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January 11, 2007
Worst president ever update
Would you believe yet another egghead is taking a pass on working with the Jimmah Carter Foundation for Ending American Success and Blaming Everything on the Joooooos (aka The Carter Center)?
Emory University Prof. Melvin Konner (who also happens to be an M.D.), provided a variety of reasons for refusing to advise the ex-president, including a passage from Carter's book that sounds like a call to kill Jews.
I will call your attention to a sentence on p. 213 that had not stood out for me the first time I read it: "It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel."
As someone who has lived his life as a professional reader and writer, I cannot find any way to read this sentence that does not condone the murder of Jews until such time as Israel unilaterally follows President Carter's prescription for peace. This sentence, simply put, makes President Carter an apologist for terrorists and places my children, along with all Jews everywhere, in greater danger.
"Apologist for terrorists" is pungent stuff -- I prefer voluptuary of tyrants -- but it's accurate. If that's not good enough, Konner points out it's not just Jimmah's writing that offends; his conduct is just as awful, leading the more charitable to suggest that he's in the throes of Alzheimer's-induced dementia.
I'm not so inclined; I think he's simply an evil, anti-semitic bastard.
But Konner adds liar to the pol's repertoire.
President Carter has proved capable of distorting the truth about ... meetings and consultations in public remarks following them. In particular, he mischaracterized the meeting he had with the executive committee of the Board of Rabbis of Greater Phoenix, saying he and they had positive interactions and prayed together, when in fact others present stated that the meeting was highly confrontational and that the prayer was merely a pro forma closing invocation ...
[I]n television interviews I have seen over the past week, President Carter has revealed himself to be so rigid and inflexible in his views that he seems to me no longer capable of dialogue. In an interview with Soledad O'Brien of CNN he failed to address a single one of the criticisms she quoted from various experts in a very serious tone of voice, pointing out that she was not reading the worst of the criticisms; he began laughing inappropriately while she spoke, and when she asked him how he would respond to the criticisms he stated, "With laughter."
[...]
[H]is repeated public insinuations that the Jews control the media and the Congress -- well-worn anti-Semitic slurs that, especially coming from President Carter, present a clear and present danger to American Jews -- are offensive to me beyond what I can politely say.
Not just you, professor. Carter never fails to lower the bar on the behavior of ex-presidents, and his unsavory reputation serves as a useful measure of the character of those who still sing his praises.
Posted by Mike Lief at January 11, 2007 12:05 AM
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