A Point by Point Rebuttal of the Omissions, Myths, Misrepresentations and Outright Lies of Jimmy Carter
Ambassador Dennis Ross has stated in interviews as a way of explaining why he took issue with Jimmy Carter's book, "Palestine, Peace not Apartheid," that while people were entitled to their own opinions they were not entitled to their own facts. Mr. Carter's opinion, as stated in his book, is abundantly clear. The Palestinian people as even now lead by their Hamas government are the hapless victims of Israeli aggression, colonization, and a policy of apartheid. He certainly is entitled to that opinion. What he is not entitled to do, is propagate through omissions, myths, and misrepresentations a characterization of Israel, its history and its policies that is completely at odds with the truth.
The purpose of this article is to provide facts where they have been omitted or replace by myth and to set the record straight where it has been misrepresented. I have been an active participant in some of the events Mr. Carter misrepresents in his book: from being a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces in three wars, to being one of the earliest proponents of a two state solution, who met with and negotiated with Palestinians at a time when such meetings violated Israeli law and US policy. I do not believe that anyone can possibly describe me as a hawk or pro-settlements, or as one who opposes the establishment of a Palestinian State which agrees to live side by side with Israel in peace. Thus, I cannot be pigeonholed as one who opposes Palestinian self-determination. I do indeed support it, but not at the cost of Israel's existence.
Perhaps equally as egregious as Mr. Carter's misrepresentation of history is his intellectual inability or refusal to recognize the profound change which has taken place in the Middle East, with the rise of Iranian inspired Shia aspirations and their determination to use terrorism and weapons of mass destruction to achieve those ends. What he is either incapable of or refuses to recognize is a transformation in the Middle East conflict from one which could be solved by adjustments in borders, to a conflict of Shia and Suni Islamist ideologies and where Israel is concerned of an Iranian announced intention to wipe it off the face of the Earth, not in order to liberate Palestinians, but in order to kill Jews. That intention is not an idle threat when coupled together with Iran's acknowledged pursuit of nuclear weapons with which to do the job. The Middle East which Carter claims almost solely to understand has changed mightily from the days of the peace treaty brokered between Israel and Egypt almost thirty years ago. But for Carter that is of no importance in his narrative. In his world, there are only Israeli aggressors and Palestinian victims.
Nowhere are Mr. Carter's sins of omission and misrepresentation more clearly seen than at the very beginning of his book in his so called "Historical Chronology." This is the history of the Jews and the Palestinians according to Carter.
"ca. 1000 B.C : King David unites the twelve tribes of Israel then his son Solomon builds the temple in Jerusalem."
For a man who claims to know his Bible, Carter leaves out the first King of Israel, King Saul. Jewish national independence comes to an end when the Babylonians conquer Juda in 586 B.C. Carter then lists the Greeks conquering the region in 332, and the Jews once again establishing an independent Kingdom in 167 which lasts until the Romans conquer Judea in 63 B.C. From that point in time until 1917, almost two thousand years later, the only independent State of an indigenous people in "Palestine" are the Jewish Kingdoms of Israel and Judah and the only people in all the world who claimed that land as their national home, were the Jews. But Carter never mentions this. Instead he states:
"1187. Saladan Sultan of Egypt conquers Jerusalem, and except for a fifteen year interval, Moslems control Palestine until the end of World War I."
That's an interesting citation, it would seem to imply some sort of unified Islamic rule over a specific country known as Palestine uninterrupted for a period of some 700 years. In point of fact however the area known as Palestine is a backwater province in various empires, including those of the Mamalukes and Mongols and a succession of Sultans and Warlords who rule until the advent of the Ottoman Empire in 1517. While it is true that they are all various believers in Islam, there is certainly no homogeneous rule and never is the area which Carter calls Palestine an independent State, nor more importantly is there ever any mention, anywhere, in that period of history of a Palestinian people who claim it as their national homeland.
But perhaps the crux of the matter can be found in this entry in Carter's chronology:
"1964 the Palestine Liberation organization is established, committed to wage a battle to liberate the homeland of the Palestinian people."
A date Carter fails to give is 1897. That is the date of the first Zionist Conference in Basel Switzerland in which Theodore Herzel founded the movement which was dedicated to reestablishing a Jewish State in the Homeland of the Jewish people. One would think that this was at least as important a date as the founding of the Palestinian National Movement. However, the establishment of the PLO and its description by Carter as the beginning of "a battle to liberate the homeland of the Palestinian people" betrays Carter's prejudice on behalf of a terrorist organization. This is so because in 1964 there quite simply were no occupied territories!! The territories of the West Bank and Gaza strip were occupied by Israel in a defensive war in June of 1967. The question must be asked then, what land was the Palestine Liberation Organization going to liberate three years earlier in 1964? The answer is quite simply: Israel. Not the Israel of the 1967 borders, but the Israel of the 1949 armistice Agreement. I have some experience with this since the first time I was ever shot at in my life was in December of 1963. I was shot at by Palestinian Fedayeen who shot at me from the Gaza Strip. I was in Israel not in any occupied territories. I was an unarmed sixteen year old planting palm trees on a kibbutz called Nahal Oz. Thus in 1964 the PLO which according to Carter was "Committed to wage a battle to liberate the homeland of the Palestinian people" was in fact committed to wage a battle to destroy the homeland of the Jewish people, namely Israel.
