Posted on 11/22/2006 4:38:33 PM PST by daveinboca
Alan Dershowitz effectively demolishes the unfortunate episode between Gerry Ford and Ronald Reagan that was perhaps the worst presidency since James Buchanan.
Carter hates Israel and American Jews for helping to organize his defeat in 1980, when John Anderson in the middle and Teddy Kennedy on the far left effectively pincered his candidacy enough to allow a Reagan win. Carter's diplomatic lurchings scared the friends of Israel enough to engineer this hapless feckless smiley-face into political oblivion. Here are some of Carter's unforced errors in a new book:
• Carter emphasizes that "Christian and Muslim Arabs had continued to live in this same land since Roman times," but he ignores the fact that Jews have lived in Hebron, Tzfat, Jerusalem, and other cities for even longer. Nor does he discuss the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab countries since 1948. • Carter repeatedly claims that the Palestinians have long supported a two-state solution and the Israelis have always opposed it. Yet he makes no mention of the fact that in 1938 the Peel Commission proposed a two-state solution with Israel receiving a mere sliver of its ancient homeland and the Palestinians receiving the bulk of the land. The Jews accepted and the Palestinians rejected this proposal, because Arab leaders cared more about there being no Jewish state on Muslim holy land than about having a Palestinian state of their own.This excrescence on the national scene still gets audiences of little old ladies and fever-swamp moonbats agitated, but grownups have long since taken control of US national interests since JC botched his turn at the helm.• He barely mentions Israel's acceptance, and the Palestinian rejection, of the U.N.'s division of the mandate in 1948.
• He claims that in 1967 Israel launched a preemptive attack against Jordan. The fact is that Jordan attacked Israel first, Israel tried desperately to persuade Jordan to remain out of the war, and Israel counterattacked after the Jordanian army surrounded Jerusalem, firing missiles into the center of the city. Only then did Israel capture the West Bank, which it was willing to return in exchange for peace and recognition from Jordan.
• Carter repeatedly mentions Security Council Resolution 242, which called for return of captured territories in exchange for peace, recognition and secure boundaries, but he ignores the fact that Israel accepted and all the Arab nations and the Palestinians rejected this resolution. The Arabs met in Khartum and issued their three famous "no's": "No peace, no recognition, no negotiation" but you wouldn't know that from reading the history according to Carter.
• Carter faults Israel for its "air strike that destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor" without mentioning that Iraq had threatened to attack Israel with nuclear weapons if they succeeded in building a bomb.
• Carter faults Israel for its administration of Christian and Muslim religious sites, when in fact Israel is scrupulous about ensuring every religion the right to worship as they please--consistant, of course, with security needs. He fails to mention that between 1948 and 1967, when Jordan occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the Hashemites destroyed and desecrated Jewish religious sites and prevented Jews from praying at the Western Wall. He also never mentions Egypt's brutal occupation of Gaza between 1949 and 1967.
• Carter blames Israel, and exonerates Arafat, for the Palestinian refusal to accept statehood on 95% of the West Bank and all of Gaza pursuant to the Clinton-Barak offers of Camp David and Taba in 2000-2001. He accepts the Palestinian revisionist history, rejects the eye-witness accounts of President Clinton and Dennis Ross and ignores Saudi Prince Bandar's accusation that Arafat's rejection of the proposal was "a crime" and that Arafat's account "was not truthful"--except, apparently, to Carter. The fact that Carter chooses to believe Yasir Arafat over Bill Clinton speaks volumes.
• Carter's description of the recent Lebanon war is misleading. He begins by asserting that Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers. "Captured" suggest a military apprehension subject to the usual prisoner of war status. The soldiers were kidnapped, and have not been heard from--not even a sign of life. The rocket attacks that preceded Israel's invasion are largely ignored, as is the fact that Hezbollah fired its rockets from civilian population centers.
• Carter gives virtually no credit to Israel's superb legal system, falsely asserting (without any citation) that "confessions extracted through torture are admissible in Israeli courts," that prisoners are "executed" and that the "accusers" act "as judges." Even Israel's most severe critics acknowledge the fairness of the Israeli Supreme Court, but not Carter.
