American Hummus

CNN has spent a great deal of time on an issue that they report themselves is not an issue. Most of it has been spent discussing two maps from Carter’s book or whether Dennis Ross agrees with President Carter’s characterization of Taba or Clinton’s characterization of Taba. There has been no substantive discussion of the major premise of Carter’s book, though the headlines tell a different story.

The current segment begins very dramatically stating that a former president stands accused of taking sides. But then gives us nothing. CNN is imposing editorial in its headline. It is a strategy used to discredit someone or mislead people in a very underhanded way.

The only real story reported here is that Kenneth Stein, a Carter Center fellow, is resigning from the Institute for the Study of Modern Israel at Emory University. For more information on Kenneth Stein see Norman Finkelstein in Counterpunch.

Stein apparently resigned because he did not like President Carter’s book and states that he does not believe that a former president of the United States has special perogative to write history or invent history. However, when pressed, Brian Todd reported on CNN Dec. 7, “that Stein has cited inaccuracies in the book, most of those minor, about dates of events.”

This is a highly sensational and dramatic report based on flimsy or even non existent accusations which raises obvious questions about the motives behind it.

Brian Todd reports for CNN:

Brian Todd: What is your problem with the title “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid”?

Stein: There is too much emotion in the Arab Israel conflict already, and I think this adds heat rather than light. When you use the word apartheid, what you are saying is that what Israel is doing to the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories is equivalent to what happened to the Blacks in South Africa.

That is precisely the point that Carter makes in the book.

But Mr. Stein doesn’t explain why the situation should not be compared to apartheid. Interviewed by Wolf Blitzer a few days ago all he says is that there are a few dates wrong.

In his book, Carter describes an apartheid-like system imposed by Israel on the West Bank and Gaza. Apartheid or not, he describes and talks about the horrendous oppression, occupation, land confiscation, and other deprivations that Palestinian people are subjected to at the hands of their Israeli occupiers. The criticism so far is that Carter’s book adds too much emotion to the situation and that there are some dates wrong. CNN has devoted 19 minutes to this report alone.

Clearly, the emotion is already there. Stein is quite emotional himself when decrying Carter for using an emotive term. Hopefully President Carter has turned on not just a light, but a flood light for the American people to begin looking at this situation as it is and not as the US media, politicians and the Israel lobby, wants us to see it.

The other accusation (or non accusation) is of plagiarism due to the similarity of 2 maps used by Jimmy Carter to two maps created by Dennis Ross.

The only problem is that NO-ONE is accusing Jimmy Carter of plagiarism, neither Stein nor Ross. CNN goes out of its way to point out that fact. However, this is a don’t-look-at-the-elephant moment. The issue is reported by CNN to create the impression in your mind that President Carter has been accused of plagiarism, even though he hasn’t been.

The actual story here is not what Ken Stein is saying, but what CNN is doing.

Portion with Dennis Ross

Former AIPAC propogandist Wolf Blitzer, probably still angry with Jimmy Carter for correcting all of Wolf’s attempts at misinformation during their interview last week, then brought out Dennis Ross who he introduced as a top US Middle East negotiator. Ross, currently a fellow and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a think tank founded by Martin Indyk of America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and a member of [Scooter] Libby Legal Defense Trust for Ross’ indicted former WINEP colleague, is a former Ambassador to Israel and was on the US negotiating team at Camp David. One might be inclined to think that the “US” team functioned as an independent honest broker. It did not.

This is how another negotiating member of the US team, Aaron Miller, currently director of Seeds of peace, characterized it in an interview for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

“Far too often, we functioned in this process, for want of a better word, as Israel’s lawyer,” said Aaron Miller … “I say this without any effort to diminish the importance, again, of gaining Israeli trust. [Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger gained it. [President Jimmy] Carter gained it, and [Secretary of State James] Baker gained it. And they produced agreements. They were also fairer and tougher”.

…The “no surprises” policy, under which we had to run everything by Israel first, stripped our policy of the independence and flexibility required for serious peacemaking. If we couldn’t put proposals on the table without checking with the Israelis first, and refused to push back when they said no, how effective could our mediation be? Far too often, particularly when it came to Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy, our departure point was not what was needed to reach an agreement acceptable to both sides but what would pass with only one — Israel.

Robert Malley, another negotiator on the US team, writing on the subject in the New York review of books states the following:

In January, a final effort between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in the Egyptian town of Taba (without the Americans) produced more progress and some hope. But it was, by then, at least to some of the negotiators, too late. On January 20, Clinton had packed his bags and was on his way out. In Israel, meanwhile, Sharon was on his way in.

He says nothing about an offer at Taba and disputes any characterization of a generous offer at Camp David. In fact Robert Malley describes the talks at Camp David in starkly different terms than either Clinton or Ross. And rather than blame Arafat for the failure, he says:

“In the end, Arafat went to Camp David, for not to do so would have been to incur America’s anger; but he went intent more on surviving than on benefiting from it.”

It seems Aaron Miller has it exactly right, the US team was acting as Israel’s lawyer. The question then of whether a generous offer was a made at Taba becomes an academic one. There is no verifiable answer and everyone has an opinion. Dennis Ross cites approval by an Israeli cabinet of an offer to be made at Taba. However, the fact that a cabinet approves an offer to be made is not proof that the offer ever was made.

If Bill Clinton wants to blame someone for failing at Camp David, he should look in the mirror. Had he been an honest broker and did the right thing, things might have worked out better. They might also have been different had he not allowed Israel to practically double their illegal settlements in the West Bank and Gaza during the time that Bill Clinton was president.

When he was asked about the issue of apartheid in the West Bank and Gaza, Dennis Ross responded “everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not everyone is entitled to their own facts.” He then never addressed any facts concerning the word apartheid or identified any incorrect facts that Carter used.

Schmel Rosner, a conservative columnist writing in the major Israeli newspaper Haaretz, writes “Arguing about Apartheid is pointless. There is enough material evidence to prove that apartheid exists in the occupied territories in one form or another. If you argue about the use of this word, you lose.” It would seem that Ross took that advice.

Finally, Wolf asked Ross about Carter’s assertion that US politicians and media are essentially silenced through intimidation by a powerful Israel lobby. In fact he argues that almost all discussion of Israel is stifled in this country.

Ross responded to this rhetorically by asking whether he (Carter) had been silenced by it, or silenced up until now.

“Are we to presume that everything that he has said up until now is a function of intimidation, and now he’s not intimidated?” Ross asked.

President Carter never said that he himself was intimidated. But writing in the Los Angeles Times he cited his own experience with this book as an example.

From the LA Times

“Book reviews in the mainstream media have been written mostly by representatives of Jewish organizations who would be unlikely to visit the occupied territories, and their primary criticism is that the book is anti-Israel. Two members of Congress have been publicly critical. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for instance, issued a statement (before the book was published) saying that “he does not speak for the Democratic Party on Israel .” Some reviews posted on Amazon.com call me “anti-Semitic,” and others accuse the book of “lies” and “distortions.” A former Carter Center fellow has taken issue with it, and Alan Dershowitz called the book’s title “indecent.”

Wolf Blitzer and CNN need to stop misleading the US public on issues relating to Palestine and Israel. This is not sloppy journalism. This is part of a deliberate calculated misinformation campaign. And it needs to stop.

Contact CNN’s Situation Room.