And things appear not to be and are?

Converting the United States to a Jewish state certainly wouldn't appear to be in the best interest of the ordinary person with Jewish background. Clearly Bush is not attempting to convert the USA into an ideal state based on the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. What then is he doing?

There are lots of things to be sorted out.

Right now my cat is sitting on my computer desk. The problem is that he is insisting on sitting directly in front of the computer screen. In other words he is occuping my space. Therefore it is necessary for me to work out a compromise with him in order to ues the computer. A compromise can be worked out because I am willing to share my space with him. Right now he has agreed to move if I will allow him to lie flicking his tail across the keyboard. This is not a perfect compromise but one I can live with without either shooting my cat or banishing him from the territory. Think about it.

Thank you, President Carter. Please keep speaking out on this subject. It is at the core of the violence now happening in the Middle East.

Pam

Your identification of apartheid relating to the Palestinians is correct. It is morally reprehensible what happened to them in 1948. The native peoples of the New World when slaughtered eventually gave up. The Palestinians will not follow their example. And neither would I if my home was taken from me and my people were kept behind bars like caged animals for generations. I am a New England Congregationalist and nowhere in the teachings of my faith is such manner of atrocity sanctioned.

Mr. Carter embodies that incredibly rare quantity in american politics: an honest, ethical man. The right wing/likudnik offers only hate and vitriol...not facts...as an argument against Mr. Carter's most thoughtful position in this matter. As I scrolled through the comments, I was struck by the kind and clear-sighted messages from people who have truly taken the humanist position to heart, juxtaposed in stark contrast by the hateful, wildly simplistic and utterly amoral screeds of those who choose only to see enemies in those who dare disagree with their ill-educated and highly narrow vision of the world. Want to really end this mess and find peace? End corporate control of the United States Government.

Is it truth that 60% of the Democratic Lobby and 35% of the Republican Lobby is financed by Israel?
Is it truth that as opposed to Christians and Muslims who believe in accountability and a life after death, Israelis believe they die when they die?
I just heard some rumors, please enlighten me.

President Carter properly articulates a sad page in the book of global history.

America the beautiful, is the land of the free. Jimmy Carter has proven to be a free man who says what needs to be said. Congratulations Mr. President.

A very proud American.

John Walsh:
I was thinking to write a comment but after reading your comment, I dont need to. I could not have summed in such a powerfull and decent way. Hope you can write more. Thank you.

I contributed a few comments early today, and I now return many hours later to look at the comments.
I find there are those who are heartened by Carter's comments and those who are not. But the latter are full of vitriol, ad hominen attacks, anti-Arab racism and just plain lies. Look over them for yourself. What are we to make of such people? Many are Jewish-Americans who have been taught to be fearful. Certainly fear and wariness is warranted given the Holocaust. But when these sentiments reache the point of visiting a Holocaust on another people, it has gone beyond reasonable bounds. And on top of that many of these folks have been taught such a heap of false history in their Temple Sunday schools that they will have a lot of work to get rid of it. We should feel sorry for them - but we must not let them do further damage.

Thank you Mr. President!
God bless you for your courage and truth!!

I agree with Mr. Carter. I feel ashamed living in an era where Israel is victimising Palastinians in such a way that even savage animals cant do the same to other animals. The policy or Israel have brought the world to brink of disaster many time in the past and I am afraid, Mel Gibosn may turn out to be right after all.

Regardless of your political persuassion, can you imagine our current president writing anything as insightful and thought provoking as what Mr Carter has written? Tragically, our current president can only fluently speak the language of the "awl-bidness".

President Carter,

You are taking back our America from it's enemies. Thank you for exposing a bunch who ill designed our foreign policy for years, betrayed their voters while wrapping themselves in our flag, (many indicted congressmen Ney, the Hammer, etc) sold out their souls to foriegn powers who spy on our land, kill our sailors on the Pueblo, and trash our elected officials who dare to speak the truth. (remember Senator C. Persy?)

Thank you Mr. President for breaking this taboo. Thanks for being an American hero. Thanks for being a true Christian.

There comes a time when public expressions should be left private. Mr. Carter has shown is true colors as a biased person who should be able to know the facts but his book is full of inaccurate facts. Its time for him to go pack to being a peanut farmer and discontinue his public voice. It makes him seem like he is dealing with a mental illness.

Mr Carter is a couragious man who tells the truth and every mean spirited and filthy comment directed at him is a reflection upon those who make them and who are afraid that the truth finally but slowly is coming out.. The Palestinians have been suffering for more than 50 years under the weight of the apartheid State of Israel and finally some of the facts about their suffering is showing up in the main press. What we spend in one year on the war in Iraq can compensate the destitute Palestinians for their losses. Why then we are not doing this. The palestinians do not covet the land and homes the Israelis stole from them..they just want compensation and the admission that the Israelis stole the land and God did not just deed it to them. But I do not believe the extremist in Israel let alone their hateful supporters here want that because after all they know peace is the ultimate threat to Israel as it stands now, an armed to teeth apartheid state with enough nuclear power to destroy this earth and all life and civilizations on it.

Jimmy Carter was a man "way over his head" attempting to fulfill the duties of being President.
Remember, he was only elected because Ford pardoned Nixon, and Carter was the only "clean" candidate without so much as a parking ticket.
Much of his presidency was spent at Camp David with Anwar Sadat and M. Begin, trying to deal with the Arab/Jew situation in the ME.
Several months after Sadats return to Egypt he was murdered, so Jimmy didn't acomplish much there.
He also let Castro empty his jails and mental hospitals to allow the Cuban misfits into America where they went on to launch a hugh crime spree in the US, and facilitated the cocaine and marijuana problems that now exists in the US.
He talks a "good game", but did not have the wherwithal to be President. He was really a joke. Inflation went to 18%, and the nation got a "belly" full of Billy Beer. Stick to building homes for the poor, Jimmy, and get off the national stage.

It seems a bit out of place for the man who single handedly caused the current turmoil in the Middle East to offer any advice ot anyone. His administrations complete mishandling vis-a-vis the former Shah of Iran resulted in the hostage stituation, the giving political power to extremists, and creating a hostile states in the region.

The less Carter has to say about anything the better.

Who believes that having German blood makes you likely to commit or condone human atrocities, but that having Jewish blood inherently makes you less likely to do the same?

Stand up and proudly say so unless you think this is absurd.

Does anyone commit atrocity without being positioned to do so by the selfish neglect of others in power?

If Israel is to be accountable for it's abuses, does that mean the Allied powers and the UN are not?

I was eighteen years old in 1976. Accordingly, the Carter/Ford matchup was the first presidential vote I cast. I am a lifelong Democrat and, with one exception, have voted for the democratic presidential candidate in every election except two- the two where Jimmy Carter was the Democratic nominee. Given Mr. Carter's offensive book, "Peace Not Apartheid," I feel I was wise beyond my years by not voting for this man. Mr Carter just doesn't get it. He doesn't get the fact that if the Palestinians had the power, they would destroy Israel. He doesn't get that all of this turmoil exists because the Arabs would not agree to accede 1/2 of 1/3 of what was Palestine under the British mandate (the other 2/3 became Jordan). He doesn't understand that an equal number of Jews were displaced as refugees from Arab countries after 1948, the difference being that Israel, unlike the other Arab countries, welcomed the Jewish refugees. He doesn't understand fundamentally that the Palestinians do not want a Palestinian state, unless that state results from the complete destruction of Israel. If you doubt that, just ask Bill Clinton, who was poignant in his criticism of Arafat after Camp David, where Barak offered virtually all the pre-1967 territories and power sharing in Jerusalem. Ronald Reagan had you pegged Mr. Carter.. "THERE YOU GO AGAIN"

As a loyal, lifelong Democrat I conclude with this thought. Thank God Ronald Reagan defeated this man in 1980!

Rob S.

Regarding Rick Jones' post...

"We should have given New Jersey to the Jewish Refugees after the war. At least it was ours to give."

Unlikey, but well said. Much better geographic resources than desert and probably a lot fewer suicide bombings.

Though ultimately, Jewish refugess from WWII should have been given THEIR ACTUAL HOMES back. Not someone ELSE's homes.

Where did the European Jewish disinterest in returning to their generations-old homes come from? Who said "never go home, go to Palestine and make THAT your home, and push out whoever is there instead."

Who was that?

Who's idea was that?

Who got everyone to say, "yeah, sure, that makes way more sense than returning you to the no-longer-ruled-by-Hitler homes of your mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, great-great-grandmothers..."

And how does asking these logical and obvious questions make me a bad jew?

Pres. Carter has shown great courage in writing this book as the influence of the Jewish-American community is too strong. I, for one, have lost all sympathy for Israel. Until Israel withdraws from ALL settlements and stops the occupation, they reap what they sew. We should withdraw all financial and military support until they do. The mean-spirited comments directed at President Carter are disgraceful. He's a good man.

Is not the cause of the unending conflict the fact that special interests beyond nation states want an outpost from which they can exert power, control and profit? President Carter is an extraordinary American leader. I hope he will help pull the ugly vail back so all humanity can see those mis-shapen beings who play their game of human suffering, pain and death. The Truth, in this case, will set us all free.

Carter is bashed for handling of Iran taking Embassy. yet not one person died because of this and the number 2 man in Iran said that Reagan sent Bush to make deal with Iran if they would hold off release of captured until he was elected.
Yes he saw rabbit, but then the mickey mouse President, Reagan , thought a movie about World WarII was an actual event and what did he do when we got hiy in Lebanon but cut and run.
Carter was not an inspiring President but it was Reagan that traded arms with Iran, sdent Rummy to kiss Saddam's ass and then it was Reagan that armed Saddam and later this was kept up by Bush41/Cheney who also armed Osama. These things people seem to overlook.
Carter may not be right but there is a bad situation in the Israel/Palestine conflict and perhaps had Bush paid attention to this we would not have the area in the mess it is. Bush's actions have gained for Iran and Hezzbollah what they could not have on their own.
Both parties in the conflict have done wrongs and while Israel has to live with Palestinians and suicide bombers, Palestianians have had their land confiscated and the justification for this goes back to religion " God gave this land to us". If that is so, let the US stop funding Israel and let God take care of the situtaion or let the US insist that bith parties come to the table and impose an international fix to this problem.
As for the fianancing of Carter by Arabs, please learn about Bush family Nazi and Arab connections, including how James Baker still represents Arab interests and how Dick Cheney made his wealth and Carter may actually look good

I think President Carter has raised the most important issue in the middle east, and that he has done so in the right context. Since Sharon's ill-advised and provocative visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Israel has pursued hard-line, confrontational approach to the occupied territories, demanding that all hotile acts toward Israel stop prior to any further official discussions with the Palestinian Authority. Contrast this with the British approach with to Northern Ireland, where substantive discussions progressed and a ground-breaking agreement concluded while IRA bombings continued. Which has been the more successful approach??!!

On reading the history of antisemetism, I believe that Isreal is an absolute necessity. But I think that the lessons taken from their experience of systematic brutal repression have led to an unproductive approach to making sure genocide of Jews never happens again. I thank President Carter for finally bringing this up frankly and completely, condemning both the Israeli policies and the suicide attacks by the Palestinians. I hope this may lead to true forward motion toward security for both Isreal and a Palestinian State.

Thank you Mr. President for starting this blog. Your efforts in waking the sleeping giant(US) to this dire issue that confronts mankind (the seeds of WWIII) is beginning to take affect as witnessed by all the comments herein. The more public debate on the issues of Isreal, vis a vis, Palestine and the Arab World, the better. I just hope it continues in other forums and does not succumb to the manipulators of the media and other propagandists. And thank you for your book, Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid. After reading it completely I am so releived that someone of your distinguished notoriety has reached out and confronted a subject long taboo in our nation. A nation founded on the principles of free speech but denied such speech by foreign interest groups and many owners of media company's here in America, land of the free.

Mr. President,

Respectfully, the fallacy with your approach is that an Israeli pullback to pre-1967 boundaries is no solution. The illegal 1948 partition of Palestine is an aggression that cannot be allowed to stand.

It's funny how those who bash the UN for opposing our ill advised adventure in Iraq, are so eager to cite the UN as the source of legitimacy for the state of Israel.

We should have given New Jersey to the Jewish Refugees after the war. At least it was ours to give.

After Iraq, the partition of Palestine stands as the worst foreign policy mistake of the 20th and 21st centuries.

