Poodle leftist Beilin wringing his hands
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1208870489796&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull UN Ambassador Dan Gillerman should be recalled to Israel following disparaging remarks he made regarding former US president Jimmy Carter, Meretz MK Yossi Beilin said Friday. Gillerman had said that Carter's hands were "bloody" after he shook the hand of Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal.
Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Dan Gillerman.
Photo: AP
Slideshow: Pictures of the week "It is Gilman's prerogative to criticize Carter," Beilin said. "However, Israel has is perpetually indebted to a person who saved many Israeli lives by bringing peace with Egypt with his own hands."
NU/NRP MK Zvi Hendel, on the other hand, called on Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to show support for Gillerman. "Beilin, who has led hallucinatory peace processes over the past decade, is the last person who can preach to someone who is saying the truth."
Carter, he said, "is an overt anti-Semite."
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Gillerman also called former President Jimmy Carter "a bigot" for meeting with the leader of Hamas in Syria.
Carter "went to the region with soiled hands and came back with bloody hands after shaking the hand of Khaled Mashaal, the leader of Hamas," Gillerman told reporters at a luncheon briefing.
The diplomat was questioned about problems facing Israel during a wide-ranging discussion lasting more than an hour. The briefing was sponsored by The Israel Project, a Washington-based, media-oriented advocacy group.
The ambassador's harsh words for Carter came days after the former president met with Mashaal for seven hours in Damascus to negotiate a cease-fire with Gaza's Hamas rulers. Carter then called Mashaal on Monday to try to get him to agree to a one-month truce without conditions, but the Hamas leader rejected the idea.
The ambassador called last weekend's encounter "a very sad episode in American history."
He said it was "a shame" to see Carter, who had done "good things" as a former president, "turn into what I believe to be a bigot."
Telephone calls by The Associated Press to two Atlanta numbers for Carter were not immediately returned Thursday.
During Carter's visit, Gillerman said, Hamas "was shelling our cities and maiming and injuring and wounding Israeli babies and Israeli children."
The ambassador noted that Hamas is armed and trained by Iran, whose president once called for Israel to be "wiped off the map."
"The real danger, the real problem is not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the real threat is Iran," he said.
Gillerman spoke with reporters from around the world at the Times Square offices of a New York law firm on the same day Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was in Washington meeting with President George W. Bush.
The ambassador said he was "quite optimistic" about the chances for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement because Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have met more times than any previous leaders of the two sides.
"I believe they've gone deeper and further than any other Israeli or Palestinian leader, and I believe that there is a very good chance (for a settlement)," he said.
Gillerman also was asked about the arrest last week in New Jersey of Ben-ami Kadish, the 84-year-old man accused of passing US weapons program secrets to an Israeli agent a quarter-century ago. The retired US military engineer faces charges linking him to the same now-defunct Israeli intelligence agency that used Jonathan Pollard, who is serving a life sentence for spying for Israel.
Gillerman called it "a very old matter."
"It pertains to something that may or may not have happened 25 years ago" and would be decided when Kadish goes to trial, he said.
In the wake of the Pollard case, the ambassador said Israel had made a pledge not to spy on the United States, "and that is something which I know that we have honored completely."
The ambassador declined to comment on US government reports that Syria was building a nuclear reactor with North Korean assistance before it was bombed by Israeli planes last year.
Gillerman called Syria a "destabilizing influence" in the Middle East.
"You see Syria's hosting, very hospitably and warmly, over 10 terror organizations in Damascus," the ambassador said, adding that the country also supports Hezbollah, an anti-Israeli Shi'ite group in Lebanon with close ties to Iran and Syria.
"Basically, Syria and Iran, together with Hamas and Hezbollah, are the main axes of terror and evil in the world," the Israeli ambassador said.
Topic: Israel's Amb. to U.N. Carter Bigot with bloody hands (Read 2226 times)