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| By israelinsider staff January 17, 2007 |
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Former President Jimmy Carter told the Arab news network Al- Jazeera that he does not consider Palestinian missile attacks on Israeli civilians -- a war crime and breach of human rights, according to the UN -- to be acts of terror.
In an interview to defend his book, Carter, apparently in an effort to not offend pro-Palestinian Muslim viewers of the program, stated that "I don't consider... I wasn't equating the Palestinian missiles with terrorism."
Carter went on to explain that other acts of Palestinian violence, like targeting civilians in bus bombings or children at schools, should not be committed because they make Palestinians look bad. Such acts, Carter explained, "create a rejection of the Palestinians among those who care about them. It turns the world away from sympathy and support for the Palestinian people."
Carter appeared on the program in order to defend his book which has come under steady fire, even by those close to him, for being one-sided and, some say, bigoted.
Last week, fourteen advisers to the Carter Center resigned their posts, outraged by claims that Carter makes in the book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.
In their resignation letter, the group told Carter that, "It seems that you have turned to a world of advocacy, including even malicious advocacy," and because of this the advisers "can no longer endorse your strident and uncompromising position".
A senior Carter Center adviser, historian Ken Stein, resigned last month over the book saying that the book is "replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments."
In the Al-Jazeera interview, Carter accused 'Jewish American organizations' to be responsible for the criticism, despite the resignations and protests of his own former staff.
In response to this perceived attack, which some have called paranoid, Carter published an open letter to American Jews explaining his position. So far, Al Jazeera has been the only major news outlet to publish the letter. |
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