Dershowitz Asks: Does Jimmy Carter's Support for Hamas Constitute a Criminal Offense?

by Thomas Rose 

While Jimmy Carter was busy accusing Israel of war crimes and encouraging greater international support for the terrorist group Hamas, a noted legal expert and civil rights advocate claims the former American president may have committed several criminal felonies that ban the provision of material support to terrorist organizations.

Recently retired Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz told J.D. Hayworth at Newsmax TV that Carter’s recent article in London’s Guardian Newspaper, urging international recognition for Hamas, may have constituted recruitment for an organization classified as ‘terrorist’ under US law. 

Dershowitz accused Jimmy Carter of being "an all-out supporter of Hamas," warning that if his advocacy turns into material support for the terrorist Hamas, Carter will be committing a felony. 

"Jimmy Carter wants the United States and the European community to legitimize Hamas," said Dershowitz. “It's against the law in the United States, even if you're a former president, it's against the law to provide material support to a listed terrorist organization."

Dershowitz claims that Carter’s call for the recognition of Hamas as an equal with Israel “defies logic. But leave it to Jimmy Carter,” said Dershowitz to defy logic. “It's as if one would want to recognize and legitimate the Mafia or al-Qaida or the Taliban," he said.

Unlike democratic Israel said Dershowitz, "Hamas murders its opponents, engaged in coup d'états, kneecaps critics, uses children as soldiers, 160 some odd children were killed building these tunnels, and it uses child warriors. But Jimmy Carter stands behind Hamas."

"There was a plan for Hamas to use all 40 of the tunnels on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, this year the end of September, and have a massive attack hoping to kill thousands of Israeli civilians and the destruction of the tunnels may have prevented this massacre, which would have resulted in an all-out war, obviously, in the Middle East and it may have taken close to 70 Israeli soldiers, this massacre, but if that report is correct, then everything Israel did was completely proportional." 

"Has Jimmy Carter read the Hamas charter?” asks Dershowitz? “The charter says that Hamas to fulfill Allah's prophecy and Mohammed's prophecy of killing every Jew standing behind every rock. It blames all the world's ills past and present on the Jews and this is the organization that Jimmy Carter is standing behind and cheerleading for?”