Sing Along with Jimmy

The founder of the Middle East program at Jimmy Carter’s Carter Center has resigned in disgust at the former president’s anti-Israel, pro-Hamas book. A longtime aide to Jimmy Carter has resigned from the Carter Center think tank, calling the former president’s new book on Israel and the Arabs one-sided and filled with errors.

Kenneth Stein, the Carter Center’s first executive director and founder of its Middle East program, sent a letter that bluntly criticized the book to Carter and others.

Stein wrote that the book, “Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid,” was replete with factual errors, material copied from other sources and “simply invented segments,” according to an excerpt of the letter published by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The Emory University professor, who teaches Middle Eastern history and political science, said he picked up a copy of Carter's latest book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" last week. After reading it, he decided to resign.

Stein bluntly criticized the book in a letter to Carter, Emory President Jim Wagner and John Hardman, the Carter Center's current executive director.

"President Carter's book on the Middle East, a title too inflammatory to even print, is not based on unvarnished analysis; it is replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments," Stein wrote. "Aside from the one-sided nature of the book, meant to provoke, there are recollections cited from meetings where I was the third person in the room, and my notes of those meetings show little similarity to points claimed in the book."

In a statement Tuesday evening, Carter said he regretted the resignation.

"If Ken has read my latest book, he knows that, as the book's title makes clear, 'Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid' is devoted to circumstances and events in Palestine and not in Israel, where democracy prevails and citizens live together and are legally guaranteed equal status," he wrote. "I would like to confirm his statement that he was not involved in writing the text or in the choice of a title.

"Ken is one of the finest teachers I have ever known, and has been of great help during the early years of our center, as an adviser to me on Middle East affairs, and as a personal friend. I thank him for this, and wish him well."

Stein's relationship with Carter dates to the early 1980s. He accompanied Carter to the Middle East in 1983, 1987 and 1989 and once said of the 39th president: "He did more to bring Israelis and Arabs together than any other president." More...

Jimmy Carter not only disgraced himself and demoralized a nation as Commander in Chief during the Iranian Hostage Crisis in 1979 in a botched raid to rescue 52 U.S. hostages in Tehran but now proceeds to attempt to out do himself with his latest book providing solidarity to Hamas. To think they gave this guy the Nobel Peace Prize along side Yassir Arafat, who's organization, the PLO, defined the word terrorism for the world during the 70s and 80s.

There are enough dolts as American presidents to go around in both parties, and then some.

Tags: middle-east, world-news, terrorism, carter, hamas, zz