Jimmy Carter is Awesome

A couple of weeks ago on The Office, Pam Beesly was stuck at her boss Michael Scott's torturous dinner party. Suddenly, when it seemed as though things could not get any worse, Pam's, um, eccentric co-worker Dwight Schrute crashed the party with his old baby-sitter as his "date" ("Purely carnal. That's all you need to know."). Pam, realizing that this party was about to get a LOT more entertaining, smiled to herself and whispered quite possibly the best line I've heard on television all year: "Awesome."

That is how I feel every time I see a new article about Jimmy Carter. Jimmy is in the news again, this time defending his meeting with exiled Hamas mass-murderer Khaled Mashal.

Lots of people I know hate Carter and call him an anti-Semite along with other pejoratives. Try as I might, I just can't bring myself to hate the guy. To me, he's just an uninformed, yet oddly entertaining, doofus when it comes to the Middle East. Hating him for that is like hating a second-grader because he can't understand Calculus and sounds kind of funny every time he tries to talk about it.

As Carter says,

"I feel quite at ease in doing this. . . . I think there's no doubt in anyone's mind that, if Israel is ever going to find peace with justice concerning the relationship with their next-door neighbors, the Palestinians, that Hamas will have to be included in the process."

See? Totally awesome. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you're wondering "What would Neville Chamberlain say?," just Google a Carter quote about Hamas, and you'll probably have your answer.

Carter then got more specific about his reasoning:

"I think that it's very important that at least someone meet with the Hamas leaders to express their views, to ascertain what flexibility they have, to try to induce them to stop all attacks against innocent civilians in Israel and to cooperate with the Fatah as a group that unites the Palestinians, maybe to get them to agree to a cease-fire — things of this kind," he said.

So Carter wants to assess Hamas's flexibility, huh? He must not read very much because Hamas has touted in the past just how flexible they are. They'd be happy to renounce violence and live in peace as long as Israel withdraws from . . . all of Israel:

"Abu Marzouk: "One of Hamas’s founding principals is that it does not recognize Israel. We [participated in] the elections and the people voted for us based on this platform. Therefore, the question of recognizing Israel is definitely not on the table unless it withdraws from ALL the Palestinian lands, not only to the 1967 borders. How can we be expected to recognize an occupying entity when millions of our people are refugees, and thousands of others are prisoners!? Why must we recognize them when they do not recognize us as a sovereign state with full independence?"

See? They're TOTALLY flexible. And if the Neville Chamberlain analogy seems like hyperbole, keep in mind that the Hamas Charter includes some pretty kick-ass old-school Antisemitism:

"Article Twenty-Two:

For a long time, the enemies have been planning, skillfully and with precision, for the achievement of what they have attained. They took into consideration the causes affecting the current of events. They strived to amass great and substantive material wealth which they devoted to the realisation of their dream. With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests. With their money they were able to control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize many countries in order to enable them to exploit their resources and spread corruption there.

You may speak as much as you want about regional and world wars. They were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate, making financial gains and controlling resources. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it."

Yup. The Freemasons and Rotary Clubs. Starting World War I, World War II, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution. They went there. I'm just a bit surprised they glossed over the Jewish role in starting the First Punic War because that was some pretty underhanded stuff.

But don't beat up poor Jimmy over this. He's probably never even read the Hamas Covenant or any substantive quotes from Hamas officials. In fact, I read that book of his last year, and it seemed like, well, he hasn't read much of anything on the Middle East. The only citations in the entire book are to two prior books Carter himself wrote. I won't get into the pervasive factual inaccuracies because they've been covered fairly well elsewhere (camera.org and Alan Dershowitz both did a decent debunking).

But overall, that book was a disorganized mess. Carter constantly vacillated between giving his own first-hand experiences and describing the "history" of the conflict (no footnotes or endnotes, of course). There was a fun controversy where Dennis Ross accused Carter of stealing the maps that were originally in Ross's book. Of course, this can't really be verified because the maps in Carter's book were completely silent as to their sources. The book did have an appendix, which contained an odd set of documents related to the conflict which seemed to be assembled almost randomly. For example, Carter decided to include Israel's objections to the famous Road Map for Peace without actually including the Road Map itself.

On one page early in the book, Carter describes the PLO as an "umbrella" of different groups who were using different means to accomplish their goals (notably, Carter doesn't identify these goals). The implication appears to be that some members of the PLO are either opposed to violence or don't utilize it. That, of course, is blatantly contradicted by Article 9 of the PLO Charter, which explicitly states that "armed struggle" is the only way to liberate "Palestine".

A bit later, Carter took Yasser Arafat at his word when Arafat told him that the PLO never sought to destroy Israel. That's just great comedy. Of course, later in the book, Carter alludes to the fact that the PLO promised during the Oslo process to amend its Charter to take out the provisions that called for Israel's destruction. Seriously, you can't make this stuff up (in fairness, Carter didn't actually quote any of the provisions at issue, which leads me to believe he's never actually read the PLO Covenant).

My favorite, though, was a tiny sentence buried at the end of one of the chapters where Carter muses wistfully about how the blood of Abraham flows through "Arabs, Christians, and Jews." Not Muslims, Christians and Jews. Arabs, Christians, and Jews, as if there are no Arab Christians or Arab Jews.

By this point, the book was getting pretty hard to read because I was giggling at the end of every sentence. So have some understanding for me. I just can't bring myself to hate Jimmy Carter. He's just too awesome.