Good Lord

Alan Dershowitz has just launched a devastating attack on Jimmy Carter, who Dershowitz used to work for. This is very, very serious stuff.

Recent disclosures of Carter's extensive financial connections  to Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi Arabia, had deeply shaken my belief in his integrity. When I was first told that he received a  monetary reward in the name of Shiekh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, and kept the money, even after Harvard returned money from the same source because of its anti-Semitic history, I simply did not believe it. How  could a man of such apparent integrity enrich himself with dirty money  from so dirty a source?
 
And let there be no mistake about how dirty the Zayed Foundation is. I know because I was involved, in a small way, in helping to persuade Harvard University to return more than $2 million that the financially strapped Divinity School received from this source.  Initially, I was reluctant to put pressure on Harvard to turn back money  for the Divinity School, but then a student at the Divinity School, Rachael Lea Fish showed me the facts.  

They were staggering. I was amazed that in the twenty-first  century there were still foundations that espoused these views. The Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up, a think-tank funded by the Shiekh and run by his son, hosted speakers who called Jews "the enemies of all nations," attributed the assassination of John Kennedy to Israel and the Mossad and the 9/11 attacks to the United States' own military, and stated that the Holocaust was a "fable." (They also hosted a speech by Jimmy Carter.) To its credit, Harvard turned the money back. To his discredit, Carter did not.

It actually gets worse for Carter from there:

The Carter Center's mission statement claims that "The Center is nonpartisan and acts as a neutral party in dispute resolution activities." How can that be, given that its coffers are full of Arab money, and that its focus is away from significant Arab abuses and on Israel's far less serious ones?

No reasonable person can dispute therefore that Jimmy Carter has been and remains dependent on Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi  Arabia. Does this mean that Carter has necessarily been influenced in  his thinking about the Middle East by receipt of such enormous amounts of money? Ask Carter.

The entire premise of his criticism of Jewish influence on American foreign policy is that money talks. It is Carter, not me, who has made the point that if politicians receive money from  Jewish sources, then they are not free to decide issues regarding the Middle East for themselves. It is Carter, not me, who has argued that distinguished reporters cannot honestly report on the Middle East  because they are being paid by Jewish money. So, by Carter's own  standards, it would be almost economically "suicidal" for Carter "to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine."

By Carter's own standards, therefore, his views on the Middle East must be discounted. It is certainly possible that he now believes them. Money, particularly large amounts of money, has a way of persuading people to a particular position. It would not surprise me if Carter, having received so much Arab money, is now honestly committed to their cause. But his failure to disclose the extent of his financial dependence on Arab money, and the absence of any self reflection on  whether the receipt of this money has unduly influenced his views, is a form of deception bordering on corruption.

I have long held Jimmy Carter in contempt – I had the misfortune of living through his misbegotten presidency. But this is absolutely breathtaking. That Carter has long been a biased – badly biased – figure in the world should have been pretty apparent to even the the most clueless. Carter has never, apparently, found a dictator he couldn't feel good about. But Dershowitz makes a very strong case that Carter is bought and paid for. And Michael Moore tried to charge that the Bush family had Saudi ties. No wonder the two were so chummy at the 2004 Democratic convention. They were covering one another.

History will judge Jimmy Carter very, very harshly. Much more so than I can.

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  By Lars Walker, April 28, 2007 @ 6:25 am

  Despicable. The word “hypocrite” is overused in our time, but it fits here.

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  By Purple Avenger, April 28, 2007 @ 7:42 am

  Not to wish him ill or anything…but his state funeral will be something I’ll definitely consider attending….so I can be sure he stays planted.

Other Links to this Post

1. empty rhetoric carter and moral authority « — April 28, 2007 @ 4:11 pm