WASHINGTON — Former President Jimmy Carter has become the
target of a class action lawsuit over ostensibly mean things he said about
Israel in his best-selling 2006 book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.

The lawsuit, filed in New York by an Israeli firm, alleges
that the book “contained numerous false and knowingly misleading
statements intended to promote the author’s agenda of anti-Israel propaganda
and to deceive the reading public instead of presenting accurate information as
advertised.”

The five American plaintiffs, two of whom are dual citizens
of the U.S. and Israel, seek $5 million in damages over the book (which is
being sold for less than $10 on Amazon) on the basis that its criticisms of
Israel violated consumer protection safeguards.

The plaintiffs alleged in a press release that the 39th U.S.
president and Nobel Peace Prize winner “violated the law and, thus, harmed
those who purchased the book” by unfairly “attacking Israel.”

Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner said her clients’ lawsuit
“will expose all the falsehoods and misrepresentations in Carter’s book
and prove that his hatred of Israel has led him to commit this fraud on the
public.”

Publishing company Simon & Schuster, which is also
targeted in the lawsuit, dismissed it as a frivolous act and a “chilling
attack on free speech that we intend to defend vigorously.”

“This lawsuit is frivolous, without merit, and is a
transparent attempt by the plaintiffs, despite their contentions, to punish the
author, a Nobel Peace prize winner and world-renowned statesmen, and his
publisher, for writing and publishing a book with which the plaintiffs simply
disagree,” Simon & Schuster spokesman Adam Rothberg told the
Washington Post.