My latest IPS news analysis on this topic is here, and also archived here.
It includes the mini-scoop that yesterday, just one day after returning to the US from his grueling two-week tour around the Middle East, the 84-year-old former President from Plains met with senior administration officials here in Washington DC. (Update: The senior officials he met with included Sen. George Mitchell, as is spelled out in the updated version of the IPS story.)
In the piece, I also note that that meeting,
- underlined the change in Carter’s relevance and status in the Obama era. The visits he made to the Middle East while George W. Bush was president were barely tolerated by the administration, which kept him at arm’s length.
On a related note, I can’t believe that on Tuesday, Laura Rozen blogged a post under the title “Obama’s Jimmy Carter problem”.
She is being seriously under-informed by the people she talks to, if she thinks that is how people in the current administration view Carter.
She quotes one of the many anonymous sources that she likes to rely on– described only as “a Washington Middle East hand”– as saying:
- Just like with President Clinton, Carter is becoming a huge problem and a growing concern for Obama… They are very pissed with him.
Later in the piece she quotes by name Aaron David Miller, whom she describes as a “veteran U.S. Middle East peace negotiator.” He might, of course, be the same person as the “Washington Middle East hand.”
But why should she quote Miller on anything to do with Arab-Israeli affairs, in light of his role at the heart of the Dennis Ross-led peace-processing effort that spectacularly failed over the course of 12 years to bring anything resembling peace to the Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese, and Israelis?
Pretending to know something about what Carter has been working on as well as about Palestinian politics (!) Miller is reported, by name, as superciliously noting that if Carter is working toward opening up an eventual dialogue between Obama and Hamas:
- that’s a key to an empty room right now given everything that Obama is trying to do with [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin ] Netanyahu and [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas… In fact, the way to lose both of them and much of Congress to boot would be to do precisely what the former president recommends.
Memo to Laura and Aaron: don’t you feel a little silly shooting your mouths off about matters that you seem to know little about?
Also, to inform yourselves a bit more about Palestinian politics, you could try reading this recent JWN post, and some of the expert sources I linked to there.
Bad-mouthing Jimmy Carter is a “sport” that, sadly, has a long history in Washington DC. It was definitely participated in by most leading figures of the Clinton administration, as well as by George W. Bush’s people.
So now that Carter is indeed getting access to senior figures in the Obama administration– and his ideas are gaining a respectful and engaged hearing there– some of those same tired retreads from the Clinton years (like Aaron Miller) are at it again.
But luckily not, it appears, the only member of the Clinton family who has any real pull these days.
Another good quick resource on the latest Carter trip to the Middle East is this CSM report, Tuesday, by Erin Cunningham. She was one of the small number of reporters who picked up on the fact of his visit with Israeli settler leader Shaul Goldstein.
Finally, what Carter has been trying to deal with for more than three years now– ever since, in fact, those January 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections that he monitored and that, lest we forget, Hamas roundly won— is really the next big issue for people in the peace-and-justice community to come to terms with… That is, the phenomenon that Nathan Brown calls “the green elephant in the room”: namely, Hamas.
In Northern Ireland, George Mitchell was successful in persuading the British government, and most of the British people, that they needed to bring the IRA into the peacemaking if it was ever to succeed.
For many British people, that was not easy to stomach, I assure you. I remember going back to visit my family in England in those years in the 1980s when there were regularly IRA bombs on the London Tube… and even that nearly successful attempt against the life of PM Thatcher, in Brighton.
But by quiet diplomacy, Mitchell succeeded in bringing all the relevant parties, including the British government, the “Loyalists” and Sinn Fein, aboard his process there. And now, the number of British people who regret having brought the IRA/Sinn Fein into the process is extremely small indeed.
We peace and justice activists in the US need to learn a little humility. We need to listen to the Palestinian people– to all of them, not just the ones who may happen to “look like us” or share our lifestyles.
Large numbers of Palestinians support Hamas; and that support is pretty deep, as well as wide. Just like large numbers of Israelis support their religious parties. Hamas has already proven its popular support at the voting booth.