I remember the issue of the Houston Post that had front page presentation of the dedication of the new Holocaust Museum in Houston. Way back inside the paper was a small photo and brief comment of a young nomad being taken off land that he and his ancestors had lived on for centuries. The Israeli soldier was not wearing a swastika --- but he should have been. Unfortunately, Israel has in some ways morphed into a copy of the monstrous bigots that so abused them in the 1930s and '40s.

What is we just poisoned the ground throughout Israel/Palestine. So that no one could live there? You know, something beyond just salting the fields. Something nuclear maybe, but carefully so everyone would be able to get out of the way well enough and not get hurt while it was being done. So no one could live there or use the land in any way.

What if EVERY religious/holy site of every religion was laid to dust. everywhere in the world? So that the peace, kindness and wisdom we all claim of religion could be separated from objects, real estate and other 'possessables' and set free.

We have the weaponry, explosives and the ability to warn those nearby in advance to clear them out so no one gets hurt. Why do we delay?

To reduce offense, we could hit 10 sites a day, distributed widely across all existing religions, and do it on day each week.

Anyone who might thrill at the chance to be some kind of martyr by chaining themselves to any particular divine bricks and mortar would of course have the opportunity to do so, and all others would have the clear option of keeping their gift of life if they so chose as well.

Given how readily overcome the complexities of pulling off productive demolition in warring regions, this really would be a piece of cake in most instances as war, at the moment, is not occurring in most of the world.

I have a lot of respect and admiration for President Jimmy Carter . We christians should stand up for the rights of the oppressed , persecuted , poors, orphans , foreigners as in the Bible . And most important to speak out against all kind of Injustice , Human Rights violation and Oppression .
Keep us the good work.

NicoNtumba_JusticeCampaign

The claim that there is no Palestinian people is a red herring. Even if true, it is utterly irrelevant. The people labeled Palestinians lived there long before Zionism reared its racist head. Regardless of whether the Palestinians were a distinctive people, they were there for hundreds of years. They were expelled by force and terror from their ancestral homelands. They deserve their land back.

It would be equally logical to say that there are no Jews, that they are really Khazars who converted to Judaism in the Middle Ages, and therefore Jews have no historical rights to Palestine because their true homeland is in the Central Asian steppes.

As for Jordan being the Palestinian homeland because most of the world's Palestinians live there, we could just as easily say that Crown Heights in Brooklyn is the Jewish national home because it has so many Jews.

All these bogus arguments are nothing but red herrings meant to distract us from history, facts, and reality. Israel was created through terror. The UN had as much right to dispossess the Palestinians of their ancestral homeland as it would to give Texas back to Mexico, or North Caroline back to the Cherokee. The Palestinians had no voice in th UN, the League of Nations, or the British Foreign Office. Lord Balfour had no right to divvy up the Palestinians land, other than the right of superior military force.

The creation of Israel was nothing but a home invasion on a national scale. There can be no peace until Israel admits this. And President Carter is absolutely right in bringing attention to the Palestinian people.

Dear President Carter,

As a mother of two wonderful young adults, I told my kids that one day an American leader would rise up and be unafraid to stand up to the Israeli Lobby, which has hijacked the American political system. I am truly glad that that leader is you, after all that they did to undermine your presidency, simply because you chose to do what was right, rather than doing their evil bidding.

God Bless you for your courage. If only there were other so-called leaders who had the guts to choose righteousness over riches, morality over money, and America over selfish ambition.

Mr. President, when we speak of faith, you should take heart in the fact that it is by faith that God has brought you to this moment. And one day, we all will realize that what you are doing now, exposing the truth, is indeed God's will, and as always, that TRUTH WILL MAKE US FREE!

religious exclusivity is everyone's right.

So don't criticize anyone who practices it.

I predict that the Palestinian/Israeli conflict will not end any time soon. Not even in the next twenty years.

Anyone disagree?

If you are a Jew who believes and practices, to the best of your ability, tolerance, humility, and kindness toward all others, know that you have brothers and sisters with differing understandings of the meaning and purpose of life who have in their hearts the same natural hope and love for life.

If you are a Jew who treats others well, yet believe that by being a Muslim you are among the chosen or the Heaven for you after your death is more important than life on this earth for others, You are not nearly the whole problem, but you are very much a part of the problem. You need to change.

It is refreshing to see that President Carter is a christian who looks at the middle east through the teachings of Jesus rather than a distorted interpretation of Armageddon.

If you are a Muslim who believes and practices, to the best of your ability, tolerance, humility, and kindness toward all others, know that you have brothers and sisters with differing understandings of the meaning and purpose of life who have in their hearts the same natural hope and love for life.

If you are a Muslim who treats others well, yet believe that by being a Muslim you are among the chosen or the Paradise for you after your death is more important than life on this earth for others, You are not nearly the whole problem, but you are very much a part of the problem. You need to change.

Dear President Carter.

Great effort to address this chronic problem which is the main reason for instability in the middle east. Please be strong and don't be weakened by the pro Zionists who are fact twisters. They will try every effort to disqualify you but I'm sure you know their dirty tricks after all these years. It is obvious they were behind justifying Iraq war to protect Israel. We need reasonable leaders who can understand and it is time now to impeach the current president.

Thank you, President Carter.
Thoughtful people can tell the difference between the facts that you lay out in your books, TV interviews, and essays and the generalizations and name-calling that your opponents have to resort to. If your assertions were false, they would have been trumpeted to the world, and there'd be nothing to talk about. The poor quality of your critics' arguments is another proof of the good work you have done in educating the U.S. about the situation in Palestine.

It is time for all who are not Palestinian or Israeli to be killed, so that Israelis and Palestinians can finally finish their divine opera of hatred without the unholy meddling of unchosen others around to keep dragging it out.

Then, at last, only those who are legitimately entitled to remain alive can do so in a perfect world.

Who will join me in converting all Jews to Islam?

Countless injustices would vanish instantly, no?

All the major religions would endorse these goals. But Moonie is not a religion. Bush needs to be sent for deprogramming. He would murder an Israeli leader just for handing the Gaza Strip over.

Who will join me in converting all Muslims to Judaism?

Countless injustices would vanish instantly, no?

We can no longer delay handing Israel and the occupied territories over to Uraguay.

A truly pathetic way to peddle your book, sir. So all but two of your heroes were not white? Nice touch, it must mean that you are more in tune with the common man, or somehow more empathetic with the poor and oppressed of the world? Lets cut to it, after the book was released by Simon and Schuster a few weeks ago, criticism started pouring in over factual irregularities and numerical errors that you alleged as accurate. Dennis Ross, a chief architect of Clinton's peace efforts so much as called you a liar and accused you of lifting a set of maps into your book that were actually created by Clinton's work (that you failed to attribute and said represented things other than they truly did.) This editorial is now your weak attempt at showing the world you aren't a bigot, or so unbelievably biased against the Israelis that you just can't think straight. Sorry, but you still are, and you still can't. Not once do you blame Arab terror for the current set of affairs. And oh, about the most horrible thing in the world? I'm sorry but the Palestinians are a really convenient excuse to keep throwing around by the Arabs and people like you. I would allege the Muslim "janjaweed" militias butchering and pillaging hundreds of thousands of the black native tribes in Darfur would actually take first prize.

We ABSOLUTELY MUST remain true to God. It is our sole function on this earth to please him.

No matter how much peace or war it takes, we must never fail to do what is absolutely right.

All injustices must be punished no matter how contradictory. No fight shall be let go of until it is won—EVER.

This is off topic. Over a year ago, just after the benzene spill on the Songhua River in Jilin, China, I met a blogger who had intricate knowledge of his homeland and was able to give me a first hand report of what I considered a major disaster with serious longterm effects.

Anyone aware of google's acquiescence to censureship can guess what has happened to him. I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I think of google's founding motto.

So on this New Years Day 2007, please take a moment to be thankful you are able to freely express your thoughts and opinions in an open forum without fear of censureship or reprisal.

To have some faith is not enough. What matters is not what you do with a good spirit, but what effect your actions have. So some intellegence is necessary as well. Wish a lot of it to the U.S. population for 2007.

Those of you on these posts who have harsh words for President Carter need to examine your own motives for you are blind to truth. President Carter is one of this worlds truly great and honest men. He cares deeply for humanity---all humanity, and he has worked tirelessly to bring about peace and understanding among people everywhere. I feel sorry for those of you with minds too small to recognize true goodness. That is how this country got itself into the mess we are in today because small-minded people tend to vote for small-minded, stupid, arrogant, pigheaded people like one whose name need not be mentioned.

The establishment of all nations at all points in our shared human history has been done 'artificially' with distinctly external interest never without the denial of previous truly heartfelt claims to the contrary.

All nations were either stolen, conquered or swindled. No nation is either special or unique in this regard.

Some, previously the Jewish diaspora, for example, have progressed divinely enough to rise above this homicidal routine of our humanity.

But it is not our role as humans to remain beyond hate. Our draw to it's warmth—to be just close enough to still claim we are not hate itself, yet close enough to reassure hate that it is not alone so that it continues to burn and keep us warm—is our eternal fate.

Let me speak on one topic which has been all but unspeakable in the U.S. media. Have you ever comtemplated how it is possible that Isreal enjoys such overwhelming support in the U.S. Congress? How many issues can you think of where 90%+ of our legislators agree with one another? This has been the level of support consistently given many pieces of legislation favorable to Isreal. No matter how virulent or unreasonable a piece of anti-Palestinian legislation may be, you can count like clockwork on overwhelming support for it. What does this say to you? For anyone who might propose that the reason is that our legislators, in all their wisdom, recognize the overwhelming justice of the Isreali cause vs. the Palestinian cause, I would respond with two words: get real. This is fantasy on your part. Some of these pieces of legislation are so nasty and mean-spirited toward the Palestinians that I cannot understand how a legislator can in good conscience vote in favor. So what is it that is really influencing these legislators? I don't know the answer, but would very much like to know and think it vital that we all know. Nobody talks about this in the media, and this fact makes me apprehensive for the health of our democracy. Does the Jewish lobby in the U.S. really have this kind of power? If so, we are truly in trouble. Are our elected legislators putting the interests of a foreign country ahead of the interests of the United States? If so, how is this possible?

Mr. Carter,

These attacks on you from the Israeli/Zionist extremists and the right-wing are sickening. More people than you know appreciate your shedding light on Israeli brutality. Keep up the good work!

John

Dear President Carter
Thank you for all you have done for humanity around the world. As you have traveled through areas most of us, as Americans, will never see, seen poverty, oppression and disease, you above all have a much better handle of the issue than most of those who have been so disrespectful of your views. We do live in a world where global politics and religion should be respected and honored, however, so much of this has been pushed aside by greed and lust for power. As for the Middle East, Jews and Arabs lived peacefully for centuries until the Balfour Agreement was written by the British. It took another 20 years for the UN to implement this agreement which began the conflict exascerbated by Zionism and it's pack-man approach to the land it wanted in addition to what was mandated. I believe Israel should honorit and not oppress those already displaced. Both are Semites and not just Jews.

It is time for all who are not Palestinian or Israeli to be killed, so that Israelis and Palestinians can finally finish their divine opera of hatred without the unholy meddling of unchosen others around to keep dragging it out.

Then, at last, only those who are legitimately entitled to remain alive can do so in a perfect world.

I wish that all Palestinians believed the same things and behaved the same way, and that all Israelis believed the same things and behaved the same way.

That way most of the impassioned articulation here would make sense and be useful, and we could establish genuinely foolproof policy that would provide unmissable results.

Thank you President Carter for having the courage to stand up and say what needs to be said about the Israeli occupation. I live in the West Bank and see this terrible situation everyday. I can't believe that our U.S. tax dollars subsidize this tragic abuse of human rights.

070101_ltwp blog re carter book
The problem of Israel and the Palestinians is mostly set in an artificial context. There is no Palestinian nationality per se. What the Palestinians are are Arabs, living in a particular area of the Middle East, call it the Levant and Mesopotamia. These Arabs are divided by religion, predominantly Muslim, but with a sizable, if shrinking, Christian minority; divided by sectarian lines, such as Sunni, Shia, Druze, Allawite, and Maronite and Chaldean Christian; but all are of Arab nationality, all Arabic speaking. The post World War I agreement between England and France divided the former Ottoman territories with artificial national boundaries, and states and territories such as Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Palestine were established. Palestine was a territory mandated to the protection of the British by the League of Nations.

