Carter rebukes Europe: Stop kissing up...

...to Israel and the US on the matter of human rights in Gaza and much more.

This news was published on Tuesday, May 27, 2008 by The Guardian/UK and republished in the US by CommonDreams.Org, an internet news source. The article is entitled: Carter Urges `Supine' Europe to Break With US Over Gaza Blockade and was written by Jonathan Steele and Jonathan Freedland.

My only question after reading this article was: where is American mainstream media in reporting this news? It is a damned shame when Jimmy Carter, a former president, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and a world-class humanitarian, must go to Europe to address audiences about human rights crimes in which the US is a participant.

"Ex-president says the EU is colluding in a human rights crime (in Gaza)", was the byline.

Quoting Jimmy Carter,

Britain and other European governments should break from the US over the international embargo on Gaza, former US president Jimmy Carter told the Guardian yesterday. Carter, visiting the Welsh border town of Hay for the Guardian literary festival, described the EU's position on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as "supine" and its failure to criticise the Israeli blockade of Gaza as "embarrassing".

Referring to the possibility of Europe breaking with the US in an interview with the Guardian, he said: "Why not? They're not our vassals. They occupy an equal position with the US."

The blockade on Hamas-ruled Gaza, imposed by the US, EU, UN and Russia - the so-called Quartet - after the organisation's election victory in 2006, was "one of the greatest human rights crimes on Earth," since it meant the "imprisonment of 1.6 million people, 1 million of whom are refugees". "Most families in Gaza are eating only one meal per day. To see Europeans going along with this is embarrassing," Carter said.

Read the rest of the Guardian article at the above link. It describes recent ceasefire terms that Carter negotiated in Syria, which were agreeable to Hamas. If Israel stops its air and ground strikes, Hamas would halt rocket attacks, and it was Carter's hope that Israel would accept the terms being communicated through the Egyptians. Hamas had called for a ceasefire with Israel over a half dozen times in the past year and had imposed a voluntary ceasefire on itself for one month to no avail.

Carter criticized the Quartet's policy of not talking to Hamas, but also took on Elliot Abrams, a White House national security official he called "a very militant supporter of Israel," which he implied was a stumbling block. Carter also spoke about America's involvement in torturing prisoners, saying he wanted the next US president to promise never to do so again.



Display:


Carter is so right (2.00 / 2)

I hope the day will come when American (mainly) and European policy on the Israel-Palestine conflict changes and becomes less one-sided. When this happens Carter will be vindicated. Thanks very much for the diary.


by Fairy Tale on Wed May 28, 2008 at 11:00:12 AM EST

Collective Punishment is War Crime (2.00 / 1)

The Europeans collusion with the U.S. and Israel in this crime against humanity in Gaza is inexcuseable. It is criminal to use hunger and grinding poverty against the 1.5 million captives of Gaza. Many of Gaza's residents were forced out of their ancesteral homes in Israel, and Israel bears a moral obligation for the welfare of the refugees they created.


It's time to restore balance and fairness to our economy,... It's time to stop giving tax cuts to corporations that ship jobs overseas... - Barack Obama
by Lefty Coaster on Wed May 28, 2008 at 11:09:37 AM EST

Re: Carter rebukes Europe: Stop kissing up... (2.00 / 1)

Thanks for this post.  

It's little wonder this doesn't get well covered in our "main stream media".  Think about who OWNS it.  "Militant supporters of Israel" don't end with Elliot Abrams.

 


"Not only do I want an elite president, I want someone who's embarrassingly superior to me." -- Jon Stewart, 4/15/08
by JulieinVT on Wed May 28, 2008 at 11:17:00 AM EST

LOVE... (2.00 / 2)

Just want to say, I LOVE JIMMY CARTER!

