[Order David Horowitz’s new book, America Betrayed, HERE.]

Recently, Jimmy Carter’s grandson, Jason Carter, said this about his grandfather: “This is a good man who has done remarkable things with his life and has taken the opportunities that he was given and used them to do good.” Others beg to differ, particularly regarding Carter’s longstanding animus toward Israel.

Jimmy Carter, like so many others who have repeated the “two-state solution” mantra since Oct. 7, 2023, has for years been hellbent on arriving at a “solution” to the Arab-Israeli conflict. But what makes Jimmy Carter think there is a “solution” to the Arab and Muslim war against Israel? The evidence supports quite a different view. I don’t think there is a “two-state” or three-state or n-state “solution” to a conflict that will continue forever, because it is based on Muslim hostility to a Jewish state, whatever its dimensions, on land Muslims once possessed, and, still more infuriating, located in the midst of Muslim Arabdom.

That a conflict cannot be “solved” does not mean it is not manageable. Right now, possessing both the Golan and the entire West Bank, Israel can manage militarily. El-Sisi’s Egypt is clearly more worried about the Muslim Brotherhood and terrorists in the Sinai, and Hamas in Gaza. Egypt has been, like Israel, destroying the tunnels into Gaza and, like Israel, it has instituted a partial blockade on Gaza. El-Sisi has publicly admitted to cooperating with Israel in the Sinai, against both Hamas and the Islamic State. As for Syria, while Assad may have won his civil war, he still has to deal with nearly half the population that has either fled, or been displaced; his country lies mostly in ruins, and hundreds of billions of dollars will be required to rebuild. Assad and the Alawites are unlikely to risk everything they have managed to hold onto by taking on Israel. They have no resources – soldiers, war materiel, money – to spare. Saudi Arabia and the UAE both see Israel in a different light, no longer as an enemy but as an ally against the menace of an aggressive Shi’a Iran. And the Saudis, especially, are fed up with Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinians constantly whining for more suppor. The Crown Prince has told Abbas to accept whatever “deal” he is offered; it must have dawned on Abbas that the Palestinian cause is no longer at the center of Arab interests. They have too much else – Iran, the Islamic State, the Muslim Brotherhood — to worry about.

Right now the greatest threat to Israel comes from Iran, as it once came from Egypt and Syria. But despite the warming of relations with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Bahrain, and Oman, Israel cannot count on those good relations becoming permanent. It has to always keep in mind the Arab and Muslim masses, for whom It remains a permanent affront. Muslims Israel does not become less of an affront if it is pushed back, as Jimmy Carter wants it to be, to the armistice lines of 1948-49. The two metaphors the Arabs routinely use for Israel are that it is a “knife” in the heart of Arabdom, or a “cancer” within the Arab body. You don’t pull a “knife” only part-way out, nor excise only part of a cancer. You have to remove the whole blade, cut out the whole tumor.

Carter’s obsession with pushing Israel back to the pre-1967 lines, his completely ignoring the Mandate for Palestine, his misreading of Resolution 242, his unshakeable belief that Israel should entrust its security to Hamas, or to the likes of Mahmoud Abbas, doing his no-one-here-but-us-accountants impersonation – all this suggests that behind the sweet habitat-for-humanity smile, and the treacly self-righteousness, and the Sunday School unctuousness, Jimmy Carter suffers from a well-known pathological condition. It’s called antisemitism. Meanwhile, if you want to really understand the legal, historic, and moral claims of Israel, begin by reading the Mandate for Palestine, especially the Preamble, and Articles 4 and 6. Look at the Mandate maps, to see what was to be included in the future Jewish National Home. And then, to understand what U.N. Resolution 242 actually means, you should turn not to Jimmy Carter, but to the man who was most responsible for drafting that resolution, that is, the commonsensical Lord Caradon.