The late Jimmy Carter’s Middle East legacy tells a tragic story of good intentions gone horribly wrong. While the 39th president achieved a genuine breakthrough with the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty, his later embrace of Hamas helped legitimize a terrorist organization bent on Israel’s destruction.

Carter’s transformation from clear-eyed critic to Hamas apologist marked a devastating shift. Before 2007, he rightfully condemned Hamas as a terrorist group. But after Hamas’s victory in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections, Carter abandoned this position, convinced that political participation would somehow change the organization’s murderous ideology.

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This delusion led Carter to embark on a series of meetings with Hamas leadership in 2008, sitting down with terrorists in Ramallah, Cairo, and Damascus. Hamas leadership quickly recognized the propaganda victory, with senior head Mahmoud al-Zahar boasting at the time that Carter’s meeting with Hamas “can now be interpreted as a sign that Hamas is now a key player in regional equations – something that cannot be easily taken for granted.”

Sadly, his advocacy for Hamas grew stronger with time. By 2008, he was describing Israel’s blockade of Gaza as “one of the greatest human rights crimes on earth.” His inflammatory rhetoric ignored Hamas’s responsibility for forcing Israel’s hand after enduring hundreds of terrorist attacks and exposing extensive weapons smuggling operations through the Sinai Peninsula.

It didn’t help after Carter’s 2009 trip to Syria for talks with Hamas’s exiled leader Khaled Mashaal resulted in the former president vouching for the terrorist group’s trustworthiness. Israel quickly condemned the meeting, while the US State Department confirmed that Hamas made no changes to its genocidal policies following his visit.

Perhaps most startling was his 2015 declaration that Mashaal was “strongly in favor of the peace process.” He willfully ignored Hamas’s doctrine of terror and its leaders’ continued calls for waging jihad. Instead, Carter kept urging the U.S. government to recognize Hamas as a “legitimate political actor.” He also dismissed meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during that visit, calling it “a waste of time.” Elevating a terrorist leader while snubbing Israel’s democratically elected leader perfectly encapsulates Carter’s disastrous late-career turn.

Carter’s Middle East legacy is complicated, to say the least. But the consequences of his misjudgment of Hamas extend far beyond his lifetime. It’s easy to look back now and say October 7 wouldn’t have happened had Carter not given Hamas the time of day, nor is anything that black and white, especially with mounting evidence of Israel’s reluctance to address Hamas’ plot despite years of warning signs. However, elections don’t transform terrorists. Carter’s refusal to see this basic truth helped Hamas buy time and legitimacy to spill massive amounts of Jewish blood on October 7.

    Pamela Leibowitz January 2, 2025 8:46 am

    The Western World has no idea of Islam , it’ culture it’s Ideology and culture ! Democracy is foreign to them and they have no desire to embrace it ! They rule with an iron fist and brook no opposition We need to understand the Quran and what beliefs they express ! We know what their mission is ! We need to believe Hamas Doctrine of 1988 !

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