Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: jimmy carter

Showing posts with label jimmy carter. Show all posts

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Jimmy Carter consulted State Dept. before Hamas meeting

It sure looks like Obama is Jimmy Carter Jr.:

Former US President Jimmy Carter met with State Department and National Security officials before meeting Hamas leaders in the Middle East, the State Department said on Thursday.

According to a statement released by the State Department, Carter met with Near Eastern Affairs Bureau Deputy Assistant Secretary David Hale and National Security staff. This statement was made in response to a question asked at a Washington press briefing on Wednesday about Carter’s meetings with Hamas leaders in Gaza on Tuesday.

On his recent Middle East trip, Carter met the exiled chief of Hamas’ powerful Political Bureau, Khalid Mash’al in Damascus, and then met Ismail Haniyeh, the elected Palestinian Prime Minister, in Gaza. US officials had stressed that the former president held these meetings as a private citizen only.

Thursday’s announcement now confirms that there has been some official contact between Carter and the current US government vis-à-vis Middle East policy.

So there's a good chance that Carter's call for Obama to take Hamas off the terror list was a charade known by the State Department ahead of time - and possibly even by the White House, which is already thinking in that direction.

It appears that things are going to get worse.

Jimmy the Dhimmi frolicking with Hamas

From Palestine Today:

Do you think that there is a single Jew that Jimmy Carter loves as much as he loves Hamas terrorist leaders?

Gazan group attempted to assassinate Carter?

Maariv is reporting that, according to Palestinian Arab sources, an al Qaeda-aligned Gaza group attempted to assassinate Jimmy Carter on his current visit to Gaza.

According to the report, Hamas police discovered two bombs on Carter's route near the Erez crossing. Maariv says they confirmed the story with members of Carter's delegation.

Hamas police denied the story.

Jimmy Carter's "truth" versus reality

In Ha'aretz, Jimmy Carter repeats one of his more obvious lies about Gaza:

To me, the most grievous circumstance is the maltreatment of the people in Gaza, who are literally starving and have no hope at this time.

So I must remind my readers that I have been following the news from Gaza very closely, in both Arabic as well as English, and have yet to see a single person who starved to death.

But I have seen pictures like these from Gaza - published the same day as Carter's interview:

Notice the despondency, the distended stomachs, the flies that they are too weak to swat away, the sense of being treated like animals in a huge open-air prison that Israel created, that Carter is referring to.

Carter acting as Obama emissary to Hamas?

It doesn't sound likely, but there are Palestinian Arabic reports that Jimmy Carter's upcoming visit to Gaza in the middle of June will include him bringing a letter from President Obama to deliver to Hamas.

Another article in an Egyptian newspaper claims that Obama met with members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Washington two months ago:

Special sources reported to Al Masry El Youm, that a delegation from the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) Association met with US President Obama, in Washington, two months earlier. This meeting was arranged in response to a request made by the MB's leaders in regards to the MB wanting to express their views concerning a number of current political issues.
The sources added that the delegation was joined by an Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood member who was living in the United States of America, as well as an Egyptian political leader who was living in a European country.
The sources referred to the fact that "The Muslim Brothers had requested that this meeting be confidential." In their talks with Obama, the MB delegates informed the US Presidents that the Muslim Brotherhood Association is a moderate association that was developed to fight against extreme religious ideas and who base their beliefs strongly on democracy, power circulation and fighting against terrorism, stated the source.

Both stories need to be taken with a large grain of salt, but they are interesting nonetheless, especially in combination.

Jimmy Carter was against Egypt/Israel peace!

A very interesting article by Arthur Herman in the WSJ:

The myth of Camp David hangs heavy over American foreign policy, and it's easy to see why. Of all the attempts to forge a Middle East peace, the 1978 treaty between Egypt and Israel has proved the most durable. Mr. Carter's admirers extol Camp David as an example of how one man's vision and negotiating skill brought former enemies together at the peace table, and as proof that a president can guide America toward a kinder, humbler foreign policy. Camp David was indeed Mr. Carter's one major foreign policy accomplishment amid a string of disasters including the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the rise of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and Ayatollah Khomeini's ascent in Iran.

