Camp David

In this week's paper, I wrote about the efforts of supermarket magnate and Clinton bundler John Catsimatidis to ingratiate himself with local Republicans in advance of his prospective bid for mayor.

The fact that he's a Democrat, he stressed, shouldn't be a big deal.

"I was a Republican in the 1980's--a Ronald Reagan Republican," he said. "I donated to the Republican library. I supported George H.W. Bush. I helped build the chapel at Camp David under George H.W. Bush, and then I was chairman of the New York County dinner two years out of five under Roy Goodman. I've done a lot of Republican things. "And I'm baaaack."

-- Azi Paybarah

Brian Williams stood up for Jimmy Carter Monday by airing a wonderful scene from the Carter Center over the weekend. At some panel convened by Williams, Carter volunteered a scene at Camp David with Anwar Sadat that is apparently not in his book. Sadat was leaving. Carter changed into a suit and tie, knelt in his room and prayed to God for guidance, then went into Sadat's room and, surrounded by suitcases, asked Sadat's aides to leave him alone with Anwar. Carter addressed Sadat angrily, nose to nose. "You're betraying me and you're betraying your people," he said. If you leave, Carter went on, "I will sever our friendship." Sadat, of course, stayed, and the rest is history.

As Carter told this story, he started to cry. I wonder about his survival guilt. Sadat may have preserved his friendship with Carter, but three years later he was assassinated. The episode suggests to me (again) the spiritual motivation for Carter's valiant book. If he's sacrificing himself, well, he owes as much to his friend.

Patrick O'Connor of Palestine Media Watch has an interesting quantitative analysis on the latest exponent of anti-Carterism: Ethan Bronner, who reviewed Jimmy Carter's book in a predictable manner in yesterday's NYT.

Bronner has written 18 articles on Israel and Palestine for the Times since July 30, 2000. In them he quoted 1226 words from Israelis, and just 145 words from Palestinians. For example, in the Week in Review on July 30, 2000, after the failure of Camp David, and two months before the outbreak of the 2nd Palestinian intifada which has continued for the last six and half years, Bronner counseled that "no explosion... occurred, nor is chaos expected any time soon." The peace process' "positive direction in the long term is clear." [!] Bronner quoted 228 words from Israelis and 67 words from a Palestinian in that less than prescient analysis. It could be asserted that Bronner is unfairly penalized for reviewing four books by Israelis and one book by a Palestinian. However, eliminating those five reviews worsens his ratio, yielding 1045 words quoted from Israelis, and 97 words quoted from Palestinians.

Henry Siegman has again and again proved a leader on the Israel/Palestine issue. His review of Jimmy Carter's apartheid-in-Palestine book in the Nation offers breathtaking relief from the smear campaign against Carter. His piece concludes with an explanation of Carter's enormous contribution to Israel's security.

Accusations by Alan Dershowitz and others that Carter is indifferent to Israel's security only prove that no good deed goes unpunished. Arguably, the single most important contribution to Israel's security by far was the removal of Egypt--possessing the most powerful of the military forces in the Arab world--from the Arab axis that was intent on the destruction of the State of Israel in its early years. Egypt's peace agreement with Israel permanently removed the possibility of such a combined Arab assault against the Jewish State, something for which the late Syrian president Hafez Assad could not get himself to forgive Sadat, even after he was assassinated.... Carter's book provides an important reminder that the Camp David agreement not only created a durable peace between Egypt and Israel but served as a model for all of the major Israeli-Palestinian peace initiatives that were to follow. Oslo's concepts of a self-governing Palestinian Authority, of a five-year process that concludes with agreements on permanent-status issues, of negotiations on such issues that begin no later than in the third year of the agreement and of an armed Palestinian police force to maintain order are all spelled out in the Camp David agreement. And the outline of what an Israeli-Palestinian settlement would have to look like if an agreement is to be reached is also adumbrated in the Camp David accords of 1978, which included Begin's acceptance of Egypt's insistence on the return of all Egyptian territory held by Israel. The magnitude of that accomplishment places the pettiness of the critics of President Carter and his latest book in proper perspective.

Jimmy Carter's interviewers have repeatedly challenged him about Hamas: Why should Israel talk to Hamas when Hamas doesn't recognize Israel's right to exist? Carter answers by describing the democratic elections that brought Hamas to power.

He ought to cite the insight of his former NSA Zbig Brzezinski, who said on public television that as the Carter Administration geared up the Camp David process in '78, Israel was led by an extremist party, Likud, that refused to accept the existence of "Palestinians," let alone their right to a state. And yet the U.S. and the Egyptians talked to those extremists.

The Palestinians are not the only unreasonable people in this mess.

It was why Mortimer B. Zuckerman had bought the New York Daily News .  read more »