Carter tells Herr Dershowitz(This the "i believe in the right to TORTURE people if you think them a threat to lives of others " Alan Dershowitz: Loke who Alan? Like Palestinians? "Yeh, like Palestinians, the vermin Heil Israel!!" that Dershowitz--max) to take a hike.
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Carter rejects request to debate Mideast conflict
AP
Boston: Former President Jimmy Carter turned down a request to debate Alan Dershowitz about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying the outspoken Harvard law professor "knows nothing about the situation".
Carter, author of a new book advocating "peace not apartheid" in the region, said he will not visit Brandeis University to discuss the book because the university requested he debate Dershowitz.
"I don't want to have a conversation even indirectly with Dershowitz," Carter said in Friday's Boston Globe. "There is no need ... to debate somebody who, in my opinion, knows nothing about the situation in Palestine."
The school's debate request, Carter said, is proof that many in the United States are unwilling to hear an alternative view on the United States' most taboo foreign policy issue, Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory.
Peace accord
Carter brokered the 1978 Camp David peace accord between Israel and Egypt and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. He said the goal of his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, is to provoke dialogue and action.
"There is no debate in America about anything that would be critical of Israel," he said.
The reference to "apartheid" has angered some rabbis because it appears to equate that system with the treatment of Palestinians.
"President Carter said he wrote the book because he wanted to encourage more debate; then why won't he debate?" said Dershowitz, a vocal free speech advocate who has worked for O.J. Simpson and other high-profile clients.
Brandeis was founded in 1948 as a non-sectarian university under the sponsorship of the American Jewish community.
Carter said he initially was interested in going there. "I thought it would be a good idea to go to a campus that had a lot of Jewish students and get a lot of questions," he said. But then the initial proposal evolved into a plan for a debate.
The school's debate request is proof that many in the US are unwilling to hear an alternative view on the United States' most taboo foreign policy issue.>>
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