It took 30 years for an American to say on camera:

ISRAEL HAS AN ILLEGAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM

ISRAEL LOCKED UP THE WHISTLE BLOWER FOR OVER 30 YEARS

Thank you Jimmy!


http://www.truepat.org/
by CrushTheGOP2008 on Wed May 28, 2008 at 11:44:12 AM EST

Re: LOVE... (2.00 / 1)

amen,
carter continues to make me proud
by citizendave on Wed May 28, 2008 at 12:30:15 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: LOVE... (none / 0)

"ISRAEL HAS AN ILLEGAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM"

Illegal? Um, in which way is it illegal? Israel hasn't signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.


by Aris Katsaris on Wed May 28, 2008 at 01:36:18 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Put it on the Rec List (2.00 / 1)

Its about time we get some of these stories on the REC list, liberating the palistinains is the civil rights movement of our time because our media, goverment and leadership is complicit in their oppresion.


by edtastic on Wed May 28, 2008 at 12:20:47 PM EST

Re: Carter rebukes Europe: Stop kissing up... (none / 0)

Will never happen. Most liberal American Jews cringe at what Israel is doing to the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. The right wing? Well that's another matter, but since they are in the minority, their vote could not be counted on anyway.


Click on Peace, Propaganda, & The Promised Land and learn the truth about the I/P conflict.
by shergald on Wed May 28, 2008 at 12:24:06 PM EST

I think Carter and Obama like losing elections (none / 0)

and I truly think there is a wing of the party that his this sadomasochistic thing for losing. They like playing political defense, which is why they hated the Clintons, and got caught off guard when he took office. Most of them had become so used to serving under GOP Presidents in the 20 our of 24 years before his term, that when it came time to legislate and LEAD, they found it hard, misplayed, and lost. Carter wants everyone else to be a loser like he was in 1980. He feels bad his loss is the second biggest landslide loss of the last 30 years next to his Vice President Mondale, and wants to see someone else suffer.


"there is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right in America"-William Jefferson Clinton, forty-second President of the United States
by DiamondJay on Wed May 28, 2008 at 12:56:07 PM EST

Re: I think Carter and Obama like losing elections (none / 0)

Ehhh??? Heard a lot of political theories before but while this may not take the cake, it is close to it.

Carter's achiles heel is that he likes to tell the truth, and that truth is sometimes unpleasant for some to accept.


Click on Peace, Propaganda, & The Promised Land and learn the truth about the I/P conflict.
by shergald on Wed May 28, 2008 at 01:51:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Jimmy, (1.00 / 1)

shut up already! You're embarassing yourself and the party? You were the single reason for the election and re-election of Ronald Reagan: your weak foreign policy! All you had to do was to have not let the Sha into the US. You have no clout: so stop trying to make up for your Presidency. You will hurt the Dem nominee if its Obama because people are already comparing him to you.

What about the Israelis lives who are ruined by car bombings, suicide bombers, and pizza parlor bombers? What about the fact it is THEIR COUNTRY, they were established for thousands of years before the 628 AD Diaspora thanks to the Byzantines, and should thus be their country today. If the Palestinians want peace, they should take the land they have now, accept they will never have Jerusalem, and be happy that after so many years of violence against the Jews and stolen land, they still have a home.


"there is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right in America"-William Jefferson Clinton, forty-second President of the United States
by DiamondJay on Wed May 28, 2008 at 01:07:11 PM EST

Another Ignorant American (none / 0)

So you want to blame all the issues in Iran and the Middle East on letting the Sha come to USA. In the entire arsenal of Pro Israel Propaganda that is the best you can do? Jimmy Carter probally could win a Nobel Peace Prize every year if he put his back into it. Meanwhile you applaud fear mongering, bigotry, war fare so long as it is not a Jewish person getting hurt right.  That kind of hypocrisy is fatal to those you have no love for. Your narrow view of humanity has been seen throughout the ages, and such a narrow views are what lay fertile ground for atrocities like the holocaust. There are suicide bombers but they are a product of oppresion not a means of oppression. There is a difference you need to learn it.


by edtastic on Wed May 28, 2008 at 01:18:31 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Another Ignorant American (2.00 / 0)

"There are suicide bombers but they are a product of oppresion not a means of oppression."

What inanity. So if innocent civilians get blown up by a suicide bomber, that's not a means of tyranny and murder?

