Israelis have their hands full. Palestinian Hamas blasted Israeli citizens with car bombs, rockets, mortar fire and other attacks over the weekend. Israeli troops are engaging Palestinian fighters in Gaza in an attempt to halt the stream of high-explosive rockets that are being launched from the Strip, which Israel gave to the Palestinian Authority in 2005 and Hamas violently seized in mid-2007. But Hamas kingpins are fielding more than just gunmen. They are also deploying another weapon: Jimmy Carter.

Or rather, the former president of the United States is deploying himself on their behalf.

The 39th president, against the wishes of the 43rd, the State Department, much of Congress, many Americans and what has to be an incredulous Israel, has spent nine days pursuing his own personal foreign policy, which includes embracing—literally—Hamas leaders like Nasser Shaer and, on the eve of the important Jewish holiday of Passover, meeting with terrorist sponsor Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, and, astoundingly, Hamas leader Khalid Mashaal, a man wanted in connection with the slayings of dozens of Israelis and Americans.

This is the same Hamas you find on the U.S. Department of State list of people who use illicit funding, continuously break international law, and systematically murder people, available here, under the word enemy.

This is the same Hamas you saw seize Gaza from Fatah in a bloody overthrow, shooting up fellow Palestinians, executing them in the street, parading bullet-riddled corpses in front of onlookers, gunning down hospital patients, and throwing bound captives off tall buildings.

This is the same Hamas whose foundational charter calls for the destruction of Israel, refuses to recognize its right to exist, and commits crimes against humanity. It is, in every sense of the word, terrorist.

And yes, this is the same Hamas that Carter, who made “human rights” the centerpiece of his presidency, is deliberately dignifying and legitimizing with his presence and his office in a display of leadership so atrophied it would be astonishing—if it were not prophesied in the Bible. In fact, Carter’s Hamas-hugging mission is a perfect picture of what happens when God removes strong leadership from a country. Today, Carter is weakly trying to solve a horrific mess that was caused by weakness.

The one-term Carter presidency was marked by foreign-policy debacles that are still hurting the U.S. and its allies. Carter slashed defense budgets and aided enemies including the Soviet colossus, Fidel Castro, North Korea and Communist China, while simultaneously decreasing help for democratic allies South Korea and Taiwan. He also facilitated the election of one Robert Mugabe and infuriated Americans by yielding to a tiny Central American dictator and giving away one of America’s oldest, proudest, most important, most benevolent strategic assets: the Panama Canal.

The Carter White House undermined Iran’s Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, one of America’s allies in the Middle East, over “human rights concerns”—which opened the door for Ayatollah Khomeini’s radical Islamist regime. According to Steven Hayward, that regime “executed more people in its first year in power than the shah’s savak had allegedly killed in the previous 25 years”—a human rights horror story for Iranians and a terrorist nightmare for the world.

In return for receiving a nation, Islamist extremists—including one Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to American officials who were there—seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Washington was so weak leading up to and even subsequent to this calamity that the band of students decided to hold on to it and 52 American hostages for 444 days. Carter’s mighty response: a half-baked rescue attempt that crashed and burned in the Iranian desert.

As one observer said, “That was a bad time. It was getting embarrassing to be American.”

As the leader of the United States of America, Jimmy Carter made foreign-policy choices that he thought showed a noble will to engage the enemy using non-violent diplomacy and talk. However, in a real world filled with bloodthirsty enemies, those choices were, in fact, perilous weakness.

Carter’s one supposedly unmitigated foreign-policy triumph was his involvement in the Israel-Egypt Camp David Accords. Besides being based mostly on the courage of Anwar Sadat, however, in reality this treaty established what has become Israel’s mortal wound: the so-called peace process. The Trumpet stands apart from other news sources in reporting to you that this supposed cure for the Israeli-Arab conflict is actually a wound! For more on that, “Israel’s Deadly ‘Wound’” is a must-read.

Since Carter left the White House, he has inexplicably continued to build on this disastrous foreign-policy legacy, visiting American enemies inside Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and representing the Clinton administration to North Korea, praising the regime and supposedly averting conflict by convincing Pyongyang to give up its nuclear program in exchange for billions in aid. Upon returning to the U.S., Carter pronounced, “I think it’s all roses now ….”

Peace in our time.

In 2002, Europeans awarded Carter the Nobel Peace Prize, possibly as a reaction against the invasion of Iraq, which Carter vocally criticized. The same year, Carter visited Fidel Castro—and North Korea declared it was still making nukes. Four years later, it tested its first one.

In 2004, Carter helped solidify Hugo Chavez’s grip on Venezuela by ignoring evidence of tampering and certifying as “free and fair” a rigged referendum, and helping to silence television criticism of the regime.

Meanwhile, the Islamist regime Carter traded for an American ally now supports Hezbollah, the terrorist army that destroyed Lebanese democracy and 241 U.S. Marines in 1982 and now sits on Israel’s doorstep. Tehran’s mullahs also fostered Hamas, bringing us back to Carter’s latest “mission.”

Ayatollah Khomeini also gave Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization terrorists the concept of suicide bombers, and offered $35,000 per blast to their families. Arafat—who won the Nobel Peace Prize himself in 1994—and his plo hijacked and bombed jetliners, buses and a ship; took hostages; executed people; slew children; blew up a full school bus with a bazooka; executed a U.S. ambassador; machine-gunned numerous Jewish families in their homes, cars and in public; and used male and female suicide bombers, bombs and assault weapons to murder people at markets, restaurants, plazas, religious ceremonies, schools and elsewhere.

Carter ceremoniously laid a wreath at Arafat’s grave Tuesday of last week.

President Carter is still convinced that his leadership choices promote “human rights” around the globe. “It’s very important that someone meet with Hamas leaders to express our views and to ascertain what flexibility they have,” he said. The would-be statesman also stated, “I’m just trying to understand different opinions and provide communications for people who won’t communicate with each other. … I think if [Khalid Mashaal] does have anything constructive to say, he or the president of Syria, Bashar Assad, then I would bring that to the people.”

A respected leader of the United States is trying to determine the “flexibility” and “different opinions” of organizations whose foreign policy is that people who happen to be Jewish are humanoid-looking apes and pigs.

Former President Carter is not just a bad ex-president. He also embodies the fulfillment of a Bible prophecy. Isaiah 3, written regarding modern-day America, Britain and Israel, reveals that God is deliberately removing strong, active, courageous, insightful and wise leaders from our government echelons because of nationwide disobedience to His laws. And, at the same time as it fulfills the principles and prophecies of Isaiah, Carter’s presidency and post-presidency leadership paves the way for other specific prophecies, including the decline of American dominance and the rise of the Islamist power bloc.

Amazingly, a thorough study of these subjects reveals that your Holy Bible is as contemporary, specific and up to date as this week’s headlines! For a better understanding of what weak national leadership means for your future, read The United States and Britain in Prophecy, by Herbert W. Armstrong.