Cairo--By coincidence I was in Cairo today when former President Jimmy Carter arrived here to meet with a delegation from Hamas over the vociferous objections of Israel and the United States. I had served as Deputy Senior Advisor for Middle East Affairs in Carter's White House, and was on the front line defending him before a hostile Jewish community during his failed 1980 reelection campaign, so I had more than a passing interest in the Cairo encounter.
Despite his success in forging the breakthrough Israel-Egyptian peace treaty between Begin and Sadat in 1978, Carter's perceived one-sided advocacy on behalf of the Palestinian people turned many American Jews against him. It was a particularly perplexing predicament for Carter, who understandably believed he was laying the groundwork for a comprehensive Middle East peace, and I was proud to be associated with him and that effort. Nevertheless, when he left the White House, Carter had so alienated the Jewish community with his holier than thou approach to Middle East peace, that the legacy of that Camp David achievement has become a veritable forsaken heirloom.
Two decades later, in 1996, Carter came to Morocco when I served as U.S. ambassador there, and he and our wives had dinner together in Marrakesh. Carter knew of the role I had played in his reelection campaign before the American Jewish community and evidently felt compelled to ask me the following question: "Marc, can you please explain to me why did our Jewish friends turn against me in 1980 after what we had achieved at Camp David?"
Carter's inquiry caught me off guard. Although I had reflected on my years in the White House in anticipation of his visit to Morocco, I frankly did not expect him to tread into the troubled waters of his relationship with Israel and the Jewish community way back when
Being as diplomatic as I could with my former boss, I explained to him that the American Jewish community was not monolithic in its views. But I reproached him for inducing unnecessary acrimony in Israel and across America's Jewish community by seemingly preoccupying himself with the plight of the Palestinian people as if they were the only victims in a conflict where there was more than enough blame to go around on each side.
I urged Carter then to understand that he could make his peace with America's Jews and Israel by having a deeper appreciation of the resentment he engenders when his advocacy on behalf of the Palestinian people seems to be at Israel's expense and to make more of an effort to take into account the terrorism that Palestinians had inflicted on Israel.
Unfortunately, Carter failed to heed the advice I offered him in Marrakesh that evening.
When he subsequently entitled his book Palestine, Between Peace and Apartheid, he ignited a firestorm of criticism. Here again, Carter had provocatively and, I believe intentionally, reopened an unhealed wound in his troubled relationship with Israel and America's Jews. The book's unwarranted and one-sided attacks on Israel only served to further alienate Carter as a responsible and even-handed peacemaker.
For a man who in recent public appearances seems troubled, if not subconsciously resentful, about the hostility he had garnered from his book, Carter's outreach to Hamas represents yet another unfortunate indulgence in what appears to be an open, hostile campaign by a former president against Israel.
Carter knows and could have done more to prevent this from happening.
Carter could have conditioned his Hamas Cairo and Damascus meetings with a pre-negotiated commitment to receive something tangible in return, such as a ceasefire by Hamas against further missile attacks against Israel, or a release by Hamas of Israeli soldiers it is holding captive.
Instead, as soon as his Cairo meeting was over with, Hamas issued a one-sided statement exclaiming that by his mere meeting with the delegation, Carter validated Hamas as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.
It may have been that in 1978 Carter was ahead of his time. In 2008, I am afraid Carter is lost in time. He has failed to face the cold reality of a Middle East that has dramatically changed since his presidency.
Unlike the secular Palestinian Authority that has embraced a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine, Hamas craves legitimacy in support of its goal of destroying the Jewish state of Israel. Treading into the quicksand of negotiating unilaterally with Hamas without something in return may be controversial, but not necessarily productive for the cause of peace.
It is one thing for Americans to expect more from Israel in its dealing with the secular Palestinian Authority, it is entirely another to expect Israel to be mesmerized by Carter's outreach to an organization that even through his powers of persuasion will never alter its stated mission to use "legitimate resistance" (read terrorism) to destroy Israel. Let the Israelis decide for themselves whether or not to negotiate with Hamas, as many in Israel advocate on terms that demand concessions from that group.
In its current incarnation and objectives, Hamas is part of the problem, not part of the solution to Middle East peace. The sooner Carter comes to understand this, the better for all concerned, including the very Palestinians he claims to be trying to help.
Here in Egypt, Hamas is also viewed with increasing trepidation as an organization that threatens regional stability and the very peace treaty that Carter mid-wifed at Camp David between Israel and Egypt.
How tragically ironic, that 30 years since Camp David, Carter's self-indulgent and one-sided embrace of Hamas may inadvertently serve to undermine the very crowning achievement of his lifetime.
Abbas says Carter visit lacked 'positive results':
http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnL22548973.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/21/world/main4031872.shtml
So obviously Ambassador Ginsberg got it right with his diagnosis of hallucinations.
Enslavement of the body of man, is past accomplishment..; the goal to enslave the soul is now under way....
Read the other side of the story: htp://www.serendipity.li/zionism.htm
Better we become a world of degenerating lunatics, and, maintain our souls.., than, eternal slaves to the dark side....
So continually and blindly chanting the mantra that Hamas is sworn to Israel's destruction sounds a little bit like the verbalizations of someone who would prefer to see the fighting, the growth of the settlements and the blowback terror that serves as an excuse to continue the expansion of the settlements continue.
The Ball is now in your court, Ambassador Ginsberg
And yet Israel denies security for an American President after all America has done for them. Carter himself brokered peace between Egypt and Israel.