But the truth about Camp David belies this myth. The truth is that Mr. Carter never wanted an Egyptian-Israeli agreement, fought hard against it, and only agreed to go along with the process when it became clear that the rest of his foreign policy was in a shambles and he desperately needed to log a success.

As presidential candidate, Jimmy Carter was sharply critical of the kind of step-by-step personal diplomacy which had been practiced by his predecessors Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. President Carter's preferred Middle East policy was to insist on a comprehensive settlement among all concerned parties -- including the Arab states' leading patron, the Soviet Union -- and to disparage Nixonian incrementalism.

Mr. Carter and his advisers all assumed that the key to peace in the region was to make Israel pull back to its pre-1967 borders and accept the principle of Palestinian self-determination in exchange for a guarantee of Israel's security. Nothing less than a comprehensive settlement, it was argued, could ward off future wars -- and there could be no agreement without the Soviets at the bargaining table. This was a policy that, if implemented, would have thrust the Cold War directly into the heart of Middle East politics. Nixon and Mr. Kissinger had strained to achieve the opposite.
...For the better part of 1977, as Israel and Egypt negotiated, the White House persisted in acting as if nothing had happened. Even after Sadat's trip to Jerusalem, Mr. Carter announced that "a separate peace agreement between Egypt and Israel is not desirable."
...But by the autumn of 1978, the rest of Mr. Carter's foreign policy had crumbled. He had pushed through an unpopular giveaway of the Panama Canal, allowed the Sandinistas to take power in Nicaragua as proxies of Cuba, and stood by while chaos grew in the Shah's Iran. Desperate for some kind of foreign policy success in order to bolster his chances for re-election in 1980, Mr. Carter finally decided to elbow his way into the game by setting up a meeting between Sadat and Begin at Camp David.
...
Camp David worked because it avoided all of Mr. Carter's usual foreign policy mistakes, particularly his insistence on a comprehensive solution. Instead, Sadat and Begin pursued limited goals. The agreement stressed a step-by-step process instead of insisting on immediate dramatic results. It excluded noncooperative entities like Syria and the PLO, rather than trying to accommodate their demands. And for once, Mr. Carter chose to operate behind the scenes à la Mr. Kissinger, instead of waging a media war through public statements and gestures. (The press were barred from the Camp David proceedings).

Above all and most significantly, Camp David sought peace instead of "justice." Liberals say there can be no peace without justice. But to many justice means the end of Israel or the creation of a separate Palestinian state. Sadat and Begin, in the teeth of Mr.Carter's own instincts both then and now, established at Camp David a sounder principle for negotiating peace. The chaos and violence in today's Gaza proves just how fatal trying to advance other formulations can be.

Now, of course, Carter uses Camp David as his major credential for "peacemaking" even as he continues to advocate his failed policies of a comprehensive peace based on Israeli concessions and empty promises by Arabs. His recollection of Camp David includes his usual amnesia about Palestinian Arab commitments:

I was really disappointed when President Reagan dropped the ball completely. He showed no interest in the Mideast peace process after I left office and we were right on the verge of a complete success back then. We had two facets of the agreement that I negotiated with (Israeli Prime Minister Menachem) Begin and (Egyptian President Anwar) Sadat. One was the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, not a word of which has ever been violated in the last 30 years. The other one was a commitment of Israelis to withdraw their political and military forces from the West Bank and to let the Palestinians have full autonomy. On that part of the process, Israel did not carry out their promise and President Reagan didn’t try to enforce the agreement that they had signed and that their parliament had approved. So yes, I was disappointed.

