Jimmy Carter’s grandson, Jason Carter, said this Monday about his grandfather: “This is a good man who has done remarkable things with his life and has taken the opportunities that he was given and used them to do good.” Back in 2016, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach pointed out several reasons to disagree with this assessment, including Carter’s fondness for the Palestinians, as well as his animus toward Israel and its American abettors:
In a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, Mr. Carter again laid responsibility for U.S. bias against the [supposedly] destitute, depressed and (consequently) violent Palestinians on American policy makers’ helplessness, over the last 30 years, against the menacing tactics of the powerful American-Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC).
AIPAC, that all-powerful Jewish lobby, as Carter clearly sees it, is a danger, with those “menacing tactics,” whom no one can apparently stand up against. In truth, AIPAC has no “menacing tactics,” but is largely informational: it disseminates information about Israel, and sometimes sponsors trips to that country; it urges its members to support candidates who share AIPAC’s concerns but does not contribute to any political campaigns itself. It is far outspent, in Washington, by the Saudis and other Gulf Arabs who do have small armies of well-paid lobbyists at their disposal, and are also well-versed in contributing to presidential centers and libraries.
However, it seems that AIPAC’s real fault was its failure to outdo the Saudi’s purchases of the former president’s loyalty. “There has not been any nation in the world that has been more cooperative than Saudi Arabia,” the New York Times quoted Mr. Carter June 1977, thus making the Saudis a major factor in U. S. foreign policy.
Carter apparently took no notice of the $100 billion the Saudis have spent around the world to promote Wahhabi (Salafist) Islam. And twenty-four years later, when 15 out of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudis, Carter still continued both to praise the Saudis, and deplore the behavior of Israel.
Evidently, the millions in Arab petrodollars feeding Mr. Carter’s global endeavors, often in conflict with U.S. government policies, also ensure his loyalty.
It’s hard to know if Carter’s animus to Israel reflected all the money that Arab sources supplied to him, to his peanut farm, to his friend Bert Lance, and to his presidential center and library. Was there not a pre-existing antisemitism which then was reinforced by the receipt of all that Arab money? His dislike of Israel was difficult to conceal during the Camp David negotiations.
Many will remember Carter’s behavior during the Camp David negotiations with Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin. He hero-worshipped Sadat, who in his view, could do no wrong. For Begin, on the other hand, Carter exhibited a palpable want of sympathy, even a visceral physical dislike for the homely Israeli leader. He was cruelly impatient with the anxieties Begin expressed about threats to the Jewish state’s survival. While pressing Begin to make concession upon concession to Sadat, Carter erupted that he was “sick and tired of hearing about the Holocaust.” Carter and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski exhibited a clear distaste for Begin, while setting up Sadat as a veritable Prince of Peace, even though it was Begin who was making “sacrifices for peace” by giving back the entire Sinai, while Sadat gave up nothing, and only had to graciously accept what Begin, under American duress, offered. The great sacrifices Begin made to obtain a peace treaty with Egypt were never acknowledged by Carter. When else in history has a nation victorious in war ever had to sue for peace, as Israel did with Egypt at Camp David? On what theory did Carter think an aggressor state deserved to have every last bit of territory from which it had launched such aggression? For Begin was pressured to give back the entire Sinai, from which Egypt had launched attacks on Israel in 1948, 1967, and 1973.
Carter has said that Israel should give up all of the West Bank, which he calls “occupied territory.” He seems never to have read the Mandate for Palestine, for if he had done so, he would have discovered that Israel has a legal claim to all of the West Bank which was, according to the Mandate, part of the territories originally assigned to the future Jewish state. But had he done so, would it have mattered? He has for decades been set in his virulent anti-Israel ways, that appeals to history and international law are unlikely to cause him to rethink his deep dislike of the Jewish state.
RJ Katz says
I look forward to reading his obituary.
Edward Amos Brandwein says
So do I
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Who’ll croak first – him or Biden?
KoshsShadow says
Also, it was Carter that was Arafat’s PR man to make the world forget he was a terrorist, and make the PLO the representative of the “Palestinian” people. We see how that worked out. The “Palestinians” are carrying Arafat’s legacy. Carter is largely responsible for the mess that exists now.
somehistory says
Carter doesn’t ‘think.’ carter hates; lusts for applause, and was afraid of a rabbit, which he battled with his paddle. It was the rabbit’s territory, and carter was an interloper. jimmy carter….always wrong.
