Lipstadt’s Dog-and-Pony Show (on Jimmy Carter)

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Saturday, January 20, 2007; A23

Jimmy
Carter’s Jewish Problem

By DEBORAH E.
LIPSTADT

IT is hard to criticize an icon. Jimmy Carter‘s humanitarian work has saved countless lives. Yet his life has also been shaped by the Bible, where the Hebrew prophets taught us to speak truth to power. So I write.

Carter’s book “Palestine: Peace Not
Apartheid,” while exceptionally sensitive to Palestinian suffering, ignores a legacy of mistreatment, expulsion and murder committed against Jews. It trivializes the murder of Israelis. Now, facing a storm of criticism, he has relied on anti-Semitic stereotypes in defense.

One cannot ignore the Holocaust’s impact on Jewish identity and the history of the Middle East conflict. When an
Ahmadinejad or Hamas threatens to destroy Israel, Jews have historical precedent to believe them. Jimmy Carter either does not understand this or considers it irrelevant.

David
Irving comments:

MY readers might enjoy
this commentary on Lipstadt’s latest act of transparent shilling, posted on his website by Norman
Finkelstein:

If
She Only Had A Brain

During her libel trial in England (David
Irving had sued her for defamation), Lipstadt was ordered by her attorneys not to say a word inside or outside the courtroom. The motive behind this defense strategy was transparent: if Lipstadt uttered even a single syllable the whole world would know she suffered from the scarecrow syndrome.

Here she rattles off the names of Carter’s critics to date, notes that “all are Jewish,” and then is bewildered that Carter believes
Jewish organizations are behind criticism of his book. It is reported that Lipstadt is currently at work on a new book on how to chew grass and write op-eds at the same time.

[Link to his full article]

Twelve questions to put to
Prof. Lipstadt the next time you see her…

His book, which dwells on the Palestinian
refugee
experience, makes two fleeting
references to the Holocaust. The book
contains a detailed chronology of major
developments necessary for the reader to
understand the current situation in the
Middle East. Remarkably, there is nothing
listed between 1939 and 1947. Nitpickers
might say that the Holocaust did not
happen in the region.

However, this event
sealed in the minds of almost all the
world’s people then the need for the
Jewish people to have a Jewish state in
their ancestral homeland. Carter never
discusses the Jewish refugees who were
prevented from entering Palestine before
and after the war. One of Israel’s first
acts upon declaring statehood was to send
ships to take those people “home.”

A guiding principle of Israel is that never again will persecuted Jews be left with no place to go. Israel’s ideal of
Jewish refuge is enshrined in laws that grant immediate citizenship to any Jew who requests it. A Jew, for purposes of this law, is anyone who, had that person lived in Nazi Germany, would have been stripped of citizenship by the Nuremberg Laws.

Compare Carter’s approach with that of
Rashid Khalidi, head of Columbia
University’s Middle East Institute and a professor of Arab studies there. His recent book “The Iron Cage” contains more than a dozen references to the seminal place the Holocaust and anti-Semitism hold in the Israeli worldview. This from a
Palestinian who does not cast himself as an evenhanded negotiator.

In contrast, by almost ignoring the
Holocaust, Carter gives inadvertent comfort to those who deny its importance or even its historical reality, in part because it helps them deny Israel’s right to exist. This from the president who signed the legislation creating the U.S.
Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Carter’s minimization of the Holocaust is compounded by his recent behavior. On
MSNBC in December, he described conditions for Palestinians as “one of the worst examples of human rights deprivation” in the world. When the interviewer asked
“Worse than Rwanda?” Carter said that he did not want to discuss the “ancient history” of Rwanda.

“All
are Jews”

To give Carter the benefit of the doubt, let’s say that he meant an ongoing crisis. Is the Palestinians’ situation equivalent to Darfur, which our own government has branded genocide?

Carter has repeatedly fallen back —
possibly unconsciously — on traditional anti-Semitic canards. In the Los
Angeles Times last month, he declared it”politically suicide” for a politician to advocate a “balanced position” on the crisis. On Al-Jazeera TV, he dismissed the critique of his book by declaring that
“most of the condemnations of my book came from Jewish-American organizations.”

• Jeffrey Goldberg, who
  lambasted the book in The Post
  last month, writes for the New
  Yorker.
• Ethan Bronner, who in the
  New York Times called the book
  “a distortion,” is the Times’
  deputy foreign editor.
• Slate’s Michael Kinsley
  declared it “moronic.”
• Dennis Ross, who was chief
  negotiator on the conflict in the
  administrations of George H.W.

  Bush and Bill Clinton,
  described the book as a rewriting and
  misrepresentation of history.

• Alan Dershowitz teaches at
  Harvard and Ken Stein at Emory.
  Both have criticized the book. Because
  of the book’s inaccuracies and
  imbalance and Carter’s subsequent
  behavior, 14 members of the Carter
  Center’s Board of Councilors have
  resigned — many in anguish because
  they so respect Carter’s other
  work.

All are Jews. Does that invalidate their criticism — and mine — or render us representatives of Jewish organizations?

On CNN, Carter bemoaned the “tremendous intimidation in our country that has silenced” the media. Carter has appeared on C-SPAN, “Larry King Live” and “Meet the
Press,” among many shows. When a caller to
C-SPAN accused Carter of anti-Semitism, the host cut him off. Who’s being silenced?

Perhaps unused to being criticized,
Carter reflexively fell back on this kind of innuendo about Jewish control of the media and government. Even if unconscious, such stereotyping from a man of his stature is noteworthy. When David
Duke spouts it, I yawn. When Jimmy
Carter does, I shudder.

Others can enumerate the many factual errors in this book. A man who has done much good and who wants to bring peace has not only failed to move the process forward but has given refuge to scoundrels.

The writer teaches at Emory
University. Her latest book is “History on
Trial: My Day in Court With David
Irving.”

[Hot dogs stands]

Illustration:
Hotdogs are served outside the great tourist attraction, the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC

Related
items on this website:

Dossier
on Deborah Lipstadt

Lipstadt
trial index

Trial
transcripts

Lipstadt’s
praise for Binjamin Wilkomirski, the
(ASSHOL) fraudster and liar:
“Deborah Lipstadt
has assigned Fragments in her
Emory University class on Holocaust
memoirs.

When confronted with evidence
that it is a fraud, she commented that
the new revelations ‘might complicate
matters somewhat, but [the
work] is still
powerful.'”

Twelve
questions to put to Prof. Lipstadt the
next time you see her…

Controversy
April 2001 over Emory’s choice of
Deborah Lipstadt as graduation speaker;
won’t get honorary degree

Lipstadt changes her spots.

Remember
how Deborah Lipstadt wailed that it was
a crime for David Irving to be
imprisoned by Austria for his opinions?
Well, now she’s wailing that it is a
crime for him to be released.

See her
web campaign against the right-minded
Austrian judge: Irving
given probation | Judges
in Irving’s probation hearing
[sic] | More
on Judge in Irving’s Austrian
case

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