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January 19, 2007
Alexander Cockburn makes an interesting observation over at CounterPunch about the Israeli Lobby's attempts to discredit Jimmy Carter’s book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, by labeling him an "anti-semite." Cockburn says:
The Israel lobby retains its grip inside the Beltway, but it’s starting to lose its hold on the broader public debate. Why? You can’t brutalize the Palestinian people in the full light of day, decade after decade, without claims that Israel is a light among the nations getting more than a few serious dents. In the old days, Mearsheimer and Walt’s tract would have been deep-sixed by the University of Chicago and the Kennedy School long before it reached its final draft, and Farrar, Straus and Giroux wouldn’t have considered offering a six-figure advance for it. Simon & Schuster would have told President Carter that his manuscript had run into insurmountable objections from a distinguished board of internal reviewers. But once a book by a former president with weighty humanitarian credentials makes it into bookstores, it’s hard to shoot it down with volleys of wild abuse.
Carter challenges the Israeli Lobby's central claim that what is holding peace back is primarily the perpetuation of Arab/lslamist rejectionism of Israel period. It holds that rejectionism---is the position of the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah-Hamas axis, that is bidding for regional hegemony. It argues that by essentially agreeing with them that all the region's problems are connected to Israel, well intentioned outsiders are strengthening rejectionism, thereby compounding the obstacles to peace and weakening the region's moderates intimidated by this resurgent rejectionism.
Cockburn adds:
The trouble with the lobby and the Christian zealots who act as its echo chamber is that they believe their own propaganda about Israel’s equitable social arrangements and immaculate political and legal record in its relations with the Palestinians. Use the word apartheid and they howl with indignation. The shock is about thirty years out of date. Israeli writers have used the word apartheid to describe arrangements in the occupied territories for years. Hundreds of prominent South African Jews issued a statement six years ago making the same link.
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