Carter sinks to new low

Yesterday I posted, “Carter’s book draws fire.” It began with an AP report:

A Carter Center fellow and longtime adviser to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has resigned after sharply criticizing Carter's new book on Palestine, and a Jewish human rights group said it obtained thousands of signatures from supporters also protesting the book.

Kenneth Stein, director of the Institute for the Study of Modern Israel at Emory University, resigned as a Carter Center fellow for Middle East Affairs after reading Carter's 21st book, titled "Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid," which was released last week. […]

The post links to Stein’s letter, a Fox News story concerning possible plagerism by Carter and more.

Stein’s letter included this:

President Carter's book … is not based on unvarnished analyses; it is replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments.

Carter’s responded to the criticisms in an LA Times op-ed. After some background on how he came to write the book and his experiences monitoring Palestinian elections, he said:

The many controversial issues concerning Palestine and the path to peace for Israel are intensely debated among Israelis and throughout other nations — but not in the United States. For the last 30 years, I have witnessed and experienced the severe restraints on any free and balanced discussion of the facts.

At that point there was a part of me that wanted to stop reading.

I’m no Carter fan. I think he’s a failed President who’s as a former President has often acted against the best interests of America. But I still didn’t want to see what I was pretty sure Carter would do next: He’d “blame the Jews” for his book troubles

Carter continued:

This reluctance to criticize any policies of the Israeli government is because of the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American-Israel Political Action Committee and the absence of any significant contrary voices. […]

Book reviews in the mainstream media have been written mostly by representatives of Jewish organizations who would be unlikely to visit the occupied territories, and their primary criticism is that the book is anti-Israel.

I encourage you to read Carter’s op-ed. If you don't, you may not believe he said what he said.

After reading Carter's op-ed, I hope you go on a read Betsy Newmark’s post, “The bigoted void that is Jimmy Carter,”which begins:

Jimmy Carter writes a column for the Los Angeles Times denying that he is anti-Israel. Oh, and by the way, any criticism of him is all the Jews' fault.

Hat tip: Mike Williams