Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid
by Jimmy Carter
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jimmy CarterEdition: Hardcover
Published: 2006-11-14
ISBN: 0739477919
Number of pages: 264
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Book Reviews of Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid
Book Review: A very problematic read
Summary: 3 Stars
This book which blends personal accounts of dealing with Israelis and Palestinians with a short history of the last decade of violence in the Middle East has many problems.
1) The use of the term Apartheid, which was employed as an emotive word in order to publicize the book apparently, is inaccurate and the author should have known better. Apartheid was the term used by Afrikaners to describe their regime in South Africa under which some 80% of the population was denied equal rights. Applying the term to Israel cheapens it, like using the word Holocaust, because it changes the meaning and definition of the term. In Israel 6 million Israeli citizens have rights whereas 1 million Palestinians in the west bank are occupied. That is not apartheid, but leave it to this book to change the logic of this term.
2) The book relies heavily on the colonialistic Geneva accords, a series of laws crafted and re-drafted by Europeans, and made for European conflicts, between the 1815 and 1950. Now it is assumed here they should apply to the entire world. But they are outdated and drafted for a different era, an era without terrorism and suicide bombings and nuclear weapons. To apply them outside europe smacks of imperialism. In addition the text relies heavily on the idea that Europeans are 'correct' and thus quotes a survey in which 80% of the 7,500 Europeans interviewed believed Israel was the main threat to world peace. This may represent European feelings, but it doesn't mean that those feelings are correct. Europeans, who mostly smart from not being allowed to control the world as they did between 1750 and 1945, now like to have opinions about all sorts of things that are no longer correct or worth listening to.
3) This book mis-represents the current conflicts in Lebanon and in Gaza, it puts all the onus on Israel for not wanted to return prisoners who were imprisoned for murdering over a thousand Israelis. The book gives no logic over why those prisoners should be released but accepts the logic that all Israeli prisoners are innocent and should be returned. The case is made clear in regards to Lebanon where the book claims that the Lebanese Hizbullah kidnapped Israeli soldiers to gain the release of a Lebanese prisoner who axed to death a boy and his mother in Nahariya in 1979. But there is no critique of whether or not Hizbullah was lying.
Seth J. Frantzman
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