(RNS) — My late parents taught me a cardinal rule of etiquette and good taste: Always speak well of the dead. That is what I have sought to do in the days since the death of former President Jimmy Carter, on Sunday (Dec. 29), at the age of 100.
He died, as the Bible would put it, at a good old age. There was much good in his legacy: the 1978 Camp David Accords, in which Carter brought Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin together to negotiate a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel; Carter’s post-White House activism with Habitat for Humanity; his work through The Carter Center in helping combat diseases in Africa; even his 1979 speech in which he criticized Americans for self-indulgence, consumption and pursuing self-interest. His critics decried his preaching; I thought that he was spot-on.
But honesty also demands a deep dive into Carter’s legacy regarding Israel and the Middle East. (Read, in particular, this assessment by his former adviser, Kenneth Stein.)
Nearly 20 years ago, I read and reviewed Carter’s 2006 book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” Back then, the book upset me, as it did many others. Neither time nor memory has chipped away at the sources of our disturbance.
At that time, we had no idea that his words would spawn other words that would become even more hateful, and that, particularly after Oct. 7, such hatred would become mainstream.
Let us start with the word “apartheid” in the title. The word stings now; it stung back when the book first appeared. In fact, that is its precise intent — to sting, provoke and malign. Carter’s language came straight out of Arab and Third World rhetoric, out of the United Nations’ 2001 conference on racism at Durban, the Woodstock of Jew-hatred.
Yes, the ongoing occupation of the West Bank and the plight of Palestinians are morally problematic and maddening. I wish that it would end, and I am far from alone. I equally decry the presence of such racists as Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, and Bezalel Smotrich, its finance minister. I bemoan the callousness that has emerged in sectors of the Israeli population.
But to equate Israel with apartheid-era South Africa has only one intent: to delegitimize and demonize the Jewish state.
Carter’s “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” is riddled with errors, misjudgments and false claims. Its understanding of history is woefully inadequate. When Syria’s late dictator, Hafez Assad, told the former president that the Palestinians had lived in the land of Israel for thousands of years, Carter accepted this historical distortion without question.
When it came to Israel’s leaders, Carter had nothing good to say. Former Prime Minister Golda Meir smoked too much, often in violation of “no smoking” signs. Begin was an extremist who was socially awkward and apparently could not make proper eye contact.
By contrast, whom does Carter admire? Syria’s Assad, the father of the recently deposed homicidal despot, Bashar Assad, has a gentle sense of humor, even, Carter wrote, when talking about Israel. Golda’s smoking merits two mentions; Assad’s tyrannical murder of hundreds of thousands of his own people, none.
Then there is Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Carter finds Arafat to be urbane and eloquent. When Arafat claims the Jews invented the Arab threat that they would drive the Jews into the sea, Carter accepts this at face value.
Any mention of Arafat’s kleptocracy, which earned him a place on Forbes’ list of richest rulers, just below that of the late Queen Elizabeth? None. If you sought, perhaps, a critique of the PLO death cult of suicide bombing, you would not find it in Carter’s book, which doesn’t stop at admiration of Arafat, but extends it to Hezbollah.
In the wake of Carter’s death, some have suggested that he was antisemitic. He lectured Meir, reminding her that God would punish his people when they turned away from their devout worship of God. This comes perilously close to blatant theological antisemitism.
But that charge of antisemitism is too glib, and too simplistic. If anything, I suspect that he was philo-semitic.
Anti-semitism and philo-semitism share one thing in common: they are rooted in irrational thoughts about “the Jews.” It’s not that Carter believed that the Jewish state could do nothing right; it’s that he seemed to believe that Israel should do nothing wrong. Because Israel is the Holy Land, Carter demanded moral perfection in a world in which such perfection exists nowhere.
It was not hatred; it was disappointment, because the Jews have not yet lived up to their potential of moral excellence.
What do I wish Carter had said, in response to the book’s many critics?
“To my Jewish friends, especially those who have been my partners in trying to make America and the world into a better place, I apologize. In my zeal to illuminate the grievous plight of the Palestinians, I painted a darker picture of Israel than is necessary. Moreover, in my attempt to bring a little bit of balance into the picture, I exaggerated the virtues and diminished the faults of many Arab leaders.
“There has been much pain in Palestinian history, some of it caused by Israeli policies, but even more of it caused by the ineptitude and villainous behavior of many Palestinian leaders. It is time for us to build a Middle East that goes beyond blame. The Carter Center — and I, Jimmy Carter personally — remain committed to that goal.”
We needed to hear that.
Alas, we never will.
The Jewish tradition speaks of what we owe the dead: chesed ve-emet, the Bible’s Book of Genesis says: grace and truth.
I have spoken my emet, my truth, about President Carter.
But I must hasten to add chesed — grace — as well, for a life well-lived, with its own measures of chesed, which can be translated as “lovingkindness,” “mercy” and “love.” The pastor in me demands that we accept people in the fullness and complexity of who they are, and who they strove to be.
President Carter was a mixture of many elements, as we all are.
My condolences to the Carter family and loved ones, and may God greet him with open arms.
