The New York Times reports that Hamas is currently engaged in its largest weapons buildup ever, thanks to Iranian arms, money, and training. Hamas’ goal? The bombardment of Israel.
An Israeli study says Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, is engaged in the broadest and most significant military buildup in its history with help from Syria and Iran. It adds that Hamas is restructuring more hierarchically and using more and more powerful weapons, especially longer-range rockets against Israel’s southern communities.
The study, by an independent research group with close ties to the Israeli military establishment, says that though the buildup will take some years to complete, it is in an intensive phase that has already led to better infiltration into Israel and a rise in the breadth and precision of rocket fire.
In spite of evidence like this that Hamas has absolutely no intention of maintaining any kind of real peace with Israel, Jimmy Carter is plowing ahead in his determination to be the first world leader ever to sit down with terrorists who openly and unashamedly admit they want to destroy the Jewish State. The Washington Post spins this decision as a “political bind” for the Democratic candidates, neither of whom are condemning Carter.
Both Clinton and Obama issued statements with milder language, saying they “disagreed” or did “not agree” with Carter’s plans.
The WaPo also points out that Carter has finally noticed Jews are starting to bail on him over his constant anti-Israel drumbeat. As ever, though, Carter is being his usual mendacious self about the issue:
Indeed, a source close to Carter said that the former president favors Obama but that he has decided not to endorse Obama publicly or formally because he fears it would contribute to hostility toward Obama among Jewish Democrats.
And the WaPo carries the party line that isolating Hamas hasn’t accomplished anything, and brings out the tired old guns of the Carter Administration—the ones who blew it on Iran and Russia—to bolster their assertions that these men could be right about anything.
However, Carter’s trip would also come at a time when a growing number of experts in the United States and Israel have argued that isolating Hamas is not productive. A poll published in February in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz found that 64 percent of Israelis favor direct talks with Hamas. Both Efraim Halevy, a former head of the Mossad spy agency, and Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former foreign minister, say Hamas can no longer be ignored.
A bipartisan group of foreign-policy luminaries, including former national security advisers Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, issued a statement before the Annapolis peace talks sponsored by the administration in November that said “we believe a genuine dialogue with the organization [Hamas] is far preferable to its isolation.”
That poll of Israelis, by the way, was deconstructed by Soccer Dad and found to be rigged. When presented with either talking to Hamas, or defeating them militarily, Israelis choose the latter. Most Israelis do not support talking with a terrorist group sworn to their destruction. Just as most Americans would not support negotiating with Al Qaeda.
And there is, of course, the inevitable result of the “peace” talks: Hamas will use the period of calm to continue its military buildup, just as Hezbollah did in Lebanon, until they feel ready to attack Israel. And on that day, count on at least a three-front attack.
A senior Israeli official in the prime minister’s office, who agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity, said that what he took from the report was that when there was relative quiet in Gaza, Israel ran the risk of playing into Hamas’s hands by allowing it to continue its military buildup.
[…] It also says the military buildup is being run largely from Damascus, where Hamas has a base, because there is better access there to Syrian and Iranian money and weapons. Nonetheless, it says, political power within Hamas is increasingly moving to the Gaza Strip.
One focus of the study is the improved nature of the rockets available in Gaza as a result of smuggling through Egypt and dozens of underground tunnels leading from Egypt into Gaza. The report does not accuse Egypt of cooperating in the smuggling, only of ineffectiveness in stopping it.
I wrote weeks ago about the increase in missile strikes and deaths by Hamas rockets. I just didn’t know the extent of the Iranian military training. However, it’s not really hard to find out about the military buildup, not when even the New York Times is running articles about it.
And still, Jimmy Carter is going to sit down and have tea with the man responsible for the mass murder of Jews in Israel and without. Carter’s ego, and his ability to ignore or belittle the negative connotations of recognizing a terror leader such as Mashaal, will allow him to insist that he is right, and the critics are wrong, when it is pointed out that his actions will be a propaganda coup like the terrorist world hasn’t seen since—Bill Clinton got Yasser Arafat to shake hands Yitzhak Rabin. And gee, how well that turned out.
Next on Carter’s agenda: Dinner with Ahmadinejad. Count on it.
I’m clean. Never voted for Carter, thought he was too sanctimonious in ’76; too much an idiot by ’80.
That said, I also used to think that he was not a hater of Jews. But, since his (thankfully) early retirement he seems to have embraced virtually every dictator and terror group sworn to kill Jews and destroy Israel. It becomes harder and harder, nay, impossible, not to see Carter as an anti-Semite.
I’m also a Baptist, as is Carter, but he’s played out the rope on my Christian charity. He is an embarrassment to all Christians who should love Israel and the Jewish people. Those of us who read Scripture, that is, and know that God does not break his promises.
To be fair, Carter has done some good since leaving office (e.g. Habitat for Humanity). But he has also become a caricature of the Stupid American, bumbling about in world affairs. And, like it or not, an ex-president may be presumed to represent America.
He’s earned the title: Worst Ex-President Ever.
Yes, that is true that they can no longer be ignored. However, that does not. mean that we should have a dialogue with the murderers. It means that we should no longer allow them to freely and without punishment carry out their murderous activities. Not ignoring them means that we should wipe them out before they kill us.
Despite the headline to the post, Meryl, I don’t think Carter’s problem on this issue is blindness. I wish it were.
I agree with Alex Bensky, though one could argue that Carter’s considerable capacity for self-righteousness blinds him to his own narcissism, and the extent to which the narcissistic injury he suffered in 1980 drives him to act as if he’s still President and not an ex-president who might be expected to defer to the foreign policies of the administration actually in power.
I also think Carter has a “Jewish problem,” one he shares with an unfortunately significant number of liberal/”progressive” Christians, in which a secular-political supersessionism is laid over the template of theological supersessionism. Traditional Christian anti-Semitism saw Israel’s “sin” as the rejection of the New Covenant of Christ; contemporary Christian anti-Zionism attacks Israel for its alleged colonialism, violations of human rights, supposed defiance of the UN, and other offenses against the “New Dispensation” of post-national politics.
I fully expect Carter will give Mashaal a pious sermon about not targetting civilians, Mashaal will respond by playing the victim (“The occupation! The settlements! The Nakhba! They have F16s! They martyred Farfoul!”), and Carter will then fall over himself to express his sympathy for Palestinian suffering and never get around to asking Mashaal if he really believes the Rotarians are part of the global Zionist conspiracy.
Actually, we should express sympathy for Mr. Carter as his Alzheimer’s (or some other form of senile dementia) continues to get worse.While it appears that he has been getting worse for some time, we should send him sympathy and get well cards.
Imagine his reaction to email and letters expresing sympathy for he Alzheimer’s disease.