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palestinian state
History Shows Carter Was Right to Warn Against Israeli Apartheid
While the Democratic Party has mostly maintained its pro-Israel stance since the publication of Carter’s 2006 book, his words now appear quite prescient and reflect a growing international consensus.
Jan 05, 2025
The late President Jimmy Carter was not a particularly progressive president, but his exemplary service as a peacemaker and humanitarian since leaving office has resulted in an outpouring of heartfelt tributes following his death at the age of 100 on December 28. During his final years, however, the Nobel Peace Laureate was met with intense criticism for insisting that standards of peace, human rights, and international law should apply not just to countries hostile to U.S. interests, but to U.S. allies like Israel as well.
Particularly controversial was Carter’s 2006 book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, which went on to be a New York Times bestseller, in which he argued against Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank, the Palestinian territory seized in 1967 during a war that the international community had hoped would form the basis for the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Carter was a liberal Christian Zionist who believed passionately in Israel’s right to exist as a secure homeland for the Jewish people. Like many left and liberal Jewish Zionists, however, he argued that the continued occupation and colonization of the West Bank would make a viable two-state solution impossible, and that Israel would be forced to choose between allowing for democratic governance in all the areas they controlled—meaning Jews would thereby be a minority, and Israel would no longer be a Jewish state—or imposing an apartheid system akin to the one instituted in South Africa prior to its democratic transition in 1994.
Carter was falsely accused of referring to Israel as an apartheid state, when he had explicitly stated otherwise. He was referring only to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where the establishment of Jewish-only roads, Jewish-only settlements, and other strict segregation policies do resemble the old South African system.
Since Carter wrote Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid 18 years ago, the number of Israeli settlers in the occupied territories has more than doubled, most of them surrounding Palestinian cities and towns in a manner that would make the establishment of a viable contiguous Palestinian state impossible.
In reality, the main objection of Carter’s critics was that he dared criticize the Israeli government, a recipient of tens of billions of dollars’ worth of unconditional taxpayer-funded military equipment from U.S. arms manufacturers.
Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid received overwhelmingly negative media coverage following its release. The Washington Postaccused Carter of harboring a “hostility to Israel” in part for allegedly failing to note, according to reviewer Jeffrey Goldberg, that the Israeli government “dearly wants to give up the bulk of its West Bank settlements.” In reality, the illegal settlements have continued to expand since 2006, and the Israeli government has reiterated that they are there to stay.
An article in The New York Times about the reaction to the book included a number of quotes from pro-Israel organizations attacking it, while failing to quote a single Palestinian or Palestinian-American source.
The Democratic Party leadership was also hostile to the book. In a rare rebuke by another former president of the same party, Bill Clinton, ignoring Carter’s frequent trips to and extensive knowledge of Israel and Palestine, wrote, “I don’t know where his information (or conclusions) came from” and insisted, “It’s not factually correct, and it’s not fair.”
Howard Dean, then chair of the Democratic National Committee, also voiced his disagreement with Carter’s analysis. Representative Nancy Pelosi, who was about to become Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, declared, “It is wrong to suggest that the Jewish people would support a government in Israel or anywhere else that institutionalizes ethnically based oppression, and Democrats reject that allegation vigorously.” She added, “We stand with Israel now and we stand with Israel forever.”
Former presidents have almost always been granted an opportunity to speak at their party’s subsequent conventions, but in apparent reaction to the book, Carter’s appearance at the 2008 Democratic National Convention was limited to a video clip speaking in praise of nominee Barack Obama and interviewing survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Carter also only appeared in short video clips at the 2012 and 2016 conventions.
In 2022, Joe Biden named Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt to be the U.S. Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism. Lipstadt had previously accused Carter of engaging in “traditional antisemitic canards” and compared him to the notorious antisemite and Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.
But while the Democratic Party has mostly maintained its pro-Israel stance since the publication of the book, Carter’s words now appear quite prescient and reflect a growing international consensus. In 2022, Amnesty International published a 281-page report making a compelling case that Israel practices a form of apartheid toward the Palestinians. Human Rights Watch published a similarly detailed study the previous year reaching the same conclusion. B’Tselem, Israel’s leading human rights organization, also released an extensive report documenting the Israeli government’s imposition of apartheid. Similar conclusions have been reached by the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories. This past July, the International Court of Justice, in an advisory opinion, also found that Israel’s ongoing and multiple violations of international humanitarian law constitute apartheid.
A number of Carter’s former critics, including a board member of the Carter Center who resigned in protest following the publication of the book, have since apologized and acknowledged that the former president was correct. No one in the Democratic Party leadership has yet done so.
