Carter: Yes, and I read the charter of the PLO too, that still stated the existence 5 years after the Olso agreement.

MM: Right but it's been changed since Olso—afterward. But the Hamas Charter includes more anti-Semitic passages than anything in “Mein Kampf.” Mein Kampf never talked about massacring all Jews. The Hamas Charter talks about that.

Carter: If you wanna talk about that ancient history, fine, but if you want to talk about what's going on now--

MM: --Well that's still the Hamas Charter, even Mr. Marzouk said they haven't changed it.

Carter: When I was there, they authorized me to make a statement for them in Israel, which I did when I got back to Jerusalem at a very large meeting of the foreign policy organization in Israel. And they made a simultaneous statement—the leader of Hamas, to Al Jazeera and a large collection of news media--that Hamas will accept any agreement, any peace agreement negotiated between Abu Mazen and Israel, if the agreement is submitted to the people in the West Bank in Gaza in a referendum and approved. That's what they have agreed to do. And they also told me, not publicly, that they would accept Israel's right to exist and to live in peace, but they would not recognize Israel diplomatically unless Israel was prepared to recognize Hamas and Fatah diplomatically. And as you know, Israel has never even recognized the Palestinian Authority, they've only recognized the PLO.

MM: Okay, President Carter, the section of the Hamas Charter—and I'm holding it in front of me—that I'm particularly concerned about---

Carter: ---I'm not going to try to defend the Hamas Charter any more than I would try to defend the PLO charter, because it calls for the destruction of Israel---

MM: ---It calls for the murder of individual Jews. It calls for the murder of all Jews so that judgment day can come. It says, "The Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realization of Allah's promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said, “The day of judgment will not come about until Muslims kill the Jews (and the passage adds: “When the Jews will hide behind stones and trees, the sones and trees will say, O Muslim, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”)

Carter:--If you want to talk about ancient history, Christians believe that in the second coming, Christ can't come back to the Holy Land until all Jews are either dead or become Christian.

MM: Nobody is calling upon the State of Israel to rely for its security on a promise from people who believe that. But you think that the State of Israel, and the United States of America, should count on promises by Hamas. Right?

Carter: As you possibly know, the United States does not recognize or, at this time, does not deal with Hamas. But, the leaders of the United States are sure—along with anyone else who is rational about it—that you can't have a permanent peace in the mid-east unless Hamas and its supporters are involved, because Hamas now has the support, probably, of a majority of Palestinians, and the Palestinians have to negotiate with Israel.

MM: Would you advise Israeli leaders to feel confident about promises from Hamas?

Carter: I know that in last April--you can look it up yourself if you will--there was a public opinion poll done in Israel reported in Haaretz where 64% of the Israeli public, including your relatives who live over there, I presume, voted that Israel should be dealing directly with Hamas--should be negotiating with Hamas. And the leaders of the three top Israeli intelligence agencies said the same thing.

MM: There's not a single Israeli politician in any of the leading parties who believes that, President Carter. I'm sorry that our time is up. I wish we could continue the conversation.....

I deeply regret that the commercial came up and the interview drew to a close before I could correct some of the misimpressions the former President conveyed. The Israelis who favor negotiating with Hamas do so on the same basis that the Bush administration suggested it could countenance such negotiation: only if Hamas renounced violence, recognized Israel, and committed to honor past agreements signed in the name of the Palestinian People. President Carter’s support for the notion that Hamas will recognize Israel only when Israel recognizes Hamas is a pathetic effort to equate a rag-tag group of terrorists who can’t even govern the tiny territory of Gaza with a prosperous, powerful and democratic nation-state that’s been a member of the United Nations for 60 years.

I also should have expressed greater indignation at Mr. Carter twice dismissing the Hamas Charter as “ancient history” even though the leaders of that organization have made no effort to alter it. In fact, they illustrate their commitment to the principles of that extremist document every day, with their profoundly self-destructive launch of rockets toward Israeli civilians.

In another sense, “ancient history” is always relevant to the Middle East since both sides base their claims on remembered greatness and perceived grievance going back for centuries. Israel and her most fervent Christian supporters make no apologies for feeling animated and inspired by ancient prophecies, and the fulfillment of those visions by the modern Jewish state.

There’s also a timeless, eternal quality to the nature of the ongoing struggle—which is, at its heart, a conflict between life and death, peace and war, good and evil. The recent fighting in Gaza highlighted the contrast between the two sides, with Hamas trying to gain by deliberately maximizing casualties (both among Israeli troops and Palestinian civilians) while Israel could succeed only by minimizing death and injury (among its own soldiers as well as among the civilians in Gaza). Jimmy Carter’s moral blindness leads him to equate those who celebrate the suicides of their own children and the murder of their neighbors’ kids, with those who mourn violence against any innocents.

Judea Pearl, the father of beheaded American journalist Danny Pearl, observed this week’s seventh anniversary of his son’s murder with a powerful piece in the Wall Street Journal. He notes that “Those around the world who mourned for Danny in 2002 genuinely hoped that Danny’s murder would be a turning point in the history of man’s inhumanity to man, and that the targeting of innocents to transmit political messages would quickly become, like slavery and human sacrifice, an embarrassing relic of a bygone era.”

Unfortunately, that transformation has yet to occur and Professor Pearl blames advocates of relativism and moral equivalence like Jimmy Carter. “Acts of terror, according to Mr. Carter, are no longer taboo, but effective tools for terrorists to address perceived injustices.”

Regardless of his dignity as a former president and his personal graciousness, this point of view-- obfuscating the essential, eternal distinction between terrorist death cults and those who resist them—counts as the worst sort of folly and denial. It is, in fact, undeniably… worthless.