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WHAT:  Digging Deeper XXVII: Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid
WHO:  Led by Mark Jensen
WHEN:  Monday, January 8 & 15, 2007 -- 7:00 p.m.-8:30 p.m.
WHERE:  Mandolin Café, 3923 South 12th St., Tacoma, WA 98405

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United for Peace of Pierce
County Study Circle:
January 8 & 15, 2007
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DIGGING DEEPER XXVII:  JIMMY CARTER'S PALESTINE: PEACE NOT APARTHEID

A year ago, Digging Deeper examined Jimmy Carter’s Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis, a number-one bestseller.  On Jan. 8 and 15, UFPPC’s book group will examine the former president’s latest volume and the issues it raises, both about the Middle East and about media and the conduct of public discourse here in the United States.

Carter has published many books, but none has provoked as much controversy as Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.  Carter’s volume has been called “simplistic and distorted” (Abraham H. Foxman, “Judging a Book by Its Cover and Its Content,” adl.org, Nov. 13, 2006) “indecent” (Alan Dershowitz, “The World According to Jimmy Carter,” Huffington Post, Nov. 22, 2006) and “cynical” (Jeffrey Goldberg, “What Would Jimmy Do?” Washington Post, Dec. 10, 2006).

In an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times (“Speaking Frankly about Israel and Palestine,” Dec. 8, 2006), the winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize responded to the controversy:  “The many controversial issues concerning Palestine and the path to peace for Israel are intensely debated among Israelis and throughout other nations—but not in the United States.  For the last 30 years, I have witnessed and experienced the severe restraints on any free and balanced discussion of the facts.  This reluctance to criticize any policies of the Israeli government is because of the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American-Israel Political Action Committee and the absence of any significant contrary voices.”  Carter said that though he has had major interviews in the broadcast media, he has seen “few news stories in major newspapers,” where “[b]ook reviews in the mainstream media have been written mostly by representatives of Jewish organizations who would be unlikely to visit the occupied territories, and their primary criticism is that the book is anti-Israel. . . . Out in the real world, however, the response has been overwhelmingly positive.”

Carter added:  “The book describes the abominable oppression and persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories, with a rigid system of required passes and strict segregation between Palestine's citizens and Jewish settlers in the West Bank.  An enormous imprisonment wall is now under construction, snaking through what is left of Palestine to encompass more and more land for Israeli settlers.  In many ways, this is more oppressive than what blacks lived under in South Africa during apartheid.  I have made it clear that the motivation is not racism but the desire of a minority of Israelis to confiscate and colonize choice sites in Palestine, and then to forcefully suppress any objections from the displaced citizens.”

· Jimmy Carter, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006).  “[T]hirty years after his first trip to the Mideast, former President Jimmy Carter still has hope for a peaceful, comprehensive solution to the region’s troubles, delivering this informed and readable chronicle as an offering to the cause.  An engineer of the 1978 Camp David Accords and 2002 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, Carter would seem to be a perfect emissary in the Middle East, an impartial and uniting diplomatic force in a fractured land.  Not entirely so.  Throughout his work, Carter assigns ultimate blame to Israel, arguing that the country's leadership has routinely undermined the peace process through its obstinate, aggressive, and illegal occupation of territories seized in 1967.  He’s decidedly less critical of Arab leaders, accepting their concern for the Palestinian cause at face value, and including their anti-Israel rhetoric as a matter of course, without much in the way of counter-argument.  Carter’s book provides a fine overview for those unfamiliar with the history of the conflict and lays out an internationally accepted blueprint for peace.” —Publishers Weekly.

Since July 2004, United for Peace of Pierce County has been conducting “Digging Deeper,” a Monday-night book discussion group, often in the form of a study circle.  Topics have included peak oil, climate change, the corporation, Iran, the writings of Robert Baer, and Islam, as well as abiding themes of war, peace, politics, and social change.  Occasionally, the group has spent several weeks reading longer works, like Daniel Yergin’s The Prize or Robert Fisk’s The Great War for Civilisation.

DIGGING DEEPER meets every Monday from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Mandolin Café, 3923 S. 12th St., Tacoma, WA.

Participation is free. Participants should procure their own copy of the book. Info: contact Mark Jensen (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; 253-535-7219).

Regular meetings of United for Peace of Pierce County are held on 1st and 3rd Thursday evenings at First Congregational Church, 209 South “J” St., Tacoma, WA.

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United for Peace of Pierce
County Study Circle:
January 8 & 15, 2007
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