SOUL FOOD:Don’t ignore Israel-Palestine debate

The title of former President Jimmy Carter’s most recent book, “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid,” — no punctuation in the title he says — may never stop raising a ruckus. Since the book’s release, his choice of words has garnered him a heap of criticism.

Last Thursday, as an alumna of UC Irvine, I was privileged to hear Carter speak at the university’s Bren Center. He talked about the book, his long commitment to peace and justice in the Middle East and, at some length, the A-word.

In its literal meaning, “apartheid” simply translates to “apartness” or “separateness.” Yet in the sense with which we are most familiar, the term speaks of racial segregation — in particular, the notorious policy of racial discrimination once practiced in South Africa.

Given that, the word is bound to travel with baggage. So I’ve assumed Carter chose it with great care, if with some reservation.

“I make it very clear,” he said on Thursday, “that the book refers to Palestine … not inside the nation of Israel,” and also that “the forced segregation of people inside Palestine and the extreme persecution and domination of the Palestinians by the Israeli occupying forces is not based on racism.”

As he sees it, this “forced segregation” is part of a plan of a few Israelis and their leaders “to occupy, to confiscate and then to colonize the property of the Palestinians.”

The idea of swapping territory “adequate for a viable and contiguous state of Palestine” for peace has, Carter said, been acceptable to a “substantial majority of Israelis” long before he became president.

Though here in the United States, where the minority has the support of “APAC (the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee), the vocal American Jewish community and almost every member of the U.S. Congress,” this is largely unknown.

In looking at the plight of the Palestinians I think Carter found himself — apart from the word “apartheid” — at a loss for words. It’s a word, he noted, already in “wide use.”

In Israel, attorney general Ben Yahir uses it every day, he said. And he mentioned another, calling her only “Aloni.”

More than likely, he meant Shulamit Aloni, former minister of education under Yitzhak Rabin.

In the past she received the Israel Prize and Israel’s Assn. for Civil Rights Grunzweig Human Rights Award.

More recently, she has written about what she describes as Israel’s “quite violent form of apartheid with the native Palestinian population.”

Politicians with cases in Israel’s Supreme Court also use the word, defining it in “much harsher terms” than Carter does, he said.

After visiting the occupied territories, Nelson Mandela and Bishop Tutu also employed “apartheid” to describe what they had seen.

In Europe and elsewhere abroad, Israel’s policy in the occupied territories is debated.

Even in Israel, Carter said, its policy — a policy he believes “is leading to an immoral outcome” and undermining its standing in the world as well as its security — is debated.

Not here. Here, Carter said, “there’s fear — political fear — among presidential candidates or candidates for U.S. Senate or Congress.”

They’re afraid they will not be elected or re-elected if they speak out on this issue.

As for how to change this, he extended some advice.

If, he said, in upcoming election campaigns, candidates will not pledge to “do everything possible to promote balanced negotiations to achieve peace and security for Israel and a secure and contiguous state for the Palestinians … do not support them.”

The former president urged students — who have little to lose and therefore little to fear — to overcome their indifference.

He offered to raise funds for a group of students and professors to visit the occupied Palestinian Territories themselves to determine whether he has “exaggerated or incorrectly described the plight of the Palestinians.”

Many, if not most, of the students and many professors in the audience last Thursday were far too young to personally remember Carter’s great achievements for the Jewish people and for peace: among them, his Camp David Accords, which forged a historic peace between Egypt and Israel; his tireless work while president to win human rights and freedom for Soviet Jews; the first Holocaust museum in the United States, built on his watch and opened in 1978, the 30th birthday of Israel.

It’s worth wondering why such a friend of the Jews and Israel would write a book like “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid.” Carter says he wrote it because we desperately need a balanced debate on what is not a simple subject.

He pointed to “the growth of anti-Semitic extremism and the unprecedented hostility toward America.”

In Egypt and Jordan, countries who “used to be our closest friends,” we now garner less than a 5% approval rating. “That animosity is strictly related to the continuing bloodshed between Israel and Palestine and [the] lack of progress toward peace,” he said.

Carter began his lecture with an anecdote. Pope John Paul II, Carter recalled, once outlined two possible solutions to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. One he called realistic, the other miraculous.

The first, he explained, would necessarily entail divine intervention.

The miraculous, on the other hand, would require voluntary agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

Still, Carter believes “long-term prospects for peace in the Middle East are not discouraging.” He cites a January poll conducted by the Harry S. Truman Institute and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

According to it, 81% of those living in the occupied territories of Palestine and 63% of all Israelis approve of what “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid” offers as an avenue for peace.

I left his lecture nearly optimistic. Then I heard about Emily Shaaya’s response to Carter’s offer to raise funds for students to visit the occupied territories.

Shaaya, a leader with Anteaters for Israel (the anteater being UCI’s mascot) told reporter Marla Jo Fisher she found the offer “slightly disturbing.” Many students, Shaaya said, might be interested in doing that — but she wouldn’t.

She’d go to Israel but “not to the Palestine-occupied lands.” That’s a shame.

Sooner or later, I believe, this debate for which Carter sees a desperate need will be forced on us. Be prepared.

You may not be able to visit occupied Palestine like some students could. But you can read Carter’s provocative book.