Jimmy Carter, the Georgia peanut farmer who as US president struggled with a bad economy and the Iran hostage crisis but brokered peace between Israel and Egypt and later received the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work, died at his home in Plains, Georgia, on Sunday. He was 100.

US President Joe Biden directed that Jan. 9 will be a national day of mourning throughout the United States for Carter, the White House said in a statement.

“I call on the American people to assemble on that day in their respective places of worship, there to pay homage to the memory of President James Earl Carter,” Biden said.

Carter, a Democrat, became president in January 1977 after defeating incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford in the 1976 election. His one-term presidency was marked by the highs of the 1978 Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt, bringing some stability to the Middle East.

But it was also dogged by an economic recession, persistent unpopularity, and the Iran hostage crisis that consumed his final 444 days in office. Carter ran for re-election in 1980 but was swept from office in a landslide as voters embraced Republican challenger Ronald Reagan, the former actor and California governor.

Carter lived longer than any US president and, after leaving the White House, earned a reputation as a committed humanitarian. He was widely seen as a better former president than he was a president — a status he readily acknowledged.

World leaders and former US presidents paid tribute to a man they praised as compassionate, humble, and committed to peace in the Middle East.

“His significant role in achieving the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel will remain etched in the annals of history,” said Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in a post on X.

The Carter Center said there will be public observances in Atlanta and Washington. These events will be followed by a private interment in Plains, it said.

Final arrangements for the former president’s state funeral are still pending, according to the center.

In recent years, Carter had experienced several health issues including melanoma that spread to his liver and brain. Carter decided to receive hospice care in February 2023 instead of undergoing additional medical intervention. His wife, Rosalynn Carter, died on Nov. 19, 2023, at age 96. He looked frail when he attended her memorial service and funeral in a wheelchair.

Carter left office profoundly unpopular but worked energetically for decades on humanitarian causes. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 in recognition of his “untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”

On Monday, the body awarding the Nobel Peace Prize repeated its praise for Carter’s work.

“Earlier this fall, the Committee had the pleasure of congratulating him on his 100th anniversary, stating that his work in favor of peace, democracy, and human rights will be remembered for another 100 years or more,” it said.

Carter had been a centrist as governor of Georgia with populist tendencies when he moved into the White House as the 39th US president. He was a Washington outsider at a time when America was still reeling from the Watergate scandal that led Republican Richard Nixon to resign as president in 1974 and elevated Ford from vice president.

“I’m Jimmy Carter and I’m running for president. I will never lie to you,” Carter promised with an ear-to-ear smile.

Asked to assess his presidency, Carter said in a 1991 documentary: “The biggest failure we had was a political failure. I never was able to convince the American people that I was a forceful and strong leader.”

Despite his difficulties in office, Carter gained global acclaim after his presidency as a tireless human rights advocate, a voice for the disenfranchised, and a leader in the fight against hunger and poverty, winning the respect that eluded him in the White House.

Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his efforts to promote human rights and resolve conflicts around the world, from Ethiopia and Eritrea to Bosnia and Haiti. His Carter Center in Atlanta sent international election-monitoring delegations to polls around the world.

A Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher since his teens, Carter brought a strong sense of morality to the presidency, speaking openly about his religious faith. He also sought to take some pomp out of an increasingly imperial presidency — walking, rather than riding in a limousine, in his 1977 inauguration parade.

The Middle East was the focus of Carter’s foreign policy. The 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, based on the 1978 Camp David accords, ended a state of war between the two neighbors.

Carter brought Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland for talks. Later, as the accords seemed to be unraveling, Carter saved the day by flying to Cairo and Jerusalem for personal shuttle diplomacy.

The treaty provided for Israeli withdrawal from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and establishment of diplomatic relations. Begin and Sadat each won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1978.

By the 1980 election, the overriding issues were double-digit inflation, interest rates that exceeded 20 percent, and soaring gas prices, as well as the Iran hostage crisis that brought humiliation to America. These issues marred Carter’s presidency and undermined his chances of winning a second term.

HOSTAGE CRISIS

On Nov. 4, 1979, revolutionaries devoted to Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had stormed the US Embassy in Tehran, seized the Americans present, and demanded the return of the ousted shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was backed by the United States and was being treated in a US hospital.

The American public initially rallied behind Carter. But his support faded in April 1980 when a commando raid failed to rescue the hostages, with eight US soldiers killed in an aircraft accident in the Iranian desert.

Carter’s final ignominy was that Iran held the 52 hostages until minutes after Reagan took his oath of office on Jan. 20, 1981, to replace Carter, then released the planes carrying them to freedom.

In another crisis, Carter protested the former Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by boycotting the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. He also asked the US Senate to defer consideration of a major nuclear arms accord with Moscow.

Unswayed, the Soviets remained in Afghanistan for a decade.

Carter won narrow Senate approval in 1978 of a treaty to transfer the Panama Canal to the control of Panama despite critics who argued the waterway was vital to American security. He also completed negotiations on full US ties with China.

Carter created two new US Cabinet departments — education and energy. Amid high gas prices, he said America’s “energy crisis” was “the moral equivalent of war” and urged the country to embrace conservation. “Ours is the most wasteful nation on earth,” he told Americans in 1977.

