Former US president Jimmy Carter apologized for any words or deeds that may have upset the Jewish community in an open letter meant to improve an often-tense relationship.
He said he was offering an Al Het, a prayer said on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. It signifies a plea for forgiveness.
“We must not permit criticisms for improvement to stigmatize Israel,” Carter said in the letter, which was first sent to JTA, a wire service for Jewish newspapers, and provided on Wednesday to The Associated Press. “As I would have noted at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but which is appropriate at any time of the year, I offer an Al Het for any words or deeds of mine that may have done so.”
Carter, who during his presidency brokered the first Israeli-Arab peace treaty, outraged many Jews with his 2006 book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Critics contend he unfairly compared Israeli treatment of Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza to the legalized racial segregation that once existed in South Africa.
Israeli leaders have also shunned him over his journey to Gaza to meet with Hamas, considered a terror group by the US, the EU and Israel.
Carter’s apology was welcomed by Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League and a vocal critic of Carter’s views on Israel.
“When a former president reaches out to the Jewish community and asks for forgiveness, it’s incumbent of us to accept it,” he said in a telephone interview from Jerusalem.
“To what extent this is an epiphany, only time will tell. There certainly was a lot of hurt, a lot of angry words that need to be repaired. But this is a good start,” Carter said.
The letter comes weeks after his grandson, Jason Carter, said he would run for a Georgia state Senate seat being vacated by US President Barack Obama’s nominee to be US ambassador to Singapore. If David Adelman is confirmed as ambassador next month, Jason Carter will be a candidate in a March special election in the northeast Atlanta district.
Jason Carter, who is running in a district with a vocal Jewish population, said in a statement that his grandfather’s letter was unrelated to his campaign and hailed the apology as a “great step towards reconciliation.”
Jimmy Carter’s letter said he hoped bloodshed and hatred would yield to mutual respect and cooperation between Israel and its neighbors. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate has long said bringing peace to the Middle East remained one of his unfulfilled goals.
In a recent appearance at Emory University, he said if he had one more day as president he would use it to bring the “full weight of the White House” to the peace process.
“That’s what I’d do with my one day in the White House,” he said. “Bring peace to Israel and its neighbors.”
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS