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Israel’s leaders are refusing to meet with former US President Jimmy Carter due to his anti-Israel statements and activities.
By Max Gelber, United with Israel
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin have both turned down a request by former US President Jimmy Carter for a meeting during his upcoming visit to Israel, citing his “anti-Israel” stance as the reason, Israel’s Channel 10 reported on Monday.
A senior diplomatic official told Channel 10 that Carter, one of Israel’s most vociferous critics, is “disastrous” for Israel, saying that he “consistently harms the State of Israel, and Israel’s leaders should refrain from meeting him.”
The report indicates that Rivlin’s aides counseled him not to meet with Carter and he accepted their advice.
The president’s office stated on Monday night that Rivlin had accepted the Foreign Ministry’s recommendation not to meet with Carter, who reportedly is scheduled to arrive within the next 10 days for meetings with Palestinian leaders and Israeli officials.
History of Anti-Israel and Pro-Hamas Positions
Throughout the years Carter has gained the status of persona-non-grata in Israel. During the IDF’s Operation Protective Edge to uproot Hamas terror infrastructure, Carter declared that there was “no justification in the world for what Israel is doing” in Gaza, calling it a humanitarian disaster.
He also advised President Barack Obama to take Hamas off the list of organizations designated as terror groups by the US.
In May 2014, Carter supported the Palestine Liberation Organization’s unilateral push to join international organizations, a breach of the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords.
In 2013, he called on the European Union to label products produced at “illegal Israeli settlements,” which is tantamount to calling for a partial boycott on Israeli goods.
In 2006, Carter wrote a book titled “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” which was found to contain factual errors, leading the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting, a media watchdog, to conclude that the former American leader “clearly has an Israel, and even a Jewish problem.”
In 2010, when Rivlin served as speaker of the House in the Knesset (Israeli parliament), he criticized Carter for certain actions, including his meetings with senior Hamas officials. Israel viewed these meetings as support for Hamas and encouraging terror, Rivlin said. Carter claimed that the purpose of the meetings was to “bring peace to the region.”
Most recently, Carter appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in January 2015, during which they discussed the terror attacks in Paris earlier that month. Carter claimed that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a cause for Islamic terror.
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