Arab Israeli Palestinian Tragedy Blog

                                                                                                      28th January 2007

My Letter to the Tribune-Review

Your editorial implies that Jimmy Carter’s new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid contains “adoring praise of the deeply oppressive, religiously intolerant Saudi regime.” The editor committed a basic blunder by not bothering to read the book under review. The book’s sparse mention of Saudi Arabia is not “adoring praise.”

The editor has thrown down a “red herring” in order to distract attention from the book’s real issue. This is the ongoing 59-year colonization and dispossession of the Palestinian people’s land by Israel. Carter deliberately used the South African word “apartheid” in order to jump-start a too long absent US discussion. The use of this word in reference to the West Bank is appropriate, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu has stated. To criticize secular Israeli governments is definitely not to be anti-Semitic (nor “anti-Israel” as stated in the editorial)!

The editorial criticized Carter for “ignoring the Holocaust.” The Palestinians had absolutely no responsibility for Europe’s Holocaust; however, they have been made to pay for it. It was Primo Levi (a Jewish survivor) who said it best when he termed the Palestinians, “The Jews of the Middle East.” The Holocaust is mentioned on pages 18 and 66.

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