The Washington Post, "Israeli leaders don’t meet with Jimmy Carter during Middle East visit": No Mention of What Carter Said About Khaled Mashaal

In a Washington Post article entitled "Israeli leaders don’t meet with Jimmy Carter during Middle East visit," William Booth writes:

"In East Jerusalem on Saturday, Carter, 90, said that he and his traveling companion, former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, did not ask for a meeting with Netanyahu or his cabinet because they assumed they would be rebuffed as past requests were.

'It would be a waste of time to ask,' Carter said.


. . . .

Carter advocates negotiations with Hamas, a group that the United States and Israel consider a terror organization."

But now have a look at an article entitled "Carter says Hamas leader committed to peace, Netanyahu not" in today's Times of Israel, which reports:

"Carter, who cancelled a planned visit to Gaza on this trip, said Saturday he 'deplored' criminal acts by members of Hamas, but said he was looking to support moderate members of the group, which he said wasn’t a terrorist organization.

'I don’t believe that he’s a terrorist. He’s strongly in favor of the peace process,' Carter said of Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashaal."

Mashaal, who was responsible for launching 4,000 rockets at Israeli towns and cities during 2014 is not a terrorist and strongly favors the peace process? Yeah, right.

But more to the point, why does The Washington Post make reference to Carter's contempt for Netanyahu, but fail to report Carter's declaration regarding Mashaal in the above-mentioned article? Has this no relevance to the refusal of Israeli leaders to meet with Jimmy?

Let's see what the editors of WaPo have to say in this regard.

Khaled Mashaal Acknowledges Hamas Killed 3 Israeli Teenagers: Do Andrew Sullivan, Katie Zavadski and Sheera Frenkel Care to Comment?

In a Yahoo! News article entitled "Hamas leader: Don't compare us to ISIL," Khaled Mashaal acknowledges that Hamas was responsible for the killing of the three Israeli teenagers, which led up to the current Gaza conflict:

"Meshaal acknowledged for the first time that Hamas members — but not the group's political leadership — were behind the slaying of three Israeli settlers on the West Bank in June. But he defended the murders as a legitimate action against Israeli 'illegal occupation.'"

But notwithstanding Mashaal's attempt to distance Hamas's leadership from the murders, Haaretz reported two days ago in an article entitled "Hamas claims responsibility for three Israeli teens' kidnapping and murder":

"A senior Hamas official boasted during a conference in Istanbul on Wednesday that the group's military wing was behind the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank in June.

A video captured during the conference shows Salah Arouri, who is based in Turkey and is considered a primary figure within Hamas, saying that the Iz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades were responsible for the abduction of the three youths, Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Fraenkel, 16."

You will recall that Katie Zavadski in a New York Magazine article entitled "It Turns Out Hamas May Not Have Kidnapped and Killed the 3 Israeli Teens After All [Updated]" wrote:

"BuzzFeed reporter Sheera Frenkel was among the first to suggest that it was unlikely that Hamas was behind the deaths of Gilad Shaar, Naftali Frenkel, and Eyal Yifrach. Citing Palestinian sources and experts in the field, Frenkel reported that kidnapping three Israeli teens would be a foolish move for Hamas. International experts told her it was likely the work of a local group, acting without concern for the repercussions."

Following Zavadski's piece, Andrew Sullivan's The Dish told us in an item entitled "The Lie Behind The War":

"Katie Zavadski, fresh from a Dishternship, nails down a critical fact in the latest Israel-Hamas death-match. As the Dish has noted before, the Israeli government knew from the get-go that the murderers of three Israeli teens – the incident that set off this bloody chain of events – were not doing official Hamas’ bidding even in the West Bank, let alone Gaza."

Do Andrew Sullivan, Katie Zavadski and Sheera Frenkel wish to say anything further on the subject?

[I sent an email to Andrew Sullivan, requesting a retraction. Do you think he will bother to respond?]

I Accuse: Obama Selling Arms to Qatar, a Terrorist State

Yesterday, Obama declared "Today, the entire world is appalled by the brutal murder of Jim Foley by the terrorist group." But is Obama truly "appalled" by the beheading of Foley, a freelance journalist, by the Islamic State, alternately known as ISIL or ISIS? If so, why is he selling billion of dollars of arms to Qatar, a tiny country which is the primary benefactor of Hamas, and whose citizens are believed to have funded the Islamic State and the radical al-Nusra Front? What precautions has Obama taken to prevent the advanced arms now being sold to Qatar from being transferred to these terrorist organizations? Why did Obama demand that Israel agree to Qatari mediation of Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza?

