Interesting Blog Exchange on Jimmy Carter and Apartheid

I received information about this interesting exchange today from Sojourners who run an interesting God's Politics Blog in Beliefnet. This recent exchange is occassioned by the use of the Apartheid on Jimmy Carter's recent book "Palestine: Peace or Apartheid." President Carter in an interview with Larry King Live on CNN recently admitted that the use of the term "Apartheid" was to provoke discussion on Israel/Palestine which was seriously lacking in the United States. Judging by the following blog exchange, he has certainly succeeded.

I quote from God's Politics Blog:

Beliefnet recently invited the God's Politics Blog to participate in a discussion of the controversy surrounding Jimmy Carter's new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. We invited Israeli peace activist Jeff Halper to respond. Here's the discussion, in order of posts:

Rabbi Eliyahu Stern: A President's Foul Play
Jeff Halper: Yes Virginia, It Is Apartheid
Rabbi Joshua Waxman: Twisting the Truth
Jeff Halper: Untwisting 'the Truth'
Rabbi Susan Grossman: Israel's Good Fences Against Bad Neighbors
Jeff Halper: Moral Blindness
Rabbi Eliyahu Stern: Mr. Halper, Please Respond to the Facts
Jeff Halper: The Occupation is the Issue

The Bloggers:

Rabbi Susan Grossman, a Conservative rabbi, is the rabbi of Beth Shalom Congregation in Columbia, Maryland. She was one of the first women to receive rabbinical ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary. She serves on the Committee for Jewish Law and Standards of the Conservative Movement (CJLS). Before entering the rabbinate, she directed Holocaust programming for the National Jewish Resource Center (now CLAL) under Rabbi Yitz Greenberg and worked for many years as a journalist and editor. Rabbi Grossman has lectured and written widely on Jewish law and tradition and on the role of women in Judaism.

Rabbi Eliyahu Stern, an Orthodox rabbi, received rabbinic ordination and an M.A. in Talmud from Yeshiva University. After leaving Yeshiva he moved to Berkeley, California where he was a Koret Fellow in Judaic Studies at U.C. Berkeley. Currently, he is scholar-in-residence at Park East Synagogue and is in the process of completing a Ph.D. in Jewish Studies at University of California Berkeley.

Rabbi Joshua Waxman, a Reconstructionist rabbi, is the spiritual leader of Or Hadash: A Reconstructionist Congregation, located in Fort Washington, PA. Before graduating from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 2003, he studied Russian history and literature at Harvard University, worked with progressive Jewish communities in the former Soviet Union, and studied in Israel. He is a member of the faculty of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in the Biblical Civilizations Department.


Jeff Halper is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House demolitions (ICAHD) and a Professor of Anthropology at Ben Gurion University. He has lived in Israel since 1973. Jeff has researched and written extensively on Israeli society and is the author of the book Between Redemption and Revival: the Jewish Yishuv in Jerusalem in the nineteenth century, Westview, 1991. Jeff founded and directed IsraelÍs Committee to Save the Ethiopian Jews. He has been active in the Israeli peace movement for many years. As the Coordinator of ICAHD, he has forged a new mode of Israeli peace activity based on non-violent direct action and civil disobedience to the Israeli Occupation authorities and in close cooperation with Palestinian organizations. Jeff is married and has three children