Carter seeks peace "based on justice for the Arabs"

When was the last time you heard anyone demand justice for the Jews ? Can you imagine what that would involve, or how many thousands of years it would take to accomplish?

Never mind that now, let's just see about Jimmy.

Carter defends Gaza theory at GWU speech (AP)
[His Gaza theory? What's his Gaza theory?]

WASHINGTON - Despite the storm it ignited, former President Carter held fast on Thursday to his accusation that Israel oppresses the Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza and seeks to colonize the land.

Speaking at The George Washington University to a polite but mostly critical student audience, Carter offered no second thoughts on his book ... that prompted 14 members of the Carter Center's advisory board to resign and drew fire from Jewish groups and some fellow Democrats.

He said he was not accusing Israel of racism nor referring to its treatment of Arabs within the country. "I defined apartheid very carefully" as "the forced segregation by one people of another" on their own land, he said.

Outside the university auditorium, some two dozen protesters gathered, a few carrying signs. "Carter is a Liar" read one held by a smiling demonstrator while the others chanted the refrain.

Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of Ohev Shalom National Synagogue, left, and Carol Greenwald, chair of Israel Affairs Committee, protest former President Jimmy Carter's appearance at George Washington University in Washington, Thursday, March 8, 2007, where he spoke about his new book... (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

"We were trying to tell Carter his lies are not helpful," a local rabbi, Shmuel Herzfeld, said afterward. "It is very clear the lies are malicious, and it raises issues what his motives are," Herzfeld said. "I believe Jimmy Carter is an anti-Semite and his intention is to hurt Jewish people," Herzfeld, the rabbi at Ohev Sholom, said in an interview.

On the other side of the argument, a local group called the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation" distributed a four-page brochure that said without U.S. aid, "Israel could not continue to discriminate against its Palestinian-Israeli citizens nor violate international rights in the occupied territories."

On the West Bank, Carter said, Palestinians were victims of oppression, their homes and land confiscated to make way for subsidized Israeli settlers. "The life of Palestinians is almost intolerable," he said.

And even though Israel agreed to give up Gaza and remove Jewish settlers from the territory, "there is no freedom for the people of Gaza" and "no access to the outside world."

Maybe that's his "Gaza theory." It sure as hell isn't fact.

Carter said Israel's policies in the territories are "contrary to the tenets of the Jewish faith."

There will be no peace until Israel agrees to withdraw from all occupied Palestinian territory, he said, while leaving room for some land swaps that would let Jews remain on part of the West Bank in exchange for other Israeli-held land to be taken over by Palestinians. Withdrawal would "dramatically reduce any threat to Israel," he said.

Carter recalled the role he played as president in negotiations that led to the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt ... The treaty required Israel to relinquish all the land Egypt lost in the 1967 Mideast war in exchange for recognition by the most powerful Arab country.

Here's the money quote.

"I have spent a good part of my life seeking peace for Israel based on justice for the Arabs," he said.

CBS reports the event slightly differently.

When asked whether using "apartheid" helped his cause, Carter did not equivocate.

"Yes, I do," he said. The term refers to the "forced segregation of one people inside the land of another," he explained. "That's exactly what's happening in the West Bank."

Describing how Palestinians have been forced from their homes and placed on subsidized Israeli settlements, Carter lamented that Palestinians' lives there have become "almost intolerable." The oppression and persecution that Palestinians have endured in these lands comes at the hand of only a "minority of Israelis who desire to confiscate and colonize Arab land," Carter said.

That error must be due to the reporter's lack of familiarity with the issues. FOX reports it more accurately, I imagine, when they assert that

"Carter said West Bank homes and land are confiscated to make way for subsidized Israeli settlers."

Okay, returning to CBS, there are just one or two other zingers.

Never referring to Dershowitz by name, Carter said he had "never received any invitation to debate, contrary to what a Harvard professor has said."

During the question-and-answer session, Carter added that Dershowitz "knows very little, if anything, about the present circumstances in the West Bank."

And then there's the obligatory yet ever-popular Bush-bashing.

"Since Clinton left office, over the last six years, not one single day [has been devoted to] overtures to peace agreements," Carter said.

Carter lies. He just lies, over and over and over again. And gets away with it. It's unbelievable.