The text of Camp David shows Carter's bias:

Egypt and Israel agree that, in order to ensure a peaceful and orderly transfer of authority, and taking into account the security concerns of all the parties, there should be transitional arrangements for the West Bank and Gaza for a period not exceeding five years. In order to provide full autonomy to the inhabitants, under these arrangements the Israeli military government and its civilian administration will be withdrawn as soon as a self-governing authority has been freely elected by the inhabitants of these areas to replace the existing military government.
When the self-governing authority (administrative council) in the West Bank and Gaza is established and inaugurated, the transitional period of five years will begin.

The autonomy that Camp David talks about is predicated on free elections in the territories, something that didn't happen until decades later.

So not only does Carter take credit for Israel/Egyptian peace that he opposed, he continues to lie about the very agreements that he brokered - always to vilify Israel.

(Also see My Right Word on the same Arthur Herman article.)

Carter: "The Israel lobby doesn't want peace"

Jimmy shows his hatred for Israel again, in the middle of an interview with The Houston Chronicle:

You have to remember that the major Israeli lobbies, they’re not in favor of peace. They never have professed to be. What they are in favor of is protecting the policies of whatever government is in charge in Israel. If you look at their Web sites, they make that quite clear. So they’re for Israel, they’re not for peace between Israel and its neighbors.

There you have it - according to Jimmy, it is impossible to be pro-Israel and pro-"peace."

Of course, if you define "peace" the way he does, where Israel surrenders everything in exchange for worthless promises, I guess that is true.

But if you define peace correctly, this is pretty slanderous.

(In case you are interested, the word "peace" is mentioned over 6000 times at the AIPAC website, about 200 times at the ZOA website, and as far as I can tell none of them are against "peace," although I'm sure they have qualms about the "peace process," which is hardly the same thing.)

Carter praises Hamas leaders

From The Carter Center, Jimmy breathlessly tries to make Hamas leaders seem to be just like Western leaders:

In the afternoon Bob, Hrair, and I met with Khaled Mashaal and his fellow Hamas politburo members, all of whom are scientists, medical doctors, or engineers – none trained in religion. It was the anniversary of Hamas' founding, and they were watching Prime Minister Haniya's speech in Gaza to an enormous crowd.

They're professionals! They wear suits! They don't talk about religion all day! How can you not love these guys?

And, as Israel Matzav points out, Carter was not above giving his terrorist pals some friendly advice on how high a price to demand for the release of Gilad Shalit:

We discussed items on my agenda that included ... formulas for prisoner exchange to obtain the release of Corporal Shalit.

Why would that great humanitarian Jimmy Carter demand an unconditional release of Gilad Shalit when he can agree with Hamas that kidnapping soldiers can help them gain more terrorists from Israeli prisons?

There's more in this "trip report" that shows exactly where Carter's even-handedness lies:

We spent one day visiting the UNIFIL area south of the Litani River. We flew by helicopter along the coast past Tyre and Sidon, then landed at Naqoura just north of the Israeli border. We then traveled along the "blue line" between Israel and Lebanon and viewed the distant Sea of Galilee from the helicopter while proceeding eastward toward Mount Hermon. ... Israelis are also occupying the northern (Lebanese) 2/3 of a small village named Garjaa. The general showed us a graph of the many flights of Israeli planes over all parts of Lebanon, averaging about a dozen each day. Neither Hezbollah nor the Lebanese Armed Forces have any anti-aircraft weapons for defense.

Notice Jimmy the Dhimmi's thinking: IDF planes that are passively monitoring Hezbollah terror activity and weapons smuggling are terribly offensive, and he would advocate that Hezbollah or the Lebanese Army have anti-aircraft missiles to shoot them down - and that would be considered "defense."

Jimmy ready to sacrifice more of Israel for "peace"

Western dhimmis might not always be enthusiastic about personally giving concessions to radical Islamists, but they are always more than willing to demand that Israel make the sacrifices for them.

In the name of "peace," of course!

