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Amb. Dan Gillerman (file)
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| By Israel Insider staff April 28, 2008 |
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Israel's ambassador to the United Nations on Thursday called former President Jimmy Carter "a bigot" for meeting with the head of the Hamas terrorist group in Syria. Carter "went to the region with soiled hands and came back with bloody hands after shaking the hand of Khaled Meshal, the leader of Hamas," Ambassador Dan Gillerman told a luncheon briefing for reporters.
The ambassador's harsh words for Carter came days after the ex-president met with Meshal for seven hours in Damascus to negotiate a cease-fire with Gaza's Hamas rulers. Carter then called Meshal 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." During Carter's visit, Gillerman said, Hamas "was shelling our cities and maiming and injuring and wounding Israeli babies and Israeli children."
Reacting to the ambassador's comments, former Meretz chairman MK Yossi Beilin on Friday urged the state to recall Gillerman from his post.
The ambassador noted that Hamas is armed and trained by Iran, whose president once called for Israel to be "wiped off the map," adding that "the real danger, the real problem is not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the real threat is Iran," he said.
Gillerman also was asked about another topic involving the U.S. government and Israel: the arrest last week in New Jersey of an 84-year-old man accused of passing U.S. weapons program secrets to an Israeli agent a quarter-century ago.
Retired U.S. military engineer Ben-ami Kadish faces charges linking him to the same now-defunct Israeli intelligence agency that used Jonathan Pollard, who is serving a life sentence for spying for Israel. Gillerman called it "a very old matter" that "pertains to something that may or may not have happened 25 years ago" and would be decided when Kadish goes to trial, he said.
In the wake of the Pollard case, the ambassador said Israel had made a pledge not to spy on the United States, "and that is something which I know that we have honored completely." |
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