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"Jimmy Carter Was the Best Friend the Jews Ever Had"

"Jimmy Carter was the best friend the Jews ever had as president of the United States."

Yeah, I couldn't believe it either, but that is what Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun claims in his defense of Jimmy Carter. Actually, it's not so much a defense of Jimmy Carter as an attack on the right wing fanatics who don't appreciate the importance of being told when you are wrong. Lerner writes:

He is the only president to have actually delivered for the Jewish people an agreement (the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt) that has stood the test of time. Since the treaty, there have been bad vibes between Israel and Egypt, but never a return to war, once Israel fully withdrew from the territories it conquered in Egypt during the 1967 war.

To get that agreement, Carter had to twist the arms of Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. Sometimes that is what real friends do—they push you into a path that is really in your best interest at times when there is an emergency and you are acting self-destructively.

...We know that critique is often an essential part of love and caring.

That is precisely what Jimmy Carter is trying to do for Israel and the Jewish people in his new book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.

...Jimmy Carter is speaking the truth as he knows it, and doing a great service to the Jews.

It’s time to create a new openness to criticism and a new debate. Jimmy Carter has shown courage in trying to open that kind of space with his new book, and he deserves our warm thanks and support.

But while Lerner engages in the sort of bend-over-backwards mental gymnastics that would put a Yoga master to shame, he does introduce a new tactic:

Unfortunately, this peace is impeded by the powerful voices of AIPAC and the mainstream of the organized Jewish community, who manage to terrify even the most liberal elected officials into blind support of whatever policy the current government of Israel advocates. Ironically, this blind support has had the consequence of pushing many morally sensitive Christians and Jews to distance themselves from the Jewish world, which makes blind support for Israeli policies the litmus test of anti-Semitism. Younger Jews cannot safely express criticisms of Israeli policy without being told that they are disloyal or “self-hating,” and elected officials tell me privately that they agree with Tikkun’s more balanced “progressive Middle Path” which is both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine.

Apparently, Lerner has decided to use the same technique as his good friend Jimmy Carter. Lerner resorts to the increasingly popular tactic of blaming the Jewish Lobby--in this case consisting not only of AIPAC but the mainstream organized Jewish community as well--for railroading the politicians and alienating "morally sensitive" Jews from the Jewish world. For good measure, Lerner also takes the Democrat's claim that the Republicans accused them of being unpatriotic and repackages it as the claim that liberal Jews are being accused of being disloyal. All this while decrying the "blind support of whatever policy the current government of Israel advocates"--this being the Olmert government which approved of the Disengagement, proposed the Convergence Plan, and is toying with releasing terrorists.

To hear Lerner talk you'd think that he was talking about Menachem Begin.

If Lerner is really interested in discussion and debate, employing the demagoguery of Israel's critics is not the way to do it.

by Daled Amos

UPDATE: More at Discarded Lies (with comments.)

Technorati Tag: Rabbi Michael Lerner and Jimmy Carter and Israel.