Noam Shalit, the father of kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, said Sunday that former United States President Jimmy Carter could help Israel because of, not despite, his anti-Israel views. The fact that Carter refers to Israel as an apartheid state and has frequently criticized Israeli policy “can help him reach people and bring up ideas that might have been received with suspicion if they had come from pro-Israeli sources,” Shalit said.
Carter plans to meet with Hamas head Khaled Mashaal in Damascus in the near future despite objections from the current US government. Shalit met with Carter on Sunday and asked him to speak with Mashaal about his son’s fate.