The King Kong size Gorilla in the room is finally getting some long deserved attention. Someone has dared to touch the third rail in American politics. The untouchable sacred cow of the United States government, politicians and press, the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, is now being assailed. President Jimmy Carter is doing what few American politicians have been courageous enough to do, which is to point out the injustice that is being inflicted on the Palestinians by successive Israeli governments. This is tantamount to the little boy in the crowd shouting that, “the Emperor ain’t got no clothes on.” The question is, will the crowd -- i.e., the press and the politicians -- continue to ignore this burdensome truth? Or will they seize the moment to rectify a policy that guarantees ever increasing enmity from the rest of the world and which contributes greatly to the terrorist threat and the perpetual unrest in the Middle East. While Carter’s words speak for themselves, there remain dire ramifications which can bring to these shores the anger generated by that conflict.

President Carter, in the midst of a busy barnstorming  tour, appeared on Larry King,  the next day on CBS’s, “The Early Show” and MSNBC’s “Hardball,” Saturday, on Tim Russert’s CNBC show, and Sunday, on “Meet the Press,” rapping it up later Sunday with a three hour appearance on Cspan,  to promote his latest book, “Palestine, Peace not Apartheid.” In writing a book on this subject, and pursuing a high profile book tour, President Carter is doing America, Israel, and the world a tremendous service, by daring to expose the basis for much of the hate,  America generates around the world, which he describes as “criminal,” what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. In his interviews, while exposing the fundamental double standard in America’s Israeli/Palestinian relationship, Carter did not connect the dots that will explain what President Clinton alluded to, when he said solving the Israeli/Palestinian problem would go a long way to addressing the terrorist threat, we will explore the connection.

<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--> After the Holocaust, the American military forced local townspeople to view the concentration camps. The face-saving guilt-avoiding position of the locals, made to witness the remains of camps and corpses, was “we didn’t know.”  What President Jimmy Carter has done, in presenting irrefutable evidence of systematic atrocities being conducted by Israel against the Palestinians, is deny those in the American news-media, the government, and politicians, the excuse of being able to honestly say, “we didn’t know.”

What follows are excerpts from  the several interviews that were conducted over a week of monitoring President Carter’s  various appearances, from Larry King to CSPAN, with my commentary interjected through out.

David Shuster—(MSNBC’s Hardball) Give us the sort of sense, how much of the responsibility for the conflict, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict do you think belongs to the Israelis for their tactics like seizing land and occupying territory that didn’t belong to them, how much of it is the responsibility of the Palestinians for their suicide terror attacks and their bombings in Israel proper?

President Carter--Well as a matter of fact the basic cause of the conflict is the sustained occupation of other peoples land by the Israelis. And this is a direct violation of United Nations Resolutions. It’s a direct violation of the international quartet roadmap. It’s a direct violation of commitments that leaders of Israel have made in the past at Camp David when I was President and in Oslo, promising that Israel would withdraw from occupied territory, they have failed to do so. In response to that, and I’m not excusing them, there have been acts of violence. As a matter of fact though, Hamas the number one accused persons for violence, have not committed an act of suicide bombing that cost an Israeli life since August, 2004. And I hope they won’t do that any more.

U.S.A. ThisWeek:--What President carter is making very clear is that the Palestinian who have been vilified for so many years,  by our government and press in support of the Israeli policy, are actually the victims with legitimate grievances that go to the very core of their existence and is consistent with the cause that America has historically stood for, which is freedom.

Larry King—Concerning your book, Nancy Pelosi, the incoming speaker of the house said, “it is wrong to suggest that the Jewish people would support a government in Israel or anywhere else that institutionalizes ethnically based oppression and democrats reject that allegation vigorously.”

President Carter—Well I didn’t refer to Israel, to repeat myself.  And I made it plain in my book that the Apartheid that’s now being practiced in the West Bank, is based, not on racism or ethnic division, it’s based on avarice for Palestinian land by a minority of Israelis. And this has been the problem for a long time. And I don’t think there’s anyway that Israel will ever have what all of us want, what I’ve worked for, for thirty years, and that is peace until Israel is willing to withdraw from the occupied territories and let the Palestinians have their own land side by side as is specified, by the way, in the international quartet’s roadmap for peace which calls for Israel to withdraw from occupied territories.

U.S.A. ThisWeek—The question for Congressman Pelosi is, okay ethnically based oppression is out, got it. So what about oppression based on the seizing of other peoples land and brutally supressing their resistance to being so oppressed? What is really happening with Pelosi is something peculiar to American politics which President Carter talked about in his interview with Tim Russert.

President Carter-- These are people who believe that that’s the proper thing to do, and it’s a very sensitive political issue. You don’t see anybody in the House or Senate of the US Congress speaking out and saying we’ve got to do something about the plight of the Palestinians, or we’ve got to encourage Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories. Or we’ve got to insist upon Israel meeting with the Palestinians to negotiate a peace agreement. You never hear a word of that kind. And those kinds of statements that should appropriate interested Americans are rarely heard or ever from the news-media.

Tim Russert—Why?

President Carter--Well that’s  a complicated question, I think in the political realm it’s quite often damaging, almost suicidal for a candidate, lets say for the US Congress to say I’m going to take a balanced position between Israel and the Palestinians, and I’m going to insist that Israel negotiates, because they’re very likely to loose the next election.

U.S.A. ThisWeek—This certainly rings true, during the last presidential debates, Howard Dean, who had apparently not received the memo, made that very statement,  “we should be more balanced dealing  with the Palestinian and the Israelis.” Senator Joseph Lieberman broke debate protocol and interrupted Dean to say, “He’s going against what five successive presidents have supported.” In his next appearance in the road-show democratic debates, Dean commented that he had since learned that what he said was a “no no.” He never approached the subject again through out the rest of his campaign.

The subject of one-sided US Congressional support for Israel was raised by Larry King. 

Larry King:-- Do you think it will continue to be as pro-Israel as this past Congress?

President Carter: --I would guess so, Larry. It's almost inconceivable for any members of the House and Senate to take any position that would be critical of Israel. That's one reason I wrote my book, is just to precipitate some controversy, to use your word, or provocation, that is to provoke debate on the issue and to let the people of America know that there are two sides to many issues in the Middle East, and that in order ever to have peace for Israel, Israel will have to comply with international law. But I don't think it's likely at all that Democrats will be any more critical for the policies of Israel than were the Republicans.

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