Jimmy Carter and Apartheid

Jimmy Carter and Apartheid - The New York Review of Books

"Of these two books, there's no question about which one is deeper, truer. But it's only the thinner, weaker one, by the old political actor taking one of his last bows, that presumes to answer the question of what's to be done. Above all, it's a political statement, a political act. In a tough review of Carter's book in The Washington Post, Jeffrey Goldberg takes no real issue with the former president on the central issue of the Jewish settlements. "Many Palestinians, and many Israelis, have died on the altar of settlement," he writes. For him this is "a tragedy, of course." If Carter in his use of "apartheid" is too judgmental in the view of his critics, maybe "tragedy" is not judgmental enough, seeming to suggest, as it does, that the settlements were not the result of deliberate and stealthy planning but simply good intentions gone wrong."