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Demonstrate at Jimmy Carter’s Brandeis Talk

Friends in Peace,

Please join our demonstration in support of Jimmy Carter when he speaks at Brandeis University on “Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid,” on January 23 at 4:30 pm at the Shapiro gym at Brandeis. We will gather in front of the gym at 2:30 unless the campus is closed (an unlikely event) in which case we will gather at the main entrance. The groups organizing for this are Jewish Voice for Peace and the Antiwar League.

I ask you to join us and to get your friends and organization to do so for two reasons:

First, Carter is being attacked from every side with few standing up
to defend him. He has largely been left to defend himself from the
outrageous attacks by the neocons, the mainstream media, AIPAC and the
rest of the Israeli Lobby, including Alan Dershowitz who has been non-stop in the vitriol he has hurled at Carter. Carter is courageous enough to tell the truth, and heshould not be left undefended. (Very few peace groups have stepped forward to defend Carter and those that have are for the most part very quiet about it. While it is true that he does not discuss the anti-Arab discrimination in Israel proper, his account of the Occupied Territories and the Apartheid there is the most accurate and devastating yet to come from a mainstream political figure. As such it is a great boon to the peace movement.)

Second, as Carter said in his recent op-ed in the Globe:

“As recommended by the Hamilton-Baker report, renewed negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians are a prime factor in promoting peace in the region. Although my book concentrates on the Palestinian territories, I noted that the report also recommended peace talks with Syria concerning the Golan Heights. Both recommendations have been rejected by Israel’s prime minister.”

It is pretty clear from this that much American blood and much more Iraqi blood is being shed in Iraq in part because of the intransigence of Israel.
From this it is hard for anyone genuinely concerned about ending the
war on Iraq to say that the question of Palestine and the machinations
of AIPAC are of no concern.

So where do we all stand? I plan to be at Brandeis to support Carter. We know that there will be protests against him. Let us not let him stand alone.

I hope that you can join us. And I hope that you tell your friends and organizations about it. Thanks.

Best,
JOHN V. WALSH

JOHN V. WALSH can be reached at john.endwar@gmail.com. He promises to follow up with a report of the demonstration and he hopes that CounterPunchers in Beantown and neighboring precincts will come to the demonstration.