Jimmy Carter can’t even get respect from Shimon Peres these days.A poster at Firedoglake, Ian Welsh, though, considers Jimmy Carter the best friend Israel ever had! After botching history (Carter created the conditions for Camp David by planning to bring the Russians back to the Middle East, after Egypt had expelled the Russians, not due to his diplomatic expertise.)
Of course Welsh has also been asleep for the past 15 years or so when Israel did all it could to enable a Palestinian state and got terror in return. I love this gross understatement:
Now let’s add in the usual caveats—the Palestinians have hardly been angels; in fact they have been thugs. They have often negotiated in bad faith (though certainly no more often and probably less often than the Israelis, in recent years). They do engage in terrorism, though what the difference to the victims between being killed by a suicide bomber or missile is compared to being killed by a tank, helicopter or bomb has always escaped me—except that tanks, helicopters and bombs kill far more people than the weapons of a terrorist or guerilla. They have certainly often been stupid and done things that weren’t in their best interests.
And if the Palestinians wanted a state, they would have had it by now. The writer may delude himself on this point but if the Palestinians were building an economy instead of a terrorist infrastructure they’d have had their state by now.
The bad faith of the Palestinians is evident when its “moderate” leaders claim that there’s no basis for a Jewish state in the Middle East and when those same moderates criticize Israel for protecting its own citizen. Nothing that Israel has done in the past 15 years comes close to rejecting very premise of the peace process, which is exactly what the “moderate” leaders of the Palestinians.
But the bottom line is that Israel is the party that can make or break negotiations. Israel is the party with the full army. Israel is the party with the money. Israel is the party that refuses to actually negotiate with the lawfully elected representative (which is Hamas) of the Palestinians.And Israel needs a peace more than the Palestinians do. That seems counterintuitive, but the Palestinians are on a path that leads to victory and the Israelis are on a path that leads to loss. Yes, the Palestinians will suffer more, much more, than the Israelis getting there, but that’s not relevant to the end-state, except in that they may not be very gracious to the Israelis once they have won. Germans killed far more Russians than vice-versa and lost. America never lost a battle in Vietnam and killed at a 10:1 ratio. It didn’t matter.
Israel doesn’t have the power to “make or break” the negotiations. Because even Fatah has never forsworn terror as a tactic to get what it wants, that means Israel needs to accede to every single demand of the Palestinians or then its efforts at peace are deemed insufficient.
Twenty years ago who would have believed that the Palestinians would be ruling themselves in Gaza and a handful of cities in Judea and Samaria? And yet they are? Who would have believed they would have accomplished all that and still portrayed Israel as an evil occupier?
Israel doesn’t make or break negotiations. The Palestinians, through violence, hold veto power over the peace process. The Palestinians’ friends, like Mr. Welsh, do them no favors by assuring them that they are nearly always right and that they ought to suffer no repercussions for their ongoing bad faith.
A true friend tells you when you’re walking down the path to defeat. A true friend tells you when you’re acting despicably. And that’s why Jimmy Carter is Israel’s best friend in America—the only President to negotiate a lasting peace between Israel and one of its enemies and the only major figure to tell the Israelis that they’re walking a path to their own destruction.Here’s hoping Israel wakes up and listens and acts. If it doesn’t, within the lifetime of many of us here today, there will be no Israel as it exists today; there will be no “Jewish” state.
Again, Camp David was the result of a Carter blunder and Israel does have a treaty with Jordan. But if a true friend tells you hard truths, why is this friend of Israel going to Israel’s enemies? Why is he encouraging Hamas, which is building an arsenal of offensive weapons to use against Israel armed by the Iranian regime that is rhetorically (if not practically) devoted to Israel’s destruction?
That these questions never occur to Welsh shows that what he shares with Jimmy Carter is not friendship with Israel, but enmity.
Fresno Zionsim pegs Carter as a tool of the Saudis. The Heathlander drags out the same busted myth Carter used yesterday that a majority of Israeli support ongoing talks with Hamas. And Carter admits that he’s been meeting with leaders of Hamas for years. Israel Matzav fisks yesterday’s Carter gabfest on ABC. (via memeorandum)
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
