MANHATTAN (CN) - A group of five on Thursday voluntarily dismissed their $5 million lawsuit against former President Jimmy Carter and his publisher, Simon & Schuster, for profiting off of Carter's "well known bias against Israel" with his book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid."
The February lawsuit, filed by Alabama attorney David Schoen, claimed that Carter's nonfiction book was falsely marketed as absolute truth. It accuses Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, of misrepresenting the history of conflict in the Middle East, and of reaping millions from "Israel's sworn enemies."
In a statement, Simon & Schuster spokesman Adam Rothberg called the decision to withdraw the suit "wise."
"In the face of a powerful argument for the rights of free speech for authors and publishers, the plaintiffs wisely withdrew their action," Rothberg said. "We hope that they will consider this the end of the matter."
Jerusalem bureau chief of The New York Times, Ethan Bronner, called Carter's 2006 book "a narrative that is largely unsympathetic to Israel."
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