I submitted a guest opinion piece to a senior editor of The Washington Post, but yesterday he turned it down, explaining only "we're not able to use your piece." Below is the op-ed that I prepared for WaPo. Read it and decide for yourselves why WaPo could not "use" it:

Kerry, Cairo and Qatar: The Mystery Surrounding an American Foreign Policy Fiasco

Do you like a good mystery? If so, perhaps you might care to conjecture why President Obama and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry recently demanded that Qatar and Turkey, instead of Egypt,  mediate Israel’s war with Hamas, against Israel’s best interests.

Turkey? Everyone knows where Turkey, straddling Europe and Asia, is located. There’s a good chance that you’ve visited Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar or at least watched James Bond ride a motorcycle over its rooftops in “Skyfall.” Then, too, you’ve probably read several of its prime minister’s bizarre anti-Semitic pronouncements.

But I’m not here to talk Turkey. Rather, let’s focus our attention on Qatar. Can you correctly pronounce Qatar? Most Americans cannot manage the guttural Arabic pronunciation. More important, if I were to hand you a map of the world, could you place your pinkie on this country, which has a population of 2 million and is the size of Connecticut? Chances are you couldn’t.

Of course, you’ve probably read that Qatar will be hosting the 2022 World Cup. You might also know that Qatar, which has the world's third largest natural gas reserves, is the world's richest country per capita.

Additionally of interest, on July 14 Qatar inked an agreement to purchase $11 billion of arms from the United States, including 10 Patriot anti-missile batteries, 24 Apache attack helicopters and several hundred Javelin anti-tank missiles. Why is this Lilliputian-sized country so hungry for armaments? More to the point, why did Obama agree to this sale of advanced weaponry to a country believed to be the primary benefactor of Hamas, designated a terrorist organization by the United States? Worse still, Qataris have been accused of financing the radical al-Nusra rebel faction in Syria as well as the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, which is busy burying Yazidi women and children alive. None other than Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shimon Peres has labelled Qatar “the world’s largest funder of terror.”

Moreover, why was Obama so adamant about making Qatar and Turkey the mediators, and not allowing Egypt, which had initiated the mediation process, to continue its work? In order to reach any semblance of a conclusion as to why Obama insisted upon Qatar and Turkey, it is necessary to wind the clock back a few years.

Foreign policy in the Arab world cannot be conducted without going through Egypt with its population of 82 million. Obama certainly knew this in the past, and in his highly heralded June 4, 2009 speech in Cairo, less than six months into his first term as president, Obama declared:

“I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”

A new beginning? Over the course of the next five years, things did not go as planned for the Obama administration, particularly as regards Egypt. In December 2010, the Arab Spring swept the Middle East, and when the demonstrations reached Cairo, Obama effectively demanded that Egypt's long-time president, Hosni Mubarak, a friend of the West, step down. Subsequently, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, who was planning to attend the 67^th session of the UN General Assembly in September 2012, was invited to the White House. However, the invitation was rescinded when the US embassy in Cairo came under attack by an angry mob on September 11, the same day on which the U.S. diplomatic compound and CIA annex in Benghazi were assaulted, leading to the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Obama didn’t want Morsi’s visit to imperil his reelection campaign.

America’s relations with Egypt grew steadily worse. With the Egyptian economy tanking and the Muslim Brotherhood attempting to consolidate power, Morsi was removed from office in a July 2013 coup by the Egyptian military, which controls much of Egyptian industry. Irked by this affront to what was hoped to be nascent Egyptian democracy, the Obama administration responded by freezing “large-scale military systems and cash assistance to the government pending credible progress toward an inclusive, democratically elected civilian government through free and fair elections.” As a consequence, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is now shopping for arms in Russia.

Worse still, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry poured oil on the fire by seeking to replace Egypt, which has a common border with Gaza, with Qatar and Turkey as mediators of Israel’s conflict with Hamas. The Egyptian military despises Hamas, owing to its close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, and it came as no surprise that Kerry was subjected to a demeaning metal detector test before being allowed to meet with Sisi in Cairo last month, while trying to force his way into the negotiation process.

Frustrated by his frigid reception in Cairo, Kerry hastily flew to Paris, where he convened a meeting with diplomats from France, Britain, Italy and Germany, and also the foreign ministers of Qatar and Turkey. Representatives from Egypt and the Palestinian Authority were not invited to the secretary of state’s soirée, which resulted in nothing, but added insult to America’s traditional Arab allies.

Having infuriated Egypt, Saudi Arabia (whose relations with Qatar are strained), and the Palestinian Authority in one fell swoop, and with Israeli journalists from both the right and the left lambasting the incompetence of America’s secretary of state, Kerry conveniently disappeared on a seven-day voyage to Afghanistan, Burma, Australia, the Solomon Islands and Hawaii.

