Kenneth W. Stein, an Emory University professor who worked closely with former President Jimmy Carter at the Carter Center, rejected many of the former president’s allegations in the latter’s recent controversial book before a packed house of 250 at Portland State University Feb. 20.
Stein was the first of 14 to resign from the board of the Carter Center in December 2006 after the publication of Carter’s “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” He had collaborated with Carter on his 1985 book, “The Blood of Abraham: Insights into the Middle East.”
A Middle East historian who visited Israel several times with Carter, Stein said he did not purport to assess Carter’s accomplishments or challenge his opinions. He said he wished to present “a scholarly interpretation that has to do with the basic standards of my profession” and to offer an “analysis of the book as I read it and of the author as I have come to know him over a quarter of a century.”
Stein, the author of four books, said he had always admired Carter’s “very precise” use of language. As he focused on passages of Carter’s book, Stein pointed out inaccuracies, omissions and “inventions” that he said he “did not expect from a man who understands word usage.”
Commenting on Carter’s use of the term “apartheid” in the book’s title, Stein acknowledged:
“He can say Israelis in the media have used the term. He can say Israelis are not interested in peace. Those are his opinions. . . . I’m talking about inventing your own Koran or King James version of the Bible. You can’t say our founding fathers wrote that all men are created unequal, and that’s what he’s done in this book.”
Stein said Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 in part for his mediation of the 1978 Camp David Accords, “discounts historical precedent” as he continues his efforts to shape a peace in the Middle East.
“He disregards the facts of how we got to this moment,” said Stein. “He believes that history (encases) people in cement . . . and that you have to take them away from their historical fears.”
Stein illustrated Carter’s errors in a visual presentation based on his own article for the spring 2007 issue of Middle East Quarterly, now available on the Internet.
He showed how Carter took liberties with the text of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, “the basis of all negotiations since 1967.”
The resolution took five months to write and contained deliberate “ambiguities,” Stein said, and Carter’s insertions were “total invention.”
“I can’t allow people to corrupt the documents,” he said.
According to Stein, Carter quotes the Oslo Accords as “requiring” Israel to withdraw from the settlements and leads the reader to assume that if the accords called for the dismantling of settlements on Egyptian land, Israel must also withdraw from the West Bank settlements.
“Carter wrote 34 drafts of the accords, and he fabricated that, and don’t tell me it’s because he’s 82,” exclaimed Stein.
Stein said Carter “cleanses” the image of Hamas, portraying the Palestinian leadership as a “respectable” partner willing to recognize and negotiate with Israel. “He suggests the Arab world is prepared to accept Israel,” said Stein.
Stein denied Carter’s claim that Hamas supports a two-state solution. He said it is also untrue that Hamas has refrained from terrorist acts since August 2004, as Carter states in his book. Stein pointed out that Carter also omitted “mention of Arafat’s corruption.”
Carter shows “an apparent willingness to condone the killing of Israelis” when he asserts in the book that the Palestinians must “end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel,” Stein said. The Road Map, he pointed out, required the immediate cessation of terrorism.
Stein said, “I’ve read the book six or seven times, and every time I find more and more to doubt.”
During a generous question-and-answer period, Klein responded to a woman who asked if he would agree that Israel has persecuted the Palestinians.
“When I say ‘persecution,’ I think of the Kishinev pogrom of 1903,” he said. “If you want to say genocide, a term Carter used in a radio interview, no. If you want to use ‘suffering,’ I’ll buy it.”
The woman taunted him and then trained her video camera on the faces of the crowd, filming them row by row despite dozens of angry protests.
Stein’s appearance was underwritten by the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. It was co-sponsored by the PSU Harold Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic Studies and the PSU Middle East Studies Center.
