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Israeli Restrictions at Rafah Crossing Could Kill Thousands Awaiting Medical Evacuation
“We know that patients have died basically waiting for evacuation," a WHO spokesperson said, "and that’s something which is horrible when you know just a few miles or kilometers outside that border help is available."
Feb 03, 2026
With only five Palestinians in need of medical evacuation from Gaza permitted to leave through the Rafah crossing after it reopened on Monday, health authorities in the exclave warned that the restrictions Israel is continuing to impose at the crossing could ultimately kill thousands of Palestinians who have been waiting for years for treatment as Israeli attacks have decimated Gaza's health system.
Zaher al-Wahidi, a spokesperson for the Gaza Health Ministry, told Al Jazeera Tuesday that although the crossing has reopened—a step that has been hailed as progress under the "ceasefire" agreement reached in October—the intense screening process Palestinians are subjected to by Israeli authorities at the entry point is "too complex."
About 20,000 patients in Gaza are awaiting medical evacuation, including about 440 people whose cases are critical and need immediate treatment.
Egyptian officials had said before the crossing reopened that 50 people were expected to cross from Gaza into Egypt per day, but al-Wahidi said that if the rate of crossing on Monday continues, "we would need years to evacuate all of these patients, by which time all of them could lose their lives while waiting for an opportunity to leave."
Al Jazeera reported that people hoping to leave Gaza must register their names with Egyptian authorities, who send the names to Israel's Shin Bet for approval. Palestinians then enter a checkpoint run by the Palestinian Authority and European Union representatives before Israeli officers use facial recognition software to identify those who are leaving.
Reporting for the outlet, Nour Odeh said the crossing process has been "humiliating" for Palestinians and exemplifies the "absolute control" Israel demands over the lives of people in Gaza.
"There were strip searches and interrogations, but now there are even more extreme elements. We’re hearing about people being blindfolded, having their hands tied, and being interrogated," said Odeh. "When we talk about security screening, and a person needing urgent medical care, that person is basically being denied medical attention."
Ambulances waited for hours on Monday on the Egyptian side of the border, ready to take patients to 150 hospitals across Egypt that have agreed to treat patients from Gaza, before five people were finally able to cross after sunset.
The process, said al-Wahidi, "will not allow us to evacuate patients and provide medical services to them to give them a chance at life."
About 30,000 Palestinians have also requested to return to Gaza, having fled the exclave after Israel began bombarding civilian infrastructure and imposing a total blockade on humanitarian aid in October 2023—retaliating against Gaza's population of more than 2 million people, about half of whom are children, for a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel.
But only about a dozen people were permitted to reenter Gaza on Monday, falling far short of the daily target of 50.
The Associated Press reported that Palestinians arrived at the border crossing with luggage that they were told they could not bring into Gaza.
“They didn’t let us cross with anything,” Rotana Al-Regeb told the AP after returning to Khan Younis. “They emptied everything before letting us through. We were only allowed to take the clothes on our backs and one bag per person.”
Another woman told Tareq Abu Azzoum of Al Jazeera that she was "blindfolded and interrogated by the Israeli military on her way back to Gaza," and other said "they were intercepted by Israeli-backed militias" who demanded information about armed groups in Gaza.
For people who have waited months or years to return to Gaza, Abu Azzoum said, "the Rafah crossing has been a humiliating process instead of a day marking a beautiful reunion with family."
Palestinian political analyst Muhammad Shehada of the European Council on Foreign Relations said the process "means in practice that Israel has made the Rafah border crossing a one-way ticket. If you decide to go to Gaza, they tell you, 'Okay, you will be caged there permanently. Forget about being able to leave ever again.' If you decide to leave you will have to settle with the concept of being banished and exiled again, permanently, because the queue is so formidably long."
Palestinian analyst @muhammadshehad2 explains the restrictions that Israel has imposed at Rafah Crossing are so harsh that it would take approximately 10 years for all 150,000 Palestinians in Egypt to return to Gaza, and similarly long for the tens of thousands of patients and… https://t.co/FBy1TCAW3L pic.twitter.com/WwBA7rs4xC
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) February 2, 2026
On Tuesday, a World Health Organization (WHO) team arrived at a Palestinian Red Crescent hospital in Khan Younis to take about 16 patients with chronic conditions or injuries sustained in Israeli attacks to the Rafah crossing. The Red Crescent had previously been told 45 people would be able to cross on Tuesday.
Al Jazeera reported that health authorities in Gaza are being forced to choose which sick and wounded patients will be permitted to get treatment first.
“We know that patients have died basically waiting for evacuation," WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said, "and that’s something which is horrible when you know just a few miles or kilometers outside that border help is available."
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I Went From Chicago to Egypt to March for Gaza—This Was My Experience
The lesson: Egypt is in full “compliance” with Israeli directives, fully complicit in its crimes toward the people of Gaza, and never had the slightest intention of allowing the march of solidarity we had hoped to carry out.
Jul 20, 2025
I participated in the Global March for Gaza because the countries of the world that have the power to stop Israel’s ongoing atrocities against the people of Gaza have done nothing whatsoever to change the situation. The situation is absolutely appalling. I wanted the people of Gaza to know that even if the governments of the world refuse to see their suffering or do anything to bring it to an end, there are ordinary citizens willing to travel across the world to stand with them and demand that they be released from the deadly prison that Gaza has become thanks to the utter impunity Israel and the United States enjoy on the world stage.
Those of us who went knew that the Egyptian authorities might not allow us to carry out our planned march from al-Arish to the Rafah border crossing. However, the march organizers were engaged in good-faith efforts to negotiate with the Egyptian government and to seek their approval, so we went, trusting that our efforts would make some sort of a difference, if even just on the symbolic level, and help to raise global awareness of the horrific and unjustifiable nature of the Palestinians’ suffering.
I had never done anything of this nature before, and I felt frightened and overwhelmed at times as I struggled with the decision of whether to go; I had to push past fears and doubts on numerous occasions, but the sense of necessity and the dire nature of the situation kept me moving forward. I was blessed to have found someone to share a hotel room with before arriving, and she and I were supportive of each other both before and after arriving in Egypt.
