Public Comment

Mr. Spitzer’s latest misunderstanding of the Israel-Palestine disputes, and of President Carter’s recent book, deserves answers. 

Fourteen, to my mind misguided, members of the Carter Center advisory board resigned, protesting President Carter’s book. The board consists of over 200 members. 94 percent of them did not resign. 

The lessons of history must be read very carefully. With the passage of time our knowledge of the exact sequence and meanings of past events becomes less certain. There were three participants at the 2000 Camp David peace talks. None of the three were without partisanship. Exactly why no agreement was reached is not as certain as Spitzer makes out. 

And it is irrelevant anyway. What history can contribute to our knowledge of current conflict cannot compare with current, immediate observations. The precise question is—what is happening right now, on the ground, in the West Bank (Arab Palestine)? It is occupied by foreign (Israeli) troops. That the Arab population is oppressed there is no dispute. 

All sides (Israel, Palestine and the United States as intermediary) have made glaring and destructive past mistakes. Israel will lose nothing and gain everything by taking radical, peaceful steps now. Leave the West Bank. Where is the justice, the peacefulness and righteousness of the Jewish past, of the Book of which Jews are the People? Let is be demonstrated now. 

Israel is a tiny geographic speck surrounded by a sea of a hundred million Arabs who hate it. Israel’s current policy is suicidal. Sanity calls for peace, not suicide.