Carter Center fellow quits after reading Carter's new book

[Rogue 9]

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Adviser breaks with Carter on Mideast book
Facts distorted, longtime associate says

By CHRISTIAN BOONE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 12/06/06

A longtime adviser to former President Jimmy Carter has resigned his position as a Carter Center fellow for Middle East Affairs in response to Carter's new book.

"Being president doesn't give one the prerogative to bend the facts to reach a prescribed reality," said Kenneth Stein, the first executive director of the Carter Center.

The Emory University professor, who teaches Middle Eastern history and political science, said he picked up a copy of Carter's latest book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" last week. After reading it, he decided to resign.

Stein bluntly criticized the book in a letter to Carter, Emory President Jim Wagner and John Hardman, the Carter Center's current executive director.

"President Carter's book on the Middle East, a title too inflammatory to even print, is not based on unvarnished analysis; it is replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments," Stein wrote. "Aside from the one-sided nature of the book, meant to provoke, there are recollections cited from meetings where I was the third person in the room, and my notes of those meetings show little similarity to points claimed in the book."

In a statement Tuesday evening, Carter said he regretted the resignation.

"If Ken has read my latest book, he knows that, as the book's title makes clear, 'Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid' is devoted to circumstances and events in Palestine and not in Israel, where democracy prevails and citizens live together and are legally guaranteed equal status," he wrote. "I would like to confirm his statement that he was not involved in writing the text or in the choice of a title.

"Ken is one of the finest teachers I have ever known, and has been of great help during the early years of our center, as an adviser to me on Middle East affairs, and as a personal friend. I thank him for this, and wish him well."

Stein's relationship with Carter dates to the early 1980s. He accompanied Carter to the Middle East in 1983, 1987 and 1989 and once said of the 39th president: "He did more to bring Israelis and Arabs together than any other president."

"Someone asked me if this was hard," Stein said Tuesday. "I'm sad but not sorry. I'm sad I had to resign, but not sorry I did."

The two have clashed before.

"They are known for having a passionate, up-and-down relationship," said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, who wrote "The Unfinished Presidency" about the Carter administration.

Brinkley writes of a visit by Carter to Syria in the late 1980s in which the former president criticized alleged Israeli human rights abuses.

"Ken Stein questioned the former president's tactic in a candid letter to his boss on March 23: 'If you continue on the course of only criticizing, or minimizing Israel in your public presentations, you will be doing yourself a potentially devastating disservice, particularly if you want to be re-engaged in any capacity in future Middle East diplomacy. The American and Israeli press have made you the bogey man.' "