The true Palestinian state, if there is one, certainly includes Jordan, where not less than 70 percent of the population are people whose origins are in the original mandated territory of Palestine of about 11 thousand square miles, which now is divided into Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. If we combine the ethnically and linguistically indistinguishable Arabs of those areas and include Jordan, we have a "Palestinian" population, including the Arab citizens of Israel, both Muslim and Christian, that totals not less than 8.5 million people. And they are all Arab, whether they be Muslim- Sunni or Shia, or Christian. It is in fact part of the Arab nation, the Levantine part, if you will, all but the million plus within Israel proper, living on territory of about 40 thousand square miles that no one claims is anything but Arab. They are set against 5.5 or 6 million Jews, living in Israel and in perhaps not more than an additional 1 or 2 hundred square miles of settlements in the West Bank. The continued enmity of this Arab population against the Israelis is deep seated, intransigent, and not amenable to an equitable solution in the foreseeable future. Carter's use of the term apartheid as a description of some aspects of this historical impasse is simple minded and nonsensical. Like many simplistic ideas, it may just come down to prejudice- in his case, a left wing, anti-white, anti-establishment, pro-Third World reflex.

Regarding the post by 'Jason Vaugha':

"Why do you need faith if you truly believe in God."

Thanks for the morsel of light here.

Wouldn't God think more highly of one who uses her gifts to continue pursuing understanding and working to resolve what can be questionable than one who sets aside her gifts of intellect and compassion to plop down in a steaming pile of 'religious' certainty?

President Carter has shown rare moral and political courage. Rarely will any American politician dare to tell the truth about what is going on in Occupied Palestine. Carter's book documents a system that in many ways mirrors South African Apartheid. Of course, the usual pro-Israeli apologists started up the attack engine even before his book had hit the book shelves. We are told that Carter is a "moran", that he is an anti-Semite, that he is ignorant of the facts. However, I have yet to see one single critique of his book which has factually refuted his essential claims- namely, that in advancing a colonist agenda on the West Bank Israel has created a legal regime of segregation and discimination that leaves the Palestinian people without civil rights, economic opportunity or any national rights to self determination. Moreover, Gaza has been turned into an open prison where over 50% of Palestinians now live on one meal a day. Zionism has been a systemic disaster for the Palestinian people. May I remind those who trash Carter that is not the Palestinians who occupy Israel but the Israelis who occupy some one else's land. And to those supposed Christians who support Israel, I find it highly unlikely that Jesus Christ would look upon with favor how the Palestinians are treated by Israel. It is a monstorous distortion of Christian theology to support brutuality of one people at the hands of another.

President Carter, the "lobby" will attempt to trash your reputation just as they have tried to do to Professors Walt and Mearshiemer. However, America needs you to stand up and tell the truth. It is time that we had an honest debate in this country. Moreover, it is time that we have a foreign policy that advances American objectives rather than those of a foreign power. Kudos President Carter- keep up the good work!

Former President Carter has worked hard for peace and much of that work has borne fruit. He championed energy conservation which was regretably dropped by successor administrations. It is a hard road but faith like President Carter inspires can help make it smoother and straighter.

I'm a little confused here...

-Was Israel a barren unpopulated wasteland—home to no one—before it was deeded to Jewry?

was it UN property? or British property?

-Do most Israelis kill Palestinians?

-Do most Palestinians kill Israelis?

-Was Zionism an invention of sectarian Christians?

-Did most Jews even want Israel before WWII?

-Are there passages in the Talmud or the Torah which confirm the inborn violent nature of the unchosen (Muslims)?

-How many atheists have never threatened to kill a believer?

-If Muslims can't stop their millenia-old murder spree, why don't we just kill them all so the world will be more peaceful for everyone else?

We have the technology, don't we?

-Can anyone explain the benefits of pride, tribe and ownership?

And finally...

-I personally make no claim to the land in question and also do not feel any burning need to kill to defend it, or the land I DO live on, nor to keep others off of it. Also, I've noticed a gigantic lack of checkpoints, suicide bombing attempts, home-bulldozering, really big walls, invasions, divine real estate, tribal affiliations and religious certainty in the world where I live.

Does this indicate a lack of meaning in my life? Am I doing something wrong?

Mr President, you put into practice a set of policy recommendations for the Middle East that are consonant with the hierarchy of values espoused in Judaism and Islam and, subsequently, in Christianity. This is the only basis upon which a long-lasting peace can evolve.

As a citizen of Costa Rica, which proscribed the military in 1948, it pains us to see so much suffering, oppression and killing taking place on both sides of the "Israeli" border, where all sides benefit from an arsenal increasingly tilted towards genocidal efficiency. Perhaps two additional components could be integrated into your policy guidelines: (1) a region-wide nuclear free zone and (2) a gradual reduction of all other conventional arms. This befits a region where a prophet once predicted that "the sword will be turned into plowshare".

Dear President Carter, most Americans in their heart and soul are 100% with you. America is proud of you for your honest and principled position. A day will come when the so called supporters of Israel will realize that you were and are Israel's best friend. Now-a-days, many Americans realize that the pre-Iraq-war French position was truly a friendly to America although many Americans at the time failed to recognize it. I hope and pray that Israel and her supporters will follow your advice before it is too late.

I find it interesting how often these comment opportunities bring out the most emotional and irrational in us, qualities standing in the path of moving discussions forward. For instance, I've seen outbursts of heated rhetoric charging that Carter's new book is "filled with errors," but none are mentioned. Instance, references to Carter's troubled presidency have nothing to do with his peace efforts, for which he has received the Nobel Peace Prize. If such a devote individual with a record of effort on behalf of humanity can be reviled so personally, without factual reference to his actual words and actions, we are not going to cope successfully with real problems of survival importance to all of us.

After awhile it would look like the peoples of the world would catch on.

Why not an international effort to scientifically examine each major event told in Genesis and Exodus. In addition to the six day creation, the 40 day flood, and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea with/against/across an East wind strong enough to hold back water from in at least two directions!!!!!

Since Bushco intermingles truth and fiction using 180 degree opposites why isn't it assumed that it has always been that way.

Mr. Carter was indeed a distinguished President.
During his tenure as President there were no major wars, although aggressions were committed by other nations. The one that comes to mind was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. President Carter initiated a policy that ultimately led to the demise of the Soviet Empire.

President Carter is a GREAT Human Rights advocate and he never initiated aggression on behalf of the United States. I have watched many of his interviews on television. He is a TRUE CHRISTIAN. His Christianity promotes love for others and respect for other religions. That is the essence of true tolerance. HE WILL DEFINITELY BE JUDGED BY HISTORIANS AS THE GREATEST PACIFICIST CHRISTIAN PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

Thank you, President Carter for setting a true example of defending Human Rights.

I'm not a Christian, but thank you, Mr. President. Being a truth-bearer is never easy. Telling the disgusting truth about Israel's racism, opression, lies and terrorism takes considerable courage. Jesus Christ was an extremely courageous man, and he died for telling the truth. You are one of the few Christians I've heard who GET IT! Happy New Year, and Bless You, Mr. President.

Why do you need faith if you truly believe in God.

It is truly sad and disheartening that a former President of the United States should become an apologist for a people and a political cause, at whose heart for 58 years, has been the destruction of a democratic soveriegn state based on the belief that any land ever conquered by Islamic Arabs should always be controlled by Islamic Arabs. If certain of his Christian scriptural underpinnings reinforce his discomfort with moden Israel, so much the worse. Jimmy Carter may be the final demonstration that age and religiosity do not necessarily bring wisdom.

John Walsh:

You wrote:

"It is another neocon talking point."

Please run a search before you post. Don't contribute one man's comment to an entire political movement. Open communication breaks down when you counter a lie with another lie.

Thanks and may you have a happy new year of fruitful conversations.

It is time for all who are not Palestinian or Israeli to be killed, so that Israelis and Palestinians can finally finish their divine opera of hatred without the unholy meddling of unchosen others around to keep dragging it out.

Then, at last, only those who are legitimately entitled to remain alive can do so in a perfect world.

Unlike many people, I do not believe that Mr. Carter was a terrible President. I thought he had a lot of bad luck with inflation and the intractable nature of the hostage crisis which mirabile dictu, was resolved quickly with credit going to Ronald Reagan.

I also think that Mr. Carter has been an admirable past President doing much great work for humanity.

Going back to his Presidency, it wasn't so much that he was a bad President as that he was not a distinguished one -- the one exception and big one it is, has to be the Camp David accords. Part of the problem is that Mr. Carter ran for President as an opportunist and without any vision for what he would do WITH and FOR America. That is not unlike most of the people who have been recent Presidents and most who now seek the office. I hope we will find the exceptions - - men and women of mission, not just ambition.

Mr. Carter wrote a book about Israeli-Palestinian relations with a title designed to be provocative. He had to know that it engender sharp reaction from Israel and the supporters of Israel in the US, the so-called Israeli lobby. And the attacks have come. Some accuse him of factual errors and some accuse him of bias. The charges of factual error in a couple pieces I have read, I cannot comment upon, as I don't know the details of the underlying issues. The charges of bias have a sort of inherent truth because if "biased" means leaning to one side or other on an issue, then Mr. Carter is obviously leaning to his own point of view. I don't have a problem with that and it is easy enough to keep charges of bias as being nothing more than a vitriolic way of saying, "we don't agree with you."

Charges of bias also imply that Mr. Carter is being unfair - a charge that he should address, if only to keep being heard in the debate he has provoked.

Given all that, it is disappointing to see Mr. Carter, instead of defending his book on its merits, resorting to "his faith" as justification for his book and as evidence of its essential correctness. The current occupant of the White House has justified his policies on the basis of his faith - in fact apparently claiming that God put him here for that purpose.

When people do things like that, one can be sure that they are not advancing seriously thought out positions, but merely personally held beliefs or delusions.

I thought Mr. Carter genuinely wanted to get peace in the Middle East. While it might be silly to think one can achieve that goal by accusing one of the players of "apartheid" -- i.e., a dumb political maneuver even if he could justify his use of the word, he started some sort of dialog, perhaps thinking that others would join in putting pressure on Israel.

Unfortunately, this piece by Mr. Carter will make the task of peace even more difficult. If his God gave him the idea of this book and this title, one wonders why either side in the conflict should embrace his views since each has its own faith, different from Mr. Carter's.

This is another example why people should keep their faith to themselves or within the confines of whatever church, temple, mosque or hermitage is their place of worship.

President Carter,

There are always those who will not agree with your proposed solutions. But no one can take away your true belief in God. Your deeds are equal to your words. Habitat for Humanity is a wonderful program giving the homeless shelter and respect. The WIC program which you instituted has helped hundreds of thousands of children from going hungry. While this President find the time and money to deceive, create havoc and destroy lives, you look to honesty and truth, assisting and helping those without and to bringing peace in regions of conflict. Your expertise in the Middle East, your true religious conviction in our Lord Jesus Christ, brings you front and center in attempting to resolve this crisis rather than to escalate it. I for one personally thank you.

Diana

Please do not insult one of our most honest presidents. His message is also about protecting Ameirca's interests, a true Statesman obligation, years after leaving office. He is still honoring his oath to protect our great constitution by putting America first. God bless you Mr. President.

Please do not insult one of our most honest presidents. His message is also about protecting Ameirca's interests, a true Statesman obligation, years after leaving office. He is still honoring his oath to protect our great constitution by putting America first. God bless you Mr. President.

Johnson's comment above needs correction, because it contains a LIE. There is no public record, or any other record, of the quote attributed to Carter about "showing the Jews a thing or two."
It is another neocon talking point.
What is true is that many in AIPAC did not like the peace between Israel and Egypt, apparently fearing it would lead to a peace with the Palestinians. Unfortunately, due to the terrorist Menachme Begin's double-cross of Carter, that did not happen. But some neocons have not forgiven Carter to this day.

Carter should refrain from meddling in the Israeli/Palistinian fiasco. Remember, his previous interference led to more problems.

Carter's book is full of omissions, distortions and lies. Try objectively reading the book, before claiming it is valid, it is not!

This article revolves around Carter, please note the continual use of first person. Remember, he is an egotist, the Saudis own him, and they support the Palestinians.

80% of the the Israeli population live on land they purchased fair and square. They cannot purchase anymore land, as any Arab who sells land to a Jew will be executed. Look at a map, not the size of the Arab world, and look at the size of Israel. Why won't the Arab world give citizenship, a helping hand, land to their brethren as Israel does? Why? Because they want to keep the kettle boiling, destroy Israel to avenge the dishonor they suffered in 1948.

Israel has been attacked since the creation of their state. The goverment has paid million in compensation to the Palestinians, but their leaders use the money for rockets and bombs, not hospitals, schools, water, sewer systems, etc. That is, the Palestinian leaders are corrupt. Sure, Israel has corrupt leaders, but they are tried and convicted if caught.

The only media source for the Palestinian people is government controlled, not so in Israel.

