Carter Advisers Quit to Protest Book

ATLANTA, Jan. 12 -  Fourteen members of an advisory board to Jimmy Carter's human rights organization resigned Thursday to protest his best- selling new book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has been attacked as unfairly critical of Israel and riddled with inaccuracies.

The resignations at the Carter Center are the latest backlash against the former president's book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." It has drawn fire within the American Jewish community as tilting sharply toward the Palestinians. Scholars have found fault with his fact-checking, and at least one former Mideast negotiator has expressed outrage over what he called "misrepresented" history.

"You have clearly abandoned your historic role of broker in favor of becoming an advocate for one side," the departing members of the center's Board of Councilors told Carter in their letter of resignation.

The 200-member board is responsible for building public support for the Carter Center. It is not the organization's governing board.

The book follows the Israeli-Palestinian peace process starting with Carter's 1977-1981 presidency and the peace accord he negotiated between Israel and Egypt.

It doles out blame to Israel, the Palestinians, the United States and others, but it concludes that "Israel's continued control and colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land."

Steve Berman, an Atlanta real estate developer who was among those who resigned, said members have "watched with great dismay" as Carter defended the book, especially as he implied that Americans might be afraid to discuss the conflict for fear of a powerful Jewish lobby.

The straw that broke Berman's back, he said, appeared on Page 213, in a passage he quoted easily from memory: It was imperative, Carter wrote, that Arabs and Palestinians "make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals" of an internationally proposed peace accord "are accepted by Israel."

"What does that say to you?" Berman asked. "It says they can stop when they get their state. He's condoning terror as a means of obtaining the objective of a Palestinian state."

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, said Carter "has only himself to blame" for the resignations because the book was "blatantly one-sided and unbecoming of a former president."

Also, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, which represents nearly 2,000 Reform rabbis, said Thursday it would cancel its visit to the Carter Center in protest over the book when the group holds its convention in Atlanta in March.