The freeze construction meme continues: And once again, the Arabs say that Israel must freeze all construction—of course, that includes in towns that will never be a part of the Palestinian state, such as Ma’ale Adumim—before any move will be made from the Arab side. Because so many moves have been made since 1967.

Elliott Abrams bitchslaps Jimmy Carter: I know Soccer Dad posted on it, but I can’t resist adding it to Snark News Briefs. Now this is a put-down.

The Obama speech: Get over it, people. So Obama’s going to give a speech to schoolchildren. Um. Have you forgotten how bored you were by long speeches? Please. This is not indoctrination. This is the president doing his job, which is to inspire children to work harder. Tempest in a teapot. He’s the president. He should be allowed to make speeches to students, and this sets a terrible precedent for all future presidents.

Hamas’ senior political leader Khaled Mashaal said on Thursday that his organization is willing to cooperate with any international effort to end the occupation but would never accept the notion of a demilitarized Palestinian state.

“The Palestinian people reject the Israeli position on a demilitarized state, on the refugees, on Jerusalem, and on the Jewish state,” the exiled Mashaal said in Damascus, referring to Israel’s demand any future Palestinian state recognize it as a Jewish nation.

So, what part of “no” don’t you understand? Because he elaborates even more:

“A demilitarized state is a pathetic state, not a serious national entity. The Palestinians will not accept Jerusalem as a unified city under Jewish control,” said Mashaal, adding that the Palestinians were dedicated to returning the refugees to their homes. Recognizing Israel as a Jewish state “would erase the right of return to lands taken in 1948.”

Meantime, the race to include Hamas as a serious negotiating partner continues. And the idiocy of Jimmy Carter? Well, that’s in plain view for all to see:

I have urged Hamas leaders to accept these conditions, and they have made statements and taken actions that suggest they are ready to join the peace process and move toward the creation of an independent and just Palestinian state.

Khaled Mashaal has assured me that Hamas will accept a final status agreement negotiated by the Palestinian Authority and Israel if the Palestinian people approve it in a referendum. Hamas has offered a reciprocal ceasefire with Israel throughout the West Bank and Gaza. Unfortunately, neither the Israeli leaders nor Hamas accept the terms of the Oslo Agreement of 1993, but the Arab Peace Initiative is being considered now by all sides.

Sure. One more time, Khaled:

“The Palestinian people reject the Israeli position on a demilitarized state, on the refugees, on Jerusalem, and on the Jewish state,” the exiled Mashaal said in Damascus.

Yeah, there’s a negotiating partner, right there.

So much of the essay is self promotion, it’s hard to know to what to take seriously. Quoting Richard Falk – I’m sorry, the Rapparteur – on the subject of the Arab Israeli conflict is hardly convincing, as Falk is exceedingly anti-Israel. (Yes, he’s an antisemite too, even if he’s Jewish.) It’s appears that he got most of his information from Hamas, which he accepted uncritically.

But this paragraph really sticks out:

We were unable to confirm this in Jerusalem because of Israel’s unwillingness to admit to any negotiations with Hamas, but rocket firing was soon stopped and there was an increase in supplies of food, water, medicine and fuel. Yet the increase was to an average of about 20 percent of normal levels. And this fragile truce was partially broken on Nov. 4, when Israel launched an attack in Gaza to destroy a defensive tunnel being dug by Hamas inside the wall that encloses Gaza.

“Defensive tunnel.” How in H*** does he know? Because Khaled Meshaal told him? I’m also not certain why Hamas would be building a defensive tunnel, towards Israel. The only thing that makes sense, is that the tunnel was being built as a means to attack Israel and carry out an attack similar to the one Hamas did to capture Gilad Shalit in 2006.

Finally here’s the brief bio at the end of the op-ed:

The writer was president from 1977 to 1981. He founded the Carter Center, a nongovernmental organization advancing peace and health worldwide, in 1982.

Sounds great. But what about the book he wrote comparing Israel to apartheid era South Africa? Isn’t that important to know, when considering the credibility of Carter’s claims?

Jimmy Carter, terrorist tool.

