Carter must debate book on Israel

When former President Jimmy Carter published his book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” he was asked why he had included the explosive word apartheid in the book’s title. His answer was that he had deliberately selected that provocative word in order to “stimulate discussion [and] debate.”

It was only natural that Carter would be expected to participate in that debate. To date, however, he has refused to debate his critics, instead resorting to ad hominem accusations. Rather than responding to the numerous reviewers who pointed out specific errors in his book — all of which went against Israel — Carter said that “book reviews in the mainstream media have been written mostly by representatives of Jewish organizations.” He must know that this is not the case. The most critical reviews were written by Michael Kingsley, Ethan Bronner, Jeffrey Goldberg and me. None of us are representatives of Jewish organizations — unless he believes that all Jews are representatives of some uniform and organized conspiracy.

When Carter was invited by Brandeis University to have a discussion or debate with me about his book, he responded as follows: “I don’t want to have a conversation even indirectly with Dershowitz. There is no need for me to debate somebody who, in my opinion, knows nothing about the situation in Palestine.” I have been to Israel and Palestine far more frequently and for greater periods of time than he has. I have written several books on the subject and I have publicly characterized my views as “pro-Palestine and pro-Israel.”

Now I have written a new book entitled, “The Case Against Israel’s Enemies: Exposing Jimmy Carter and Others Who Stand In The Way of Peace,” in which I respectfully but firmly rebut the points made by Carter in his book and in his subsequent public appearances. The time has now come for a full-scale debate between Carter and me about the issues that divide us and divide so many other people around the world.

I challenge Carter to debate me on his home turf. I will come at my own expense to the Carter Center, or to Emory University, to have the discussion and debate that he said he wanted to stimulate when he wrote his book. I will accept any rules, any moderator and any limitations that he proposes.

I can promise, based on comparing Carter’s book with mine, that there will be considerable differences between us. Perhaps my strongest criticism relates to Carter’s use of the term apartheid.

The accusation of apartheid — an accusation Carter has never apologized for or retracted — is more than a mere exaggeration. It associates the Jewish state with an evil system that was declared a “crime against humanity.” To accuse Israel of apartheid is therefore to strike at the foundations of the state itself. It implies — and many of those who make the accusation declare openly — that Israel is illegitimate, racist and deserving of destruction. Just as the apartheid system in South Africa had to be dismantled entirely, the analogy posits “apartheid Israel” must be utterly destroyed. It also suggests that academic boycotts and divestment campaigns, the tools used against apartheid South Africa, are appropriate for use against Israel.

Despite the title of his book, Carter offered no evidence to prove that Israel practices apartheid. Search through the pages carefully, and you will find the word apartheid mentioned only three times. Carter does not even define what the term means. In his Washington Post review, Goldberg accused Carter of using “bait and switch” tactics, by failing to prove what he alleges.

Carter even admits, toward the end of his book, that the term apartheid is problematic: The situation in Israel today “is unlike that in South Africa — not racism, but the acquisition of land.”

He does not add that Israel gained control of that territory in a defensive war, that it has long offered to trade land for peace and that it has pulled its settlers and soldiers off much of these lands in good faith.

There are many other false charges against the Jewish state contained in Carter’s deeply flawed and one-sided book. The time has come for him to participate in the debate he claims he wanted to stimulate. Pick a time, President Carter, and I will be there.

• Alan Dershowitz is Felix Frankfurter Professor at Harvard Law School.