The first day we were there, June 13, 2025, we had initially been scheduled to meet at an agreed-upon location in Cairo, board buses to al-Arish, and then again seek permission to march from there to Rafah. However, the plan changed for reasons we weren’t fully aware of (I suspect that the Egyptian authorities were making things difficult for the organizers, and it may have been difficult to find drivers for the buses given the heavy surveillance under which Egyptians must live). In any case, we were instructed to make our way in small groups to the town of Ismailiyya, an hour and a half from Cairo, where we hoped to meet and plan next steps.
In the days that followed, it became clear that we were, indeed, being watched and followed, and scores of activists from various countries were detained and deported.
Three of us set out in a taxi for Ismailiyya, but when we came to the first checkpoint along the road, we were not allowed through. We were told we would have to surrender our passports for some reason. Many non-Egyptians were standing around a nearby building, and it became apparent that they had handed over their passports and had been waiting for them for hours, but to no avail. Some of them warned us not to hand over our passports for fear of not getting them back. Our taxi driver had had his license pulled, and I think he was questioned, though of course he had no clue about anything!
Eventually, the taxi driver got his license back, and we were urged to go back to Cairo. However, we felt as though it was our moral obligation to stay with all the would-be marchers who were stranded without their passports, so we stayed with them instead. The hours went by, and a sense of community began to develop among the people there. At one point, some military vehicles drove up and parked, and very young-looking armed soldiers got out and basically just stood there watching us.
Still more hours later, some of the would-be marchers said, “Well, everybody knows why we’re here, so we might as well demonstrate openly for Palestine!” So, cheers for a free Palestine went up, and speeches were delivered in French, English, and some other languages. Meanwhile, the Egyptian authorities had sent out several military buses and were urging people to get on them to be taken back to Cairo. People were not doing so, however. Eventually, at 7:00 pm local time, plainclothes policemen—thugs, essentially—began lunging at certain individuals, the ones they could see were in leadership positions, and they physically assaulted several of the men, dragging them across the pavement. Others of us locked arms and sat down, but the thugs kept coming at people, knocking a woman violently to the ground and stealing her phone. They were demanding that we get on the buses, which we then did.
They were prisoner buses, with tiny windows at the very top that don’t allow you to see out. I, along with four other women from the American delegation, managed to stay together as we got on one of the buses. We waited for around two hours on the bus, sweltering in the heat, while very gradually, people whose passports had been taken from them got their passports back. Once we were driven off, we expected to be detained and deported. But when we had been traveling in the bus for around an hour heading back to Cairo, we were told that we would simply be let off the bus, five at a time, in locations around Cairo.
We learned that Egypt is indeed a police state, and a gathering of even as few as four people to protest the government is illegal. It was a sobering lesson, and it caused me to feel unwilling to engage in any outward actions that might jeopardize either myself or my group or the local population.
In the days that followed, it became clear that we were, indeed, being watched and followed, and scores of activists from various countries were detained and deported. The crowning act of hostile intimidation by the Egyptian authorities was the arrest, temporary disappearance, and abuse of the Global March’s initiator and lead organizer. Our people were being warned to leave the country, and many of us changed our travel plans to depart earlier than planned.
The lesson: Egypt is in full “compliance” with Israeli directives, fully complicit in its crimes toward the people of Gaza, and never had the slightest intention of allowing the march of solidarity we had hoped to carry out.
As people began leaving the country, a last-minute initiative materialized, namely, that of traveling to Tunisia, whose government and population are nearly all pro-Palestine, to meet with participants in the Sumud overland convoy that had made its way to Egypt’s western border but, not surprisingly, had not been allowed entry. Some of their party might also have been detained at the border (though I’m not sure about this). By the time this initiative emerged, I had already changed my travel plans once, and since the details weren’t very clear to me, I decided simply to head back home.
Now that I am home, I am hoping to become more involved in an initiative that has begun to bypass the United Nation’s useless Security Council by passing a General Assembly resolution that would demand concrete measures such as sending a U.N. peacekeeping force into the occupied Palestinian territories at the request of the State of Palestine, breaking the deadly blockade on Gaza (obviously), calling on countries around the world to jointly boycott Israel on all levels, reopen the apartheid committee, strip Israel of its U.N. credentials, and carry out comprehensive embargos of Israel—pushing individual countries to take this last action in particular. It’s the least we all can do.
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100 Palestinians Killed in Weekend of Israeli Airstrikes on Gaza
Victims include 22 members of one family massacred in their Gaza City home.
Apr 27, 2025
Israel Defense Forces bombing killed at least 100 Palestinians including numerous women and children in the Gaza Strip over the weekend, while the IDF also renewed airstrikes on Lebanon as cease-fire talks between senior Hamas and Egyptian officials wrapped up in Cairo without any breakthrough.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Sunday that Israeli strikes killed at least 51 Palestinians over the previous 24 hours. Among the victims were eight people, including three women and two children, killed in an IDF bombing of a tent in Khan Younis; a man and four children slain in another strike on a tent in Deir al-Balah; and at least six people who died when a coffee shop near the Bureij refugee camp was hit.
The ministry said Saturday that at least 49 Palestinians were killed during the preceding 24 hours, including 22 members of the al-Khour family who were sheltering in their Gaza City home when it was bombed.
The IDF said the strike targeted a Hamas militant. Israel's military relaxed rules of engagement after the October 7, 2023 attack to allow an unlimited number of civilians to be killed when targeting a single Hamas member, no matter how low-ranking.
Saed al-Khour, who is grieving the loss of his family, refuted Israel's claim, telling The Associated Press that "there is no one from the resistance" among the victims.
"We have been pulling out the remains of children, women, and elderly people," al-Khour added.
Israel's U.S.-backed 569-day assault on Gaza has left at least 183,800 Palestinians dead, injured, or missing. Nearly all of Gaza's more than 2 million people have been forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened amid a "complete siege" that is cited in an International Court of Justice genocide case against Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are also fugitives from the International Criminal Court, which issued arrest warrants for the pair last year.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces unleashed a wave of bombing attacks in Lebanon in what critics called a blatant violation of a November cease-fire agreement with the resistance group Hezbollah. The IDF bombed targets in southern Lebanon and in suburbs of the capital city of Beirut.
The IDF, which said it warned residents ahead of the Beirut airstrike, claimed it attacked "an infrastructure where precision missiles" were being stored by Hezbollah, without providing any supporting evidence.
