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Jimmy Carter Was No Saint for Jews
Anwar Sadat, Jimmy Carter, and Menachem Begin at the Camp David Accords Signing Ceremony. Photo: wiki commons.
JNS.org – Forgive me if I don’t join in the rush to canonize Jimmy Carter. He deserves respect for serving as president and for some meritorious accomplishments, but he was also one of, if not the most, anti-Israel president in history. Though hailed as a peacemaker, his actions and statements, particularly after leaving office, show a much darker side steeped in antisemitism.
Carter said in 1977 that his strong stand against the Arab League boycott “was one of the things that led to my election.” His position had been drafted by Rep. Benjamin Rosenthal’s (D-N.Y.) office to attract Jewish voters. The strategy paid off. If only one in nine New York Jews who voted for Carter had gone for Gerald Ford, the president would have been re-elected.
After his election, however, Carter backed away from his campaign commitment to fighting the boycott, undermining the trust Jews placed in him. He was more concerned with America’s dependence on Arab oil and his messianic vision of bringing peace to the Middle East. Anti-boycott legislation was seen as having the potential to upset the Arabs, and thereby endanger U.S. oil supplies and his peace efforts. Still, momentum for legislation had grown since it was introduced in the Ford administration, and the pro-Israel and business lobbies negotiated a compromise that led to its passage. The legislation outlawing cooperation by U.S. companies with the boycott is one of Carter’s enduring contributions to Israel. Still, he didn’t view it as important retrospectively, devoting just one paragraph in his memoir to expressing his outrage towards the boycott and claiming credit for the outcome.
One of his early decisions that drew the ire of Israel was linking aid to the cancellation of Ford’s sale of concussion bombs and his approval of the sale of Israeli-built Kfir jets to Ecuador. Under pressure, he agreed to allow Israel to receive arms needed for its security but refused to reverse his decision on the bombs and jets.
Far more problematic for most Jews was his attitude towards the Palestinians. He saw Palestinians as being in a similar situation to American blacks. He believed the treatment of Palestinians in the disputed territories was contrary to the moral and ethical principles of the United States and Israel.
Carter was the first president to call for a “Palestinian homeland.” He later became determined to leverage Israeli peace with Egypt to force Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to agree to make concessions to the Palestinians, a strategy like the one unsuccessfully employed by the Biden administration to achieve Saudi normalization with Israel.
The Israel-Egypt peace treaty is rightly lauded as Carter’s greatest foreign-policy accomplishment. What is less remembered is how much he did to impede the negotiations. Carter wasn’t interested in a bilateral agreement; he had a misguided vision of a comprehensive Middle East peace that he believed could be reached at an international conference in Geneva. When Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin came to the White House, Carter told him US support for Israel would be damaged if he refused to accept the Palestine Liberation Organization’s participation and was the first president to call Israeli settlements illegal. Carter insisted that the Jewish states accept only “minor adjustments” to the 1967 borders, causing an uproar because it was inconsistent with Israel’s determination to maintain “defensible borders.” Carter pressured Israel to “accept the situation that we think is fair.” (emphasis added)
He tried to enlist the help of Syrian President Hafez Assad with the PLO. Despite finding Assad “extremely antagonistic” towards Israel, he praised the dictator as a “strong supporter in the search for peace.”
After the election of Menachem Begin, Carter said that his call for a Palestinian homeland didn’t imply the creation of a Palestinian state, which he said would be a threat to peace, but he envisioned an entity associated with Jordan. Whatever goodwill that statement gained was offset by the subsequent revelation that the administration was in contact with the PLO and that it agreed to negotiate with Yasser Arafat if he accepted either Israel’s right to exist or U.N. Security Council Resolution 242. This violated Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s agreement with Israel that the PLO must meet both conditions.
Meanwhile, Israel and Egypt had begun secret talks in Morocco. President Anwar Sadat recognized that Carter’s idea of an international conference would allow his rivals to veto a deal with Israel and took matters into his own hands by making his historic trip to Jerusalem in November 1977. Carter and his advisers were furious that Sadat had undermined their Geneva gambit. Morton Kondracke of The New Republic wrote that Carter’s unwitting “freshman-year ineptitude scared Sadat into dramatic independent action.”
To his credit, Carter reversed course and convened the talks at Camp David. He was hardly the honest broker his supporters claim. After the 1978 congressional election, he said he was willing to sacrifice re-election because of alienating the Jewish community. Still, Carter believed it was necessary to side with Sadat and pressure the Israelis. His effort to leverage the Palestinian issue, however, failed because he recognized Sadat “did not give a damn about the West Bank.”
Carter was desperate for an agreement as his political standing deteriorated. Failure was seen as a potential death knell to his re-election. He realized he had little influence over Israel and consequently accepted an agreement that did not resolve what he considered the major issues.
