Monday, October 15, 2007

Peanut Farmers and the Value of Common Sense

I've just finished reading Jimmy Carter's Book, "Palestine: Peace not Arpathied." This was a book that proved to be an exceedingly controversial one in as much as the former US President stated the obvoius - there will be no peace in the Middle East until, Israel stops grabbing land that it has no right to and when the USA actually starts acting like an honest broker rather than like an Israeli pawn. The former President goes onto say that the current "Anti-American" sentiment is linked to America's blatant support for Israel's violation of a host of UN resolutions.

Personally, I never thought much of Jimmy Carter. Like many of his critics in AIPEC, I believe Jimmy made some pretty horendous mistakes. For example, he tried to make the Shah of Persia into a "Democratic Hero" when in reality, the man was a dictator. He also underestimated the threat of the Soviet Union - the worst he did to protest the Soviet invasion of Afgahnistan was to lead a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games. The poor man's administration was marked by such a long list of blunders that the American military suffered one of its most embarrasing moments in its history just as he was leaving office after being crushed by Ronald Regan.

Old Jimmy certainly did not come accross as being heavy in the brain department. For Christ sake, the man was peanut farmer! But having said that, you have to hand it to the peanut farmer for having something which a load of intellectuals don't have - common sense. Perhaps I'm reading too much into a romanticised image of farmers here but when you read his book on Palestine, you really start to wonder if we should kick out all the intellectuals running policy in that part of the world and leave it to the hands of ordinary people with good old fashioned common sense.

Carter is not some sort of liberal "Arab-Lover" from the campuses of Berkly. The man is actually one of the better friends that the Israeli people have had. Which makes what he says so much more credible. He does not cheer for suicide bombers - in fact he condems such practices as vile. However, throughout the book he states the blatantly obvious - Israel is occupying land that it should not be occupying, it is violating the human rights of people whom it should not be harming and most important of all, the USA, the land of the brave and free is....well being held hostage into colluding with criminal acts.

He points out that the vast majority of Israeli people are willing to swap land for peace and have been constantly sabotaged by their political leadership. And he points out that the lack of discussion in the American media about the role of Israel is precisely what America needs.

Humm, its so blatantly obvoius and yet, and yet the Fags in the White House and their cabal will never allow common sense to rule the day. - Isn't time for a change of global leadership?

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Maira Gall