Open Letter to President Jimmy Carter


Document ID: PHBFZE20070327 URL:  http://www.humanbeingsfirst.org Discussion Space:  http://humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com.



To: His Excellency, Jimmy Carter, former American president, and Nobel laureate
From: Project Humanbeingsfirst.org
Subject: Introducing Palestine, Justice Not Apartheid

Date March 27, 2007


Dear distinguished scholar, humanitarian, Nobel peace-laureate, former President:


As a major public figure who is immensely concerned about the fate of the peoples of this planet, you have admirably endeavored in many notable social projects, including the most famous, Habitat for Humanity. For the past few years, I have taken my children to participate in its annual fund raising 5K and 10K races sponsored by the local university's Chapter of Habitat, and I hope that one of these days I will also be able to participate in helping build at least one of these Habitat homes. I wish more persons of privilege would show leadership in these sorts of inspiring activities, and I greatly applaud your conscionable spirit of volunteerism as a very positive role model for all humanity. And especially for me.

However, in this open letter, I must draw your kind attention to a rather disturbing question that I humbly raise about your most recent book "Palestine, Peace not Apartheid" which is admittedly your very courageous voice of conscience in your continued endeavor to bring peace and equanimity to the beleaguered peoples of this lonely planet. You too indeed recognize that we are equal human beings first - sharing this lonely planet - before we are anything else.

In reference to your recent speech at George Washington University, as reported by the Associated Press and carried by Israeli newspaper Haaretz at  http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/834962.html, where it was noted:

'He said he was not accusing Israel of racism nor referring to its treatment of Arabs within the country. "I defined apartheid very carefully as the forced segregation by one people of another on their own land," he said. ...'


I am compelled by my own far humbler and rather limited conscience to straightforwardly ask you, "why?" Why are you not accusing Israel of racism, nor referring to her treatment of Arabs within the country in your profound book? Why have you so artfully redefined racism and apartheid:

"I defined apartheid very carefully as the forced segregation by one people of another on their own land",


and deliberately restrained yourself from not seeing the direct and immediate parallels with South Africa? Did you come by this restricted redefinition for the semantics of a well known phenomenon, and the thrust of your insightful analysis of the situation in Palestine through whim, fear, or through some "ubermensch" principle of morality?

I have expanded on this question in my short commentary "Introducing Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid" at humanbeingsfirst.org. I have also humbly expanded on the issue of Israel-Palestine at much greater depth in my essay "The endless trail of red herrings" available on the same website wherein I quite straightforwardly deconstruct the constricted discourse space in the entire Western Hemisphere that has been so deliberately crafted in favor of Der Judenstat to continually enable new faits accomplis to be artfully constructed on the ground such that they become "impractical" and "inexpedient" to subsequently reverse! Have you had the opportunity to visit Jerusalem lately? I am informed by its Palestinian residents that it looks nothing like it used to before 1967, with all vestiges of Arab inhabitation being deftly replaced by a European look. Indeed, quite "impractical" to reverse!

While the most notable persons in the world clamor the two-state solution space and artfully continue to dodge their responsibility of calling a spade a spade, settlement of the Land of Canaan by the European aliens is a fait accompli as noted by Gideon Levy in his candid Haaretz article "Netanyahu and Meshal forever" at  http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/835457.html

In this stark reality of faits accomplis that is visible to all, your interestingly titled book is rather too little too late! The only rational recourse today is to outright dismantle Zionism as an organized terror philosophy, and its brainchild, Der Judenstat, as an abhorrent Apartheid construction - a blot on humanity that created it, and tolerates it, while its distinguished leaders continually seed newer red herrings in the guise of sympathy thus permitting the root cause celebra to exist in peace unhindered by "not accusing Israel of racism nor referring to its treatment of Arabs within the country." As a distinguished world leader and elder-statesman of the most powerful nation in the universe, your every word is significant. Why has this word been chosen thusly in contrast to the manifest reality on the ground?

Additionally, I have briefly analyzed your interesting interview of January 25, 2007 with NPR's Steve Inskeep, and your former Historian-friend Prof. Kenneth Stein's criticism of your book in my very detailed essay "Dialog Among Civilizations: Whytalksfail? Part-1" also available from the same website, where I invite you and NPR to redo those series of interviews using the commonsensical dialog algorithm developed in the afore titled document where no unexamined and sacred axioms are allowed to remain unexamined and untouchable. This dialog algorithm is rationally architected to amicably resolve today's most dangerous of disputes among mankind, unless of course the intent is indeed to not resolve them equitably, but rather to perpetuate American primacy and its geostrategic imperatives by hook or by crook.

Such a dialog algorithm is especially necessary in order to avert the looming predatory American war upon a defenseless Iran (please see my Open Letter to Amnesty International, USA), for which your former National Security Advisor has already candidly laid out the following plausible scenario (an imaginative variation on Operation Canned Goods) before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on February 1, 2007 ( http://www.voltairenet.org/article145515.html):

"a plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks, followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure, then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the US blamed on Iran, culminating in a "defensive" US military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan"


I hope you can find a little time in your very busy schedule to examine these humble analyses emanating from the rather plebeian mind of Project Humanbeingsfirst. I also hope that you would find them at least a tiny bit worthy to respond coherently, and not feel it necessary to engage in the amazing techniques of deflection perfected by your illustrious successor.

I straightforwardly challenge your anemic condemnation of Israel, and I hope that you too will respond rather straightforwardly. Obviously as you enjoy the privilege of your position, you likely see the world from the pragmatic lens of expediency and primacy imperatives of a lone superpower state, as you did when you engagingly permitted your National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski to hand "the USSR its Vietnam War" on another's soil with another peoples' blood (as confessed by Brzezinski in 1998:  http://members.aol.com/bblum6/brz.htm).

If it is indeed the primacy wisdom of ideological "expediency" that has informed the diktats of your noble conscience in writing this book on Palestine - which you could have also forthrightly named "Palestine, Justice Not Apartheid" and developed its theme accordingly had you also courageously recognized that lasting peace is only a harvest of justice, else it's acquiesced slavery - perhaps you might share your ideological wisdom with the mesmerized world which is so enthralled with the mere thought of any American President even dreaming of criticizing the "ubermensch" state in the modernity du jour. When you had the moral strength to come this far, why not all the way? What, or who, has co-opted you?


With Warm and Courteous Regards,

Zahir Ebrahim
the plebeian, founder Project HumanbeingsfirstTM
and American Tax Payer

The author, a minor justice activist, grew up in Pakistan, studied EECS at MIT, engineered for a while in high-tech Silicon Valley (patents here), and retired early to pursue other responsible interests. He may be reached via humanbeingsfirst on gmail com.


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