Indeed, very few of Carter’s critics have been willing to demand an end to Israel’s settlements and segregation policies in the West Bank or acknowledge that these colonial outposts in the occupied territories constitute a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and a series of unanimous U.N. Security Council resolutions.
Since Carter wrote Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid 18 years ago, the number of Israeli settlers in the occupied territories has more than doubled, most of them surrounding Palestinian cities and towns in a manner that would make the establishment of a viable contiguous Palestinian state impossible.
As a result, many Palestinians and others who once supported a two-state solution have concluded it is too late and are now demanding a single democratic state with equal rights for both peoples between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Similarly, increasing numbers of Jewish people in the United States and elsewhere now believe that the Zionist movement has become hopelessly dominated by overt racists, and have renounced Zionism altogether.
Carter warned that the choice before Israel was “peace or apartheid.” The Israeli government and its backers in Washington have chosen apartheid—but people across the world have not given up on the peace Carter envisioned.
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The ICC Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu Is Also an Indictment of US Policy and Complicity
Ultimately, this is the story of how the Israel lobby undermined America, wrecked the Middle East, and set a series of international crimes against humanity in motion.
Nov 21, 2024
It’s official now. America’s closest ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the one accorded more than 50 standing ovations in Congress just months ago, is under indictment by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and war crimes. America must take note: the U.S. Government is complicit in Netanyahu’s war crimes and has fully partnered in Netanyahu’s violent rampage across the Middle East.
For 30 years the Israel Lobby has induced the U.S. to fight wars on Israel’s behalf designed to prevent the emergence of a Palestinian State. Netanyahu, who first came to power in 1996, and has been prime minister for 17 years since then, has been the main cheerleader for U.S.-backed wars in the Middle East. The result has been a disaster for the U.S. and a bloody catastrophe not only for the Palestinian people but for the entire Middle East.
These have not been wars to defend Israel, but rather wars to topple governments that oppose Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people. Israel viciously opposes the two-state solution called for by international law, the Arab Peace Initiative, the G20, the BRICS, the OIC, and the UN General Assembly. Israel’s intransigence, and its brutal suppression of the Palestinian people, has given rise to several militant resistance movements since the beginning of the occupation. These movements are backed by several countries in the region.
The obvious solution to the Israel-Palestine crisis is to implement the two-state solution and to demilitarize the militant groups as part of the implementation process.
Israel’s approach, especially under Netanyahu, is to overthrow foreign governments that oppose Israel’s domination, and recreate the map of a “New Middle East” without a Palestinian State. Rather than making peace, Netanyahu makes endless war.
What is shocking is that Washington has turned the U.S. military and federal budget over to Netanyahu for his disastrous wars. The history of the Israel lobby’s complete takeover of Washington can be found in the remarkable new book by Ilan Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic (2024).
Rather than making peace, Netanyahu makes endless war.
Netanyahu repeatedly told the American people that they would be the beneficiaries of his policies. In fact, Netanyahu has been an unmitigated disaster for the American people, bleeding the U.S. Treasury of trillions of dollars, squandering America’s standing in the world, making the U.S. complicit in his genocidal policies, and bringing the world closer to World War III.
If Trump wants to make America great again, the first thing he should do is to make America sovereign again, by ending Washington’s subservience to the Israel Lobby.
The Israel Lobby not only controls the votes in Congress but places hardline backers of Israel into key national security posts. These have included Madeleine Albright (Secretary of State for Clinton), Lewis Libby (Chief of Staff of Vice President Cheney), Victoria Nuland (Deputy National Security Advisor of Cheney, NATO Ambassador of Bush Jr., Assistant Secretary of State for Obama, Under-Secretary of State for Biden), Paul Wolfowitz (Under-Secretary of Defense for Bush Sr., Deputy Secretary of Defense for Bush Jr.), Douglas Feith (Under-Secretary of Defense for Bush Jr.), Abram Shulsky (Director of the Office of Special Plans, Department of Defense for Bush Jr.), Elliott Abrams (Deputy National Security Advisor for Bush Jr.), Richard Perle (Chairman of the Defense National Policy Board for Bush Jr.), Amos Hochstein (Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State for Biden), and Antony Blinken (Secretary of State for Biden).
Netanyahu has been an unmitigated disaster for the American people, bleeding the U.S. Treasury of trillions of dollars, squandering America’s standing in the world, making the U.S. complicit in his genocidal policies, and bringing the world closer to World War III.
In 1995, Netanyahu described his plan of action in his book Fighting Terrorism. To control terrorists (Netanyahu’s characterization of militant groups fighting Israel’s illegal rule over the Palestinians), it’s not enough to fight the terrorists. Instead, it’s necessary to fight the “terrorist regimes” that support such groups. And the U.S. must be the one to lead:
The cessation of terrorism must therefore be a clear-cut demand, backed up by sanctions and with no prizes attached. As with all international efforts, the vigorous application of sanctions to terrorist states must be led by the United States, whose leaders must choose the correct sequence, timing, and circumstances for these actions.
