It's in the New York Times, so it must be true.

They close their piece quoting an historian who says Ken Stein's severing ties with the Carter Center isn't about academic integrity as claimed but a snit over his bruised ego for not getting the recognition he thought he deserved for the work he had done for Carter.

So now you have the real story from the newspaper or record.

Former Aide Parts With Carter Over Book
http://snipurl.com/14jgo

I am writing about the latest controversy created by Jimmy Carter's latest book on Israel/Palestine.

I have been in the West Bank (Hebron) twice in the last few years with CPT. There I have seen the daily suffering of the Palestinian people. Their olive trees have been uprooted, their sheep have been poisoned (south ot Hebron), freedom of movement is constantly inhibited, Palestinain school children are harrassed by the IDF and Jewish settlers, houses are destroyed, and land is taken away from them. If the basic meaning of the word apartheid is is separate, but terribly unequal development, then this is surely what is happening in the Palestinian territories at present.

Anyone who spends any time in the occupied territories will see the oppressive aspects of the Israeli presence there. In fact, many Israeli opposition groups have arisen because of this situation (Rabbis for Human Rights, Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions, Women in Black, B'tselem, Gush Shalom, Yesh Gvul, Tayoush, Macshom Watch etc,).

I thank God for Jimmy Carter's courage in again bringing this situation to the world's attention. It is especially refreshing after many years of benign neglect on the part of the US government.

Dr. Eric J. Schiller
Professor (retired) University of Ottawa, CANADA

Isn't funny how there are all of these "opposition groups" but not a single one on the Arab side shouting that maybe, perhaps, if they'd just stop trying to murder Jews and destroy the Jewish State, life might get a little better? Odd isn't it?

I guess we do need reminding of the things that Dr. Schiller points out. Conditions must be truly vile on the West Bank. But my impression is that while he grasps part of the truth, he has not seen the whole picture.

I doubt if he had time during his trips to learn of the security problems within Israel, of the devastation left by suicide bombers, and of all the attacks that never happened because they had been successfully thwarted. I don't think he's looked at Palestinian textbooks and television and radio broadcasts that daily spew out racial and religious hatred.

Also, his notion of apartheid in Israel is undermined by one point: The PA is mainly responsible for the quality of lives of Palestinians. Dr. Schiller makes the mistake of assuming that Israel really has total control over the lives of the Palestinians, and so the Palestinians' conditions represent the exact policy and desires of the Israelis. He thinks that West Bankers live in poverty and violence precisely because Israel wants them to. But that’s not the case. The Palestinians were never totally dependent on Israelis, as they have received hundreds of millions of dollars of aid from the UN, the EU, the US, other Arab countries, and I think from Israel, too. Where has that aid money gone?

Separate development, yes, but under separate authorities, and the PLO or broader PA (and Hamas) have never seemed to make the Palestinians' health and prosperity their priority. In fact, at least some of the repression the Palestinians suffer has been at the hands of the PA or of Hamas, rather than of the Israelis.

Moreover, Dr. Schiller has to remember that Israel is at war with the Palestinians on the West Bank (and in Gaza). When that war heats up, Israel will close its borders to ensure its safety. Unfortunately, that also cuts off many Arabs from their jobs within Israel, but then the other Arab countries should step in to create jobs or generate economic links to their own economies. Dr. Schiller does not seem to understand that Israel trying to protect itself. If the violence magically went away, so would the checkpoints. South Africa, on the other hand, was in total control of its black African populations, and was trying to enforce a particular noxious social order no matter whether there was peace or war.

What do you do with a population that will keep attacking your civilians whether you withdraw or not? By not addressing Arab political aims and practices, and by not addressing the quandary in which Israel finds itself, Dr. Schiller gives a heartfelt but profoundly unfair account of the situation. It sounds to me that he may have gone on tours of the West Bank (and only the West Bank) conducted by PA representatives. If this was the case, he should have had the presence of mind to understand that what he was seeing was being interpreted for him.

One more thing: He said that Jimmy Carter was courageous. I would have thought Jimmy Carter braver if he had written a more honest book, not one filled with lies and distortions. If Carter wanted to make for a more balanced debate in the US over Israel/Palestine, this was not the way to do it.

Sol and Joanne make good points in their critiques of the estimable Dr. Shiller's comment. To amplify Joanne's point about his having listened to only one side's story, and a carefully prepared one at that, one should always have a healthy skepticism about one-sided claims.

A claim or an accusation, particularly when it has great propaganda value for the person making it, does not stand on its own as established fact, and even when true may lack context essential for a full understanding. Sol recently posted about how some Palestinians have caught damaging and uprooting their own trees in order to seek for compensation from Israel claiming the trees were harmed or uprooted by settlers. Just because a tree is harmed, doesn't mean Israelis did it, and the fact that Israel takes responsibility for damages claimed to be caused by its citizens speaks volumes. There's a lot of hutzpa in this double-dipping. In some instances, the Arab farmers are gaming the system -- benefiting from Israel's decency and compassionate treatment -- while at the same time using their self-inflicted wounds as propaganda about Israel's villainy.

They claim poisoned sheep near Hebron? What's the evidence, if some sheep died, that they were poisoned and that Israelis did it? It would be a great cover for sheep dying of a disease, and given the record of Arab calumny, it would not be at all surprising if the sheep's demise had nothing to do with Israeli poison.

I'm not saying one way or the other what did or didn't happen, just that it would be wise to take these grievances with a grain of salt.

The existence of these opposition groups speaks to the fact that Israeli society is vibrant and free. Dr. Shiller, what happens to an Arab in the PA areas who speaks out or demonstrates against his government, the Palestinian Authority?