Meeting Jimmy Carter

This is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.

The news of President Carter’s illness has political pundits preparing his obituary. Since I have encountered President Carter on numerous occasions, my reaction is personal. My first encounter was most memorable.

It was 1988, at the height of the Palestinian Uprising. The venue was a conference, “Theology, Politics and Peace,” that the Carter Center co-sponsored with Emory University in Atlanta. As with most conferences, the papers delivered at the conference were, for the most part, theoretical. With the Uprising in the air, however, I was determined to highlight the brutal repression the Israeli government was meting out to Palestinians struggling for freedom.

My encounter with President Carter began as a long shot. In 1987, I received a letter inviting me to attend the conference. I accepted because I hoped to meet the former President. Some months later a query asking for side paper proposals arrived. Though I doubted I would be chosen, I sent off a topic without an explanation of the subject matter. I hoped to catch the conference organizers eye with the title: “Theology, Politics and Peace: A Jewish Perspective.”

My proposal was accepted. Some months later, I received a phone call asking if I would deliver the luncheon address. The luncheon speaker, the up and coming Hispanic mayor of San Antonio, Henry Cisneros, was embroiled in a scandal and had withdrawn. Since I was a relative unknown, I had difficulty understanding the reason for my elevation. In the spring of 1987, I published a book on a Jewish theology of liberation, but at that point the audience for the book was small, the reaction minimal. Did someone on the conference committee want to highlight my views now that the Palestinian Uprising had hit full stride?

When the luncheon began, the room was full, with speakers and invited guests numbering in the hundreds. The gathered were waiting to hear Mayor Cisneros. Their surprise as I was introduced was soon compounded when, because of the Uprising, I announced my new title, “The Palestinian Uprising and the Future of the Jewish People.”

I began by noting that a sea-change in Jewish history was upon us and that with the Palestinian Uprising we, as Jews, and Christians in solidarity with Jews, faced a fundamental choice. Were Jews and Christians to use the Holocaust and Israel as a bridge of solidarity to all peoples, especially the Palestinian people? Or would both be used as a blunt instrument against others, especially Palestinians?

I was direct and to the point. The crushing of the Palestinian Uprising was wrong for Palestinians and for Jews. I counseled that Jews around the world confess our sins against the Palestinian people, historically in the formation of Israel, and today in the denial of Palestinian freedom. For Christians I added a challenge: They could only be in solidarity with Jews if they were also in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle to be free in their own homeland.

When I finished, the room was hushed. A moment later, the luncheon guests were on their feet, heralding my message of solidarity with a standing ovation. As I left the stage, however, the reaction was more mixed. I was surrounded by emotional well-wishers and by angry opponents. Before I knew it, a few professors gathered around me, linked arms with me and ushered me out of the building. In their view, my presentation was a success. They also felt I needed physical protection.

The next day the major speakers at the conference were scheduled to have lunch with President Carter. Since luncheon and dinner speakers generally leave after their presentations, my attendance at the lunch was at issue. Jurgen Moltmann, a well-known German theologian and a mainstay of the conference, opposed my presence. He wanted to avoid the Palestinian issue – and Jewish dissent – at all costs. As well, his ego was involved. The Palestinian Uprising had relegated his well-worn musings on the crucified God to the back burner.

The next day, I entered the room where the lunch with President Carter was to be held and searched for a my place card. To my surprise, I was seated right across from the President.

Forty minutes into the lunch, President Carter had only glanced my way. Then, all of a sudden, he looked at me intently. I tried to make my name tag more visible without being too obvious. Then he asked who I was. I responded that I was a professor at the Maryknoll School of Theology and Jewish. Though Carter hadn’t attended any of the conference events, he responded immediately: “Yes, you are the one I heard about.”

For the next twenty minutes we chatted one-on-one as if no one else was in the room. Carter asked my views about the Palestinian Uprising and how, as a Jew, I saw the direction Israel was taking. Carter offered candid views about his experience with Menachem Begin at Camp David and after. Carter expressed his disappointment with Israel in no uncertain terms. In his view, Israel had violated the Camp David agreement in substantive ways. Israel was untrustworthy. Begin and the Israeli government had lied to him.

At the end of our conversation, President Carter pulled out a little five and dime notepad. Taking his pen, he asked me for the title of my book. “Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation,” I responded slowly, and with a serious expression rather than his famous smile, he wrote down the title of my book.

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Marc, maybe you helped him see the apartheid situation! He was ready to be annoyed at Begin and Israel already, but every little bit helps.

The bad reactions to your talk were, it seems to me, either from people who’s Israel-First ideology required them to submerge their all-people-are-God’s-children ideology (if any) or from people who feared changing their behavior (not their feelings) and thereby breaking with the crowd (for instance the Jewish-Christian-talkathon crowd the rules of which required not looking closely at what Israel was, had done, and was doing. The surprise, therefore, was that so many applauded your talk.

And Jimmy Carter was one of them.

Triple WOW

Jimmy Carter’s contributions have been invaluable in rendering the understanding of the plight of the Palestinians accessible to a much wider segment of the society. This understanding is already emerging as a pivotal factor in the challenging of the long standing injustices and the eventual achievement of peace,

Some Presidents fade into the sunset after leaving office. Jimmy Carter has grown in stature every day of his long and remarkable life.

Jimmy Carter walked into a storm when he publicized the plight of the Palestinians. He knew what to expect. The real significance is that ex-Presidents do not normally get involved in current controversies. To my mind, this shows that the US ruling class – or part of it – understands that the Israel Lobby has too much power.

Why would any POTUS ever believe Israeli leader or government?