Israel says it will continue its assault and siege on Gaza until Hamas releases the two dozen Israeli and other hostages it has imprisoned since October 2023. Hamas counters that it will only free the hostages in an exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, a complete withdrawal of IDF troops from Gaza, and a new cease-fire agreement. Israel unilaterally broke a January cease-fire last month.
A senior Hamas delegation left Cairo late Saturday following days of talks regarding a possible deal for a multi-year truce and the release of all remaining hostages. The head of Israel's Mossad spy agency was also in Qatar earlier this week for separate cease-fire talks. Qatari mediators said they believed there has been "some progress" in both sides' willingness to reach an agreement.
United Nations agencies and international humanitarian groups—many of which have accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war—have warned in recent days of the imminent risk of renewed famine in Gaza as food stocks run out.
"Children in Gaza are starving," the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East
said on social media Sunday. "The government of Israel continues to block the entry of food and other basics. [This is a] man-made and politically motivated starvation."
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As Israel Pulls Plug on Gaza, Smotrich Says Trump's Ethnic Cleansing Plan 'Taking Shape'
"By openly trying to starve and freeze an entire civilian population to death, the far-right government of indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu has once again clearly demonstrated its genocidal intent in Gaza," said CAIR.
Mar 09, 2025
Israel's finance minister said Sunday that U.S. President Donald Trump's plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza is proceeding, remarks that came on the same day as Israel completely cut off electricity from the last receiving facility in the obliterated Palestinian enclave.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of the far-right Religious Zionism party told fellow Knesset lawmakers that "this plan is taking shape, with ongoing actions in coordination" with the Trump administration.
Smotrich said that he is working with Cabinet members including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz to establish a "migration administration" that will oversee the removal of an indeterminate number of Gaza's approximately 2.1 million people, most of whom are descendants of Palestinians who fled or were ethnically cleansed from what is now Israel during the modern Jewish state's founding in 1948.
While Smotrich insisted that Palestinian removal would be "voluntary," it is highly questionable whether many Palestinians would leave what remains of their homeland of their own free will, or what kind of incentives it would take to convince them to go.
Last month, Trump—who on Wednesday threatened to kill everyone in Gaza unless Hamas handed over the dozens of remaining Israeli and other hostages it has held for over 500 days—vowed that the U.S. would "own" Gaza.
U.S. developers, the president said, will "level" Gaza and build the "Riviera of the Middle East" there after Palestinians—"all of them"—leave. Asked if his plan involved sending U.S. troops to Gaza, Trump replied, "If it's necessary, we'll do that."
Forced removal of people by an occupying power is a war crime according to Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, under which Israel's apartheid settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem are also illegal.
Smotrich said Sunday that the so-called Trump Plan "involves identifying key countries, understanding their interests—both with the U.S. and with us—and fostering cooperation."
"Just to give you an idea—if we remove 10,000 people a day, seven days a week, it will take six months," Smotrich said. "If we remove 5,000 people a day, it will take a year. Of course, this is assuming we have countries willing to take them, but these are very, very, very long processes."
Leaders of both Egypt and Jordan, where Trump has proposed sending Gazans, vehemently oppose the plan. A counterproposal issued by Egypt and other Arab nations—which involves rebuilding Gaza without forcibly displacing its residents—has the support of the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation and nations including China, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy.
Smotrich's remarks came on the same day that Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen said that he "just signed an order for the immediate halt of electricity to the Gaza Strip" as part of a policy to use "all of the tools that are at our disposal to ensure the return of all the hostages."
Smotrich weighed in on the power cut, arguing that "the Gaza Strip must be completely and immediately blacked out as long as even one Israeli hostage is being held there."
Israeli officials believe 24 hostages are still alive in Gaza, including 22 Israelis, one Thai, and one Nepali. The bodies of 35 hostages who died or were killed after their abduction are also being held in Gaza.
"Israel must bomb the huge fuel depots that entered the strip as part of the unfortunate deal, as well as the generators operated by Hamas," Smotrich said, referring to the crumbling cease-fire that went into effect on January 19. Israel stands accused of nearly 1,000 violations of the truce.
In recent days, renewed but limited Israeli airstrikes and statements from Israeli leaders about resuming a full assault on Gaza have further imperiled the shaky cease-fire.
Electricity was first cut off to Gaza in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, as then-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced a "complete siege" of the coastal strip. The ongoing blockade has fueled deadly starvation, disease, and exposure.
Along with Israel's bombardment and invasion—which have left more than 170,000 Palestinians dead, maimed or missing in Gaza—the siege is cited in the South Africa-led genocide case currently before the International Court of Justice. Netanyahu and Gallant are also wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri is also a fugitive from the ICC.
Humanitarian groups warned that the suspension of electricity to Gaza could force the shutdown of the strip's two functioning desalination plants, reducing the already scarce supply of fresh water.
However, Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem said Sunday that the electricity cutoff probably wouldn't have much impact, given the existing siege. But Qassem still called the move "behavior that confirms the occupation's intent to continue its genocidal war against Gaza, through the use of starvation policies, in clear disregard for all international laws and norms."
Hamas further slammed the Israeli move as "cheap and unacceptable blackmail."
In the United States, the Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned what it called "Israel's latest act of genocide in Gaza."
"By openly trying to starve and freeze an entire civilian population to death, the far-right government of indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu has once again clearly demonstrated its genocidal intent in Gaza," CAIR said in a statement. "Banning food, water, fuel, medical supplies—and now electricity—threatens the lives of everyone in Gaza."
"The United States and other western nations must stop treating Palestinians as less than human and stop giving this one government impunity as it flagrantly violates international law," the group added.
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What’s So Dangerous About Trump’s Plan for Ethnically Cleansing Gaza?
The risk is less that the U.S. would actually invade and more that Trump’s words would give Israel the green light to push Palestinians out of the West Bank or renew its offensive in Gaza.
Feb 18, 2025
Let’s be clear: The forced displacement of Palestinians is not a new idea. U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest proposal to take “long-term ownership” of Gaza, to “clean out” the “mess,” and to turn it into a “Riviera of the Middle East” is just the latest iteration of efforts aimed at ethnically cleansing Palestinians from their homeland.