Back now to the original question: Why did Barack Obama seek to impose Qatar as a mediator upon Israel? Was it really because the U.S. was seeking a country with financial leverage over Hamas? This hardly makes sense, given Egypt’s control over the flow of goods across its mutual border with Gaza, which trumps any amount of Qatari funding.

Alternatively, was this an expression of petulance on the part of Obama, given General Sisi’s arrest of Mohammed Morsi, thus putting the kibosh on Egypt’s fleeting experiment with democracy and the president’s “new beginning”?

Or was this just the effect of jetlag on John Kerry?

Whatever the reason, it has proven another painful diplomatic setback for the United States.

[According to Fatah, Qatar forced Hamas to break the most recent truce arranged by Egypt and threatened to expel Khaled Mashal, Chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau, from Qatar, where he maintains his offices, if he did not reopen rocket fire on Israel (see: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/184225#.U_WXq5scTct and http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4561522,00.html). On Monday, US State Department spokesperson Marie Harf admitted: "Today, [Kerry] has spoken with the Israeli prime minister, the Israeli foreign minister, the Turkish foreign minister, and the Qatari foreign minister. We need countries that have leverage over leaders of Hamas who can help put a cease-fire in place."]

PLEASE FORWARD TO YOUR SENATOR AND REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS! THE SALE OF ARMS TO QATAR MUST BE STOPPED!

Pillar of Defense Musings

My thoughts will never be published by Andrew Rosenthal, editorial page editor of The New York Times. My views are not leftist, and I have no political ax to grind.

Moreover, I will not be scheduling paid speaking appointments in the United States, given that I hope to spend most of my free time digging in my garden. Somehow, I recently found the time to plant two Ettinger avocado trees, and I look forward to seeing the literal fruits of my labor in 2013.

How do I view the renewed fighting between Israel and Hamas? If I had to choose a word to describe my feelings, I suppose it would be "anguish."

My oldest son, a paratrooper, has not yet been called up by his reserve unit, and I am embarrassed to admit my relief. During Operation Cast Lead, his officer died only a few meters away from where he stood, and I believe there is a limit to the trauma that any person can withstand over the course of a lifetime. I know that I have been left with a very short fuse. Nevertheless, Michael wants very much to again be in the thick of things.

I was in Tel Aviv two days ago when the sirens sounded, announcing an incoming Fajr-5 missile, supplied to Hamas by Iran. Having lived through Iraqi Scud attacks during the First Gulf War, which regularly shook our sixth floor apartment when Michael was just an infant, I couldn't get excited.

Earlier this evening, I stopped by our local grocery store and purchased meat from our Palestinian butcher, who occasionally hitches rides from me back to his neighboring village. He knows that I am a reservist, yet today, like every day, there were only smiles and no signs of enmity.

What will be the future of this conflagration? I don't know, because I don't decide policy.

Yet, I view with horror the demands from Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal that Israel initiate a ceasefire. Is it all just a matter of pride? Doesn't human life mean anything to him? Inasmuch as he heads an organization whose charter calls for the murder of all Jews, perhaps we shouldn't be expecting too much.

The EU is acknowledging Israel's right to defend itself, but is also asking that Israel's response to Hamas and Islamic Jihad missiles be "proportional." In addition, the EU is telling Israel's political leadership that under no circumstances should Israel dare send its ground forces into Gaza.

Fortunately for me, I do not need to make the decision whether to send infantry and tanks into Gaza. However, I would be very curious how European capitals would respond if their civilian centers were, over the course of a week, subjected to a barrage of a thousand rockets and missiles.

Meanwhile, in Antwerp leftists and rightists today staged a protest against Israel and chanted, "Hamas, Hamas, Jews to gas." I find it interesting that only anti-Semitism can bring these two extremes together.

And in the US, although "57% of the public says Israel is justified in taking military action in Gaza against Hamas," only 40% of Democrats agrees with Israel's efforts to defend itself (see: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/19/cnn-poll-57-of-americans-say-israeli-attacks-in-gaza-are-justified/). I wonder what these Democrats would say if New Jersey, which is the same size as Israel, were to come under missile attack.

Hamas rockets today landed on three schools in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, but fortunately classes have been canceled since November 14. I suppose many of these Democrats, including many Jews among them, would prefer that Israel just lay down and die.

Me? I'm not ready to pass on just yet. I'm too busy working to ensure the success of my life science companies, and I can't wait to taste that first avocado from our new trees.