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Middle East scholar Kenneth Stein
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| December 7, 2006 |
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A Carter Center fellow and longtime adviser to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has resigned after sharply criticizing Carter's new book on Palestine, and a Jewish human rights group said it obtained thousands of signatures from supporters also protesting the book.
Kenneth Stein, director of the Institute for the Study of Modern Israel at Emory University, resigned as a Carter Center fellow for Middle East Affairs after reading Carter's 21st book, titled "Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid," which was released last week.
Deanna Congileo, Carter's spokeswoman, confirmed Stein's resignation on Wednesday. She said Stein was The Carter Center's first executive director in the early 1980s and founded the center's Middle East program.
"President Carter stands by the accuracy of his book," Congileo said. Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, in large part for his efforts to bring peace to the Middle East.
Also Wednesday, the Simon Wiesenthal Center has received 6,000 signatures on an online petition rebuking Carter for his book, said spokesman Marcial Lavina.
"President Carter there is no Israeli Apartheid policy and you know it. I join with the Simon Wiesenthal Center in respectfully reminding you that the only reason there is no peace in the Holy Land is because of Palestinian terrorism and fanaticism," according to the petition at the Los Angeles-based center's Web site.
Congileo declined comment on the Wiesenthal Center's statement.
Phone messages to Stein and the Wiesenthal Center were not immediately returned on Wednesday.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Wednesday on its Web site that Stein said he was "sad but not sorry" about his resignation.
The newspaper said Stein sent a letter full of blunt criticism of the book to Carter, Emory University President Jim Wagner and John Hardman, executive director of the center.
The newspaper printed an excerpt of the letter saying the book "is not based on unvarnished analysis; it is replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments ... Aside from the one-sided nature of the book, meant to provoke, there are recollections cited from meetings where I was the third person in the room, and my notes of those meetings show little similarity to points claimed in the book."
Carter released a statement saying that Stein had not been actively involved with the center for more than 12 years and that he regretted Stein's resignation. Carter said Stein was not involved with his new book.
The former president praised Stein as "one of the finest teachers I have ever known," a Middle East adviser and a friend.
"I thank him for this, and wish him well," Carter's letter said.
It's not the first time Carter and Stein have disagreed over Middle East policy, said Douglas Brinkley, a professor of history at Tulane University and the author of the 1988 Carter biography, "The Unfinished Presidency."
Brinkley said he has read Carter's new book but could not address Stein's accusations.
"It's packaged with previous Carter writings and ideas coralled together and presented as new. Some of the things in the book Carter has been saying for a long time," he said.
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