Carter later used Israel to sell America’s most sophisticated fighter jets to Saudi Arabia. Israel objected because it threatened its qualitative military edge. Carter packaged the sale with jet transfers to Israel and Egypt to win approval, and said it was all or nothing. AIPAC objected: “By placing Israel in the same category as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the administration is obviously trying to make the Arab sales more acceptable to Congress, but the administration is also abandoning America’s traditional special relations with Israel.” As would happen in subsequent arms fights, AIPAC lost. The fight added to the Jewish perception of Carter as an unreliable ally.
As the election approached, Carter was embarrassed by his U.N. ambassador, Andrew Young, who was forced to resign when it was revealed that he had arranged secret meetings with representatives of the PLO. It was the last straw.
In 1980, Jewish voters abandoned Carter—first for Sen. Edward Kennedy in the primaries, and then for Gov. Ronald Reagan and Illinois Rep. John Anderson in the general election. Carter won only 45% of the Jewish vote (compared to 66% this past November for Vice President Kamala Harris); Reagan got 39%. This was the worst showing among Jewish voters for a Democratic presidential candidate since James Cox in 1920. Jews voted against Carter for the same reasons as other Americans, but his policy towards Israel undoubtedly led to the drop in his share of the Jewish vote from 71% in 1976.
Carter’s disdain for Israel’s leaders is a recurring theme in his diary, referring to them as “obstinate and difficult,” “recalcitrant” and “intransigent.” For example, Yitzhak Rabin was “ineffective,” “timid, stubborn and also somewhat ill at ease.” Begin, who he initially believed was “congenial, dedicated, sincere and deeply religious,” became “a small man with a limited vision.” Carter wrote after one meeting at Begin’s home that he had “rarely been so disgusted in all my life.” By contrast, he found Sadat “charming,” “strong and courageous.” After the three men received the Nobel Peace Prize, Carter wrote: “Sadat deserved it; Begin did not.”
Carter partly blamed his electoral defeat on the Jews, and his animus was reflected in his post-presidency statements and writings. His attitude towards Israel was also influenced by his conviction that Begin lied to him (he didn’t) about freezing settlements.
While he is rightly lauded for his humanitarian work, his antisemitism tarnished his legacy. His book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, was filled with falsehoods and the misrepresentation of history. He even contradicts the calumny in the title when he says, “The driving purpose for the forced separation of the two peoples is unlike that in South Africa.”
Even though he helped facilitate Israel’s peace with Egypt, which included the evacuation of Sinai, Carter repeatedly asserts that Israel does not want peace, is stealing Palestinian land, and refuses to trade land for peace.
Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the United States, said when he reviewed the book that he was shocked by Carter’s “not-so-subtle antisemitism.” Oren also noted that Carter was a Hamas apologist.
Professor Deborah Lipstadt criticized his insinuations about Jewish control of media and government. Carter was angry about the negative comments about his book, and even as he was making the rounds promoting the book in the press, he complained about the “tremendous intimidation in our country that has silenced” Israel’s critics.
Sadly, the former president became one more anti-Israel propagandist, demonizing the Jewish state at every opportunity and spouting the one-sided narrative of the antisemites.
As I wrote in a review of the book, few, if any, Jews realized just how nefarious Carter’s views were until he left office. In retrospect, their votes against him may have saved Israel.
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Harvard Faculty Oppose Deal With Trump, Distancing From Hamas Apologists: Crimson Poll
Harvard University president Alan Garber attending the 373rd Commencement Exercises at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, May 23, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
A recently published Harvard Crimson poll of over 1,400 Harvard faculty revealed sweeping opposition to interim university President Alan Garber’s efforts to strike a deal with the federal government to restore $3 billion in research grants and contracts it froze during the first 100 days of the second Trump administration.
In the survey, conducted from April 23 to May 12, 71 percent of arts and sciences faculty oppose negotiating a settlement with the administration, which may include concessions conservatives have long sought from elite higher education, such as meritocratic admissions, viewpoint diversity, and severe disciplinary sanctions imposed on students who stage unauthorized protests that disrupt academic life.
Additionally, 64 percent “strongly disagree” with shuttering diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, 73 percent oppose rejecting foreign applicants who hold anti-American beliefs which are “hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence,” and 70 percent strongly disagree with revoking school recognition from pro-Hamas groups such as the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC).
“More than 98 percent of faculty who responded to the survey supported the university’s decision to sue the White House,” The Crimson reported. “The same percentage backed Harvard’s public rejection of the sweeping conditions that the administration set for maintaining the funds — terms that included external audits of Harvard’s hiring practices and the disciplining of student protesters.”