Read some valid history folks.

The world doesn't need a biased person like Carter to tell the world how they should and should not act. This is the man who, when he was trying to get reelected as president said, "When I get back in office, I'll teach those Jews a thing or two".
This person has no sense of righteousness. His prejudices stand out as he condemns those he disagrees with and praises their enemies.
He is a useless old man that would be better off back raising peanuts. I suppose, that upon his death, he will be honored as was the late G. Ford. Too bad. The two men were so different. One honorable and truthful, the other a hateful little person.

I have read with interest, and some detachment (being neither American, Jewish or Palestinian), the message posted by President Jimmy Carter and the responses provided by readers. I would like to offer certain comments that have nothing to do with the substance of Mr. Carter's idea, but have to do with the tone of his message and, in particular, the responses of some of the readers:
1) the idea presented by Mr. Carter, seemingly in the context of publication of his recent book, is reasonable and polite. I do not know if the general strategy and outlook that he proposes would/will solve the Middle East problems, but they are sensible. Considering Mr. Carter's past experience (including being a US President), he deserves to be listened to carefully or, minimally, politely.
2) I am surprised by the comments offered by a significant numbers of readers that have nothing to do with the subject at hand. Some of these comments are simply aimed at offending Mr. Carter and appear useless. They are also impolite.
3) I am shocked by the comments made by a few, suggesting that the discourse of Mr. Carter is pro-Arabic or anti-Semitic. There is nothing to that effect in the message that I read and re-read. Such an inflation is not very useful.

Happy New Year to all!

It would be great if comments could remain relevant to the topic. How about some solutions for peace? People should know by now that hate, war, revenge, tit for tat, bigotry, etc., only brings more of the same. One look at Iraq proves that. In reading some of the hateful comments, it only proves that civil discourse has taken a downward turn in this country as well. This only puts us -- the entire human race -- farther away from understanding God's greatest commandment: love one another. A soul filled with hate will never find peace.

THANK YOU, PRESIDENT CARTER.

President Carter has the first-hand experience and knowledge about what's going on in Palestine and Israel. He's witnessed the discrimination and aparteid that Israel has implemented over the years, which helped drive hundreds of thousands of Christians and Muslims out of Palestine and continues to create hatred.
The Israeli lobby, AIPAC, controls the message in Washington and controls most of the Congress. Just watch AIPAC's annual meeting on C-SPAN and see how many politicians are pandering to its audience (essentially, prostituting themselves). Only Carter is able to speak out about this and now he's being accused of anti-semitism after all he's done for Israel. BTW, this is the same AIPAC that had it's director indited for spying for Israel. It goes to show you where their loyalties are.

It took a lot of courage for Mr. Carter to issue his recent book on the Israel/Palestine problem considering the unseemly power of the Israel lobby in Washington and elsewhere. He raises issues that have been waiting years to be exposed and prevented.

Jimmy Carter asserts that "permanent peace for Israelis, with peace and justice for the Palestinians" are goals that "[a]ll the major religions would endorse." It apparently would come as a surprise to him (but not to anyone else who has paid attention to the Middle East) that, in their last elections, the Palestinians voted into power a party, Hamas, that claims to be founded strictly on Islamic principles and that is also explicitly dedicated to the destruction of the State of Israel. Notwithstanding Carter's starry-eyed musings about what "all the major religions would endorse," the hard fact is that the Palestinians have chosen to empower a political party that endorses very different goals. For reasons of his own, Jimmy Carter prefers to close his eyes to this obvious truth.

In the same vein, the alleged human rights violations suffered by Palestinians, including the construction of a barrier to deter terrorists from attacking Israeli civilians, are by and large reasonable defensive responses to terrorism, much of which has been perpetrated by the same group, Hamas, that the Palestinians recently elected. Carter is exquisitely sensitive to the problems the barrier creates for Palestinians, but he makes no mention of the suicide bombings the barrier was designed to prevent and, from statistical evidence, has succeeding in preventing. Again, for reasons known only to himself, the former President closes his eyes to crucial facts.

I salute the only american leader who puts humanity and justice above all other considerations. Those who attack president carter are people with no morals at all, they claim he is antisemetic because he tells it like it is. Israel is the only apartheid democracy in the world, if you do not believe this why dont you travel to the west bank and see how the palestinains are living, I am not even talking about the palestinains refugees living in refugee camps in lebanon, syria, jordan for over 50 years. In the west bank and Gaza palestinians are surrounded by high walls in open prisons, jewish settlers who live in exclusive jewish settlments can use a lot more water than palestinains, jews drive cars with yellow license plates while palestinains are issued green ones, palestinaisn cannot use exclusive jewish rodes. Jewish settlers in Hebron/west bank can move into palestinain homes and kick them out, jewish settler kids can chase palestinains in the streets, throw garbage at them, take their lands, cut and burn their olive trees, they do all this to cleanse the lands of palestinains. They do all this with the tacit approval of american media and corrupt american leaders.
The funny thing is americans realy believe the propaganda about freedom in the middle east.
The israeli army is the most professional terrorist army in the world.

One more comment. Jimmy Carter in addition to the other fine contributions represented by his book does us the service of dropping the euphemisitic term "settlers" and uses instead the term "colonists." Of course those streaming into the West Bank from Isreal, America and elsewhere are colonists, usurping the land of others. If what they are doing is just, so was the gradual, forced removal of the American Indian by colonists or the subjugation of South African Blacks by colonists.
Colonialism is a nasty business and in the end it always justifies itself with a racist ideology so apparent in many of the pro-Israel comments above.
If the readers of this exchange want a more reasonable voice from Israel, they would do well to read the writings of Uri Avnery, leader of Gush Shalom and a wise and trenchant critic of the Israeli Lobby here and the Likudniks there.
Of course you will not find Avnery's writings published in the U.S. except on the wonderful electronic pages of CounterPunch.com

President Carter's hypothesis is about achieving a just and sustainable peace for Arabs and Jews. Those who are trying to discredit him are not true friends of Israel. Israel can and should co-exist side by side with it's Arab neighbors. We Americans, should also realize that peaceful and stable Middle East is also in the best economic interests of us, Americans.

I travelled the Middle East extensivley and am amazed to see how many Arabs and Israelis are craving for peace. I hope that our own media will have the courage to admit that. The paradigms of the conflict have been made worse with our ignorance and ingorant perspective of this unfortuante conflict. Do not call me an anti semite, or Arab lover, because I am a strong supporter of the State of Israel right to exist. Do not call me a petro dollar lover either, because I am an enviromentalist.

The most contentious issue preventing a Mideast settlement has been the status of Jerusalem. I personally think that it should be an international city, undivided, as authorized in 1947 by the UN. But the Israelis are very much against this. What gives them the right to insist upon protection by the U.S. in their pursuit of what is, essentially, a religious goal? The world allowed creation of the state of Israel as a refuge for the survivors of the Holocaust and the Jewish people, for all time. I can't blame the Israelis for suspicions of Arab intentions after having been attacked so many times since then. But to further inflame Arabs by taking even more of their land, instead of settling for what Israel was given by the UN, is counterproductive. The U.S. is so deep in debt that Israel would be smart to make peace on the terms Mr. Carter suggests, or else risk losing it all at some future date when we're too bankrupt to keep protecting them. If I had to add one thing to Mr. Carter's roadmap, it would be that, assuming Jerusalem were to be made a UN territory, to allow Israel to continue to protect the entire city of Jerusalem as a UN territory for at least the next 50 years, because there is too much of a risk of terrorism against the Holy City and its sites from all sides. No one can argue that Israel has failed on this responsibility, and they have restored protection to the Wailing Wall- portions of which were next to a trash dump under Jordanian administration.

this subject is still taboo...but the winds of change begin to stir a dialogue of a sad reality. if you don't want to view the picture then deny what you see and build the walls and fences to re-inforce a false sense of security. right on mr. carter...is my god better than yours?

President Carter is what a true moral leader sounds like.
It doesn't surprise one bit that fearful, warmongering "christian" self-proclaimed judges of who is "good" and who is "evil" choose to crucify him every time he speaks.
President Carter speaks of love, justice, mercy, tolerance -- words that aren't spoken very often by the christians from Fox News, rightwing radio, or Bush's White House.

I wish more people understood the Middle East; Palastine/Isreal issue as Mr. Catrer currently does.

I think President Carter properly notes the source of the conflict between the Arab world and Isreal; disrespect/racist attitudes towards other people; Muslims in specific, other religions in general.

Isreal's disrespectfull attitudes towards the Palestines/Lebanese/Syrians in specific and all other Arab peoples in general is a clear indication of how they feel about other races/religions in general and specifically. Intollerant and disrespectfull to all otrhewr races of people and religions.

If the Middle East is to ever have Lasting Peace it will be when Isreal learns to respect other religions, other people and drop their racist attitudes towards other races of people and their religions.

Isreal has used their status of victim in the past to the victimizer in the present. Isreal lives in homes that used to belong to Palestineian people that still have the keys to homes the Palestinians can no longer enter.

If you want to tell the future observe your present actions, is what I have learned through life. Isreal will become the next monster of the world, chasing Muslims around the World trying to remove the Musloims and in mthe process creating turmoil and unrest throught the entire world not just the middle east.

I hope Isreal chganges their path of destruction; torture and killing innocent women and children; and stop killing people out of revenge. I do not feel sorry for Isreal as they have created their own future from the own past actions. Cause and Effect.

Killing other people's women and children will only lead to other's killing Isreal's women and children. Does Isreal not see or understand this simple relationship of Cause and Effect?

Thank you Mr. President for writing the truth.

Thank you President Carter for all your efforts to pursue peace in this world. Thank you for being so strong while standing up to the ill informed attacks on your efforts.

I remain amazed at the venom and hatefulness of the self centered, racist remarks coming from what appear to be Jews, Arabs, and atheists. I remain amazed at the clumsiness and violence wrought by the current administration who claim to be Christians. It seems to me that its this segment of the population - the outspoken religious people who seem to be the root of the problem.

Back in the 60's, as a young graduate of UCLA, I returned to my native land Cyprus, where I was appointed Master Education Department. On a visit to our school, the President of Cyprus who also happened to be the head of the Orthodox church, had a meeting with the school's staff. My question to him was how could he sign on for the execution of a convicted felon, something which was contrary to the teachings of the church. His reply was that as Archbishop, I oppose capital punishmenmt; as President of the Republich I must enforce the laws passed by the people of Cyprus. It is up to Almighty God to judge me and the people. During his Presidency, I don't believe that anyone was executed.

It's funny how those who bash the UN for opposing our ill advised adventure in Iraq, are so eager to cite the UN as the source of legitamacy for the state of Israel.

We should have given New Jersy to the Jewish Refugees after the war. At least it was ours to give.

After Iraq, the partition of Palestine stands as the worst foreign policy mistake of the 20th century.

Mr. Carter: You are one of few true christians I know, act as one. Sorry to see so many uninformed or biassed comments.

Dear President Carter,

My grandparents from both sides of the family had to flee Turkey at the turn of the 20th century after the massacre of Christians there. My great grandparents from my mothers' side were killed. My grandparents, like many Christians, fled to the Holy Land in search for a peaceful place to live. My parents were born in Jerusalem and it wasn't long before the Jewish-Arab conflict began in 1948. My parents moved away from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to avoid the bloodshed and that's where I was born. I lived there until I was 8 then the 1967 war came about and we found ourselves fleeing there to a safe region. That region was Lebanon. I lived there until I was a teenager then the Lebanese civil war began in 1975. At that point, we were fortunate enough to migrate to the United States--the only place I am honored to call home.

I assure you, what my family endured is not unique, for many other families suffered as much--if not more. All this took place due to religious hatred. As a Christian, I am ashamed of the position of many Christians that promoted religious hatred and intolerance--in direct defiance of the message brought to us by Lord Christ. I wonder what happened to "Love thy neighbor?" I am equally ashamed of the behavior of many Muslim and Jewish groups for the same reason. Religion is supposed to improve our lives and provide the spiritual enrichment to make this world a better place to live.

If humanity is to survive, we must act in accordance to what religions truly teach about love, decency, and compassion. I am truly honored when individuals of your stature speak up and have their views be heard!

Sincerely,

Mounir Murad

Although it appears that he is a decent man, he was the worst elected president. He lost Iran, he handle the hostage crisis without dignity, inflaton was rampant. I could not believe that such a political failure can give advise about the world problems. It is a shame that is still peole that lsten to such a "politician"

Jimmy Carter is still eligible to be elected President so he could run for election in 2008. He could even do it as something other than Democratic if need be. John Walsh, as above, could be the Vice-president candidate.

