A while back I was watched the documentary about Jimmy Carter entitled Man from Plains. Carter spent much of the time in this film defending his book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, from harsh criticism, mainly from the religious-right.
Carter, who mediated the peace accord between Israel and Egypt at Camp David back in 79 when he was serving as our 39th President, has long been an advocate of the idea that the path to peace in the Middle East begins with the establishment and recognition of a Palestinian State and removal of Israeli settlements from Palestinian territory.
Hitting closer to home, I later read in La Nación that Costa Rica’s President, Oscar Arias, holds similar views.
Carter himself is a deeply religious man and a devout Christian. Has been for all his life. But years ago he was abandoned by the religious-right for a whole host of reasons for which they deemed him religiously wrong. Of course, chief among those reasons is his view on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
This all got me to probing around in the recesses of my own mind about this issue. I used to be a hard-line right-winger myself. But the truth is that no one has a corner on the truth.
The religious-right’s hard-line stance on this issue stems from their view of biblical prophecy. That the establishment of a strong and secure Israeli state will usher in the second-coming of Christ and the end times. Any movement that is even deemed slightly anti-Israel is met with claims of anti-semitism.
I really don’t believe that Jimmy Carter, nor Oscar Arias, are anti-semites. In fact, that very notion is absurd. I have never heard Jimmy Carter call for a dismantling of the Israeli nation in favor of Palestine. What I have heard from him is that it is not right for the Palestinian people to be held prisoner in the ever shrinking strip of land in which Israel saw fit to sequester them.
Palestinian retaliation against this oppression, while certainly wrong (no one can condone suicide bombing), is understandable. That is the opinion of many serious thinking people, none of whom are anti-semitic.
But the real point of this post is not about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is about the conflict between those who think they have it all “right” and the rest who they believe are all “wrong.”
Carter once said (I am paraphrasing) that this posture of preeminence gives rise to an attitude of superiority and even the non-recognition of the right for others who disagree to exist.
Is this not the same view of a suicide bomber?
Interpretations of faith that respect the basic rights of all humanity, regardless of religious viewpoint, are much more appealing to me these days than those which propound the preeminence of any one religious view over another.
Unless we can reach the point where human rights and respect for our planet are more important than being “religiously right”, then I guess violence will continue to reign in many parts of our world.
Perhaps the best hope for humanity are folks like Jimmy Carter and the religious wrong.