12.21.2006

Pretty good Jimmah takedown

Not surprisingly, Alan Dershowitz isn’t a big fan of Jimmah’s last book. What is surprising is that after writing a book that’s purported purpose was to “stimulate debate”, Jimmah wants no part of it.

YOU CAN ALWAYS tell when a public figure has written an indefensible book: when
he refuses to debate it in the court of public opinion. And you can always tell
when he's a hypocrite to boot: when he says he wrote a book in order to
stimulate a debate, and then he refuses to participate in any such debate. I'm
talking about former president Jimmy Carter and his new book "Palestine Peace
Not Apartheid."

Carter's book has been condemned as "moronic"
(Slate), "anti-historical" (The Washington Post), "laughable" (San Francisco
Chronicle), and riddled with errors and bias in reviews across the country. Many
of the reviews have been written by non-Jewish as well as Jewish critics, and
not by "representatives of Jewish organizations" as Carter has claimed. Carter
has gone even beyond the errors of his book in interviews, in which he has said
that the situation in Israel is worse than the crimes committed in Apartheid
South Africa. When asked whether he believed that Israel's "persecution" of
Palestinians was "[e]ven worse . . . than a place like Rwanda," Carter answered,
"Yes. I think -- yes."

[…]

Carter's refusal to
debate wouldn't be so strange if it weren't for the fact that he claims that he
wrote the book precisely so as to start debate over the issue of the
Israel-Palestine peace process. If that were really true, Carter would be
thrilled to have the opportunity to debate. Authors should be accountable for
their ideas and their facts. Books shouldn't be like chapel, delivered from on
high and believed on faith.

Since Ford and Bush Sr. have some concept of how to conduct themselves after leaving office, Clinton is actually intelligent and there’s just no way that Bush is writing anything after 2008 it’s safe to say that Carter has the “Worst Ex President” prize all wrapped up.

Or maybe Amy, his moral compass, just isn't talking to him anymore….

Update: Here's another good question/observation regarding Jimmah:
But what of men like Carter, a man who's worked in government, knows
how jacked-up (Marine word, btw) it is, how far away from the
conventional liberal-left understanding of participatory politics it
really is, a man who's seen the world, worked with the tyrants
face-to-face, spoken with the dissidents, set up meetings with
virtually all competing sides of all major conflicts, monitored their
elections on the ground? How does a man like that keep on sympathizing
with the bad guys at the end of the day? Is it really just pragmatic
politics on his part, another realism? Or is there a real, active
sympathy there (with Castro, Chavez, Arafat, Assad, you name it)? I
think the latter gets more at the truth, which is to say Carter really
isn't the kind of liberal he makes himself out to be. And all the
intelligent, informed self-avowed liberals like him aren't really the
liberals they say they are either.