Although I was only six years old, I remember the day my father returned from his New York trip to our temporary stay in Atlanta, Georgia, excited that he had been to the Oval Office, and met then 39th President of the United States, James “Jimmy” Earl Carter. To this day, an elegant, black-and-white, framed photo of my father shaking Carter’s hand graces the IJN office (alongside photos of my grandfather Max Goldberg with John F. Kennedy and with Dwight D. Eisenhower).
Three pivotal points about Carter influenced my life.
I was a young school girl, passionate about the Sinai settlement of Yamit. I remember giving out stickers at the Jerusalem corner of Herzl St. across from the Institute of The Blind. It held a quote from the famed Israeli songwriter Naomi Shemer: “Al na ta’akor natua, al tishkach et hatikva, do not uproot what has been planted, do not forget hope.”
The Camp David accords and peace treaty between Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin — brokered by President Jimmy Carter — were unprecedented. That the process of this famous treaty already betrayed anti-Israel biases harbored by Carter is beyond the scope of this column. This groundbreaking treaty in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War heralded a time of peacefulness with the major Arab country of the time.
Nonetheless, there was the issue of the dismantlement of Yamit, in the Sinai. Even for those in support of this bold step toward peace, Yamit presented a problem. When I think back to it, it’s weird that I was so immersed and informed about it at such a young age. But that’s how it was back then in my school and youth group circles.
We were passionate about Yamit.
Yamit was a fatal flaw in the agreement. It was a a settlement that lay right on the seam of the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza. It was built there with the intention of being a buffer, in order to prevent weapons smuggling between the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip. Yamit sealed off Gaza. Israel was interested in swapping land for Yamit and instead of dismantling this strategic settlement. At the time, the Greater Israel movement was relatively nascent. Yamit issue was a clear security issue.
Fast forward to 2005. Israel withdrew from Gaza, from Gush Katif. The Palestinians in Gaza dug tunnels into the Sinai Peninsula and succeeded in smuggling in countless amounts of ammunition.
Today, in our post-Oct. 7 world, we all know what that led to.
Giving up Yamit, instead of swapping other territory inside Israel for it, proved to be a critical step in empowering terrorist leadership, ultimately compromising Israel’s security.
The second pivotal point about Carter was this: Soviet Jewry. Under the aegis of Carter’s leadership, the cause of Soviet Jewry exploded with support, eventually securing freedom for millions. There was a constellation of factors involved. Many were involved. Nonetheless, it’s fair and right to credit President Carter, too. I remember the influx of Soviet Jews — including neighbors of ours — when he was president.
That, and setting aside all the peanut jokes, there were other seemingly endearing endeavors of President Carter, such as him being a lifelong Sunday School teacher and his tremendous for Habitat for Humanity, a very moving project.
The thing is, then came the 1990s. Setting aside a generic evaluation of Jimmy Carter’s one term presidency, he ratcheted up his anti-Israel bias. It became blatant. He published a book that distortedly labeled Israel an apartheid state. That was a crossing of the rubicon. Ever since, things have never quite been the same for Israel. That one word, right there in the book title, that false and spurious accusation, caught on like wildfire. It created a new, warped, hostile narrative. It gave fodder and credence to Israel’s haters. Carter knew what he was doing.
At the same time, I was aware of the longevity of Carter’s marriage. That was inspirational, as was his active role as a public servant long after his presidency ended.
But then — the third pivotal point — my ability to see anything positive about Carter’s legacy was eclipsed many years ago. It was the day I was surfing the web to learn more about the hostage Gilad Shalit (another item beyond the scope of this column).
Before that day, I was aware of non-violent forms of anti-Semitism, such as not being admitted to a particular program or hired for a certain job, but my overall perception of anti-Semitism was of violence. I associated anti-Semitism with war and terrorism, blood and death, like the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue. In my lifetime, before Oct. 7, this was rare.
But on that pivotal day, when I came across a two-minute and 59-second video on YouTube, it all changed for me. It was titled: Noam Shalit Meeting Jimmy Carter 2009. By all means, google it.
My mouth was agape as I watched this brief sickening clip. You could cut the tension in the room with a knife — the desperation and groveling of a father. I understood that what I saw before me in Jimmy Carter’s response was pure, clean, ice as ice, bloodless, no shot fired, indifferent, cruel, anti-Semitism.
If you want to see a tangible example of what anti-Semitism in this particular form means, like I said, watch this clip.
It’ll make your blood run cold.
Once I saw it, I couldn’t un-see it.
If somewhere in the back of my mind Jimmy Carter still held a space as “peacemaker,” it ended that day.
Strangely, every few years I would re-watch this chilling video.
Perhaps it’s not fair to judge a man or a leader from a recorded interaction that is all of a couple of minutes. After all, people are complicated, leaders are complicated, legacies are complicated. Perhaps there was a lifetime of good that might have been accomplished, too. But you know what? Anti-Semitism, that’s not complicated.
That Jimmy Carter was even capable of being so cruel, yes, so humanly detached (in blatant contrast to his expressing how he was on the verge of weeping at seeing the pain in Gaza) on a personal level, as he was face to face with an innocent father’s pain and plea — this brief interaction made such an impression on me. To me, this became Jimmy Carter’s legacy.
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