2007 April 18
Copyright © Brian Wright
The Coffee Coaster™

Palestine:
Peace not Apartheid
by Jimmy Carter

The Israeli garrison state continues to cough up humanitarian fur balls

2006, Simon and Schuster, 250 pages

If I had to use a single phrase to identify the main thrust of this timely, richly humanitarian book, it would be a message to the Israeli government: tyranny in Palestine ill befits you... and tyranny in Palestine is arguably the largest impediment to peace on the planet today.

Carter's benevolent yet insistent message is the Israeli government must step up and live up to agreements it has made over the previous 60 years:

• UN Resolution 194 (1949)—following an Arab-Israeli
   conflict when the Israelis declare independence, this
   measure says properties must be returned to any owners
   who agree to live in peace; Israel takes over 77% (!) of the
   land formerly considered Palestine.
• UN Resolution 242 (1967)—calling for withdrawal from the
   occupied territories (Gaza, The West Bank, the Golan
   Heights, and areas around Jerusalem), a restoration of
   properties, compensation for victims, and secure 1949
   borders for Israel.
• UN Resolution 338 (1973)—confirms Resolution 242, calls
   for international peace talks, and various disengagement
   agreements.
• The Camp David Accords (1978)—Israel and Egypt
   treaty, confirms UN Resolution 242, withdrawal of political
   and military forces from the West Bank and Gaza, and full
   autonomy for the Palestinians.
• The Oslo Agreement (1993)—Israel and the PLO conclude
   an agreement and a five-year plan to resolve all remaining
   differences; UN Resolution 242 reconfirmed.

Then several other follow-ons, including:

• Arab League Summit (2002)
• Quartet Group (US, UN, EU, and Russia) "road map for
   peace" and the Geneva Initiative (2003)
• UN Resolution 1701 (2006)

The latter was a desperate measure for a cease-fire following the recent Israeli invasion and bombing of Lebanon (and Gaza). 

After reading the book, you'll realize that, however you slice and dice the peace process, 242 and 338 still apply and the Israeli government simply defies them.  In essence, the state of Israel has decided to keep the land it has taken and to crush its rightful owners under the yoke of utter despotism.

That's a fack, Jack.

Maybe it's not genocide, but it walks and talks like genocide.  Like the Bush dynasty, the Israeli fiefdom denies due process, secretly confines people indefinitely, practices torture, confiscates property, and deports people routinely—and that's on a good day. 

During its messianic 20th-century incursion, the state of Israel has expropriated hundreds of villages and displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their farms, homes, and businesses.  I had no idea of the devastation.  And now the Israeli totalitarian class has nearly completed this hideous West Bank Wall imprisoning everyone!

Where is the outcry?!  In Europe, I guess.

Jimmy's book is igniting a firestorm of outrage from, of all places, the Israeli-tyranny lobby and its supporters.  They say the simple prose of our Nobel-Prize-winning, peanut-farmer, human-habitat-building president "supports terrorism."  Yeah, right.  Where have we heard that before. 

Jimmy Carter heroically speaks truth to power.

Fortunately, there's an active peace and freedom movement in Israel, in the occupied territories, and around the world... just as there are substantial majorities everywhere for getting the US imperial corporatist juggernaut out of the Middle East domination/occupation business. Prospects are good for remediation of these superstate crimes.

Palestine is an important book.  In addition to the straightforward narrative, President Carter provides a clear understanding of relevant history.  He also gives you a glimpse of the connection between the Israeli government's criminal enterprise and the international corporate, US-government-dominated criminal enterprise (the Cartel). 

Priceless.

What do you think?

Cool S/W

Read the soon to be updated first edition of the only FS book so far:

Antonia Juhasz
The Bu$h Agenda: Invading the World One Economy at a Time

105 S. Kedzie Hall on the Michigan State University East Lansing, MI
Wednesday,
April 18, 2007
7:30 PM EST

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