Former US president Jimmy carter and his delegation had a round of talks with prime minister Fouad Siniora and some members of the cabinet around 8:PM Thursday.
He added : "I look forward to see the establishment of close diplomatic relations between Lebanon and Syria, which will be a step forward for peace in the region . The day after tomorrow (Saturday) I will visit Damascus to meet with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in order to encourage him to speed up this process."
He expressed his belief that Israel's withdrawal in the near future from the Shebaa Farms area and the village of Ghajar would bring peace to the region as a whole.

Notice that Carter doesn't even rely on Hezbollah lies to make these sorts of statements anymore. Hezbollah refused to meet with him, so he has no idea if Hezbollah would agree that these withdrawals would bring peace.

No, Jimmy has now become a proxy for Hezbollah, tacitly agreeing with them that if anyone is wrong, it is always Israel.

Hezbollah themselves, of course, have made it clear that they will never put down their weapons even if Israel gave them Shebaa Farms and Ghajar.

And Jimmy the Dhimmi's willingness to accept Hezbollah's positions extends to his desire for "peace" between Syria and Lebanon. Both Syria and Hezbollah agree with that goal - to destroy any last vestiges of Christianity and secularism in Lebanon and to cooperate fully with Iran in gaining more and more weapons to use against Israel.

But the new Greater Syria would be at "peace" with itself, so Carter's single-minded idiotic goals would be reached.

Jimmy betraying national secrets?

Once upon a time, strange as it may sound now, Jimmy Carter was the President of the United States. As president, he was privy to a great deal of secret information that he was honor-bound to keep private.

Now, everyone assumes that Israel has nuclear weapons. No one really knows how many, though. Chances are that the United States government does have a much clearer idea of how many such weapons Israel has, and, as Israel is an ally of the US, it keeps mum.

What does one do with a president who, after he leaves office, decides to betray the trust that Americans and their allies placed in him?

Israel has 150 nuclear weapons in its arsenal, former President Jimmy Carter said yesterday, while arguing that the US should talk directly to Iran to persuade it to drop its nuclear ambitions.

This is not some investigative reporter coming up with these numbers, this is an ex-president. As such, they appear to have more inside information behind them.

If a former Israeli prime minister would tell a public venue about US spies found in Israel, or perhaps about US military capabilities and weaknesses discovered during joint exercises, what would be the US reaction? If Tony Blair announced the exact location of US submarines when he was prime minister, what kind of an uproar would that cause? Because this is exactly what Jimmy Carter just did to Israel.

He just gave priceless information to Iran about Israel's nuclear arsenal.

Does this make him a spy? A turncoat? I don't know, but at the very least it should mean that whatever little credibility he still has as a decent human being is now utterly lost.

Carter to EU: Stop being wimps. Defy the US. Support Hamas

Jimmy just takes every opportunity he can to prop up his Hamas pals:

