EX-PRESIDENTS SHOULD BE NEITHER SEEN NOR HEARD

Negative response to Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid prompted Jimmy Carter to issue a clarifying letter addressed to American Jews. The letter makes it clear that by apartheid he doesn't really mean apartheid, Carter defining apartheid as "the forced segregation of two peoples living in the same land, with one of them dominating and persecuting the other." You know, like American segregation for 100 years or so following the Civil War. Apartheid is, apparently, included in the title solely for shock value.

The letter also contains a plea for peace, Carter expecting Israel to negotiate with a "government" avowedly committed to her destruction:

When asked my proposals for peace in the Middle East, I summarized by calling for Hamas members and all other Palestinians to renounce violence and adopt the same commitment made by the Arab nations in 2002: the full recognition of Israel's right to exist in peace within its legally recognized 1967 borders (to be modified by mutual agreement by land swaps). This would comply with U.N. Resolutions, the official policy of the United States, commitments made at Camp David in 1978 and in Oslo in 1993, and the premises of the International Quartet's "Roadmap for Peace." An immediate step would be the resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, now absent for six years. President Mahmoud Abbas is the official spokesman for the Palestinians, as head of the Palestinian National Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization, and has repeatedly called for peace talks. I asked the rabbis to join in an effort to induce the Israeli government to comply with this proposal.

Having designated Israel an apartheid state it seems only fair for Carter to categorize Hamas. Genocidal leaps to mind. Okay, that's probably overly emotive; how about, murderous?

Anyway, Carter says the aim of the book is to open up debate on Palestinian-Israeli issues, with the focus on Israel:

“There is no debate in America about anything that would be critical of Israel.”

It therefore seems odd that Carter refuses to appear at Brandeis University. The problem for Carter is the expectation that he would debate Daniel Pipes, considered by Carter an unworthy opponent:

“I don’t want to have a conversation even indirectly with Dershowitz,” Carter told The Boston Globe. “There is no need to for me to debate somebody who, in my opinion, knows nothing about the situation in Palestine.”

It's obvious that Carter's nothing more than a self-important, self-promoting knob who really should do the right ex-presidential thing and slide quietly into oblivion. The poor guy is arguably America's worst ever president and is determined to be its worst ever ex-president. Some claims to fame.

Just in case anyone needs to be reminded, this isn't Carter's first ill advised ex-presidential international relations adventure. In 1994 he traveled to North Korea hoping to calm tensions. The 82 year-old Kim's sincerity and good health impressed him. Kim was dead within a month.

Carter was not at all impressed with the Clinton administration's response to his efforts:

When I got back to Seoul, I was amazed and distressed at the negative reaction that I had from the White House. They urged me not to come to Washington to give a briefing, urged me to go directly to Plains, my home.

That was some pretty poor advice from the White House; they forgot to tell Carter to shut up.