Rich Lowry writes:
Jimmy Carter brings a Christian perspective to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Unfortunately, it is the same Christian perspective as a drunken Mel Gibson, obsessed with heaping blame on the Jews...
The book marks Carter’s further disgraceful descent from ineffectual president and international do-gooder to apologist for the worst Arab tendencies. “It is imperative,” Carter writes, “that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel.” In the meantime, presumably, the slaughter of Jews can continue.
Israel can’t be so blithe about the murder of its citizens, which is why it built the security fence. Carter calls it an “imprisonment wall,” but it has been effective in preventing Palestinian terrorists from blowing people to bits — the kind of attacks Carter characterizes as “(unfortunate) for the peace process.” Twice recently, Israel has vacated occupied land, in Southern Lebanon and Gaza, only to see attacks against it launched from those same territories. But Carter always finds a way to point a finger at Israel...
Incredibly, given his media presence, Carter thinks that he is being silenced by shadowy forces. He makes this bizarre claim: “My most troubling experience has been the rejection of my offers to speak, for free, about the book on university campuses with high Jewish enrollment.” Does Carter keep track of which schools have lots of Jews? And who does he think is keeping him from speaking at them?
Just as creepy is a passage in the book about Christians in Galilee who “complained to us that their holy sites and culture were not being respected by Israeli authorities — the same complaint heard by Jesus and his disciples almost 2,000 years earlier.” As New Yorker writer Jeffrey Goldberg notes, “There are, of course, no references to ‘Israeli authorities’ in the Christian Bible. Only a man who sees Israel as a lineal descendent of the Pharisees could write such a sentence.”
What the Palestinians desperately need is a decent government that is genuinely committed to pursuing peace with Israel. By excusing the current degraded state of the Palestinian leadership, Carter is helping only to extend the conflict with Israel and perpetuate Palestinian suffering, not to mention trash his own reputation.
More here.
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