Or are you somehow under the impression that suicide bombers only ever attack the military targets of their oppressors?


by Aris Katsaris on Wed May 28, 2008 at 01:39:27 PM EST
[ Parent ]

What inanity? (none / 0)

This material is about Israeli state terrorism and is quoted by Lawrence of Cyberia about Israel's targeting of civilians and children. Here you have a occupying military force attempting to colonize another people's lands, while Israeli soldiers are given orders to take out Palestinian civilians.

Palestinian deaths during the first and second Intifadas were not unintentional collateral damage. It was terrorist murdering by an occupying force.

Israel's claim that its soldiers adhere to a doctrine of "purity of arms" in dealing with the Palestinian civilian population has been going on for a long time. In the first intifada, Ehud Barak was the IDF's Deputy Chief of Staff, and proclaimed: "We do not want children to be shot under any circumstances ... When you see a child you don't shoot." That was untrue then, just as Bradley Burston's insinuation that Palestinian civilian deaths aren't intentional is a lie now:

The Swedish "Save the Children" organization estimated that "23,600 to 29,900 children required medical treatment for their beating injuries in the first two years of the [first] intifida," with nearly one‐third sustaining broken bones. Nearly one‐third of the beaten children were aged ten and under. It also states that 6,500 to 8,000 children were wounded by gunfire during the first two years of the Intifada. Researchers investigated 66 of the 106 recorded cases of "child gunshot deaths." They concluded that: almost all of them "were hit by directed ‐‐ not random or ricochet ‐‐ gunfire"; nearly twenty percent suffered multiple gunshot wounds; twelve percent were shot from behind; fifteen percent of the children were ten years of age or younger; "most children were not participating in a stone‐throwing demonstration when shot dead"; and "nearly one‐fifth of the children were shot dead while at home or within ten meters of their homes."
-    cited in The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy (chapter 2, end note 49); by Mearsheimer and Walt.

That's how the IDF killed Palestinian civilians - children - during the first intifada. Not through a careless use of missiles or the occasional errant tank shell, but by individual Israeli soldiers pointing their guns at children in the Occupied Territories - even children under ten, even children who had turned their backs and were running away - and shooting them dead.

And the IDF's record in the second intifada is much worse. Firstly, because the IDF announced in March 2003 that it would no longer routinely investigate the deaths of civilians killed by Israeli soldiers, but would allow individual Israeli officers in the field to decide whether to call in the Military Police whenever their troops killed a civilian, or to simply declare the killing an "unfortunate incident of death", which required no investigation. A policy that has had the following, entirely predictable, result:

The IDF effectively grants immunity to soldiers who open fire illegally. Since the beginning of the intifada, the IDF has ceased to automatically open an investigation into every case in which a Palestinian is killed by IDF fire. The decision as to whether to open a Military Police investigation into each incident is now made by the Judge Advocate General's office, based on the results of the field de-briefings, which are also carried out by the army itself. In one case that was exposed by B'Tselem, it was clear that an eleven-year-old child had died as a result of the violation of procedures and illegal shooting. Despite this, the Judge Advocate General's office decided not to request a Military Police investigation. In addition, the investigations that are opened are generally protracted and based primarily on soldiers' testimonies, while completely ignoring the Palestinian eyewitnesses.
This policy has unavoidably resulted in a situation in which shooting at innocent Palestinians has practically become a routine. (B'Tselem)

And secondly, because at the very beginning of the second intifada, the IDF issued extremely broad open fire regulations, concerning who might be considered a legitimate target:

Sniper: "They forbid us to shoot at children".
Journalist: "How do they say this?"
Sniper: "You don't shoot a child who is 12 or younger".
Journalist: "That is, a child of 12 or older is allowed?"
Sniper: "Twelve and up is allowed. He's not a child anymore, he's already after his bar mitzvah. Something like that".
Journalist: "Thirteen is bar mitzvah age".
Sniper: "Twelve and up, you're allowed to shoot. That's what they tell us".
Journalist: "Under international law, a child is defined as someone up to the age of 18."
Sniper: "Up until 18 is a child?"
Journalist: "So, according to the IDF, it is 12?"
Sniper: "According to what the IDF says to its soldiers. I don't know if this is what the IDF says to the media."