Britain and other European governments should break from the US over the international embargo on Gaza, former US president Jimmy Carter told the Guardian yesterday. Carter, visiting the Welsh border town of Hay for the Guardian literary festival, described the EU's position on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as "supine" and its failure to criticise the Israeli blockade of Gaza as "embarrassing".
Referring to the possibility of Europe breaking with the US in an interview with the Guardian, he said: "Why not? They're not our vassals. They occupy an equal position with the US."
The blockade on Hamas-ruled Gaza, imposed by the US, EU, UN and Russia - the so-called Quartet - after the organisation's election victory in 2006, was "one of the greatest human rights crimes on Earth," since it meant the "imprisonment of 1.6 million people, 1 million of whom are refugees". "Most families in Gaza are eating only one meal per day. To see Europeans going along with this is embarrassing," Carter said.
While being scrupulously polite to the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, and prime minister, Salam Fayyad, who represent the Fatah movement, he was scathing about their exclusion of Hamas. He described the Fatah-only government as a "subterfuge" aimed at getting round Hamas's election victory two years ago. "The top opinion pollster in Ramallah told me the other day that opinion on the West Bank is shifting to Hamas, because people [i.e., Jimmy - EoZ] believe Fatah has sold out to Israel and the US," he said.
Carter said the Quartet's policy of not talking to Hamas unless it recognised Israel and fulfilled two other conditions had been drafted by Elliot Abrams, an official in the national security council at the White House. He called Abrams "a very militant supporter of Israel". The ex-president, whose election-monitoring Carter Centre had just certified Hamas's election victory as free and fair, addressed the Quartet for 12 minutes at its session in London in 2006. He urged it to talk to Hamas, which had offered to form a unity government with Fatah, the losers.
"The Quartet's final document had been drafted in Washington in advance, and not a line was changed," he said. [Nah, he doesn't sound like a bitter old man who gets ignored by the young whippersnappers who replaced him. - EoZ]
Last night, before a packed crowd at Hay, Carter spoke of his "horror" at America's involvement in torturing prisoners, saying he wanted the next US president to promise never to do so again.
He left an intriguing hint that George Bush might even face prosecution on war crimes charges once he left office.
When pressed by Philippe Sands QC on Bush's recent admission that he had authorised interrogation procedures widely seen as amounting to torture, Carter replied that he was sure Bush would be able to live a peaceful, "productive life - in our country".
Sands, an international legal expert, said afterwards that he understood that to be "clear confirmation" that while Bush would face no challenge in his own country, "what happened outside the country was another matter entirely"

Carter's love affair with Palestinian Arab terrorists continues

Fox News interviewed Jimmy Carter and asked at least one good question:

When asked whether he'd ever meet with Al Qaeda, Carter replied, "No, of course not."
"I don't see any redeeming features of Al Qaeda at all," he said.

But in defense of meeting with Hamas, Carter pointed out a Ha'aretz poll from February that said that 64% of Israelis supported direct talks with Hamas in order to free Gilad Shalit as well as the fact that Hamas was elected by the Palestinian Arab people.

But what Fox didn't ask him afterwards was, if Carter was so enamored of Hamas because of the poll and because they were elected, why he tried also to meet with Islamic Jihad which had none of those distinctions?

The fact that Carter wanted to meet with Islamic Jihad - a pure terror group - shows that his rationalizations to Fox News are just after-the-fact attempts to stave off criticism, and not deep-felt convictions.

Or perhaps he can enlighten us of the "redeeming features" that he feels that Islamic Jihad has?

Jimmy Carter gets more despicable by the hour

Jimmy Carter just gets more despicable by the hour:

Speaking at the American University in Cairo after talks with Hamas leaders from, Carter said Palestinians in Gaza were being "starved to death" and received fewer calories a day than people in the poorest parts of Africa.

I will say it again: I have been following the news very closely from Gaza, in Arabic as well as English, and I have not yet seen a single person reported or even rumored to have starved to death. If Jimmy the Dhimmi is going to slander Israel like this he needs to show some proof. Meanwhile, a couple of weeks ago I did a quick visual comparison between starving Gazans and starving Africans. See if you can tell the difference.

"It's an atrocity what is being perpetrated as punishment on the people in Gaza. It's a crime... I think it is an abomination that this continues to go on," Carter said.

Here Carter makes clear that he regards Israeli defensive actions to kill terrorists as more immoral than thousands of Qassam rockets designed to kill civilians (which he called merely "criminal."

Carter said Israel and the US were trying to make the quality of life in Gaza markedly worse than in the West Bank, where the rival Fatah group is in control.

"I think politically speaking this has worked even to strengthen the popularity of Hamas and to the detriment of the popularity of Fatah," he added.

Carter, who has done more to legitimize and popularize Hamas than any other Western figure, now has the nerve to blame Israel and the US for doing that? Since when is he against strengthening Hamas? What a hypocritical tool.

..."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 said.

Yes, Jimmy would be much happier if more Hamas terror attacks hit their marks more accurately, so Israel wouldn't be acting so disproportionately. What a sick, twisted, decrepit man.

