WASHINGTON – Ex-President Jimmy Carter has touched off a storm by blasting President Bush, saying Bush should get tougher on Israel.
“I have been disappointed in almost everything [Bush] has done,” said Carter – breaking the unspoken rule that ex-presidents don’t try to bloody their successors.
Carter charged Bush is getting nowhere in the Middle East and should follow Bush’s dad – and Carter – and demand that Israel remove Jewish settlements from the West Bank.
“George Sr. took a strong position on that issue and so did I,” Carter told Knight-Ridder reporters in an interview marking Bush’s sixth month in office.
Carter helped broker the Israel-Egypt peace deal at Camp David, but his Mideast policies drew criticism from Israel supporters like Ed Koch, who accused him of undermining U.S. support for the Jewish state.
Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations said Carter’s remarks show “poor judgment and poor taste and poor policy.”
But Jim Zogby, head of the Arab American Institute, said Carter is “justifiably concerned about the settlement issue.”
Zogby said he sees politics as the reason Bush is more pro-Israel than his dad. He must hold onto his conservative core supporters, including the Christian right and neo-conservatives who are “extraordinarily pro-Israel,” Zogby said.