I read this list over at Little Green Footballs today.  It’s a pretty good breakdown of the many less-than-above-board affiliations Mr. Obama has with some pretty anti-Israel characters around the country, including professors, pastors, and advisers.  As much as I’d like to believe that Obama will bring change that is good for America, I think he’ll be more of a foreign policy disaster than anything else.

So read the list and judge for yourself.  Do we really want someone with this sort of character-judgment in the white house?  Carter was bad enough, do we really need another Jimmy?

Here’s a quick run-down of some of Barack Obama’s questionable and disturbing associations:

* Rabidly anti-Israel Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi. The Obamas were regular dinner guests at Khalidi’s Hyde Park home for years.

* Terrorist sympathizer Ali Abunimah, who runs the viciously anti-Israel web site Electronic Intifada.

* Unrepentant Weather Underground terrorists William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.

* Reverend Jeremiah Wright. What more needs to be said?

* Anti-Israel foreign policy adviser Samantha Power — fired after calling Hillary Clinton a “monster.”

* Anti-Israel foreign policy adviser Robert Malley — fired when it was revealed he has been holding talks with Hamas.

* Hatem El-Hady, former official of the Hamas-linked charity Kindhearts, closed by the Justice Department. El-Hady’s web page suddenly vanished from the Obama campaign site with no explanation, after being exposed by LGF and others.

* Tony Rezko — a Chicago fixer currently in a whole lot of legal trouble.

There are more, I know; this is just off the top of my head.

I have never witnessed a presidential election in which a major candidate had this many skeletons in his closet.

Hamas has proposed a ten-year truce with Israel. Continued peace–peace that could extend beyond one decade–is apparently too much of a commitment for the Palestinian terrorist group. Ten years. I imagine Khaled Mashaal thought that this was a rather nice number. A rounded number. A short time for peace to sink in–certainly not long enough for a viable two-state solution to become solidified. Without a doubt, not long enough for any sort of reconciliation to occur between the Palestinians and the Israelis, or should I say between the Arabs and the Jews.

Ten years isn’t really long enough for any sort of real peace to manifest. It sounds rather like a very long cease-fire. As with all cease-fires, however, what lays in wait at the end of the line is a fire. When the cease ceases to exist, all that’s left is a conflagration. That seems to be the meat of this so-called truce offer, which is so obviously flawed that Mr. Jimmy Carter should be hanging his head in shame and embarrassment right now for ever lending credence to the Hamas movement. Carter seems completely oblivious to the outrageous demands of the militants, and suspiciously optimistic about chances to negotiate with these killers and kidnappers.

Nevertheless, Hamas has made an offer. This is something. Even if it is just a ploy to buy time and re-arm, at least it is something, right? Even if ten years would only serve to make Hamas stronger and more capable of attacking Israel with real force, at least there is some motion, some budging of the proverbial tectonic plates.

It is important to note, however, that nobody in their right mind would accept a peace agreement from a group who refuses their enemy’s very right to exist.

Ten years. Hamas, even though “at peace” with Israel would still refuse to acknowledge Israel’s very right to exist. More than likely, terrorism from other groups would continue, unchecked, the entire time.

Here is one scenario: Hamas and Israel make “peace” and Hamas promises not to attack Israel if Israel withdraws from the West Bank. Then another terrorist group emerges as the “new” Hamas. Perhaps Islamic Jihad will take the reigns. Perhaps some other fringe movement will rise up to replace the now “legitimate” Hamas–sort of a replay of what Hamas did when Fatah became a recognized political group, when Arafat was suddenly not a terrorist anymore but a statesman.

This group will blow themselves up in an Israeli cafe, or a Jerusalem bus, or will start hurling makeshift rockets into Israeli cities. They will complain of human rights violations, of Israeli occupation, regardless of the fact that Israel at this time will have withdrawn from all so-called “occupied” lands. They will do this and Hamas will not stop them. Likely, they will be funded by some outside government–probably the same government or governments that will fund the armament of Hamas who now will operate without Israeli supervision of any kind.

So Israel will retaliate, and has always been the case, the world will condemn them for it, casting their act of self defense as an atrocity. People from countries around the world who are not (and probably never have been) under constant attack will chastise and berate the Israeli actions. Hamas will have the high moral ground, since they didn’t carry out the attack–all the while rearming, not doing the dirty work, building up international support, and plotting what their charter has always said they would carry out: the utter destruction of Israel.

Is this the peace we want for the region? Is this even, in any sense, peace? It’s like one kid saying to another, if you look away, take your guard down, I won’t hit you for ten minutes. For ten minutes you’re good to go, no fist, no sucker-punch.

And then?

Jimmy Carter said in Sderot that he deplores the killing of innocent civilians. Snubbed by most of Israel’s top brass, Carter managed to get an audience with the rocket-strewn town’s mayor. The peace process was central to Carter’s message, though one has to ask oneself just how much sanity the ex-President retains. After all, by meeting with Hamas, Carter is taking a huge step away from the peace process. Any step toward legitimizing the terrorist organization is a mistake, including the US insistence that Hamas be allowed to participate in elections, which has led us down the road we’re on now.

Carter needs to realize that he’s fell into the trap of moral relativism–that his reasoning for meeting with Hamas, no matter how well-intentioned it may be, is still likely to cause more harm than good. Visiting Sderot will do nothing to make up for this error in judgment. I do not doubt that Mr. Carter wants peace. I’m sure he does. I simply believe that in his quest for middle-ground, the former President has lost sight of the facts. If peace is to be achieved, it will not be done my giving the terrorists more power. It will not be achieved through so-called ceasefires that allow the terrorists to be rearmed. It will only be won when the forces of terror abandon the killing and seriously work for peace. How can Israel make peace with those who publicly state they are after its destruction? How can they make peace with an enemy that fires rockets indiscriminately at civilians?

Carter is making a mistake by dealing with Hamas. He is giving them credibility, and credibility is one thing that terrorist organizations should never possess.

Jimmy Carter is getting my 2007 Idiot of the Year Award (I don’t remember doling it out already, but it’s no big deal if two idiots get it this time) for his statements on Hamas.

“This effort to divide Palestinians into two peoples now is a step in the wrong direction,” he said. “All efforts of the international community should be to reconcile the two, but there’s no effort from the outside to bring the two together.”

Well, Mr. Carter, maybe that’s because Hamas is a terrorist organization bent on the complete destruction of Israel and the murder of its entire Jewish population. Think that might have just a little tiny bit to do with the West’s refusal to legitimize them?

Carter told the Toronto Star:

Despite the concerns expressed about the character of Hamas, we have to hope for the best. My prayer is the Hamas leaders, now serving in positions of unprecedented authority, will lead the Palestinian people on a peaceful, non-violent path toward a two-state solution.

What Carter may be suffering from, aside from Idiocy, is a bit too much optimism. Or, it could be due to the fact that he sees himself in some, I don’t know, Messianic light after brokering the Israeli/Egypt peace deal.

Of course, all that self-congratulation must have gotten to his head, because, as we all know by now, Mr. Carter has described Israel’s relationship with the “Palestinians” as apartheid.

The only funny thing that’s come out of all of this isn’t really funny at all. I think Dry Bones has said it better than I can. Read the strip below and you decide….

All cartoons courtesy of CoxAndForkum.com and Drybones.