Poor Jimmy Carter! “This is the first time that I’ve ever been called a liar and a bigot and an anti-Semite and a coward and a plagiarist. This is hurting me.”
This plaint, issuing from a podium at Brandeis University (where else?) and from a man who won election to the presidency of the United States and oversaw the Iran hostage crisis, seems somewhat disingenuous. The “first time?” But you have to attend to the middle term, “anti-Semite,” inserted so casually among the others. Lying, bigotry, cowardice, and plagiarism speak to the deeds and character of the accused. Casting oneself as the victim of charges of anti-Semitism involves a third party, and can be a way of reinforcing the original attack against them.
Good people weep for the hardships of troubled populations. It was noble—and Christian—to feel sorry for the starving children in Europe in the 1930′s, and no less so to sympathize with the Palestinians today.
But there are those who, through “lying and bigotry and cowardice,” turn those sympathies into blaming Jews for failing to alleviate hardships that Jews did not cause in the first place and are powerless to prevent.
It was not Jimmy Carter who formed the Arab League to prevent the emergence of Israel and who then dedicated the work of the League to Israel’s destruction. It was not Jimmy Carter who refused partition and insisted on maintaining generations of Palestinians as refugees. Neither was it Carter who instituted the economic boycott of Israel, introduced the UN resolution equating Zionism with racism, or sponsored terrorism as an “unsponsored” weapon against Israel. Carter did not translate, disseminate, and dramatize the Protocols of the Elders of Zion for audiences in the multi-millions. He did not generate the anti-Semitism that sweeps and informs the Arab world. He is not an active anti-Semite. But he became its apologist, he echoes its accusations, using its terminology and advancing its cause.
Let us then make the distinction between anti-Semites who generate anti-Semitism and those who sustain it. And let him whom the shoe fits wear it.
Is anyone giving odds on whether there will actually be “exhaustive and probing” hearings on Eric Holder’s nomination for AG? Color me very surprised if that actually happens.
Pat Toomey is not a serious threat to Arlen Specter this time, he had his shot in 2004 and fell short. Pennsylvania primary voters are not filled with either enthusiasm for Toomey or rage at Specter, they know the guy very well by now. Age and health issues are a bigger threat, and Specter has proven to be both physically and politically tough.
Reform movement in Pennsylvania has stalled since the state Senate and House shakeups of 2006, Toomey was not a significant factor then, and the state’s slow response to change in general is a net positive for Specter. Pat Toomey would have had a very difficult general election in 2004 had he won the primary, but the state has drifted in a direction that would make 2010 an even steeper climb.