Carter's house of mirrors - by Asaf Romirowsky

...At the end of the day, “land-for-peace” really translates into “land-for-talk.” For too many Americans and Europeans talk - not peace - is all that Israel should expect (and possibly deserve), in exchange for territorial concessions.

Asaf Romirowsky..
The Hill..
06 December '16..
Link: http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/309079-jimmy-carters-house-of-mirrors

Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found are a great way to understand the Palestinian narrative and in particular, advocates of the Palestinian cause like former President Jimmy Carter. Carroll uses time and space as the plot device while drawing on chess imagery, mirror themes, opposites and time running backwards. This topsy-turvy world provides the perfect “logic” explain why, according to Carter, in his last days in office President Obama should force the United States through the UN Security Council to recognize a Palestinian state.

Carter’s voice in the political wilderness is mostly heard in pro-Palestinian circles but he is mostly seen as someone who’s built his post-presidency on practicing foreign affairs without an electoral mandate. Of course, all of this speaks directly to the New York Times political and editorial agenda as it relates to Israeli-Palestinian conflict and American politics, especially now during the transition between Obama and Trump.

It is also no coincidence that the Times published Carter on the anniversary of the 69th anniversary of the UN Partition Resolution of 1947 a plan that would have given the Arabs a state, which they chose to reject in favor of waging war on the Jewish state which was in formation. Of course, had the Palestinians and the Arab states simply said yes, then Carter would have nothing to demand from the US or Israel. An honest reading of history would show that at every juncture that involved Arabs and Palestinians recognizing Jewish rights, it was flatly rejected in favor of war. Yet in the house of mirrors where Carter lives only Israel is responsible for Palestinian “misery.”

It would seem when it comes to Israel, Carter just can’t control himself - by Stephen M. Flatow

...So we see that Carter’s lie about the Israeli “occupation,” in his New York Times op-ed, is just the latest in a long series of fabrications. It’s as if when it comes to Israel, he just can’t control himself. But what is the Times’ excuse for publishing such a blatant falsehood?

Stephen M. Flatow..
Times of Israel..
04 December '16..
Link: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/jimmy-carters-biggest-lie-yet/

Mark Twain once reiterated that “there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” And former president Jimmy Carter has made a post-presidential career out of lying about Israel. The latest is this doozy, which appeared in his November 29 op-ed in the New York Times: “Over 4.5 million Palestinians live in these occupied territories. Most live largely under Israeli military rule.”

Not only is that a lie, but Carter knows it’s a lie. The former president has visited Ramallah , the Palestinian Authority’s capital city with a population of more than 57,000 residents, on numerous occasions — most recently in May 2015, when he placed a wreath at the tomb of arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat there. He has seen with his own eyes that there are no Israeli troops occupying that city, or any of the other cities where 98% of the Palestinian Arabs reside.

Carter knows that the PA, not Israel, rules those areas. He knows that the PA, not Israel, runs the schools, the courts, the police department, and all other aspects of daily life.

Since Carter used the figure 4.5-million in his op-ed, he must have been including Gaza in his accusation. Yet he knows there are no Israelis occupying Gaza. He knows that Hamas rules that area.

So how can the ex-president knowingly tell such blatant lies? The same question might be asked about many of his past statements about Israel:

Carter Blames Israel One More Time - by Elliott Abrams

...Mr. Carter concludes, “I fear for the spirit of Camp David.” Does that spirit consist of ignoring change, misstating facts, blaming Israel for every problem, and destabilizing the Middle East further by putting in its midst a new, weak, and impoverished state that oppresses its own population?

Elliott Abrams..
National Review..
30 November '16..

Jimmy Carter is 92 now, and it has been 36 years since his landslide defeat for reelection. But neither the passage of time nor the debilities of age slow him from making proposals that will do real harm to the State of Israel — and he has just tried one more time.

In Monday’s New York Times, he writes that “America must recognize Palestine” and presents a version of Israeli reality that simply takes leave of the facts. Carter tells us that “the simple but vital step this administration must take before its term expires on Jan. 20 is to grant American diplomatic recognition to the state of Palestine, as 137 countries have already done, and help it achieve full United Nations membership.”

