STOP ISRAELI KILLING OF PALESTINIANS IN GAZA

Former president Jimmy Carter has an op-ed in today's The Washington Post.

Writes Carter:

"After 12 days of "combat," the Israeli Defense Forces reported that more than 1,000 targets were shelled or bombed. During that time, Israel rejected international efforts to obtain a cease-fire, with full support from Washington. Seventeen mosques, the American International School, many private homes and much of the basic infrastructure of the small but heavily populated area have been destroyed. This includes the systems that provide water, electricity and sanitation. Heavy civilian casualties are being reported by courageous medical volunteers from many nations, as the fortunate ones operate on the wounded by light from diesel-powered generators."

This is an unjustified war against Palestinian civilians. It shows what happens to a people (Israel) when their leaders rely on bombs and missiles instead of diplomacy and respect. Having failed to kill off Palestinians through the blockade, Israel then decided to send its war planes. The notion that Israel is doing this to protect its own people is smoke screen for its true intention of subjugating and eliminating the Palestinians in Gaza. Condoleeza Rice and George Bush are just as complicit for their enabling the Israel war mongers.

JIMMY CARTER CRITICIZES EUROPEAN LEADERS FOR NOT DENOUNCING ISRAEL'S UNJUST TREATMENT OF PALESTINIANS

The Guardian has an article by Jonathan Steele and Jonathan Freedland about former president Jimmy Carter criticizing a "supine" Europe for failing to protest the Israeli blockade of Palestinians in Gaza.

Write Steele and Freedland:

"Britain and other European governments should break from the US over the international embargo on Gaza, former US president Jimmy Carter told the Guardian yesterday. Carter, visiting the Welsh border town of Hay for the Guardian literary festival, described the EU's position on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as "supine" and its failure to criticise the Israeli blockade of Gaza as "embarrassing"."

Carter is the only American out there who is not afraid to go up against the powerful Israeli lobby and denounce Israel's unjust and criminal collective punishment of the Palestinians.

Steele and Freedland report more on Carter's speech:

"The blockade on Hamas-ruled Gaza, imposed by the US, EU, UN and Russia - the so-called Quartet - after the organisation's election victory in 2006, was "one of the greatest human rights crimes on Earth," since it meant the "imprisonment of 1.6 million people, 1 million of whom are refugees". "Most families in Gaza are eating only one meal per day. To see Europeans going along with this is embarrassing," Carter said."

Carter brings up a subject upon which European leaders such as Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown have been strangely silent. And how about the silence of former prime minister Tony Blair? He has a job of trying to bring peace to Palestine, yet he has remained incommunicado. Why hasn't he spoken up as Carter? Europe's leaders are a milquetoast bunch. They loudly protest against Iran's development of nuclear power but they are mute when it comes to Israel's enforcement of collective punishment.

WHY DOES OBAMA CRITICIZE JIMMY CARTER IN TALKING WITH HAMAS?

I am getting antsy about Barack Obama, my candidate of choice. When Jimmy Carter went and met with representatives of Hamas, the Obama campaign disapproved. As a matter of fact, Steve Clemons in his The Washington Note says that the Obama campaign told him that it did not approve of Jimmy Carter as a negotiator.

Writes Steve Clemons:

"But for the Obama camp to say one thing and then to whisper another -- one formally and another through informal assertions that a campaign principal was misquoted -- is not something that inspires trust and confidence. . . .

"Obama's disparagement of Jimmy Carter for reaching out to Hamas was another such point. Obama needs someone of stature to try and do what can be done at developing an "internal solution" to Palestine's current civil war -- and needs to turn this new construct into something that might be able to be negotiated with. Obama will have to confront this as President -- either directly or through proxies. A senior Obama strategist told me that he didn't really disagree with my views -- but asked "If I were president, would I want Jimmy Carter to be my emissary?" "

Jimmy Carter is the only American statesman who has the fortitude to act on his belief that no good will come to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations as long as no one wants to talk and reason with Hamas. It is not enough for Barack Obama to agree with Bush/Cheney/Olmert that Hamas is a "terrorist organization" that should be excluded. We need Obama to follow through with his foreign policy articulation that the president of the United States should sit down with those perceived to be "enemies." That includes necessarily Hamas and Hezbollah and Syria and Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez.

For Obama then to turn around and criticize Jimmy Carter, someone whose family has expressed support for Obama, is disconcerting and confusing. Obama should be supporting Carter, wishing him good luck as Steve Clemons suggest, rather than denigrating Carter as a negotiator. We need Barack Obama to return to his original vision for talking, rather than shunning.

JIMMY CARTER TALKS TO HAMAS - ONLY SOLUTION TO MID-EAST TURMOIL

Is Jimmy Carter the only sane world leader when it comes to talking with Hamas? Both the Israeli government and Bush refuse to meet or talk to Hamas which they call a "terrorist organization." The result is as yesterday, three Israeli soldiers are killed and scores of Palestinians including women and children dead or injured.

AP's Ian Deitch reports in today's The Washington Post:

"Carter, who was scheduled to fly to Egypt after wrapping up the first leg of a weeklong Mideast peace mission, has drawn criticism from the U.S. and Israel for meeting Hamas officials. . . .