(And then, lest we forget, our government responded by turning round and helping Israel to smash Hamas and all the Palestinians of Gaza very hard in the teeth. Go, democracy, eh? Our government has a lot to apologize for on this count… )
One way to start to rectify matters now is to find a good, forward-looking way to deal Hamas into the peacemaking diplomacy. Both because it’s the right thing to do, and because the diplomacy certainly won’t get anywhere without Hamas. (Go back and check my earlier JWN post about the parlous state of Fateh, if you doubt that.)
Like dealing with the IRA or back in the day the ANC or any other liberation movement: It seems hard, but in large part that’s because of the lengthy campaign of demonization our government(s) and MSM have engaged in for many long years now.
… So let’s give Jimmy Carter and his suggestions a fair and supportive hearing. And let’s have a lot less of this know-nothing bad-mouthing behind closed doors that passes for “Middle East expertise” in too much of Washington.
Good for you, Helena. This was a well-deserved defense of a seriously underrated statesman, as well as a well-deserved reprimand to those who put him down.
Hear! Hear! This is good news! Reason for optimism.
And, best of all, in Hamas, Israel and the United States might just find a negotiating partner, one with some actual legitimacy!
Still over a decade away from reaching President Cater’s age I can only hope to be as able to move myself from here to there as he. But medical training enables me to spot his frailty and thus note that this man is driven, not by superpower, but by a very human determination, by an obsession to do good as all men, in his view, are called upon to do by God; that is his Evangilism, not the hateful kind you hear from the lips of shyster “settlers” or gelt driven “pastors” mouthing the arguments e-mailed them from Jerusalem. Please, don’t forget that as you slip on excretory right-wing Zionist attempts in print and media to besmirsh Carter with vulgarities and lies. All my life I was raised and guided by Jews and all were like Carter, obsessed to be there to serve the calling of serving the needs of those in need. It is here that the people of the Old and New Testament meet, at a moral standard of giving and caring for your fellow man, whomever he/she may be. And yet, the right-wing Zionist slanderers that pound Carter with verbal punches– those neocons con men I knew as loudmouth cowards that run when time comes to stand for what they believe in– are only seeking to give themselves the illusion of “mensch-hood” at Carter’s expense. Like Dershowitz, they have justified themselves in attacking his book APARTHEID, not for its criticism of Israel’s ethnic policies but for alegedly intimating that his characterization of Israel’s total social and cultural deviance from Talmudic proscriptions are designed to tell their Zionist-Christians “allies” that Israel does not deserve the status of CHOSEN land of the CHOSEN people. For this IMPLICATION alone, in their minds, not for his criticisms of Israel, they engage in ganging-up cowardly assault on this fragile old man, standing alone seeking dialogue. I have not seen such cynical perspective from materialists like this since my days in Ceausescu’s Communist Romania. One time Reds, neocons are guided by their old Leninist concept: polarize to mobilize, they seek to arouse hate, not reasoned debate. Can anyone wonder, therefore, how the inhumanity that so outraged Carter on his trips to the “Holy Land” left him in utter dismay to face in despair the slander they heap upon him as enaction of the guidelines Likud gives to its minions assigned to “bury” Carter? Zionism was an idealism that has turned into a cynicism in the hands of Likud corruption. And yet, what Carter advocates is not Hellfire and brimstone against Israel but rather a call for dealing with its Palestinian cousins in a family way, at least as humane as the Torah demands of good Jews. The man is indeed a living saint. And for those of you of the monotheisitic persuasion who know the Scriptures well, this makes him not a miracle maker but an ordinary man who pushes his frail frame to extraordinary accomplishments in promoting a moral and decent peace based on the basic precept of all three monotheistic faiths: TREAT OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM TREAT YOU. For that right-wing Zionists have bashed this holy man when, in fact, good Jews would recognize his goodness right away as a follower of THE WAY, like themselves.
Hamas? Partner? Only if you can get past their stated goal of genocide.
As US presidents go, Carter is one of the best there has ever been, a hero in many ways.
As US presidents go, Carter is one of the best there has ever been, a hero in many ways.
She [Laura Rozen] is being seriously under-informed by the people she talks to, if she thinks that is how people in the current administration view Carter.
Well… who is in running this administration? Barak Obama? or Rahm Emanuel, Laura Rozen and the AIPAC? Is there any difference?
