[img]7|left|||no_popup[/img]Sure, I know about his Nobel Peace Prize and his good work with Habitat for Humanity. I know about his travels across the world and his service as election monitor. I’ve even read some of his op-ed pieces. But surely, I distantly wondered, a one-term President is like, in music terms, a one-hit wonder. Then there’s the antipathy many people, notably on the right, express towards Mr. Carter, raising many questions. Is he really such a horrible individual? Is he really a closet anti-Semite? Was he really that dismal a President? Truthfully, I’ve just never given much thought one way or another to former President Jimmy Carter.
In watching Jonathan Demme’s compelling, even-tempered documentary Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains, a more substantial picture emerges of Mr. Carter than that ephemeral figure made of reputation and distant consideration. The film was shot during Carter’s book tour for Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, with footage from his home and farm in Plains, Georgia. Here we see Carter as a devout Christian, albeit not of the disagreeable science-hating fundamentalist variety, and family man; neighbourly and down-to-earth. Throughout the book tour and with footage from the non-profit organization he founded with wife Rosalyn, The Carter Center, his passion for human rights is quite clear.
As the film isn’t set up as a biography of Carter, a polemic extolling his virtues, or a condemnation, it takes a bit of additional research to fill in the blanks. I never knew, for example, that Carter served in the U.S. Navy with a particular interest in nuclear submarines. I also didn’t know, although it should be rather obvious given the nature of U.S. politics, that he had a robust political career, beginning with his service as senator during the 1960s, continuing with his service as Governor of Georgia, and culminating in his election to the Presidency in 1976. His wealth as a peanut farmer was also built up, although apparently the trustees of a blind trust Carter set up to run his farm while he was President managed to put him in debt. All in all, he had a resume and character at the time of becoming President that certainly make George W. Bush and Barack Obama seem like babes in diapers to varying degrees.
In terms of his Presidency, I really don’t know enough to hold an opinion one way or another. Like Obama, he was saddled with a variety of problems and he was, perhaps, a victim of the expectations that U.S. Presidents are sorcerers who can make it rain on command during the drought season. But regardless of the overall success of Carter as a President, his negotiation of a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel is surely a worthy accomplishment – it’s more than Bush, who started wars instead, ever did accomplish in his failed terms of office.
Israeli Hater or Tough Love?
Out of all this, however, it is the reaction towards Carter that is most interesting. Critics, notably Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, are scathingly dismissive of Carter. “It's obvious that Mr. Carter just doesn't like Israel or Israelis,” he writes. I’ll leave it to Dershowitz nemesis Norman Finkelstein to handle the professor in terms of the Israeli-Palestinian debate (and, briefly, in regards to criticism vis a vis Carter’s book). For my part, however, I don’t think Dershowitz’s assessment is correct.
In observing the criticism leveled against Carter, I see the same kind of criticism leveled against anyone who dares suggest Israel may not be living up to the highest moral standards or even dares sympathize with the plight of Palestinians. Is it not possible to be a friend of Israel and Palestine while criticizing both for their failures in achieving peace? In being blunt with Israel, the vastly more powerful force in this asymmetrical conflict, does it have to be interpreted as anti-Israeli bias? In considering the answer to the question in light of Carter’s work, the following comes to mind: When a child misbehaves and requires discipline, does a parent stop loving him or her? What about tough love? I’m not suggesting that Israel is a child, of course. Yet it seems to me that there are plenty of situations in which we have to be critical, we have to be blunt, we have to be honest, and it is not a sign of spite or malevolence but, instead, an indication of caring. Whether Carter is right or not in his assessment of Palestine as suffering from a kind of apartheid, I find it hard to see him as either a featherweight or an Israel hater. The more I learn, the more I think there is more to Carter than he is given credit for.
Frédérik invites you to discuss this week's column at his blog, www.inkandashes.net
