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June 20, 2009
Jimmy Carter and the Encounter of Truth with Prejudice
Ex-U.S. President Jimmy Carter is a prominent enemy of Israel, whose history of action as President and subsequent writings have consistently displayed a deep animus matched only by a staggering level of ignorance. So this report in the Jerusalem Post of his visit a few days ago to the heart of the dreaded Israeli settlements, Gush Etzion, is fascinating – and poignant:
...A casual browsing of the Carter Center Web site reveals that as recently as 2007 Carter gave an address at Brandeis University in which he demonstrated extreme and total ignorance about the geography, demographics and even traffic patterns of the area, when he said about Judea and Samaria, “...their choice hilltops, vital water resources and productive land have been occupied, confiscated and then colonized by Israeli settlers. Like a spider web, the connecting roads that join more than 200 settlements in the West Bank, often for the exclusive use of Israelis, Palestinians are not permitted to get on those roads... This divides this area into small bantustans, isolated cantonments.”
Anyone who has traveled through Judea and Samaria would be astonished at those words. The roads are replete with both Jewish and Palestinian vehicles, and it is the Jewish communities - settled on barren land - that are isolated. In addition, there is abundant Palestinian land outside of the Jewish communities which is richly cultivated, and kilometers of land that lie fallow.
...In the end, Carter came, and in addition to local officials, met with victims of Palestinian terror, like Sherri Mandell, whose son Koby, 13, was murdered in a cave near Tekoa, and Ruth Gillis, whose husband Shmuel, a hematologist from Hadassah University Medical Center, was shot dead on the road from Jerusalem to Gush Etzion. Goldstein spoke passionately about the history and roots of Gush Etzion.
At the end of his visit, Carter declared to TV cameras, “I think I've done more listening than talking this afternoon... This particular settlement area is not one that I envision ever being abandoned... this is part of the settlements close to the 1967 line that I think will be here forever.” Goldstein said, “He said he saw things here that he never saw before. He was never here before.”
Aye, there's the rub. He (like many others) was never here before.
And will the experience cause Carter to stop promulgating his falsehoods about Israel which have done so much to promote hatred and strife? Can someone who has been so thoroughly inculcated with Palestinian propaganda ever renounce falsehood for the truth? He went off to pay a visit to Hamas after his encounter in Gush Etzion. I'm not holding my breath. But who knows? Sometimes the still small voice of conscience wakes.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributor Melanie Phillips is the author of the powerful and frightening Londonistan, and she blogs at The Spectator.
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