Now, granting diplomatic recognition to “the state of Palestine” will no more make it a legitimate and genuine country than granting diplomatic recognition to Plains, Ga., would make it one. The fact that 137 countries have done so — to no effect whatsoever — ought to make that obvious. So, what is Carter’s real goal here? He writes that it is peace, but the steps he proposes and the analysis he offers would leave Israel and the Palestinians further from peace than ever.

(Continue to Full Article)

Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, was assistant secretary of state for Latin American and the Caribbean in the Reagan administration. He is the author of Tested by Zion: The Bush Administration and the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Carter, an Obama Post-Presidency and Israel - by Jonathan Tobin

...Should Donald Trump keep his promises to stand by Israel, Jerusalem will not have to worry as much about its sole superpower ally as it has in the last eight years. But if Obama chooses to use the coming years of relative leisure to pursue his vendetta against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and to push for pressure on Israel or even to isolate it in the same manner as Carter, he could be almost as much of a problem for the Jewish state out of office as he was in it.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
29 November '16..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/israel/obama-post-presidency-israel-jimmy-carter/

In recent months, there’s been a lot of speculation about whether President Obama would use his last months in office to take a parting shot at Israel. In his final seven weeks, there is still a chance that he will allow a dangerously anti-Israel resolution to go up for a vote at the United Nations Security Council without a U.S. veto. But even if he is constrained by either common sense or a commendable desire not to tie the hands of his successor with an act that can’t be undone, supporters of the Jewish state should not assume that Obama’s attitude toward Israel will be something they can safely ignore once he leaves the White House.

A reminder of just how much damage an ex-president can do comes today in the form of an op-ed by Jimmy Carter published in the New York Times. In it, Carter urges Obama to do just what Israel’s friends fear: allow the Security Council to recognize Palestinian independence with the borders of the territories Israel seized in 1967 without first compelling them to make peace with Israel. That would be a reversal of decades of U.S. policy and do incalculable harm to Israel while not advancing the cause of peace.

Despite sharing an antipathy for Israel’s government, Carter and Obama are not close. If Obama does stab Israel in the back at the UN with a measure that will brand Israel as an outlaw state, it likely won’t be due to Carter’s influence. Yet the resurfacing of the 92-year-old Georgian at this crucial moment should alert the pro-Israel community to the possibility that Obama may use his post-presidency in a manner that will follow Carter’s pattern on the Middle East, but with the ability to create far more havoc than his predecessor.

Ever since he left the White House, Jimmy Carter has used the prestige of his former office to promote some anodyne causes like Habitat for Humanity. But he is almost as well known for his other post-presidential obsession: hammering Israel every chance he gets. Carter’s barely-concealed animus for Israel during his term in office was no secret, but it was overshadowed by Anwar Sadat’s courage in forging a peace with Israel for which the former president got more credit than he deserved.

Since then, Carter has stooped to false comparisons between Israel and apartheid-era South Africa and become a reliable apologist for anything the Palestinians do no matter how awful while never failing to attack Israel any chance he gets.

Carter left office as a defeated president and was labeled a failure. His presidency is chiefly remembered now, if it is remembered at all, as a prelude to the Ronald Reagan’s successful two terms, in which he presided over a robust recovery from Carter’s “malaise” and the defeat of the Soviet Union. Good works restored his reputation to some degree, but Carter’s standing at home and abroad has never been sufficient to lend the kind of weight to his attacks on the Jewish state that would have had an impact on American opinion or that of an international community already prejudiced against Israel.

Revisiting the 1937 Nobel Peace Prize

...The Nobel Peace Prize of 1938 was awarded to the Nansen International Office for Refugees, which was needed to assist the victims of both Hitler and the failed policies of hollow diplomacy and moral equivalence of the International Peace Campaign. In 1940 Norway fell to the Nazis. The Peace Prize was not awarded again until 1944, when it went to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Oslo was liberated in 1945 by Allied peacemakers, using guns.

Stefan Sharkansky
Shark Blog
First Posted 18 Oct. '02

If you want to put Jimmy Carter's (Barack Obama's) Nobel Peace Prize in its proper perspective, and to see how little the Nobel committee has learned in the last seventy years, go back to the 1930s and see who was winning the Peace prizes while Hitler was preparing to conquer Europe. The 1937 Nobel Prize went to a British nobleman named Viscount Cecil of Chelwood (Lord Edgar Algernon Robert Gascoyne Cecil), who was president of the International Peace Campaign, and earlier helped found the League of Nations. Even then, The Nobel Committee was still singing the same refrains of disarmament, moral equivalence and aimless diplomacy.