Carter has no fear of being kidnapped or assassinated while visiting the Middle East. He has shown himself to be more anti-Israel and pro-terror than the EU and the UN, by orders of magnitude. No wonder he gets embraced and applauded by terrorists.

Add two more terrorists to Carter's trophy shelf

From Reuters:

Hamas said on Wednesday that former U.S. President Jimmy Carter would meet two of its leaders from Gaza in Egypt, in further defiance of Israeli leaders, who have shunned him over his contacts with the Islamist group.

Hamas official Ayman Taha told Reuters senior leaders Mahmoud al-Zahar and Saeed Seyam would travel to Cairo later in the day for talks with Carter, who began a Middle East visit on Sunday.

"Mr Carter asked for the meeting. He wanted to hear the Hamas vision regarding the situation, and we are interested in clarifying our position and emphasising the rights of our people," Taha said.

I'm surprised that Jimmy hasn't publicly offered to mediate between Hamas and Fatah yet.

Also, this means that Egypt allows Hamas leaders to freely travel between Gaza and Egypt.

Carter wanted to meet Islamic Jihad, too

Both Palestine Today and Palestine Press Agency report that Egyptian officials invited Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Shalah to visit Cairo to meet Jimmy Carter but Shalah refused, saying that Carter is following an "American/Israeli agenda." Shalah has been harshly critical of Khaled Meshaal's planned meeting with Carter.

It would appear that Carter initiated this request to meet with the arch-terrorist. All of the reasons that Carter uses to justify meeting with Hamas - that Hamas has supposedly offered a truce, for example, or that most attacks are not initiated by Hamas - do not apply to Islamic Jihad, yet Carter apparently wants to give legitimacy to Islamic Jihad terrorists anyway.

Meanwhile, Carter plans to meet with a Hamas official in Ramallah and he has already laid a wreath at the grave of his fellow Nobel Prize winner, Yasir Arafat, a man responsible for the deaths of thousands of people who Carter admired greatly.

What is "criminal" about Jimmy Carter

Compare:

Former US president Jimmy Carter toured Sderot on Monday and said the firing of Kassam rockets from the Gaza Strip at the western Negev is "criminal."
Carter, who made the comment after he was shown the remains of hundreds of rockets that were fired at the town, said he would try to promote a ceasefire in the region.

With:

The Secretary-General condemns rocket fire against Israel by Hamas... He calls on Hamas and other militant groups to cease such acts of terrorism.

To call terrorist acts "criminal" betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the facts and a clear bias towards the terrorists.

The only time I can find Dhimmi Carter condemning rockets to Sderot he also didn't use the word "terrorism," just using the blander "attacks" or the passive "violence" and even-handedly comparing suicide bombing to Israeli defensive actions last February:

The Carter Center condemns the recent Palestinian suicide bombings and rocket fire against Israel and calls on the Palestinian leadership in Gaza to take urgent and immediate measures to halt the spiraling cycle of violence.
At the same time, the Center reiterates its previous calls for Israel to end its siege of Gaza and urges Israel to refrain from further attacks and assassinations against Palestinians. If the Annapolis process is to have any chance to succeed in bringing a lasting peace to the region, Israel and the Hamas leadership in Gaza must negotiate an immediate ceasefire, and all sides must redouble efforts to resolve key issues to enable a viable two-state solution.

The February 4 attack by two Palestinian suicide bombers was the first such attack within Israeli borders in over a year and the first claimed by Hamas since August 2004. Hamas' claim to have resumed the use of suicide bombings against civilians as a means of resistance to Israel is strongly condemned. In addition to these attacks, recent rocket fire has maimed two children in the Israeli town of Sderot. These attacks have led Israeli authorities to call for large-scale retaliatory operations in Gaza and for the assassination of Hamas leaders. Israel retaliatory attacks in eastern Gaza have killed both militants and innocent civilians. A missile dropped on a Palestinian school killed a teacher and wounded several students.

