[Fegasderty]

Jimmy Carter's Jewish Problem

By Jason Maoz
JewishPress.com | November 30, 2006

For those with eyes to see, there were hints as far back as the 1976 presidential campaign of the trouble to come. Early that year, Harper’s magazine published “Jimmy Carter’s Pathetic Lies,” a devastating exposé of Carter’s record in Georgia by a then little-known journalist named Steven Brill.

Reg Murphy, who as editor of the Atlanta Constitution had kept a close eye on Carter’s rise in state politics, declared, “Jimmy Carter is one of the three or four phoniest men I ever met.”

Speechwriter Bob Shrum quit the Carter campaign after just a few weeks, disgusted with what he described as Carter’s penchant for fudging the truth. He also related that Carter, convinced the Jewish vote in the Democratic primaries would go to Senator Henry (“Scoop”) Jackson, had instructed his staff not to issue any more statements on the Middle East.

“Jackson has all the Jews anyway,” Shrum quoted Carter as saying. “We get the Christians.”

Relations between Carter and Israel were tense from the outset of the Carter presidency. Carter’s hostility was evident to Israeli foreign minister Moshe Dayan, who in his memoir Breakthrough described a July 1977 White House meeting between Carter and Israeli officials. “You are more stubborn than the Arabs, and you put obstacles on the path to peace,’’ an angry Carter scolded Dayan and his colleagues.

“Our talk,” Dayan wrote, “lasted more than an hour and was most unpleasant. President Carter...launched charge after charge against Israel.”

On October 1, 1977, the U.S. and the Soviet Union unexpectedly issued a joint statement on the Middle East calling for an Arab-Israeli peace conference in Geneva, with the participation of Palestinian representatives. The communiqué marked the first time the U.S. officially employed the phrase “legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.”

Reaction in the U.S. was immediate and furious. “[A] political firestorm erupted,” wrote historian Steven Spiegel. “After American officials had worked successfully for years to reduce Russian influence over the Mideast peace process and in the area as whole, critics could not understand why the administration had suddenly invited Moscow to return.”

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who five years earlier had expelled thousands of Soviet military advisers from Egypt, neither liked nor trusted the Russians, and decided to kill the U.S.-Soviet initiative in the womb. His decision to go to Jerusalem to address the Knesset electrified the world and caught the Carter administration completely off guard.

Eventually the U.S. would broker what became known as the Camp David Accords and oversee the signing of the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. But Carter was far from a dispassionate third party. His disdain for Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and near hero-worship of Sadat were clearly reflected in his demeanor and has informed nearly everything he’s written on the Middle East since leaving office.

In The Unfinished Presidency, his book about Carter’s post-White House activities, the liberal historian Douglas Brinkley provides a detailed account of the former president’s obsession with helping Palestinian terror chief Yasir Arafat polish his image. Carter, according to Brinkley, regularly advised Arafat on how to shape his message for Western journalists and even wrote some speeches for him.

Carter was also a vocal critic of Israeli policies and “view[ed] the unarmed young Palestinians who stood up against thousands of Israel soldiers as ‘instant heroes,’” wrote Brinkley. “Buoyed by the intifada, Carter passed on to the Palestinians, through Arafat, his congratulations.”

Former New York mayor Ed Koch, in his 1984 bestseller Mayor, recounted a conversation he had shortly before the 1980 election with Cyrus Vance, who’d recently resigned as Carter’s secretary of state. Koch told Vance that many Jews would not be voting for Carter because they feared “that if he is reelected he will sell them out.”

“Vance,” recalled Koch, “nodded and said, ‘He will.’ ”

In Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the U.S.-Israeli Covert Relationship, Andrew and Leslie Cockburn revealed that during a March 1980 meeting with his senior political advisers, Carter, discussing his fading reelection prospects and his sinking approval rating in the Jewish community, snapped, “If I get back in, I’m going to [expletive] the Jews.”

Carter – such was the country’s good fortune – did not get back in. But as evidenced by his years of pro-Palestinian advocacy, reams of anti-Israel op-ed articles, and the release last week of his latest book/screed, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, he’s been trying to [expletive] the Jews ever since.

[HedgeYourBets]

There are plenty of American Liberals who agree with Carter.
He is a Leftish Democrat, but hardly on the lunatic fringe.

[MannoFr]

They are. Just stay away from the colleges and cities like Seattle and SF. He's right though, Carter isn't really on the fringe. Most Democrats I know are fine but there are still more than enough freaks in that party.

[Slonopotam845]

You'r American so would know better then me, but my impression is that most Democrats are closer to the center.

Their base is extremely anti-Israel and this disease has infected their entire party. I mean this base is so hateful that they even deny Israel's right to exist. I expect the Democratic party to get much worse in time. Even the moderate Democrats are bad for Israel even though they claim to be "supportive." The next Democrat in power will again attempt to pressure Israel into signing suicidal, phony peace treaties (ala Clinton and his quest to win the Nobel Prize).

I agree with Farmall. Dhimmi Carter is not considered part of the lunatic fringe. He is just to the left of the mainstream Democrats. He is extremely dangerous b/c he gives this former-President stamp of approval on terrorist activities. He is on TV here 24/7 informing Americans that everything wrong in the world is Israel's fault.

For R2sputin,

Is Seattle really as bad as San Francisco? I was in San Francisco for 1 day before I saw a white non-Arab useful idiot in a keffiyah. Made me sick to my stomach.

[Ifroham4]

The problem is that while most Democrats are in the middle....the primary system tends to elect the liberals. Thus a democrat is forced to vote for either a Liberal Democrate or a Republican....they choose the Democrat.

If the Democrats are "in the middle" as you say then why would they elect a liberal in the primary over a moderate? Your argument doesn't make any sense.

[MannoFr]

The only man that infuriates me in US politics for his anti-semitism as much as Carter is that Saudi puppet, James Baker.

As much as I despise Saudi Arabia and US-interests in the Middle East, calling Baker and Carter antisemites because they realise that the US also needs friends and businesspartners in the Middle East is outrageous, and demonstrates the extremism among some Israel-lobbyiests in the US.
Anyway I hope the US will continue to support Israel, and especially a more radical prime minister like Netanyahu, which will even further reduce US-influence in the Middle East and hopefully lead to more Arab unity. Because besides the war in Iraq there's nothing more damaging for US-interests in the Middle East than support for Israeli aggression and occupation against its neighbours. Bush and the neo-cons did a fine job scewi%g up US-position in the region. (and not only there, also in Latin-America, etc.)

[MannoFr]

Callong any opinion contrary to your own "Israeli Lobbyists" is your own extremist racist bigotry.