Hamas, Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter, Hamas

When people say Israelis offer peace, do they mean the systematic home demolition of innocent Palestinians that has been going on since 1948? Imagine having your home torn down because you are not Jewish, so that Jewish people can move into your home and take over your lands. To me, the demolishing of homes is the ultimate form of terrorism, period. Then Israel pretends to care about the environment, meanwhile bulldozing tens of thousands of acres of Palestinian olive trees that are hundreds of years old. Why? So they can build KB style homes for you guessed it, Jews only.

Angela @ 10:08 AM PDT, May 17, 2008

*Palestinian extremism is the obstacle to peace. They refuse to accept any fair compromise, because they are absolutely stuck, due to incessant incitement from demagogues, on the idea that Israel must be destroyed. Every Palestinian leader so far, including Hamas leaders, who has ever mentioned peace, has only spoken of temporary cease-fires with Israel, never a permanent peace. The Arabs want “peace” only long enough to rearm, train and gain strength. Carter is a fool to think otherwise.

Lee G. (not the other Lee) @ 5:35 PM PDT, May 14, 2008

Israel offers peace and the Palestinians give them horrific terror and war. The Palestinians were offered peace and their own country many times over the years, but they refused to end the conflict as long as it meant that they would have to accept the legitimacy of Israel as a sovereign, permanent country and neighbor. Only when the Palestinians’ extremist/rejectionist/supremacist attitude changes will peace really be possible.

Lee G. (not the other Lee) @ 5:34 PM PDT, May 14, 2008

Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel. Israel is the rebirth, the resuscitation of the Jewish nation in the land where Jews had their own kingdom, with Jerusalem as its capital, in ancient times. Arabs came to the land hundreds of years later. Both peoples have long histories there, and it is fair to have two states (an Arab state and a Jewish state) living side by side in peace. Unfortunately, the Arabs have long refused, preferring for Israel to be destroyed.

Lee G. (not the other Lee!) @ 5:32 PM PDT, May 14, 2008

Carter, the useful idiot tool of the terrorists, is an embarrassment to our country. I think the hundred million dollars given to the Carter Center by various Arabs in the Middle East has gone to Carter's head. Israel is a democracy. Hamas is a terrorist organization whose goal is to deny human rights to women and anyone who isn't just the right kind of Muslim. Carter is a fool if he thinks he can turn Hamas fanatics into reasonable statesmen. If the Palestinians put down their weapons there would be peace. If the Israelis put down their weapons, there would be no more Israel and millions of slaughtered Jews.

Lee G. @ 5:25 PM PDT, May 14, 2008

Mr. Pearl insults Jimmy Carter by saying he sees his "sincerity to be questionable" and "Carter''s tango with Hamas is a further proof that the man is oblivious to what the culture of terror is doing to society." Remember, to forge the Egyptian-Israel Peace Treaty in '79, it was Carter at Camp David in '78 who bridged the gap between Egypt's Sadat and Israel's Menachem Begin by running between the two men in separate buildings because they refused to sit together face to face. Could Carter in '78 not have known that Begin (who led the Irgun, a zionist terror group) triggered the King David Hotel bombing killing 91 innocent people in 1946?

Allen Hovey @ 4:46 PM PDT, May 14, 2008

RHSchumann writes "Hamas has as much right to use terror as Israelis prior to 1948." Only an idiot thinks terror is a legit negotiating tactic today, haven't we learned anything? Hungary had 3/4 of its land and population taken from it after WWI and Austria similar, leading them to ally with GErmany in WWII to try to regain this; it was wrong for the "Allies" to have committed this theft so that some other ethnics could be happy, leaving 10 million new people occupied by those who treated them second-class; should they use terror, too? Where will it end?

jane @ 2:38 PM PDT, May 14, 2008

What's disgraceful is not so much that Carter is talking to Hamas, but the context, blaming Israel up-front, as "The Apartheid State," leaving no room for open mindedness. There's a role for ex-Pres's who can talk to people sitting leaders can't, but he's been a lifetime fool and hick in international relations, embracing Romania's Coucescu brutal dictator while he was raping his country and wiping out Hungarian villages and arresting anyone who even spoke that language (Romania annexed a big chunk of Hungary after WWI), same with Tito, etc. But look at his grain embargo and skipping Olympics which hurt only American athletes.

jane @ 2:33 PM PDT, May 14, 2008

It's amazing that some posters here actually defend terrrorism! Some of you cite pre-1948 "terrorism" by Zionist groups. Well, they never targeted civilians. It's just not comparable. And let's say for sake of argument that some of these groups had practiced terrorism (which I don't accept), would that justify Palestinians deliberately killling civilian men, women and children today? If you answer yes, you have no moral compass and I have nothing to say to you.

Martin K @ 2:19 PM PDT, May 14, 2008

Part III It is a disgrace the way President Carter, probably the most moral President of the 20th Century, has been maligned for his honest and thoughtful words. Sane people in Israel and the USA and of course also in the Arab world would do themselves a favor by heeding what he has to say. Hamas has as much a right to use terror tactics as Israelis had prior to 1948. Of course we must talk to them. Only talking to friends is like mental masturbation.

RHSchumann @ 1:30 PM PDT, May 14, 2008

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