Letter From Israel

       elinor        אלינור   

                                                                                                                        

A Day in Jerusalem

I learned decades ago that decades before that, Jerusalemites who were arranging to meet downtown said We’ll meet at the traffic signal, for there was only one in the city. I have been absent from Jerusalem for yet a further decade, so when the opportunity to sign up for a Bus 99 two-hour tour of Jerusalem surfaced, I signed. Bus 99 is a hop-on/hop-off tourist attraction, although this one was privately hired.

The weather this week has been so different from the usual that I left home with opposing accouterments: sun hat, umbrella and sweater.  And the essential element, a book.  My bag was heavy, my spirits light. The bus will be a double-decker and I almost died of the cold on top of one once, in summer, in Copenhagen.  I have not, however, requested to sit up top.

All went well on the bus ride to Jerusalem until the road right up to the city, where the highway was clogged for about half an hour. I hadn’t noticed the lack of progress until the drivers of the three giant trucks that were blocking one lane of traffic were loudly and enthusiastically persuaded to relocate—or else.

In Jerusalem I took the new light-rail train to my old neighbourhood for a delicious lunch with an old friend, then rode it back downtown. It runs into only two areas and they haven't got it right just yet. The ticket machine offers many possibilities if you acquire the information in your chosen language; that took some convincing. I chose the ‘ticket and no receipt’ option; the machine produced a receipt and no ticket. At least if the cops had checked, they couldn't arrest me for not paying.

From downtown I walked cross-town forever until I came to the Dan Panorama Hotel, where Mrs Ditzy, organiser of the Tour of Jerusalem, had directed me to meet the other participants. Not so. The one person at the desk who seemed to know something instructed me to take the bus to the King David Hotel, about half-way back whence I came.  Already exhausted, I thought Hell with that, if I have to go back to the King David I will go directly to the bus with my home-town name on it. No—I'll figure it out. Undaunted, and all that.

The desk clerk offered to ring Mrs Ditzy's office and heard We're only open until 2 on Sunday. It’s three o’clock and they’re not open, he says. OK, I say, but I'm fairly sure it's Monday. A woman, chugging by in Jerusalem’s requisite hat, skirt and sneakers, hears us talking and asks if she can help. I snivel out a remarkably obtuse sentence.  Hold your anguish, says she, I'm taking that tour too and it starts right across the street. So why are you in this hotel? I like the toilets.  Understood.  She ushers me across a hugely wide and frantically busy street to meet up with a whole passel of skirted sneaker-wearers. Speaking English. Heaven. 

The bus, scheduled to leave at 15:45, arrives at 16:10. It's a huge red double-decker and the driver parks it half-on-the-sidewalk in the approved Jerusalem manner. We rush to get in and just when many of us are comfortably seated upstairs and down, a tiny old man rushes through, frantically yelling Get off the bus, get off the bussss!! You can't get on until you're checked off my list! GET OFF THE BUS!!! Must be Mr Ditzy. 

We descend to the sidewalk, trying to avoid eye-level ancient tree branches. As it happens, I land right under Mr Ditzy’s nose—or over it, as he comes up to my shoulder. He begins: BROWN!!! Where are Mr and Mrs BROWNNNNNN? A little old couple wriggles through the crowd and mounts the bus. SCHWARZ!! Where is SCHWARZZZ? Another couple, etc and so on. GOLDBERG!! MR GOLDBERG!!! Mr G nimbly leaps a garden railing to reach Mr D. I look down at his list and say Why don't you ask our names, then find them on the list? Oh no, he says with some horror, I can't do that. I believe him.

The next name is mine. Quietly I say I’m right here and he says You can get on now, gesturing like he's the Host with the Most, and I find a seat facing a charming couple who introduce themselves immediately. Within moments we discover a startling set of common experiences. They have relocated to Jerusalem only recently after visiting for many years; they have brilliant children doing wonderful things and I’m delighted to involve myself, although we are on a tour and we should be listening instead of laughing, I suppose.

In fact, we are the only ones laughing, the rest are trying to hear what the guide is saying. Her microphone goes off and on, off and on; the city is whizzing by and we are having great fun trying to put whole names to the ragged segments we are hearing.

