Jimmy Carter's book, 'Palestine Peace Not Apartheid

An Emory University professor who for 23 years has been the Middle East Fellow of the school's Carter Center has ended that association over the "factual errors," "glaring omissions," and "simply invented segments" of President Jimmy Carter's new book, "Palestine Peace not Apartheid."

"For the record, I had nothing to do with the research, preparation, writing, or review of President Carter's recent publication. Any material which he used from the book we did together in 1984, "The Blood of Abraham," he used unilaterally," wrote Professor Kenneth Stein in an e-mail to a number of recipients.

"President Carter's book on the Middle East, a title too inflammatory to even print, is not based on unvarnished analyses; it is replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments."

Stein, when contacted by WND, said he would respond later to questions sent by e-mail, which WND supplied.

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But he did talk briefly with Israel National News, which said that he was preparing an article revealing the details of the copied words, and the words lifted "from another source" were being dealt with by "that source."

The resignation ends Stein's 23-year-long work with the institute where he served 10 years as executive director.

"This note is to inform you," his e-mail said, "that yesterday I sent letters to President Jimmy Carter, Emory University President Jim Wagner, and Dr. John Hardman, Executive Director of the Carter Center resigning my position, effectively immediately, as Middle East Fellow of the Carter Center of Emory University. This ends my 23 year association with an institution that in some small way I helped shape and develop."

Stein teaches Mideast history at Emory, and said he'll maintain his responsibilities for academics in the school's history and political science departments, as well as serving as a director of the Emory Institute for the Study of Modern Israel.

Israel National News reported a spokeswoman for Carter, Deanna Coneglio, issued a statement that said Stein's connection to the center was only "titular" but does not address the accusations.

Publisher Simon & Schuster spokesman David Rosenthal told the New York Times he's "confident" of Carter's work while admitting that not every line was checked.

"Many still believe that I have an active association with the Center and, act as an adviser to President Carter, neither is the case," Stein wrote. "President Carter has intermittently continued to come to the Arab-Israeli Conflict class I teach in Emory College."

"Aside from the one-sided nature of the book, meant to provoke, there are recollections cited from meetings where I was the third person in the room, and my notes of those meetings show little similarity to points claimed in the book," he wrote.

"Being a former president does not give one a unique privilege to invent information or to unpack it with cuts, deftly slanted to provide a particular outlook," Stein wrote. "Having little access to Arabic and Hebrew sources, I believe, clearly handicapped his understanding and analyses of how history has unfolded over the last decade. Falsehoods, if repeated often enough become meta-truths, and they then can become the erroneous baseline for shaping and reinforcing attitudes and for policy-making."

"The history and interpretation of the Arab-Israeli conflict is already drowning in half-truths, suppositions, and self-serving myths; more are not necessary. In due course, I shall detail these points and reflect on their origins," he wrote.

He served as the Carter Center executive director from 1982-1993, but he said his continued association would create "the impression that I am sanctioning a series of egregious errors and polemical conclusions which appeared in President Carter's book. I can not allow that impression to stand."

He said history must be presented in context, and understood the way it was, "not the way we wish it to be."

In the book, Carter writes that, "Israelis believe they have the right to confiscate and colonize Palestinian land and try to justify the sustained subjugation and persecution of increasingly hopeless and aggravated Palestinians."

"The overriding problem is that, for more than a quarter century, the actions of some Israeli leaders have been in direct conflict with the official policies of the United States, the international community, and their own negotiated agreements," Carter wrote. "In order to perpetuate the occupation, Israeli forces have deprived their unwilling subjects of basic human rights. No objective person could personally observe existing conditions in the West Bank and dispute these statements."

He said the options for the Mideast include Palestine's "legal absorption into Israel" and "a system of apartheid" where Israelis would suppress violence "by depriving Palestinians of their basic human rights."

Alternatively, he suggested that 1967 borders once again be recognized. But he said international peace is only waiting on "the Israeli government" to comply with international law.

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