As Netanyahu told the American people in 2001 (reprinted as the 2001 foreword to Fighting Terrorism):
The first and most crucial thing to understand is this: There is no international terrorism without the support of sovereign states. International terrorism simply cannot be sustained for long without the regimes that aid and abet it… Take away all this state support, and the entire scaffolding of international terrorism will collapse into dust. The international terrorist network is thus based on regimes—Iran, Iraq, Syria, Taliban Afghanistan, Yasir Arafat’s Palestinian Authority, and several other Arab regimes, such as the Sudan.
All of this was music to the ears of the neocons in Washington, who similarly subscribed to U.S.-led regime change operations (through wars, covert subversion, U.S.-led color revolutions, violent coups, etc.) as the main way to deal with perceived U.S. adversaries.
After 9/11, the Bush Jr. neocons (led by Cheney and Rumsfeld) and the Bush Jr. insiders of the Israel Lobby (led by Wolfowitz and Feith), teamed up to remake the Middle East through a series of U.S.-led wars on Netanyahu’s targets in the Middle East (Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Syria) and Islamic East Africa (Libya, Somalia, and Sudan). The role of the Israel Lobby in stoking these wars of choice is described in detail in Pappe’s new book.
The neocon-Israel Lobby war plan was shown to General Wesley Clark on a visit to the Pentagon soon after 9/11. An officer pulled a paper from his desk and told Clark: "I just got this memo from the Secretary of Defense's office. It says we're going to attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five years—we're going to start with Iraq, and then we're going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran."
In 2002, Netanyahu pitched the war with Iraq to the American people and Congress by promising them that “If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region[...] People sitting right next door in Iran, young people, and many others, will say the time of such regimes, of such despots is gone.”
A remarkable new insider account of Netanyahu’s role in spearheading the Iraq War also comes from retired Marine Command Chief Master Sargent Dennis Fritz, in his book Deadly Betrayal (2024). When Fritz was called to deploy to Iraq in early 2002, he asked senior military officials why the U.S. was deploying to Iraq, but he got no clear answer. Rather than lead soldiers into a battle he could not explain or justify, he left the service.
The neocon-Israel Lobby teamwork has marked one of the greatest global calamities of the 21st century.
In 2005, Fritz was invited back to the Pentagon, now as a civilian, to assist Under-Secretary Douglas Feith in the declassification of documents about the war, so that Feith could use them to write a book about the war. Fritz discovered in the process that the Iraq War had been spurred by Netanyahu in close coordination with Wolfowitz and Feith. He learned that the purported U.S. war aim, to counter Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, was a cynical public relations gimmick led by an Israel Lobby insider, Abram Shulsky, to garner U.S. public support for the war.
Iraq was to be the first of the seven wars in five years, but as Fritz explains, that follow-up wars were delayed by the anti-U.S. Iraqi insurgency. Nonetheless, the U.S. eventually went to war or backed wars against Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Lebanon. In other words, the U.S. carried out Netanyahu’s plans—except for Iran. To this day, indeed to this hour, Netanyahu works to stoke a U.S. war on Iran, one that could open World War III, either by Iran making the breakthrough to nuclear weapons, or by Iran’s ally, Russia, joining such a war on Iran’s side.
The neocon-Israel Lobby teamwork has marked one of the greatest global calamities of the 21st century. All of the countries attacked by the U.S. or its proxies—Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria—now lie in ruins. Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza continues apace, and yet again the U.S. has opposed the unanimous will of the world (other than Israel) this week by vetoing a UN Security Council ceasefire resolution that was backed by the other 14 members of the U.N. Security Council.
The real issue facing the Trump Administration is not defending Israel from its neighbors, who call repeatedly, almost daily, for peace based on the two-state solution. The real issue is defending the U.S. from the Israel Lobby.
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'Stop It. Stop It Now, Joe.'
Even though fascist Donald Trump is still worse, just look at the latest polls in the swing states and recognize where we are heading. A true leader doesn't zig and zag when innocent people are being killed.
May 25, 2024
As the keynote speaker at Morehouse College in Atlanta last week, Joe Biden listened to the class Valedictorian’s call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. The President nodded and applauded with others in the assembly. In contrast, he had just approved another billion dollars in killer weapons for the genocidal Netanyahu regime to blow up what’s left of the Death Camps in Gaza. “Stop it, stop it now, Joe,” declared his wife, Dr. Jill Biden months ago.
