A friend defends Carter’s meeting with Hamas (AJC)

[struggle4progress]

By Rick Badie | Thursday, April 24, 2008, 07:45 AM
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

My friend Tony Honein admires Jimmy Carter ...

Honein grew up in Beirut and attended school there until the start of the civil war in Lebanon. He finished high school in France, then earned a marketing degree from Indiana University. He worked nearly two decades as an executive for an international tobacco company, logging time in several countries. Europe. Africa. Parts of the Middle East. He and his wife, Margaret, eventually moved to America ...

Diplomacy, by its very nature, requires dialogue twixt all parties, including enemies. It’s a basic tenet, no matter how powerful and principled those with a vested interest in negotiating pretend to be. Talk to everyone. It doesn’t mean you condone terrorist behavior or that you’re rewarding it. And if you can’t see beyond that, and (wrongly) consider Carter a grandstander, then bite on reality: With no dialogue, without Hamas at the table, there will be no justice, no peace, no political progress between the Palestinians and Israel.

“No one was under any illusion that a comprehensive peace in the Middle East would be achieved during President Carter’s visit,” Honein told me. “There should always be attempts at making peace” ...

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/shared-blogs/ajc/badie/entries/2008/04/24/a_friend_defend.html

[Briar]

1. Carter doesn't need defending

It appals me that a brave and principled man who does the only sensible and moral thing possible in this situation is under attack for his actions. Enough of the cringing acceptance that being sensible, moral, brave and principled is somehow not good enough for "mainstream" society and the "centrist" drones whose views apparently represent the dominant attitudes of our society. They're the ones who should be on the defensive.