Another Humiliation of Jimmy Carter

In a column published in last week's Boston Globe, former US president Jimmy Carter complained that ever since his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid came out, he has been called "a liar, plagiarist, anti-Semite, racist, bigot, ignorant, etc."

I have not read the book. But the column alone proves that some of those epithets are justified.

For instance, Carter complains that "an enormous wall snakes through ? what is left of the West Bank ? obviously designed to acquire more property and protect the Israeli colonies already built." Aside from the misleading terminology (the barrier is mostly fence, not wall) and the false implication of massive annexation (more than 90 percent of the West Bank remains on the Palestinian side), there is an obvious problem with his "obvious" explanation of the fence's objective: Not only does Israel claim that its purpose is stopping suicide bombers, but the evidence supports that claim.

First, the fence was only inaugurated two years into the intifada, as Israel's death toll from terror attacks approached the 500 mark. Carter not only fails to mention this, he disingenuously implies that it has existed for decades by preceding his diatribe with the phrase "for 39 years, Israel has occupied Palestinian land..."

Second, Israeli casualties of Palestinian terror have declined by almost 50 percent a year since construction began in 2002, indicating that the fence is in fact serving its stated defensive purpose.

To obscure this inconvenient fact, Carter offers an astounding alternative explanation: "Hamas declared a unilateral cease-fire in August 2004 ? which they claim is the reason for reductions in casualties to Israeli citizens."

Even overlooking the six-month inaccuracy - Hamas announced the "lull" only in February 2005 - this "explanation" ignores the fact that the drop in casualties began fully two years earlier, following Operation Defensive Shield in spring 2002. Thus by the intifada's third year, October 2002 through September 2003, the Israeli death toll was already a whopping 47% lower than the second year's figure.

EVEN MORE astonishing, however, is Carter's disregard for the fact that Hamas has proudly claimed credit for various deadly attacks even since February 2005 - including the firing of hundreds of rockets at southern Israel and the cross-border raid that kidnapped one soldier and killed two this past June.