I RECENTLY read Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid by former United States president Jimmy Carter. I must say the only thing interesting about the book, published in 2006, was its title. The book is littered with suggestions of ‘peace’ between the Arabs and Ashkenazi Jews. It is as if Carter was subtly guiding ‘Israel’ to accept peace, or it would be branded an apartheid state. Nowhere in the book did the late president demand that the European Jews must return to their homeland.

It was probably because of his evan-gelical beliefs. The evangelicals in America have doled out billions of dollars and weapons of mass destruction to Israel to kill the Arabs and to take over their lands in the name of religion.

After the war in 1973, the occupiers knew that a divided Arab fraternity would work in their favour. The Camp David agreement in 1978 between Israel and Egypt, mediated by Carter, was in Israel’s interest. The world has witnessed how this agreement has kept Egypt silent even with a genocide being perpetrated by the Zionists against hapless Palestinians.

Carter’s loyalty to Israel was on display once again when the Arabs drafted United Nations Resolution 465 referring to Jerusalem as an occupied territory, and that condemning Israeli settlements.

Carter ordered his UN ambassador, Donald McHenry, not to support any resolution condemning Israeli control of Jerusalem. Though the UN resolution still got passed, it was clear which side of the divide Carter chose to be. Carter is often remembered as a peace-loving, mild- mannered US president, but people must understand what he did in factual terms.

Angabeen Ahmad
Karachi

Published in Dawn, February 21st, 2025