The Committee explained the goals of the International Peace Campaign:

international disarmament and «establishment within the framework of the League of Nations of effective machinery for remedying international conditions which might lead to war»

The Peace Campaign apparently didn't do a lot to stop Hitler or Tojo, but not because the pacifists weren't optimistic enough.Cecil gave his acceptance lecture on June 1, 1938, just a few months after the Anschluss, and showed us why he was the Jimmy Carter of his day, or maybe it's the other way around:

I am still convinced that with a little more courage and foresight, particularly among those who were directing the policy of the so-called Great Powers, we might have achieved a limitation of international armaments, with all the enormously beneficial consequences which that would have given us....And I am perfectly satisfied that the attempt to limit and reduce armaments by international action must be resumed and the sooner the better, if the world is to be saved from a fresh and bloody disaster.

But Hitler was happily on a roll, what conceivable incentive did he have to disarm? Cecil had a momentary glimpse into the abyss of reality:

The Italian invasion of Abyssinia ... was, perhaps, even more indefensible internationally than the invasion of China by Japan, and unhappily it was equally successful. Here, there was no excuse for the peace-loving powers. They had unquestionably the strength and the opportunity to have stopped that defiance of the principles of the supremacy of law in international affairs, and they declined to use them.

But the realism quickly fades and he's back to wishful thinking and a call for unspecific diplomacy

Let us, rather, examine where we now stand and what steps we ought to take in order to strengthen the international system and thrust back again the forces of reaction.

Carter's Call For Palestinian Elections Can Be Seen As Timely

...Keeping people in a perpetual state of silence by denying them any say in their future is a guaranteed recipe for disaster. When people vote – they bear the consequences of the Government they elect. Carter the Elder has spoken. What says Obama the Younger?

Daphne Anson..
08 May '15..

Here, entitled "Carter causes consternation with election call for Palestinian Arabs," is the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international offairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

Former US president Jimmy Carter has created a stir with his call for Palestinian Arabs to hold elections to end the internecine struggle between Hamas and the PLO in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza.

Speaking at a joint news conference with PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah – after cancelling his stop in Gaza where he was supposed to meet Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh – Carter – now a member of the independent Elders Group of global leaders – declared:

"We hope that sometime we'll see elections all over the Palestinian area and east Jerusalem and Gaza and also in the West Bank"

No Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) elections have been held in over a decade – even though Abbas's te)rm in office as President expired in January 2009 – a position he continues to fill without any constitutional authority to do so.

In 2006 – a year after Abbas was elected as President – Hamas overwhelmingly won the one and only election ever held in Judea and Samaria. The PLO refused to accept its electoral defeat and a year afterwards Hamas violently ousted Abbas's Fatah faction from Gaza and seized control there.

Carter’s call can be seen as timely – given the current stalemate in the negotiations between Israel and the PLO and the distinct likelihood they will not be resumed.

Indeed one could see Carter’s election call as the most constructive contribution he has made to peace in the Middle East since his following statement in Time magazine on 11 October 1982 [cover above] concerning Jordan and Jordan’s late monarch, King Hussein:

(Continue Reading)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter, 
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And Peace to You, Jimmy Baby by Michael Lumish

...I have a better idea. Instead of folding Hamas into the PLO - which, itself, is a terrorist organization, of course - why do we not defeat Hamas and thereby make it go away? I know that wishing to actually defeat one's mortal enemies is today considered dangerously hard-right radical, but I feel reasonably certain that Franklin Roosevelt approved of the notion.

Michael Lumish..
Israel Thrives..
13 May '14..




Former American President, Jimmy Carter, has an op-ed in the Washington Post today entitled, United Palestinian government may provide new opportunities for peace.

He writes:

The Palestinians’ plans for the coming months are relatively clear: to form a new unity government and expand involvement in the United Nations. Although condemned by some, the decision by the leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization and Hamas to reconcile their differences and move toward elections can be a positive development. In the past, similar efforts have been abandoned because of strong opposition from Israel and the United States, but the resolve to succeed is now much stronger among leaders in the West Bank and Gaza. This reconciliation of Palestinian factions and formation of a national unity government is necessary because it would be impossible to implement any peace agreement between Israel and just one portion of the Palestinians.