What makes Trump’s comments dangerous is not the immediate threat of U.S. military intervention in Gaza followed by the expulsion of its 2.2 million residents. The real danger lies elsewhere.
First, Israel may interpret Trump’s words as a green light to push Palestinians out of Gaza or the West Bank. Second, the U.S. could tacitly endorse another Israeli offensive under the guise of fulfilling the president’s wishes. Third, Trump’s remarks suggest his foreign policy on Palestine will remain largely unchanged from his predecessor’s.
Trump’s so-called “humanitarian” ethnic cleansing proposal will similarly go down in history as another failed attempt, particularly as Arab and international solidarity with the steadfast Palestinian people is stronger than it has been in years.
Some Democrats have seized this moment to criticize Arab and Palestinian Americans who voted for Trump or abstained from supporting Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in the last elections. However, the idea of ethnic cleansing was already being floated during the Biden administration.
While then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated that “Palestinian civilians... must not be pressed to leave Gaza,” former President Joe Biden created the conditions for displacement through unconditional military support for Israel. This allowed one of the most devastating wars in modern Middle Eastern history to unfold.
Just days into the war, on October 13, 2023, Jordan’s King Abdullah II warned Blinken in Amman against any Israeli attempt to “forcibly displace Palestinians from all Palestinian territories or cause their internal displacement.”
The latter displacement became a reality as most of northern Gaza’s population was crammed into overcrowded refugee encampments in central and southern Gaza, where conditions have been and remain inhumane for over 16 months.
At the same time, another displacement campaign is underway in the West Bank, particularly in its northern regions, accelerating in recent weeks. Thousands of Palestinian families have already been displaced in the Jenin governorate and other areas.
Despite this, the Biden administration has done little to pressure Israel to stop.
Arab concerns over Palestinian expulsion were real from the war’s outset. Almost every Arab leader raised the alarm, often repeatedly.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi addressed the issue multiple times, warning of Israeli efforts—and possibly U.S. involvement—in a “population transfer” scheme.
“What is happening now in Gaza is an attempt to force civilian residents to seek refuge and migrate to Egypt,” Sisi stated, insisting that such an outcome “should not be accepted.”
Fifteen months later, under Trump, he repeated his rejection, vowing that Egypt would not participate in this “act of injustice.”
The Saudi statement was issued almost immediately after Trump doubled down on the idea during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on February 4. The Saudi foreign ministry went further than rejecting Trump’s “ownership” of Gaza but articulated a political discourse that summarized Riyad’s, in fact, the Arab League’s position on Palestine.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs affirms that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s position on the establishment of a Palestinian state is firm and unwavering,” the statement said, adding that the Kingdom “also reaffirms its unequivocal rejection of any infringement on the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, whether through Israeli settlement policies, land annexation, or attempts to displace the Palestinian people from their land.”
The new U.S. administration, however, seems oblivious to Palestinian history. Given the mass displacement of Palestinians in 1948, no Arab government—let alone the Palestinian leadership—would support another Israeli-U.S. effort to ethnically cleanse millions into neighboring states.
Beyond the immorality of expelling an Indigenous population, history has shown that such actions destabilize the region for generations. The 1948 Nakba, which saw the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, ignited the Arab-Israeli conflict, whose repercussions continue today.
History also teaches us that the Nakba was not an isolated event. Israel has repeatedly attempted ethnic cleansing, starting with its intense attacks on Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza in the early 1950s, and ever since.
The 1967 war, known as the Naksa or “Setback,” led to the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, both internally and externally. In the years that followed, various U.S.-Israeli initiatives throughout the 1970s sought to relocate the Palestinian population to the Sinai desert. However, these efforts failed due to the steadfastness and collective resistance of the people of Gaza.
Trump’s so-called “humanitarian” ethnic cleansing proposal will similarly go down in history as another failed attempt, particularly as Arab and international solidarity with the steadfast Palestinian people is stronger than it has been in years.
The key question now is whether Arabs and other supporters of Palestine worldwide will go beyond merely rejecting such sinister proposals and take the initiative to push for the restoration of the Palestinian homeland. This requires a justice-based international campaign, rooted in international law and driven by the aspirations of the Palestinian people themselves.
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Menendez Sentenced to 11 Years in Prison for Bribery
"Bob Menendez's blatant corruption made a mockery of the Senate and was one more piece of the shattering of Americans' trust in our government in recent years," said the head of one government watchdog.
Jan 29, 2025
"Americans can feel secure in the knowledge that, in at least some cases, corruption does not go unpunished," said one government watchdog on Wednesday after a federal district court judge in New York sentenced former Sen. Robert Menendez to 11 years in prison for bribery, extortion, and other crimes.
Menendez, who represented New Jersey as a Democrat in the Senate for 18 years, was convicted last year of trading his political influence, including as former chair of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, for gifts including cash, gold bricks, and a luxury car.
A jury found him guilty of accepting bribes from three businessmen and acting as a foreign agent on behalf of Egypt.
He resigned from the Senate soon after his conviction, as his colleagues began considering an expulsion. U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) led the call for his resignation, saying Menendez should step down to "maintain the integrity" of his Senate seat.
He was convicted of using his political clout to intervene in criminal cases on behalf of his associates, two of whom were also sentenced on Wednesday.
"It is critical that we hold our elected leaders to the highest professional and ethical standards."
Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) said the sentence was "in line with these very serious offenses."
"Bob Menendez's blatant corruption made a mockery of the Senate and was one more piece of the shattering of Americans' trust in our government in recent years," said Bookbinder. "By sending Menendez to prison, the judge has shown that the system can work."
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, also a Democrat, said that although Menendez "accomplished many things in behalf of our state and our residents... sadly he will be remembered for putting his own interests and financial gain ahead of the public interest."
"At a time when our country is deeply divided," said Murphy, "it is critical that we hold our elected leaders to the highest professional and ethical standards."
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Israeli Forces Kill at Least 24 People Trying to Go Home in Southern Lebanon
The killings came as Israel and Lebanon reportedly agreed to extend the deadline for Israeli forces to leave the country until mid-February.
Jan 27, 2025
Israeli forces killed at least 24 Lebanese and injured more than 130 others as they tried to return to their homes in occupied southern Lebanon, the country's Ministry of Public Health said Monday.