 

We are shown the four corners of this beautiful city, glowing in the afternoon sun. I lived in Jerusalem for almost fifteen years so I find a number of opportunities to add my own arcane data: There are 57 steps from the street down to Mishkanot Sha’ananim, I climbed them every day when I worked there. That synagogue is the oldest in this area, someone once told me (irrefutable source). That restaurant was once—never mind, it’s an ugly story.

The enjoyable two-hour tour lasts for three hours. When it's over, I consider going out for dinner with my new friends and to my amazement, I decide I'd rather go home. Ninety minutes later I'm eating cheese out of my refrigerator.

Jerusalem is now enormous and exhausting, with uncountable traffic signals. I’m so glad I don’t live there anymore but I’d visit again in a heartbeat.

cross posted Israel Thrives

Probing the Unfathomable

geoffff

Why did they do it?

Latma goes inside the FBI to get an update on the agency's expert analysis of the intelligence on what motivated the Boston Marathon bombers.  

hat tip  Post Cards from Paris & elsewhere

Who Are The Islamophobes?

geoffff

An odd report from DEBKA




 The Tsarnaev brothers, were double agents who decoyed the US into terrorist trap
DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis
20 April. Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev won the dubious distinction of being the first terrorist operatives to import al Qaeda terror to the United States through a route outside the Middle East – the Caucasus. DEBKAfile: The pair were double agents, hired by US and Saudi intelligence to penetrate the Wahhabi jihadist networks which have spread across the Russian Caucasian, with the help of certain Saudi financial institutions. Instead, the two former Chechens betrayed their mission and went secretly over to the radical Islamist networks. This provides the answer to the big questions buzzing about the Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev since they carried out the twin Boston Marathon bombings Monday, April 15, leaving three dead, 180 injured and a police officer killed at MIT.
The two brothers by their movements were obviously trained and whoever trained them trained others. So the pair clearly did not act alone.

Note the date. It's a week old. I have no idea about the veracity of this analysis . It may be informed speculation but it is now certain this was just another radical Islamic attack inspired by nothing more than hateful ideology of the worst kind that we have seen a thousand times before.  A day or two earlier the Progressives were vilifying anyone who dared suggest that radical Islamic ideology might be a fruitful line of enquiry. Let alone Islam. Islamophobes.  

Now where is the discussion? 

Palestinian hunger striker reaches deal for release

Mike L.

{Cross-posted at Israel Thrives and Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers.}

RAMALLAH, West Bank - A Palestinian prisoner whose hunger strike had stoked weeks of protests in the West Bank ended his eight-month on-off fast on Tuesday in exchange for early release by Israel, Palestinian officials said.

Israeli and Palestinian officials had feared that had Samer Essawi, 32, died because of refusing food, it might have led to mass unrest.

At least six Palestinian protesters were wounded in February in clashes with IDF soldiers after another Palestinian died while being interrogated in an Israeli jail. The clashes were fueled by the worsening health of Essawi and other prisoners.

Under a deal signed by Essawi and a military prosecutor, he will serve eight more months for violating bail conditions from an earlier release, the officials said, announcing he had ended the strike.

He will then be allowed to go to his Jerusalem home, Qadura Fares, head of the Palestinian prisoner organization, told Reuters.

Israel convicted Essawi of opening fire on an Israeli bus in 2002, but released him in 2011 along with more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Gilad Schalit.

So let me see if I understand this correctly.

In 2002 this maniac shot up a bus in an effort to kill a bunch of Jews.  Since then he sat in prison until he was one of the five gazillion criminals and murders and Jihadis that Israel released for Gilad.   And now he's back in prison for another eight months for violating bail conditions, but Israel is considering giving him an early release if he would eat?

Once again, how can anyone have writer's block when the pure stupidity piles up this high and this fast on a daily basis?

The guy shot up an Israeli bus, for crying out loud.  I do not know about you guys, but where I come from if someone takes a gun and goes down to the road and shoots at a bus full of people (was it a school bus?) they pretty much go away forever.  They don't get exchanged for kidnap victims.  And if they refuse to eat that's basically their problem.