But Carter's dating is even more egregious in that. Consider the following entries in chornological order:
1917: Great Britain, during World War I, issues the Balfour Declaration, promising a Jewish National home in Palestine, with respect to the rights of non-Jewish Palestinians.
1922: After the Ottoman Empire is defeated in World War I the League of Nations confirms British mandates over Iraq and Palestine and a French mandate over Syria and Lebanon. Trans-Jordan is separated from the Palestinian Mandate and becomes an autonomous Kingdom.
(What Carter fails to mention here is that Britain was granted the mandate over Palestine specifically to prepare for a Jewish independent state in what was then known as Palestine. The very purpose of the mandate was to create an independent Jewish State).
1936: Palestinian Arabs demand a halt to Jewish immigration and a ban on land sales to Jews. British troops attempt to assert control but violence continues. The Peel Commission recommends partition of Palestine between Arabs and Jews.
What Carter again fails to mention is that under the Peel Commission proposal of 1938 the Jewish State was to be a mere sliver of land comprised of the area between Tel Aviv and Haifa with the Valley of Jezrael and a sliver of the Galilee. I have reproduced the actual Palestine Partition Plan Map below. The dark area is the proposed Jewish State. The area delineated with broken lines was the proposed Arab State. The Jewish Agency which was the defacto government of the nascent Jewish State accepted the proposal. They did so not because it was just or fair but because they saw on the horizon the wholesale slaughter of all of Europe's Jews and that not one nation on Earth was willing to take them in. They therefore agreed to a country that would basically be composed of two cities and a few villages. They did so to provide a refuge for those whom they knew would be slaughtered otherwise. While the Jews agreed to this pygmy sized indefensible state, Haj Amin El Hussein, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and titular leader of the Arabs living in British mandatory Palestine refused the Partition Plan, as did virtually all of the neighboring Arab states. Once again there were no occupied territories. There were no borders of '67. There were no borders of '49, nor the UN Partition Plan of '48. Two cities and a few villages were deemed by the Arabs living in mandatory Palestine, as being too much for the Jews. Indeed one city, one village, would have been deemed too much for the Jews, by the Arabs living in mandatory Palestine. Please note that I do not refer to them as Palestinians, since they did not refer to themselves in that way. They simply called themselves Arabs. The only people prior to 1948 who called themselves Palestinians were Palestinian Jews. Indeed my foster father fought in the Jewish Brigade of the British Army on the side of the Allies in World War II and on his shoulder patch was emblazoned the word Palestine. Haj Amin El Hussien, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and leader of the Arabs living in Palestine spent World War II in Berlin, allied with Hitler, whom he promised he would support along with all his people in bringing about Hitler's final solution, the slaughter of the Jews in that part of the world known as Palestine.
This then leads to Carter's next two entries:
1939: Britain announces sever restrictions on Jewish immigration and land purchases in Palestine. Violence erupts from Jewish militants.
There is no further entry in Mr. Carter's chronology of major events that shape the Middle East until 1947. That must elicit two comments. The first is that Britain gave in to Arab blackmail in return for Arab oil by literally slamming the door shut on the Jews of Europe for whom Palestine represented the only alternative to Hitler's gas chambers and ovens. This was done in direct contravention of the very terms under which Britain was given the mandate over Palestine by the League of Nations. The purpose of the mandate was to prepare for a Jewish Independent State. Britain's acquiescence to Arab blackmail in return for Arab oil, violated the terms of the mandate and locked the Jews of Europe into a building which Hitler was about to set afire.
That of course brings us to the odd omission of the event that occurred between 1939 and 1947. While Haj Amin El Hussein the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and titular leader of the Arabs of Palestine, the Yasser Arafat of his day and indeed Arafat's uncle, was living in Berlin as Hitler's honored guest and ally, the six million Jews of Europe were systematically murdered. Not one country on Earth including the United States of America was willing to open their door to those soon to be murdered Jews. The only place that was begging to accept them was the promised Jewish National Homeland in Palestine. And that was closed to them as a payoff for Arab oil. Thus when Ahmadenijad claims today that the Holocaust (which he denies ever happened) was strictly a European affair, for which the Palestinians have had to pay the awful price of having a Jewish state established in their neighborhood, that too is a lie. The leadership of the Arabs of Palestine was as culpable of the murder of six million Jews as would be one who purposely scuttled the lifeboats on a sinking ship. But the murder of six million Jews who could have been saved by the existence of even a miniscule Jewish state is not recorded by Carter. What an odd thing for the former President, who prides himself on being able to empathize, even with terrorists, to forget to mention in his comprehensive chronology.