CARTER CRITICIZES SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER

When last we heard from Jimmy Carter, he was trying to limit the damage from his one-sided book. According to this article, he’s criticizing the Simon Wiesenthal Center, saying that they’ve slandered him. Here’s Carter’s shot:

“I don’t believe Simon Wiesenthal would have resorted to falsehood and slander to raise funds,” Carter wrote last month in a handwritten letter to the head of the human rights center that bears the name of the late Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter. The petition does not require payment to be sent, though Carter’s letter suggests it is being used as a fundraising tool.

Rabbi Marvin Hier replied:

“I believe that Simon Wiesenthal would have been as outraged by your book, ‘Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,’ as I was,” Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, wrote in a Feb. 2 response to Carter.

Considering all the controversy surrounding the petition, let’s look at the petition itself and determine if it has merit.

Here are some of President Carter’s key allegations in Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid:Israel’s “occupation and colonialization” of the West Bank and Gaza is the reason there is no peace.

FACT: President Carter deliberately overlooks that in 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak went to Camp David and offered Yassir Arafat 95% of the West Bank, 100% of Gaza and part of the Old City of Jerusalem for a Palestinian State, along with $30 billion in compensation for Palestinian refugees. Arafat’s response: launching the bloody Intifada which targeted innocent civilians in restaurants, malls, schools, and religious services with suicide terror attacks. Had Arafat accepted Israel’s offer at Camp David there would have long been a Palestinian State alongside Israel.

The only thing that’s controversial about that section is President Carter’s characterization of Israel’s act. Here’s the next point of the petition:

• Israel’s ‘Wall’ has virtually choked-off the Palestinian economy and in many ways is worse than South Africa’s former Apartheid system.

FACT: Israel’s temporary security fence has been an effective deterrent in thwarting unending Palestinian suicide terror attacks which have dropped over 90% since its construction. Israel has said that the fence will come down when the Palestinian terror stops. Israel is entitled to protect her citizens from outside threats in the same way as with any sovereign country. It is interesting to note that during his presidency President Carter correctly chose to continue the U.S. embargo of its Soviet-allied neighbor, Cuba because he perceived it as a continuing potential national security threat.

After people criticized Carter for using the word apartheid, Carter immediately backtracked, saying that he merely wanted to provoke a dialogue on the Palestinian-Israeli situation. It’s fair to say that the fence is perfectly justifiable from Israel’s standpoint because Palestinian terrorists were flocking into Israel like college students flock to South Beach this time of year. Nations have the right to defend themselves. It’s even in the U.N. Charter.

I strongly recommend you read the entire petition. I’ll guarantee that you’ll agree with me that the Simon Wiesenthal Center didn’t cheapshot President Carter. Rather, it’s the other way around. President Carter has perverted the truth of what’s happened during the Israeli-Palestinian war. That’s why he’s received so much criticism from so many different directions. There’s a reason why Alan Dershowitz challenged him to a debate. There’s a reason why his advisers at the Carter Center quit.

These things happened because Jimmy Carter took liberties with the truth. That’s why the Simon Wiesenthal Center took issue with his book.

MEDIA BIAS? NO WAY! (YEAH RIGHT.)

Now let's sit back a bit here and watch the media at work.

Yesterday you saw headlines in newspapers and heard many TV talking heads telling you that the Republicans had blocked debate on an anti-war resolution in the U.S. Senate. But is this the way things really happened? Just where did the media get this story? Where did the mainstream media come up with the idea that the Republicans were trying to stop the debate?

Well .. it came from a vote. A cloture vote. Republicans refused to step forward and vote for the cloture motion, so it failed. But just what is a motion for cloture? Why, it's a motion to stop debate and vote on the issue in question! The issue in question here the Democrat non-binding resolution opposing Bush's moves in Iraq.

Are you following this? There's a debate going on in the Senate. The debate is over a Democrat-inspired resolution condemning George Bush and his latest actions in Iraq. The Democrats bring a motion to the floor to stop the debate and vote on the resolution. The Republicans vote against the motion. The debate goes on ... and suddenly the left-wing media is reporting that the Republicans are trying to block debate on the Iraq war in the Senate? On what level does this make sense?

If the situation were reversed and it was the Republicans bring a cloture motion to the floor of the Senate, with the Democrats opposing the motion, you can bet your first born that the mainstream leftist press would be blaming the Republicans for trying to stifle debate in the Senate.

The truth is that the Republicans have kept the debate going ... rather than blocking it. But Harry Reid gets up there and accuses of the Republicans of trying to block debate and the media grabs Reid's slant and runs with it. But what would you expect? Reid is the Democrat leader of the Senate! Do you really expect the media to do anything other than adopt his slant?

There is more to the story. Why are the Democrats so anxious to vote on their anti-war resolution and be done with it? Because the Republicans have another resolution they want considered. It's called the Gregg resolution and it was introduced by Republican Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire. The Gregg resolution would state that the Senate would oppose any reduction in funding for troops in Iraq. Harry Reid called Gregg's resolution a "diversionary tactic" and refused to allow it to come to a vote. So the Republicans have in turned refused to allow the Democrats anti-war resolution to come to a vote. The Democrats are afraid that the Gregg resolution would get more votes than their favored Warner-Levin anti-war version .. and that would make them look bad.

Now once again, and all together ... "there is no liberal bias to in the mainstream media!"

Yeah .. sure.

Al Gore says that the Bush Administration is paying scientists to dispute the party line on man-made global warming. Now isn't it odd that Gore doesn't mention that many of the scientists who are preaching the party line are being paid to do so! These scientists know that as soon as they get off the man-made global warming bandwagon their funding dries up. I guess this just slipped Gore's mind.