I don't really quite understand why Israel does this kind of thing.  Israel is the most maligned country on the planet and, yet, it is constantly begging the world for some kind of pat on the head for noble little gestures like this.  Israel gives up the Sinai and it gets back hatred.  Israel gives up the Gaza and it gets back ten thousand Kassam and Katyusha rockets.  People try to kill Jews in the Jewish State and they get released for diplomatic reasons.

Look, I was thrilled when Gilad Shalit was released from whatever Gazan hell-hole that they subjected him to, but there is no reason to release this maniac - and, yes, anyone who shoots a gun at a bus is a maniac.

It's as if Israel, if not the Jewish people more generally, are so desperate for some kind of acceptance by the world that they will do anything for a pat on the head, but it simply never works.  Releasing criminals and murderers because they refuse to eat, and thereby potentially sparking riots by their misguided and heavily propagandized compatriots on the outside, is beyond foolish.

It is suicidal.

Why The Silence?

geoffff

One of the great unanswered questions of our time. Where are the moderate Muslims?  After all it is their religion that is defiled by the hateful ideologues with murder in mind and say they are driven by Islam. To even raise the question is to risk denouncement as an Islamophobe. Here is an article in Gatestone Institute from a former Muslim exercising her human rights in a full and frank way that would be unthinkable in most Muslim countries. 

The Nice Muslim Family Next Door

by Nonie Darwish
April 22, 2013 at 5:00 am

Where are the articles by moderate Muslims condemning the prominent Muslims who beg Allah to strike infidels with cancer and disease? No practicing Muslim has openly condemned such prayers, or named the sheikhs who urge these brutalities.

The neighbors of the Chechnyan Muslim family whose sons were responsible for the Boston Marathon terror attack said they were stunned by the news and that this nice Muslim family was known for its generosity and kindness. Many Americans often ask, "What about the Muslim family next door? They are really nice people."
Some of the nicest people I know are Muslims, but that must never blind us from understanding the risk we are taking when we allow the building of hundreds of mosques financed by Saudi Arabia, as well as millions of Muslims to migrate into America at a time of a fierce, if sophisticated, desire by Islamist groups to spread Islam throughout the world, and to radicalize impressionable youths by stoking anger against the Western nations, people and values.
The existence of nice, educated Muslims should also never blind us from seeing the deep problems within the ideology of Islam and its jihadist goals. Muslims themselves admit that Islam is more than a religion – that it is, in fact, a state, legal system and a military institution—with the goal, as one's holy duty, of bringing Islam to the rest of the world, a desire often enshrined deep in the hearts of Muslims.
Even though our visible problem is with the Muslim jihadists, the so-called "moderate" Muslims have often been silent enablers and defenders, perhaps from inertia, misinformation or fear of reprisals against them, including death threats to them and members of their family should they speak out.
Terrorists could never be as powerful as they are without the prayers, and especially the material support, of Islamic nations, governments and people. A Muslim Egyptian friend -- one of the nicest people you will ever meet -- visiting in 1994, was crying in front of the television while praying for the people of Chechnya to declare independence from Russia and declare their country an Islamic State ruled by Sharia law

Read on

Hat tip Shirlee

Progressives : Throwback Reactionaries To Wowser The Life Out Of The West

geoffff

With some style Pat Condell has defined the new social class that has emerged from nowhere to rule us all just when we thought all that crap was behind us. The Progressives. Also known as Guardian Readers but definitely not liberals. 

More broadly and  politely Nick Cater would call the Australian version The Insiders. 

The Lucky Culture. About to be published and already ordered. It's time to push back hard and this book could be a kick along. 

From Europe here is Condell with something blood curdling about where they are taking us. A great flourish at the end.

Islamism is winning the cognitive war -- thanks to manipulative and gullible journalists

Sweden tops European rape league

Sweden: A raped country

1 in 4 Swedish women will be raped

"Police reported an average of five rapes a day in Stockholm"

The crisis in Swedish media

Honing anti-Semitism in France and Sweden


Sweden's Jewish community "dying of a thousand cuts". 

After Boston attack: US Muslims reliving post 9-11 experience

Mike L. 

