Fake "Elders" condemned Israel without knowing the facts

Elder of Ziyon
17 October '10

To give an idea of how fair-minded the "Elders" who are now visiting Gaza are, I just found their press release about the Mavi Marmara raid, drafted within a few hours of the first sketchy news reports. I annotated it by pointing out just a few of their outright lies and false assumptions.

31 May 2010
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Elders have condemned the reported killing by Israeli forces of more than a dozen people [nine people] who were attempting to deliver relief supplies [Mavi Marmara had no aid; they refused offers to deliver the aid via Israel; their goal was political and not to deliver aid] to the Gaza strip by sea.

Meeting in Johannesburg, the independent group of eminent global leaders repeated their call for an end to the blockade on Gaza. They called for a full investigation of last night’s incident and urged the UN Security Council to debate the situation with a view to mandating action to end the closure of the Gaza Strip.[So the Elders weren't upset at the deaths, they wanted to leverage them to pressure Israel to lessen its security.]

Overnight, Israeli troops stormed at least one ship in a flotilla of vessels carrying 10,000 tonnes of relief supplies to Gaza. [Closer to 1500 tons of mostly useless supplies] Around 600 people are on board the six cargo and passenger boats.

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What Carter Missed in the Middle East

Elliot Abrams
Washington Post
08 September 09

In an op-ed on Sunday ["The Elders' View of the Middle East"], former president Jimmy Carter, speaking on behalf of a self-appointed group of "Elders," described a rapacious Israel facing long-suffering, blameless Palestinians, who are contemplating a "nonviolent civil rights struggle" in which "their examples would be Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela."

As with most of Carter's recent statements about Israel and the Palestinians, instead of facts we get vignettes from recent Carter travels. And while he finds "a growing sense of concern and despair" among "increasingly desperate" Palestinians, polls do not sustain this view. The most recent survey by the leading Palestinian pollster, Khalil Shikaki (done in August, the same month Carter visited), shows "considerable improvement in public perception of personal and family security and safety in the West Bank and a noticeable decrease in public perception of the existence of corruption in [Palestinian Authority] institutions." This does not sound like despair. In fact, positive views of personal and family safety and security in the West Bank stood at 25 percent four years ago, 35 percent two years ago and 43 percent a year ago, and they have risen to 58 percent in the past year, Shikaki reports. There are other ways to measure quality of life in the West Bank: The International Monetary Fund recently stated that "macroeconomic conditions in the West Bank have improved" largely because "Israeli restrictions on internal trade and the passage of people have been relaxed significantly."

The IMF predicts that "continuation of the relaxation of restrictions could result in real GDP growth of 7% for 2009 as a whole," a rate of growth that would be far in excess of ours -- or Israel's.

Carter's efforts to portray life among the Palestinians as unbearable and getting worse are belied by data. His efforts to blame Israel for all the problems that do exist are equally unpersuasive, and the best example is Gaza.

Carter states that Gaza is a "walled-in ghetto" and that "Israel prevents any cement, lumber, seeds, fertilizer and hundreds of other needed materials from entering through Gaza's gates." But Gaza is not an enclave surrounded by Israel; it has a border with Egypt. Every commodity that Carter says is needed can be supplied by Egypt, a point he overlooks in his efforts to blame Palestinian problems exclusively on the Jewish state.

Similarly, he says that "[s]ome additional goods from Egypt reach Gaza through underground tunnels," phrasing that suggests the "additional goods" may help reduce shortages. In fact, they include missiles and rockets, thousands of which have been fired into Israel since its troops left Gaza in 2005. While Carter warns that a Palestinian "civil rights struggle" is in the offing, he says nothing about Palestinian violence in the real world -- in which Palestinian terrorist groups continue to attack Israel and where all of Gaza is, of course, in the hands of one such group, Hamas.

Carter claims that the expansion of Israeli settlements is "rapidly" taking Palestinian land. Yet four years ago Israel gave up the Gaza Strip and all the settlements there (plus four small West Bank settlements); moreover, Carter presents no data suggesting that Israel's West Bank settlements are actually expanding physically. Their population is growing, but new construction is almost all "up and in," meaning that the impact on Palestinians is limited -- and that the picture Carter paints of a rapidly disappearing Palestine is inaccurate.

Most inaccurate of all, and most bizarre, is Carter's claim that "a total freeze of settlement expansion is the key" to a peace agreement. Not a halt to terrorism, not the building of Palestinian institutions, not the rule of law in the West Bank, not the end of Hamas rule in Gaza -- no, the sole "key" is Israeli settlements. Such a conclusion fits with Carter's general approach, in which there are no real Palestinians, just victims of Israel. The century of struggle between moderate and radical Palestinians, and the victories of terrorists from Haj Amin al-Husseini to Yasser Arafat, are forgotten; the Hamas coup in Gaza is unmentioned; indeed the words "Hamas" and "terrorism" do not appear in Carter's column. Instead of appealing for support for the serious and practical work of institution-building that the Palestinian Authority has begun, Carter fantasizes about a "nonviolent civil rights struggle" that bears no relationship to the terrorist violence that has plagued Palestinian society, and killed Israelis, for decades. Carter's portrait demonizes Israelis and, not coincidentally, it infantilizes Palestinians, who are accorded no real responsibility for their fate or future. If this is "the Elders' view of the Middle East," we and our friends in that region are fortunate that this group of former officials is no longer in power.

