Jimmy Betraying National Secrets?
Once upon a time, strange as it may sound now, Jimmy Carter was the President of the United States. As president, he was privy to a great deal of secret information that he was honor-bound to keep private.
Now, everyone assumes that Israel has nuclear weapons. No one really knows how many, though. Chances are that the United States government does have a much clearer idea of how many such weapons Israel has, and, as Israel is an ally of the US, it keeps mum.
What does one do with a president who, after he leaves office, decides to betray the trust that Americans and their allies placed in him?
Israel has 150 nuclear weapons in its arsenal, former President Jimmy Carter said yesterday, while arguing that the US should talk directly to Iran to persuade it to drop its nuclear ambitions.
This is not some investigative reporter coming up with these numbers, this is an ex-president. As such, they appear to have more inside information behind them.
If a former Israeli prime minister would tell a public venue about US spies found in Israel, or perhaps about US military capabilities and weaknesses discovered during joint exercises, what would be the US reaction? If Tony Blair announced the exact location of US submarines when he was prime minister, what kind of an uproar would that cause? Because this is exactly what Jimmy Carter just did to Israel.
He just gave priceless information to Iran about Israel’s nuclear arsenal.
Does this make him a spy? A turncoat? I don’t know, but at the very least it should mean that whatever little credibility he still has as a decent human being is now utterly lost.
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Elder of Ziyon may or may not be a real person. He (or she, or it) blogs at http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/Filed Under: General
He didn’t have much to lose in the first place.
In European media, he is hailed as prophet of peace…
One can only hope the grave takes him before he damages Israel and the United States further. I don’t enjoy wishing ill on anyone like that. This sort of betrayal not only weakens Israel in the ME, it adds insult to the already injured trustworthiness of the United States. It’s borderline treason.
That makes the assumption that what Jimmy Carter said was based on confidential information he was privy to when he was president.
I don’t think that is the case. I think he is merely echoing another common “anti Israel talking point” and has no clue how many nukes Israel has, even roughly. (It is a common “anti Israel talking point” to claim that Israel has anywhere between 150-200 nukes.)
Nevertheless, what we’ll see from now on are Israel’s detractors quoting Carter as a “reliable source”.
The Muslim world had its eye on nukes, with a view to destroying Israel, long before the Persian Muslims got in on the act. See Bat Yeor, ‘The Dhimmi’, pp 137-38. She reports these terrifying words by then Algerian PM Ben Bella – “Ce que nous voulons, nous autres Arabes, c’est *etre*. Or, nous ne pourrons etre que si *l’autre* n’est pas” {trans: ‘What we want, as Arabs, is to *be*. However we can only be, if *the Other* is not.’}. Bat Yeor relates that Ben Bella, in the same interview, “openly approved the assassination of leaders whose policies he disapproved of” and “then went on to justify, AFTER THE ACQUISITION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS BY ARAB STATES, A NUCLEAR WAR TO DESTROY ISRAEL – ‘If there is no other solution, then let there be a nuclear war’ (so said Ben Bella, Algerian Arab Muslim president, in 1982), ‘and that will be the end of it, once and for all’ (interview with Ben Bella, in Revue Politique Internationale, V. 16, 1982, pp. 107 and 108). For greater clarity, in the first passage cited, where Ben Bella says ‘Arabs’, read ‘Muslims’, and in the sentence reading ‘acquisition of nuclear weapons by Arab states’, read ‘acquisition of nuclear weapons by Muslim states’.
What is truly horrifying about Ben Bella’s words – words that were also noted, with great alarm, by Jacques Ellul on page 148 of his book ‘Un Chretien Pour Israel’ – is the absolutely insane and indeed murderous assumption that drives the Arab/Muslims, that is, their belief that the mere *existence* of anything or anyone external to, or different from, their poor precious lordly selves, is a mortal threat; that for THEM – Arab Muslims, Muslims – to exist, everyone else must be made to cease to exist.
Israel is first on their ‘to do’ list for Total Annihilation – but if one pays attention to the discourses coming out of Iran, and Hamas, and elsewhere too, one realizes with horror that there are quite a lot of Muslim jihad plotters and preachers out there who would like nothing better than to use WMDs to mass-murder ALL FIVE BILLION non-Muslims. “WE [WE MUSLIMS] cannot ‘be’ unless ‘the other’ [Israel; and ALL non-Muslims] IS NOT.” After all, Mohammed is believed to have said, ‘the earth was made a place for me to clean”…
May the Holy One of Israel have mercy on us all – 13 million Jews, five billion non-Muslims, facing off against this Religion of War, the Arabs’ Imperial Religion, that has committed genocides many times in its history and now, flush with petrodollars, eagerly reaching for WMDs, is avidly dreaming of global mass-murder.
Hi! The Clash of Civilizations is inside your head! You are creating it everything you conjure up these fantasies of apocalyptic war.
Out here in the real world, real people just want to live and get along.
That’s a far-fetched and hysterical overinterpretation of a passage out of context. And why would you assume that it reflects the opinion of the entire so-called Muslim “world”? And why are you under the impression that “the Muslim world” is the same thing as “Arabs,” or that all Arabs and Muslims are fixated on the little real-estate dispute over there?
Israels Nuclear program didn’t really kick off until the mid 80s when he wasn’t even in office.
Carters is telling a lie or at best making a wild stab in the dark which coincidentally is akin to his entire Middle east policy.
If you can call criticising Israel at all costs a policy.
I was going to say “is more than he deserves” but I’m not sure the CIA has a sense of humour.