It is hard to fathom how anyone could think that folding a genocidally anti-Semitic organization into the PLO is a good thing. It is obvious, of course, that Israel can reach no meaningful peace agreement with only a portion of the Palestinian-Arab people, but it is equally obvious that an organization that calls not only for the destruction of the Jewish State of Israel, but for the genocide of the Jews, represents a sworn enemy, not a partner for peace.

Hamas has made no gestures that would suggest that they are interested in two states for two peoples. Quite the contrary, Hamas opposes a negotiated conclusion of hostilities, yet a former President of the United States, a nuclear engineer, no less, thinks that it is in the best interest of the Jews of the Middle East to recognize and uplift an organization that screams to the hillsides for Jewish blood.

The wrong-headedness of such a notion goes well beyond casual naivety.

An Apparently Befuddled Jimmy Carter, History and the Jewish State

...Both President Clinton and President George W. Bush have encountered the Israeli demand for Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state put forward by the administrations of three Israeli prime ministers prior to Netanyahu.

Tamar Sternthal..
CAMERA Snapshots..
25 March '14..

Former President Jimmy Carter is apparently confused about the Israeli demand for Palestinian recognition of Israel as the Jewish state. And the historical record seems to elude him as well. The Associated Press reports on an interview with President Carter:

Various Israeli politicians have been declaring the “two-state” solution of a separate Palestinian and Israeli nations dead, and many are demanding that the Palestinians and Arabs formally recognize Israel as a Jewish state in order to discuss the Palestinian issue.

“I don’t see how the Palestinians or the Arab world can accept that premise, that Israel is an exclusively Jewish state,” Carter said.

“This has never been put forward in any of the negotiations in which I was involved as president, or any president, before (Benjamin) Netanyahu became prime minister this time. And now it has been put into the forefront of consideration,” he added.

About a fourth of Israel’s people are Arab or other non-Jewish citizens.

“Israel can claim ‘We are a Jewish state.’ I don’t think the Arab countries will contradict that Jewish statement. But to force the Arab people to say that all the Arab people that they have in Israel have to be Jews, I think that’s going too far,” Carter said.

Both President Clinton and President George W. Bush have encountered the Israeli demand for Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state put forward by the administrations of three Israeli prime ministers prior to Netanyahu.

The ever more bizarre and vile world of Jimmy Carter

...If he has become politically toxic even during the administration of the president whose foreign policy and predilection for picking fights with Israel most resembles his own, it is due to his own intemperate and indefensible views on the Middle East and his not-so-subtle echoes of the anti-Semitic Walt-Mearsheimer “Israel Lobby” thesis. Obama’s snubs in the wake of Carter’s “apartheid” slurs are simply a matter of political awareness that it wasn’t possible to align oneself with such a discredited figure. That the 39th president would blame the Jews, rather than himself, for this predicament is as vile as it is predictable.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
24 March '14..

Former President Jimmy Carter is back in the news this week publicizing a new book about women’s rights. But, as is often the case with Carter, he drew more interest for comments he made about Israel and its supporters. When asked on NBC’s Meet the Press yesterday by Andrea Mitchell why it was that Barack Obama never called upon him for advice, he made it clear that the Jewish state was the reason he has been treated like a pariah:

I—that’s a hard question– for me to answer—you know, with complete candor. I think the problem was that– that in dealing with the issue of peace in– between Israel and Egypt– the Carter Center has taken a very strong and public position of equal treatment between the Palestinians and the Israelis. And I think this was a sensitive area in which the president didn’t want to be involved.

When he first came out with his speech in Cairo calling for the end of all settlements and when he later said that the ’67 borders would prevail, he and I were looking at it from the same perspective. But I can understand those sensitivities. And I don’t have any criticism of him.

