Jimmy Carter and Red Meat

Michael L.

Tamar Pileggi of the Times of Israel reports:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin have turned down invitations to meet with former US president Jimmy Carter during his upcoming visit to Israel over his “anti-Israel” views.

Both the president and prime minister declined the invitations after consulting with the Foreign Ministry and the National Security Council.

A senior diplomatic official told Channel 10, which broke the news, that Carter is “a disaster for Israel,” and that all Israeli leaders should refrain from meeting the former president, due to his “anti-Israel positions.”

The official was also quoted as saying that while Netanyahu and Rivlin refused to meet with him, Israel had approved Carter’s request to visit the Gaza Strip.

I have to say, I feel no particular desire to take a gratuitous slap at ex-US President Jimmy Carter... although it is tempting.

{Maybe you guys can pick up the slack on that front, I don't know.}

I will say, however, that the very cover of his book did much damage to the cause of Jewish self-determination and self-defense.

It put Jewish people and friends of Israel into the position of endlessly having to explain to people the myriad of ways that Israel is nothing like an apartheid state.  I have not read the book, but I have read - and perhaps someone can confirm - that the word "apartheid" actually only comes up a few times in the text and that he never makes a case that Israel actually is an apartheid state.

When I used to participate at Maryscott O'Connor's now defunct My Left Wing blog there was an anti-Zionist there who went under the moniker of Shergald.  Shergald's avatar was exactly the picture above and Shergald had the audacity to claim, before innocent liberals and left-wing radicals, that Hamas was an organization devoted to social justice for the Palestinian people.

Some people bought it and some people did not.  The majority were silent because they did not know who to believe.

That is just one semi-anecdote, but it should be obvious that if Carter did not defame Israel in the text, his publishing house most certainly did on the cover and he could easily have prevented it.

He didn't.

And it is that cover that probably had a greater influence on people's thinking than anything that he had to say in the book, itself.  This book was a significant book and this man was the President of the United States, after all.

When the book came out and people passed it by in the aisles of Borders Books and Music and saw that title it planted in their minds that Israel is an apartheid state.

So, should Israel roll out the red carpet for this guy?

Were I PM, he would not be allowed falafel in Haifa, because he would not be allowed access to the country without an apology to the Israeli people.

Good for Netanyahu and Rivlin.

If there was ever a time to demonstrate Israeli backbone, it is now.