To his credit: the first Israel-Arab peace treaty. To his shame: the Israel=apartheid canard in international discourse.
Certainly there is much to admire in the late President Jimmy Carter.
• In contrast to some of his successors, he was a gentleman and a person of integrity. He was not crude of speech or of habit; and he did not surround himself with staff and physicians who lied about his capacity.
• His post-president career was dedicated to humanity in a persistent and humble way, from Habitat for Humanity to eradicating disease in Africa. He became a model that any future president, in his post-presidential years, will find hard to match.
• His presidency was marked by the first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab state, an achievement in which Carter’s dogged persistence in the Camp David negotiations in 1978 played a critical role. Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin initiated the process, but when the two leaders reached an impasse, it was Carter who was able to break it.
• Jimmy Carter was a man of faith and of family.
• Carter brought needed foci to the country: he stressed human rights and put an end to the image of the southern politician as opposed to civil rights; he instituted a much needed raise in military funding at a time when the USSR was rapidly enlarging its arsenal; and he doubled the size of the national parks.
Without taking any of this away from Carter, there is much else to his record.
• He is the person who injected the word “apartheid” into the international lexicon in connection with Israel. He is the person most responsible for this canard. He originated and sustained it, to the delight and exploitation of Israel haters everywhere.
• As Carter made clear in his memoirs, he disdained Israel Prime Minister Menachem Begin as over against Egypt’s Anwar Sadat. Ironically, oddly, tellingly, Begin’s erstwhile enemy Sadat ended up appreciating Begin more than Carter. Despite Carter’s ability to see the Camp David Agreements through to completion, Carter did not grasp the age-old irrational hatred of Jews and of Israel that made Begin, the Holocaust survivor and the Communism survivor, who he was. Of greater moment, Carter did not appreciate the decisive role that Israel’s tiny size then played (and still plays, and will always play) in its foreign and military policy.
• Carter presided over the fall of Iran to the ayatollahs with no coherent diplomatic or military response. The menace of Iran in the Middle East and beyond began on Jimmy Carter’s watch. He set the tone toward Iran that endangers the world till this day.
• Carter had this thing for dictators. Syria’s Hafez Assad was only one of them. Somehow, no cruelty could keep Carter from fawning over the worst of the worst as he negotiated with them. This stood in puzzling and ugly contrast to the air of righteousness he always seemed to carry.
• Carter presided over interest rates that exceeded 20 percent! Today a signal of a one-quarter percent rise or fall in federal interest rates sets off dramatic ripple effects. Carter’s economic incompetence was out of control.
It was therefore no surprise when he lost reelection. To his credit, this did not deter him from showing that there is meaning in life even for one who once held the most powerful position in the world. We just wish that after Carter had left office, he had extended as much compassion to Israel as he did to his Habitat for Humanity recipients.
© IJN 2025
