Not
everyone has the courage to question a book written by so
prestigious an author as a former president. Most people will
unfortunately accept whatever Mr. Carter wrote as truth.
PEACE
NOT APARTHEID: MORE FICTION THAN FACTS
The
SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. KIRK) is recognized for 5
minutes.
Mr.
KIRK. Madam Speaker, in today's Washington Post, former
President Jimmy Carter defended his book, ''Palestine: Peace
Not Apartheid.'' President Carter wrote, ''. . . most critics
have not seriously disputed or even mentioned the facts . . .
''
But
after reading the book, I have become a critic and today will
only correct the facts that he purports in his book. Regarding
our policy towards Israel, there is little room for mistakes,
let alone outright misstatements of fact.
For that reason, I want to present to the House eight factual
inaccuracies found in President Carter's book.
Error
number one, on page 62, President Carter quotes Yasser Arafat
as telling him, ''The Palestinian Liberation Organization has
never advocated the annihilation of Israel.'' No evidence is
provided, and the book does not contain a single footnote.
Fact
check, article 22 of the PLO's charter states, ''The
liberation of Palestine will destroy the Zionist and
imperialist presence.'' Yasser Arafat supported this charter,
and he directly lied to President Carter.
Error
number two, on page 57 President Carter writes, ''The 1949
armistice demarcation lines became the borders of the new
nation of Israel, and were accepted by Israel and the United
States, and recognized officially by the United Nations.''
Fact,
the 1949 armistice lines were never accepted as the official
borders of Israel, United States or the United Nations. The
error reflects a very poor attention to detail in the book.
Error
number three, on page number 127, President Carter writes that
there was ''a surprising exodus of Christians from the Holy
Land.''
Fact,
Israel is one of the only Middle Eastern nations where the
Christian community has grown in the last half century. But
Christian communities and other faith communities like Baha'is
have dropped in size in many Muslim nations.
Error
number four, on page 152 President Carter writes, ''It was
later claimed that the Palestinians rejected a 'generous
offer' put forward by Prime Minister Barak with Israel only
keeping 5 percent of the West Bank. The
fact is no such offers were made.''
Fact, according to President Clinton's lead negotiator,
Ambassador Dennis Ross, Prime Minister Barak accepted
President Clinton's proposal, offering to withdraw from 97
percent of the West Bank, to dismantle isolated settlements,
and to accept the Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its
capital. Arafat rejected this proposal, and a quick call
between President Carter and President Clinton would have
corrected
this
error.
Error
number five, on page number 148 President Carter presents two
maps he claims were considered at Camp David, one of them
labeled ''Israel's interpretation of Clinton's proposal.''
Fact,
there were no maps at Camp David. The map President Carter
labeled as Israel's interpretation is a copy of a map that was
created later by Dennis Ross for his book, ''The Missing
Peace.'' Ambassador Ross's map is a representation of an offer
agreed to by Prime Minister Barak and rejected by Arafat.
President Carter violated Ambassador
Ross's
copyright of the map.
Error six, on page 197 President Carter writes, ''Confessions
extracted
through torture are admissible in Israeli courts.''
Fact,
the Israeli Supreme Court banned the use of torture in
interrogations in a decision handed down by the court on
September 6, 1999, by Supreme Court President Barak.
Error number seven, on page 188 President Carter writes, ''Kadima
had been expected to gain 43 seats based on its pledge of a
unilateral expansion of the 'great wall.' ''
Fact,
Israel's Kadima Party ran on Prime Minister Sharon's platform
of
disengagement,
a pledge to dismantle settlements and unilaterally withdraw
from territory.
Error
number eight, on page 215 President Carter writes that the one
option for Israel is ''withdrawal from the 1967 border as
specified in U.N. Resolution 242.''
Fact. The U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 does not define
a border.
Madam Speaker, these errors, in fact, diminish the credibility
of President Carter's book. President Carter is entitled to
his own opinions, but not to his own facts.
The errors I present here are only a sampling of the other
errors included in his book.
Now,
in the twilight of his career, with many at the Carter Center
resigning from their posts, President Carter should recall the
book and hire competent assistants to assure that his future
work does not reflect such poor scholarship.
I
want to thank, especially, Dr. Mitchell Bard and the Committee
for Accuracy in the Middle East Reporting in America for
helping compile this list of errors.
Recently,
former President Carter spoke at Brandeis University and
apologized for one sentence in the book that seems to condone
terrorist violence. That apology is not enough as it only
addresses one of the errors in the book, not all.
Professor Alan Dershowitz has challenged the former president
to debate him on the "facts" written in the book,
but Mr. Carter has avoided such a debate with numerous
excuses. Apparently
Mr. Carter cannot publicly defend his own book!
Congressman
Kirk, taking all of this into account makes your public
acknowledgement of the fallacies in Palestine:
Peace not Apartheid all the more special.
On
behalf of American Jewry, I thank you. It is so gratifying
that a congressman in the US House of Representatives should
not only have the courage to point out the errors on the part
of a former president, but do so on public record, as well.
Shea
Hecht
B"H
Rabbi Shea Hecht
824 Eastern Parkway
Brooklyn, NY 11213
718-735-0200
rabbishea@aol.com
www.sheahecht.com