-- Amira Hass' interview with an IDF sharpshooter, explaining why so many Palestinian children were killed in the first weeks of the intifada, when the IDF was largely confronted by stonethrowers. Published in Ha'aretz, Don't shoot till you can see they're over the age of 12, 20 November 2000.


Click on Peace, Propaganda, & The Promised Land and learn the truth about the I/P conflict.
by shergald on Wed May 28, 2008 at 01:56:48 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: What inanity? (none / 0)

Nice. answer with a non-sequitur. Did I justify anywhere Israeli policy? Did I?

My comment was about the inanity (actually the obscenity) of proclaiming the Palestinians suicide bombers that target civilians innocent. And nowhere are you saying anything REMOTELY relevant to either defending or refuting that.

So take the irrelevant propaganda elsewhere.


by Aris Katsaris on Wed May 28, 2008 at 02:31:22 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: What inanity? (none / 0)

So if innocent civilians get blown up by a suicide bomber, that's not a means of tyranny and murder?

Or are you somehow under the impression that suicide bombers only ever attack the military targets of their oppressors?

Decontextualization is an old propaganda trick. Left unanswered, one is left with the Israeli canard that Palestinians are terrorists, and that the Israeli government just defending itself against these murderers.

Point is that the Israeli government is just as guilty of the murder of its own citizens as the Palestinians who retaliated through suicide bombings. Israel is no victim by any measure of events, but the perpetrator of the very crimes it deems itself a victim. Sharon knew damned well that after killing hundreds of Palestinian civilians, including children by IDF who had orders to head-shoot them, there would be a price to pay, and he was willing to stir the broth to achieve his goals: a total abrogation of Oslo and a continuation of the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank to achieve the Greater Israel dream.

The Likud mind is a wonder to contemplate.

Otherwise, get educated.


Click on Peace, Propaganda, & The Promised Land and learn the truth about the I/P conflict.
by shergald on Wed May 28, 2008 at 03:07:30 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: What inanity? (none / 0)

Shergald, all your post speak of one thing -- collective guilt. You don't recognize individuals as criminals or innocents, you subsume everything to the nation. A person for you isn't an innocent or a murderer first, they're first either a Palestinian or an Israeli.

That's an old racist attitude, and I completely reject it. Your "contextualization" is nothing but an excuse for another genocide of Jews, by simply shrugging away as mere "retaliation" the murder of every single one of them.

I call bullshit on your retaliation theories, I call bullshit on your contextualization theories, and I call bullshit on your justifications for murder. The intentional targetting of innocents is always mass murder, and it doesn't afford "contextualization".


by Aris Katsaris on Wed May 28, 2008 at 04:20:24 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: What inanity? (none / 0)

"intentional targetting of innocents is always mass murder"

I see that you read Lawrence of Cyberia's article on "intentional" killings by the IDF. As for the Palestinians, no question that when they retaliated, it was intentional.

The issue is not the obvious horror of these killings on both sides but what is causing them. You may wish to damn the Palestinians alone, by ignoring, intentionally, the culpability of the Israelis, but the facts that I listed are facts. And I am more familiar than you are with the political heterogenity of the populations involved on both sides. Listing individuals in these discussions is just not possible, and it only imposes a red herring to indicate that talking about Israelis or IDF or Palestinians or militants is somehow equvalent to bigotry.

Ultimately, the causes:

military occupation
colonization of another peoples' lands

Bye.


Click on Peace, Propaganda, & The Promised Land and learn the truth about the I/P conflict.
by shergald on Wed May 28, 2008 at 06:31:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: suicide bombers. (2.00 / 1)

Which was worse? Israel's state terrorism in killing hundred of Palestinian adults and children before any suicide bomber entered Israel in retaliation, or what it produced, namely, suicide bombers?

Read on and get educated:

The first suicide bombing in the second intifadah was on Dec. 22 (no Israelis died in it). By that time, 86 Palestinian children (<18 years of age) had been killed by Israelis http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/rem ember2000.html

The first Israeli child was killed on Jan. 17, 2001 http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/rem ember2001.html. By that time, at least 90 Palestinian children had been killed by Israelis.