Or it could be John Walsh for President with Jimmy Carter as Vice-president.

Either way they would get plenty of publicity. A lot of it would be negative as above, but who knows, if we have a reasonably honest election, we might even save our republic.

If I had the opportunity to meet anyone in the world, it wouldn't be George H. Bush or his demented son W. It would be Jimmy Carter. True, his presidency wasn't the best but at least he didn't have over 3,000 young Americans killed in combat for an unnecessary incursion in Iraq based on lies of weapons of mass destruction. He didn't attempt to destroy our constitutional guarantees of freedom based on a hateful campaign of politics of fear while hijacking Christianity for his own agenda. History will show who the statesmen were. The Bushs' will not be among them but Jimmy Carter will.

I do sympathize with the Jewish people for their centuries of suffering but not at the expense of the rights of the Palestinian people.

It is important to remember that the Holocaust did not occur at the spur of the moment. There is a long history of expulsions, killings , and usurpation of the property of Jews from the end of the fourteenth century to the Hlocaust in Europe.

Before the Holocaust there was a constant effort to demonize Jews all over the world, especially Europe.

Lord Cromer, Britain’s proconsul in Egypt (1883-1907), divided humanity into “governing races” and “subject races”, while T. E. Lawrence called Egyptians “worms”. This is hardly different from “vermin”, the Nazi epithet for Jews.

Lord Balfour, whose 1917 declaration handed over Palestine to Europeans, was intensely anti-Jewish and was so disturbed by the possible mass migration of east European Jews into Britain following pogroms in Russia that as prime minister he had the Aliens Act passed in 1905 to block their migration to Britain. And Mark Sykes (of the Sykes-Picot pact fame) called the Jews “the archetype of cosmopolitan financier, rootless money grubber....contemptible”.

Churchill believed that “atheistic Jews” were behind the Russian revolution, and often referred to the Bolsheviks as “bacillus”— a pet Nazi term for Jews. An article “By the Rt. Hon. Winston S. Churchill” in the February 8, 1920, issue of the Illustrated Sunday Herald, named Karl Marx, Bela Kuhn, Rosa Luxembourg and others among Jews who were behind “every subversive movement” in the 19th century. He also accused Trotsky of attempting to set up a world communist empire “under Jewish domination”.

During our time, an attempt is being made to demonize Muslims by portraying them all to be terrorists.

The neocon and the theocon unholy alliance often cherry picks negative news about Muslims from around the world to demonize Muslims in general. Various terms have been invented to make an impact on the minds of the people. Examples of these emotionally charged terms are "jihadists","islamicists" etc. A constant maligning of all Muslims is going on for the acts of few.

No, not all Italians are mafia, or all blacks are criminals, or all Japanese are traitors. We must stop maligning all Arabs,or Muslims also.

JIMMY CARTER: "All the major religions would endorse these goals."

Unfortuneately, it is a tenet of the Islamic faith as prescribed in the Koran that once a region has become Muslim, it cannot be given back to infidels.

There will not be a permanent solution as long as both Israel and Islam exist.

Jobe Barker wrote:

"And sense leaving office he has set the standard for how to be an ex-President working tirelessly creating such institutions as Habitat for Humanity"

Millard Fuller and his wife founded Habitat for Humanity International in 1976.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter became involved with Habitat for Humanity in 1984.

Habitat's founder, Millard Fuller, and his wife were fired by the Habitat board of directors on January 31, 2005, after he was accused of "suggestive comments and inappropriate touching" towards a female employee during a ride to the Atlanta airport in 2003. HFH now says there was insufficient evidence to corroborate the complaint and it now appears that the firing was due to a change in corporate culture.

There are so many half truths floating around here. Let's stick with the facts, please.

Kyrie eleison.

The term 'semitic' refers to a family of languages that includes both Hebrew and Arabic. The term 'anti-Semitic' was invented to intimidate all those who offered any criticism of Israel. So both Arabic speaking people and the Hebrew speaking Jews are semites.

Those who want to intimidate President Carter by calling him an anti-Semite are literally misleading the public. There are many honorable Jews both inside and outside Israel who are opposed to Israeli policies of bulldozing Palestinian homes and businesses, cutting down centuries old olive trees, building fences and walls etc, and could not possibly be called "anti-Semitic."

The argument that why other Arabs did not provide land to the Palestinians is basically un-American. If you take away somebody's home by force, you cannot justify your actions by simply expecting the victim's neighbors or co-religionists to provide them a home. No, the victims have an absolute right to resist and fight back the invader. That is the basic American value.

Some of the posts are distracting us by blaming President Carter for other things--a familiar way to go after the person who opposes their point of view. Some posts here have blamed the Palestinians for their plight--again a classic way of blaming the victims.

Referencing the Rachel Enfrenfeld(Arab financeers) submission:Did I miss the important point the writer was laboring to make that Carter was being funded by some outside group,so? Are we being invited to assume that "they" are all the same. It occurs to me we would be making the Vietnam mistake yet again. Why not restrict the discussion to the Pastinians.

Why is it that whenever anyone has the courage to ask for an open debate about the Palestinian situation, so many try to shut it down by attacking the credibility of the author? In policiat campaigns, this would be negative campaigining and is a common tactic of those with a weaker argument. Perhaps they are afraid of the open discussion. For example, the common refrain (and visible in these posts) is that critics of Israeli policies should look to Palestinian terrorism equally. They usually do but that, in my experience is not good enough for so many Israeli supporters.

President Carter, for instance, does not condone terrorism. And anyone who says he does is a liar. He does, however, understand that Palestinian terror has a handmaiden in the Israeli occupation. Neither will exist without the other for long. As for who has hurt who more, that is a child's argument. Adults look at the realities on the ground and American patriots try to find answers to how we can end this crisis to preserve lives and long term stability in the region.

Dear President Carter,

Thank you for your frank discussion. We all need need to live in peace with our neighbors if the world is to survive. This means we need to give in on some issues. More talk of war and distruction will just cause more sufferring and more enimies at a time when there are more people that are barely surviving.

Thank you for comming forward and for talking about true peace, which always comes with some justice and sacrifice.

All I can say is it's about time an American politician spoke up concerning the plight of the Palestinians. I applaude former Pres. Carter for having the courage to write his latest book concerning the atrocities committed and perpetuated against the Palestinian people by the nation of Israel. If only we had political leaders like him in this country with a spine to stand up against political retribution by voicing the present and past realities of the middle east, maybe there would be constructive change. As long as right wing Israeli leaders and their American cohorts live in denial as to the real source of violence and turmoil in Israel/Palestine, the longer and more brutal will the conflict be.
And as we found in this country on 9/11, we are no longer immune or seperated from the on going mayhem between the occupiers and the occupied in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Truth will set you free. I can see how free President Carter is now.

I could not help but notice that the Kuchinsky comment above is based on a racist argument. You see, all Muslims or "Islamists" (What is that anyway? Are there Judaists or Christianists?) are terrorists and one cannot make peace with them or even co-exist with them.
If we follow this argument to its conclusion, then the only final solution is to get rid of them all.
Does Mr. Kuchinsky not recognize where this barbarous thought was applied before? Is he not ashamed of the ideological company he unwittingly keeps?

Given how very well Muslims are treated in the United Kingdom, and given also the fact that intelligence agencies there are aware of literally dozens of terrorist plots hatched by groups of home-grown Islamist terrorists against the English people, how could there be any basis to believe that if only Israel withdrew to the 1967 lines and from Jerusalem, the local Arabs would coexist peacefully?

What did Israel get for its withdrawal from Gaza? Rockets. For the withdrawal from Lebanon? More rockets. And from what we can see of how Muslim massacres Muslim in the Sunni v. Shiite schism, on what reasonable basis could the Jews believe that they would be treated well?

This naive belief of Carter that terrorists are really good people at heart, if only you talk to them nicely and address all their legitimate grievances, will destroy us. There is good and evil in the world, and just as diagnosis has implications for treatment in the medical world, the knowlege of the type of people you are dealing with has implications for the type of negotiation you engage in, if you engage them at all.

Anyone who criticizes Israel will be slandered in the mainstream news media. Particularly in the Washington Post.

Carter's piece above is very revealing. He sums up his political views through the lens of his childhood experiences saying "Of the five adults who shaped my life, other than my parents, only two of them were white. My future political commitments were shaped by my aversion to the official discrimination that I condoned in my youth."

To Carter, everything now is about purging himself before his god from the rascist sins of his youth. But in so doing, he has a new racism where he looks at every challenge between dark skinned people and light skinned people and assumes that the dark skinned people are the oppressed and the light skinned people are the oppressors. This was true when pretended to be objective on the outside when he was an unfair elections observor in a messy scandal that helped bring the dark skinned Hugo Chavez to power though an election frought with irregularities. Indeed, Chavez defeated a lighter skinned candidate with blue eyes and Carter felt that somehow the darker skinned people of Venezuela had been liberated - when in fact the lighter skinned candidate, Gov. Henrique Salas Romer, had better plans and proven experience to help ALL the people of Venezuela.

Today Carter has a book about the conflict in the Middle East where he put the word "Apartheid" in the title and treats the Palestinians as if they were the wronged African Americans in Jimmy Carters youth. True, many Palestinians are suffering and they deserve a better life. But their oppressors are not the Israelis who Carter somehow manages to treat as white racsists. The challenges faced by the darker skinned Palestinians are largely because of the failures of their leaders to accept a two state solution where both Israel and the Palestinians coudl live in peace.

Carter is now 82 and eventually he will go the way of Reagan and now Ford. But before he faces his own judgement day he should clean his accounts from having condoned rascism against blacks in his youth by making sure he is not rascist against whites today.

I am proud to have served in the Jimmy Carter White House from 1979-80. America would have been much better off had he been president for four more years.

His latest book on the Middle East offers a ray of hope for peace in that region. The framework for peace already exists in the U.N. resolutions which remain in force.

Thanks, President Carter.

While we are at it, adding to my comment just above, the excellent paper of Professors Mearsheimer (U. of Chicago) and Walt (Harvard) on the Israeli Lobby is must reading. They conclude along with many others, and the number is growing as the truth outs, that a major and crucial factor (but certainly not the only one) in getting us into this bloody quagmire in Iraq was the Lobby.
M and W were also labeled as anti-Semites (despite not a shred of such an attitude in their backgrounds) and could not get their paper published in the US so they went to the London Book Review. If that is not testimony to the dark power of the Israeli Lobby, I do not know what is.
And to read the intemperate and malicious criticisms of Carter above only reinforces the notion that we must get this pernicious influence out of our political life. Our survival may depend on it.
John Walsh

Dear Sir,
Mr.Jimmy Carter's dream had always been to plant one of his mental pea-nuts and see a terrific oak tree of (his) human fame and accomplishment dash forward, in the bal(r?)my shade of which the Lion would chew the cud of his benevolence together with the innocent lamb; or where Islamist sods would kneel to present their hostages in the Tehran embassy with incense, myrrh, and bullion.

As far as his bigotted anti-Semitism goes, Mr.Carter reminds me of Martin Luther, the Reformator. Initially he lovingly wooed the Jews, praised their ancient friendly terms cultivated with their mutual God, and was sure to convert them to lovely German Protestants.When, however,he found himself rebuffed, his advances turned into unmitigated hatred: "Burn them at the stake...destroy their synagogues..." etc., published together with a collection of additional pious good wishes in his book: "On the Jews and their lies".

There, though, any comparison with old Luther ends, as Carter's prose remains as bromidic as the contents of his Middle East insights prove nincompoopishly simplistic.

K.Klempel,

Jimmy Carter's ill conceived and one sided view of the Palestinian situation and his virulent and unapologetic negative view of Israel, Zionists, American Jews, Jewish power and the rights of the State of Israel should not be clouded by his masterful, shift-shaping rhetoric cloaked as it is in his usual pseudo-religous Christian morality. It is just another attempt on his part to make good bad and bad good. His complete amnesia to historic Palestinian rejection of Jews in general and a Jewish State in particular for more than 85 years as well as the collective violence they've committed against Jews in the past and even today is inexcusable and completely obliterates his own case.

Carter is to be congratulated for his wonderful and much maligned book, "Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid," and his equally worthwhile op-ed in the Boston Globe where he says:
"As recommended by the Hamilton-Baker report, renewed negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians are a prime factor in promoting peace in the region. Although my book concentrates on the Palestinian territories, I noted that the report also recommended peace talks with Syria concerning the Golan Heights. Both recommendations have been rejected by Israel's prime minister."

