Associated Press:
ATLANTA — Former President Jimmy Carter apologized for any words or deeds that may have upset the Jewish community in an open letter meant to improve an often-tense relationship.
He said he was offering an Al Het, a prayer said on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. It signifies a plea for forgiveness.
"We must not permit criticisms for improvement to stigmatize Israel," Carter said in the letter, which was first sent to JTA, a wire service for Jewish newspapers, and provided Wednesday to The Associated Press. "As I would have noted at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but which is appropriate at any time of the year, I offer an Al Het for any words or deeds of mine that may have done so."
Carter, who during his presidency brokered the first Israeli-Arab peace treaty, outraged many Jews with his 2006 book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." Critics contend he unfairly compared Israeli treatment of Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza to the legalized racial oppression that once existed in South Africa.
The full text of Carter's letter is here.
Cynics say, and the former President and Nobel laureate denies, that his walk-back was prompted by the aspirations of his grandson, Jason Carter, currently running for a state Senate seat in the Atlanta suburbs.
What's remarkable about this is Carter's couching of his statement in Jewish faith and theology. Brad Hirschfeld in WaPo:
The remarks should be welcomed especially in light of both the healing they could bring and the deep awareness of Jewish liturgical tradition which they reflect. I wonder in fact how many Jews would reach for the penitentiary prayer, Al Het ,as their model for public apology. Yet here we have a devout Baptist, sufficiently learned and comfortable in a tradition not his own, doing so. That alone is noteworthy.
A columnist in Haaretz makes a clear point about the verbiage directed at the Jewish state in the West.
The problem is the tone of the criticism. Israel's defenders often point out that Israel's human right abuses pale in significance compared to those of China, Iran or Sudan. The problem with many of Israel's critics is the sheer hatred they express. When Iran crushed the protests against election fraud this year with vicious cruelty, the world felt sympathy for the protesters. Few in the West felt hatred for Iran; at most they felt disdain for Iran's repressive regime. Britain's academics tried to impose a boycott on Israeli universities and researchers; they never initiated a boycott against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, or towards China after the Tiananmen massacre. [...]
It looks like Jimmy Carter has realized that he had crossed the line between criticizing Israel and hating it; that there is a big difference between being critical and even exasperated with Israel's inability to end an occupation that should have ended in 1968, as David Ben-Gurion knew very well, and the self-righteous rage and hatred that many of Israel's Western critics express in their criticisms. Carter's apology is to be lauded: his stigmatization of Israel did not befit a man who has devoted life after the presidency to peace initiatives, and it tainted his critique of Israel's policy with a tone that was illegitimate.
There is quite a bit to be unhappy about with Israel's policies and the course being charted by its present government. President Carter makes precisely that point in a recent Op-Ed published in The Guardian (UK).
But as the President says in that piece,
This is a time for bold action, and the season for forgiveness, reconciliation and peace.
Merry Christmas.