Alyza Lewin of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law told The Algemeiner that the poll results indicate that Harvard University will continue to struggle to address campus antisemitism on campus, as there is now data showing that its faculty reject the notion of excising intellectualized antisemitism from the university.
“If you, for example, have faculty teaching courses that are regularly denying that the Jews are a people and erasing the Jewish people’s history in the land of Israel, that’s going to undermine your efforts to address the antisemitism on your campus,” Lewin explained. “When Israel is being treated as the ‘collective Jew,’ when the conversation is not about Israel’s policies, when the criticism is not what the [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism] would call criticism of Israel similar to that against any other country, they have to understand that it is the demonization, delegitimization, and applying a double standard to Jews as individuals or to Israel.”
She added, “Faculty must recognize … the demonization, vilification, the shunning, and the marginalizing of Israelis, Jews, and Zionists, when it happens, as violations of the anti-discrimination policies they are legally and contractually obligated to observe.”
The Crimson survey results were published amid reports that Garber was working to reach a deal with the Trump administration that is palatable to all interested parties, including the university’s left-wing social milieu.
According to a June 26 report published by The Crimson, Garber held a phone call with major donors in which he “confirmed in response to a question from [Harvard Corporation Fellow David M. Rubenstein] that talks had resumed” but “declined to share specifics of how Harvard expected to settle with the White House.”
On June 30, the Trump administration issued Harvard a “notice of violation” of civil rights law following an investigation which examined how it responded to dozens of antisemitic incidents reported by Jewish students since the 2023-2024 academic year.
The correspondence, sent by the Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, charged that Harvard willfully exposed Jewish students to a torrent of racist and antisemitic abuse following the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre, which precipitated a surge in anti-Zionist activity on the campus, both in the classroom and out of it.
“Failure to institute adequate changes immediately will result in the loss of all federal financial resources and continue to affect Harvard’s relationship with the federal government,” wrote the four federal officials comprising the multiagency Task Force. “Harvard may of course continue to operate free of federal privileges, and perhaps such an opportunity will spur a commitment to excellence that will help Harvard thrive once again.”
The Trump administration ratcheted up pressure on Harvard again on Wednesday, reporting the institution to its accreditor for alleged civil rights violations resulting from its weak response to reports of antisemitic bullying, discrimination, and harassment following the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre.
Citing Harvard’s failure to treat antisemitism as seriously as it treated other forms of hatred in the past, The US Department of Educationthe called on the New England Commission of Higher Education to review and, potentially, revoke its accreditation — a designation which qualifies Harvard for federal funding and attests to the quality of the educational services its provides.
“Accrediting bodies play a significant role in preserving academic integrity and a campus culture conducive to truth seeking and learning,” said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Part of that is ensuring students are safe on campus and abiding by federal laws that guarantee educational opportunities to all students. By allowing anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination to persist unchecked on its campus, Harvard University has failed in its obligation to students, educators, and American taxpayers.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Balancing Act: Lebanese President Aoun Affirms Hope for Peace with Israel, Balks At Normalization
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun attends a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, March 28, 2025. REUTERS/Sarah Meyssonnier/Pool
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on Friday carefully affirmed his country’s desire for peace with Israel while cautioning that Beirut is not ready to normalize relations with its southern neighbor.
Aoun called for a full Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory, according to a statement from his office, while reaffirming his government’s efforts to uphold a state monopoly on arms amid mounting international pressure on the Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah to disarm.
“The decision to restrict arms is final and there is no turning back on it,” Aoun said.
The Lebanese leader drew a clear distinction between pursuing peace and establishing formal normalization in his country’s relationship with the Jewish state.
“Peace is the lack of a state of war, and this is what matters to us in Lebanon at the moment,” Aoun said in a statement. “As for the issue of normalization, it is not currently part of Lebanese foreign policy.”
Aoun’s latest comments come after Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar expressed interest last month in normalizing ties with Lebanon and Syria — an effort Jerusalem says cannot proceed until Hezbollah is fully disarmed.
Earlier this week, Aoun sent his government’s response to a US-backed disarmament proposal as Washington and Jerusalem increased pressure on Lebanon to neutralize the terror group.
While the details remain confidential, US Special Envoy Thomas Barrack said he was “unbelievably satisfied” with their response.
This latest proposal, presented to Lebanese officials during Barrack’s visit on June 19, calls for Hezbollah to be fully disarmed within four months in exchange for Israel halting airstrikes and withdrawing troops from its five occupied posts in southern Lebanon.
However, Hezbollah chief Sheikh Naim Qassem vowed in a televised speech to keep the group’s weapons, rejecting Washington’s disarmament proposal.
“How can you expect us not to stand firm while the Israeli enemy continues its aggression, continues to occupy the five points, and continues to enter our territories and kill?” said Qassem, who succeeded longtime terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah after Israel killed him last year.
