[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 10 (Thursday, January 18, 2007)]
[House]
[Page H737]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


              PEACE NOT APARTHEID: MORE FICTION THAN FACTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KIRK. Madam Speaker, in today's Washington Post, former President 
Jimmy Carter defended his book, ``Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.''
  President Carter wrote, `` . . . most critics have not seriously 
disputed or even mentioned the facts . . . ''
  But after reading the book, I have become a critic and today will 
only correct the facts that he purports in his book. Regarding our 
policy towards Israel, there is little room for mistakes, let alone 
outright misstatements of fact.
  For that reason, I want to present to the House eight factual 
inaccuracies found in President Carter's book.
  Error number one, on page 62, President Carter quotes Yasser Arafat 
as telling him, ``The Palestinian Liberation Organization has never 
advocated the annihilation of Israel.'' No evidence is provided, and 
the book does not contain a single footnote.
  Fact check, article 22 of the PLO's charter states, ``The liberation 
of Palestine will destroy the Zionist and imperialist presence.'' 
Yasser Arafat supported this charter, and he directly lied to President 
Carter.
  Error number two, on page 57 President Carter writes, ``The 1947 
armistice demarcation lines became the borders of the new nation of 
Israel, and were accepted by Israel and the United States, and 
recognized officially by the United Nations.''
  Fact, the 1949 armistice lines were never accepted as the official 
borders of Israel, United States or the United Nations. The error 
reflects a very poor attention to detail in the book.
  Error number three, on page number 127, President Carter writes that 
there was ``a surprising exodus of Christians from the Holy Land.''
  Fact, Israel is one of the only Middle Eastern nations where the 
Christian community has grown in the last half century. But Christian 
communities and other faith communities like Baha'is have dropped in 
size in many Muslim nations.
  Error number four, on page 152 President Carter writes, ``It was 
later claimed that the Palestinians rejected a `generous offer' put 
forward by Prime Minister Barak with Israel only keeping 5 percent of 
the West Bank. The fact is no such offers were made.''
  Fact, according to President Clinton's lead negotiator, Ambassador 
Dennis Ross, Prime Minister Barak accepted President Clinton's 
proposal, offering to withdraw from 97 percent of the West Bank, to 
dismantle isolated settlements, and to accept the Palestinian state 
with Jerusalem as its capital. Arafat rejected this proposal, and a 
quick call between President Carter and President Clinton would have 
corrected this error.
  Error number five, on page number 148 President Carter presents two 
maps he claims were considered at Camp David, one of them labeled 
``Israel's interpretation of Clinton's proposal.''
  Fact, there were no maps at Camp David. The map President Carter 
labeled as Israel's interpretation is a copy of a map that was created 
later by Dennis Ross for his book, ``The Missing Peace.'' Ambassador 
Ross's map is a representation of an offer agreed to by Prime Minister 
Barak and rejected by Arafat. President Carter violated Ambassador 
Ross's copyright of the map.
  Error six, on page 197 President Carter writes, ``Confessions 
extracted through torture are admissible in Israeli courts.''
  Fact, the Israeli Supreme Court banned the use of torture in 
interrogations in a decision handed down by the court on September 6, 
1999, by Supreme Court President Barak.
  Error number seven, on page 188 President Carter writes, ``Kadima had 
been expected to gain 43 seats based on its pledge of a unilateral 
expansion of the `great wall.' ''
  Fact, Israel's Kadima Party ran on Prime Minister Sharon's platform 
of disengagement, a pledge to dismantle settlements and unilaterally 
withdraw from territory.
  Error number eight, on page 215 President Carter writes that the one 
option for Israel is ``withdrawal from the 1967 border as specified in 
U.N. Resolution 242.''
  Fact. The U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 does not define a 
border.
  Madam Speaker, these errors, in fact, diminish the credibility of 
President Carter's book. President Carter is entitled to his own 
opinions, but not to his own facts. The errors I present here are only 
a sampling of the other errors included in his book.
  Now, in the twilight of his career, with many at the Carter Center 
resigning from their posts, President Carter should recall the book and 
hire competent assistants to assure that his future work does not 
reflect such poor scholarship.
  I want to thank, especially, Dr. Mitchell Bard and the Committee for 
Accuracy in the Middle East Reporting in America for helping compile 
this list of errors.

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