Troybeam says
Should have never been elected, should have kept to the peanut farm and building houses. Repercussions abound from all presidents that screwed up our nation. Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon both messed up our nation, Nixon never should have gone to China, Carter the ball less wonder and the hostages in Iran a huge failure right there. So much to write so little space.
Wellington says
He was a lousy President and an even worse ex-President. All his life he has been a busy-body lecturing others on what to do right all the while he was doing so much wrong. Ronald Reagan had to clean up after the mess he made from 1977-1981 just as Trump had to clean up Obama’s many errors and hopefully will get a chance again to right the many exceedingly stupid wrongs Biden has perpetrated in the last three and a half years. MAGA 2024—necessary to save what is left of America.
Gamaliel says
Carter pressured the Shah of Iran an ally of the United States, to cede Iran to Ayatollah Khomeini and the Mullahs. The Shah of Iran was later to say “I should never have listened to Carter”. Imagine a world in which Iran was a friend of the United States and Israel. If it hadn’t been for Carter that’s the world we would live in.
James Lincoln says
One can say a lot of things about Jimmy Carter – and his failure as POTUS.
But he was likely the most intelligent “failed” leader, as IQ does not always reflect leadership abilities, practical thinking, etc.
“While at the Naval Academy, he graduated 60th out of 821 midshipmen in the class of 1947 with a Bachelor of Science degree and was commissioned as an ensign.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter
Laura Root says
Carter claims to be a Christian; however, the principle exists that one cannot truly be a Believer in the One True God and His Son, and continue to hate His People and His Land.
brenrod says
.Carter was the crooked low life POS who deposed the shah and created the mullah jihad terrorist state of Iran and the decades of war and terror to this day and the policy of appeasing jihad. May the scum rot in hell
gravenimage says
Jimmy Carter’s Animus Toward Israel
………………………………………….
Ever since his presidency–when I was just a teenager–this has been quite obvious.
Kepha says
Carter is a man who would probably be a wonderful neighbor; but as a president, he was dismal.
However, I do not blame him for having much admiration for Sadat. Sadat made a very big gamble when he made his overtures to Israel. He knew that Egypt and its people needed peace; that an unrelenting cry of “Itbagh al-Yahud” wasn’t going to carry Egypt all that far. And I will credit Carter for being the broker of that first major Mideast peace breakthrough (I also give credit to Trump for the Abraham Accords between Israel on the one hand and Bahrain and UAE on the other).
Re Carter and Begin–Begin began (no pun intended) as the leader of the Irgun, which was a nasty bunch that vied with the IRA and a few others for terrorist cred. Although, in fairness, it should also be noted that Sadat also had a shady political past, including organizing Egyptian students to stab Britain in the back while Rommel was advancing towards the Nile.
However, on balance, Carter’s foreign policy was a dismal monument to the naive good faith of old-fashioned American liberals. His undercutting of both the Shah of Iran and Taiwan sowed the seeds for conflict and the withering of American interests. He believed Khomeini could be trusted because he was “a religious leader”, a sentiment inculcated by a brain-dead theological liberalism that buries Christianity all while trying to make it “relevant”; his normalization with Communist China was a monument to American liberal faith in legal formulas and a thoroughly vain hope that a perceived “wave of the future” in Asia could be America’s friend when it consistently fed its own people a fiery hatred of the USA. It also seems that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan took him by complete surprise. Perhaps, in a truly moral world, Carter did not deserve what happened to him–but he sure set himself up for the hard fall his administration experienced.
At the same time, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s National Service Adviser, served us badly in opposing the Soviet Union chiefly because it was Russian rather than Communist. He had a very naive view of the Chinese Communists–who are now the world’s best exemplar of and best hope for 20th century totalitarianism, an idea and movement that rivals Islam itself as a degenerative force.
We see Carter’s legacy in the attempts of the Obama and Biden administrations to engage with Iran and to support the Ikhwan in Syria’s civil war (a fight in which the USA truly had no dog). Again, the belief that an implacably anti-US “wave of the future” can somehow be placated.
As for Carter’s anti-Israel animus, it is Israel’s fault because, unlike the good American liberal or European social democratic state it was supposed to be, it decided to take its own side in a fight (a hat tip to Will Rogers, who once said that a liberal is a man who won’t take his own side in a fight).