Jeffrey Goldberg on Jimmy Carter: My Complaints

Earlier today Michael shvitzed about Jewcy editorial advisor Jeffrey Goldberg’s critical review of Jimmy Carter’s Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. I haven’t yet read Carter’s book, so I’m not in a position to evaluate most of Goldberg’s review. However, two of the review’s shortcomings stand independent of the content of the book.

Goldberg opens his review with a story from the beginning of Carter’s book:

On his first visit to the Jewish state in the early 1970s, Carter, who was then still the governor of Georgia, met with Prime Minister Golda Meir, who asked Carter to share his observations about his visit. Such a mistake she never made.

"With some hesitation," Carter writes, "I said that I had long taught lessons from the Hebrew Scriptures and that a common historical pattern was that Israel was punished whenever the leaders turned away from devout worship of God. I asked if she was concerned about the secular nature of her Labor government."

Goldberg finds this story “strange and revealing”—Carter’s view of the conflict is “faith-based”. Goldberg thinks that’s bad, and I agree with him. Any patterns that Carter believes he has discerned in the Bible are worse than irrelevant to the modern Arab-Israeli conflict. I’m amazed that any head-of-state discussing a modern conflict between states would publicly acknowledge that his opinions are molded by scripture.

My problem, however, is that Bill Clinton—who Goldberg compares favorably to Carter and praises as a President with a wise and balanced approach to Israel/Palestine—made far more outlandish statements about how deeply his Christianity informed his view of the conflict. And he did so in far more public and inappropriate settings.

Here is Clinton speaking on the floor of the Knesset in October of 1994:

The truth is that the only time my wife and I ever came to Israel before today was 13 years ago with my pastor on a religious mission. I was then out of office. I was the youngest former governor in the history of the United States. No one thought I would ever be here – perhaps my mother, no one else. We visited the holy sites. I relived the history of the Bible, of your Scriptures and mine. And I formed a bond with my pastor. Later, when he became desperately ill, he said he thought I might one day become President, and he said, more bluntly than the Prime Minister did: 'If you abandon Israel, God will never forgive you.' He said it was God's will that Israel, the biblical home of the people of Israel, continue for ever and ever.

So I say to you tonight, my friends…here on earth, God's will must truly be our own.

Clinton’s speech, I’ve read, was met with rapturous applause by the assembled Knesset members.

So what to make of this?

If we Jews are comfortable with Clinton’s frank statements that scripture tells him to support Israel, then we cannot expect others to take seriously our alarm when someone such as Carter spouts scripture while criticizing Israel. At least, we must acknowledge that our objection is not to Carter's religious approach to the conflict, but to his criticisms of Israel.

My second objection to the review: I agree with Goldberg that it is ludicrous to claim that a vigorous, pluralistic democracy such as Israel exists under “apartheid”. This is obviously not the case, as is clear to anyone who has ever visited, and I’ve spent a great deal of time arguing this to left-wing critics of Israel. But it is vastly different—and, at the very least, far more credible—to argue that the regime imposed in the West Bank is comparable in significant respects to apartheid. I’ve seen the West Bank from both sides (as has Goldberg), both from Palestinian areas and from Jewish settlements, the latter including the settlement where my cousin lives in Gush Talmonim. Though I agree with Golderg (and Carter) that it is not racism that motivates the settlers but instead desire for land, the presence of different roads for members of different religions, as well as generally different administrative infrastucture, make a description of the West Bank as characterized by “apartheid” far less absurd than such a description Israel.

Carter has stated clearly in interviews that Israel is a democracy and not in a state of apartheid, and that his application of that term is to the West Bank alone. Yet Goldberg fudges this distinction and allows us to conclude that Carter’s use of the word apartheid applies to all of mandate Palestine. His review is weaker for it, as it is for the double-standard applied to Clinton and Carter’s “faith-based” approach to the conflict.