The Many Lies of Jimmy Carter

(From "FirstOneThrough" Blog).  It is not particularly surprising that Jimmy Carter, former US president and author of “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid,” chose to commemorate the UN’s official Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People (November 29), to launch another attack on Israel. Carter did this through lies and half-truths in a New York Times Op-Ed (printed below).

Here are some lying lowlights:

Lie: Israel cannot take control of any of the “West Bank” which it seized during a war. Carter wrote that Israel and Egypt concluded a peace deal because it was based on UN resolution 242 which included the clause “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.” The peace agreement with Egypt has nothing to do with the Palestinian Arabs.

• The “West Bank” was taken during a DEFENSIVE war. While it is a matter of debate whether Israel’s 1967 preemptive attack on Egypt which was ready to attack Israel was offensive or defensive, there is no debate that the Jordanians (and Palestinian Arabs who had taken Jordanian citizenship) attacked Israel first. The laws about the inadmissibility of taking land have to do with a “belligerent party,” not the defensive party.
• The international community recognizes Israel’s taking land in a defensive war. After the Arab armies attacked Israel in 1948-9, Israel seized much more land than was granted to it under UN Resolution 181, known as the 1947 Partition Plan. The dynamic of taking more of the “West Bank” in yet another defensive war follows the same principle.
• The Sinai peninsula was never part of the Palestine Mandate. Israel returned land to Egypt that it took in the 1967 war, land that was never part of the Palestine Mandate which sought to reestablish a Jewish homeland. However, the “West Bank” is part-and-parcel of the Palestine Mandate, just as the land west of the 1949 Green Line was part of the Jewish homeland.

Lie: The Palestinians seek “a just and lasting peace in the Middle East in which every state in the area can live in security.” Carter continued to recite language from UN resolution 242, but failed to connect Palestinians to the clause.

• The Palestinian Arabs have voted for war, not peace. The Palestinian Arabs voted Hamas, a recognized terrorist group that seeks the destruction of Israel, to 58% of the parliament in 2006. Palestinian polls show Palestinian Arabs favoring the group in every poll. This is a group that has the most anti-Semitic charter in the world, which specifically calls for killing Jews and destroying all of Israel. The Hamas leadership continues to incite violence against Israelis.

Lie: Carter implied that “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict,” meant withdrawal from the West Bank. It does not.

• A withdrawal from “territories” but not “all of the territories.” The language in the UN resolution was approved with specific amendments in the final text. It specifically did not call for Israel to remove troops from all of the new lands, as the 1949 Armistice Agreements with Egypt and with Jordan specifically stated that the Armistice Lines / the Green Line was NOT to be considered a new border.

Lie: Carter stated that Jewish homes in the West Bank were “constructed illegally by Israel on Palestinian territory.” Carter has adopted the anti-Israel United Nations language in describing “settlements” as illegal. He might as well also state that “Zionism is racism,” as stated in UN Resolution 3379 which was passed in 1975 under his watch.

• Jews living throughout the West Bank is LEGAL. International law in 1920 (San Remo Agreement) and 1922 (Mandate of Palestine) specifically stated that Jewish immigration was to be encouraged throughout Palestine and that “No person shall be excluded from Palestine on the sole ground of his religious belief” (Mandate Article 15). You cannot bar Jews from living in the West Bank as a matter of moral and legal principle.

Lie: Carter wrote that Obama declared that the border between Israel and Palestine “should be based on the 1967 lines.” This is a half-truth that is a complete lie.

• Obama stated that borders should be negotiated between the two parties and include land swaps to account for current realities. Carter deliberately misled his liberal fans and Israel-bashers by only using half of Obama’s suggested course to peace. Obama stated that the borders would NOT look like the 1967 borders, but Carter piecemealed Obama’s quote into a distortion, a lie. It should be further noted that Obama’s language was much softer than the assurances that President George W. Bush gave Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2004 that “it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.”

Lie: Carter implied that the Israelis’ “commitment to peace is in danger of abrogation,” and said nothing about Palestinian Arabs lack of desire for peace.

