The Blood of Abraham
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Former president Jimmy Carter's The Blood of Abraham was written in the mid-1980s following the terrible slaughter of civilians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon. Carter had been instrumental in achieving the famous Camp David Accords of 1978, which established a framework for peace in the Middle East. But he was troubled by the apparently unending violence there. In this book Carter sought to "understand the roots of the hatred and bloodshed that still shape the relationships among the people of the region" (4). Carter looked to the story of Abraham, "a common foundation for both Judaism and Islam," and related it to the struggle for land and resources that is still the basis of the fighting in the Middle East--as it was in the time of Abraham (7). Carter sought to determine why, despite the strong potential for resolution of all the Middle-Eastern conflicts, the various nations and their leaders felt unable to arrive at solutions. He concluded that the two religions and the various nations interpret the promises God made to Abraham in different, and opposing, fashions. Thus peace can only be achieved when all the countries and sects of the region agree that their interpretations of God's promises do not have to be mutually exclusive. But this introductory material, which gave Carter his title, does not have a great deal to do with the chapters in the book. Each chapter addresses the problems of coexistence peculiar to an individual Middle-Eastern
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e and lets it stand. But he does not raise the question of why this should be so. In fact, in discussions of Syria's and Egypt's relationships with the USSR, he never questions the fact that the region should be a primary concern for this global conflict. The problem of oil supplies is, of course, a major reason why this was so, yet Carter seems to operate on the simple assumption that the Soviet Union was going to try to develop influence and that the United States would counteract it. He never asks why this should be so or what ends the leaders of the Arab nations were serving by playing the two sides against the middle. He accepts this usage as fact and does not delve into the underlying reasons for such manipulation. Egypt switched back and forth between the US and the USSR and did so on a major scale and Carter lists these changes in his summary of Egypt's recent history. He also describes the freedom of his conversations with Sadat. But he does interrogate these major events in any way. What is it in the superpower conflict that made such switching possible or advantageous to the smaller powers? What relationship does this behavior bear to the nature of the two societies between which the Egyptians fluctuated and w
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Soviet Union, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, God Abraham, Jews Israel, Ayatollah Khomeini, East--as Abraham, Syria's Egypt's, Gulf War, Syria Middle-eastern, saudi arabia, middle east, situation middle east, major reason, middle-eastern leaders, various nations, situation middle, carter makes, individual leaders, carter sought, palestinian question,
Approximate Word count = 1597
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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