Both the Israeli government and Hamas, which has repeatedly stated in the past that it is willing to negotiate a truce with Israel, should take immediate steps to end the tragic cycle of retaliation.

This is obscene.

Carter equates Israeli actions with those of Hamas,
he attempts to paint Hamas as more interested in peace than Israel by repeating Hamas lies about its interest in a temporary "truce",
he refusese to label even Palestinian suicide attacks as "terrorism,"
he implies that Hamas has been innocent of any terror acts in a 3.5 year period,
he implies that Israel assassinates - purposefully targets - innocent Palestinian Arabs and not only the terrorists,
he seems to be upset about the maiming of two Israeli children only because Israel might retailiate -

--these are all examples of his clear leaning towards the terrorists. Moreover, even though at the time of this press release it was known that the "school" that Israel shot at was a launching pad for Hamas rockets - a war crime - Carter doesn't mention it.

It is sickening.

Rockets being shot at civilians in Sderot is not merely a criminal act, and to label it as such is to downplay it. Jimmy has a rich record of downplaying Arab terror and demonizing Israeli actions, and this is yet another example.

Jimmy the Dhimmi wants to legitimize Hamas again

From Ma'an (h/t Israellycool):

A plan is coalescing to arrange a meeting between exiled senior Hamas leader Khalid Mash'al and former US President Jimmy Carter in Damascus on 18 April, Palestinian sources told the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat on Tuesday.

According to Al-Hayat, Carter's aides will arrive in Syria soon to make arrangements for the meeting.

If the meeting is held, Carter will become the highest-ranking American official ever to publicly meet with Hamas leaders. Hamas officials did meet with representatives of President Bill Clinton's administration in the 1990s.

During the proposed meeting, Carter will be presented as the chair of the Carter Center, rather than as a former US president. A Hamas official said that that the meeting would show that Hamas is a power that can't be ignored in addressing the Palestinian question.

Jimmy's prophetic powers of a peaceful Hamas are bearing fruit, and he is ready to act on them. After all, the rockets are down to only 3 a day now. If that ain't peaceful what is?

And the 2008 EoZ Dhimmi of the Year is...

The long-time sentimental favorite, the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize winner and, more importantly, the 2003 Fiskie Award winner, former President, peanut farmer and terrorist-sympathizer extraordinaire, Jimmy Carter!

While some (including myself) may dispute his status as a classic dhimmi, Mr. Carter did still manage to do some spectacularly dhimmi-type activities this year, including:

- The revelation that he might have advised his friend, Yasser Arafat, to reject Israel's Camp David offer in 2000;

- Declaring the mass murders in Darfur to not be genocide;

- Starting a pompously-named supergroup plagiarized from your humble host, which coincidentally includes mostly members that share his hatred of Israel;

- Not backtracking from his 2006 praise of Hamas on Larry King;

- Advising Jews to hate Christian evangelists, and advising Christian Evangelists to hate Israel;

- Telling Iowans to choose candidates who aren't so darn pro-Israel; and

- Quoting a fake "letter from Nelson Mandela" that was created on a virulently anti-Israel website calling Israel an apartheid state as if it was true.

If we add what we found out about this great humanitarian in December of 2006 we can add:

- It was revealed that Dhimmi Carter himself, when President of the United States, personally intervened on behalf of a Nazi war criminal.

- It was shown that in his "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" book, Carter purposefully plagiarized and misrepresented maps that came from Dennis Ross' book on Camp David.

Yes, it was a busy year for Jimmah, with much of his efforts going towards strengthening terrorists and demonizing Zionists.

So congratulations to Jimmy!

Honorable mention to Christiane Amanpour, our runner-up, who managed to equate a couple of abortion-clinic bombings and some decades-old Jewish settler actions with the purposeful murder of tens of thousands of people. Because, of course, all religions are equally likely to hurt people.