Lest anyone think this was a slip of the tongue, he repeated the assertion in more stark terms this morning during a fawning interview with Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough on the same network’s Morning Joe program:

I think that sometimes an incumbent president doesn’t want to be very friendly with me because it might looked upon as more friendly toward the Palestinians instead of the Israelis. So we try to be balanced. That’s the only issue that separates me from Obama anyway. And I was very proud of him when he made a speech in Cairo and said no more settlements when he said the 67 borders would prevail except for minor modifications. Those things are very compatible with what I believe.

Carter might consider that the reason a successor wouldn’t wish to be burdened with a relationship with him was, at least in part, due to the Georgian’s insufferable personality and chronic self-righteousness. But there may be some truth to his assertion that his stands on the Middle East are at the root of the problem. Far from being an innocent victim of political influence for being “even-handed,” however, his lack of influence is due to the fact that his bias and slanders against the Jewish state have effectively marginalized him.

Carter’s recipe for continued Palestinian statelessness

Seth Mandel..
Commentary/Contentions..
23 October '12..

I’ve written over the last year about the newest phenomenon among the Palestinians and their supporters: they do not want negotiations—at all—with the Israeli government. In the past, the Palestinian leadership could at least use negotiations as a ploy to bide time or look like statesmen, and force Israeli leaders to spend their time on the Palestinian issue instead of other domestic issues.

But something changed with the speech Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made at Bar Ilan University in 2009, in which he declared his support for a two-state solution. And the shift has taken place, it seems, because despite the derision with which Netanyahu’s pronouncement was met by leftwing columnists, the Palestinian leadership seems to actually believe Netanyahu means it. And so negotiations have taken on a sense of historical heft they didn’t have in the age of Arafat, when everyone knew ahead of time Arafat’s answer would be no. Mahmoud Abbas has responded to the situation by adding new preconditions every time Netanyahu agrees to the last ones, in a desperate attempt to stave off peace negotiations. And now Jimmy Carter is getting in on the action.

Carter arrived in Israel this week with former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland and former Irish president Mary Robinson, two other critics of Israel looking for something unhelpful to do with their time. The trio came to Israel to heap more attacks on the Israeli people, as would be expected. But they also met with Mahmoud Abbas. Did they at least suggest that maybe Abbas should consider negotiating with Netanyahu? The Times of Israel reports:

Abbas told them that he has decided to go ahead with the plan to ask the UN General Assembly to accept Palestine as a nonmember state in November. While Israel and the US fiercely oppose such a move, saying it doesn’t change facts on the ground and would preempt the outcome of future negotiations, Carter, Robinson and Brundtland wholeheartedly endorsed the plan, as it would give the Palestinians “a new stature.”

Rather than multilateral negotiations, Carter’s team told Abbas to ignore talks in favor of unilateral action opposed by the West. According to the New York Times, Netanyahu’s office pointed out the flaw in Carter’s no-negotiations strategy:

Yisrael Medad - Carter's Death Throes

Yisrael Medad..
My Right Word..
23 October '12..







No, not his death throes although, probably like me, you also thought that in reading my headline.

No, it's from a NYTimes headline of a story by Jodi Rudoren:

In Israel, Carter Says Two-State Solution in 'Death Throes'
Former President Jimmy Carter said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had abandoned the two-state solution and that President Obama had shirked the historical role played by the United States in the region.

The really funny, alright, weird, thing is that his groups of traveling interventionists call themselves the "Elders". They are

an independent group of global leaders who work together for peace and human rights

"Independent" financially-wise, perhaps, but not ideologically or politically.

CAMERA - Jimmy Carter Snipes at Israel Again

ER..
CAMERA/Snapshots..
07 March '12..

Israelis, former president Jimmy Carter worries, seem inclined to "resume" war with their neighbors. But he trusts that Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood -- its leaders having "assured me personally" -- will keep their country's peace treaty with Israel.

So the one-term chief executive (1977 - 1981) told "America's Morning News," the radio affiliate of The Washington Times ("Carter: Netanyahu seems too eager for war on Iran," March 7). Of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Carter said "I don't think that's [war with Iran] his first preference, but I think he's much more eager to go to war with Iran than President Obama (is). And I was glad to see President Obama discourage that immediate resumption of hostilities between Israel and its neighbors that the Israelis seem to be inclined to do."

Carter, who as president suggested Americans had an inordinate fear of communism, then professed to being shocked by the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan, said "I think the economic sanctions would be adequate. ... War with Iran can and should be avoided."

