Longtime Aide Tells FOX News Why He Cut Ties to Carter

WASHINGTON – A longtime aide to former President Jimmy Carter told FOXNews.com Thursday that he cut ties with the Carter Center in protest of a new book on Palestinian lands because it distorts history to shape the reader's opinion to one side of the issue.

"I just want to be sure that when people write history, people don't do it for purpose of special pleading," said Kenneth Stein, director of the Institute for the Study of Modern Israel of Emory University. "They write it the way it was. They don't try to shape a person's opinion and slide them down a path in order to come to an inevitable conclusion."

Stein resigned Tuesday as Middle East Fellow of the Carter Center of Emory University, stating in his resignation letter that "President Carter's book on the Middle East, a title too inflammatory to even print, is not based on unvarnished analyses; it is replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments."

"I think he's become increasingly frustrated that the Palestinians don't have a voice," Stein said. "I just don't think this is the way you do that."

Click here to read Dr. Kenneth W. Stein's letter.

"It's not just the content in the book, it's that he uses the book to create additional distortions," Stein said.

Stein leaves the center after serving as its first executive director and founder of its Middle East program.

Carter issued a statement noting that Stein hasn't been directly involved with the center in more than 12 years and did not address specific allegations by Stein.

"If Ken has read my latest book he knows that, as the book's title makes clear, "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid" is devoted to circumstances and events in Palestine and not in Israel, where democracy prevails and citizens live together and are legally guaranteed equal status," according to a statement by Carter released by Deanna Congileo, Carter's spokeswoman.

The book, "Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid," was released last week.

Stein hasn't talked directly with Carter, but has been contacted through third parties.

"Ken is one of the finest teachers I have ever known, and has been of great help during the early years of our Center, as an advisor to me on Middle East affairs, and as a personal friend. I thank him for this, and wish him well," Carter said.

Stein alleged an inaccuracy on page 131 in the book of a 1990 White House meeting where Carter cites that Washington was mostly preoccupied with the Iraq/Kuwait conflict. Stein said that was in 1980, not 1990.

"He makes it appear that the reasons people didn't pay attention to what he was saying was because of the invasion," Stein said. "How was that possible? I was there."

"Carter can disagree with me. I don't think if you're president of the United States you have a specific privilege to overstate," he added.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish human rights group based in Los Angeles, has received more than 16,000 signatures to an online petition to "act now against President Carter's one-sided bias against Israel." Click here to read the petition.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the center, who read the book, said people in the Jewish community are outraged at Carter's book.

"I think the point of the book is to be hostile to Israel," Hier said. "I think he deliberately did it."

Hier said the book sides with the Palestinian cause and blames Israel for troubles in the Middle East.

"The reason he wrote this book is because he has become a spokesman for the Palestinian cause," Hier said. "Having read the book, I can tell you these are not the words of a person who is objective, who is trying to see a way out of this. He has come down 100 percent on the Palestinian side."

As for more specifics on questions to the book, Stein hinted at offering more details on factual errors and challenges to Carter's book in his letter.

"In due course, I shall detail these points and reflect on their origins," according to his letter.