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Carter Blames Israel for Gaza Bloodshed
Former President Jimmy Carter told the Free Press that Israel was responsible for last month’s fighting in Gaza, a comment that drew sharp reaction from members of the local Jewish community, who called him an apologist for terrorist groups.
Carter, asked in a telephone interview who was responsible for the Gaza war, replied simply: “Israel was.”
The Democrat said that Israel first violated an earlier cease-fire agreement with Hamas, the Palestinian ruling party in Gaza that fired rockets into Israel.
The former president, who met with Hamas leaders last year, also urged the United States to negotiate with Hamas.
“Hamas’ popularity has increased in the last few weeks since Israel attacked Hamas and its people in Gaza,” Carter said. “So you got to deal with them.”
But some say Carter is misguided.
“It’s like asking the Jewish people to make a deal with Hitler,” said Hannan Lis, 50, of Farmington Hills, who has family members in Israel. “It’s naive and a little concerning that … a former president is using his moral authority and political capital to essentially say Israel should make a deal with a religious philosophy that is totally committed to the destruction of … people because they’re Jewish.”
Carter’s interview with the newspaper was conducted in connection with the release of his new book, “We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work.”
It arrives at a time of renewed interest in solving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, on which President Barack Obama has said his administration will focus.
This is not the first time Carter has stirred controversy with his criticism of Israel. In 2006, the former president wrote a book titled “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid.” The use of the word “apartheid” to describe Israel upset many in the Jewish community.
Robert Cohen, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Metropolitan Detroit, said “Mr. Carter’s books are one-sided rewrites of history that pile on one false claim after another. Since withdrawing entirely from Gaza three years ago … every Israeli military action in Gaza was a response to terrorist attacks against Israel or aimed at preventing an imminent terrorist attack.”
Carter defended his books as accurate. When he was president, Carter oversaw peace efforts between Israel and Egypt, which led to a historic deal that normalized relations between the two nations that had fought several wars. Carter said he learned from the experience that even adversaries can one day live together in peace.
“You got to talk to both sides,” Carter said. “But you can’t … take the position that everything that Israel does is right, and that anybody who disagrees with them is an act of terrorism. You got to try to find solutions that relate to both sides.”
Niraj Warikoo
Detroit Free Press
Picture caption:
Former President Jimmy Carter, right, listens to police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld, center, on Monday as he looks at home-made rockets that were fired at Israel, at the police station in the southern Israeli city of Sderot. Carter called Palestinian militants’ attacks on Israel a “despicable crime” as he toured a rocket-battered town
Sabastian Scheine/Associated Press