December 24, 2009
Letter to Jimmy Carter Urges Action After Apology

CAMERA* has sent a letter to Jimmy Carter after the former president, addressing the Jewish community in an open letter, offered an apology for anything he may have done to stigmatize Israel. After expressing wishes for peace, Carter noted that “we must not permit criticisms for improvement to stigmatize Israel,” and offered an “Al Het” — a plea for forgiveness which is part of the Jewish prayer on Yom Kippur — “for any words or deeds of mine that may have done so.” (See more from JTA here and here.)

CAMERA’s letter, which is published in its entirety below, urges that Carter join his words with concrete actions, specifically, the correction of false and exaggerated charges he made in a November Op-Ed in the International Herald Tribune.

The Dec. 23 letter follows:

Dear President Carter:

We at CAMERA have been outspoken in our criticism of the many factual errors and distortions about Israel in your book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, as well as in various Op-Eds and media appearances. We’ve been greatly concerned that false allegations you’ve made damage Israel, promoting misunderstanding, enmity and prejudice against that nation and its people.

It is against this backdrop that we sincerely welcome your recent letter to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in which you ask forgiveness from the Jewish community for statements that may have stigmatized Israel. As you may know, in Judaism the process of repentance also entails action to reverse any harm caused.

In this spirit, we urge you to join your promising words with concrete actions to redress troubling false statements you have made only recently about the Jewish state. In a Nov. 6, 2009 Op-Ed in the International Herald Tribune entitled “Goldstone and Gaza” you made false and exaggerated charges concerning the UN’s Goldstone report on the Gaza conflict. You referred erroneously to the “destruction” of 40,000 homes in Gaza and claimed “several hundred thousand homeless people suffered through last winter.” You refer to the “destruction of hospitals” and claim the Gaza Strip is “surrounded by an impenetrable wall.” You claim “the Goldstone committee examined closely the cause of deaths of 1,387 Palestinians who perished. . .”

All these statements are factually false and contribute to inflaming negative perceptions of Israel. Efforts to redress the errors via communication with IHT editors failed with their saying you have refused to correct the false statements.

We do hope you’ll set the record straight and affirm your commitment to undo any wrongful stigmatizing of Israel. Below is the factual detail corroborating our concerns about the errors made:

• Israel did not destroy 40,000 Palestinian homes.

Al Mazen Center for Human Rights, a pro-Palestinian NGO, recently issued a report called “Cast Lead Offensive in Numbers” in which it found that 2,632 houses were destroyed beyond repair and 8,522 were assessed as repairable. The latest UN figures are 3,600 homes beyond repair and 2,700 homes that sustained major damages. The Goldstone Report provides additional sources including the Palestinian NGO, Al-Dameer-Gaza, that cites 2,011 civilian and cultural premises as destroyed, of which 1,404 were houses that were completely demolished and 453 partially destroyed or damaged. Even the Arab League’s report on Cast Lead states: “Over 3,000 homes were destroyed and over 11,000 damaged.” There is no credible report that comes near your charges.

• There was no “destruction of hospitals.”

Along with the World Health Organization and the Arab League, other international and Palestinian sources confirm that while there were hospitals damaged in the Gaza Strip, none were destroyed. The January 22-23 report by the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that four days after the cease-fire, hospitals were running at full capacity to treat the wounded. The report states:

Hospitals continue to function at full capacity as many injured patients remain hospitalized, with the result that hospitals have been unable to resume regular services such as elective surgery. Post-surgical physiotherapy is provided in Shifa hospital. Most repair work to the Al Quds Hospital in Gaza City, which was shelled on 15 January, has been completed and the facility is now functioning again.

• “Several hundred thousand” people were not made homeless, spending the winter in tents and caves and under plastic sheets.

A January 21-27, 2009 report by the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, issued just days after the end of the Gaza fighting found that “Tens of thousands of Gazans remain homeless, with most staying with relatives or other host families.” A Jan. 16-20, 2009 report, also by OCHA, stated: “As of late 20 January, 18,035 people remained in 30 shelters, down from 29,421 people on 19 January.” Thus, the U.N.’s figure for those displaced last winter is one-tenth or less of the number you posit. Of those displaced, most stayed with relatives and not in tents, caves or plastic sheets.

• Gaza is not “surrounded by an impenetrable wall.”

While a concrete and steel wall does separate Gaza from Egypt, a fence made of metal wire, posts and sensors separates Israel from the Gaza Strip. The fence has been penetrated many times, including when Palestinian gunmen crossed into Israel and kidnapped Israeli Cpl. Gilad Shalit and killed two of his comrades.

• The Goldstone Report did not examine “closely the cause of deaths of 1,387 Palestinians.”

The report identified by name only a small fraction of the1,387 reported fatalities, and certainly did not “closely” examine the “cause of deaths” of that total.

Again, we hope your conciliatory words are indicative of a true change of heart in which Israel is no longer subjected to unwarranted and false criticism. We urge you to take the concrete step of correcting the wrong and distorted statements about Israel in your recent column in the IHT.

Thank you for considering this request and, perhaps, setting the stage for a new beginning.

Andrea Levin
Executive Director, CAMERA

* COMMITTEE FOR ACCURACY IN MIDDLE EAST REPORTING IN AMERICA

Carter "Apology": Reaction II
by Gerald A. Honigman, IsraelNationalNews.com
December 25, 2009

Ex-President Jimmy Carter has recently asked Jews for forgiveness. Carter claims that the fact that his grandson is now running for
office in their home state of Georgia has nothing to do with his apology. He states that Jews only make up 2% of the county where his grandson lives -- about the same percent that Jews make up in the nation at large -- and so uses this as further evidence of the integrity of his intentions.

Hogwash!

I voted for Carter in the '70s. I liked his approach to environmental concerns.  I  came to regret my decision.

I'll never forget watching the Democrat National Convention on television and seeing Carter chasing after his producer comrade, Michael "Israel is one of the three top evils in the world" Moore. Like other Gentile politicos, Carter has received millions of  dollars from Arabs for his help in demonizing Israel and Jews. Well, I have a way Jimmy can put this all to rest...sort of.

Since he is a man of the world whose books do indeed reach millions and influence world opinion, I have a new assignment for him. After all, for decades now, if Israel took one too many breaths, he was there to investigate, criticize, and dissect it under the high power lens of moral scrutiny. Most often, his critiques were given little or no context whatsoever. Jewish victims were constantly blamed themselves when issues such as blown buses, checkpoints, the security barrier, and such were discussed. Arabs were given a virtual free pass.

While indulging in such hypocrisy, Carter acted deaf, dumb, and blind regarding what was happening in the region surrounding the nation of the Jews.

Jimmy, your first task is to travel to re-visit your friend, Bashar al-Assad, the butcher of Damascus and author of the "Hama Solution's" son, in Syria.

Since you worry so much about Arab rights and conditions--you must now, at long last, demand that "Arab" Syria stop murdering and subjugating its millions of Kurds. The latter are not even allowed to speak their own language, have been forcibly Arabized for decades--yet I don't recall a peep about their plight ever being uttered from your lips. Only America's toppling of Saddam changed things for the better for "Arab" Iraq's millions of Kurds. No concern from you over their brethren in the Turkish and Iranian portions of Kurdistan either...some thirty five million perpetually used and abused stateless people. Why hasn't their plight caught your attention?

The second part of your assignment will take you to "Arab" North Africa. Since you are allegedly so concerned about human rights, you will finally have to break your troubling silence about the plight of another truly stateless people (Arabs have almost two dozen states; "Palestinians"--no matter how you define them--are Arabs), the thirty million or so Imazhigen/Berbers, who predate their Arab conquerors by millennia and who, like the Kurds, have had their own language and culture outlawed by Arabs and who have been murdered if they have resisted.

Your next assignment has you moving just a bit south and east into the Sudan. While Darfur in the west has been making the news of late, the forced Arabization of the south by the north has been going on for centuries and exploded once again in the '60s.
 

Where have you been while this Arab enslavement, genocide, and such against black Africans (not only in the Sudan) has been going on? And, unlike the most of the south, the blacks in Darfur are also Muslims... so, this goes beyond a religious jihad and truly involves Arab racism, pure and simple. Many quotes from black victims have testified to this.

All of these things are happening in the here and now. Why the silence? Where’s your book?

So, here's the deal, Mr. Carter...

Write your book and articles, give your speeches and take Arabs to task for the crimes they have committed against everyone else in the region -- real crimes, not measures Israel has been forced to take to survive Arab slaughter -­ and maybe we will take you seriously.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/9224

 
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