Israeli Knesset Member Yossi Beilin makes the case that Jimmy Carter said nothing Israelis themselves don’t say:

It is not that Israelis are indifferent to what is said about them, but the threshold of what passes as acceptable here is apparently much higher than it is with Israel’s friends in the United States. In the case of this particular book, the harsh words that Carter reserves for Israel are simply not as jarring to Israeli ears, which have grown used to such language, especially with respect to the occupation.

In other words, what Carter says in his book about the Israeli occupation and our treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories — and perhaps no less important, how he says it — is entirely harmonious with the kind of criticism that Israelis themselves voice about their own country. There is nothing in the criticism that Carter has for Israel that has not been said by Israelis themselves.

I think that the American Jewish Community is grossly mishandling their reaction to Carter’s book, not that I’m surprised that the organized Jewish community is mishandling something. Despite nearly unanimous criticism of Carter’s book from nearly everyone I know, and countless more in the jBlogosphere, I’ve yet to find anyone (Beilin excepted) who has actually read the book.

Categories: America, Books, Israel, Jewishness, Politics