Alison Weir, in her documentary Off the Charts, noted the following:

Before a single suicide bomber had entered Israel after the start of the Second Intifada, sometimes called, after Sharon's provocative visit to the Temple Mount, the al Aqsa Intifada, during its first month, 27 Palestinian children had been killed by Israeli Defense Forces in the West Bank and Gaza, the youngest only four months of age, and the majority due to gunshots to the head. Numerous children were also wounded. In the first three months alone, 159 children lost an eye presumably to rubber bullets shot from IDF rifles. Clearly the IDF were intentionally targeting these children, aiming at their heads with either rubber bullets or real bullets in the case of the child kills. We are talking here about a trained, mechanized army versus civilians, children participating in the intifada, the nonviolent resistance instituted by child and teenage Palestinian boys and girls. Oh, yes. Let's be fair. We did hear that an Israeli soldier lost his eye from a rock thrown by a Palestinian boy from a pretty IDF spokeswoman, but it was the only such incident reported in three years.

In addition to these children, many more innocent adult civilians were killed, in the month before suicide bombings commenced. If terrorism is the intentional killing of civilians, then clearly, Israel's armed forces were deep into terrorism, state sponsored terrorism, long before the Palestinians engaged in it to any degree. As a people fighting a military occupation, it would seem that the ultimate cause of all of these horrors on both sides rests with Israel and the purpose for which it continued its long occupation, the stealing of Palestinian lands.  

See Alison Weir's short documentary, Off The Charts: Media Bias and Censorship in America for the names, ages, places, and dates of these child killings.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid= -5600677940569035557&q=Alternate+Foc us

To be accurate, there were sporadic bombing incidents engineered by Hamas extremists in Israel during the Oslo period. None at all occurred between 1998 and 2000. But the strong resumption of attacks after 2000, over fifty in the first year, was directly related to civilian and child killings by IDF, and it was not just Hamas, but Islamic Jihad and other Fatah associated organizations that were involved.

This Time.com article apprises of what motivated them:

"Until recently most Palestinians believed they had alternatives to the kind of militancy practiced by Hamas. For years after the 1993 Oslo peace accord, which brought limited self-rule to the Palestinians and the prospect of an independent state, polls showed a strong majority of Palestinians supporting the peace process with Israel and only a minority endorsing suicide bombings. Thus, in their headhunting, the fundamentalists were limited to stalwart followers of their doctrine, which holds that any kind of peace with Israel is anathema. Even then, Hamas and Islamic Jihad had to cajole--some might say brainwash--young men into believing that the rewards of paradise outweighed the prospects of life on earth.

But with the breakdown of the peace process in the summer of 2000 and the start of the latest intifadeh that September, the martyr wannabes started coming to Hamas--and they didn't require persuading. "We don't need to make a big effort, as we used to do in the past," Abdel Aziz Rantisi, one of Hamas' senior leaders, told TIME last week. The TV news does that work for them. "When you see the funerals, the killing of Palestinian civilians, the feelings inside the Palestinians become very strong," he explained."

From the mouth of Rantisi, but it also motivated Fatah supporters, to exact revenge for the killing of Palestinian civilians. Revenge is not a formal use of terrorism. See Alison Weir's film, Off The Charts, at Google Video.

(Why Suicide Bombing Is Now All The Rage)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/articl e/0,9171,1101020415-227546,00.html

This commentary is from an article by Rami Khouri, editor of the Beirut newspaper, The Daily Star, which cynically denounced Olmert's statements professing concern for the well-being of Palestinian children:

(Ehud Olmert's Profound Ethics and Deep Lies)

http://www.ramikhouri.com/

"For anyone interested in the facts about the impact of Israeli policies on Palestinian children, a good place to start is the carefully checked data disseminated by the Palestinian Nongovernmental Organization Network (www.palestinemonitor.org). Their data is compiled and verified on the ground by the Ramallah-based Health Development Information and Policy Institute, which has been honored by the World Health Organization for its work in promoting Palestinian health needs. So these people know what they are talking about when it comes to health conditions on the ground in Israeli-occupied Palestine. Some of the facts they provide are as follows.