The ministry said in a statement that the dead include six women. One Lebanese soldier was also reportedly killed. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops opened fire on residents desperate to go home after the 60-day deadline for Israeli forces to withdraw from southern Lebanon expired.
The Washington Post reported Monday that an IDF spokesperson claimed that Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah sent "agitators" into the southern part of the country in a bid to inflame tensions. No evidence was provided to support the claim.
IDF Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee
warned Lebanese on Sunday that, while Israeli forces "do not intend to target you... at this stage you are prohibited from returning to your homes... until further notice," and that "anyone who moves south" of an Israeli-designated line along the Litani River "puts themselves at risk." Scores of villages are located south of the IDF "red line."
The White Housesaid Sunday that Israel and Lebanon have agreed to an extension of the deadline for Israel's withdrawal from the country, with IDF troops now having until February 18 to leave. Lebanese and international media reported several Israeli cease-fire violations since the extension was announced.
Last month, Amnesty Internationalcalled for a war crimes investigation into IDF airstrikes in Lebanon, as well as a suspension of arms transfers to Israel over its attacks on the country, and on Gaza and the illegally occupied West Bank in Palestine.
Israeli forces—which had been attacking Lebanon since October 2023, when Hezbollah began launching rockets and other projectiles at targets in northern Israel in solidarity with Gaza—initiated a major bombing campaign and invasion of the northern neighbor last October 1 that killed more than 4,000 people, wounded over 16,000 others, and forcibly displaced more than 1.2 million more, according to Lebanese officials.
Meanwhile in Gaza, where a fragile cease-fire took effect earlier this month, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians forcibly displaced by Israel's 15-month war on the coastal enclave—which local officials say has left around 170,000 people dead, maimed, or missing—are in the process of returning home to scenes of utter destruction.
Several Arab leaders including Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Jordanian King Abdullah, and officials in Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi's government on Sunday condemned U.S. President Donald Trump's call for Jordan and Egypt to take "about a million-and-a-half" Palestinian refugees from Gaza after "we just clean out that whole thing," with some observers accusing the Republican of endorsing ethnic cleansing.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) also called out Trump, saying Monday: "There is a name for this—ethnic cleansing—and it's a war crime. This outrageous idea should be condemned by every American."
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Trump Admin Reportedly Implements Widespread Freeze on Foreign Aid—Except to Israel and Egypt
"Guess which country was exempted…?" wrote the investigative outlet Drop Site News.
Jan 24, 2025
The State Department on Friday reportedly issued guidance that it is freezing almost all U.S. foreign assistance—with exceptions for emergency food aid and foreign military financing for two U.S. allies, Israel and Egypt—according to a cable obtained by multiple outlets.
"Guess which country was exempted....?" wrote the investigative outlet Drop Site, in response to the cable, which independent journalist Ken Klippenstein shared on social media.
The aid carve out for Israel follows 15 months of nearly unqualified U.S. support for the Israeli government during its military campaign on the Gaza Strip, which began after Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023, and led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians, according to the local health officials. A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas went into effect on Sunday, but Israel has since then attacked the city of Jenin in the West Bank.
Other traditional U.S. allies, like Ukraine and Taiwan, are not listed among the waivers to the pause. Trump has been a longtime critic of NATO, which Ukraine hopes to join, and has been critical of the scale of U.S. support for Ukraine as it battles an invasion by Russia.
On Monday, his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order calling for a 90-day pause on U.S. foreign development assistance in order to assess "programmatic efficiencies and consistency with United States foreign policy." But this latest memo, signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and sent to embassies worldwide, further fleshes out that directive.
The U.S. "shall not provide foreign assistance funded by or through the department and USAID without the secretary of state's authorization or the authorization of his designee," according to the cable, which was referring to the United States Agency for International Development.
Additionally, "no new obligations shall be made for foreign assistance until such times as the secretary shall determine, following a review" and "for existing foreign assistance awards, contracting officers and grant officers shall immediately issue stop-work orders."
Politico, which also obtained Rubio's memo, reported that "it had not been clear from the president's [Monday] order if it would affect already appropriated funds or Ukraine aid. The new guidance means no further actions will be taken to disperse aid funding to programs already approved by the U.S. government, according to three current and two former officials familiar with the new guidance."
"State just totally went nuclear on foreign assistance," one State Department official told Politico.
In fiscal year 2023, the most recent year with complete government reporting, the U.S. spent $68 billion in foreign aid obligations, on topics ranging from economic development, to health and the environment. Ukraine was the top recipient of foreign aid that year, with $17 billion obligated, and Israel came in second, with $3.3 billion.
According to The Associated Press, which also obtained the cable, the order was particularly disappointing to humanitarian officials who hoped that health clinics and other health programs worldwide would be spared from the funding freeze.
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Beyond the Myths: Reflecting on Jimmy Carter’s Israel-Palestine Legacy
More than any other U.S. president, he tried to create a better future for Palestinians and for Israeli Jews.
Dec 30, 2024
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who died Sunday at the age of 100, is a man whose legacy will forever be inextricably linked to Israel and Palestine. Yet that legacy will be built as much on myth as on reality, as with so many other aspects of the history and politics of the “Holy Land.”
Carter is remembered fondly by many on the left, and for good reason. In many areas, he tried to govern with humanity, decency, and with regard to people’s rights. Whether due to his own shortcomings or the limitations of the system, he was not always successful, as citizens of Cambodia and East Timor can attest. Still, if he was far from perfect, Carter did still bring principles of human rights into his policy thinking more than any other U.S. president in living memory, and quite possibly in all of American history.
There can be little doubt that Carter’s heart was in the right place when it came to his ambition to resolve what he referred to as the “Israel-Palestine conflict.” Carter spoke often about the need for Palestinian rights to be recognized, but he also repeatedly noted that he was motivated by his affection for Israel and his desire to see it survive, something he did not believe it could do if it continued to oppress the Palestinians.
The most striking thing I recall about Carter—aside from the oppressive feeling his Secret Service guards projected—was the depth of his feeling when he talked about both Jewish history and the Palestinian present, at that time.