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated repeatedly he seeks to commence negotiations immediately to resolve the conflict. It is Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas that refuses to engage with Israel. It is Mahmoud Abbas that incites terror against Israelis and seeks to deny Jewish rights and history in Jerusalem. Only Israeli leadership has declared the goal of two states for two peoples, while Abbas has called for an Arab state of Palestine devoid of Jews, and Israel, which should be a bi-national state.

Lie: Carter calls all of the West Bank “Palestinian Land,” which are “occupied.”

• The West Bank includes “Palestinian Authority territory” which is administered by the PA, and Israeli territory, administered by Israel – according to the Oslo Accords, agreed to by both parties. The Oslo I and Oslo II Accords signed in 1993 and 1995 by the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority handed over certain lands to the PA. Those areas, known as Area A, are where the vast majority of Arabs in the West Bank live. They are not under Israeli military control. Area C, which is under Israeli military control, is where the vast majority of Israelis live in the West Bank, and include a minimal number of Arabs.

Lie: Carter claims that the world condemns Israel since Arabs east of the Green Line cannot vote, while Israeli Jews living in EGL can. That is wild distortion of reality.

• Arabs in Jerusalem can become citizens and vote in Israeli elections. Israel reunited the city of Jerusalem in 1967, and expanded the borders of the city in 1980. Israel gave ALL people living in the city the option to become Israeli citizens, just as the other million-plus non-Jews in Israel enjoy Israeli citizenship. Thousands of Arabs from Jerusalem have become citizens of Israel.
• People in territories around the world don’t vote. Puerto Ricans, Guam and other US territories, are not eligible to vote in US elections. Does the world condemn the US for this structure? No. Citizens are entitled to vote – regardless of where they live. An American living in Germany for 20 years still gets to vote in US elections, while a Puerto Rican will not. Similar for Israeli citizens that opt to live in EGL/ the West Bank.

Lie: Carter calls the Palestinian Authority a “moderate Palestinian leadership.”

• The Palestinian Authority is RELATIVELY moderate compared to Hamas, but far from moderate. Liberals state that Israel is run by right-wing extremists, without any basis for such comments. At the same time they excuse any and all incitement to violence by Palestinians as a “natural reaction to occupation” and are only “resorting to violence.” Really? Read the Hamas Charter. Read the PLO Charter. The Fatah Constitution. Look at the ADL anti-Semitism poll which showed that almost every single Palestinian Arab is an anti-Semite.

After laying out a package of outright lies and half-truths, Carter calls on President Obama to act quickly and: 1) recognize a Palestinian State; and 2) passing a UN Security Council Resolution that all Israeli “settlements” are illegal. He added “Recognition of Palestine and a new Security Council resolution are not radical new measures, but a natural outgrowth of America’s support for a two-state solution.”

It is beyond “radical.” It is wrong and dangerous.

To this day, Carter remains the only US president to call Israelis living in EGL/West Bank “illegal.” Obama, Bush and others used terms like “illegitimate” (Obama) or “unhelpful” (Bush) or even an “obstacle to peace,” but no other president claimed that settlements in disputed territory are “illegal.” Such a declaration is radical, and the left-wing extremist was the only president to use such terminology.

Further, recognizing a Palestinian State completely ends the Oslo Accords and a negotiated solution. It doesn’t “restart” talks, but puts both parties on the course for unilateral actions, such as annexation of additional lands. It will most likely lead to war.

Carter (like the anti-Israel UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon) has urged Hamas and Fatah to reconcile. They seek to insert a genocidal Nazi party into the Palestinian government as a pathway to peace. These are the same people that recommend these two radical actions.

While Carter and Ban are correct in recognizing that it is unsustainable to have a Palestinian state with distinct governments controlling different parts of the country, that just underscores why there cannot be recognition of a Palestinian state today. It doesn’t mean rewarding a dysfunctional and anti-Semitic government with recognition.

Seeing Jimmy Carter write again is a reminder of the far left fringe’s inability to see or grasp the truth of the Middle East. Carter’s adoration of Hamas, underlines his insanity. He imagines and hopes for a world that doesn’t exist, and makes suggestions that are dangerous for civil society.