THE EX-PRESIDENCY The Question of Carterâs Cash In which our reporter follows the money CLAUDIA ROSETT Did Jimmy Carter do it for the money? Thatâs the question making the rounds about Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, an anti-Israeli screed recently written by the ex-president whose Carter Center has accepted millions in Arab funding. Even in Carterâs long history of post-presidential grandstanding, this book sets fresh standards of irresponsibility. Purporting to give a balanced view of the PalestinianâIsraeli conflict, Carter effectively shrugs off such highly germane matters as Palestinian terrorism. The hypocrisies are boundless, and include adoring praise of the deeply oppressive, religiously intolerant Saudi regime side by side with condemnations of democratic Israel. In one section, typical of the bookâs entire approach, Carter includes a âHistorical Chronology,â from Biblical times to 2006, in which he dwells on events surrounding his 1978 Camp David Accords but omits the Holocaust. Kenneth W. Stein, the founder of the Carter Centerâs Middle East program, resigned last month to protest the book, describing it in a letter to Fox News as âreplete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments.â As this article goes to press, more protest resignations, this time from the Carter Centerâs board of councilors, appear to be in the works. If there is a silver lining to any of this, it is that Carterâs book has drawn much-overdue attention to some of the funding that pours into the Carter Center, whose intriguing donor list includes anti-Israeli tycoons and Middle East states. Founded in 1982 and appended to Carterâs presidential library, the center has served for almost a quarter century as the main base and fund-raising magnet for Carterâs self-proclaimed mission to save the world. In recent weeks, a number of articles have noted that Carterâs anti-Israeli views coincide with those of some of the centerâs prime financial backers, including the government of Saudi Arabia and the foundation of Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, whose offer of $10 million to New York City just after Sept. 11 was rejected by then-mayor Rudy Giuliani because it came wrapped in the suggestion that America rethink its support of Israel. Other big donors listed in the Carter Centerâs annual reports include the Sultanate of Oman and the sultan himself; the government of the United Arab Emirates; and a brother of Osama bin Laden, Bakr BinLadin, âfor the Saudi BinLadin Group.â Of lesser heft, but still large, are contributions from assorted development funds of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, as well as of OPEC, whose membership includes oil-rich Arab states, Nigeria (whose government is also a big donor to the Carter Center), and Venezuela (whose anti-American strongman Hugo Chávez benefited in a 2004 election from the highly controversial monitoring efforts of the Carter Center). A recent editorial in Investorâs Business Daily, headlined âJimmy Carterâs Liâl Olâ Stink Tank,â listed a number of âfoundersâ of the Carter Center. The names were drawn from the annual reports, and included âthe king of Saudi Arabia, BCCI scandal banker Agha Hasan Abedi, and Arafat pal Hasib Sabbagh.â And, writing last month in the Washington Times, terror-funding expert Rachel Ehrenfeld described links going back to the 1970s between the Carter family peanut business and the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, whose Pakistani founder helped bankroll the Carter Center at least until BCCI went belly-up in 1991, busted as a global criminal enterprise.
==================== Arnie; interesting clip. He may or may not have done it for the money; but as my banker dad used to say' ''pay peanuts, get monkeys''.LOL Actually the reasons i did not vote for Carter more than once; 1] He practices peace at any price 2] Peace at any price could be harmful to Israel; harmful to students/appease NEA & labor unions 3]I dont hold it against him or any Israeli bank, doing business with Arabs; but Caters peace at any price track record is simply unacceptable and dangerous. 4- more]Solomon , whose name has peace in it; wrote there is a time for war.