It’s been nearly 28 years since your famous Playboy interview admission – “I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.” My concern is for what may lurk in your heart but remain unsaid.
It’s certainly commendable that you have actively devoted yourself to human rights and helping those less fortunate since leaving the presidency. However, it’s puzzling that your generosity of spirit comes to an abrupt halt in matters related to Israel. How can care and concern for others be so selective?
You’ve written a string of major newspaper opinion pieces on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the past few years. They follow a similar pattern. In your 2002 New York Times op-ed ominously titled “America Can Persuade Israel to Make a Just Peace,” your analysis of each leader is telling and sets the stage.
Accusations bolt off the page at Ariel Sharon. “His invasion of Lebanon, his provocative visit to the Temple Mount, the destruction of villages and homes, the arrest of thousands of Palestinians, his open defiance…” You chastise him for “His rejection of all peace agreements that included Israeli withdrawal from Arab lands,” as part of his ultimate goal “to establish Israeli settlements as widely as possible throughout occupied territories…”
This premise is curious in light of revelations by Betty Glad and Olin Johnson in ?Carter’s Greatest Legacy: The Camp David Negotiations.” They note that when Prime Minister Begin refused to budge on the last sticking point in negotiations between Egypt and Israel, the settlements in the Sinai, it was Ariel Sharon who broke the impasse, calling Begin “to assure him it was all right to compromise on the issue to avoid the failure of the entire conference.”
As the linchpin of those negotiations, this fact could not have escaped your knowledge, yet you completely ignore it, instead painting the Israeli leader as ruthless and uncompromising. Sharon’s intent to dismantle the Gaza settlements, whether or not ultimately implemented, is further proof of a strong pragmatic side. But why let hard facts cloud an agenda.
In marked contrast, complaints about Yasir Arafat are muted and limited to sins of omission. You offer that he never exerted control over Hamas and other radical Palestinians, rarely denounced violence and was likely insincere when he did speak out. Then, in an observation bordering on the absurd, you continue “He may well see the suicide attacks as one of the few ways to retaliate against his tormentors, to dramatize the suffering of his people…”
This is the man whose aids, during the height of the 2000 peace negotiations, clandestinely ran summer camps instructing 25,000 Palestinian teenagers on mock kidnappings of Israeli leaders and the handling of Kalashnikov rifles. It’s the man who swore off violence to President Bush just days before Israel intercepted the Karin A and confiscated 50 tons of sophisticated weaponry earmarked for a fresh Palestinian Authority terror campaign. It’s also the man exposed by both CBS and the BBC as having diverted funds totaling upward of a half billion dollars to his personal accounts, monies meant to improve the quality of life for countless Palestinians.
Considering your profound commitment to helping those most in need, shouldn’t these actions, all of which led to increased Palestinian suffering, be worthy of your contempt? Yet, even now, despite all the revelations, rarely does a rebuke of Arafat come forth from your lips. Why not? Why is your outrage so selective, Mr. Carter?