{Cross-posted at Israel Thrives and Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers.}

Muslims in the US are living in fear, praying that those responsible for the bombings in Boston will be apprehended and shown to be non-Muslim. Over the last few days, reports of harassment of Arabs and Muslims have been coming up throughout the US, especially at places of employment and in schools.

Apprehensions were raised among Arabs and Muslims after the New York Post published the photos of two Muslim teens, who the paper's headlines claimed, were wanted by authorities for questioning in relation to the Boston bombings.

A short time after the attack, the main headline on the newspaper’s site had stated that at least 12 people had been killed and that the main suspect was a Saudi who had been arrested by Boston Police. Law enforcement quickly denied the reports, saying they had not arrested a Saudi national, or anyone else.

The link above is to a Y-Net article, but the Boston Globe is reporting that two Chechen immigrants, brothers, are suspects for the attack in Boston.

I know that some people are crowing that these people are Muslim.

Speaking for myself, I have no intention of using this space to slander Muslims because of this.

The Jewish people in the Middle East have lived under Islamic supremacy for thirteen of the last fourteen centuries.  That's an historical fact, but it does not mean that we need to stir the pot and start screaming our heads off.

I still want to know more about what was behind this and why they did it - if they did it. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was apparently shot dead by the cops, but until such a time as his brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, starts screaming "Alahu Akbar!" and "Death to America!" I am emphatically NOT going to go under the assumption that this was a Jihadi attack.

It might very well have been, but I do not know that to be the case and the fact of the matter remains that the Muslim population in the United States is a small minority and if they have fears of persecution, those fears should be considered and not denigrated.

Nonetheless, I have considerable faith in the American public and I do not believe for one second that Americans will launch into to some anti-Muslim frenzy.  We didn't after 9-11 and we're not going to do so now.

Letter from Israel

       elinor        אלינור   

                                                                                                                        

Learning Hebrew II

Summer stopped my first ulpan right in its tracks.  Teachers and students scattered, leaving only the administrators to tidy up the remnants of disorder.  Remember being called to the office?  I was called to the office, feeling unbelievable adolescent angst and telling myself There’s nothing they can do to me, I’m an adult and I know a good lawyer.

Never anticipate a bad moment:  Elinor, the principal said, You are invited to further study at what we call a professional ulpan where you will learn to write a CV and how to get through a job interview successfully.  Ha.  I used to write professional CVs and I will never survive an interview in Hebrew, but thank you and I’d be delighted. 

This ulpan was located right at the entrance to Jerusalem in the same building as something important and handy—I think it was an emergency clinic—but it never got in our way.

The all-women class was much more homogeneous than the first one:  half Iranian, half Russian and me.  Most of the Iranians had lived through somewhat the same treatment as the Russians; the competition between the two factions was rife.  If only I had understood Russian or Farsi, I could have written two books.

Few of the Russians spoke English or owned up to doing so.  The Iranians had no time for me, except for one lovely young woman who was determined to stop scrubbing floors for a living and return to her profession, accountancy.  Oh, I said, too bad the Iranians treated you so shabbily.  Not just them, she said with some scorn, showing me her hands.  Further chats disclosed her ten years of ‘Iranian gulag’ treatment; she was denied her license to practise.  Her pharmacist husband lost his job as well and they worked at whatever they could find to support themselves and their small child.  Ultimately they both became house cleaners—and very good ones too, she assured me.

The class began with everyday elements that I didn’t need to be taught, like how to write a cheque.  Amongst many new immigrants from eastern Europe and the Soviet sector, the universal perception of cheque-books seemed to be that as long as there were pages, there was money in the bank.  I suppose living in a dictatorship robs one of some of the fun we take for granted, like bank overdrafts and significant debt. 

I was amazed at the lesson on the Israeli political system which that year had fielded an enormous number of parties—even more than I’d left in Canada, which makes the USA look like they’re not even trying.  The instructions on how to vote in an arrangement where only the party and not the candidate is chosen fascinated all of us, as my fellow students had never voted other than the solitary Party line.  And then—and then—the parties are not named on the ballots, but denoted by one or two Hebrew letters.  Could they make it more difficult?  Rhetorical question.