Perhaps she didn't win because she was accused of being a Zionist spy.

Honorable mentions to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the California congressional representatives, tied for third place. Full results here.

The Elders of Zion-haters

Amateurs:

Combining serious statesmanship and a large measure of audacity, former South African President Nelson Mandela and a clutch of world-famous figures plan to announce Wednesday a private alliance to launch diplomatic assaults on the globe's most intractable problems.

The alliance, to be unveiled Wednesday during events marking Mandela's 89th birthday, is to be called The Elders. Among others, it includes retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, retired UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and Mary Robinson, the human-rights activist and former president of Ireland.

Many, including Mandela, have been harsh critics of President Bush and U.S. foreign policy, particularly toward Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The group's members and backers insisted in interviews, however, that they are guided neither by ideology nor by geopolitical bent.

Mandela states in remarks prepared for Wednesday that the fact that none of The Elders holds public office allows them to work for the common good, not for outside interests.

"This group can speak freely and boldly, working both publicly and behind the scenes on whatever actions need to be taken," the stateement says. "Together we will work to support courage where there is fear, foster agreement where there is conflict and inspire hope where there is despair."

How many weeks before their first "bold" pronouncement that Israel is an evil apartheid state? Because, obviously, they have been too intimidated by the worldwide Jewish conspiracy to hold that position publicly before they joined forces.

They'll first have a pronouncement that AIDS or poverty in Africa is bad, to establish their Elderliness, and then they'll be empowered to do what they really want to do - go after that intractable problem that is all the fault of those pesky Zionists who just love oppressing Arabs.

Meryl Yourish has already detailed the amazing coincidence of their "non-partisan" opinions:

Mary Robinson, who led the UN Human Rights Commission during the infamous Durban conference: Anti-Israel. Anti-Israel. Anti-Israel.
Jimmy Carter, whose latest anti-Israel screed is a best-seller: Anti-Israel. Anti-Israel. Anti-Israel.

Nelson Mandela, who never met a Palestinian terrorist he didn’t like: Anti-Israel. Anti-American.

Desmond Tutu, who thinks all the world’s problems can be traced to the U.S. and Israel: Anti-Israel. Anti-Israel. Anti-Semitic?

Let's hear what Jimmy has to say!

As Hamas destroys Fatah in northern Gaza, and as Fatah starts fighting back in the West Bank, let's go back in memory lane in those rosy days after Hamas' election when Jimmy Carter expressed his profound love for all things Hamas in February 2006 on the Larry King show:

KING: We're back with President Carter. You were there. Is there any chance of Hamas turning away from the violent statements in their concept?

CARTER: Yes, I think there's a good chance, Larry. After Arafat was elected ten years ago, I was there and he knew me and he asked me to intercede with Hamas leaders to see if at that time they wouldn't accept the new Palestinian government, the parliament members and Arafat as president.

And, I spent a while with them but some of their leaders were out of the country, so I arranged to meet with the leadership in Cairo after I left Palestine. But when the time came they canceled on the meeting, so I haven't had any contact with them since until two days after this election.

I did meet with some of the same Hamas members in Ramallah and I think they told me they want to have a peaceful administration. They want to have a unity government, bring in the Fatah members and the independent members and I think that there's a good chance that they will, of course, what they say, what they do is two different matters.

One thing they pointed out and Israeli security confirmed this to me, Hamas leadership in August of 2004 pledged themselves to apply a cease-fire and they haven't committed any actions of violence in the last 18 months. [Here is proof of that Hamas "truce" during those 18 months - EoZ]

This indicates what they might do in the future but it also indicates another thing I think is quite interesting. That is that Hamas is a highly-disciplined organization and if they say "We will not have any violence from our people," I think they can enforce what they say.

It's eerie. Almost like Jimmy was a prophet or something. He just nailed it - the discipline, the desire for peace, the chances of Hamas becoming peaceful. An amazing job.