Jimmy Carter: There He Goes Again

Jimmy Carter, the darling of the anti-Israel left, continues his effort to give legitimacy to Hamas in the pages of yesterday's New York Times. Anyone with a working knowledge of 20th century history cannot fail to recognize the parallels between Carter and another tragically wrong-headed failed Western leader, Neville Chamberlain.

Actually, Carter's misguided missive adapts surprisingly well to Chamberlain's capitulation at Munich in 1938. Imagine that Carter had been writing at that time...... (you can apply the appropriate "Wayback machine" sound effects and visuals here) and this is what would have appeared in the Times in September 1938:


A COUNTERPRODUCTIVE Washington policy in recent years has been to boycott and punish political factions or governments that refuse to accept United States mandates. This policy makes difficult the possibility that such leaders might moderate their policies.

I, my wife and my son went to Germany. My goal was to learn as much as possible to assist in the faltering peace initiative endorsed by Prime Minister Chamberlain. Although I knew that many in the West were concerned about the government of Germany and leaders of the Nazi Party, I did not receive any negative or cautionary messages about the trip.
The Carter Center had monitored German elections since 1928, including one for parliamentary seats in January 1933. The Nazis had prevailed in several municipal contests, gained a reputation for effective and honest administration and did surprisingly well in the legislative race, displacing the ruling party. Eventually, the Nazis gained control of Germany and opinion polls show them steadily gaining popularity. Since there can be no peace with Germans divided between Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, we at the Carter Center believed it important to explore conditions allowing the Nazis to be brought peacefully back into the discussions.
We met with Nazi leaders from Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland, and after two days of intense discussions with one another they gave these official responses to our suggestions, intended to enhance prospects for peace:
•
Germany will accept any agreement negotiated with the government of Czechoslovakia, as long as it is put to a referendum of Germans everywhere.
•
When the time comes, the Nazis will accept the possibility of forming a nonpartisan professional government of technocrats to govern the Sudetenland until the next elections can be held.
•
The Nazis will also disband the SS if a nonpartisan professional security force, led by the same individuals, can be formed.
•
The Nazis will permit Jews held in concentration camps to send letters to their families.
•
The Nazis will declare a peaceful border between the Sudetenland and the rest of Czechoslovakia, which might be extended to the rest of Europe at some later time.
•
Through more official consultations with these leaders, it may yet be possible to revive and expedite the stalemated peace talks between Germany and its neighbors. In Europe, the path to peace lies in negotiation, not in isolation.

Just For Fun: Early Observations on Jimmy Carter's Book

I recently (as in today) began reading a copy of Jimmy Carter's new book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Of course, being the good citizen I am, I decided to give my thoughts on the first 60 pages or so.
At first glance, the print is massive. This looks like a children's book, with large margins large type, but a good deal higher level of vocabulary and better command of language. I remarked that the publishers. could have easily boiled this down to a pamphlet, to which a friend of mine responded: But then they wouldn't be able to sell a nice big hardcover edition. Which of course is true.
The text itself seems harmless enough, it generally seems like the heartfelt pinions and memories of a highly influential ex-president. But then, I come across this bit on page 15:

Although some extremists disagree, most Israelis have learned that they cannot reconstruct the Kingdom of David, which includes all of the West Bank the Golan Heights, and parts of Lebanon and Jordan.

This may seem innocuous, but it implies through the use of the word learned, that at one point most Israelis seriously hoped to reconstruct the Kingdom of David. This is simply false. Quite to the contrary, the Jews living in Mandatory Palestine accepted without hesitation every plan thrown at them, from the early ideas of the twenties which simply split off at the Jordan River and continued to the borders of Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt, to the 1947 partition passed by the United Nations, which though giving them 55 percent of the landmass, contained the barren Negev desert. This shows early on Carter's obvious bias.
For the next fifty pages or so, Carter chronicles his personal journies from his visit to Israel in 1973 through the Camp David accords. This section passes without much grumbling from me, just the occasional piece here and there which is hard to place, but still shows the book's bias.
On pages 65-66, Carter is discussing Jewish immigration to the land, and the population statistics pre-independence. He then writes on page 66:

There had been further waves of Jewish and Gentile immigration into Palestine, as indicated by official British date: the Arab population increased from 760,000 in 1931 to 1,237,000 in 1945, mostly attracted by economic oppurtunity.
...
No serious consideration was given by Arab leaders or the international commmunity to estblishing a separate Palestinian state while these people's ancient homeland was divided amog Jordan, Israel, and Egypt.

In the first section, through a statement of fact, namely the doubling of the Arab population in Palestine, Carter neglects to mention the driving force behind this sudden economic oppurtunity: the Zionist immigrants. This change from wasteland to up-and-coming economic player is well known to be the work of these hard working European Jews, who drained the swamps and built the farms throughout the land that drew the massive Arab immigration, creating their imaginary majority at the time of partition. I call this majority imaginary in reference to the great numbers of Jews who were disallowed and even turned away from entering the land by British law. The second quoted section is much more fun: It calls Palestine the ancient homeland of the local Arabs. Not disputing any claim to a homeland in part of this area, let's focus on the word ancient: Nearly half of the Arabs living in Palestine at the time were very recent immigrants, and of course for them to be considered Arab at all, they would have had to come from the Arabian Peninsula, which, coincidentally, does not include Palestine. Any claim to an "ancient homeland," put forth here by Carter, is false and misleading.
That's all for now. I'll point out more innacuracies, and obvious showings of bias as they come up. Check back soon...