Keep Digging That Hole, Jimmy

For someone who has been opining on the Israel-Palestinian conflict so much over the past few years, former President Jimmy Carter seems to have avoided his homework and not read much on the subject. In response to allegations that he plagiarized materials from a book by Dennis Ross, Carter responded recently that was impossible since he had never read Ross' book. Such a defense is flabbergasting. Ross was the United States' lead negotiator in the conflict during the Clinton administration. In other words, there is probably no non-Israeli or non-Palestinian who is more intimately familiar with the "peace process" than Ross. According to Carter though, it wasn't worth it to read Ross' accounts of the process.

Carter apparently has also not read Alan Dershowitz's The Case For Israel. That book is as comprehensive a take-down as there is of the Palestinians' claims against Israel. Yet, in refusing Brandeis University's recent invitation to Carter to debate Dershowitz, the former said, "There is no need ... to debate somebody who, in my opinion, knows nothing about the situation in Palestine." (Quote and ellipses courtesy of the Boston Globe here.)