In 1979, Carter delivered what became known as his “malaise” speech to the nation, although he never used that word.

“After listening to the American people I have been reminded again that all the legislation in the world can’t fix what’s wrong with America,” he said in his televised address.

“The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.”

As president, the strait-laced Carter was embarrassed by the behavior of his hard-drinking younger brother, Billy Carter, who had boasted: “I got a red neck, white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer.”

‘THERE YOU GO AGAIN’

Jimmy Carter withstood a challenge from Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination but was politically diminished heading into his general election battle against a vigorous Republican adversary.

Reagan, the conservative who projected an image of strength, kept Carter off balance during their debates before the November 1980 election.

Reagan dismissively told Carter, “There you go again,” when the Republican challenger felt the president had misrepresented Reagan’s views during one debate.

Carter lost the 1980 election to Reagan, who won 44 of the 50 states and amassed an Electoral College landslide.

James Earl Carter Jr. was born on Oct. 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia, one of four children of a farmer and shopkeeper. He graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1946, served in the nuclear submarine program and left to manage the family peanut farming business.

He married his wife, Rosalynn, in 1946, a union he called “the most important thing in my life.” They had three sons and a daughter.

Carter became a millionaire, a Georgia state legislator, and Georgia’s governor from 1971 to 1975. He mounted an underdog bid for the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination, and out-hustled his rivals for the right to face Ford in the general election.

With Walter Mondale as his vice presidential running mate, Carter was given a boost by a major Ford gaffe during one of their debates. Ford said that “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration,” despite decades of just such domination.

Carter edged Ford in the election, even though Ford actually won more states — 27 to Carter’s 23.

Not all of Carter’s post-presidential work was appreciated. Former President George W. Bush and his father, former President George H.W. Bush, both Republicans, were said to have been displeased by Carter’s freelance diplomacy in Iraq and elsewhere.

In 2004, Carter called the Iraq war launched in 2003 by the younger Bush one of the most “gross and damaging mistakes our nation ever made.” He called George W. Bush’s administration “the worst in history” and said Vice President Dick Cheney was “a disaster for our country.”

In 2019, Carter questioned Republican Donald Trump’s legitimacy as president, saying “he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf.” Trump responded by calling Carter “a terrible president.”

Carter also made trips to communist North Korea. A 1994 visit defused a nuclear crisis, as President Kim Il Sung agreed to freeze his nuclear program in exchange for resumed dialogue with the United States. That led to a deal in which North Korea, in return for aid, promised not to restart its nuclear reactor or reprocess the plant’s spent fuel.

But Carter irked Democratic President Bill Clinton’s administration by announcing the deal with North Korea’s leader without first checking with Washington.

In 2010, Carter won the release of an American sentenced to eight years hard labor for illegally entering North Korea.

Carter wrote more than two dozen books, ranging from a presidential memoir to a children’s book and poetry, as well as works about religious faith and diplomacy. His book Faith: A Journey for All was published in 2018.

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Israeli hostages held by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip were subjected to unspeakable abuse, including sexual torture in which teenagers were forced to perform sex acts on one another, starvation, beatings, burnings, and severe medical neglect, according to a new report that will be submitted by Israel to the United Nations this week.

Children were branded with heated objects and beaten, while women and girls endured sexual assault and psychological humiliation, the report said. Male hostages described being left in isolation, denied food and water, and forced to defecate on themselves, as well as beatings and burnings with irons.

Based on extensive interviews and medical evaluations conducted by Israeli health and welfare teams for more than 100 hostages, the report will be submitted later this week to Alice Edwards, the UN’s special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

The hostages, who were mostly released at the end of November 2023 as part of a week-long ceasefire deal with Hamas, were among the 251 individuals snatched by the terrorist group in southern Israel during its invasion and brutal assault on Oct. 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people were murdered. Some of the hostages were freed in rescue operations by Israeli forces. Approximately 100 hostages remain in captivity.

Children and other hostages were forced to watch footage from the Oct. 7 attack.

They also “witnessed the killing of other captives, further deepening their sense of helplessness and hopelessness,” the report said.

“In captivity, the hostages were often subjected to solitary confinement, poor sanitation, severe medical neglect, lack of sleep, starvation, sexual abuse, violence, threats, and brainwashing through media designed to break their spirit and make them submissive,” it continued.

One child, according to the report, was tied to a chair for extended periods and beaten if they cried. Another survivor recounted how captors extinguished cigarettes on their arms and legs as a form of punishment.

The report highlighted the experiences of women hostages, who faced some of the most egregious abuses. One survivor described being tied to a bed and left for hours, while guards watched her distress for their own amusement. Some were forced to perform humiliating acts under the threat of violence. Others were sexually assaulted by their captors.

Among the elderly hostages, medical neglect was particularly severe. Diabetics were denied insulin, while others with chronic conditions like hypertension or heart disease were left without necessary medications. Some were given food that exacerbated their illnesses or were denied adequate hydration, leaving them weak and unable to stand.