He was equally sanguine about the Muslim Brotherhood, which -- with the even more fundamentalist Salafist party -- holds two-thirds of the seats in Egypt's influential lower house of parliament. Carter said he recently met with Brotherhood leaders and "they know it's very important to Egypt to maintain peace with Israel. They assured me personally ... that they will honor the peace treaty that I helped to negotiate back in 1979 ... and I don't have any doubt they will carry out their promise to me."

CAMERA - Jimmy Carter Puts Foot in Mouth Again Blaming Israel

MK..
CAMERA/Snapshots..
23 January '12..

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter misrepresented a key Middle East issue yet again, this time in a CNN appearance. He has done this often in the past regarding Israel (examples – here and here). This time the ex-President erroneously blamed Israel for the flight of Palestinian Arab Christians from “Palestine.”

Carter told CNN interviewer Piers Morgan on Jan. 18. 2012:

When I first went to Israel, about 15 percent of the Palestinians were Christians and they were my friends and they were my soul mates in the worship of the same god in the same way. Now they've almost been removed from Palestine because of some pressures and encouragement from the Israelis.

Carter, unchallenged by Morgan, offers no substantiation for this allegation. But in blaming Israel for the flight of Palestinian Arab Christians, he is wrong again about Israel and the Middle East.

A Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) report, Christians Flee Growing Islamic Fundamentalism in the Holy Land, documents the central cause of the flight. Muslim intimidation of Christian Arabs includes assaults by Muslim men upon Christian women, demands for “protection” money and illegitimate land seizures.

Carter’s false claim is also contradicted by the facts about Israel's growing Christian population (in absolute numbers).

Morgan could have shed light on Carter's persistent Israel-bashing by asking him about his connections to Arab oil money. But Carter, like so many other severe critics of Israel, once again sailed through with a free pass from the mainstream media.

Link: http://blog.camera.org/archives/2012/01/jimmy_carter_puts_foot_in_mout_1.html

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
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Tobin - Ominous Sign for Egypt: Carter’s Optimistic

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
13 January '12..



If you weren’t already worried about the direction events are heading in in Egypt, here’s one more reason to be worried: Jimmy Carter’s feeling good about things. Carter, who was in the country monitoring the recent elections, had this to say about the impact of the new Egyptian government on the Middle East peace process:

This new government will probably be much more concerned about the rights of the Palestinians than have the previous rulers or leaders in Egypt, but in my opinion that will be conducive to a better prospect of peace between Israel and its neighbors.

But the only real difference between the Mubarak government and his successors is that the latter are good friends with the Hamas terrorists who run Gaza. In Carter’s distorted worldview, support for Palestinian Islamists is synonymous with “Palestinian rights.” That’s bad enough, but to think the opening up of Hamas’s supply lines and its increased influence will actually lead to peace is so contrary to logic and reason the only conclusion one can draw from such a statement is that any development that heightens Israel’s isolation and increases the danger of terrorism is something the 39th president regards with complacence.

Carter Misrepresents Longstanding U.S. Policy, U.N. Resolution 242

Tamar Sternthal
CAMERA
Middle East Issues
30 May '11

Not for the first time, former President Jimmy Carter misrepresents the contents of U.N. Resolution 242, passed in the wake of the 1967 Six Day War. In an Op-Ed last week in the International Herald Tribune, Carter recycles falsehoods from his book and deceives readers ("The unchanged path to Mideast peace," May 26, 2011):

U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 of Nov. 22, 1967, concluded the war of that year and has been widely acknowledged by all parties to be the basis for a peace agreement. Its key phrases are, “Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war,” and “Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.” These included the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, plus lands belonging to Lebanon, Egypt and Syria. . . .

Significantly, Carter does not quote the "key phrase" of the resolution calling for the withdrawal of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, because the resolution does not even mention them. Those were the President's own additions. Given that the drafters of U.N. Resolution 242 did not intend for Israel to withdraw to its pre-1967 boundaries, the resolution very deliberately refers to withdrawal from "territories," and not "the territories." Indeed, the fact that U.N. Resolution 242 does not call for withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem was made clear in a series of correction published in 2000 by the New York Times, which owns and publishes the International Herald Tribune. The three corrections follow:

(Read full "Carter Misrepresents Longstanding U.S. Policy, U.N. Resolution 242")

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Hamas mourns bin Laden — does Carter?

