Jimmy Carter has achieved nothing by talking to terrorists who have said, time and again, that they are going to destroy Israel. Snoopy details the exact quotes of the men that Carter has met with in the last few days, and I have detailed the same kinds of quotes from Khaled Meshaal, Hamas’ leader in Damascus. He is in Damascus because he knows if he comes to Gaza he will be assassinated. (Why Israel hasn’t assassinated Haniyeh and al-Zahar, I’ll never understand.)
His failure is obvious. Hamas has not agreed to stop firing rockets. They have not agreed to stop attacking Israelis. They have not agreed to release Gilad Shalit. If they had, Carter would be trumpeting their willingness to do all these things to the world. Instead, he’s doing his usual speeches: Blaming Israel for failing to give the terrorists what they want, and blaming Israel’s actions. And now he’s calling Israeli self-defense “terrorism”—just like his terrorist buddies do.
Carter said he told Hamas leaders from Gaza that they should stop rocket attacks on Israel, which have prompted deadly Israeli military assaults on the crowded Mediterranean coastal territory. Any “killings of civilians is an act of terrorism,” he said.
The utter depravity of this man knows no bounds—he is equating the accidental deaths of civilians by Israeli forces with the deliberate murder of civilians by terrorists. Because gee, there’s no distinction whatsoever between blowing yourself up in a crowded bus filled with children on their way to school, and an errant missile or tank shell. But he said what the terrorists want to hear, and is now totally holding the Palestinian line.
And notice what’s missing from these quotes:
He said that during his visit to Israel, the first stop on his trip, he saw rockets that had been fired by Hamas and “met with people who lost loved ones.”
“At the same time, if you live in Gaza, you know that for every Israeli killed in any kind of combat, between 30 to 40 Palestinians are killed because of the extreme military capability of Israel,” Carter added.
“Any kind of combat,” he says. Including, apparently, the indiscriminate firing of rockets at civilians, with the especially disgusting practice of launching them during the times terrorists know children are going to and from school—when they are most likely to kill a child.
The word “terorism” does not appear when discussing the deaths of Israelis that actually died due to terrorist acts. Carter met with residents of Sderot, who “lost loved ones” to kassam missiles fired indiscriminately at the civilian population. They “lost loved ones” to acts of terrorism. But the T-word isn’t mentioned directly in relation to Sderot. He uses the word “combat” instead to describe the deaths of Sderot residents to kassam rockets. Carter is no longer just a terrorist tool. He has actively gone over to the other side. And they are extremely grateful. Carter’s visit is useful. It legitimizes Hamas to the world, in their eyes.
“This meeting is a message to those who don’t recognize Hamas’s legitimacy as a movement,†the former Palestinian foreign minister, Mahmoud al-Zahar, was quoted as saying on the Hamas Web site.
And it set a precedent. Watch for other world leaders to insist on including Hamas in negotiations in the future.
Carter has obviously failed in his mission to get Hamas to agree to any kind of peace accord, in spite of his speech to the contrary at American University. And here is how obvious his failure is, and will be:
My hope is that there will be no more rockets coming out of Gaza and that was my primary request to Hamas leaders and I hope they will comply,” said Carter.
That request was made on Thursday. Here’s what happened today:
Three Qassam rockets fired from the southern Gaza Strip on Friday afternoon landed in open areas in the Eshkol Regional Council and in a kibbutz in southern Israel. There were no reports of injuries or damage.
Hamas ignored the request to stop the rocket fire. Hamas has no intention of doing anything other than using Carter as a badge of legitimacy. Carter has actually harmed the cause of peace in Israel—not that I believed Hamas was going to agree to peace, but Carter has delegitimized Fatah even more than they already are.
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the – Web Reconnaissance for 04/18/2008 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.
Hmmm. Traveling to an enemy nation and meeting with their leaders in a time of war, in violation of explicit instructions from the State Department.
If someone did that in World War II, they’d have been tried for treason.
Today, we can’t even get the State Department to revoke his passport.
He could have suggested to Hamas that one reason the Palestinians suffer more casualties than Israel is because Hamas deliberately uses civilians as shields and firebases. He could have, but I’d bet it never occurred to him.
Well then … let’s do it this way.
Jimmy Carter says that Hamas is a legitimate group. Israel gives Hamas
24 hours to recognize it and work peacefully for a solution to the Arab-Israeli problem.
Hamas refuses to recognize Israel.
Israel says President Carter made Hamas
a legitimate target. So Israel targets
ALL of HAMAS, military and political. When the UN whines Israel steadfastly states that Nobel Prize winning American Ex-President states that Hamas is a “legitimate target”.
Jimmah go STFU!