It is not hard to conclude from this that American blood is being spilled in Iraq, in part because of Israeli rejectionism. No wonder the neocons are so disturbed by Carter's book. It is also remarkable, but not surprising, that Carter has had so few champions of his important book on the "Left," where the Lobby holds considerable sway.

It is high time that we stop shedding American (and Iraqi) blood for the interests of Israel, as perceived by its Likudnik government and its amen corner in the neocon think tanks and Pentagon committees.
john walsh

Is it truth that the usage of the international plus symbol, the cross, has been forbiden in Hebrew elementary schools using instead an inverted T? Pedro

Wow! Emphasis on the differences between peoples!! Even the sign (+) is replaced by an inverted T,I assume, to show being different and uppity. The genesis of a new breed of al-qada???

The Palestinians surely have been deprived of their rights. In recent times, however, they have shown themselves to be incapable of self government and seemingly in a permanent state of anarchy, corruption, and civil war. For two states to live in peace as neighbors, both have to be responsible, peaceful, and of good will towards the other. At this point, somewhere between zero and one of them fits that description. Until that changes, nothing else will improve the situation.

It is good to read more for Pres. Carter. It is my hope that his push for human rights would shape US policy away from amassing 'gold and silver' to enhancing the dignity of Man.

More power to you, Mr. President.

it truly saddens me that a man like Carter can be so easily be bought by petrodollars. I'd like to thank the author who explained the buying of Carter by the Saudis. I didn't know the story but it now makes perfect sense to me. he is a disgrace to the country, but he was as president anyway.

Here come the Israeli apologists. We can spot them in a minute. First, they accuse President Carter of ignoring the facts. Second, they accuse him of loving dictators and terrorists. Third, they accuse him of hating Israel and therefore hating all Jews. They throw in snide remarks about faulty logic and bad writing. Typical.

Let's look at the facts. Israel used terror, rape, and murder to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its indigenous inhabitants. Zionists went into Palestinian villages like Dier Yassin and coldbloodedly murdered over 100 innocent people. Ooops, they weren't innocent, they were untermenschen with the anti-semitic gall to occupy Israel's lebensraum. These people had nothing to do with the tragedy of European Jews at the hands of the Third Reich, but they have to pay the price. All the early Zionists, including ben Gurion, Begin, Shamir, and Sharon admitted their plan to create a Palestinian-free Palestine. Carter's sin is in admitting this. Facts. Pesky facts. They always get in the way. But not to those Americans who value Israel above America and thus attack those Americans who put the interests of America above the interests of foreign powers.

The Iranian hostage crisis. Attack President Carter for the actions of a foreign gov't. Ignore Reagan lobbying the Ayatollah to hold the hostages a little bit longer so Ronnie can win the Presidency. Ignore the efforts of President Carter to solve the crisis through diplomacy, while Reagan sabotages his efforts.

Terrorism. Ignore Deir Yassin. Ignore Sharon's personal responsibility for the deaths of 2400+ innocent Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps during Sharon's Excellent Adventure in Lebanon. Sharon tells the Christian Phalangists (that's Fascists) that Palestinians killed their leader when he knew full well this was a bald-faced lie. Ignore Sharon ordering the Israeli military to look the other way during 3 days of rape, murder, massacre and death. Ignore Israel dropping 2-ton bombs on residential apartment buildings because a single man on their hit list is there. Ignore the deaths of 14 innocent men, women and children that Israel knew would happen, hoped would happen, expected to happen, so it would send a message to the Palestinians. But when Palestinians send a message to Israel with suicide bombers in response, screech shamelessly about terror.

These attacks on President Carter are attacks on America. Attacks to benefit a foreign power. A foreign power that killed 34 American sailors on the USS Liberty in 1967, machine gunning the life rafts. Attacks that to this day go unpunished because the attacker is Israel. Attacks shamelessly apologized for as mistakes. Sure, just like 9/11 was a mistake. Al Qaeda really wanted to attack Canada and mistook New York for Moosejaw. Oh yes, accept such shameless excuses. Then cover up the attack, and attack the victims for being there.

Then there's Jonathon Pollard. The greatest espionage breech of US national security since the Rosenbergs gave Stalin the Bomb (in this case, religion had NOTHING to do with it, so save your rants about anti-semitism). The same krewe attacking President Carter today also want the US to release the traitor Pollard for a single reason: He did it for Israel. And where did these stolen secrets go? To the USSR. But it was for poor little Israel, so it's OK.

In each case, Israel refused to allow the US access to the Israeli officials responsible for these Israeli attacks on America. But we never really pressed the issue, because people like these who now attack President Carter screeched about poor little Israel.

We make new citizens renounce allegiance to all foreign princes and potentates. When we see Mexican flags at immigrant rights rallies, certain people in America go ballistic. Yet they remain silent, and in fact cheer, when American politicians and citizens publicly swear allegiance to Israel. They roar with far greater indignation at criticism of Israel than at criticism of their own Republic!

It's clear where their loyalties lie. And it's not with the United States of America. And certainly not to reality, facts, and history.

Palestinians /Israelites :two people, who both belong there, want it all. They're both right and they're both wrong. Disarm them all. When they have to make war with their bare arms and other insignificant weapons, they'll learn to make peace.

One of the things that Mr. Carter needs to answer for, and for which he has not been taken to task sufficiently, is his disastrous handling of the hostage crisis in Iran. After our embassy was overrun and embassy personnel taken hostage, Mr. Carter made ridiculous attempts at negotiating with the then Iranian "government". I use the word government in quotes because by the time of the crisis, it was a radical theocracy. The Iranian "goverment" responded that the hostage crisis was a result of behavior by "students" angered at America's support for Shah Reza Palavi.

The invasion of our embassy and kidnapping of American embassy workerw as an absolute violation of basic international law, and under princples of international law, a grounds for war. After the negotiations went nowhere, Mr. Carter waited to launch a military assault thad had little chance of success. What he should have done, and what he failed to do, was tell the Iranian "government" that if our embassy was not vacated and our hostages returned in say, one week's time, he would then go to Congress and the American people, and ask for war powers. Subsequently, all out strikes should have been carried out on Iran's military and civilian infrastructure. It was the failure to do so that lead to the deep humiliation of this country, and emboldened Iran. His failure of leadership in this time haunts this country today.

As far as his latest book goes, suffice it to say that it is full of lies and half-truths. Mr. Carter, you are a disgrace.

Jimmy Carter is right on target. Peace is the Answer. Most of his critics have not read his most recent book out of 20+ books. To bring up the Iran hostage crisis in this is upsurd because as we know the true October suprise (getting Regunz elected) (Gates Rummy and Cheney)is to get and keep Republicans in Power at the expense of American lives and keep the Industrial Military Complex alive. More Nukes, Fear and oppression. AIDS, Hunger, loose Nukes, Global warming, environment should be on everybody mind as we bask in 80 degree weather in Washington.

Jimmy Carters Stupidly is exceeded only by George Bush’s Jr. Stupidly! Arabs have been killing each other thought-out recorded History, Tribe against Tribe, religious sect against religious sect, They are not capable of Democracy or the rule of law their Religion forbids Reason, Mercy or Common sense.

I know Palestinians who have a more balanced world view than Carter. His agenda is clearly to promote Palestinian propaganda from his pulpit as ex president and it is because of this position that his false assertions, half truths, and outright lies are unacceptable. One would hope that a onetime leader of the free world (albeit a failed one) would be compelled to adhere to fact and honesty when rendering a public opinion. Carter's legacy is less than impressive, perhaps he should fade away more gracefully and stop reminding people that he is one of the 20th century's least accomplished statesmen.

"they live under a system of mandatory segregation, with passes required to reach their jobs, schools, pastures and fields."

And because of the murderous hatred of the Arabs towards Jews and Israel, Israelis, in their own country, must also go through a system of passes and checks to reach their jobs, schools, pastures and fields, and grocery stores and restaurants and kindergartens and sporting events and pizza shops and synagogues and the Western Wall and buses and concerts and libraries and parking lots and shopping malls and hospitals....
And, speaking of faith, Jews of any nationality are forbidden to utter even a silent prayer on the holiest site of the Jewish Faith, the Temple Mount, let alone freely enter that site.

These restrictions for both peoples is in reaction to demonstrated Arab behaviour and not, as Jimmy Carter's libellous implication, because of a racist Apartheid policy of any Israeli government.

"Forced from their homes"
Yes by a war created by the Arabs after refusing the two state resolution of the UN accepted by Israel in 1947; and again, after another war in 1967 created by Egypt's threat to annihilate Israel; and after twenty years of Arab occupation of these very lands, currently under dispute, without any movement towards a Palestinian state by these occupiers. And this war was followed again by Arab refusal to negotiate with Israel.

And speaking of faith, Jimmy Carter lied to me and to others who voted for him in 1976. He said, when announcing his candidacy on Meet The Press, December 1974, that he saw no need for a Palestinian state.
I suppose he was just influenced by the "Jewish" lobby and would say anything to get elected.

I hope that some day Mr. Carter and others of prominence will realize that their faith based pronouncements are extremely alienating in a diverse world and that the existence of multiple faiths are largely a cause of the problems we face. In a world filled with Muslim, Jewish, and Christian fanatics, there will be no peace publicly calling on one's faith. In our world, there is a generally accepted moral, social, and ethical framework, developed over thousands of years, that is a universal barometer of what is right and what is wrong. This framework is almost all inclusive and possesses elements of religion such as the Mosaic Law as well as the teachings of the great philosophers. In pursuit of peace and well being, we all have to be talking the same language of right and wrong. We cannot do that when we invoke religion in any form because it always boils down to what religion we are talking about. I am not an atheist, I am a life long Roman Catholic and I am thoroughly distressed at what religious considerations have done to our world. We should keep it out of any discourse and keep it to ourselves. Common morality and the precepts of right and wrong do not need religious backing to make sense.

Thanks to President Carter for attempting to stimulate thought-provoking debate. He is one of the few who understand that "peace" means different things. To the Israelis it's security. For the Palestinians it's justice and for the U.S. and most other foreign countries, it's a state of non-war.

Still President Carter is searching for a possible solution even though the basic definitions are seen differently. The word "Apartheid" surely draws attention to Palestinian predicament of being 3rd class citizens in their own country.

Carter will go down in history as a truly great human being, even better than his Presidency. There are few other former presidents who rise to this level. Thanks again Jimmy.

I am amazed at the antisemitism dripping from Carter's article; that a former U.S. president would have this view of Israel is despicable. Israel has been in a defensive position for its survival since its formation at the end of WWII. It's Arab neighbor's want to see it "wiped off the map". Such clearly stated genocidal proclivities of Arabs should not be tolerated. Commentaries and books such as Carter's are clear evidence that Jews still need a refuge such as Israel to escape persecution in the remainder of the world.

Jimmy Carter’s vision, I am beginning to think, came too early to the country. His time is ahead. Good things and great things maybe need to go underground for 30 years or so to fall fallow, spread roots and get grounded.

It amazes me that there is still so much animosity toward one of the best men to have ever held the office of president, granted he was not a very effective executive but like President Ford he was instrumental in healing the nation. If you want an apt and telling comparison you need look no further then 3 mile island, against he fiercest objections of the secret service the president visited the plant while it was still in a run away state and there was he considerable danger of the hydrogen bubble that had formed inside the reactor removing a large swath of the Pennsylvania and neighboring states from the map, the History channel runs a documentary on it occasionally he went knowing better then any one the danger (Navy trained Nuclear Engineer) because that is what presidents do the act Presidential, then watch chicken George on 911 how long was before he even addressed a traumatized nation. And sense leaving office he has set the standard for how to be an ex-President working tirelessly creating such institutions as Habitat for Humanity, The Carter Center, working as a peace envoy almost always at the request of the sitting administration when they want to conceal there true intent. How did the supposed greatest President (not hardly) Saint Ronald spend his, he immediate began pimping the white house doing Japaneses commercials and forgetting about the laws he broke, ignoring AIDS until it had become a full blown epidemic and taking credit for things that rightly belong to Gen. George Marshall and every sitting Resident between Truman and Bush Sr(the good one)
As far as the Palestinian issue, I love Israel I'm retired Navy visited it oftn and found the people warm and welcoming the food ediable ,a large number of Ammericans both Emigrees and Hebrew college students , also liked the fact that every one was armed with an Automatic weapon because f there urprp national service laws it is one of the few places in the world that I would willingly live outside the US, but I have never understood how a Holocaust perpetrated and encouraged by European Christians, and ignored and covered up by the only non European power us resulted in Palestinian Muslims and Christians (a significant Palestinian minority had to give up there land and any hope of the barest semblance of self determination, would have made allot more sense to give them Bavaria, the Ruhr Valley,part of Vichey France, anything but punid=sh the people that historicly while not being a great ally th the jewish people at least did no spend seveal centuries perscuting them and laying the ground work for Hitlers final soloution. As far the bombing and other self defeating acts of desperation the difference between a Patriot and a terrorist is which side your own, try reading up on the southern campaign of the revolutionary war, or the second civil war(the South during Reconstruction)or Missouri Kansas conflict leading up to through and for several decades following the Civil War. Trust me the only atrocity to compare it to is 911 and that was not carried out by Palestinians (because they don't attack Americans (Hamas is Lebanese and Shiite) They just don't understand why we fail to see there plight and see the great miscarriage of justice that President Truman rioghtly predicted from the onset.and when basically the entire rest of the world gets it.
I don't know the answer other then a fair partitioning of the land (which the Wall is most defiantly not) and some sort of shared control of Jerusalem (make it the first UN city maybe) But the western world Great Brittan especially owes these people something and one more point the first Terrorist bombings carried out in in what is now Israel were carried out by Jewish settlers against both the British (Consulate twice, Officers Club etc) but the Palestinian people who had co-existed peacefully with there indigenous Jewish neighbors for centuries while the rest of the western world was inventing new ways to torture and kill them!

