The Washington Post Acts Just Like Carter
Once again, the Washington Post gives legitimacy to a mass-murdering terrorist, and it seems that they are doing it because of Jimmy Carter. Some lowlights:
Last week’s attack on the Nahal Oz fuel depot should not surprise critics in the West. Palestinians are fighting a total war waged on us by a nation that mobilizes against our people with every means at its disposal — from its high-tech military to its economic stranglehold, from its falsified history to its judiciary that “legalizes” the infrastructure of apartheid. Resistance remains our only option. Sixty-five years ago, the courageous Jews of the Warsaw ghetto rose in defense of their people. We Gazans, living in the world’s largest open-air prison, can do no less.
He applauds the Arab murder of innocents and in the next breath compares Gazans who support the mass murder of Jews to Jews slated for genocide.
Our movement fights on because we cannot allow the foundational crime at the core of the Jewish state — the violent expulsion from our lands and villages that made us refugees — to slip out of world consciousness, forgotten or negotiated away. Judaism — which gave so much to human culture in the contributions of its ancient lawgivers and modern proponents of tikkun olam — has corrupted itself in the detour into Zionism, nationalism and apartheid.
So Jewish nationalism is evil, but Islamic nationalism – the core of Hamas’ existence, and orders of magnitude more violent by any yardstick – is just peachy. I love how he quotes “tikkun olam” as well, perhaps a nod to his ideological pals of the Jewish ultra-left.
A “peace process” with Palestinians cannot take even its first tiny step until Israel first withdraws to the borders of 1967; dismantles all settlements; removes all soldiers from Gaza and the West Bank; repudiates its illegal annexation of Jerusalem; releases all prisoners; and ends its blockade of our international borders, our coastline and our airspace permanently. This would provide the starting point for just negotiations and would lay the groundwork for the return of millions of refugees. Given what we have lost, it is the only basis by which we can start to be whole again.
While it is obvious that he is saying that Israel must be utterly destroyed before Hamas would consider stopping murdering Jews, it would be impolitic to write those words. This way he can sound a bit more peaceful.
And he signs off with a final threat:
As for the Israeli state and its Spartan culture of permanent war, it is all too vulnerable to time, fatigue and demographics: In the end, it is always a question of our children and those who come after us.
To have the leader of masked gangs dedicated to nothing but murder saying that the the State of Israel has a “culture of permanent war” is beyond parody. His demographic threat only points to the futility of Israel granting concession after concession.
To be fair, he WaPo also publishes a fairly good rebuttal to Zahar as well as a rebuke to Carter in their own editorial on the opposite page:
ON THE OPPOSITE page today we publish an article by the “foreign minister” of Hamas, Mahmoud al-Zahar, that drips with hatred for Israel, and with praise for former president Jimmy Carter. We believe Mr. Zahar’s words are worth publishing because they provide some clarity about the group he helps to lead, a group that Mr. Carter contends is worthy of being included in the Middle East peace process….
Mr. Zahar lauds Mr. Carter for the “welcome tonic” of saying that no peace process can succeed “unless we are sitting at the negotiating table and without any preconditions.” Yet Mr. Zahar has his own preconditions: Before any peace process can “take even its first tiny step,” he says, Israel must withdraw to the 1967 borders and evacuate Jerusalem while preparing for the “return of millions of refugees.” In fact, as Mr. Zahar makes clear, Hamas is not at all interested in a negotiated peace with the Jewish state, whose existence it refuses to accept: “Our fight to redress the material crimes of 1948 is scarcely begun,” he concludes.
In that fight, no act of terrorism is out of bounds for the Hamas leader, who endorses the group’s recent ambush of Israeli civilians working at a fuel depot that supplies Gaza. The “total war” of which he speaks was initiated and has been sustained by Hamas itself through its deliberate targeting of civilians, such as the residents of the Israeli town of Sderot, who suffer daily rocket attacks.
These facts would hardly need restating were it not for actors such as Mr. Carter, who portray Hamas as rational and reasonable.
Nevertheless, they could have written the same editorial without printing Zahar’s sickening words, where the realities of editorial space give Zahar’s genocidal hate the same legitimacy that Carter’s meetings do to Hamas. Jimmy also condemned rocket attacks, that hardly blunts the net effect of treating terrorists as respectful players, and the WaPo falls into the same trap.
And just like Carter congratulates himself on being so bold, so does the Washington Post.
About the Author
Elder of Ziyon may or may not be a real person. He (or she, or it) blogs at http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/Filed Under: Uncategorized
I don’t blame the Wash. Post for this. I think they did a good job.
When an ex-president meets with Hamas it is news. It is the job of the newspaper to provide information to its readers on background of the event. This is a good way to do it. Instead of commenting on Hamas, let Hamas speak for itself. The post then gave an editorial that beautifully showed the implications of the words of Zahar. They trapped Zahar in his own words and at the same time exposed the folly of Carter.
