Jimmy Carter says he's just being fair-minded by continuously condemning Israel. Meanwhile, his Carter Center draws ever more money from anti-Israel sources. Follow the money.The ex-president's irritating opinions on Mideast matters are one thing. But the funding of his Atlanta think tank by big-money, state-linked Arab sources is quite another — and points to a conflict of interest. According to the Carter Center Web site's 2004-05 annual report — the most recent available — the center has received "in excess of $1 million" from characters like Prince Al-Walid bin Talal.
Bin Talal, you might recall, is the Saudi prince who insultingly offered $20 million to New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center. The cash was held out not because the prince cared about terrorism but to rub in that the attack was really a byproduct of the Palestine conflict. The streetwise Giuliani, who once threw Yasser Arafat out of a New York theater, wasn't fooled by bin Talal's power play and told him to keep his dirty money to himself. Giuliani smelled the quid pro quo and wasn't a man who could be bought.
Carter looks a little different. His new book, "Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid" lays all the blame on Israel for the Palestinian conflict in an interpretation worthy of a Cairo coffee shop. It is so extreme — and so seemingly out of character — that a top staffer at the Carter Center resigned in disgust.
It may be easy to dismiss Carter's nutty statements about Israel as the ranting of a bitter man in his twilight years. But it's not so easy to look the other way as Arab cash flows into the Carter Center from people known to demand something in return. It is worth noting that the center's anticipated contributions receivable and Carter's anti-Israeli diatribes have both increased dramatically.
Carter's foundation has a $200 million endowment, according to Rachel Ehrenfeld, an expert on terrorism, writing in the Washington Times, and the center's own 2004-05 statement says it took in $172 million in donations, with some as high as $25 million. Fat cats who've given $1 million since the center's founding in 1982 (and in the hazy disclosures we don't know how much more) include the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Sultanate of Oman, the Saudi Fund for Development and the Government of the United Arab Emirates. Among individuals who donated more than $100,000 in 2004-05, there is His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said of Oman, in addition to bin Talal. Among listed "founders" of the center are the king of Saudi Arabia, BCCI scandal banker Agha Hasan Abedi and Arafat pal Hasib J. Sabbagh.
All of these contributors have virulently anti-Israel elements, and most have medieval records of opposing and obstructing democracy in their own countries. Maybe someday, in one of those softball interviews he gives, Carter will be asked to reconcile what he supposedly stands for with those from whom he gets his money.