What Do You Know? Carter May Have Called It Right On Israel After All

Posted by Bob Lord

About 5 or 6 years ago, President Carter wrote Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid, which immediately drew scathing criticism from the AIPAC crowd, led by Alan Dershowitz. Dershowitz found a handful of inaccuracies in the several hundred points President Carter made. President Carter acknowledged the few mistakes he made, but the media onslaught was so ferocious that his book never received a fair review. 

I've always thought history ultimately will be kind to President Carter. I'm still in the minority, but this may bring my view closer to vindication. The documentary, Gatekeepers, directed by Dror Moreh, an Israeli, has been nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar. Here's how Huff Po describes Gatekeepers:

Moreh's film, which was nominated for a Best Documentary Feature Oscar, features surprisingly candid interviews with six retired directors of Israel's domestic spy agency, the Shin Bet, and offers a sobering look into the targeted killings behind Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories. It has sparked a collective soul-searching for many both in Israel and the United States.

"There is something that I felt while I am here in America, that most of the majority of the Jewish population here are cherishing Israel," Moreh told HuffPost Live host Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, adding that American Jews look to Israel as a post-Holocaust "safe haven." Moreh argues that this had led the American Jewish population to the "wrong conclusion…that they have to support Israel no matter what."

Moreh said this point of view is actually "damaging the state of Israel."

Then, Moreh concludes by pretty much validating all that Carter had to say:

"They don't understand that we are going towards an apartheid country," Moreh added. "By not criticizing it, by accepting everything Israel does politically and especially towards the conflict, they are damaging their own goal, to protect the state of Israel as a safe haven for them."

It's almost like Moreh read Carter's book.