Maybe instead of defending terror he should go back to building houses. That way no one gets harmed. Then again, maybe not.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

A lock of the guard’s hair turned white and his teeth began to chatter. “The Todal looks like a blob of glub,” he said. “It makes a sound like rabbits screaming, and smells of old, unopened rooms. It’s waiting for the Duke to fail in some endeavor.It’s an agent of the devil, sent to punish evil-doers for having done less evil than they should.”

Apparently, Jimmy just didn’t measure up.

And while ex-President Jimmy didn’t do evil as much as enable evil, his record as an enabler is actually quite impressive.

One of the worst of his clients has been Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe.

Messrs. Carter and Young would only countenance a settlement in which Mr. Mugabe, a Marxist who had repeatedly made clear his intention to turn Zimbabwe into a one-party state, played a leading role. Mr. Young, displaying the willful naivet� that came to characterize Mr. Carter’s mindset, told the London Times that Mr. Mugabe was a “very gentle man” whom he “can’t imagine � ever pulling the trigger on a gun to kill anyone.”

Mr. Mugabe already had pulled the trigger on many innocent people, though. And not long after taking power in 1980, he killed about 25,000 people belonging to a minority tribe, the Ndebele. In spite of this, in 1989, Mr. Carter launched his “Project Africa” in Zimbabwe, a program aimed at helping African countries maintain food sustainability.

Mugabe’s latest accomplishment to make the news is a cholera outbreak.

“No matter how much medicine they bring, they are not going to contain this cholera, because they are treating the symptoms rather than the disease,” says Tongesai, a well-educated man in his mid-30s whose younger brother was admitted earlier in the day. “The cholera is coming from the water, which is contaminated. It is not the boreholes that are bringing in the contaminated water, but the water from the city. That water is now getting to the people without being treated, and that is how people get cholera. It is tantamount to drinking raw sewage.” And this is why Mugabe’s government bears ultimate responsibility for the suffering of its people.

Regardless of his record of supporting all manners of tyrants, the Washington Post published an op-ed by the ex-President yesterday in honor of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Remarkably there’s nothing in Carter’s op-ed about Zimbabwe. Of course, sharp guy that he is, Carter recognizes the central problem of America’s image regarding human rights:

Throughout the Middle East, there is hope that the United States will move more aggressively and persistently to help orchestrate a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the prism through which the region measures the U.S. commitment to human rights.

So if the United States pressures Israel to cede more land to create a state that denies its people freedom of the press, and due process and incites against Israel America’s human rights image will improve.

I can’t complain too much about the Washington Post’s decision to give Jimmy op-ed space, after all he isn’t the head of a terrorist organization. Still maybe it would have been better to have him right about something he knows, like building homes for the poor instead of something he’s been so miserable at promoting.

I would point out that Carter isn’t the only one with a blindness about human rights, especially in the Middle East. Yet his hypocrisy of claiming to champion them while giving support to the worst abusers of human rights is especially extreme.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Captured IDF soldier Gilad Schalit has still not written the letter Hamas promised would be given to his family, Moussa Abu Marzouk, deputy head of Hamas’s political bureau, was quoted as saying Sunday by Qatari newspaper A-Sharq.

Some six weeks ago, former US president Jimmy Carter brokered a Hamas pledge to send a letter from Schalit to his parents in a meeting with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Damascus.

Yeah, it’s hard to write if you’re dead. We have seen no proof of life from any of the captives of 2006. Until we do, I’m assuming the worst—which is one reason why I oppose an exchange of prisoners. Not without proof of life.

Chalk up another “victory” for the expert negotiator—the one who stopped North Korea from developing nuclear weapons—oh, wait. The one who oversaw “free and fair” elections in Venezuela—oh, wait. The one who helped Robert Mugabe come to power in Zimbabwe—oh, wait.

I guess the best news here is that Israel basically ignores Carter.

“The Palestinians and the Arabs have crushed the Jews’ assumption of supremacy… The Zionist legend of invincibility has been destroyed.

