Undiplomatic Language

The whole point of diplomacy is to get parties at odds with each other to negotiate, and thus avoid or mitigate open warfare. Jimmy Carter has never engaged in bigotry, but he has been willing to shuttle between warring parties, to make sure these negotiations occur. This is what the State Department should be doing. It's not a matter of rewarding terrorists, or whatever useless moral category one wants to put necessary work into. It's unfortunate, and perhaps inevitable, that a nation like the U.S., with an Administration that prizes privatization, now has to conduct urgent and necessary diplomacy through private channels, because the government officials who should be conducting the diplomacy are too lame and incompetent and frightened to do it themselves.

Now, people can differ about whether negotiations may be helpful, or not - there are times when poorly-timed negotiations can backfire - but this is not one of them. Throwing panic-stricken insults around is not a productive or useful approach:

NEW YORK (AP) - Israel's ambassador to the United Nations on Thursday called former President Jimmy Carter "a bigot" for meeting with the leader of the militant Hamas movement in Syria.

Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, "went to the region with soiled hands and came back with bloody hands after shaking the hand of Khaled Mashaal, the leader of Hamas," Ambassador Dan Gillerman told a luncheon briefing for reporters.

The diplomat was questioned about problems facing his country during a wide-ranging discussion with reporters 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 ex-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."

...Gillerman said 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 day Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was in Washington meeting with President Bush.

...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 Shiite 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.