About ten years ago, after reading Professor Benjamin Bait-Hallahmi's book, "Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel", I had great sympathy for the Palestinians. However, a few years ago when extremist Palestinians began the suicide bombing, which was targeted at innocent people, especially Jewish women and children, I no longer could support their cause. The Palestinians need to follow the way of Martin Luther King, whose non-violent peaceful but persistent protests achieved historic success for the Black minority in America.

I applaud President Carter’s new book, Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid. He is the only American statesman courageous enough to address the historical facts behind the Israeli governments taking of neighboring lands and the world’s condemnation and response with UN resolutions 242 and 338. It seems only in America are those historical events so well suppressed that they are all but forgotten. Until now. ps. It is all but common knowledge now that Israel Lobby groups such as AIPAC, wield enormous pressure over all United States Senators and Congressmen to the point of silence and submission on such issues as President Carter raises in his book. In that vein it gives representative government a whole new meaning doesn’t it?

Thank you jimmy Carter. Only the ill informed and crazed zionist idiots can't see that people don't like having their land stolen homes destroyed and citizens butchered. The wacko Israeli apologist will continue to deny the truth about the ugly "for jews only" cancer that is Israel. Stop giving my tax money to this racist criminal state and FREE PALESTINE!

Dear President Carter:

No good is done by using bigotry to attract attention.

There is no apartheid in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria if you are a religious person).

There is only corruption of the Palestinian leadership, no accountability, no love for their people at all.

Hard work, accountability, love for their people, minimum corruption, respect for the law. All are characteristics of the Jewish leadership. Honesty of Jewish leadership.

I am shocked that you have become a liar and a bigot Mr. Carter.
The least I had expected from you was to be a dishonest person.
But again there is no surprise, since you have the distinguished
place in American history of being the worst president the USA ever had.

Jimmy Carter a bigot, liar, dishonest. Worst president ever.

And Yasser Arafat got also the Noble Peace Prize.

Dios Los Crea Y Ellos Se Juntan. God created them and then they get together. Also in hell. Poor Jimmy.

It's high time someone in a position to speak truth to power stands ready to do so, to advocate a loud reading of the riot act to the regime in Isreal for its treatment of the Palestinians. Therein lies the pivot-point for bringing peace to the Middle East.

It's also time to stop judging Jimmy Carter by his record while in office. Over the years since then he has logged enough accomplishments (on a global scale) to silence his abundantly smaller-minded critics forever.

Is it truth that US taxpayers, mostly christians, finance half of the Israeli budget?
Is it thruth that the Israel government finances the spitting of the cross from converts to judaism?
Is it truth that the usage of the international plus symbol, the cross, has been forbiden in Hebrew elementary schools using instead an inverted T?
Is it truth that the Carter' failure to free the hostages was a set up so to make him loose the reelection?
Is it truth that the hostages were magically freed five minutes after Reagan took office, the same administration that was later dealing forbidden arms with Iran through Israel?
Is it truth that Saddam was not a treat to the US but to Israel and that we are fighting into this snake pit for them and not for us?
I just heard rumors, so please somebody enlighten me.

Alas, Mr. Carter seems to suffer the same lack of understanding of the Muslim faith that plagues his dedicated Christian brother, Mr. Bush. They both see the resolution of middle east problems from the viewpoint of Christian morality.

The Palestinian tragedy of losing "their" land might equally be applied to the tragic exile of the Jews from that same land by the Romans. But history is forgotten when convenient. And, yes, the Hittites and Canaanites probably suffered equally when the Jews returned from Egypt.

The "Palestinians'" claim to nationhood stems from the artful partitioning of the British "Mandate" after WW 1, just as the State of Israel stems from similar foreign map carving.

The Arab dissatisfaction with this latest arrangement stems from the declarations of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in the 1940s in opposition to the UN decree. This religious politician fomented resistance among the Arabs who had previously been selling their land to Zionists (not really a bad word) for cold hard cash provided by the Jewish National Fund.

But unlike the Christian ethic which Carter and Bush would have prevail, one of the greatest Muslim ethical precepts is revenge. (No other cheek for them.) And on the Jewish side there is eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth.)

And so, dear friends, there is little hope that the Palestinian Arabs will accept any peace short of the removal of the Jews from the middle east, nor that the Jews will stop building walls and defensively curtailing Arab liberties as long as the Palestinians remain armed and hostile to the Jewish presence.

And is there any surprise that, with Muslim vengeful vigor, the Shiites will continue to exact revenge for the murderous Sunni policies which Mr. Bush unwittingly interupted? He had expected something like the liberation of France in WW 2. Sorry, different culture.

Why all this from a Pantheist? Is it not apparant
that the various organized religions, in defining their varying moralities have created the bedrock of intolerance from which governments derive motivation? While there is virtue in the Christian viewpoint, it is utterly naive to expect Christian behavior from Muslims. Shame on both these Presidents!

Would that we could all start over and embrace Nature as the true creator and human DNA as the uniting element on which to base a global society embracing all creatures as having an entitlement to a peaceful existance according to the laws of nature, not the codes of ethics fixed by religious law makers of antiquity.

So color me naive, too.

Carter's Nobel Peace Prize puts in him in the same group as Yasser Arafat and Henry Kissinger. What a sick joke!

A majority of Israelis voted for peace in 1992 when they elected Yitzhak Rabin, who with the Oslo Peace Accords, wanted to usher in a new era of peaceful coexistence between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Unfortunately ALL Palestinian parties, organizations, terror groups and politicians (Fatah and Arafat, Hamas and Yassin, the DFLP, the PLFP, Islamic Jihad, etc...) decided to continue their war on Israel and their wave of murder and terror.

Peace will come when all of the Palestinian terrorists are dead and the remaining Palestinian population is willing to leave in peace with a Jewish State - OR - when the state of Israel is destroyed and all jews killed or exiled.

Jimmy Carter, and the intellectual left wing in America are apparently fine with either outcome.

Thank you Jimmy Carter for writing such an intelligent and insightful book on the perhaps the world's most intractable social/political problem.

Your critics are uninformed. You rock. Keep up the good work.

Mark C. says:
"We need to define justice very carefully. Justice is when a harmed party is able to attain retribution or restituition from those who harmed them. If the founding of Israel harmed the Palestinians, then the UN must be the source of redress. Perhaps the UN can create an agreement to carve out a section of some other nation - Saudi Arabia? Egypt? Jordan? Libya? - as the new home for the Palestinians."

No need for the UN to go into this again. The UN partioned the British Mandate for Palestine into a Jewish state and a Palestinian state way back in 1947. The Palestinian portion of the state is still occupied and large parts colonised by Israeli settlements. All that is required is for Israel to end its ocupation and illegal settlements - the basic requirement for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

In my opinion former President Jimmy Carter is the most honorable and noble statesman still alive in America. His courage and decency has always made him a target of mocking and sneer campaign from extremists. He is the most knowledgeable man on Middle East affairs among all presidents who succeeded him.

Finally we have a person like Carter who is willing to call what the Palestinian issue what it is- a grave and constant violation of human rights. Of course it is wrong for Palestinians to use rockets or bombs against Israel. But Israel clearly holds power and is occupying not just Palestinian but Syrian land. They have the responsibility for at least TRYING to negotiate or initiate dialogue with the Palestinians and changing the status quo. But no, what do we get instead? Israel now plans to build new settlements in the West Bank, ignoring international opinion.

Oh, and for any of you ignorant people who falsely think you're friends of the Israeli state when in fact you're just making them more insecure and more vulnerable to resistance against occupation and intransigence, I am Jewish and my parents lived in a kibbutz and Jerusalem, and witnessed rocket attacks. So please don't waste your breath calling me an anti-Semite or jew-hater or any other such nonsense. All I want is for Israel to reach a settlement and return the Arab land they are occupying. That's the best chance the Middle East has for peace, and brave men like Carter have the guts to say as much. If only the rest of the US wasn't so brainwashed by propaganda.

I salute the only american leader who puts humanity and justice above all other considerations. Those who attack president carter are people with no morals at all, they claim he is antisemetic because he tells it like it is. Israel is the only apartheid democracy in the world, if you do not believe this why dont you travel to the west bank and see how the palestinains are living, I am not even talking about the palestinains refugees living in refugee camps in lebanon, syria, jordan for over 50 years. In the west bank and Gaza palestinians are surrounded by high walls in open prisons, jewish settlers who live in exclusive jewish settlments can use a lot more water than palestinains, jews drive cars with yellow license plates while palestinains are issued green ones, palestinaisn cannot use exclusive jewish rodes. Jewish settlers in Hebron/west bank can move into palestinain homes and kick them out, jewish settler kids can chase palestinains in the streets, throw garbage at them, take their lands, cut and burn their olive trees, they do all this to cleanse the lands of palestinains. They do all this with the tacit approval of american media and corrupt american leaders.
The funny thing is americans realy believe the propaganda about freedom in the middle east.
The israeli army is the most professional terrorist army in the world.

carter, shut up, and grow peanuts. you are making the situation worse.

Pres. Carter -- I appreciate and respect your willingness, again, to say what you think needs to be said no matter how popular or unpopular it is. But, as the comments on your post so far suggest, this doesn't seem to be a trait that is much valued in contemporary US discourse, or thought. I would therefore love to hear your thoughts on the place of faith in reasoned, civilized, peaceful conversation.

Namaste!

Jimmy Carter's bleeding heart for Palestinians bleeds green and not red ...

"To understand what feeds former president Jimmy Carter's anti-Israeli frenzy, look at his early links to Arab business.

Between 1976-1977, the Carter family peanut business received a bailout in the form of a $4.6 million, "poorly managed" and highly irregular loan from the National Bank of Georgia (NBG). According to a July 29, 1980 Jack Anderson expose in The Washington Post, the bank's biggest borrower was Mr. Carter, and its chairman at that time was Mr. Carter's confidant, and later his director of the Office of Management and Budget, Bert Lance.

At that time, Mr. Lance's mismanagement of the NBG got him and the bank into trouble. Agha Hasan Abedi, the Pakistani founder of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), known as the bank "which would bribe God," came to Mr. Lance's rescue making him a $100,000-a-year consultant. Abedi then declared: "we would never talk about exploiting his relationship with the president." Next, he introduced Mr. Lance to Saudi billionaire Gaith Pharaon, who fronted for BCCI and the Saudi royal family. In January 1978, Abedi paid off Mr. Lance's $3.5 million debt to the NBG, and Pharaon secretly gained control over the bank

Mr. Anderson wrote: "Of course, the Saudis remained discretely silent... kept quiet about Carter's irregularities... [and] renegotiated the loan to Carter's advantage."

There is no evidence that the former president received direct payment from the Saudis. But "according to... the bank files, [it] renegotiated the repayment terms... savings... $60,000 for the Carter family... The President owned 62% of the business and therefore was the largest beneficiary." Pharaon later contributed generously to the former president's library and center.

When Mr Lance introduced Mr. Carter to Abedi, the latter gave $500,000 to help the former president establish his center at Emory University. Later, Abedi contributed more than $10 million to Mr. Carter's different projects. Even after BCCI was indicted ‹ and convicted -‹ for drug money laundering, Mr. Carter accepted $1.5 million from Abedi, his "good friend."

