And based solely on being a Southern Baptist rather than through any anti-semitic actions on his part…
The US media is one sided and it is easier to be a follower.
You quoted only the first part of my sentence. That sentence said it was a Baptist who made that statement. We were discussing US presidents vis a vis Israel, and I said that Carter was an antisemite. She said that I must remember his heritage, as a Southern Baptist. Since she was one, I assumed the verity of that statement. Later posts indicate that she, and consequently I, was mistaken. I apologize. Nonetheless, he has written a book calling Israel an apartheid state and has made similar comments on talk shows.
But … but … he made Israel give back the Sinai! And stopped them from having a reason to fear/hate Egypt!
barbitu8, isn’t it more useful to discuss the (in)accuracy of the statements you object to than to denounce the character of the person stating them?
You are right. But calling Israel an apartheid state in a title of a book, when she is not, is not only inaccurate but inflammatory. He also made similar comments on talk shows.
:dubious: “Back”?
What’s 2000 years between friends?
And that doesn’t make him an antisemite either.
What questions like these often revolve around is “would Israel collapse without the US support.”
The answer is “no.”
Someone would fill in the void. Be it Russia, China, India or another Western Power.
Another thing people fail to understand is Israel is a convenient nuisance for the Arabs.
Arabs are not a unified group. They all dislike Israel but that’s about it. Jordan for instance does not like Syria. But if Syria is so worried about Israel, they aren’t going to be making much trouble for Jordan. Therefore while Jordanians may not like Israel, it’s very useful for Israel to be taking the rap.
Saudi Arabia doesn’t like Israel, but as long as the Palestinians are so busy hating Israel they aren’t going to be saying “Hey wait a minute, aren’t we Arabs all supposed to be brothers. How 'bout you Saudis giving us some of your oil money.”
It works within countries. In Syria for instance, the power is with the Alawites. These are a subgroup of Shi’a Muslms. Or are they? Some Muslims don’t consider them Muslim at all. In fact the Syrian constitution goes so far to declare they ARE Muslims to eliminate any doubt.
In addition about 10% of Syria’s population is Christian.
If Syrians are too busy worried about Israel they are less likely to complain to their government about why conditions in Syria suck.
Same way throughout all of the Muslim and Arab world. Muslims dislike Israel but they’re not a whole lot else they agree on. Isreal serves as an important state to take the focus off of their own internal problems.
Israel has already shown it can be beaten by groups like Hamas.
Calling Israel an apartheid state is not anti-Semitic, it is a considered criticism of Israel’s actions, one that you disagree with. Antisemitism is ethnic hatred directed exclusively at Jews. Jewishness and Israeliness are not equal, and Israel, even though it has a very large percentage of its population as Jews is not entitled to a get out of jail free card because its supports are so quick to hide behind past atrocities towards Jews.
Carter’s criticism of Israel as engaging in apartheid is a friend speaking the truth. Carter has done more for Israel in the US than any other American, and he did it out of conviction and principle, which is more than can be said for most politicians.
It’s called Christian Zionism and it’s even dumber than it sounds.
Why would someone fill the void? Israel is a small country with few strategic resources and without much geographic significance. The Arabs, on the other hand, sit on a metric assload of oil and control land with geographic significance. It’s obvious which side makes a better friend to the likes of Russia, China, and India.
Of course Israel won’t collapse without U.S. support. They will be able to buy weapons from someone, or in the worst case they have the technology industry to create their own. It would simply be more expensive and difficult for them to do what they want without the billions in aid and diplomatic cover the U.S. provides.
There is no doubt that some US Christians are ardent Zionists, mostly because they identify the present-day country of Israel with the Biblical Hebrews.
However, this tendency is a two-edged sword, as the various texts making up the Bible contain much that is critical of Jews oin general and the (ancient) Israeli state in particular.
