Four Carter Myths on the Arab-israeli Conflict

Jimmy Carter’s slanderous campaign against Israel was well-known in 2006, when he wrote the book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” The book’s title implied that Israel enforces an apartheid system in the disputed territories and/or is an Apartheid state, both of which are slanderous lies that even Carter himself admitted are false. As a result of that book, which is full of slanderous lies against Israel, many people from the Carter center resigned.

In 2008, Carter also had talks with Hamas, saying that Hamas is willing to have peace with Israel if most Palestinians vote that way in a referendum, even though a Hamas spokesman admitted that Hamas wouldn’t necessarily accept that in a referendum. 

Myth #1

“When I met with Yasir Arafat in 1990, he stated, ‘The PLO has never advocated the annihilation of Israel. The Zionists started the ‘drive the Jews into the sea’ slogan and attributed it to the PLO.’” [page 62 of his book "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid"]

Truth

“The partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of the state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of the passage of time, because they were contrary to the will of the Palestinian people and to their natural right in their homeland, and inconsistent with the principles embodied in the Charter of the United Nations, particularly the right to self-determination,” states the 1968 PLO charter.

Carter simply quotes Arafat as saying that as if he was saying the truth. Anyone who studies the PLO understands that’s a lie. Even Arafat himself repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel. In 1979, Arafat said,”Peace forus means the destruction of Israel.” In 1996, in a Stockholm speech, in front of an Arab audience, he said,”We plan to eliminate Israel.” 

“Despite the numous factions, on one thing the PLO was unified: It wanted Israel eliminated and it opposed all diplomacy,” stated David Raab’s eye opening informative book Terror in black September [on page 5]. The PLO’s goal is Israel’s destruction in fact, despite recognizing Israel’s right to exist and denouncing terrorism in theory, its dominant faction Fatah continued to call for Israel’s elimination through the media and textbooks, and the other factions, also were in reality, dedicated to Israel’s destruction. In 2001, in his interview to the Egyptian newspaper Al-Arabi, Faisal al-Husseini, the PA Minister to Jerusalem Affairs said that the PLO’s “recognition” of Israel’s right to exist was another Trojan horse to eventually eliminate Israel. Arafat was a crook, as many people understood. Yet Carter took what he said as the truth, despite the fact that Arafat’s lie that the PLO never called for Israel to be detroyed is obviously a big fat lie to anyone who seriously studies Arafat and the PLO. From the facts, it was obvious that Arafat lied to Carter in order to dupe him. And it worked. Arafat and the PLO sought Israel’s destruction. He was the chairman of the PLO. It would be pretty stupid if he doesn’t understand what the charter says, especially since he mentioned it in his letter to the Israeli-then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, in which he claims that the articles in the PLO charter that call for Israel’s elimination are null and void, though there is no new PLO charter that calls for peaceful coexistence with Israel and the PLO charter still appears on Palestinian websites.

The “driving the Jews into the sea” slogan is an accurate way to describe the goal of the Palestinian genocidal struggle including the PLO. Israel’s enemies themselves have called for Jews to be “driven to sea.”

Myth#2

“And as a matter of fact, Hamas, whom everyone criticizes — the fact is that Hamas, since August of 2004, has not committed a single act of terrorism that cost an Israeli life, not a single one.” [Carter newshour, PBS interview November 28, 2006]

Truth

This is another example of where our country’s most incompetent president gets it wrong again. The CAMERA report that refutes Carter’s slanderous claims agianst Israel states that:

On Aug. 31, 2004, Sixteen people were killed and 100 wounded in two nearly simultaneous suicide bombings aboard two city buses in Beer Sheva. Hamas claimed responsibility.
On Sept. 29, 2004, two preschool children were killed by a Qassam rocket fired from Gaza. Hamas claimed responsibility.
On Jan 13, 2005, Palestinians terrorists attacked the Karni crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel, killing 6 civilians. Hamas claimed joint responsibility.
On July 14, 2005, a woman was killed by a Qassam rocket fired from Gaza. Hamas claimed responsibility.