But Republicans and many Democrats are denouncing Carter??? Calling for his passport to be revoked... Calling for his funding to be completely cut off...
Yet we sit idly by while our current President is continuing to rape our country and it's citizens in almost every way conceivable.
What is wrong with our elected Democrats??? The Republicans are continuing to be as un-patriotic as imaginable... And we let them paint us as such. What is wrong with this picture?
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem and the salvation of all of the nations of the world!
Let me just remind you that it was the state of Israel that immigrated to Palestine, NOT the other way around. To defend the subjugation of the natural inhabitants of that land in a disgusting apartheid and endless and criminal occupation in their own homeland is bizarre and revolting.
The Arabs, who are called Paletinians falsely, are the descendants of Arab invaders. There has never been a Arab-Palestinian state and anytime the Arab had the opportunity to establish a state, they chose violence instead.
They were granted plenty of land in the past and present for a homeland,
What is shameful is the criticism he has received.
Terrorism cannot be seperated from the underlying "need" or "cause" to use such..; terrorisim is the attention grabber -tool- of the sponsors, or oppressed, and until we pay attention to the underlying concerns.., will there be "peace"....
The underlying concerns, is their "cause", and; terrorism (method), in and of itself, is like a Knocker on the door of "reason and humanity"...Mr. Carter is answering the door...while the rest cower in the dark....
Is it any wonder Israel is always fighting. I would fight for Israel's right to have a safe homeland;
I would NOT fight for people who are too stubborn and blind to see that talking is the best policy.
This unending war is not the fault of just one "side". They are all fighting for a secure place to live.
I hope that they see that the ONLY way to have their dream is to talk to who ever will sit down and discuss the problems. One talk won't do it, keep going. No, I haven't lived there, but I know that I am right in this. President Carter knows it too. THINK PEACE and don't be so full of themselves.
"talking is the best policy" - a generalising myth, disconnected from reality.
"[it] is not the fault of just one "side" - another myth, a wishful thinking.
"They are all fighting for a secure place to live." - when Hamas's idea of security is Jew-free land between the River and the Sea. According to their covenant. Which you can't dismiss out of hand without being intellectually dishonest, or self-delusional.
"whoever will sit down" - have you asked Hamas lately? They won't, and said as much, many times.
"I'm know I'm right" - you mean, you "feel" it? Feelings can't stand for knowledge and facts, no matter what postmodernist nonsense you where told in college.
There is no negotiation with people who cannot compromise on their goal of total annihilation of an entire nation.
And, "don't be so full of themselves." Pinkerman? In your assertion that you "know you are right in this" it is YOU who are obviously too full of yourself. It is you who are too disconnected from reality to form an intelligent opinion on the matter.
You can't even make up your mind long enough to form a coherent post. First you say "I would NOT fight for people who are too stubborn and blind to see that talking is the best policy," in reference to what must be Hamas, since they are the side unwilling to talk. So you wouldn't fight for a side so radical in its demands that it will not negotiate, but then you commend Jimmy Carter for his efforts in fighting for the Palestinians. But Carter somehow "knows it"! What does he really knows that we don't? The problem is what Carter thinks he knows.
Israel came to occupy the territories because Arab armies massed on the Israeli border, an act of war. And it was the Arabs who fired the first shots when Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran, also an act of war. Israel responded and defeated the invading Arab forces which required the taking of the West Bank, Gaza, and the entire Sinai. And Israel has every legal right to hold on to the acquired territory. It has returned the Sinai to Egypt, including oil fields that supplied much of the oil required by Israel.
When folks demand that Israel return the territories they forget the laand was held by Egypt and Jordan from 1948-1967. If a "Palestinian" homeland was important why did these two nations fail to create one? Does anyone recall the inability of Jews to worship at their holiest sites in Jerusalem? Until 1967 no one of the Jewish faith could pray at the Western Wall. Since 1967 every religion has been welcomed at their sites. UNlike Iraq, where mosques have been attacked and destroyed, the Mount in Jerusalem has been safe and open to Moslems.
If Israel returned to its pre-67 borders folks on HuffPo and most Arabs have said peace will come to the Middle East. If that was true why was Israel attacked in 1967, before it held the territories?
A violently enforced colonial occupation is ALWAYS wrong. It has nothing to do with defense, and NO set of historical events can justify it, any more than endless historical rationalizations could EVER jsutify what the Nazis did.
Furthermore, it is clear that our complicity in these acts has resulted in the same blowback terror against the US that Israel has suffered for decades, and MANY people here are sick of paying that price for something this country and virtually EVERY OTHER NATION IN THE WORLD condemns.
...like it does Isreal
Mordecai Vanunu was recently rearrested after serving 11 out of 18 years in solitary confinement for revealing Isreals nuclear program in 1986, the longest solitary confinement sentence in the world.Read about this courageous hero here, he continued to speak out despite Isreals demand to censor him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordechai_Vanunu
Hamas was not democratically elected!!! LEARN THE FACTS!!
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/29/international/middleeast/29mideast.html
1. Read
2. Think
THEN
3. Write
It is Hamas themselves responsible for the oppression of Palestinian people. Without their assaults on Israeli territory, soldiers, and civilians, there would be not roadblocks or embargoes on trade. Unfortunately, Israel needs to do these things to protect its security and sovereignty.
The Israeli lobby does not want peace, they want 100% of Palestine, all of it. They will not stop as long as the US and Europe finance it.
If Israel has to return land to the guys who want to destroy it, then Russia, Poland and France have to return occupied territory to Germany.