According to the report, in the days leading up to last year’s ceasefire agreement, the captors made noticeable efforts to improve the hostages’ living conditions. They increased food rations and distributed clean clothing, actions that appeared intended to mask the harsh realities of their captivity and give the impression of humane treatment.

In addition to detailing the abuse, the report also criticized the international community for what it described as insufficient action to secure the hostages’ release. To date, the International Red Cross has not accessed the hostages.

The report is “a harrowing testimony to the brutal experiences suffered by the hostages in Hamas captivity,” Israeli health minister Uriel Busso said in a statement released alongside the report. “The horrors the hostages endured reveals to the world the brutality of the enemy with whom Israel is engaged.”

Israeli President Isaac Herzog said the UN was “morally obliged” to bring the remaining hostages home.

“These are the testimonies of those who have been released and rescued. But still, for 450 days 100 innocent men, women, and children, babies and the elderly, have been held hostage in Gaza. With the winter upon us, their lives are in imminent danger,” he said.

Torture. Physical and psychological torture. Starvation. Sexual abuse. Beatings. Branding.

Just some of the horrific words that jump of the pages of the Ministry of Health’s submission to the UN on the horrific ordeal endured by the hostages at the hands of Hamas terrorist…

— יצחק הרצוג Isaac Herzog (@Isaac_Herzog) December 29, 2024

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum called on global leaders to act urgently to secure the release of all hostages in Gaza, warning that |every hostage faces mortal danger each day they remain in captivity.”

“To the world, its leaders, and humanitarian organizations: How can you watch this torture continue? How can you remain silent?” a statement released by the forum said.

Urging the United States and mediating parties to prioritize a comprehensive ceasefire deal for the release of all hostages, the forum stated, “The time to act is now. Lives hang in the balance.”

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JNS.org – Would you believe that it took a whole year for Chanukah to be recognized as a bona fide Jewish festival?

But it’s true. Here’s a quote straight out of the Talmud in Shabbos (21a). After telling the basic Chanukah story, the Talmud adds, “The next year, the Sages established those days and made them holy days with the recitation of Hallel and special thanksgiving prayers and blessings.”

Why did they wait a whole year? Surely, everyone saw then and there, with their own eyes, the great miracle of the one jug of oil that lasted eight days, and the astounding military victory of a bunch of untrained priests taking on the vastly superior Greek army and defeating them. Why did it take a year for Chanukah to be accepted as a festival worthy of an annual celebration?

It would appear that our sages understood that enthusiasm can evaporate rather easily with the passage of time. The excitement and inspiration of the miraculous Maccabean victory could have faded and been forgotten all too soon. That’s why they deliberately waited to see if the people would still be inspired by the previous year’s miracle. When they saw that the inspiration was indeed being sustained, they proudly proclaimed the “Festival of Lights,” and Chanukah became a Yom Tov for posterity.

Have we not seen it in our own generation? Israel has experienced miracles of biblical proportions such as its victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, the hostage rescue at Entebbe in 1976, and, recently, the failed Iranian missile attacks and the astonishing success of the pager explosions against Hezbollah this past year.

These were all incredible miracles of the highest order, but it’s all old news already. We were in awe momentarily, and now it’s all taken for granted. We give credit to Tzahal, the Mossad and all of Israel’s brilliant minds who took part in these efforts, as well as the brave forces on the ground and in the air—as we should. But with all their talents, a million things could have gone wrong. The fact that it all went so smoothly surely points to a higher force beyond our control.

It’s no different in business, communal work or marriage. It doesn’t take long for the initial excitement to fade away and the humdrum of routines to set in, gradually leading to disillusionment and then, all too quickly, to dissolution.

It’s interesting that God chose His very first revelation to Moses to be at the Burning Bush. Miraculously, the bush was covered in flames, but it would not be consumed. What a lesson to the new leader.

Don’t ever get burned out! You’re becoming a leader now. You will have to deal with Pharaoh and his Egyptian superpower, the evil Amalek and other warrior nations who will attack you. And Jews aren’t the easiest to deal with either. Your own people will complain about all sorts of things, justifiable or not. Even a mutiny or two will be on your agenda. But remember the bush, Moses. Learn from the bush. Keep the fire burning!

In the Chanukah story, our people remained inspired and on a spiritual high all that year. The light of the menorah never dimmed, and their enthusiasm never waned. When the sages saw this, they ruled that the events of a year ago were now worthy of being commemorated annually and becoming fixed in the Jewish calendar forever.

Chanukah means “dedication.” The Maccabees rededicated our holy Temple after the Greeks defiled it. Throughout this next week, if we rededicate ourselves to kindling the lights of our menorahs around the world, then our own celebrations will likewise be granted the blessings of posterity and eternity.

We live in traumatic but miraculous times. Big things are happening in the world, and we really do have reasons to hope for a new world order where Israel and the Jewish people will be safe and respected.

May we remember all the miracles we have been privileged to experience. May there be no burn-out, no weakness and no faltering as we progress to the finishing line. May we remain fiery and faithful in the service of our God and our people, illuminate the darkness of our world and usher in the lighting of a new menorah in a rebuilt Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Amen.

Chanukah Sameach!

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