"All of Israel's senior political leaders declined to meet Carter, and only the country's ceremonial president, Shimon Peres, made time to meet with him."

Like Bush, Israel's senior leaders think the way out of the deadly relationship with the Palestinians is through the use of tanks and missiles. This approach has never worked, anywhere. The use of force always begets more force, more killings, more hatred.

Hamas has encouraged inhumane and cruel acts on the part of its population. Firing missiles into nearby Israeli towns, killing innocent people, terrorizing whole populations. Yet the way to deal with Hamas is to talk with its leaders and to negotiate in good faith. That's what Jimmy Carter is doing. And for that, the whole world should commend him.

JIMMY CARTER IN MIDDLE EAST, WILL MEET HAMAS OFFICIAL IN SYRIA

Jimmy Carter is in Israel but Israeli officials seem to be snubbing him because of his forthcoming meeting with a Hamas official in Syria.

Adam Entous writes for Reuters:

"Israeli leaders shunned former U.S. President Jimmy Carter during a visit because of his plans to meet Hamas and Israel's secret service declined to assist U.S. agents guarding him, U.S. sources said on Monday."

Carter knows an important principle in establishing peaceful coexistence between Israel and the Palestinians is to show respect to both sides, and that includes Hamas. If Israel refuses to talk with Hamas leaders, we will have another hundred years of missiles raining down on Israeli towns and Israeli Defense Forces storming little Gazan villages and killing civilians as well as militant Palestinians.

Israel of course claims Hamas is a "terrorist" organization, but the Palestinians say the same thing about the Israeli government. Whether a group is "terrorist" seems to depend on who does the judging. Many observers say Bush is the greatest "terrorist" when he orders the U.S. Navy to shell small Somali villages because he wants to kill Qaeda "members."

After his 2006 book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, Israeli officials and many American Jews accused Jimmy Carter of being an anti-Semite. However, Carter has in no sense done or said anything that is anti-Semitic. But he does believe, contrary to George Bush's retarded policy of shooting-first-and-talking-later diplomacy, in talking and negotiating with both sides.

Reports Entous:

"Carter visited the Israeli border town of Sderot on Monday and said he was "distressed" by cross-border rockets fired by militants in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. "I think it's a despicable crime for any deliberate effort to be made to kill innocent civilians," Carter said, adding that he hoped a ceasefire would be reached soon.

"Hamas leaders have offered a long-term truce with Israel in return for a viable Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but the group's 1988 founding charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state.

"Israel said it rejected Carter's request to meet jailed Palestinian uprising leader Marwan Barghouthi, who is seen as a possible successor to Abbas."

PLEA TO SEN. OBAMA - RECONSIDER UNWILLINGNESS TO TALK TO HAMAS

I see where Barack Obama is excluding Hamas from his pledge to sit down and talk with heads of governments with whom the United States has had rocky relationships. I think this is a big Obama mistake. Steve Clemons has a good post in The Washington Note on this.

One of the reasons that I support Sen. Obama is precisely because of his pledge to begin negotiations with officials from Iran and Venezuela instead of continuing the Bush failed policy of threatening them with bombs and missiles. So for Obama to exclude Hamas is a big disappointment.

I realize that Israel has a powerful lobby here in the U.S. But the neo-cons in Israel must not be allowed to determined U.S. foreign policy. They would like nothing better than to bomb Iran. And kill all the Palestinians. But this is just as ineffective as the Bush/Cheney doctrine of pre-emptive war.

We need to break through the deadly impasse between Israel and the Palestinians by talking, not shooting. Hamas was elected two years ago in fair elections. It is unfair to say that the U.S. won't deal with Hamas because Israel says it is a "terrorist" organization. Jimmy Carter deserves credit for planning to meet with a Hamas official in Syria in the coming weeks.

I want Barack Obama, my candidate, to emulate Mr. Carter and at least show a willingness to talk.

JIMMY CARTER UPBRAIDS BUSH ON TORTURE AND CHENEY ON WAR MONGERING

The country needs more of former president Jimmy Carter saying what needs to be said. Bush is a disaster and Cheney is a war monger. Dan Froomkin of washingtonpost.com has a full run down of Carter's thoughts and words and more.

Writes Froomkin:

"Former president Jimmy Carter is once again lambasting the current occupants of the White House. In one interview yesterday, Carter accused President Bush of abandoning the basic principles of human rights, engaging in torture, and lying about it. In another, he called Vice President Cheney a disaster for our country and a militant who is "trying again to promote once again what might well be a counterproductive and catastrophic military venture.""

Froomkin also provides a link to a video of Carter's interview on the BBC. Writes Froomkin:

"Here's the video of Carter's interview with the BBC's Matt Frei, discussing Cheney's preference for force over diplomacy.

""As usual, Dick Cheney is wrong," Carter said. "He's a militant who avoided any service of his own in the military and he has been most forceful in the last 10 years or more in fulfilling some of his more ancient commitments that the United States has a right to inject its power through military means in other parts of the world. And here he's trying again to promote once again what might well be a counterproductive and catastrophic military venture. . . .

""You know, he's been a disaster for our country. I think he's been overly persuasive on President George Bush and quite often he's prevailed.

""One of his main commitments was to go into Iraq on false pretenses and he still maintains that those false pretenses are accurate.""