Tuesday, November 28, 2006

American Thinker has this to say about the fiasco, and the UN's role in it, called Human Rights in the Israel-Palestinian conflict:

"Therein lies the rub, the incredible rub, the impossible-to-explain-otherwise-than-as-anti-Semitism rub. The one Israeli missile that struck the Beit Hanoun apartment house was: 1) launched in justifiable self-defense; 2) reasonably produced and targeted; and 3) absolutely not intended to kill civilians. The daily Palestinian bombs, meanwhile, are 1) acts of aggressive war; 2) callously launched without any effort to aim them accurately at military targets (in fact, legal experts long ago concluded that the use of the notoriously inaccurate Qassams are ipso facto a war crime since they simply cannot be targeted); and 3) in fact meant to kill and terrorize civilians.

This asymmetry is well understood by Palestinians. The Jabaliya Refugee Camp in Gaza was the scene of Palestinian celebrations earlier this week. Locals celebrated the victory of female "human shields" in thwarting an air strike against the home of murderous terrorist Wail Barud. Note the implications of this celebration: it demonstrates that Palestinians know that Israel does not seek to kill civilians wholesale. Palestinians do not believe their own propaganda about the Zionist thirst for blood -- otherwise they would not have been able to recruit those human shields. Human shields are worthless in the face of the heinous enemy Israel is supposed to be. If Israel placed "human shields" in front of Hamas, they would be mowed down."


And coming to the assistance of a failed UN and Palestinian myth-makers is none other than former American President Jimmy Carter, whose recent book is an anti-Israel screed. In an interview with Wolf Blitzer today* he was asked plainly why his version of Camp David II is so different from Bill Clinton's. Clinton puts the onus of the failure directly on Arafat. He was there. He quotes a conversation with Arafat in which he makes his judgment clear. But Clinton's word is not good enough for Carter. He just smiled and shrugged off the quote from Clinton's book. what was he suggesting, with that smile and that shrug? That Clinton is lying? That he, Carter, surely knows better? Too bad the pusilanimous Blitzer did not press the point.

So that's probably what we can expect from Carter's book to be: No matter what the records tells you, what the testimony is, what the law says, he, Carter, knows better what's what.

Alan M. Dershowitz lists here some of the many deliberate sins of omission and commision which characterize this immoral account of Israel's plight vis a vis the Palestinians. (A reminder: Palestinians are Arabs, part of the 400 million strong Pan-Arab nation which is part of the 1.4 Billion Muslims in this world. There are 13 million Jews in the world, 5.2 of whom live in Israel).

He concludes with this disturbing thoughts:

"And it’s not just the facts; it’s the tone as well. It’s obvious that Carter just doesn’t like Israel or Israelis. He lectured Golda Meir on Israeli’s “secular” nature, warning her that “Israel was punished whenever its leaders turned away from devout worship of God.” He admits that he did not like Menachem Begin. He has little good to say about any Israelis—except those few who agree with him. But he apparently got along swimmingly with the very secular Syrian mass-murderer Hafez al-Assad. He and his wife Rosalynn also had a fine time with the equally secular Yasir Arafat—a man who has the blood of hundreds of Americans and Israelis on his hands. . .

The Carter book is so biased that it inevitably raises the question of what would motivate a decent man like Jimmy Carter to write such an indecent book. Whatever Carter’s motives may be, his authorship of this ahistorical, one-sided and simplistic brief against Israel forever disqualifies him from playing any positive role in fairly resolving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. That is a tragedy because the Carter Center, which has done much good in the world, could have been a force for peace if Jimmy Carter were as generous in spirit to the Israelis as he is to the Palestinians."


*BLITZER: But the government, the current government of Prime
Minister Olmert...
CARTER: Yes.
BLITZER: ... the previous government of even Sharon and before that...
CARTER: Netanyahu.
BLITZER: But -- Netanyahu, but Barak, Ehud Barak, they offered,
under the last days of the Bill Clinton administration, a deal which
would give up most of the West Bank, including parts of Jerusalem
itself. And Clinton said Arafat missed a major opportunity to resolve
this crisis right then.
CARTER: That is not quite an accurate description of it, which the...
BLITZER: Well, let me read to you what
CARTER: ... the accurate description...
BLITZER: Let me read to you what Jim -- what Bill Clinton wrote in
his book, "My Life." He was the president who as negotiating at Camp
David...
CARTER: OK.
BLITZER: ... and then at Taba, trying to resolve this. And Barak,
the prime minister...
CARTER: Right, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) yes.
BLITZER: ... who made some major...
CARTER: OK. Go ahead.
BLITZER: ... major concessions. He said: "Right before I left
office, Yasser Arafat thanked me for all my efforts and told me what a
great man I was. 'Mr. Chairman,' I replied, 'I am not a great man, I am
a failure and you have made me one.' Arafat's rejection of my proposal
after Ehud Barak accepted it was an error of historic proportions."
CARTER: OK, well...
BLITZER: That's what the former president wrote in his book.
CARTER: All right. Well, in my book, which I think is accurate --
I hate to dispute Bill Clinton on your program because he did a great
and heroic effort there. He never made a proposal that was accepted by
Barak or Arafat.
BLITZER: Why would he write that in his book if...
CARTER: I don't know.
BLITZER: ... if he said Barak accepted it?
CARTER: I don't know...
BLITZER: And Arafat rejected it.

NogaNote: I'm puzzled by this contradiction between Clinton's and Carter's versions. It is safe to assume that Carter researched some material for his book, and that surely he read Clinton's autobiography and was well aware of Clinton's account. Why has he not made the effort, then, to reconcile Clinton's statements with his own perceptions of the truth? Why didn't he go to Clinton and ask him about the facts? He preferred to write his book, knowing full well that there was a differing record, written by another former president.

When Blitzer asked him about it, Carter just said he didn't know why Clinton made the statement he did, and that his book makes other claims. But Clinton was speaking from a position of authority as an eye witness and a present participant in the Camp David talks while Carter is merely observing from afar, selecting whom to believe and whom to disbelieve without even explaining the reasons for his selection.

This is most puzzling.

_______________________

A disturbing insight into the purpose of Carter's book, here (emphasis- mine) :

Carter isn't writing for Arabs or Jews; he's aiming at American Christians, particularly the evangelicals who are among Israel's most ardent supporters.

Carter repeatedly refers to Israeli oppression of Christians, destruction of Christian holy sites and imprisonment of Bethlehem. He emphasizes Israel's secular nature in 1973 and makes dark allusions to the powerful pro-Israel lobby.

He asserts that Israel's security fence is a grotesque violation of international law but ignores its success at stopping suicide attacks; he praises Hamas for maintaining a cease-fire for two years and ignores the Qassam rockets raining on Sderot.

And he uses that buzzword, apartheid, which resonates with religious folks who fought to divest from South Africa in the 1980s. Carter hopes his book will inspire a similar grass-roots movement to undermine Israel and ruin the U.S.-Israel relationship.

"Palestine: Peace not Apartheid" is a poorly written, poorly argued, nonsensical little book, and it's the most dangerous weapon Israel has faced in a year full of fighting.



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