[Laura Rozen on an eventual dialogue between Obama and Hamas] …that’s a key to an empty room right now given everything that Obama is trying to do with Netanyahu and Abbas… In fact, the way to lose both of them and much of Congress to boot…
She stridently asserts AIPAC ownership of rooms full of power in Washington DC.
Carter: Grief and despair for Gaza
“My primary feeling today is one of grief and despair and an element of anger when I see the destruction perpetrated against innocent people in January.”
He said the Palestinians had been treated “like animals” and the deprivations faced by them in Gaza were unique in history.
Carter said: He [Obama] mentioned several things about the prospective road to peace.
“First of all, all settlement expansion should be stopped immediately.
“Secondly, that Jerusalem should be shared. Third, that there should be a two-state solution … each occupying their own territory.
“Fourth that these two nations should live in peace.”
Palestine’s own territory has certainly shrunk under US/Israeli expropriation… but it certainly includes every square centimeter of the territory occupied by Israel since the 1967 war.
A link to a transcript of Carter’s speech in Gaza. In fact it’s very weak tea.
Speech to the United Nations Relief Works Agency’s Human Rights Graduation in Gaza
Carter, wasn’t on his watch that Khomeini came back from France and started the Islamic Revolution we now suffer from? Didn’t he attempt a military approach against Iran at the time? I agree that unlike Obama who is trying to please the worst scum out there, Carter spoke up and made human rights a focus of his tenure. Now we have a timid version of Carter using cultural relativism to state that nothing is sacred and all behavior is permissible in its own cultural context. I guess if I had a Kenyan father that left me, an aunt in BOston in deportation proceedings for years, and who knows what else on the Kenyan side of the family it would also make me “open minded” like him.
I don’t sense Americans have much warmth for Carter’s presidency, and he left as an impotent in foreign policy. I doubt impotence gets better with age. He maybe a useful tool to Obama on the sense that he has already made his enemies and therefore can do dirty work with no incremental prejudice. Like asking somebody else to shoot your dog.
“right-wing Zionists have bashed this holy man”
Only right-wing Zionists? I would suggest that the nice, “liberal” Zionists have done more than their share of bashing.
“But why should she quote Miller on anything to do with Arab-Israeli affairs, in light of his role at the heart of the Dennis Ross-led peace-processing effort that spectacularly failed over the course of 12 years to bring anything resembling peace to the Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese, and Israelis?”
An important point well taken about Aaron Miller.
I think many people on “our side” of this issue think of Miller only as the guy who called the Ross team, “Israel’s lawyer.” I have been told that he gives a very slick presentation and is a “good guy.”
However, if you read Miller’s book on the peace process (I do not remember the title), you will see that he is not all that reasonable and is definitely in the pro-Israel camp.
On the positive side, it was not long ago when most writers thought Ross was a neutral figure in I/P issues!!! Now things are quite different.
Another great post, Helena! I’d like to hear more from Laura on her woefully misguided post. It was very disappointing and harms her credibility.
This really is excellent blogging.
Chris Berel: either you are mistaken in believing that Hamas has ‘genocidal’ aims, in which case you might wish to reconsider the priority you give to sharing your opinions over formulating them.
Or you are deliberately misrepresenting a position, well understood by readers of Just World News, in order to demonise Hamas and Palestinians generally. Such deceptions have consequences as the massacres in Gaza so tragically demonstrate. People ought to understand that to promote war and incite hatred is a deadly business. And that those who do such things have the deaths of innocent people on their consciences.
to promote war and incite hatred is a deadly business. And that those who do such things have the deaths of innocent people on their consciences.
You’re funny. I suppose letting Hamas know this would strike you as unreasonable? To comply with this statement, Hamas would have to jettison their charter, cease incitement in mosques, textbooks, television, etc., stop smuggling weapons, stop sniping, bombing and kidnapping IDF soldiers patrolling the border, stop breaking kneecaps of Fatah supporters in Gaza, stop stealing international relief supplies and then selling them to the Gazan population, and let’s not forget that uncomfortable fact of Hamas firing of thousands of rockets, indiscriminately, against Israeli civilians, and who can forget (thanks to IDF’s actions, many of us have forgotten) Hamas blowing up Israeli buses and restaurants packed with innocents.
Hamas apologists are a joke.