Sunday, April 27, 2008

GETTING CARTER AND THE HEROIC EFFORTS OF THE FORMER PRESIDENT

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY IAN WILLIAMS IN THE GUARDIAN

Carter has been nothing less than heroic here.

For trying to be fair and genuinely trying to promote peace, he has been called every name you can think of.

Only today, Israel's UN ambassador called Carter 'a bigot."

Imagine, an ex-president, a man who has worked hard for many charities, a man whose Carter Center has brought understanding to many difficult situations around the world, a man who made the biggest achievement towards peace in the Middle East in half a century, a man loved by tens of millions who love peace, and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

And what's the record of the last two Prime Ministers of Israel? The killing of tens of thousands innocents, the building of a new Berlin Wall, the constant seizure of still more land belonging to others, keeping an entire people in misery, torture, assassination, and illegal arrests in the thousands.

Israeli rhetoric has reached the level of the absurd. More absurd still is the fact that there are people who believe it.