Carter had, and often expressed, boundless sympathy for the Jewish people and what they had endured throughout history. But he recognized both that this history did not justify the oppression of another people and that establishing an ethnocentric apartheid state would not end the scourge of antisemitism or the harm that caused to Jews. This was the ethos he expressed in his book, even while it was less visible in his policies as president.
Carter’s view of the issue was, inevitably, shaped by his evangelical Christian background and his thorough immersion in the view of Israel that dominated the United States throughout the Cold War years after World War II. It was a view of Israel that few Palestinians would recognize, but it was also a view that, in the 1970s and 1980s, was still more critical of Israeli actions than the overwhelming majority of Americans.
Carter’s view evolved over the years, as we can see from the two major points of Carter’s engagement with the issue: the Camp David agreement and Israel-Egypt peace treaty of 1978 and 1979, respectively; and the publication of his controversial book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, in 2006.
Meeting Carter
I had the privilege of meeting President Carter a few years before his book was published. The meeting was attended by about half a dozen progressive leaders in the San Francisco Bay Area, on the UC Berkeley campus.
The most striking thing I recall about Carter—aside from the oppressive feeling his Secret Service guards projected—was the depth of his feeling when he talked about both Jewish history and the Palestinian present, at that time. I’ve met many political leaders, and I’m used to the air of phoniness they project. There was none of that with Carter. If he wasn’t genuinely affected by the suffering he was talking about, he was a much better actor than he ever was a politician.
Carter spoke with pride of the work he put in to get Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat to an agreement at Camp David, and with immense regret that he didn’t do more to secure a better future for the Palestinian people. One can debate the politics and strategy of his actions, and even find considerable fault with them, but it is clear that his intentions toward both peoples were positive.
Carter is seen by much of the Jewish community and many other supporters of Israel as an enemy, the man who forced then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to accept compromises that he and the pro-Israel community wished to reject. But as it played out, Carter did more for Israel’s security than any other U.S. president, while unwittingly setting the stage for the steady erosion of Palestinian rights that the Oslo process represented.
Camp David
The result of the Camp David summit and the Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement that emerged from it was that Israel has not faced a credible military threat since the agreement was put in place. Carter understood, as any observer would, that if Israel made peace with Egypt, it would remove the single biggest military challenger in the region and the remaining Arab states would no longer be able to mount a credible threat against Israel. He understood as well that by bringing Egypt firmly into the United States’ sphere of influence, the Cold War balance of power in the Middle East shifted significantly.
Carter, in that case, acted not only in the interests of Israel, but also had a clear American interest in the outcome. The regime of annual aid that has flowed ever since to both Israel and Egypt locked both countries into an alliance, and into a certain degree of dependence on the U.S., a factor that was of great importance in Cold War strategy.
All of this was lost on Israel’s supporters in the United States. In his book, We Are Not One: A History of America’s Fight Over Israel, historian Eric Alterman described the reaction to Carter mentioning the “legitimate rights of the Palestinian people,” citing Carter’s Press Secretary Jody Powell describing the reaction as “bonkers.” Alterman elaborated:
Democratic fundraising events were cancelled. Representatives of the administration to Jewish groups were shunned. Hyman Bookbinder, the outspokenly liberal Washington representative of the American Jewish Committee, lectured the Carter people, “Obviously you apparently do not really understand what these words mean…‘Palestinian rights’ means the destruction of Israel.” A Harris poll taken at the time found 60% of Jews agreeing with the statement that “the president and his people have abandoned Israel.”
Alterman further noted that the chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations at the time, Alexander Schindler, leaked the contents of a private meeting with Carter to the press, a highly unusual betrayal of trust. That generated even more intense controversy and American Jewish anger at Carter, as it was intended to do.
All of this, it must be noted, was in response to Carter’s vision of Palestine being a sort of autonomous adjunct of Jordan, a position not far removed from that of most of the Israeli political spectrum. He was not advocating an independent Palestinian state, an idea which was completely out of bounds in American political discourse of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Indeed, Carter, in March 1977, said that “the first prerequisite of a lasting peace is the recognition of Israel by her neighbors, Israel’s right to exist, Israel’s right to exist permanently.” Carter never wavered from that position, despite the invective hurled at him by Israelis and Israel’s American boosters for the rest of his life.
When the historic agreement emerged from Camp David, parts of the Jewish community saw Carter in a better light, but this soon faded amid controversy over the sale of fighter jets to Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Jewish leadership got even more enraged when, due to a miscommunication, the U.S. voted in favor of a United Nations Security Council resolution that condemned Israeli settlement in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Though Carter said that the U.S. was supposed to abstain and only voted “yes” by mistake, the Jewish leadership, already hostile to him, was not mollified. It’s worth noting, however, that at that time, opposition to settlements was a much stronger U.S. policy, so much so that even the staunchest pro-Israel advocates didn’t expect the U.S. to vote “no” on the resolution. Times have certainly changed.
While the Jewish community was nowhere near large or powerful enough to cause the defeat of an incumbent president, it was a factor in Edward Kennedy’s strong, if ultimately unsuccessful, challenge for the Democratic nomination in 1980 which weakened Carter. Carter had the poorest showing among Jews of any Democratic presidential candidate since 1920, although he still won a plurality of the vote (John Anderson, who ran as an Independent, got 15% of the Jewish vote to Carter’s 45% and Ronald Reagan’s 39%).
Yet, after all of that, and with some continued grumbling and foot-stomping, Israel did manage to make a peace with Egypt; withdraw its settlements from the Sinai Peninsula; secure the annual funding that has stabilized and grown its economy and helped it become the dominant military power in the region; and kept Egypt as a cold ally ever since. Israel has Jimmy Carter to thank for all of that.
Reagan did little but press forward on Carter’s actions until the end of his second term. Ironically, Reagan would, only a few months after taking office, have his own run-ins with Israel’s domestic U.S. lobby, over the sale of the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) to Saudi Arabia.
Yet Reagan remained beloved among the pro-Israel forces, despite selling a state-of-the-art military system to the Saudis, whom Israel was still extremely unfriendly with at that point; despite his frequent criticism of Israel’s behavior in Lebanon; and despite rebuking Israel for its dangerous attack on the Osirak nuclear site in Iraq in 1981. The difference was that Reagan rarely mentioned the Palestinians and often said nice things about Israel.