A voice kept interrupting the teacher with how it was in Russia.  One interruption, then another, then a third and I began to perceive that this voice was kindly offering a comparative study of the two political systems.  My impatience mounted until I called out We are not here to study the Russian political system—although it is without doubt fascinating—so please let the teacher teach.  I received a look of pure hate from the owner of the voice which I was dismayed to note belonged to Olga.  The teacher, who should have interrupted the interruptions much earlier, finally said Elinor is right, let us proceed.  Oh boy, that’ll go over well.  Thanks a heap.

Olga, dear Olga, was built like a chest of drawers, easily distinguished from her fellow immigrants.  At an earlier stage I’d overheard her describing, in her basic Hebrew, a recent experience she’d had in a hospital, concerning a relative. 

The bell rang and like a gang of teenagers, we ran out of doors to congregate in the courtyard.  I hadn’t noticed that my Iranian friend had not accompanied me; I was busy trying to cadge a light for my cigarette.  I went from one knot to another but the knots untied as I approached.  I didn’t understand until I looked at the entrance to the building.  Olga steamed out, shoulders raised, hands clenched.  The crowd melted into the bushes, the windows, the air.  I was alone.

I am not only a pacifist, I’m a coward.  I have never been struck or otherwise damaged by another human being and I was not prepared to start then.  I gave thought to the emergency clinic being so handy.

Olga chugged toward me.  WHY? She demanded, Why you no let me talk?  I started to whimper: Olga, we’re not here to…Olga, you take up our learning time…Olga…Olga—how is your mother?  The sun came out.  Olga bestowed a gold-toothed smile upon me and said She much better.  You so nice for to ask. 

See?  Miracles happen.


cross posted  Israel Thrives

65 Years

geoffff

Letter from Israel

       elinor        אלינור   

                                                                                                                        

The Flag

For Israel’s 65^th Independence Day, I bought a flag for the first time ever.  Is my writing this Letter from Israel sharpening my chauvinistic acuity?  Is it shaping my amorphous patriotism?  As always, time will tell.

Pass three days; the flag is attached to the balcony railing, looking proud.  I’m still wondering why this year. 

My grandson, the navy gunnery instructor, rang to say that he has been promoted and could I sew on his new stripes?  I’d be more than delighted, when you arrive from your base I’ll even feed you—as if that wouldn’t happen.  I call my grandsons the Voracious Brothers. 

He needs his white uniform for Independence Day, when of course there will be an Armed Forces ceremony.  He will be here for the night and will return to base in the morning. 

He arrives with his whites on a hanger, covered with an upside-down punctured trash bag, bright orange.  I smile.  Before his induction he would have slung the shirt over his arm and dropped it at least once—or stuffed it into a plastic bag meant for six pieces of fruit. 

He’s wearing his snappy light beige uniform which boasts a ship pin to signify sea-going service; a shoulder board with cartoonish owl eyes to show that he’s an instructor and a dark blue lanyard which does not end in a whistle, as I thought, but signifies ‘navy’.  He says that his students are keen enough to learn—and possibly to be on base instead of on board ships—that there’s no need for a whistle.  I don’t say that my entire experience with lanyards comes from summer camps.

I’ve never before sewn stripes onto the sleeves of a uniform and it takes hours.  The new stripes have to be sewn at the same level as the previous ones, at the same angle and be sure to do this and that and I can’t stop smiling.  Whilst I sew I hear stories of his students, comparisons between life on board (crowded, great comradeship, scary but exhilarating) and his ‘private’ room on base (worse food, time to read, loves teaching). I comment on how different he is from the boy who went into the IDF and he says Oh Gran, you have no idea.  Softly I say Yes, I do.

Eventually I call out ‘minished’—his toddler word for ‘finished’—and he grins at me. He thanks me profusely and I hear myself saying It was a pleasure and a privilege.  A year and a half after his induction, he is officially a sergeant.

Ah.  Now I understand the flag.

cross posted Israel Thrives

Kerry, Obama and Eleven Dimensional Chess

Mike L.