Carter gave that interview in 2006. There were terrorist attacks by Hamas on Israeli civilians between 2004 and 2006, even in 2005. The Anti-Defamation League [ADL] lists some more Hamas terrorist attacks committed in 2005:

• August 28, 2005: A suicide bombing outside the Central Bus Station in Beersheba severly injured two security guards who stopped the bomber from entering the bus station.
• January 13, 2005: Six Israelis were killed and five other civilians were wounded in a double suicide bombing at the Karni crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip. The two suicide bombers used a very large explosive device to blast through a defensive wall that separates the Israeli and Palestinian sides at the crossing. Following the blast, the bombers crossed into the Israeli side, carrying explosives on their bodies, which they detonated.

Yet Carter was too busy being an apologist for Hamas, a position that led him to waste his time talking to them. Hamas is a radical Islamic terrorist group dedicated to Israel’s destruction. Radical Islam’s version of peace with non-Muslims is for them to be treated as second-class citizens in their caliphate. Therefore, it is contrary to Hamas’s ideology to have peace with Israel. Hamas will not change their ideology and will always be committed to Israel’s destruction. 

Myth #3

“Let me read exactly what they accepted verbatim. This is their language: ‘If President Abbas succeeds in negotiating a final status agreement with Israel, Hamas will accept the decision made by the Palestinian people and their will in a referendum monitored by international observers … even if Hamas is opposed to the agreement” [this was shown that Carter said this here]

Truth

This is another example of our country’s worse president attempting to put a human face on Hamas, one of the world’s most genocidal terrorist groups. Hamas spokesman in Gaza Sami Abu Zuhri stated that Hamas supposedly putting a peace deal to a refendum ”does not mean that Hamas is going to accept the result of the referendum.” That’s all over the web and reported in the media, yet Carter doesn’t get it. And Khaled Mashaal, head of the Syrian branch of the political bureau of Hamas, stated that:

Hamas accepts the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital and with full and real sovereignty and full application of the right of the Palestinian refugees to return, but Hamas will not recognize the state of Israel

The right of return demographically destroys Israel, but let that pass. Hamas will not recognize Israel’s right to exist. Hamas attempts to put a human face in their barbarism, and Carter gets duped into believing it.

Myth #4

“It’s [the Israeli "blockade"] 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.” [it is shown that Carter said this here]

Truth

Israel, America, the European Union and the rest of the international community sends lots of humanitarian aid to Gaza. In fact, it’s Hamas that is seeking to start a humanitarian crisis in Gaza to make Israel look bad. I reported that:

It’s Hamas that closes bakeries when “stocks of the material sufficient to meet the exact needs of the population of the Gaza Strip of bread for a whole month and more,” [bakery owners in Gaza who were forced by Hamas to close their bakeries], closes power plants when the Palestinian Authority Petrol Authority, who helps coordinate the fuel, shows that they have enough fuel to run the power plant for the evening and, in northern Gaza, cuts the electricity. There is more proof, but let me stop now.

It’s Hamas that shuts down bakeries, closes power plants and clinics. As seen form the hyperlink, it was a Palestinian source that is not at all friendly to Israel that reported that Hamas closed the bakeries when the bakery owners admitted that they had at least a months worth of supply of bread. Hamas is manipulating the suffering of people in Gaza to give Israel bad PR, whether it’s by starting a humanitarian crisis or by hiding themselves and terrorist infrastructure so when Israel strikes back after launching rockets at Israeli civilians, Gazan civilians are accidently killed and Israel gets more bad PR. It’s true that Israel and the west have a boycott of the Hamas government. But that’s in response to Hamas refusing to recognize Israel’s right to exist and their terrorism on Israel. The EU, US and Israel stated that they would negotiate with Hamas and end the boycott if Hamas recognizes Israel’s right to exist, ends terrorism and honors previous agreements, the last of which is accepting the basic principle of land for peace. Hamas said no to all three the preconditions and continued to use their media and schools to spew their Islamist ideology, call for Israel’s destruction and the killing of Jews. Hamas never said that they would change their charter, which calls for the destruction of Israel and says that:

The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said:

The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! This will not apply to the Gharqad, which is a Jewish tree.

There are many more false claims that Carter makes on the Arab-Israeli conflict. In a nutshell, Carter came from being our country’s worst president to being an apologist to Israel’s genocidal enemies including Hamas, as well as being a spokesman for the Pallywood propaganda industry.