American politician-martyr

Granted that this is a premature matter to discuss while President Carter is alive and, one would hope, with many years of longevity before him.   But as I witness his painful walk through slow martyrdom, I am compelled to have my say.  His interviewers and reviewers in the book-circuit tour have become hungry lions, some would say pit bulls, with uncalled for ferocity towards a gentle person, former president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.  Merciless as those Romans were with the early followers of Christ at the Coliseum – presumably because of their faith – these new centurions of the media are equally sanguine with the follower of another faith: Truth; or, at the very least, his search for truth in debate.

Why?  Why is something like this happening without apparent rime or reason to a person who is simply trying to express his views towards a peaceful end?  Someone who has an intimate knowledge of the subject writes with utmost objectivity and has no personal ax to grind with either Israel or the Zionist cause? Why is “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” made out to be such a provocative book?  Or is “provocative” an epithet given by the media, one with a strictly negative connotation, to label the unthinkable, the great taboo, in this United States: criticism of Israel? 

It was painful to watch the attacks, openly hostile for the most part; even when that hostility was adorned with a few grains of diplomacy or the respect de rigueur.  It made little difference whether the interviewer was Jew or Gentile, male or female, old or young, credentialed journalists or cable-reporting hoi polloi.  One almost had a sense of discovery.  Eureka!  This has to be the political common denominator for all Americans: unquestionable loyalty to Israel under any and all circumstances.

Some of these interviewers and reviewers, I can sense, would love to tag Mr. Carter as an anti-Semite, the ultimate label reserved for any critic of Israel and its policies; but even Alan Dershowitz would not dare enter such state of pathetic ridicule with a term directed at a person of unquestionable honor and honesty… nor any of the others.

Yes, I’ve watched Jimmy Carter walk his calvary and live through the stations of his cross.  It has been painful to watch, but at the same time it was redemptive to find out that there will always be people, very special people, searching for the truth; and that freedoms, all freedoms, must emanate from that truth.