Fresnozionism.org
02 May '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/05/hamas-mourns-bin-laden-does-carter/


Sometimes it’s too easy. Compare this:

And then there is the Palestinian Hamas, whose top leader in the Gaza Strip mourned bin laden [sic] on Monday as an “Arab holy warrior.” Ismail Haniyeh, who is Hamas’s prime minister, told reporters that “we regard this as a continuation of the American policy based on oppression and the shedding of Muslim and Arab blood.”


“We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior,” said the man who has assured former president Jimmy Carter, among other envoys, of Hamas’s peaceful intentions toward Israel and the United States. “We ask God to offer him mercy with the true believers and the martyrs.”


– Jackson Diehl, Washington Post

With this:

President Carter said, “This [Fatah/Hamas] agreement, and the promise of elections in the next twelve months, has the potential to arrest the spiral of intra-Palestinian human rights violations and preserve Palestinian democracy. It can also lead to a leadership representing all Palestinians capable of negotiating peace with Israel. Based on my years of contacts with Fatah and Hamas, I am confident that, if handled creatively and flexibly by the international community, Hamas’ return to unified Palestinian governance can increase the likelihood of a two-state solution and a peaceful outcome. I encourage the international community to respect this decision by the Palestinian leadership and to view it as part of the larger democratic trend sweeping the region.”


– The Carter Center (April 29)

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Former President Jimmy Carter Named in Class Action Suit

IMRA

The suit is the first time a former President and a publishing house have been sued for violating consumer protection laws by knowingly publishing inaccurate information while promoting a book as factual.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 2, 2011

FORMER PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER NAMED IN CLASS ACTION SUIT FILED IN NEW YORK COURT ALLEGING DECEPTIONS AND FRAUDULENT MISREPRESENTATIONS IN BOOK ATTACKING ISRAEL

An historic class action suit has been filed against former President Jimmy Carter and the Simon & Schuster publishing company alleging that Carter’s book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, 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 suit, captioned Unterberg et al. v. Jimmy Carter et.al (11 cv 0720), filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, seeks compensatory and punitive damages.

The plaintiffs, who hope to have the case certified as a class action, are members of the reading public who purchased Carter’s book expecting that they were buying an accurate and factual record of historic events concerning Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. The lawsuit contends that Carter, who holds himself out as a Middle-East expert, and his publisher, intentionally presented untrue and inaccurate information and sought to capitalize on the author’s status as a former President to mislead unsuspecting members of the public. The complaint alleges that the defendants’ misrepresentations, all highly critical of Israel, violate New York consumer protection laws, specifically New York General Business Law § 349, which makes it unlawful to engage in deceptive acts in the course of conducting business. While acknowledging Carter’s right to publish his personal views, the plaintiffs assert that the defendants violated the law and, thus, harmed those who purchased the book.

The suit is the first time a former President and a publishing house have been sued for violating consumer protection laws by knowingly publishing inaccurate information while promoting a book as factual.

The plaintiffs are represented by attorney David Schoen, Esq. of Montgomery, Alabama and attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, Esq. of Tel-Aviv, Israel.

The complaint notes that after the book’s publication some of Carter’s closest aides, including distinguished public officials and scholars personally involved in the events described, condemned the book as untruthful. Despite being presented with irrefutable proof that many of representations in the book are false, the defendants have refused to make any corrections.

Attorney Darshan-Leitner stated that: “The 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. He is entitled to his opinions but deceptions and lies have no place in works of history.”

Attorney Schoen stated that: "It is, indeed, a sad day for all of us as Americans, when a former President demeans the dignity of his office by intentionally misstating critically important facts concerning events of great historic significance and public interest, simply to advance a personal anti-Israel animus and to foster the agenda of the enemies of Israel who pump so much money into the Center which bears his name."

