Carter's open mind to terrorist

Jacob Laksin:

The trouble with having an open mind, the novelist Terry Pratchett once observed, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. That caveat seems especially relevant in light of the news that Jimmy Carter will travel to the Middle East this week to meet with, among others, Khaled Meshal, the notorious Hamas commander living in exile in Damascus.

It isn’t clear who convinced the former president that the road to peace in the Middle East lies through one of its leading saboteurs. But Carter’s justification for the trip – he intends to come with an “an open mind and heart to learn from all parties” – is an object lesson on the perils of open-mindedness.

For one thing, there is little to be learned from Khaled Meshal. His resume speaks gruesomely for itself. A Hamas veteran, Meshal is suspected by Israeli authorities of being the mastermind of several high-profile terror attacks. The June 2006 abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit reportedly was carried out on his orders.

Less compromising than even his counterparts in Gaza, who have at least paid lip service, however implausible, to the idea of honoring a peace treaty with Israel, Meshal makes no effort to conceal his true aim: destroying the Jewish state through a relentless campaign of terrorism.

In a 2006 interview with the BBC, for instance, Meshal explained that any truce with Israel would be “limited because there is a Palestinian reality that the international community must deal with.” That “reality” was the mere fact of Israel’s existence, which Meshal, along with the rest of the Hamas leadership, deems intolerable.

Out of earshot of Western media, Meshal has sounded still more sinister notes. In taped speeches to his supporters, Meshal can be heard declaring that “Israel with the help of Allah will be defeated.” With chilling candor, he has confessed that “resistance” – i.e., terrorism – is not only the “basis” of Palestinian politics but the “destiny” of the Palestinian people.

“[W]e won't pretend to be something we're not,” Meshal revealingly told Al-Ahram newspaper in 2005. “Yes, suicide operations… anger international public opinion, but you must observe the Palestinian popular mood.” Terror is Meshal’s business, in other words, and he has no intention of closing down shop.

With this public record to go on, to believe that an arch-terrorist like Meshal has a role to play in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians requires self-delusion on a momentous scale. Regrettably, the 39^th president is more than equal to the task.

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Carter is open to everything but the truth about the Islamic religious bigots. They don't want a deal, they want to kill us and Israel. The only hope for a Palestinian state is the destruction of organizations like Hamas. As long as it insist on the destruction of Israel, it should be marked for destruction.