A quick survey of the major contributors to the Carter Center reveals hundreds of millions of dollars from Saudi and Gulf contributors. But it was BCCI that helped Mr. Carter established his center

BCCI's origins were primarily ideological. 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."

Shortly after assuming office, in March 1977, Mr. Carter made his first public statement regarding a Palestinian "homeland." Since then, he has devoted much of his time to denouncing Israel's self-defense against Palestinian terrorism, which he claims is not only "abominable oppression and persecution" of the Palestinians, but also damages U.S. interests in the region.

By the time BCCI was shut down in July1991, it operated in 73 countries with a deficit of $12 billion, which it had managed to hide with wealthy Arab shareholders and Western luminaries. Among them Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan of Abu Dhabi, who gave hundreds of millions of dollars to Yasser Arafat and Palestinian terrorist groups, and who branded the United States: "our enemy number one"; Former head of Saudi foreign intelligence service, and King Faisal's brother-in-law, Kamal Adham ‹ who with another Saudi, the banker of the royal family, Khaled bin Mahfouz, staged BCCI's attempt to illegally purchase the Washington-based First American bank, in the early 1980s.

True to its agenda, BCCI assisted in spreading and strengthening the Islamic message; they enabled Pakistan's nuclear ambitions, and helped the Palestinian leadership to amass a $10 billion-plus fortune, used to further terrorist activities and to buy more influence in the West.

BCCI founders also supported the Islamic fundamentalist opposition to the Shah of Iran, and saw it as an opportunity to undermine Western influence in the Gulf. They assisted the revolution financially, reinforcing their position within the leadership of the Iranian revolution. Ironically, the success of that revolution cost Mr. Carter his presidency.

BCCI's money also facilitated the Saudi agenda to force Israel to recognize Palestinians "rights," convincing Egyptian president Anwar Sadat to sign the Camp David Accords in September 1978. Since then, Mr. Carter repeatedly provided legitimacy to Arafat's corrupt regime, and now, like the Saudis, he even sides with homicidal Hamas as the "legitimate" representative of the Palestinian people.

In a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, Mr. Carter again laid responsibility for U.S. bias against the destitute, depressed and (consequently) violent Palestinians on American policy makers' helplessness, over the last 30 years, against the menacing tactics of the powerful American-Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC).

However, it seems that AIPAC's real fault was its failure to outdo the Saudi's purchases of the former president's loyalty.

"There has not been any nation in the world that has been more cooperative than Saudi Arabia," the New York Times quoted Mr. Carter June 1977, thus making the Saudis a major factor in U. S. foreign policy.

Evidently, the millions in Arab petrodollars feeding Mr. Carter's global endeavors, often in conflict with U.S. government policies, also ensure his loyalty."

Carter's Arab financiers
By Rachel Ehrenfeld
December 21, 2006
http://tinyurl.com/y6nlhx

Yes, President Carter "lusted in his heart", but at least it was for a WOMAN, and he didn't keep male prostitutes around the White House.

Dear President Carter

Happy New Year 2007! May all your efforts to bring peace, with the help of The Prince of Peace, be crowned with success!

Soja John Thaikattil
Sydney, Australia

'Instantly' recognizes the Freepers and trolls; a question for President Carter could be 'if he knew in 1980 what he knows now he would have suspected what was really going on with Iran and the hostages, and done things differently'?

Reality seems to be 180 degrees from what is sometimes put forth.

As a step forward in my sphere of influence in my profession of engineering, I am trying to promote discussion, within the profession's 20 million degreed members, worldwide, and in the profession's external stakeholders (that would be everyone else) how the profession's code of ethics can be modified in scope and/or implementation so that engineers, worldwide, can pledge allegiance to something - their profession and its code of ethics - that promotes peace, justice, democratic rule of law, and human rights.

For instance, if an Israeli and Palestinian engineer start discussing religion, politics, or history, there is not much chance of a productive conversation. But if they are talking about providing water to a location in West Bank, they should be on same side of table, talking as engineers, making reference to the same engineering codes and standards, and the same code of ethics.

Comments?

Joe Carson, P.E.
Knoxville, TN
President, Affiliation of Christian Engineers

I am pleased to see President Carter writing and speaking out on successive Israeli governments' treatment of the Palestinians. There is much to criticize about the leadership of the Palestinians, too, of course. But the party with the most power carries the most responsibility for creating the conditions for a resolution.

It is especially shameful how Israel and Zionists abroad try to label as anti-Semitism criticism of its actions in Palestine. It is not anti-Semitism to criticize Israel anymore than it is anti-American to criticize the Bush administration's behavior at home or abroad.

It is heartening to hear many Israeli voices raised against their country's policies and behavior in the occupied lands. They are a redeeming force in that society.

If you wish an Israel living at peace in the Middle East and realizing its great potential, as I do, then you must support these voices for sanity and reason in Israel and elsewhere, including the blunt truths voiced by President Carter.

Carl S. Thank you for your post and common sense look at President Carter's post. This country has had President Carter to pick on up until now. I would like to hear what they will say about the current president and his insane war after he has left office. I hope they will be no less critical of the Bush administration.

I agree with you completely. This is a snake pit we are in today and with nearly 3000 dead and unfortunately more to come.

Terry Aghee this president is AN AWFUL BAD ONE. His diplomacy is non existent and makes Carter look brillant.

So, according to President Carter, "the plight of the Palestinian people represents one of the most abhorrent cases of human rights oppression on earth."

He mustn't get out much if he thinks that being "Forced from their homes and land and surrounded by walls, they live under a system of mandatory segregation, with passes required to reach their jobs, schools, pastures and fields" represent the worst possible human rights violations. It's easy to find examples that make such restrictions look about as annoying as a parking ticket.

I have to wonder why Carter does not cite the violations of human rights represented by Palestinian terrorists killing and kidnapping Israeli citizens and the resulting climate of fear - perhaps these are invisible to him.

Perhaps the missiles lobbed from Gaza and Lebanon at random targets in population centers are just illusions.

Or perhaps Carter has taken cultural relativism so far he can't distinguish between offense and defense.

If the Palestinians would submit to the rule of law, admit Israel has the right to exist - something granted by the UN almost 60 years ago - stop murdering civilians and innocents, and focus their energies on achieving peaceful, property-respecting free market prosperity within Gaza, there would be no need for passes or gates. In fact, they would find themselves sitting right beside a valuable trading partner, who would be more than happy to work with them.

But Palestinian behavior since being given Gaza to inhabit seems to show they are unwilling to do anything but engage in murderous temper tantrums when they don't get everything they want. Why are the Palestinians not to blame for their plight?

The Jordanian, Egyptian and Saudi neighbors of the Palestinians had opportunities many times over the years to end the Palestinians' "homelessness" by granting them land. They have never done so. Why are they not to blame?

Carter says that "peace for Israelis, with peace and justice for the Palestinians" are goals everyone can agree with. However, when the method of achieving peace that is proposed is essentially the surrender of the victim (Israel) to the aggressor (the Palestinians) no justice is served. And why shouldn't the Israelis have justice too?

We need to define justice very carefully. Justice is when a harmed party is able to attain retribution or restituition from those who harmed them. If the founding of Israel harmed the Palestinians, then the UN must be the source of redress. Perhaps the UN can create an agreement to carve out a section of some other nation - Saudi Arabia? Egypt? Jordan? Libya? - as the new home for the Palestinians.

And what redress will the Israelis have for all of the harm done by the Palestinians? Carter has no answer.

I suspect that the Palestinians have given up on the ability to be anything but victims, and that they will, as they have, just turn on each other until no one is left to kill. Perhaps President Carter needs to come up with a plan to help the Palestinians develop the morality of life rather than the urge to kill and die, so peace can really be attained.

So, according to President Carter, "the plight of the Palestinian people represents one of the most abhorrent cases of human rights oppression on earth."

He mustn't get out much if he thinks that being "Forced from their homes and land and surrounded by walls, they live under a system of mandatory segregation, with passes required to reach their jobs, schools, pastures and fields" represent the worst possible human rights violations. It's easy to find examples that make such restrictions look about as annoying as a parking ticket.

I have to wonder why Carter does not cite the violations of human rights represented by Palestinian terrorists killing and kidnapping Israeli citizens and the resulting climate of fear - perhaps these are invisible to him.

Perhaps the missiles lobbed from Gaza and Lebanon at random targets in population centers are just illusions.

Or perhaps Carter has taken cultural relativism so far he can't distinguish between offense and defense.

If the Palestinians would submit to the rule of law, admit Israel has the right to exist - something granted by the UN almost 60 years ago - stop murdering civilians and innocents, and focus their energies on achieving peaceful, property-respecting free market prosperity within Gaza, there would be no need for passes or gates. In fact, they would find themselves sitting right beside a valuable trading partner, who would be more than happy to work with them.

But Palestinian behavior since being given Gaza to inhabit seems to show they are unwilling to do anything but engage in murderous temper tantrums when they don't get everything they want. Why are the Palestinians not to blame for their plight?

The Jordanian, Egyptian and Saudi neighbors of the Palestinians had opportunities many times over the years to end the Palestinians' "homelessness" by granting them land. They have never done so. Why are they not to blame?

Carter says that "peace for Israelis, with peace and justice for the Palestinians" are goals everyone can agree with. However, when the method of achieving peace that is proposed is essentially the surrender of the victim (Israel) to the aggressor (the Palestinians) no justice is served. And why shouldn't the Israelis have justice too?

We need to define justice very carefully. Justice is when a harmed party is able to attain retribution or restituition from those who harmed them. If the founding of Israel harmed the Palestinians, then the UN must be the source of redress. Perhaps the UN can create an agreement to carve out a section of some other nation - Saudi Arabia? Egypt? Jordan? Libya? - as the new home for the Palestinians.

And what redress will the Israelis have for all of the harm done by the Palestinians? Carter has no answer.

I suspect that the Palestinians have given up on the ability to be anything but victims, and that they will, as they have, just turn on each other until no one is left to kill. Perhaps President Carter needs to come up with a plan to help the Palestinians develop the morality of life rather than the urge to kill and die, so peace can really be attained.

Jimmy Carter has NEVER met a murdering communist dictator that he didn't love more than America. His hate for the United States is obvious - even to his own mother who admitted when asked about her disgraceful son, publicly stated,

"Sometimes, when I look at my children, I say to myself: "Lillian, you should have remained a virgin."

Jimmy Carter - .....

Oh dear, here come the Freepers. Seems all you have to do is put up a note over at the wingnut sites and they descend to sputter irrelevant, hatefilled "comments."

Thank you to the single poster who has so far made the only comment intelligently directed at the substance of the article.

I think Pres. Carter brings up an important point - that preserving peace and ensuring respect for human rights are issues that need to be addressed in the current Middle East debate.

Not that President Carter had a whole lot of credibility in the first place but his latest piece of fiction is so full of factual errors, invented events and flat-out propaganda that it amazes me that anyone pays attention to this egotistical blowhard anymore...

President Jimmy Carter "WAS AN AWFUL BAD ONE".

Current Liberal Enthusiasts can 'Make Up" all
the good they want about this president but it
will never resonate with the American People.

Carter's presidency was merely a family affair
with Carter's friends and family. He was not
there for the regular Americans. Ms. Lillian told
the little fellow just what she wanted done much
the same as Hillary Clinton is now doing.

His handling of the "hostage" situation was an
abismal failure and he choked on it. He really
was a mess. Please do not forget that a
KILLER RABBIT was after him and he 'lusted' in
his heart for good looking women.
abismall

If given the opportunity, I would like to ask President Carter, how, as an elected leader, he would make a decision, if one or more of the alternatives was contrary to his (obviously quite sincere) faith? Which comes first--the nation or his faith?

I have always thought that if more Christians acted like President Carter, we atheists wouldn't have such a problem with Christians, and I would love for him to come and speak at our regional atheist organization.

The problems in the Middle East, while intensified by religious hatreds, seem to be more about ethnic arrogance and lust for land and oil. When an ethnic group, with the blessing of the Christian world, buys into the notion that they are "God's chosen people", can you really be surprised at the way the Jews treat the Palestinians?

We need to remember that the Iran hostage crisis, while dragging on far too long, ended with the safe return of the hostages. (thanks to the huffing and puffing of Ronald Reagan, too)

President Carter's attempt to rescue the hostages tragically failed, with 8 fatalities. But considering that we now have 3000 dead Americans in the Iraq war, Bush could have attempted--and failed--at more than 300 similar missions (to get Saddam) and the death toll still would be less than this bungled adventure--this snake pit--we find ourselves in.

Yet, America always wants to act like the tough guy. We reap what we sow.