There’s no fool like an elder fool

On Sunday, Jimmy Carter produced an op-ed in the Washington Post called “The Elders’ View of the Middle East.” It’s rather pathetic that a former U.S. president feels the need to call himself an “elder,” and to invoke other aging leftists (here the likes of Desmond Tutu and Mary Robinson), in order to vouch for his own wisdom. Not surprisingly, “elder” in this context turned out to mean vicious Israel basher.
Today, Elliott Abrams demolishes Carter’s op-ed, demonstrating that nearly every claim Carter makes is false. For example, contrary to Carter’s assertions, despair is not increasingly among Palestinians (the polling evidence is clear on this point); Gaza is not a “walled-in ghetto” into which Israel precludes the flow of needed items (Gaza has a border with Egypt through which these items can flow); and Israeli settlements are not expanding rapidly into “Palestinian land (nearly all settlement construction is “up” not “out”).
It’s difficult to imagine a bigger mismatch than Elliott Abrams vs. Jimmy Carter, and I doubt that more than a handful of our readers take Carter at all seriously. Nonetheless, Abrams’ take-down of the old dictator-coddling, Israel-hating fool should not be missed.