Informed Speculation

…is suddenly even less popular:

Fourteen of the city’s business and civic leaders resigned from the Carter Center’s advisory board on Thursday to protest former President Jimmy Carter’s recent criticisms of Israel and American Jewish political power.

Their joint letter of resignation denounced Mr. Carter’s best-selling book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” for its criticisms of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. The letter also took issue with comments Mr. Carter has made suggesting that Israel’s supporters in the United States are using their power to stifle debate on the issue.

“It seems you have turned to a world of advocacy, even malicious advocacy,” the letter said. “We can no longer endorse your strident and uncompromising position. This is not the Carter Center or the Jimmy Carter we came to respect and support.”

The 14 who resigned were members of the center’s board of councilors, a group of more than 200 local leaders who act as ambassadors and fund-raisers for the center but do not determine its policy or direct its operations.

Among the letter signers were Michael Coles, the chief executive of the Caribou Coffee Company; William B. Schwartz Jr., the ambassador to the Bahamas during Mr. Carter’s presidency; Liane Levetan, a former chief executive of DeKalb County, Ga.; and S. Stephen Selig III, who served as national finance chairman for the Carter-Mondale Presidential Committee.

“I felt very passionate about this,” Ms. Levetan said. “You can’t, when something is not correct, sit back. You have to stand up for what you believe.”

Several members said they had admired Mr. Carter for years and found it difficult to resign, but could not remain associated with his recent statements.

“I was very offended with the views that he espoused in that book,” said Jonathan Golden, a board member for 10 years and chairman of the Arnall Golden Gregory law firm in Atlanta.

In an e-mailed statement responding to the resignations, John Hardman, executive director of the Carter Center, thanked the resigning members for their “years of service and support,” but also played down the significance of their departure. Mr. Hardman pointed out that those who resigned were just a fraction of the overall board and were not “engaged in implementing the work of the center.”

The resignations are the latest in a recent string of public defections from Mr. Carter and the ideas he espouses in his book, which has been on The New York Times best-seller list for the last five weeks.

In December, Kenneth W. Stein, a professor at Emory University who was the first executive director at the Carter Center, resigned his most recent position as a fellow there. Days later, Dennis Ross, a former envoy to the Middle East who is now a news analyst, accused Mr. Carter of using maps that Mr. Ross created without his permission, and mislabeling them in the book.

The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith recently placed advertisements criticizing Mr. Carter in several major newspapers, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis, representing Reform Judaism, announced that its members would not visit the Carter Center, as planned, during a coming conference in Atlanta.

Mr. Carter has defended his views, along with his use of the word “apartheid” in the book’s title, saying he intended the book to spark discussion.

The letter from resigning board members accuses Mr. Carter of having abandoned his role as a peace broker in the Middle East, and said his statements had proven useful to white supremacists and other anti-Semites.

Carter brought this on himself; if he had truly hoped to win converts to his point of view, he would never have used such an inflammatory title. Worse still are the ex-President’s blatant falsifications, including those recently detailed by Dennis Ross, envoy to the Middle East during the Clinton Administration:

Mr. Carter’s presentation badly misrepresents the Middle East proposals advanced by President Bill Clinton in 2000, and in so doing undermines, in a small but important way, efforts to bring peace to the region.

In his book, Mr. Carter juxtaposes two maps labeled the “Palestinian Interpretation of Clinton’s Proposal 2000” and “Israeli Interpretation of Clinton’s Proposal 2000.”

The problem is that the “Palestinian interpretation” is actually taken from an Israeli map presented during the Camp David summit meeting in July 2000, while the “Israeli interpretation” is an approximation of what President Clinton subsequently proposed in December of that year. Without knowing this, the reader is left to conclude that the Clinton proposals must have been so ambiguous and unfair that Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, was justified in rejecting them. But that is simply untrue.

In actuality, President Clinton offered two different proposals at two different times. In July, he offered a partial proposal on territory and control of Jerusalem. Five months later, at the request of Ehud Barak, the Israeli prime minister, and Mr. Arafat, Mr. Clinton presented a comprehensive proposal on borders, Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees and security. The December proposals became known as the Clinton ideas or parameters.

Put simply, the Clinton parameters would have produced an independent Palestinian state with 100 percent of Gaza, roughly 97 percent of the West Bank and an elevated train or highway to connect them. Jerusalem’s status would have been guided by the principle that what is currently Jewish will be Israeli and what is currently Arab will be Palestinian, meaning that Jewish Jerusalem — East and West — would be united, while Arab East Jerusalem would become the capital of the Palestinian state.

The Palestinian state would have been “nonmilitarized,” with internal security forces but no army and an international military presence led by the United States to prevent terrorist infiltration and smuggling. Palestinian refugees would have had the right of return to their state, but not to Israel, and a fund of $30 billion would have been created to compensate those refugees who chose not to exercise their right of return to the Palestinian state.

When I decided to write the story of what had happened in the negotiations, I commissioned maps to illustrate what the proposals would have meant for a prospective Palestinian state. If the Clinton proposals in December 2000 had been Israeli or Palestinian ideas and I was interpreting them, others could certainly question my interpretation. But they were American ideas, created at the request of the Palestinians and the Israelis, and I was the principal author of them. I know what they were and so do the parties.

It is certainly legitimate to debate whether President Clinton’s proposal could have settled the conflict. It is not legitimate, however, to rewrite history and misrepresent what the Clinton ideas were.

If Carter has any integrity, he will answer his critics, instead of ducking them, as he has so recently done with Alan Dershowitz, who is not deterred:

The most vociferous attacks on Mr Carter have come from the pro-Israeli Alan Dershowitz, a professor at Harvard law school. In a series of articles published on a Boston website under the title Ex-President For Sale, Prof Dershowitz has accused Mr Carter of having been in hock to Arab leaders in countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The spat between the two men led to further controversy within Brandeis, a Massachusetts university founded by the Jewish community in America. Mr Carter declined an invitation to speak there because he would have had to debate with Prof Dershowitz. Yesterday, Mr Carter announced that he would speak at the university this month, but only after the law professor had been taken off the ticket.

His spokeswoman said he would be happy to answer all questions.

Prof Dershowitz said he would be at the event and ask questions from the floor. “I will be the first person to have my hand up. I guarantee they won’t stop me from attending,” he told the Associated Press.

That’s the spirit!…