Two surprises greeted the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas last
week. First it triumphed over corruption-mired Fatah in the
Palestinian elections. Next it unexpectedly secured the endorsement
of a former American president.
The president in question is, of course, Jimmy Carter. Not a few
outrages have issued from the 39th president since he appointed
himself, on no compelling grounds, the world’s premiere ethicist.
Now, however, Carter may have outdone even himself.
A lone point of consensus following Hamas’ victory in last
week’s elections, which Carter monitored with a group of observers,
was that the international community would suspend funding to the
new Palestinian government until it forswore violence and
recognized the existence of Israel. Against this approach, Carter
took it upon himself to make the case for Hamas. This was no easy
task. American law expressly prohibits the provision of aid to a
terrorist organization and European countries have, reluctantly but
firmly, adopted a de facto ban.
Not to worry, though, for Carter had a plan. In an interview
this weekend with the New York Times, Carter explained that that the U.S. and Europe should,
as the Times put it, “redirect their relief aid to United
Nations organizations and nongovernmental organizations to skirt
legal restrictions.” Thus did the erstwhile leader of the free
world advocate criminal action on behalf of a terrorist group.
Fairness dictates noting that Carter attempted to justify that
position. “It may well be that Hamas can change,” he explained. As
evidence, he adduced the supposed moderation — under his influence
— of Yasir Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization. In Carter’s
version of the history, Arafat and the PLO, inspired by his rousing
vision for peace, agreed to renounce terrorism and acknowledge
Israel’s right to exist. Of the many myths in Carter’s self-serving
syllabus of accomplishments, this has always been among the more
invincible.
The actual history is worth retelling. Not long after he assumed
office, Carter asked his national security adviser, Zbigniew
Brzezinski, to determine whether Arafat was genuinely ready for
compromise. Brzezinski sensibly concluded in the negative. Carter,
convinced as ever that peace was at hand, ignored him. More than
that, he actively tuned out Arafat’s incitement in Arabic — such
as his repeated pledges to destroy Israel and his intentionally
inflammatory claim that “U.S. policy was an imperialist plot to
liquidate the Palestinian cause” — while clinging, against all
evidence, to his faith in what he called “Arafat’s moderate
line.”
The results were predictable. Arafat’s repeated provocations
thwarted all progress toward peace negotiations and his
anti-American declamations put U.S. diplomats on notice. As Barry
and Judith Rubin point out in their illuminating biography of
Arafat, a striking rift emerged in American policy toward the PLO.
In 1979, even as Carter continued to sing hosannas to Arafat’s
pragmatism, the State Department was warning American embassies to
guard against the possibility of PLO attacks.
Once out of office, Carter stubbornly resisted enlightenment
about Arafat’s true intentions. Through his Carter Center, funded
in part by Palestinian money, he maintained contact with PLO
operatives and publicized their agenda. When Arafat claimed that he
was unable to excise a reference to Israel’s destruction from the
PLO charter because of pressure from unspecified hardliners, Carter
accepted it unquestioningly. Similarly, when the PLO leader
insisted that he was powerless to advance the peace process, Carter
credulously announced that “Chairman Arafat has done everything he
can.”
Arguably the saddest part of Carter’s overture to Hamas is how
typical it is for his career. One wants to be charitable — to
attribute his misplaced sympathies to some unstable mix of utopian
idealism and political naivete. But apologies for the president
increasingly ring false. After considering his years of befriending
the worst the world has to offer — from Yugoslavia’s Tito to
Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu, from North Korea’s Kim Il Sung to
Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, from Fidel Castro to Venezuela’s Hugo
Chavez, from Arafat to Bashar Assad — one is forced to conclude
that Carter’s values are, to borrow a metaphor, not merely
endangered; they are effectively extinct.
In The Real Jimmy Carter, his superbly scathing
catalogue of the ex-president’s accumulated folly, Steven Hayward
notes that in Carter’s hometown of Plains, Georgia, it was said of
the prominent native son that after an hour you love him, after a
week you hate him, and after ten years you start to understand him.
More than a quarter century has passed since Carter was
unceremoniously evicted from office. Some of us just want to forget
him.
