RAEL JEAN ISAAC

CHUTZPAH PRIZE TO CARTER

There’s little doubt that the Chutzpah Prize for 2006 goes hands down to Jimmy Carter (also a prime candidate for Worst President in U.S. History). Scheduled to speak at Brandeis University on his new book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, he cancelled his appearance when Brandeis asked him to debate Harvard’s Alan Dershowitz. Carter offered two grounds. He told the Boston Globe “There is no need…for me to debate somebody who, in my opinion, knows nothing about the situation in Palestine” and declared the debate request was proof that many in the U.S. are unwilling to hear an alternative view on the nation’s most taboo foreign policy issue, Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory.

The chutzpah here is truly breathtaking. Carter declaims on every TV screen that no one is willing to engage in “forthright debate” on the issues he raises and then refuses to debate as soon as it is offered.

The reality is that Carter is terrified of debate. He had a foretaste of the public humiliation he could expect in Dershowitz’s review in The New York Sun (Nov. 22) which outlines only a small sample of the outright falsehoods, glaring omissions and plain naked anti-Israel bias that permeates the book. Indeed the book is so sloppy and riddled with elementary factual errors that it has even drawn fire from Norman Finkelstein, himself second to none as a hater of Israel.

As Jacob Laskin notes in Frontpage (Dec. 18) Carter’s basic thesis is that no Jew who identifies with Israel is capable of engaging in the debate. Yet if identification with one side disqualifies one, by his own logic Carter himself is disqualified. Laskin points out the extent to which the Carter Center depends on Arab largesse. In 1993 alone King Fahd presented Carter with a gift of $7.6 million. And then there is the king’s nephew, Prince Alaweed Bin Talah, who has coughed up at least $5 million, the Saudi Fund for Development, which turns up repeatedly on the Center’s list of contributors, even ten of Bin Laden’s brothers who produced $1 million for the Center. And that’s just Saudi Arabia. The United Arab Emirates are also big supporters. No surprise that Carter is now an advocate for the “government of elected Hamas.”

A CLOSE SECOND

A close second in the chutzpah department is James Baker. To be sure, the hoopla attending the report of the Iraq Study Group rapidly dissipated when its “79 theses” were published, according to Baker a magical integrated web that could not be selectively implemented. It is easy enough to sum the plan up: persuade Iran and Syria to reduce support for Iraqi insurgents by giving them Israel in exchange (yes, the Baker Study Group even called for enforcing an Arab “right of return,” i.e. curtains for Israel).

On The American Thinker website Ed Lasky notes that the Study Group’s shift of attention from Iraq to Israel can be understood in terms of Baker’s strong financial ties to the Saudis. He made sure that the Study Group’s staff, which made the real proposals (commission members simply added their stamp of approval) had one trait in common: opposition to Israel.

A small sampling of the list Lasky provides of those comprising the four working groups that formed the Iraq Study Group: Raymond Close, a former CIA official who served in Saudi Arabia, and on his retirement almost 30 years ago, went to work for the Saudi security agency. David Mack is vice President of the Middle East Institute, a Saudi-funded “think tank.” Richard Norton is a former member of the Cairo University faculty, who has declared “I can’t recall any U.S. president who has subordinated American interests to Israeli interests like this one.” Phebe Marr is on the editorial board of both The Middle East Journal (published by the Middle East Institute) and the Middle East Policy Council, another Saudi “front” outfit. Charles Freeman, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, as head of the Middle East Policy Council has become a de facto Saudi ambassador to America. Martin Peretz aptly notes that when the Iraq Study Group went to work, “personnel became policy.”

For the last word on this whole ridiculous enterprise go to YouTube for a two and a half minute film by Hollywood’s David Zucker entitled “The Fabulous Baker Boy.”

WHITHER TURKEY?

While the Pope’s visit to Turkey went relatively smoothly, the tirade launched in advance of his visit by former Turkish Prime Minister Necmettin Erkaban at a protest rally is both noteworthy and worrisome, especially in view of Turkey’s potential entry into the EU. Some excerpts: “All humanity, including the Pope, owes everything to Islam and to our Prophet….We are also telling the Pope not to come because we know why he is coming…He is coming in total defiance of the Turkish people, to visit the Patriarch of the Orthodox [Christians], to strengthen his hand and claims for ecumenical status, and to resurrect Byzantium. He is coming as the religious representative of the Greater Middle East Project…This is part of the plan to divide our country and nation into easy-to-swallow bites.”
For those who believe in the saving power of education, Erkaban holds a PhD in engineering from a German university and for many years was professor at a Turkish university.

Unreported News from Iraq
The administration often complains that the good news from Iraq is not being heard. That may be so, but it is also true that there is much additional bad news that goes unreported. Christians for Assyrians of Iraq (CAI) organized a demonstration at the White House to seek some remedy for the targeting of Assyrian Christians (also known as Chaldeans and Syriacs) by radical Islamists. Only 5% of the population, they are reported to be close to 40% of refugees fleeing Iraq. The situation is so bad (church bombings, kidnapping, crucifixion-murders, beheadings) that the only “solution” CAI has come up with is creating an autonomous zone (to be called the Nineveh Plains Adminstrative Unit) within Iraq for Assyrians and other Christians where they would be free to practice their faith.
In Mosul the Catholic charity Caritas had to close its doors when its staff was threatened with bodily harm if it did not provide funds “to support resistance to the American occupation of Iraq.”

Good for Goode
Our congratulations to Rep. Virgil Goode (R.-Va.) for not only speaking out but standing firm in face of the predictable cries of outrage from Islamic groups. In a letter to constituents Goode wrote: “I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United states if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America.”
And in a session with reporters he insisted: “I do not apologize and I do not retract my letter.”

Halima of Troy
The Brussels Journal reports that Halima Chechaima, the 18 year old daughter of a Moroccan father and Flemish mother, was elected Miss Brussels and as symbol of the multicultural paradise Belgium hoped to be, was the odds on favorite to be chosen Miss Belgium. No longer. She declared Israel must be wiped off the map. While that would probably not have been enough to derail her, her fate was presumably sealed when she wound up in the middle of a multicultural duel. On the one side her lover Ould Haj, an oft-convicted Belgian criminal of Moroccan origin soon to stand trial for torturing an 84 year old lady. (When he broke into her home and found only 500 euros Haj flew into a rage, broke the woman’s legs with a hammer and set her hair on fire). On the other side Halima’s other lover, an Albanian criminal who, in a jealous fury, knifed Ould Haj (who had escaped from prison) twice in the neck (he survived to be rearrested).