The writer, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, served as a deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration.
Related: Despair, Indeed
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Bilin Journal

In Village, Palestinians See Model for Their Cause

Ethan Bronner
New York Times
30 August 09

(As Ethan Bronner seems to be captive to his own mind's narrative, in conjunction with the "Elders" arrival on location, a closer look may be in order. Perhaps a simple Youtube on location could provide a more accurate picture of the weekly setting. Ni'ilin is a neighboring village just down the road)

BILIN, West Bank — Every Friday for the past four and a half years, several hundred demonstrators — Palestinian villagers, foreign volunteers and Israeli activists — have walked in unison to the Israeli barrier separating this tiny village from the burgeoning settlement of Modiin Illit, part of which is built on the village’s land. One hundred feet away, Israeli soldiers watch and wait.

The protesters chant and shout and, inevitably, a few throw stones. Then just as inevitably, the soldiers open fire with tear gas and water jets, lately including a putrid oil-based liquid that makes the entire area stink.

It is one of the longest-running and best organized protest operations in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and it has turned this once anonymous farming village into a symbol of Palestinian civil disobedience, a model that many supporters of the Palestinian cause would like to see spread and prosper.

For that reason, a group of famous left-leaning elder statesmen, including former President Jimmy Carter — who caused controversy by suggesting that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank amounted to apartheid — came to Bilin on Thursday and told the local organizers how much they admired their work and why it was vital to keep it going.

The retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, also on the visit, said, “Just as a simple man named Gandhi led the successful nonviolent struggle in India and simple people such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King led the struggle for civil rights in the United States, simple people here in Bilin are leading a nonviolent struggle that will bring them their freedom.”
(Continue)


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Deconstructing Jimmy Carter: Former president visits Israel with the “Elders”, and gets a drubbing

Robin Shepherd

Think Tank Blog

26 August 09

“Could it be,” asks columnist and writer Michael D. Evans in today’s Jerusalem Post, “that Jimmy Carter’s ideals are formulated by the number of zeros before the decimal on the contributions to the Carter Center by oil-rich Gulf States?”

That’s right. This is not going to be a hagiography of the former president, and his supporters would be advised to read no further. But just what has Jimmy Carter been playing at? I don’t just mean in the last couple of days where he has turned up in Israel with Desmond Tutu and Mary Robinson to tell “apartheid” Israel to start behaving itself. He is visiting as part of a delegation of “The Elders”, a designation which is either ludicrously pompous or, in the Israeli context, just plain crass (Elders? Protocols? Zion?), according to your taste. Set up with funding from Virgin Atlantic boss Richard Branson, the Elders say that they “amplify the voices of those who work hard to be heard, challenge injustice, stimulate dialogue and debate and help others to work for positive change in their societies.”

In other words, it’s a UN talk-fest gone freelance. We know what to expect then. But back to Jimmy Carter and his record in the Middle East. Evans has a few gems to offer.

His piece takes the form of a review of Carter’s latest book, We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan that Will Work. In it, Evans tells us, Carter comes up with the startling innovation that all sides should embrace the Road Map advanced by the so called Quartet: The US, the EU, the UN and Russia. But that Hamas, Hizbolloah, Iran and Syria should also be involved.

Quoting the British, Menachem Begin is described as the “most notorious terrorist in the region”. It is also alleged that at one point Begin agreed to divide Jerusalem, a point which Evans ridicules:

‘I found that to be astonishing, especially since Begin had given me a copy of the letter he penned to Jimmy Carter on September 17, 1978, in which he wrote, “Dear Mr. President, on the basis of this law, the government of Israel decreed in July 1967 that Jerusalem is one city indivisible, the capital of the State of Israel.” According to Begin, Carter informed him that the US government did not recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

‘Begin told me he responded, “Excuse me sir, but the State of Israel does not recognize your non-recognition.”‘

There is plenty more of this sort of thing (see article below). But Jimmy Carter’s ability to be taken in any way seriously in the Middle East peace process died the day he published, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid thus legitimising a form of hate-speech against the Jewish state which has now entered the mainstream and in no small part due to the former American president’s own efforts.

Carter has tried to wriggle and squirm his way out of this. But to no avail. In an online interview with Amazon.com in January 2007 he gave the following absurd response to a question as to whether he had been surprised by the reaction his wording elicited:

“Forced segregation in the West Bank and terrible oppression of the Palestinians create a situation accurately described by the word,” said Carter. “I made it plain in the text that this abuse is not based on racism, but on the desire of a minority of Israelis to confiscate and colonize Palestinian land. This violates the basic humanitarian premises on which the nation of Israel was founded. My surprise is that most critics of the book have ignored the facts about Palestinian persecution and its proposals for future peace and resorted to personal attacks on the author. No one could visit the occupied territories and deny that the book is accurate.” (My Italics)

So if it is “not about racism” why did Carter use the term which more than any other in the post-Holocaust era is synonymous with brute racism and white supremacy? There is no rational come-back to that question. His use of the word “apartheid” was a term of abuse: nothing more and nothing less.

As for his latest foray into peace-making in the Middle East, Evans has a simple piece of advice:
“The best thing President Obama could do is completely ignore Jimmy Carter and his plan.”

Enough said, I think.

To read the piece from the Jerusalem Post, click here:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1251145115888&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
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