• Carter even blames Israel for the "exodus of Christians from the Holy Land," totally ignoring the Islamization of the area by Hamas and the comparable exodus of Christian Arabs from Lebanon as a result of the increasing influence of Hezbollah and the repeated assassination of Christian leaders by Syria.
• Carter also blames every American administration but his own for the Mideast stalemate with particular emphasis on "a submissive White House and U.S. Congress in recent years." He employs hyperbole and overstatement when he says that "dialogue on controversial issues is a privilege to be extended only as a reward for subservient behavior and withheld from those who reject U.S. demands." He confuses terrorist states, such as Iran and Syria to which we do not extend dialogue, with states with whom we strongly disagree, such as France and China, with whom we have constant dialogue.
Carter was a fool when he was in the White House and remains a fool today.
pincered his candidacy enough? He got slayed from coast to coast.
Good stuff; and we have seen that Dershowitz is also a fool in his own right.
And that old fool just won't go away.
Rhyme not intended.
Carter is worse than a fool - he's evil.
I'd have to agree with you on that.
even more damning-- he's a Democrat
I have to disagree, Carter was a fool when he was in the White House, but now..he is just a Senile ol' fool.
The obsequious Carter suck-ups in the comments are unintentionally hilarious; one guy even favorably compares Mr. Peanut to Jesus.
Carter a fool? That's a given; why waste bandwidth debating the issue.
I just gotta post it:
I have read the first paragraph and refuse to go any further.
First of all one cannot find a finer person than Pres. Jimmy Carter on the face of the earth these days. He not only speaks "brotherly love", but he lives every day of his life, in all of his deeds and actions in that mode as well. I see in Pres. Carter one of the very few in the world today who truly live their lives as Christ lived His. Instead this world today is nearly an epidemic of hypocrisy and indifference. Carter is a man of great intellect, great wisdom, Godly humility, and with a huge heart to go along with it. And his love for his fellow man extends to ALL people, all races, all nationalities, etc. It is not limited to Plains, GA, or just the USA. And neither is Gods. And that is the essence of a truly good and Godly man.
Pres. Carter cares about the plight of the Palestinians and the less privileged in other nations of the world, as Christ Himself would do. And that is a wonderful quality, and one in which IMO millions of others need to mimic. If we would all live our lives more like Pres. Carter's, in a mode of tangible "brotherly love" and focusing on being our "brother's keeper" it would make our world a lot better place than this current chaotic mode of indifference and strife.
Anybody ever thought what it would be like to walk in the shoes of a person from Palestine, Darfur, Iraq, etc. for just one day? You may want to think about that when you are eating your Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow with your family and loved ones.
Pres. Carters focus is clearly caring and working for the betterment of all people, here and abroad. When is the last time others picked up a hammer and helped build a house for the poor, and for the betterment of the life of their less privileged "brother" or "neighbor", as Carter, a former President of the US, does constantly?
By: thepathforward on November 22, 2006 at 05:32pm
Flag:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/the-world-according-to-ji_b_34702.html?p=4#comments
Carte is a hard core anti- semite.
something that "Herbies" should remember.
He is indeed a fool...his military service notwithstanding.
You're being much too polite.
I used to enjoy working with habitat for humanity, but having him as a spokesman kind of destroyed it for me. That's not the only reason, though, I don't do it any more.
Yes, Carter is either the worst or second worst presidnet of all time.
Amen. Yet Carter remains the example Liberals throw up as an example of a "good man" as President. When you meet them with the destruction wrought on this country during his mere 4 years in power, their eyes glaze over. He is a fixed "good" president icon in their minds and facts simply have no place in that hazy belief system.
You obviously don't know what apostasy is.
He's much worse than that. He is a Traitor!
Rent the Reagan movie "In the Face of Evil" it has a clip of jimmuhhh grinning while signing away our military might with Brezhnev. He knew full well what he was doing, and was damn proud and happy about it too!
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