Carter takes shots at Begin and Netanyahu
Category: Dr. Mike Evans, Featured Headlines, Iran, Iran Watch, Iraq, Israel, J.W.N. Exclusives, Middle East News, Religion, Special Feature, The War on Terror, U.S. News
In the words of Ronald Reagan during the second Reagan-Carter debate in 1980, “There you go again!” Jimmy Carter was not content to skew the facts in Palestine Peace not Apartheid; he is at it again in his latest book, We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land.
A recent opinion piece in the Washington Times outlined Carter’s inequities in the manuscript regarding two former prime ministers, Menachem Begin and Benjamin Netanyahu. The Begin Center Diary, an authorized blogspot for the Begin Center, applauded the Times article for setting the record straight.
On the subject of dividing Jerusalem, Mr. Carter wrote that Menachem Begin viewed the possibility favorably. Nothing could have been further from accurate. I was a confidant to Mr. Begin; he gave me a copy of a letter he had written to President Carter on September 17, 1978. In the letter, Begin penned, “On the basis of this law, the government of Israel decreed in July 1967 that Jerusalem is one city indivisible, the capital of the State of Israel.” That doesn’t sound like Mr. Begin wished to divide Jerusalem to placate Mr. Carter.
The former president wrote that Begin agreed to a freeze on building Jewish settlements. Again, not true. Begin told me he had only agreed to a three-month moratorium on building, from September 17 to December 17, 1978.
Carter also targets Benjamin Netanyahu who is certainly no friend to the Liberal Left. He writes that in 1976 this Israeli leader was a “naysayer” who opposed returning control of the Sinai to Egypt. I ask you: How could Netanyahu have been a naysayer in 1976? He was working as a salesman in the U.S. while pursuing his education.
It was in 1982, on the anniversary of his brother, Jonathan’s, death as leader of the raid on the Entebbe airport in Uganda to free Jewish hostages that I prayed and wept with Benjamin. I was so impressed with him that the following day, I asked Prime Minister Begin and his senior advisor (and my dear friend) Reuben Hecht to offer him a position in government. I said, “Someday this young man will be the prime minister of Israel.” Begin smiled and asked the identity of this competing Prime Minister. I did not relate this to Benjamin until some twenty years later.
As with the inaccuracies in Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, Mr. Carter seems to weave fact and fiction with a weary old plan to achieve peace in the Middle East and hope that he can, at least, fool some of the people some of the time. As is the norm in any initiative for Middle East Peace, Mr. Carter’s miraculous “new” plan demands much of Israel and very little of the Palestinians.
While Jimmy Carter seems to view Israelis as the radicals in the Middle East, he exposes his soft underbelly where the leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Syria are concerned.
Carter believes Israel will live happily ever after with the Arab world by simply giving terrorist regimes their land. I am reminded of the question I asked Benjamin Netanyahu at the Madrid Peace Conference: “For human rights not to be biased, “I said, “Jews would have the same freedom as Arabs regarding settling in territories if they chose to do so, be it Riyadh of Amman, etc. Has there been any discussion on that?”
Netanyahu replied, “On the question of individual rights of Arabs and Jews, there is no symmetry now. That is, if Arabs desire to live among Jews, as they do and they have a right to, Jews should have the right to live among Arabs. The fact is that no Jews are allowed to live in Jordan or Saudi Arabia, and that is the kind of conception, an apartheid peace if you will, that we cannot tolerate and that no one should tolerate in the closing part of this century.” And yet, it was Jimmy Carter who in a previous book accused Israel of being an apartheid state.
When Mr. Carter’s tired and trite commentary is exposed to the light of day, it will be easily seen that there is truly nothing new under the sun.
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Michael D. Evans, a #1 New York Times bestselling author, is the author of Jimmy Carter: The Liberal Left and World Chaos. A television special based on the book is currently being produced (www.carterbooktv.com).
