See all of my Speaking Frankly About Abu Carter posts in one place here.

14 Carter Center Advisers Resign
Over Former President Jimmy Carter's Book

WASHINGTON —  Fourteen members of a leadership group under former President Carter's think tank resigned Thursday over concerns that Carter's book on the Middle East does not represent "the Jimmy Carter we came to respect and support."

The members of the 200-member Board of Councilors, a leadership advisory group founded in 1987, join a longtime Carter aide, Jewish groups and lawmakers who have publicly criticized the former president's best-selling book "Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid" for inaccuracies and distorting history.

"It comes to the result of deep soul searching and a tremendous amount of angst," said Steve Berman, a member who was appointed six months ago.

Berman, an Atlanta commercial real estate developer, said he was led to resign after becoming deeply troubled after reviewing Carter's book, shocked by factual errors and a message that doesn't serve the cause of peace.

"We're trying to send a message that the issue of the Middle East is very complicated and complex," Berman said. "There are two narratives that need to be heard."

Berman refers to two narratives between the Israelis and Palestinians in contesting one piece of land. "Palestinian leaders have had chances since 1947 to have their own state, including during your own presidency when they snubbed your efforts," the letter reads. ...

James Taranto has more here (3rd item) and links to a copy of the resignation letter here.

*** Update and bump. Original timestamp 2007.01.11.23:18

Say It Ain't So, Jimmy 
Wretchard

It's hard to read Alan Dershowitz's denunciation of former President Jimmy Carter without getting a sinking feeling. Dershowitz summarizes the huge sums which investigative journalists now say Jimmy Carter received from Arab and Islamic sources. And they are considerable. The Saudis bailed out his peanut farm in 1976. The infamous BCCI and Saudi billionaire Gaith Pharaon actually helped with the startup funding of the Carter Center. Carter himself is quoted fulsomely thanking  Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, the long time ruler of the UAE, for donating half a million dollars. From what is known Carter has received tens of millions of dollars from Arab and Islamic sources. And that, argues Dershowitz, is behind the former President's tireless campaigning against Israel. He says so in the most brutal and accusatory terms: "Carter ... has been bought and paid for by anti-Israel Arab and Islamic money." But it is one of Dershowitz's sources, Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, who provides the most food for thought: "seems that AIPAC's (American-Israel Political Action Committee) real fault was its failure to outdo the Saudi's purchases of the former president's loyalty". The sinking feeling is the realization that this is what political viewpoints might come down to. ...

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Jimmy For Terror
N Y Post Editorial

January 15, 2007 -- Has a former president of the United States - a Nobel Peace Prize winner, no less - given his blessing to wanton murder and terrorist assaults against Israel?

Sure looks that way.

How else to read that astonishing statement on page 213 of Jimmy Carter's new anti-Israel screed, "Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid"?

To wit: "It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel." (Emphasis added.)

You don't have to read between the lines here.

Carter isn't calling on the Palestinians to give up terror and murder now as a way to convince Israel they are serious about peace. Rather, he says they can wait until they've achieved their goals at the bargaining table. No need, says Carter, to give up terrorism until then.

Certainly, that's how 14 members of the Carter Center's advisory board read that paragraph. Indeed, it's why they angrily submitted their resignations last week.

That's also how Melvin Konner read it. He's a respected anthropology professor at Emory University and had been asked to be part of an academic group meant to advise the former president and the Carter Center on how to respond to criticism of the book.

As Konner wrote to John Hardman, the center's executive director, in declining the invitation: "I cannot find any way to read this sentence that does not condone the murder of Jews until such time as Israel unilaterally follows President Carter's prescription for peace. The sentence, simply put, makes President Carter an apologist for terrorists and places my children, along with all Jews everywhere, in greater danger."  ...

*** Update and bump. Previous timestamp 09:11

Jimmy Carter's irresistible urge
Paul Mirengoff

Kenneth Stein is the Emory University professor who resigned from the Carter Center in protest against the "gross inventions, intentional falsehoods and irresponsible remarks" contained in Jimmy Carter's latest book. He has now elaborated on what some of the falsehoods are. One involves Carter's misquotation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242. Stein says that Carter inserted the word "the," which did not appear in the original, and thus made the resolution appear more specific than it was in requiring Israel's withdrawal from occupied territories.

But Stein's main complaint is that Carter reports falsely about a meeting he had with Syrian dictator Hafez Assad in 1990, which Stein also attended. In Carter's version, Assad said he was willing to negotiate with Israel on the status of the Golan Heights. But according to Stein, Assad was not willing to accept a demilitarized Golan. Stein also disputes Carter's claim that Assad expressed willingness to move Syria's troops farther from the border than Israel would be required to do. According to Stein, Carter's falsehoods are intended to make Syria look more reasonable, and Israel more intransigent, than was actually the case. So, as one might have guessed, Carter's irresitible urge to cast anti-American dictators in a favorable light (coupled, of course, with his hatred of Israel) has landed him in this latest spot of bother.

Finally, Stein takes issue with Carter's claim that ...

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Jimmy Carter’s heart of dorkiness
Allahpundit

The latest provocative, three-quarters-baked missive from Spengler at the Asia Times. Dedicated with love to all our southern readers:

After Iran let the diplomats go, the provincial peanut farmer who stumbled into the presidency flew to the US air force base in Germany to meet them. He asked the Central Intelligence Agency psychiatrists who were debriefing the hostages, “Didn’t the Iranians know what they were doing was wrong?” Call it the heart of dorkiness: Carter was so horrified by the Iranians’ capacity for evil that he could not absorb the information, even when it grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and threw him out of the White House…

The former president is hard to read without taking into account the southern US context. A partial explanation for his see-and-hear-no-evil view of the world can be found in southern guilt over the maltreatment of blacks. Carter’s chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, heard his first briefing on the Middle East in 1977 and offered, “I get it: the Palestinians are the niggers.”  ...

*** Update and bump. Previous timestamp 2007.01.15.21:44

Video: Fmr. Carter center member
says Carter condones Palestinian terrorism 
Ian Schwartz

[video link]

Steve Berman, one of the fifteen members who have left the Carter Center in recent weeks, appeared on Hannity & Colmes Monday evening to explain why he left and why he thinks Former President Jimmy Carter condones Palestinian terrorism.

Berman’s angst comes from the following passage in Jimmy Carter’s new book: ...