“We will not be part of legitimizing the occupation in Lebanon and the region,” the terrorist leader continued. “We will not accept normalization [with Israel].”
Last fall, Israel decimated Hezbollah’s leadership and military capabilities with an air and ground offensive, following the group’s attacks on Jerusalem — which they claimed were a show of solidarity with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas amid the war in Gaza.
In November, Lebanon and Israel reached a US-brokered ceasefire agreement that ended a year of fighting between the Jewish state and Hezbollah.
Under the agreement, Israel was given 60 days to withdraw from southern Lebanon, allowing the Lebanese army and UN forces to take over security as Hezbollah disarms and moves away from Israel’s northern border.
However, Israel maintained troops at several posts in southern Lebanon beyond the ceasefire deadline, as its leaders aimed to reassure northern residents that it was safe to return home.
Jerusalem has continued carrying out strikes targeting remaining Hezbollah activity, with Israeli leaders accusing the group of maintaining combat infrastructure, including rocket launchers — calling this “blatant violations of understandings between Israel and Lebanon.”
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Peace Meals: Chef José Andrés Says ‘Good People’ On Both Sides of Gaza Conflict Ill-Served By Leaders, Food Can Bridge Divide
Chef and head of World Central Kitchen Jose Andres attends the Milken Institute Global Conference 2025 in Beverly Hills, California, US, May 5, 2025. Photo: Reuters/Mike Blake.
Renowned Spanish chef and World Central Kitchen (WCK) founder José Andrés called the Oct. 7 attack “horrendous” in an interview Wednesday and shared his hopes for reconciliation between the “vast majority” on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide who are “good people that very often are not served well by their leaders”
WCK is a US-based, nonprofit organization that provides fresh meals to people in conflict zones around the world. The charity has been actively serving Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank since the Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel. Since the Hamas attack, WCK has served more than 133 million meals across Gaza, according to its website.
The restaurateur and humanitarian has been quoted saying in past interviews that “sometimes very big problems have very simple solutions.” On Wednesday’s episode of the Wall Street Journal podcast “Bold Names,” he was asked to elaborate on that thought. He responded by saying he believes good meals and good leaders can help resolve issues between Israelis and Palestinians, who, he believes, genuinely want to live harmoniously with each other.
“I had people in Gaza, mothers, women making bread,” he said. “Moments that you had of closeness they were telling you: ‘What Hamas did was wrong. I wouldn’t [want] anybody to do this to my children.’ And I had Israelis that even lost family members. They say, ‘I would love to go to Gaza to be next to the people to show them that we respect them …’ And this to me is very fascinating because it’s the reality.
“Maybe some people call me naive. [But] the vast majority of the people are good people that very often are not served well by their leaders. And the simple reality of recognizing that many truths can be true at the same time in the same phrase that what happened on October 7th was horrendous and was never supposed to happen. And that’s why World Central Kitchen was there next to the people in Israel feeding in the kibbutz from day one, and at the same time that I defended obviously the right of Israel to defend itself and to try to bring back the hostages. Equally, what is happening in Gaza is not supposed to be happening either.”
Andres noted that he supports Israel’s efforts to target Hamas terrorists but then seemingly accused Israel of “continuously” targeting children and civilians during its military operations against the terror group.
“We need leaders that believe in that, that believe in longer tables,” he concluded. “It’s so simple to invest in peace … It’s so simple to do good. It’s so simple to invest in a better tomorrow. Food is a solution to many of the issues we’re facing. Let’s hope that … one day in the Middle East it’ll be people just celebrating the cultures that sometimes if you look at what they eat, they seem all to eat exactly the same.”
In 2024, WCK fired at least 62 of its staff members in Gaza after Israel said they had ties to terrorist groups. In one case, Israel discovered that a WCK employee named Ahed Azmi Qdeih took part in the deadly Hamas rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Qdeih was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in November 2024.
In April 2024, the Israel Defense Forces received backlash for carrying out airstrikes on a WCK vehicle convoy which killed seven of the charity’s employees. Israel’s military chief, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, said the airstrikes were “a mistake that followed a misidentification,” and Israel dismissed two senior officers as a result of the mishandled military operation.
The strikes “were not just some unfortunate mistake in the fog of war,” Andrés alleged.
“It was a direct attack on clearly marked vehicles whose movements were known by” the Israeli military, he claimed in an op-ed published by Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot. “It was also the direct result of [the Israeli] government’s policy to squeeze humanitarian aid to desperate levels.”
In a statement on X, Andres accused Israel of “indiscriminate killing,” saying the Jewish state “needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon.”
The post Peace Meals: Chef José Andrés Says ‘Good People’ On Both Sides of Gaza Conflict Ill-Served By Leaders, Food Can Bridge Divide first appeared on Algemeiner.com.