They say only the good die young, which doesn’t ring too true when we eliminate Hamas terrorists, for example. But Jimmy Carter shuffling off his peanut farm this mortal coil at the ripe old age of 100 definitely supports this contention.
True, he did some good things in his life – like brokering the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, signing of legislation in 1977 banning American corporations and individuals from complying with the Arab boycott of Israel, helping Iranian Jews and Soviet Jews fleeing their respective countries, and launching both the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and the annual National Menorah lighting ceremony, to name some. And it is only fair we recognize that.
But this legacy was tarnished by not just his failed policies regarding Iran, which paved the way for the Iranian revolution and the death and destruction for which the Iranian regime has since been responsible. In 2006, he published his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, a highly distorted account of the Arab-Israeli conflict blaming all Middle East woes solely on Israel, and seemingly justifying terrorism against Israel. As a part of “the Elders” (or as I called them, the Elders of Moron), he would constantly slam Israel while pimping for Hamas, something that aged about as well as Carter himself.
One could assume that his despicable views on Israel were the result of his much-documented antisemitism: like when he taught Sunday class and stated that the Jews killed Jesus (something he later denied saying); when he once complained there were “too many Jews” on the government’s Holocaust Memorial Council; or when he blamed Jews for his loss in the Primaries to Ted Kennedy.
In other words, I think that Carter not only had lust in his heart, but also blackness when it came to the Jewish people. So while I won’t celebrate his death, I won’t exactly be shedding any tears over it either.