{Cross-posted at Israel Thrives and Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers.}

From the earliest days of the Obama administration his followers have assured us what a smart fellow Barack Obama is, yet when it comes to the Middle East everything that Obama touches turns to garbage.

Today we have an article in the Jerusalem Post by Douglas Bloomfield in which he tells us this:

The State Department spokeswoman confirmed a Turkish newspaper report that Kerry wants Erdogan to play an active role in the peace process, and said Kerry asked Turkey to use its “significant influence with the Palestinians” to encourage Hamas to accept the demands of the International Quartet.

Turkey to play an active role in the "peace process"?  Turkey?  Really?

Bloomfield is skeptical:

Erdogan’s inclusion is bad news for Egypt, Fatah and Israel. Egypt resents Turkey moving on to its turf. Former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak felt he had a monopoly as the regional intermediary and told Erdogan to keep his hands off; his successor, Mohamed Morsi, apparently feels that way as well, plus now it’s an Islamist as well as national rivalry.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas knows Erdogan is a close ally of arch-rival Hamas and hostile to the secular nationalist Fatah. If anything, Erdogan is more radical than Abbas, and that’s the last thing the PA leader needs. Relations between the two men are said to be cool at best. Abbas also knows Hamas wants to overthrow him and take over not only the PA but control of the PLO as well.

There are few people who Israelis distrust more than Erdogan. Bringing him in is no way to win their confidence.

This must be another example of the Obama administration's fabled eleven dimensional chess.  Whenever this administration does something both counterintuitive and counterproductive (i.e., stupid) we're supposed to believe that it's actually some super-sophisticated move that the rest of us are just not bright enough to understand.  We're supposed to believe that Barack Obama is playing eleven dimensional chess with Sheldon Cooper and Stephen Hawking.  That's how intelligent the guy is.

Obama wrecked whatever potential that there may have been in the peace process through demanding total settlement freeze and he helped the Muslim Brotherhood come to power in Egypt.  Excuse me, but this is not the behavior of an intelligent individual, nor of an effective administration.  This is not eleven dimensional chess with Sheldon Cooper and Stephen Hawking.  These are not some super-sophisticated diplomatic ninja moves.  On the contrary.  What it really reflects is either stupidity or ignorance, or both, resulting in ineptitude.

And now we have Kerry wanting to bring Erdogan into the peace process?  In other words, Kerry thinks that it makes sense to alienate the Israelis and the Palestinian Authority for the purpose of courting Hamas?

I'm sorry, but this is yet another example of the Obama administration falling directly on its face when it comes to its efforts in the Middle East.  This move is not quite as dumb as demanding total settlement freeze, about which the administration (much to my amazement) actually does seem to have belatedly learned a lesson.  Nor is this nearly so horrific or treasonous as the administration's support for the rise of political Islam throughout the region.  It is merely a relatively small screw-up that will help blow the deal in the long run, but since there is virtually no hope for a negotiated conclusion of hostilities anyway, I suppose it hardly matters.

The point is that this administration, at least when it comes to foreign policy, is inept.  They do not know what they are doing and they have, in fact, made matters considerably worse.  Unless one is a craven sycophant of the administration, or of this president, we owe it to one another to point out these various mistakes and screw-ups, both large and small.  It does no one any good to pretend that a sow's ear is really a silk purse.  If Obama was half as intelligent as they tell us he is then he would not be making these profoundly stupid mistakes and his supporters would not feel it necessary to try and explain away these screw-ups as super-sophisticated ninja diplomacy.

It might be due to ignorance or it might be due to stupidity, but what it's not is effective.

Kerry should get out of the Middle East before the administration does even more damage than it has already.

Carter at Cardozo

geoffff

Here's something different. 

Kiss of Death

What is it with peace prizes? 

The Cardozo School of Law which is part of Yeshiva University is to award Jimmy Carter something called the “International Advocate for Peace” for a life time of work of some sort This is to be done on Wednesday 10 April 2013; a day that has already  begun here and is advancing relentlessly towards New York as we speak. 

Can there be anything done to stop this? Is it too late?

