Jimmy Carter’s flacks aren’t denying reports that the former president and global scold is heading for Syria for a friendly sit-down this week with Hamas terrorist-in-chief Khaled Meshaal.
That would make Carter the highest-ranking Western leader to break bread with the top leader of a group that the US government has officially designated a “foreign terrorist organization.”
It’s bad enough that Carter – a former US president and winner of the now-thoroughly discredited Nobel Peace Prize – will be putting a stamp of legitimacy on a gang of cutthroats who’ve never hesitated to include Americans in their growing body count.
The saddest thing about this get-together is that it comes as no real surprise. Indeed, it’s entirely in keeping with Carter’s recent embrace of Palestinian extremism – to the point where, in his latest published anti-Israel screed, he all but gave his blessing to attacks on Israel.
Carter later apologized for the book’s “stupid” wording and insisted he believes that “all” should “terminate the use of violence.”
But now he’s sitting down for a chit-chat with someone who has patently rejected any such calls.
Is Jimmy Carter so convinced of his powers of persuasion that he believes he can single-handedly change Hamas’ avowed intention to destroy Israel?
Fat chance. A new Israeli study reports that Hamas, aided by Iran and Syria, currently is engaged in the biggest arms buildup in its history.
For the record, Carter reportedly will be traveling in his capacity as head of his Carter Center and not as a former president.
That’s a distinction likely to be lost on the families of:
* The four young Americans killed by a Hamas bomb at Hebrew University in 2002.
* The New Jersey woman who was among the 15 killed by the Hamas bombing of a Jerusalem pizzeria in 2001.
* The two US citizens killed, along with 13 others, in the 1997 Hamas bombing of a crowded outdoor market in Jerusalem.
* The three Americans among the 26 victims of a 1996 Hamas passenger bus bombing in Jerusalem.
And so on.
To sit down with the leader of a group that has the blood of innocent Americans on its hands is an outrage.
If he goes through with it, Jimmy Carter will have disgraced (again) the office he once held.