Jimmy Carter caused outrage today when reports of his comments supporting Hamas and their violent take over of Gaza surfaced in Jpost:

During his speech to Ireland’s eighth annual Forum on Human Rights, the 83-year-old former president said monitors from his Carter Center observed the 2006 election in which Hamas won 42 percent of the popular vote and a majority of parliamentary seats.

Carter said that election was “orderly and fair” and Hamas triumphed, in part, because it was “shrewd in selecting candidates,” whereas a divided, corrupt Fatah ran multiple candidates for single seats.

Far from encouraging Hamas’s move into parliamentary politics, Carter said the US and Israel, with European Union acquiescence, has sought to subvert the outcome by shunning Hamas and helping Abbas to keep the reins of political and military power.

“That action was criminal,” he said in a news conference after his speech.

“The United States and Israel decided to punish all the people in Palestine and did everything they could to deter a compromise between Hamas and Fatah,” he said.

Carter said the United States and others supplied the Fatah-controlled security forces in Gaza with vastly superior weaponry in hopes they would “conquer Hamas in Gaza” – but Hamas this month routed Fatah because of its “superior skills and discipline.”

He said plans to reopen international aid to the West Bank, but clamp down on aid to Gaza, would imprison 1.4 million Gazans. He called for both territories to be treated equally.

“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.”

This is the same conference where Carter claimed the United States was a nation of torturers. He hasn’t yet commented on Hamas’ persecution of Christians in Gaza or the burning of their churches. As a supposed church going man himself you’d think he’d be a little offended by this. Of course he probably thinks Muslim persecution of Christians is caused by Zionism.

Hamas isn’t the only terrorist group Carter’s been carrying water for however, as just a few days ago Carter shilled for the Maoist insurgency in Nepal who have been fighting a bloody ten year war against the government there. He wants the U.S. to take them off the terror list even though they’re responsible for the deaths of more than 13,000 people in the last 7 years. You can read about the “people’s revolution” in Nepal including interviews with its leader here and here to see why Carter’s association with them is so troubling.

It’s funny how Jimmy Carter’s partners in his “peace movement” are usually armed, radical terror cells bent on the destruction of America, western civilization and Israel. It’s almost as if he’s using the cause of peace for some other agenda…