How can anyone slap former President Jimmy Carter with such name-calling as "anti-Semitic" or "un-American?"

Give the man a break. After all, he is responsible for nearly eradicating Guinea worm in Ghana. Millions of children are alive today because, through the Carter Center, they were immunized against polio and measles.

At great personal risk, he mediated disputes in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, North Korea, Haiti and Bosnia, and monitored elections in Panama, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Zambia, Guyana, Paraguay, Liberia and Jamaica. Carter has dedicated his life to alleviating tensions in the troubled areas of the world, promoting human rights and protecting the environment. He denounced apartheid in South Africa and brokered an unprecedented peace between Israel and Egypt, for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize. He helped produce a cease-fire in the former Yugoslavia.

Carter is looked upon by the international community as the most trustworthy American alive today. He is respected by struggling democracies all over the world as an honest broker. He has never slacked off from the message of the Old Testament prophets or the teachings of Jesus in working for peace.

And now, out of concern for the security of Israel, Palestine and the United States, he meets with Hamas. He chooses to talk rather than bomb, to listen rather than kill. Violence has not worked. Isn't it time to seek a better way?

> Thomas Are is a retired Presbyterian minister living in Big Canoe.