The way out.

Say what you will about Jimmy Carter — I thought he was a pretty awful president in many ways, quite frankly — he has certainly brought attention to one of the greatest injustices of our time, for which effort he will undoubtedly be attacked ad derided as an anti-Semite. I must say, I have a great deal more respect for him this week than I did last. The guy has, more than any other ex-president in living memory, distinguished himself through his philanthropic work, earning the Nobel Peace Prize and the admiration of many. Rather than being content to settle back on his laurels and enjoy retirement, he has instead chosen to wade hip deep into one of the most acrimonious political issues going — the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Carter is using his considerable prestige to gain a broad public hearing for what has long been the international consensus solution for that conflict, namely the end of Israeli rule over that less than one-quarter of mandate Palestine they’ve occupied since June 1967. He has also shone a light on the Palestinian experience in a way that is seldom (if ever) seen on U.S. television.

Of course, the Chuck Krauthammers of the world will remind us of every bad decision Carter has ever made, every war crime committed by a Palestinian, every concession they claim Israel has tried to make through the decades, to its own detriment. They will invoke the existential threat posed by extremists like Amadinejad and Nasrallah and claim that Israel’s 1967 borders were indefensible. Bullshit. Unlike in 1967, Israel does not now face a hostile Egypt, a hostile Jordan, a hostile Iraq. It is clear that the occupied territories and the plight of Palestinians both there and scattered throughout the region remain the only real obstacles to normal relations, with the possible exception of Israel’s formidable nuclear arsenal, still undeclared and yet undeniably real. Fact is, with the continued occupation of that small part of Palestine that was left to the Palestinians after 1948, Israel’s more expansive borders are indefensible precisely because those territories are filled with legions of people whose lives are being crushed by the mad pursuit of a greater Israel. It’s a pretty tight neighborhood, and the only way to have good neighbors is to be one.

Then there’s Amadinejad. What a gift to Israeli and American hawks that man is! His ludicrous fulminations provide them with the ammunition they need to maintain perpetual military confrontation. And the best part about him is that he doesn’t even run Iran. He is as powerless as Khatami was before him, subject to the will of Iran’s supreme clerical leader, the Ayatollah Khamenie. So he presents a pretty low-grade threat to any state that possesses enough conventional and non-conventional weapons to reduce the region to rubble. Add to that the fact that Israel’s politicians (to say nothing of their U.S. counterparts) regularly threaten Iran with attack, and it should come as no surprise that Iran might contemplate building their own nuclear deterrent (though it appears this remains in the contemplative stage at present). With his observations about the Palestinians, Carter is trying to defuse the bomb that is the modern Middle East… and as a result, he will no doubt be lumped together with the bomb-throwers.