A copy of the complaint is available here:
http://israellawcenter.org//uploadimages/image/Jimmy%20Carter%20Complaint.pdf

For more information please contact:

Nitsana Darshan-Leitner (516) 684-9983, 011-972-3-7514175
Email: nitsanad@zahav.net.il

David Schoen: (334) 395-6611
Email: David@Schoenlawfirm.com

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Jimmy Carter back to old tricks, backs unilateral Palestinain statehood even as Palestinian PM opposes it

Robin Shepherd
robinshepherdonline.com
21 December '10

The least successful US president of the 20th century seems hell bent on backing every anti-Israeli manoeuvre he can attach himself to, rarely missing the opportunity in the process to blunder into a diplomatic minefield he is clearly not competent to navigate. That’s right, Jimmy Carter is at it again. This time he has given his backing to the notion of a unilateral declaration of Palestinian independence on 1967 lines. The idea — unworkable in practice and a surefire recipe for renewed violence — is that the Palestinians would make such a declaration in the middle of 2011 and then, Kosovo style, get as many UN member states as possible to recognise it. Brazil and Argentina pre-emptively recognised Palestinian independence earlier this month in anticipation of such a move.

Britain’s Daily Telegraph has reported Carter as telling Brazil’s Folha de S. Paulo newspaper the following: “I am very happy to see that Brazil recognised the Palestinian state with the 1967 borders… We cannot count on the United States alone to bring peace, since it agrees with almost everything that Israel does… Brazil can help because it has a lot of influence among developing countries. Brazil can be one of the leaders of this process.”

The trouble is that not even the Palestinians can agree on this.

(Read full "Jimmy Carter back to old tricks ....")

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Carter thought Begin would fall fast, new documents show

US official said that due to Likud’s election, chances for peace looked bleak at the time.

Gil Hoffman
JPost
24 May '10

US president Jimmy Carter’s administration tried to undermine prime minister Menachem Begin’s government from the moment he got elected in 1977, documents published by Yediot Aharonot over the weekend reveal.

The newspaper published a letter written to Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski by the head of the Mideast desk on the council, William Quandt, the day after Begin’s landmark first election victory, whose 33rd anniversary was marked by the Likud last week.

In the letter, Quandt suggests not putting too much pressure on Begin at first and “allowing him to make his own mistakes” that would encourage Israelis to elect a more dovish prime minister in a year or two. It shows how the Carter administration interpreted the transfer of power from Left to Right as temporary when, in hindsight, the Center-Right has been in power for all but six of the last 33 years.

“Much of our strategy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict has been predicated on the assumption that a strong and moderate Israeli government would at some point be able to make difficult decisions on territory and on the Palestinians,” Quandt wrote Brzezinski. “Now we face the prospect of a very weak coalition, a prolonged period of uncertainty, and an Israeli leadership which may be significantly more assertive in its policies concerning the West Bank, Palestinians, settlements and nuclear weapons.”

Quandt said that due to Begin’s election victory, chances for Middle East peace looked bleak. He cautioned against appearing to interfere in Israeli politics, but suggested doing just that.

“We should do nothing in public to indicate disappointment with the Likud victory,” he wrote. “Instead, we should continue to talk of the importance of [the peace process], the requirements of a comprehensive peace, and the need for flexibility.

“By our actions, we do not want to increase support for Begin, which might occur if we reassess our policy too quickly,” Quandt wrote.

“At the same time, Israeli voters should know that a hard-line government will not find it easy to manage the US-Israel relationship.

(Read full story)

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Iran's Jews 'did not face persecution': Thatcher

Bataween
Point of No Return
31 January '10

Margaret Thatcher, elected British Prime Minister in 1979, the year of the Islamic revolution in Iran, has a reputation as one of the most pro-Jewish of politicians; Jimmy Carter has acquired a reputation as one of the least pro-Israel of US presidents. Newly-released documents show the roles are reversed: the 'Iron Lady' rebuffed Carter's appeals to her to protect the Jews of Iran, denying that they were being persecuted. Yet over the next decade, more than two dozen Jews were executed, several jailed for spying, and four-fifths of the community have since fled the country. (With thanks: Frank)

In May of 1979, according to the files, which go online on Saturday on the Thatcher Foundation Web site, Carter appealed Thatcher for "urgent private representations" to Iranian authorities to assure the safety of Iranian Jews.

Thatcher refused, saying the British Embassy did not believe Jews faced organized persecution, and that intervention "could indeed make their position less secure."

The papers also showed that the former British premier had also refused a more demonstrative response to the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979, saying it would do more harm than good.

(Read full article)
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