In just the first two years of the second intifada, from September 2000 to November 2002:

* 383 Palestinian children (under the age of 18) were killed by the Israeli army and Israeli settlers, i.e. almost 19% of the total Palestinians killed; those figures have increased since then.

* Approximately 36% of total Palestinians injured (estimated at more than 41,000) are children; 86 of these children were under the age of ten; 21 infants under the age of 12 months have been killed.

* 245 Palestinian students and school children have been killed; 2,610 pupils have been wounded on their way to or from school.

* The Israeli policy of widespread closure has paralyzed the Palestinian health system, with children particularly vulnerable to this policy of collective punishment. Internal closures have severely disrupted health plans which affect over 500,000 children, including vaccination programs, dental examinations and early diagnosis for children when starting schools.

* During the first two months of the intifada, the rate of upper respiratory infections in children increased from 20% to 40%. Almost 60% of children in Gaza suffer parasitic infections.

* An overwhelming number of Palestinian children show symptoms of trauma such as sleep disorders, nervousness, decrease in appetite and weight, feelings of hopelessness and frustration, and abnormal thoughts of death.

* There have been 36 cases of Palestinian women in labor delayed at checkpoints and refused permission to reach medical facilities or for ambulances to reach them. At least 14 of these women gave birth at the checkpoint with eight of the births resulting in the death of the newborn infants.

The Israeli army killing of Palestinian children continues apace. In its annual report May 16, the respected global human rights organization Amnesty International accused the Israeli army of killing 190 Palestinians, including 50 children, last year (2005)."

Here is some commentary from Jonathan Cook on a grandmother suicide bomber:

"If one thing offers a terrifying glimpse of where the experiment in human despair that is Gaza under Israeli siege is leading, it is the news that a Palestinian woman in her sixties -- a grandmother -- chose last week to strap on a suicide belt and explode herself next to a group of Israeli soldiers invading her refugee camp.

Despite the "Man bites dog" news value of the story, most of the Israeli media played down the incident. Not surprisingly -- it is difficult to portray Fatma al-Najar as a crazed fanatic bent only the destruction of Israel.

It is equally difficult not to pause and wonder at the reasons for her suicide mission; according to her family, one of her grandsons was killed by the Israeli army, another is in a wheelchair after his leg had to be amputated, and her house had been demolished.

Or not to think of the years of trauma she and her family have suffered living in a open-air prison under brutal occupation, and now, since the "disengagement", the agonising months of grinding poverty, slow starvation, repeated aerial bombardments, and the loss of essentials like water and electricity.

Or not to ponder at what it must have been like for her to spend every day under a cloud of fear, to be powerless against a largely unseen and malign force, and to never know when death and mutilation might strike her or her loved ones.

Or not to imagine that she had been longing for the moment when the soldiers who have been destroying her family's lives might show themselves briefly, coming close enough that she could see and touch them, and wreak her revenge.

Yet Western observers, and the organizations that should represent the very best of their Enlightenment values, seem incapable of understanding what might drive a grandmother to become a suicide bomber. Their empathy fails them, and so does their humanity.

Just at the moment Fatma was choosing death and resistance over powerlessness and victimhood -- and at a time when Gaza is struggling through one of the most oppressive and ugly periods of Israeli occupation in nearly four decades -- Human Rights Watch published its latest statement on the conflict. It is document that shames the organization, complacent Western societies and Fatma's memory."

So you see my dear friend, Palestinian suicide bombers were a retaliatory reaction to Israeli state terrorism and the killings of numerous Palestinian civilians, adults and children, which preceded them. See the post below to understand what Israeli state terrorism consisted of, the intentional shooting of Palestinian children on IDF orders in the West Bank and Gaza.


Click on Peace, Propaganda, & The Promised Land and learn the truth about the I/P conflict.
by shergald on Wed May 28, 2008 at 02:03:00 PM EST
[ Parent ]


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