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Rashida Tlaib attended the funeral of Jimmy Carter, her favorite president, and even more favorite post-president, who was as staunch a supporter of the Cause of Palestine as she could have wished. After all, he’s the man who wrote Palestine: Peace or Apartheid, a title that must have made her swoon with pleasure. She went to the funeral of her favorite American politician dressed not in funereal black, but with the keffiyeh that signifies “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “Intifada Forever.” More on her final expression of gratitude to Jimmy Carter can be found here: “Tlaib Sports Palestinian Keffiyeh at Carter Funeral, Thanks Late President for ‘Speaking Out Against Apartheid,’” by Corey Walker, Algemeiner, January 10, 2025:
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), one of the most strident opponents of Israel in Congress, wore a Palestinian keffiyeh to the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter, commemorating the late American leader’s advocacy against so-called “apartheid” in the Jewish state.
Carter wasn’t just against the non-existent apartheid that he claimed, against all the contradictory evidence, was practiced in Israel. He didn’t care for the Jewish state at all. Come to think of it, the more you look into his statements made in the four decades of his post-presidential existence, the more you realize he was, for all of his sanctimonious piety, a true antisemite, completely indifferent to the wellbeing of the Jewish state and its people. Not only did he dislike Israel and its inexplicably ungrateful Jews — and after all he’d done for them! — but after meeting in 2009 with Ismail Haniyeh, then the head of the terrorist group Hamas, and his associates, Carter wrote this in his report on the meeting: “As in previous meetings, my impression was that they [the Hamas leaders] were frank and honest with me, listening carefully, quickly accepting or rejecting my suggestions, and being flexible when possible.” Not a word about Hamas’ terror attacks, nor of any attempt by Carter to raise that issue with Haniyeh, for whom he had only praise for being “frank and honest and flexible.” Carter had similar words of praise for Bashar Assad, with whom he met on the same trip to the Middle East.
Tlaib tweeted about the funeral, giving Carter a Farewell on X that left not a wet eye in my house. To wit:
“Rest in peace, President Jimmy Carter. It was an honor to be there with your family. I wore my Palestinian keffiyeh to show my gratitude for your courageous stance in speaking out against apartheid and standing up for peace,” Tlaib posted on X/Twitter, along with a picture of her keffyeh.
The keffiyeh, a traditional Arab headscarf, has become known as a symbol of solidarity with the Palestinian cause and opposition to Israel since the outbreak of the war in Gaza in October 2023.
No, the keffiyeh has been a symbol of “Palestinianism” ever since Yasser Arafat made it his permanent fashion statement in the 1970s. Lately, however, it has traveled far from the Middle East, and become the must-have accessory for the legions of anti-Israel campus protesters who would not be caught dead without it. No article of clothing says “I hate Israel” more eloquently than that black-on-white checkerboard scarf.
High-profile politicians, including all five living US presidents, attended Carter’s funeral at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC on Thursday. The former president died on Dec. 29, 2024 at 100 years old due to heart failure.
Over the past couple of decades, Carter’s public commentary on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has ruffled feathers among supporters of the Jewish state. In 2006, Carter raised eyebrows after publishing a book titled, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, which condemned Israel for constructing settlements in the West Bank and accused the Jewish state of constructing a racially-discriminatory political regime.
Carter, of course, did not bother to look at how Israeli Arabs really lived. Had he done so, he would have realized how foolish it was to accuse Israel of apartheid. As foolish, in fact, as the more recent, and even graver charges now flung with such abandon at Israel, that it is committing “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” in Gaza.
In 2009, Carter traveled to the Middle East and held meetings with leaders of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. Critics noted that he did not criticize Hamas leadership during his meeting and praised the terrorists as being “frank and honest.”
“I don’t see that deep commitment on the part of [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to make concessions which [former Prime Minister] Menachem Begin did to find peace with his potential enemies,” Carter continued….
Begin was browbeaten at Camp David by both Carter and his national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, until he finally agreed to submit to Sadat’s demand that the entire Sinai, together with the producing oilfields that the Israelis had discovered, and the airbases they had built, and the tourist resort they had constructed at Sharm el-Sheikh, would be returned to Egypt, in three tranches, and within three years. When Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister, he was not about to yield to American pressure and would not make the “concessions” that Jimmy Carter, always taking the Arab side, thought he should be prepared to make, including giving up Judea and Samaria, and the Golan Heights, to a future Palestinian state. No wonder Carter the Sanctimonious Peace-maker preferred the pliant Begin to the unyielding Netanyahu.
“What’s their top priority the first week of the new Congress? Lowering costs? Addressing the housing crisis? No, it’s sanctioning the International Criminal Court to protect genocidal maniac Netanyahu so he can continue the genocide in Gaza,” Tlaib wrote on social media.
So Netanyahu is a “genocidal maniac” for trying to protect the people of Israel from a repetition of what was done to them by the 6,000 Hamas terrorists who smashed into Israel on October 7, 2023, and proceeded, both at the music festival and at ten kibbutzim, to torture, rape, mutilate, and murder 1,200 Israelis. That is what wearing the keffiyeh really means: I support Hamas. I support Palestinian Islamic Jihad. I support the destruction of Israel, and its replacement by a 23rd Arab state. You were so right, Rashida. It was the perfect accessory to wear to the funeral of Jimmy Carter.