Apartheid
“And the word ‘apartheid’ is exactly accurate,” Carter told journalist Amy Goodman in 2007. “Within Palestinian territory, they are absolutely and totally separated, much worse than they were in South Africa, by the way. And the other thing is, the other definition of ‘apartheid’ is, one side dominates the other. And the Israelis completely dominate the life of the Palestinian people.”
Carter was responding to the resounding criticism of his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. The book itself was far less remarkable than the title, which drew an avalanche of criticism to Carter, including accusations of antisemitism. Then-ADL leader Abraham Foxman said, “The title is to de-legitimize Israel, because if Israel is like South Africa, it doesn’t really deserve to be a democratic state. He’s provoking, he’s outrageous, and he’s bigoted.”
Foxman’s statement is bizarre. States, of course, do not “deserve” to be democratic, it is something they either are to a significant degree or they are not. Foxman could not even utter the possibility that Israel was not a democratic state, which, interestingly, was certainly not what Carter was saying either in his book or his subsequent statements and writing.
Jimmy Carter, for all of his missteps, was, at heart, the decent man that Joe Biden liked to claim to be and couldn’t be farther away from actually being.
Carter was trying to warn Israel that it would become an apartheid state if it didn’t change course. This stood in sharp contrast to the claims of Palestinians, who, by 2007, had already been accusing Israel of apartheid for many years. Worse for Foxman was that Carter made the argument that legitimate Palestinian views were rarely heard in the media. Although Carter neither stated, nor even implied, that this demonstrable statement of fact had anything to do with a nefarious conspiracy of Jewish control, Foxman said, “The reason he gives for why he wrote this book is this shameless, shameful canard that the Jews control the debate in this country, especially when it comes to the media.”
Carter knew he was going to get hit for the title of his book. The substance, however, made it clear that he was trying to steer Israel away from its own self-immolation on the altar of its occupation. At the end of his book, he wrote, “The bottom line is this: Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law... It will be a tragedy—for the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the world—if peace is rejected and a system of oppression, apartheid, and sustained violence is permitted to prevail.”
The woman in Joe Biden’s administration who currently, and undeservedly, holds the position of Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Deborah Lipstadt, said Carter’s book “ignores a legacy of mistreatment, expulsion, and murder committed against Jews. It trivializes the murder of Israelis. Now, facing a storm of criticism, he has relied on antisemitic stereotypes in defense.” The scurrilous accusation is backed up with the same sleight of hand Foxman used.
Carter continued to advocate for Palestinian rights while also, contrary to the assertion of Lipstadt and Foxman, repeatedly asserting that Israel must be afforded a secure existence within recognized and clear borders.
In November 2016, as Barack Obama was preparing to leave office, Carter urged the outgoing president to recognize a Palestinian state, arguing, “The combined weight of United States recognition, United Nations membership, and a Security Council resolution solidly grounded in international law would lay the foundation for future diplomacy. These steps would bolster moderate Palestinian leadership, while sending a clear assurance to the Israeli public of the worldwide recognition of Israel and its security.” It was not the first time he had promoted such recognition.
This was the theme of Carter’s efforts from the 1970s to the end of his days. He was willing to take risks to see that vision come true. Over the years, he and the Carter Center he started made many efforts to heal the breach between Fatah and Hamas, ignoring criticism over talking with Hamas.
Carter’s legacy should be scrutinized carefully and honestly, with the same critical eye as any other president. He made his mistakes, and, as with any president, innocent people suffered as a result. But more than any other U.S. president, Jimmy Carter tried to create a better future for Palestinians and for Israeli Jews. No president before or since has tried as hard or has placed peace ahead of political concerns to the extent he did.
Jimmy Carter, for all of his missteps, was, at heart, the decent man that Joe Biden liked to claim to be and couldn’t be farther away from actually being. The hateful comments that came his way for many years, mostly from the Jewish community but also from the Christian Zionists who share his evangelical beliefs but not his understanding of what those beliefs mean, were horribly misplaced. He cared deeply and tried to do what he could to create a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike. For that, he’s been called an antisemite. Every person who ever uttered that slur against him owes him an apology. Now would be a good time to send it.
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Jimmy Carter, Middle East Peace, and The Man Who Killed My Dog
On how I ended up having more affection for Jimmy Carter than for any president before or since in my lifetime.
Dec 30, 2024
In January 1977 the nuns where we used to attend church in Lebanon gifted me the only dog I ever owned, a mutt they’d called Jimmy, after the newly elected American president. American politics was the world’s most accessible entertainment even then, so Jimmy Carter was big news in Lebanon. To those Antonine nuns Carter was something of a sex symbol. He wore his Christianity on his sleeve with a leer worthy of Mary Magdalene, allowing them to lust for him in their heart. In consequence they delivered me a Jimmy more frisky than pious.
Not being a registered Democrat I promptly renamed my new dog to something more presidential (King). Little did I know that I’d end up having more affection for Jimmy Carter than for any president before or since in my lifetime, which began a year to the day after JFK’s assassination. Maybe it’s because Carter was still president when I landed in the United States as a permanent resident in 1979. Inflation meant nothing to me. Gas lines were way shorter than they’d been in Lebanon. No one was shooting at me even in New York City, where we lived at what was to be the height of its post-Prohibition crime wave. It was a great time.
I’d come to admire Carter from another memory in 1978. This was the president who’d managed what no other president before or since has managed. He’d gotten Egypt and Israel to sign a peace treaty and Israel to give up the Sinai, the biggest and last real achievement in Middle East peacemaking since France and Britain turned that region into a hellhole on time-release after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire.
Egypt’s Anwar Sadat thought he was a latter-day pharaoh, but he’d started the impossible by going to Jerusalem and daring the Israelis to the peace table. Israel’s Menahem Begin was (and remained) a terrorist, his hatred for Arabs overmatching in weaponry and violence Arabs’ berserk hatred for Jews. Carter’s skill and smarts, and a self-righteousness almost as distressing as Woodrow Wilson’s, looked past all that in those famous 13 days at Camp David.
Opinion polls told Carter he was nuts. He looked past them. He ignored the imperious convention that presidents should not personally engage in negotiations. Mostly, he looked past the bigoted Kissinger doctrine–that Israel is always right, that nothing in Middle East initiatives ought to be done without Israel’s approval first. The approach had prevailed since Kennedy (Eisenhower, the last president to stand up to Israel, had no use for it) and would prevail again after Carter, as it does to Biden-bloodied day.