Not all committed Christians are “ardent Zionists”. Many have deep, historical-religious ‘issues’ with the Jews, based on exactly the same sorts of arguments that appeal to Christian Zionists - i.e., the identification (tenditious though it may be) of the ancient, Biblical Hebrews and Israeli state and the modern Jews and State of Israel.
In the case of Carter, there is no doubt whatsoever that the man is a committed religious Christian. He is obviously not a “Christian Zionist”. Disturbingly, he does share their tendancy to conflate ancient Israel with the modern nation, and not to the benefit of the latter. This is demonstrated repeatedly in his book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, when he said stuff like this:
“It was especially interesting to visit with some of the few surviving Samaritans, who complained to us that their holy sites and culture were not being respected by Israeli authorities — the same complaint heard by Jesus and his disciples almost two thousand years earlier.”
According to his book, he met with Prime Minister Golda Meir and when asked to share his observations, responds to her as follows:
“I said that I had long taught lessons from the Hebrew Scriptures and that a common historical pattern was that Israel was punished whenever the leaders turned away from devout worship of God. I asked if she was concerned about the secular nature of her Labor government.”
To Jews, this sort of talk is deeply concerning. It would appear that Carter is animated by an essentially religious-historical view of the region, one in which “Israel” is singled out for unique religion-based criticism. Viewing the events of the Bible as “historical” is bad enough: outright stating that the same “lessons” apply to modern Israel, and that having a non-religious political party will bring down the wrath of God, is worse. Poor Golda must have thought he was totally nuts.
In short, Carter shares the Christian-Zionist method of analysis - seeing Israel through the lens of Biblical prophecy- but where the former are driven to unquestioningly support Israel, he is driven to unceasisngly criticise Israel. Both see Israel as a special case, to be judged on special criteria.
Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister, last night delivered an unusually blunt warning to his country that a failure to make peace with the Palestinians would leave either a state with no Jewish majority or an “apartheid” regime.
His stark language and the South African analogy might have been unthinkable for a senior Israeli figure only a few years ago and is a rare admission of the gravity of the deadlocked peace process.
“As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic,” Barak said. “If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.”
Four decades later, the increasingly complex world of Israel’s system of classification deems Said Rhateb to be a resident of the West Bank - somewhere he has never lived - and an illegal alien for living in the home in which he was born, inside the Jerusalem boundary. Jerusalem’s council forces Rhateb to pay substantial property taxes on his house but that does not give him the right to live in it, and he is periodically arrested for doing so. Rhateb’s children have been thrown out of their Jerusalem school, he cannot register a car in his name - or rather he can, but only one with Palestinian number plates, which means he cannot drive it to his home because only Israeli-registered cars are allowed within Jerusalem - and he needs a pass to visit the centre of the city. The army grants him about four a year.
There is more. If Rhateb is not legally resident in his own home, then he is defined as an “absentee” who has abandoned his property. Under Israeli law, it now belongs to the state or, more particularly, its Jewish citizens. “They sent papers that said we cannot sell the land or develop it because we do not own the land. It belongs to the state,” he says. “Any time they want to confiscate it, they can, because they say we are absentees even though we are living in the house.”…
An Israeli human rights organisation has described segregation of West Bank roads by the military as apartheid. Arab Israeli lawyers argue anti-discrimination cases before the supreme court by drawing out similarities between some Israeli legislation and white South Africa’s oppressive laws. Desmond Tutu, the former archbishop of Cape Town and chairman of South Africa’s truth and reconciliation commission, visited the occupied territories three years ago and described what he found as “much like what happened to us black people in South Africa”.
The government’s decision last week to extend the validity of the Citizenship Law (Temporary Order), for another year, is evidence that the legal barriers preventing severe discrimination against Israel’s Arab citizens and harm to their civil rights have been removed…
The claim that there are characteristics of an apartheid state in Israel is widely heard in the Western world. The word apartheid is catchy and understood in many parts of the world, which makes it useful to send a message that we resent and which we claim has no connection with reality in Israel. However, we do not need to replicate exactly the characteristics of South African apartheid within discriminatory practices in civil rights in Israel in order to call Israel an apartheid state. The amendment to the Citizenship Law is exactly such a practice, and it is best that we not try to evade the truth: Its existence in our law books turns Israel into an apartheid state.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/996697.html
That merely indicates that “apartheid” has, through the efforts of Carter and his like, become a word that is essentially content-less - the word is simply used as a perjorative term for any policies that the speaker seeks to warn his or her audience about, or to critique, as discriminatory.
