When you mash peanuts you get....... Jimmy

For those who don't know, former President Jimmy Carter has a think tank located at Emory University. The principal academic voice behind the Center, Professor Kenneth Stein, recently resigned his post because of Carter's book. His principal reason was the fundamental lie that Carter is putting forth, i.e. that the "Palestinian issue" is the fault of the Israeli's. More specifically, he has cited Carter's numerous factual errors, with a focus on several "large" errors.

Taken from "The Emory Wheel"

Professor Describes Carter 'Inaccuracies'
By: Rachel Zelkowitz
Issue date: 12/12/06 Section: News

Below is an article taken from the Emory University newspaper discussing Professor Stein's resignation:

[I]Emory's top expert on the Arab-Israeli conflict outlined his criticisms of Jimmy Carter's new book on Monday, charging the former president with distorting the history of Arab-Israeli relations.

Professor Kenneth Stein, who resigned last week from his post at The Carter Center over the book, listed two "egregious and inexcusable errors" and several other inaccuracies in Carter's Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid.

Although Carter has insisted in several interviews that his book contains no factual errors, Stein said the president misrepresents the wording of key security council resolutions and negotiated documents, including the Camp David Accords, which Carter himself negotiated.

"History gives no refunds, no do overs," Stein said in his class on the Arab-Israeli conflict, where he presented his criticisms of the Carter book. "You have to take what is and build on it. You can't bend the [facts] to suit a need."

Stein, who worked closely with Carter in the 1980s, said the former president's first error concerns United Nations Security Council Resolution 242. Signed in November 1967, the agreement has been used as the basis for all subsequent Arab-Israeli negotiations.

In his book, Carter writes that the resolution says, "Israel must withdraw from occupied territories" it acquired by force during the Six-Day War in 1967 between Israel and Egypt, Jordan and Syria.

But the word "must" never appears in the actual U.N. resolution text.

Stein argued that each word in the resolution was carefully chosen and by inserting the word "must," Carter changed the implications of this key resolution.

Stein said Carter makes a second "inexcusable" error in describing the impact of the 1978 Camp David Accords, which details how Egypt and Israel would normalize relations.

Carter writes that the accords called for "the dismantling of [Israeli] settlements on Egyptian land." But the accords never actually refer to the settlements. In fact, the Israeli leader at the time, Menachem Begin, was so opposed to discussing the issue that he wouldn't have signed any document mentioning them, Stein said.

Stein's third objection to Carter's book is that the former president de-emphasizes the importance of U.N. Resolution 242, he said.

This resolution called for the "territorial integrity, political sovereignty and independence of all states in the region." By emphasizing subsequent resolutions over 242, Stein said, Carter suggests that a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict could be imposed on the states by an outside party. That would change the central premise of all Arab-Israeli negotiations, Stein said.

"As soon as [Carter] put the idea out there, he made it an issue of debate," Stein said.

Carter has consistently defended his book's accuracy against Stein and other critics.

Deanna Congileo, Carter's press secretary, wrote in a statement that Carter had his book reviewed for accuracy throughout the writing process.

"As with all of President Carter's previous books, any detected errors will be corrected in later editions," Congileo wrote.

Carter Center Research Director Steven Hochman, who also fact checked Palestine, declined to comment further on Stein's individual criticisms.

Besides his major concerns, Stein pointed out Carter's use of inaccurate dates. For example, Carter said he met with Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad in Switzerland in June 1977 when he actually met Assad in May. Additionally, Stein said Carter mistakenly wrote that Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir resigned in June 1974 when, in fact, she resigned a month earlier.

Stein also took issue with Carter's account of the now-infamous Egyptian Cement Scandal. Carter wrote that "authorities" intercepted humanitarian aid in 2004 and sold it for profit, but he did not specify that it was the Palestinian authorities who intercepted the aid. This could lead readers to believe the Israeli authorities seized the aid, Stein said.

"If he intentionally didn't put 'Israelis' in there, then that's an error of commission, not omission," Stein said. [/I]