Camp David was the exception.
Of course neither Begin nor Sadat gave a shit about Palestinians. No Arabs and no Israelis ever have. They just wanted to remove their militaries from each other’s faces so Sadat could go back to repressing his people and Begin could go back to repressing Palestinians in the rest of the occupied territories. Peace with Egypt was to be the recalibration of repression in the West bank and Gaza. Carter, so often naive, looked past that, too, thinking Camp David was a start, not an end. (Clinton repeated the mistake with the deservedly doomed Oslo accords a decade and a half later.) He took at face value both men’s promises that they’d turn to the Palestinian problem some other time. Maybe Sadat meant it. It’s doubtful. It’s certain Begin, who called Palestinians “beasts walking on two legs” while Rafael Eitan, the Israeli military’s chief of staff, called them “drugged roaches in a bottle,” didn’t mean it.
Sadat was assassinated for signing the Camp David accords. Reagan was elected. The Middle East bored him once he vaguely learned it wasn’t to the right of the Midwest. He cleared the way for more unlawful Israeli colonization of the West Bank.
Begin took advantage, going on an orgy of “settlements”–a sanitizing euphemism that reduces land theft to something like summer camp and that the servile American press uses still. The orgy accelerated under Sharon and Netanyahu, with American money. Begin and Sharon in 1982 invaded Lebanon (with American weaponry) in the deadliest of all Israeli invasions until then, kicking off a 20-year occupation. Begin thought he was getting rid of the PLO. The invasion inseminated the more brutal and indigenous Hezbollah, provoking yet more wars–1996, 2006, 2024–with America turning a blind eye and thousands of Lebanese civilians paying the price, as always.
The 1994 peace between Israel and Jordan gave Israel still freer rein in the West Bank, once the brief hopes of the Oslo accords–which were supposed to lead to an autonomous Palestinian state–were discarded with Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination by an Israeli terrorist a year later–a Jewish ultra-nationalist, but really the twin of Sadat’s assassins. The so-called two-state solution to which every American president paid lip service and Israel never took seriously died about then, reinforcing what Carter called, with unfortunate restraint, Israeli apartheid.
At home, Carter’s presidency is remembered as a failure. Carter biographer Kai Bird has discredited the myth, documenting too many accomplishments to count. Not that this amnesiac country is interested in fact. The two crises that overwhelmed Carter’s legacy were the oil shock of 1979 and its subsequent inflation, and the Iranian hostage crisis, when 53 Americans were held hostage for 444 days in Tehran after the fall of the Shah. The oil shock was not Carter’s doing. The hostage crisis was.
The Shah was one of the most vain and mass-murdering leaders of the 20th century, a sort of dandy Idi Amin. He was the mutant child of an abominable union between Winston Churchill and the CIA in 1953. He’d been flattered, financed and fellated by every American president since Eisenhower on the cynical calculation that tyrannizing over 40 million Iranians in exchange for blocking Soviet control of the Persian Gulf was ok with them. We finally paid the price. The Shah was ousted by the identically reprehensible but also vengeful Khomeini.
Carter despised the Shah and initially resisted for most of a year letting him into the United States. The Shah was now himself battling what he’d been to his country: cancer. Carter’s aides and Henry Kissinger (as always) kept up the pressure. Kissinger threatened to undermine Carter’s arms control treaty with the Soviets by condemning SALT II before the Senate.
Just as Carter was building what seemed like constructive relations with the new Iranian regime, he gave in and let the Shah check into New York Hospital, despite warnings from the American embassy in Tehran that it would endanger the staff there. It was the single worst decision of Carter’s presidency. Nine days after the Shah entered the United States, Iranian militants took the Americans hostage.
But for one more error–again giving in to hawks with an attempted rescue that ended in disaster in the Iranian desert, with the death of eight Americans–Carter handled the crisis with admirable diplomacy, refusing escalations to safeguard the life of the hostages even at the cost of his plummeting poll numbers.
He might have won their release but for the Reagan campaign repeating the Nixon campaign’s treachery against Johnson in 1968. Nixon go-betweens carried out secret negotiations with the enemy for electoral gain. So did Reagan’s with Iran. It was a preview of Oliver North’s secret negotiations and illegal arms deals with the regime a few years later as Reagan secretly siphoned millions of dollars and weapons to Nicaraguan terrorists he called “freedom fighters.”
As Kai Bird wrote, “now we have good evidence that Ronald Reagan’s campaign manager Bill Casey made a secret trip to Madrid in the summer of 1980, where he may have met with a representative of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and thus prolonged the hostage crisis. If this is true, such interference in the hostage negotiations sought to deny the Carter administration an October surprise, a release of the hostages late in the campaign, and it was dirty politics and a raw deal for the American hostages.”
Of course it’s true: Khomeini released the hostages minutes after Reagan was inaugurated, the day the most scandal-free administration of the 20th century gave way to the most scandal-ridden. It was Fantasyland again in (white) America.
Americans like their country to be run as a theme park. Annoyances like reality, responsibility and malaise have no place. Neither did Carter. The fantasists have been taking their revenge on him ever since, even as Carter’s legend grew in the 43 years since his presidency. He became the busiest ex-president in history, if still the least celebrated and the most shunned. The great conciliator out-hustled some of his predecessors’ actual presidencies (notably the senescent Reagan, Trump and all those zeros between Wilson and FDR), and of course out-living two of those who followed him. I thought he had a good chance of outliving Biden and Trump II. He’s decided otherwise. His one hundred years of solitude are over.
As for King, my dog, I’m glad I renamed him. A year after I left Lebanon he, too, was assassinated. I wouldn’t have wanted to have Jimmy’s death on my conscience. My poor dog was running after a neighbor’s chickens. The neighbor, Khalil, shot him dead. The same neighbor who not long afterward shot his own son, Munir–who had been one of my closest friends–dead. Khalil was finally imprisoned.
Lebanon, like the rest of the Middle East, could have used a few dozen Carter Centers: “Waging peace. Fighting Disease. Building Hope.” So could the United States, a nation proudly and vindictively becoming more Begin than Sadat, more Khalil than Carter, by the day.
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