Carter offers students trip to Palestinian areas

Jimmy Carter offered to raise money for Jewish and Arab students at the University of California-Irvine to visit Palestinian areas. “I’d like to see the leaders form a combined group and take my invitation to go to Palestine and see what’s going on for yourselves,” Carter said Thursday at the campus, where relations between Jewish and Arab students are tense. “If you take me up on it, I’ll raise the money to pay for your trip.” Jewish students peacefully protested the talk by the former president, who was touting his book, “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid.” The book alleges that Israel is principally responsible for the impasse in Palestinian-Israeli peace, and that the pro-Israel lobby silences pro-Palestinian views in the United States. Jews and Arabs on the California campus have accused each other of intimidation and harassment, and the U.S. Civil Rights Commission cited Irvine in describing a problem of growing anti-Semitism on U.S. campuses.