Countless times Joe Biden has publicly urged Netanyahu to allow the waiting trucks carrying – food, water, and medicine – blocked at the Egyptian and Israeli borders to deliver this humanitarian aid. But Biden declined to demand sanctions and an end to the Israeli military blocking hundreds of trucks, paid for by the U.S., into Gaza to help the dying population. He could have draped American flags over these trucks and dared the Israeli state terrorists to stop them. Biden showed lethal weakness from an unused position of great presidential power. “Stop it, stop it now, Joe,” implored his wife Dr. Jill Biden as thousands of children are being killed who could have been saved.
When Biden took his oath of office, he swore to uphold the laws of the land. That oath requires action.
Biden asked early on that Netanyahu comply with international law. His government commits daily overt numerous war crimes targeting civilians, homes, schools, markets, hospitals and health clinics, ambulances, fleeing refugees, and even Mosques and Churches. The Israeli regime also violates the international law that requires the conquerors to protect the civilian population. Biden, Blinken and Austin have refused to condemn such “crimes against humanity,” halt arms shipments and thereby obey five federal laws prohibiting the U.S. from sending weapons to countries that are violating human rights or being used for offensive purposes.
When Biden took his oath of office, he swore to uphold the laws of the land. That oath requires action. His State Department, in a required compliance report this month to Congress, disgracefully punted. “Stop it, stop it now, Joe,” beseeched Dr. Jill Biden.
From the beginning, Biden has backed a two-state solution publicly and in private conversations with Netanyahu. These words support a peaceful settlement. Yet whether under Obama as vice president for eight years or since 2021, as president, Biden has not connected to any action advancing the two-state proposal. Worse, he has never called out Netanyahu, with consequences, for bragging year after year to his Likud Party that he has been supporting the Hamas regime and helping to fund it because Hamas, like Netanyahu, opposes a two-state solution.
Biden is still rejecting the recognition of a Palestinian state by 143 of the 193 member states of the United Nations. This week Spain, Norway and Ireland said they would recognize a Palestinian state. Biden bizarrely insists statehood be negotiated with Israel. He knows, of course, how many Israeli colonies (so-called settlements) exist in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israel rejects outright any such Free Palestine. Weak Joe Biden is okay with that brutal occupation. “Stop it, stop it now, Joe,” says Dr. Jill Biden.
Joe Biden is always condemning anti-semitism against Jews, while he spends billions of dollars weaponizing Netanyahu’s violent anti-semitism against Arab semites in Palestine. This “other” anti-semitism has been violently inflicted, with very racist epithets, on defenseless, subjugated Palestinian families for over fifty-five years. The violence includes U.S. fighter planes bombing, ground troops smashing homes, and refugee camps, blowing up homes, imprisoning and torturing thousands of men, women and children, without charges, and hundreds of dictates, checkpoints, and other maddening harassments. (See the New York Times Magazine Sunday, May 19, 2024 piece “The Unpunished: How Extremists Took Over Israel”). Biden and Netanyahu are arm-in-arm anti-semites against Arabs. (See the “Anti-Semitism Against Arab and Jewish Americans” speech by Jim Zogby and DebatingTaboos.org).
It’s the ongoing massacre of these little innocents—in their mother’s or father’s arms or in crumbling hospitals that led Dr. Jill Biden to admonish: “Stop it, stop it now, Joe.”
Throughout his fifty-year political career, Biden has never said that “Palestinians have a right to defend themselves.” Only the overwhelmingly more powerful, occupying Israelis have this right, as he has repeated hundreds of times. “Stop it, stop it now, Joe,” advises Dr. Jill Biden.
Biden has expressed doubt about the Hamas Health Ministry’s fatality count in Gaza – itself a huge undercount. (See my column March 5, 2024 column: Stop the Worsening UNDERCOUNT of Palestinian Casualties in Gaza). His actions enabling the Israeli annihilations (“over the top” he once blurted) are moving the real fatality toll, especially with the Rafah invasion and starvation, to the fastest rate ever recorded in 21st century conflicts, according to experts. This includes the bloody, accelerating deaths of babies and children.
It’s the ongoing massacre of these little innocents—in their mother’s or father’s arms or in crumbling hospitals that led Dr. Jill Biden to admonish: “Stop it, stop it now, Joe.”
Still, Joe Biden conveys weakness to Netanyahu, to Netanyahu’s Congress and its omnipresent “Israel-can-do-no-wrong” lobby. Being weak on such a high visibility and protested genocide in Gaza is bad for your re-election, Joe. Even though Der Führer Donald is worse. Look at the latest polls in the swing states! A true leader doesn’t zig and zag when innocent people are being killed. “Stop it, stop it now, Joe.”
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