Jimmy Carter’s Love Affair with Terrorists Continues

Former President Jimmy Carter announced Monday that he will venture to Gaza to meet with the leaders of terrorist group Hamas. regardless of the fact that Hamas is listed on the US State Department's terrorism list.

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Carter has been in Israel and the occupied West Bank over the past week, but he will be the first American leader in recent years to officially meet the deadly terrorist group's leadership in Gaza. He is expected to visit, among other Hamas officials, Ismail Haniyeh, the former Palestinian prime minister, according to the left-leaning British newspaper The Guardian During his May trip to Syria, Carter met with Khaled Meshal, the chief of Hamas's so-called political wing. Carter calls his meetings "private diplomatic efforts," yet critics say his meeting are anything but private and he uses his former political office as his key to garnering adulation from the US left and America's enemies. The one-term president's actions continue to anger the Israeli government. And Carter continues to criticize the Israeli's military actions against terrorists and their supporters. For example, last Sunday Carter slammed a speech given by Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which he gave, what Carter characterized as, a carefully worded approval for a future Palestinian state under strict conditions, but insisted "normal lives" should continue in Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank. "My opinion is he raised many new obstacles to peace that had not existed under previous prime ministers," Carter told a Guardian reporter. "He still apparently insists on expansion of existing settlements, he demands that the Palestinians and the Arabs recognize Israel as a Jewish state, although 20% of its citizens here are not Jews. This is a new demand," said Carter, who has never been viewed as a friend or ally of Israel. Unfortunately, Carter rarely, if ever, criticizes the Palestinians. For instance, part of Hamas' charter is the total destruction of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic nation. Jimmy Carter, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, has never mentioned that clause, nor has he ever condemned such statements. In a subsequent US television appearance, Prime Minister Netanyahu said he wanted to reduce the differences between his government and President Barack Obama. "President Obama and I are trying to reach a common understanding on this," Netanyahu said. "I think we'll find some common ground." Meanwhile Palestinian officials continue their vitriolic responses to Israeli comments by calling on members of the United Nations to challenge Israel. "The international community should confront this policy, through which Netanyahu wants to kill off any chance for peace," Yasser Abed Rabbo, an adviser to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, told The Guardian. Netanyahu favors a Palestine that has no standing army with strict border controls, something US conservatives find reasonable. Also, the Palestinian state would not enter into any military alliances with other Muslim or Arab states, according to Netanyahu. Following the 2006 elections in the Palestinian territory, when asked by the media for his thoughts on the Hamas triumph in the Palestinian parliamentary elections, Carter replied that while they have a terrorist past, at least they're not corrupt. One of the complaints by many in the Middle East was the corruption within the Palestinian Authority and Yasser Arafat's Fatah Party. Arafat himself squirreled away millions of dollars from aid packages that were intended to help the Palestinian people. However, Carter's comment appeared to dismiss the years of death and destruction perpetrated by Hamas on the Jewish State. Hamas won a majority in the 132-seat legislature, winning 76 seats. Fatah only won 43 seats in that election. The victory gave Hamas the power to shape and even lead the Palestinians.