Carter's Heir
EDITORIAL Carter’s Heir “Senator Obama does not agree with President Carter’s decision to go forward with this meeting because he does not support negotiations with Hamas until they renounce...
...Same as always: terror and death...
...Writing in the Washington Post the day before Carter’s visit, Hamas’s “foreign minister,” Mahmoud al-Zahar, stated that “resistance”—read: terror—“remains our only option...
...Not 1973...
...Sound familiar...
...He does not live in Gaza or the West Bank...
...This includes “increasing the size of its forces,” now at 20,000 terrorists, and “developing powerful IEDs and placing them near roads...
...He says he accepts the renunciation of violence and Israeli annihilation that is at the core of the 1993 Oslo Accords, which created the Palestinian government in the fi rst place...
...He is the head of state...
...Carter’s defenders say the trip was justifi ed because Hamas “won an election” in 2006...
...Columnist Joe Klein blogs that “people who want to negotiate with our enemies almost always have a stronger argument than people who don’t...
...On what planet is it unreasonable to demand that a terrorist entity disavow ending your country before you—or an American ex-president engaging in self-parody—enter into negotiations with it...
...EDITORIAL Carter’s Heir “Senator Obama does not agree with President Carter’s decision to go forward with this meeting because he does not support negotiations with Hamas until they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and abide by past agreements...
...It’s a revealing statement, a window into the world of Carter-Obama liberalism: the make-believe land of treaties and conferences and “dialogue” where there is no distinction between friend and foe and evil men are routinely rewarded for fl outing international law...
...And it may well be that Carter’s trip is the shape of things to come...
...This was the reigning doctrine during the 1990s...
...Meeting the former president and Nobel Laureate had not swayed Meshal from his position that “peace” is just a pit stop on the road to Israel’s extinction...
...Perry argues that Hamas’s “leaders have been showing real moderation...
...No one elected Meshal...
...He embraced Khaled Meshal, its leader, in Damascus on April 18...
...This is something the Palestinians must understand if they are ever to join the community of democratic nation-states...
...It did win parliamentary elections...
...The goal...
...There was no good reason...
...Not 1967...
...For Carter to grant Hamas more prestige by meeting its representatives delays that reckoning...
...Only 1948, the year Israel was founded...
...To visit him—to grant him legitimacy—is to prove that the Gazans are pawns in a larger confl ict...
...Zahar attacked Israel’s “falsifi ed history,” its “foundational crime,” the “material crimes of 1948...
...Reread the above quotation from the Obama campaign...
...On April 19—Passover Eve—Hamas terrorists driving armored personnel carriers and car bombs disguised as Israeli Defense Force jeeps attacked border crossings in the Gaza Strip, wounding more than a dozen Israeli soldiers...
...But that is precisely a reason not to talk to Hamas...
...That can’t happen—it won’t happen, it shouldn’t happen—until groups that deploy murder to achieve genocidal ends face popular rejection and destruction...
...Israel ended its occupation of Gaza in 2005...
...It is the reigning doctrine of Carter’s Democratic party...
...On April 21, Carter announced to the world that Hamas would honor a peace deal with Israel negotiated by the Palestinian Authority if a majority of Palestinians also assented in a referendum...
...That is an exact description of the Iran ruled by the Ayatollah Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...
...It still does...
...Hamas rejected Oslo in 1993...
...That is the “crime” Hamas wants redressed...
...A faction recognized as an international terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union is not a legitimate political actor...
...Meantime, the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, an Israeli think tank, writes that “Hamas has accelerated its military buildup...
...He directs Hamas’s war against Israel from afar at the behest of his Syrian and Iranian patrons...
...And the result of such desperate eagerness to “negotiate with our enemies” would be the same: empty words and emboldened adversaries...
...Yet Obama has said that as president he would meet with Ahmadinejad without conditions...
...Moderation...
...Matthew Continetti, for the Editors...
...Unbelievable...
...But it nullifi ed those elections in 2007 when it took over the Gaza Strip by force...
...The Carter mission was a bust...
...The president of the Palestinian Authority is Mahmoud Abbas, elected in 2005...
...Mark Perry of the Confl icts Forum says Carter was right to meet with Hamas because it retains “prestige among the Palestinian people...
...Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki, April 10, 2008 Jimmy Carter met with Hamas anyway, of course...
...The Democratic frontrunner objects to meeting with Hamas because it supports terrorism, disavows Israel’s right to exist, and has violated past treaties...
...All as Hamas fi red rockets into the Israeli city of Sderot, home to some 20,000 men, women, and children...
...But the rocket assaults continue...
...He’d pull a Carter...
...A few hours later, Carter’s new friend Meshal contradicted him in public...
...He never should have gone...
Vol. 13 • May 2008 • No. 32
