HEBRON REFLECTION: Jimmy Carter and Neo-McCarthyism

[Note: The following is an edited excerpt from a longer report that CPTer Jerry Levin sent to his supporters. People wishing to see the original may contact Levin at guest.993507@MennoLink.org.]

I have been following with interest, as well as a feeling of having been there myself, the current passion of former U. S. President Jimmy Carter. His latest book, _Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid._ It is about the terrible (and to an extent made-in-America) humanitarian and political crisis in Palestine and Israel.

For several years now I have been calling the wall the Israelis have been building at places deep inside the West Bank a de facto "annexation" wall, designed to pull the most thickly populated squatter-settlements into a greater Israel and keep them there. In time, the Israeli military/weapons of mass destruction-making /political/theological plutocracy intend to absorb the area de jure into the Jewish state. In an Op Ed he wrote recently in the Los Angeles Times, Carter described it as, "An enormous imprisonment wall now under construction, snaking through what is left of Palestine to encompass more and more land for Israeli settlers." What he said is equally true, because the wall--like the fence around Gaza--is also intended to control entrance and exits from the two territories. From now on, I will be describing it as an "annexation-imprisonment wall."

There is a terrific undertow designed to bring him down. Mr. Carter has said that he wrote the book to provoke dialogue and action. The book's publication, however, has predictably and sadly stimulated discrediting characterizations of him and the book's contents, one of the most prevalent being that he hates Jews. These libels and slanders are designed to stifle dialogue, debate, and action where it needs to count most: in the U. S. Congress and the White House. That campaign appears to be succeeding.

But in usual Carter fashion, he is taking the lambasting with good but firm grace. With respect to this issue, he is finding, as have many others, that the closer one approaches the flame of truth, the more likely one is to get singed or even burned.

Those old enough to remember the McCarthy anti-Communist witch-hunting of the 1950s must have a feeling of deja vu when they see partisans of Israel equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism now, just as McCarthy and his minions equated criticism of American racist or social injustices with pro-Soviet communism then.

Neo-McCarthyism applied to the agony of the Palestinians, however, need not succeed so long as decent people with decent convictions do not let themselves be cowed into silence about equal justice in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel. It will not succeed so long as a growing number of Americans are willing to shrug off charges of hatred and bias and stand up for the security, dignity and human rights of all people living in the Middle East.

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