I recently speculated that former President Carter's apparent hostility to the organized Jewish community may date back to the lack of support he received from the Jewish leadership during both of his presidential campaigns. A much more informed commentator, Ken Stein, a former Carter advisor and Carter Center fellow, confirms my speculation in the Middle East Quarterly, and elaborates.

Meanwhile, Cathy Young has some interesting thoughts on Carter's appearance at Brandeis University.

UPDATE: If you are joining this discussion without having read my previous post and the article it links to, please spend a couple of minutes reading these before making comments that makes it obvious that you haven't.

Via YouTube, here is a video of Alan Dershowitz at Brandeis asking the question to Jimmy Carter that he would have asked in person, had Carter agreed to a debate, and it's a good one: did Carter, who had become a confidant of Yasser Arafat during the 1990s, advise Arafat to reject Israel's offer at Camp David in 2000, an offer that, although Dershowitz doesn't mention this, Arafat's own Palestinian advisors thought he should accept?