During a visit by Jimmy Carter to the President’s Residence in Jerusalem when Shimon Peres was president, I approached the former US president and told him that in my opinion, he was the best American president Israelis had ever had. At the time, there was an active anti-Carter sentiment among many Israelis.
He looked at me with a bewildered expression and asked: “Are you kidding?” I replied that I knew, as both a fighter in the Yom Kippur War who lost most of my friends, and as someone who served as Peres’s close political and diplomatic adviser, that he was the best and most important president for our future as a thriving, independent state.
There were certainly other presidents who helped us greatly – Lyndon Johnson, who worked closely with prime minister Levi Eshkol to improve our working relationship and gave us anti-aircraft missiles; Barack Obama, who opened US intelligence to us; George H.W. Bush, who mobilized the Iraqi missile warning system to protect us; and Ronald Reagan, who backed Peres’s inflation reduction and economic rescue plan.
But none of them compared to Carter
He initiated and worked hard to impose upon us the peace agreement with Egypt. Without that agreement, who knows where we would be today. His determination encouraged Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat to rise and end the terrible cycle of violence that culminated with the heavy losses of the Yom Kippur War.
Carter expertly maneuvered within our political system to force Begin and the Likud Party to make a 180-degree turn from their position of not retreating a millimeter from Sinai. Begin had even symbolically established his presence in the Neot Sinai settlement, an area in which I was fortunate to sleep during my military reserve duty.
Carter also moved Sadat away from the “three noes of Khartoum,” a reference to the Arab League Khartoum Resolution of 1967, after the Six Day War, which had stipulated: No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no negotiations with Israel.
He succeeded in making both sides appreciate and internalize the consequences of the war. Thanks to him, we all came to understand that military strength is not eternal, that it can erode, that even a perfect surprise and overwhelming force don’t lead to victory, and that enemies can inflict heavy losses on one another. (It’s a pity that current leaders and military commanders have not learned this lesson.)
In other words, Carter reminded us of the limitations of power and its use.
The peace agreement with Egypt allowed us to focus on internal matters and allocate vast resources to our education and welfare needs. Our economy flourished after this agreement: the number of students per classroom was reduced, and roads and highways sprouted like mushrooms after the rain. In short, the State of Israel and its people reaped the fruits of peace daily.
For all of these things, Carter deserves our nation’s gratitude. May his soul be bound up in the bundle of life.
The writer served as a strategic adviser to Shimon Peres from 1990 to 2016. He recently published a book in Hebrew, Whispering in His Ear, which includes never-before told stories about his years as a senior aide to Peres.
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