“Hugs for Hamas” (link):
Jimmy Carter Embraces Hamas Official
Apr 15 10:57 AM US/Eastern
By DALIA NAMMARI
Associated Press WriterRAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) – Former President Jimmy Carter embraced a leading Hamas figure Tuesday, according to participants in a meeting that infuriated Israeli officials already upset by Carter’s freelance Mideast peace mission.
Carter also laid a wreath at the grave of Yasser Arafat*, whom the Bush administration and many Israelis blame for the breakdown of peace talks seven years ago and the violence that followed.
At a reception in the West Bank town of Ramallah organized by Carter’s office, the former president hugged Nasser Shaer, a senior Hamas politician, meeting participants said. Embraces between men are a common custom in Arab culture.
“He gave me a hug. We hugged each other, and it was a warm reception,” Shaer told The Associated Press. “Carter asked what he can do to achieve peace between the Palestinians and Israel … and I told him the possibility for peace is high.”
Carter’s office refused to comment, saying he does not discuss closed meetings.
But wait, isn’t Hamas listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO)? Doesn’t that make the person offering support to that group a criminal? Did Yasser Arafat donate stolen international aid money to the Carter Center or something? (link) I didn’t blog about it but last week Hamas TV, part of their “education ministry” had this lovely show on (link):
(AP) In a Hamas TV production for Palestinian children, a puppet stabs U.S. President George Bush to death in revenge for American and Israeli actions.
The children’s puppet aired Sunday, part of series called “Exceptionals.”
In the episode, Bush, a hand-held puppet dressed in a green uniform and wearing boxing gloves, is shown talking to a Palestinian child.
The child, with tears in his voice, accuses Bush of killing his father in Iraq, his mother in Lebanon and his brothers and sisters in Gaza with the assistance of the Israelis.
The Islamic Hamas overran Gaza last June. Israel, the U.S. and EU consider it a terror group. Hamas charges the U.S. with backing Israeli attacks.
The unnamed child tells Bush: “Your are a criminal. You deprived me of everything.”
The child says, “I have to take my revenge with this sword of Islam.”
Bush, in a panic, pleads for his life. “I repent. Don’t kill me.”
He invites the child for talks in the White House. But the child counters that the White House has been turned into a mosque, and “impure Bush” can’t enter it. Then the child stabs him to death.
In a previous Hamas production, a Mickey-Mouse lookalike preached against Israel and the United States and urged Palestinian children to fight them.
I found that press release from Nasser Shaer unilaterally condemining Hamas TV’s show. I’m speechless.
Dutch
April 15th, 2008
I’m no fan of President Carter… but neither am I a fan of our slavish devotion to Israel.
Too bad we didn’t listen to the warnings of the Founding Fathers when they cautioned us against taking up the banners of foreign nations.
BadIdeaGuy
April 15th, 2008
What do you propose happen with Israel?
That American Chap
April 15th, 2008
Compare this to Bush’s million-dollar-a-day bribe (to Iraqi insurgents who’ve been killing American soldiers) to what Carter is doing and suddenly it doesn’t look much like “treason”.
I’m with Dutch on this. It’s pretty stunning when you look into how many “dual-passport” carrying Israelis there are in the highest reaches of this government (shouldn’t they owe allegiance to this country only?). Geez, on 9/11, the Comptroller of the Pentagon (i.e., the guy who controls every bit of that huge budget financed by you and me) was Dov Zackheim, a dual-national with a clear loyalty to Israel. The day before 9/11, he and Don Rumsfeld held a little noticed press conference (thanks to the events of the next day) during which they announced that they had “lost” 3 TRILLION dollars in money and material!! It was later discovered that whole squadrons of fighter jets had been labeled as “scrap” and simply shipped to Israel, all very quietly.
As far as I’m concerned, NO OTHER COUNTRY should have access to control of the important offices of this nation, particularly one who continually tries to get us to fight it’s wars for them.
G.I.N. President and CEO
April 15th, 2008
I can’t figure TAC out. On one hand, she is no fan of Carter (good). And I can’t disagree with her comment that dual national should not be a big dawg in the Pentagon (good). On the other, she likes when terrorists kill Israelis.
That American Chap
April 15th, 2008
(“Chap”=”she”…..what a brutal put down!)
Terrorists? In all of human history, with it’s countless bloody struggles, I doubt that there’s a clearer case for a “Freedom Fighter” than there is for the Palestinians. Do you know *anything* about that conflict? Is it possible that you’re unaware that they’ve lived in Palestine for at least 5000 years and that the Zionists simply rolled through the ancient villages with modern armor (the Palestinians had no army) and either killed the occupants wholesale or turned them into refugees? You seem to imagine that the Israelis are the legitimate owners of the land, when in fact they’re nothing more than thieves. If they’d wanted the land, they could’ve negotiated with the Palestinians and bought it parcel by parcel. Instead, they stole it outright.
Now I don’t know about you but if someone came onto my land with a gun, claiming it was THEIR land, they’d be in mighty deep trouble. I’d fight for my land, regardless of whether ignorant fools called me a “terrorist’ or not. Lest you think that this perception comes from me being a Palestinian, you’d be wrong (on the contrary, I’m a Jew who lost most of his older relatives in the Holocaust). I’m just a guy who still has some capacity to tell right from wrong, and when it comes to the occupation of Palestine, the Zionists are ALL WRONG. The only “terrorists” in that conflict, I regret to say, are the Jews that lay claim to that which belongs to others.
After the war, my grandmother (one of the few relatives to survive) used to say “never again” like a repetitive mantra. What she was saying was that that kind of holocaust should never happen again, not just to Jews, but to anyone….she was mortified when the Zionists attacked Palestine “They’re no better than the Nazis” she used to say to everyone. My grandmother was a hell of a woman, someone who’d walked through Hell and came out more righteous than when she went in. You don’t have to accept my take on this, but you’d be well served to listen to her.
G.I.N. President and CEO
April 15th, 2008
Sounds like you should do the right thing and give up your land to a Native American (assuming you live in USA).
That American Chap
April 16th, 2008
If my parents had taken native American land at gunpoint (or by murder), I’d be forced by law to do just that. That’s how things go in lawful countries, and rightly so. Whatever the injustices to the native tribes (and the list would be pretty depressing), we’ve been here for 400 years (and no one that I’m aware of came over with a plan to entirely dispossess the Indians of their land), making a comparison fairly ludicrious.
The Palestinians have repeatedly offered to stop all resistance in return for their own state (as if they should have to ask for what is already rightly theirs) and the Israelis refuse to negotiate. They want ALL of Palestine for their own and keep the inhabitants of Gaza in conditions worse than the Nazis kept the Warsaw Ghetto in an attempt to force them to capitulate via starvation. Tell me again: who is the terrorist?
BadIdeaGuy
April 16th, 2008
So the US is not a lawful country? If not, could you name some “lawful” countries so we can compare?
By the way, does it offend you that Yasser Arafat plundered billions in international aid intended to help starving Palestinians?