…to Israel and the US on the matter of human rights in Gaza and much more.
This news was published on Tuesday, May 27, 2008 by The Guardian/UK and republished in the US by CommonDreams.Org, an internet news source. The article is entitled: Carter Urges `Supine’ Europe to Break With US Over Gaza Blockade and was written by Jonathan Steele and Jonathan Freedland.
My only question after reading this article was: where is American mainstream media in reporting this news? It is a damned shame when Jimmy Carter, a former president, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and a world-class humanitarian, must go to Europe to address audiences about human rights crimes in which the US is a participant.
“Ex-president says the EU is colluding in a human rights crime (in Gaza)”, was the byline.
Quoting Jimmy Carter,
Britain and other European governments should break from the US over the international embargo on Gaza, former US president Jimmy Carter told the Guardian yesterday. Carter, visiting the Welsh border town of Hay for the Guardian literary festival, described the EU’s position on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as “supine” and its failure to criticise the Israeli blockade of Gaza as “embarrassing”.
Referring to the possibility of Europe breaking with the US in an interview with the Guardian, he said: “Why not? They’re not our vassals. They occupy an equal position with the US.”
The blockade on Hamas-ruled Gaza, imposed by the US, EU, UN and Russia – the so-called Quartet – after the organisation’s election victory in 2006, was “one of the greatest human rights crimes on Earth,” since it meant the “imprisonment of 1.6 million people, 1 million of whom are refugees”. “Most families in Gaza are eating only one meal per day. To see Europeans going along with this is embarrassing,” Carter said.
Read the rest of the Guardian article at the above link. It describes recent ceasefire terms that Carter negotiated in Syria, which were agreeable to Hamas. If Israel stops its air and ground strikes, Hamas would halt rocket attacks, and it was Carter’s hope that Israel would accept the terms being communicated through the Egyptians. Hamas had called for a ceasefire with Israel over a half dozen times in the past year and had imposed a voluntary ceasefire on itself for one month to no avail.
Carter criticized the Quartet’s policy of not talking to Hamas, but also took on Elliot Abrams, a White House national security official he called “a very militant supporter of Israel,” which he implied was a stumbling block. Carter also spoke about America’s involvement in torturing prisoners, saying he wanted the next US president to promise never to do so again.