Let's be frank about this. Jimmy Carter is the US's worst ever president. Not just since the war or in the last century. Ever. I say that after some reflection.  His presidency was one long low howl of humiliation and shame for America and America's friends. It is a travesty of history to give him any part of the credit for the courageous initiatives of Begin and Sadat and the peace treaty it led to.  Begin and Sadat were the statesmen. Carter was an opponent of a "separate peace" and damn near sabotaged it.   It was  just one dumb and dangerous debacle after another and a reckless negligence that bordered on the criminal from this strange and creepy man.   

Then it got worse. 

After Carter was enthusiastically tossed  out of the White House by the American people at the first opportunity he has become America's most enthusiastic friend of America's enemies and America's most prominent slanderer of Israel. You can't be one without the other.

Here's a list.  

CAMERA Roundup of Commentary on Jimmy Carter’s Palestine: Peace not Apartheid

1987: Carter intervened to help a Nazi war criminal.

2006: Carter says that pressuring Hamas economically is immoral – but pressuring Israel economically is desirable.

2006: Jimmy predicts that Hamas will be a peaceful party and that they hadn’t had any terror attacks on the previous 18 months, an out and out lie.

2007: Carter quotes a fake Nelson Mandela letter to”prove” Israel is an “apartheid state”

2008: Carter claims that Palestinians in Gaza were being “starved to death” and received fewer calories a day than people in the poorest parts of Africa.

2008: Jimmy entreats Europe to ignore the official US position on Gaza terrorists and embrace them instead.

2009: Carter says Gazans are “literally starving.”

2009: Jimmy reportedly asks Hamas to “Help us to help Obama to overcome the Zionist lobby”

2009: Carter was revealed to have been against a separate Israel/Egypt peace agreement.

2010: Carter praised Palestinian Arab “democracy” but casts doubts on Israel’s democracy

2012: Carter blames the Jews for the Christian exodus from Palestine.”

2012: Liberal Jimmy Carter has no problem with Islamists in power in Egypt where they can implement misogynist and discriminatory laws according to their religious duties.

2012: Carter says that if Iran has one or two nuclear weapons, it is no big deal.

My favourite American lawyer Alan Dershowitz has much to say.and has offered to debate Carter at Cardozo.  Says Dershowitz

“I can’t imagine a worse person to honor for conflict resolution. Here’s a man who has engendered conflict wherever he goes. He has encouraged terrorism by Hamas and Hezbollah. He was partly responsible for Yasser Arafat turning down the Clinton-Barak peace offer,” Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz told The Algemeiner in an interview. Dershowitz wrote about Carter in his book “The Case Against Israel’s Enemies: Exposing Jimmy Carter and Others Who Stand in the Way of Peace.”

“He is significantly responsible for the second Intifada. If he had told Yasser Arafat to accept that deal we might be celebrating Palestinian statehood today,” Dershowitz added. “He just prefers terrorists to Israelis.”

Read it all

Says Concerned Alumni of Cardozo

 "Jimmy Carter has an ignominious history of anti-Israel bigotry. He is responsible for helping to mainstream the antisemitic notion that Israel is an apartheid state with his provocatively titled book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”, the publication of which prompted mass resignations from the Carter Center. He has met numerous times with leaders of the terror group Hamas whitewashing their genocidal goals and undermining US efforts to isolate Hamas. And Carter’s record of slandering Israel is so voluminous that both CAMERA and Alan Dershowitz have written books refuting his lies."

What's to be done? The dean of the law school cannot attend the award ceremony if he is to distance the institution  from the award as he is being firmly counselled. Nor should the faculty. And the students?

Dershowitz has the best advice.

 "Students should attend the ceremony “and in a dignified and respectful way show contempt for Jimmy Carter,” he said. “Students should know who they’re honoring. The response to bad speech is good speech. You don’t cancel the event you use it as an educational opportunity to teach people about the evil things that Jimmy Carter has done.”"

.. in a dignified and respectful way show contempt for Jimmy Carter ...

Spoken like true lawyer. I suggest they quietly stand and turn their backs but under no circumstances should they throw their shoes. And the rest of us?

You can go to this site and vote on whether Carter deserves this award.

And then you can go this site and vote on who was America's worst president.

cross posted Israel Thrives