Jimmy Carter has been turned down flat by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin on his invitation to meet with those officials during his forthcoming visit to Israel.  Tamar Pileggi writes in the Times of Israel:

Both the president and prime minister declined the invitations after consulting with the Foreign Ministry and the National Security Council

A senior diplomatic official told Channel 10, which broke the news, that Carter is “a disaster for Israel,” and that all Israeli leaders should refrain from meeting the former president, due to his “anti-Israel positions.”

The official was also quoted as saying that while Netanyahu and Rivlin refused to meet with him, Israel had approved Carter’s request to visit the Gaza Strip.

Carter will reportedly arrive sometime in the next 10 days for meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

In his post-presidency, Carter has become a vocal critic of Israel and has met with Hamas, a terror group dedicated to the destruction of Israel.

Carter was the subject of much criticism in Israel over his 2006 book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” in which he wrote: “Israel’s continued control and colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Middle East.”

In 2013, Carter called on the European Union to label products from West Bank settlements, which, he argued, are illegal under international law, although he rejected a full economic boycott to pressure Israel over the settlements.

In a recent interview with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, he said Israel should to give up the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, while the Palestinians “make sure that they commit themselves without equivocation to the freedom of Israel to live in peace alongside them.”

I am glad that Carter will be paying a price for his extreme views, and I hope that Barack Obama will receive similar treatment once he is out of office.