“Now more than ever I tell you – will never recognize Israel… We will form the Palestinian state on all of Palestine’s territories and the sun of liberty will burn the Zionists. To them I say – you will lose. You will leave and we will keep hounding you. The blood of our slain sons will haunt you forever,” he said.

Carter wrote in op-eds around the world only last week:

Hamas has agreed to accept any negotiated peace settlement between the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, provided it is approved in a referendum of the Palestinian people.

Compare and contrast these words, Mr. Carter. Tell me how Hamas wants peace. And oh yeah—there’s also the matter of flooding Israel with millions of third- and fourth-generation Palestinian “refugees”:

Senior Hamas member Mahmoud al-Zahar spoke Wednesday at a Gaza Strip event marking the 60th anniversary of the Nakba – the anniversary of the 1948 events which led to the induction of the State of Israel – and promised his listeners that “the right of return in closer than ever.”

Yep. Those are the words of a group that is willing to accept a peace with Israel. Uh-huh. Sure.

I’m anxiously awaiting the Carter spin on this one.

The world is witnessing a terrible human rights crime in Gaza, where a million and a half human beings are being imprisoned with almost no access to the outside world. An entire population is being brutally punished.This gross mistreatment of the Palestinians in Gaza was escalated dramatically by Israel, with United States backing, after political candidates representing Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian Authority parliament in 2006. The election was unanimously judged to be honest and fair by all international observers.

Israel and the US refused to accept the right of Palestinians to form a unity government with Hamas and Fatah and now, after internal strife, Hamas alone controls Gaza. Forty-one of the 43 victorious Hamas candidates who lived in the West Bank have been imprisoned by Israel, plus an additional 10 who assumed positions in the short-lived coalition cabinet.

As I’ve commented in the past, Jimmy Carter’s say-so that elections are “honest and fair” is worthless as he’s covered for elections stolen by Yasser Arafat and Hugo Chavez.

Still Carter, is not a lawyer and knows nothing about international law. However, David B. Rivkin and Lee Casey specialize in the subject and outlined Israel’s rights and obligations according to international law.

It is because an occupying power exercises effective control over a territory that international law substantially restricts the measures, military or economic, it can bring to bear upon this territory, well beyond the limits that would be applicable before occupation, whether in wartime or peacetime.The Israeli military does not control Gaza; nor does Israel exercise any government functions there. Claims that Israel continues to occupy Gaza suggest that a power having once occupied a territory must continue to behave toward the local population as an occupying power until all outstanding issues are resolved. This “principle” can be described only as an ingenious invention; it has no basis in traditional international law.

The adoption of any such rule (designed to limit Israel’s freedom of action and give Hamas a legal leg up in its continuing conflict) should be actively opposed by the United States. Its adoption would suggest that no occupying power can withdraw of its own volition without incurring continuing, and perhaps permanent, legal obligations to a territory. This issue is particularly acute regarding territory not otherwise controlled by a functioning state — failed states or failed areas of states where the “legitimate” government cannot or will not exercise effective control. Such places — call them badlands — were once rare. Over the past 15 years, though, there has been an explosion in the number of such areas, notably parts of Afghanistan, Somalia and portions of Pakistan.

I suppose that Jimmy should be flattered, they called his declaration that Israel should not be allowed to defend itself “ingenious.” I don’t think they meant it in a complimentary fashion though.

Furthermore restricting Israel’s right to defend itself, has implications in relation to the United States.

Unduly handicapping states that intervene in such badlands — whether to protect their own interests, those of the local population or both — is unrealistic and irresponsible. Requiring agreement by the “international community” (whatever that may be) as a precondition for extinguishing such a designation is equally unproductive if the goal is saving lives. Consider the example of Darfur.Even worse is pretending that groups such as Hamas are merely criminal gangs that must be dealt with as a local policing problem — just one of the potential side effects of imposing an “occupied” status on a territory. This implicates U.S. interests directly, since America’s ability to use robust armed force against al-Qaeda and similar non-state actors remains critical to defending our civilian population from attack.

Perhaps rather than lecturing us about international law, Jimmy ought to sit down and read a book or two on the topic before spouting off.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.