In the Dec. 14 issue of New Jersey Jewish News, the editor chose to provide pro-and-con commentary on Jimmy Carter’s book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Providing a “pro” perspective, written by Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun magazine, was a serious mistake in judgment, which served to legitimatize an intellectually dishonest attack on the State of Israel.

Carter’s use of language reflects his anti-Israel agenda. His use of the word “apartheid” in the title is clearly intended to be inflammatory. Carter engages in name-calling by describing the Israeli government as being run by racists and oppressors.

The former president’s discussion of Israel’s security fence is equally inflammatory. He titles the chapter “The Wall as a Prison.” While Carter attacks Israel’s building of a security fence, he never addresses the fact that the fence was built only after hundreds of innocent Israeli civilians were murdered.

Carter’s discussion of how the Israeli government has attempted to deal with terrorism is completely one sided and devoid of any attempt to be balanced. He calls Jewish towns in the West Bank the single greatest obstacle to peace; however, he never examines pre-1967 history. If Carter’s argument is true, then why couldn’t Israel make peace with its neighbors when Jordan occupied the West Bank?

Perhaps the most dangerous notion that he tries to advance is that if Israelis would only make peace, Islamic terrorism would somehow disappear. He never addresses the fact that Al Qaida is committed to the destruction of Western society and the Iraq civil war is being fought between Sunnis and Shi’ites.

Carter’s book is nothing but a polemic, which completely ignores the following basic facts:

• At Camp David in 2000, Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the Palestinian leadership their own state essentially based upon 1967 borders. This offer was met by outright rejection and a carefully orchestrated campaign of murder and terrorism.
  
  
• The State of Israel is the only real democracy in the Middle East.
  
  
• Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was elected in 2006 on a platform to withdraw from much of the West Bank.
  
  
• The Palestinian leadership is dominated by Hamas, a recognized terrorist organization, which is committed to the destruction of Israel.

If an unknown author had written this book, it would probably have been scoffed at. However, since the author is a former president of the United States, some may view it as somewhat credible. By giving a half page of the NJJN to a fringe thinker like Lerner, whose essay is titled “Former president speaks truth — and that’s good for the Jews,” the NJJN implicitly validates Carter’s work. It wrongly suggests that reasonable people might agree with Carter.

The NJJN publisher’s statement provides in part that the purpose of the newspaper is to “serve as a forum for the exchange of ideas and opinions in the Jewish community.” However, there are common sense limits to this objective.

For example, would it be appropriate to use space in the NJJN to debate with Holocaust deniers? I wonder if the editor of the NJJN would consider inviting John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt to submit an essay explaining their theory that the pro-Israel lobby controls U.S. foreign policy. After all, Mearsheimer is a professor at the University of Chicago and Walt is on the faculty of Harvard.

The editor of the NJJN has failed to take into account the unique role this newspaper plays. It was created in order to help build a strong Jewish community. Ours is a Jewish community that is committed to “standing in solidarity with Israel.” It is inappropriate and offensive to publish the views of Israel’s unabashed attackers. Therefore, we must put an immediate stop to using our community newspaper as a forum for those who are blatantly anti-Israel.