Thank you very much, President Carter

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A few years ago, during his visit to the Israeli presidential residence, I approached President Carter and told him that in my opinion, he was the best US president that we Israelis have had experienced…writesYoramDori

Yoram Dori

At that time, there was an active anti-Carter sentiment among many in the Israeli public.

He looked at me bewildered and asked: “are you joking?” I replied that I knew, as both a fighter in the Yom Kippur War who lost most of his friends and as someone who served as Shimon Peres’s close security and diplomatic advisor, 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 Eshkol to improve our working relationship and gave us anti-aircraft missiles, Barak Obama, who opened U.S. intelligence to us, George H.W. Bush, who mobilized the Iraqi missile warning system to protect us, and Ronald Regan, who backed Peres’s inflation reduction and economic rescue plan. But none of them compared to Jimmy Carter.

He initiated and worked hard to impose the peace agreement with Egypt on us. 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.

President 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 millimetre from Sinai. Begin had even symbolically established his presence in the Neot Sinai Settlement, where I was fortunate to stay during my reserve duty in the area.

Carter also moved Sadat away from the three noes of Khartoum”. 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 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 do not know this lesson!) In other words, he reminded us of all of the limitations of power and its use.

The peace agreement with Egypt allowed us to focus on internal matters and to allocate vast resources to education and welfare needs. Our economy flourished after this agreement: the number of students in classrooms increased, 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, President Carter deserves our nation’s gratitude. May his soul be bound up in the bundle of life.

Yoram Dori was a close adviser to Shimon Peres 1990-2016.