semitism.net

Readers might want to sign this petition to online bookseller Amazon.com.

Amazon has posted a highly negative piece on former President Jimmy Carter’s book “Peace, Not Apartheid” in the “Editorial Reviews” Section, which is normally reserved for neutral, informative comments.

The review’s author, Jeffrey Goldberg, accuses Carter of antisemitism and dishonesty and of hiding his true purpose in writing the book:

Carter…has long been disproportionately interested in the sins of the Chosen People… Why is Carter so hard on Israeli settlements and so easy on Arab aggression and Palestinian terror? Because a specific agenda appears to be at work here. Carter seems to mean for this book to convince American evangelicals to reconsider their support for Israel.

This would all be fine in the “Readers Reviews” section, but Amazon has no business embracing this view of the book by placing it in the “Editor’s Reviews.” Lots of controversial books are up on Amazon without this sort of pointed dis-endorsement.

By the way, Henry Norr, who started the petition, is an interesting character - a technology writer and a Jewish activist against the Iraq war and the Israeli occupation. This is from a 2004 article in the Berkeley Daily Planet:

Veteran Berkeley technology reporter Henry Norr has reached a settlement with the San Francisco Chronicle, which suspended him last April, ostensibly for participating in protests before the Iraq invasion started…

Norr fans, especially East Bay techies, turned the firing into a major cause celebre, setting up a website, whereishenrynorr.com, and replacing the cover sheets on Chronicle coin boxes around Berkeley’s Bart station and elsewhere with ‘Where is Henry Norr?’ posters. They also organized a demonstration on his behalf at one of Executive Editor Bronstein’s public appearances, and called for circulation and advertising boycotts.

The Chronicle’s Monday story about the settlement claims that “Norr’s termination occurred as a result of events arising out of his role in anti-war protests against the current war in Iraq.” Norr concedes that his Iraq opposition, including his arrest in San Francisco, played a part in his eventual firing, but he thinks there’s more to the story. His statement, published in Monday’s Chronicle article, says that “because I didn’t violate the ethics policy the Chronicle had in place at the time, it is clear I was fired because of my political views—my opposition to the war in Iraq and Israel’s occupation of Palestine.”

In an interview with the Daily Planet Monday, Norr went on to say that “I can’t prove it, but I have a strong suspicion that one of the main reasons I was fired is because of my support for Palestine.”

Norr’s July 2002 column about a billion-dollar Israeli Intel plant built on land guaranteed to Palestinians in a 1948 treaty was the subject of a heated campaign by pro-Israel groups, and he incurred further criticism for a vacation trip to the Occupied Territories with the International Solidarity Movement.

He himself is Jewish by background, though not religious, and he answers accusations that he’s anti-Semitic with the quip that “anti-Semites used to be people that hated Jews, but now they’re people that Jews hate.”