One could, for example, describe the Canadian system of dealing with Native Canadian rights an “apartheid system”, with equal validity; and I’ve seen it done.
Problem is that this reduces the sting in the term, similar to one article I once read that described removing funding from a dance troupe here in Canada as “genocide” - as in, “cultural genocide”.
It’s a form of bait-and-switch: using a loaded term to elicit a reaction. Israelis are as capable of doing it as former US Presidents, which doesn’t make it right.
“Jews” are concerned, or “Israel and its supporters” are concerned? I am concerned with the way “Jews” get conflated with “supporters of Israel” such that any criticism of Israel becomes “antisemitism.”
As for being “animated by an essentially religious-historical view of the region,” doesn’t that criticism apply equally to Jewish Zionists? Are you equally concerned about the mindset in that case?
With Carter, I suspect he was just (clumsily) using the Bible to make a moral appeal to Israelis. Not sure why that would be so horrifying to Israel or its supporters, or why it would get him accused of antisemitism.
I myself do not use the term “anti-semitism” to describe Carter, because it displays the lack of nuance that the term “apartheid” does in the hands of critics of Israeli policy.
“Jews” have reason to be concerned when someone of great influence is evidently making decisions based on their interpretation of the Scriptures. Indeed, I’d have though anyone who did not share the same religious convictions would be. As an atheist, for example.
Certainly it does to some. Fact is, most Zionists historically were not religious - they were more nationalist romantics of a socialist bent.
But tu quoque is not really an answer.
How on earth is suggesting that the Labour Party’s secularism may being down the wrath of God making a “moral appeal”? Appeal to what?
What is disturbing (not “horrifying”) is that the man’s motivations are so biased, and biased based on a religious tradition that is not exactly friendly.
I’ll state right away that I dislike the use of the term “anti-semitism” for this bias. There is no proof that Carther actually hates Jews.
What he does, is view the Israeli situation through a biased, Biblical lens that conflates the modern, secular state of Israel with the ancient Biblical theocracy, and assumes that the same (unique) moral rules apply to it.
Why this is not disturbing to Carter’s many supporters, some of whom are no doubt atheists, is harder to understand.
“If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.”
You honestly think “apartheid” in that context is contentless? I don’t think that having a large portion of your population unable to participate in the democratic process because they are nominally citizens of a state within a state is a twisting of the word at all. It’s not simply a pejorative but a valid comparison to the Bantustans of South Africa. Feel free to tell me why I’m wrong.
You are picking out a quote concerning a possible future event.
The term is usually used to describe current policies, as in 'Israel is now an ‘apartheid state’. See the title of Carter’s book.
The one is an appropriate use of ther term, the other is not. The fact that the term was used appropriately concerning a possible future contingency merely highlights the fact that the term is used inappropriately for the current situation, right?
‘If the Israel government decides in the future to exterminate the Palestinians en mass, that would be genocide’ is a correct use of the term. ‘Israel is currently engaged in a genocide of the Palestinian people’ is incorrect - though that is not to say that some policy or act of the Israelis towards the Palestinians cannot be criticized on its own (de)merits. See the subtle difference?
Because it is just a distraction from the real issue: is Israel practicing, or heading toward, a form of apartheid? Instead of addressing that issue, Carter’s critics are attacking him personally either for being “antisemitic” (and I understand that you are not doing this but others are) or for being some sort of kooky religious nut. Neither of those attacks does anything to address Carter’s criticism.
And since you bring up fallacies, these are just ad hominem attacks. 