Stan
Seemed like a reasonably fairly balanced spread by the Wash. post.
Atleast they put in a rebuttal of sorts, if it was meant to be biased they wouldn’t have bothered.
The problem is that there were plenty of half-truths and lies that Zahar writes that the WaPo doesn’t examine, leaving them unchallenged and making it look like there are two sides to the story.
Sometimes, when a newspaper publishes a provacative letter to the editor or an op-ed by the likes of the wart-faced one, I think they do it to stir controversy and sell newspapers.
The post Editorial might not have covered every point made in the op-ed, but it nailed some very central issues; the fact that Hamas is a terrorist organization killing civilians, that they are intransigent in their demands, that Carter’s statements were clearly incorrect according to the statements of Zahar, and that Carter’s actions were wrong.
That is pretty good stuff for a paper like the Post. I give them credit where credit is due.
Stan
I somehow doubt that Al-Zahar writes this stuff himself. Would be curious to find out who his “mercenaries of the pen” are.
“We believe Mr. Zahar’s words are worth publishing because they provide some clarity about the group he helps to lead, a group that Mr. Carter contends is worthy of being included in the Middle East peace process….”
Or, how about this from 1938?
“We believe Mr. Hitler’s words are worth publishing because they provide some clarity about the group he leads in Germany, a group that Mr. Chamberlain contends is worthy of being included in the European peace process….”
If they wanted to clarify where Hamas stands then why can’t they write it themselves in their own editorial instead of giving them a platform which they’ll use to diseminate their views?
If you think Carter is bad, you haven’t seen anything yet. Obama is going to be much worse as a President and former President.
Actually what he does as former President might not mean too much as what Obama will do as President will perhaps totally destroy Israel.
And while I don’t blame Carter and Obama totally on the Jews, it is the truth that while of course not all Lefists are Jews, prominent leaders on the American Left are indeed Jews. So there is a certain amount of “chickens coming home to roost” aspect to this as a result of the great influence (too great some may say) that Jews have had over American politics.
Long term though, Obama might be the best possible outcome for this years’ election. A McCain victory means a prolonging of the current situation which leads to America’s destruction as well. Perhaps an Obama win and the hardship such a win will bring will be the wake-up call that Americans will need to snap them into reality and start electing good solid Americans instead of sleazebags like Obama and McCain.
After all because of Carter we had Reagan. Perhaps in the end, after no doubt lots of pain, Obama will be the best for America as a result of what comes after him.
But again, for you Israelis, Obama might be all she wrote. But be assured, your destruction will be one of the things that leads America onto the right path.
Here is an uncomfortable thing to consider.
Perhaps Hitler’s election win was the best thing to have happened to freedom, given the only other possible results.
After all had Hitler’s political enemies won, they would have been better able to maintain an alliance with Stalin. Actually such an alliance was part of the ideology of Hitler’s political opposition. A Soviet Union/Germany alliance (A strong alliance where one side doesn’t stab the other side in the back) would be able to totally destroy anyone coming against it at the time, such as England or even the United States. Who can say what the world would look like today? It could be a much worse place.
It is hard when the only possible outcomes one has are bad ones. But that is what the American voting electorate is facing today.
Mind you I don’t like it that Hitler became leader of Germany, but you need to consider the other possible results. There were few options and they were all going to disasterous. There was no way the result was going to be any thing else than bad.
And we did defeat Hitler. Could we have defeated Germany if the Soviet Union maintained its alliance with Germany (had Hitler not stabbed them in the back)?
I don’t think we could have.
So that is where we are today. There is no way that a good outcome can come out of this year’s US election and perhaps in the end again, electing Hitler (Obama) is the best when you look at it in the long run.
McCain is the Aaron Burr of modern American politics.
I believe we will be better able to survive the long term effects of Obama than the long term effects of McCain.
Not going to be pleasant but perhaps that is what it is going to take to save America. But it is likely that Israel is going to be a casuality in this painful process.
But when I pull the level for Obama I am going to remember this one thing “without Carter we wouldn’t have had Reagan”.
Hi..
Really I must be surprised due to your point of view,
you are completely do as Mr. Bush said after september 11th attacks that “Those who are not with us are against us”. Why do not you let the newspaper to unlearn all the points of views, as the israeli speech published, let the palestinian speech of its different parties be published.
Here, I invite you really to look closely at Hamas`s ideas, put in your minds that Hamas`s militant wing “Al-Qassam” is hard enough to make israeli people to suffer at least in Sederot city.
Can someone explain to me where this mythical ‘Palestine’ is? No, really. My understanding is that this name was invented by foreign invaders (and ironically, it also means ‘invasion’), and ceased to exist in May 1948.