Julia Conley
Former President
Jimmy Carter, who served just four years in office and went on to win the Nobel
Peace Prize for his decades of work promoting human rights and international
peace, died on Sunday at his home in Plains, Georgia at the age of 100.
His death was
confirmed by his son and came close to two years after the Carter Center
announced that the former president had stopped medical treatment for health
conditions and was entering hospice care.
Rights advocates
have credited Carter for his championing of the rights of marginalized people
including Palestinians, even as the U.S. political establishment remains
overwhelmingly supportive of Israel's violent policies in Palestine.
"He was our
greatest ex-president and a very good president despite GOP efforts to tarnish
him," said James Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute. "He
was a peacemaker and a human rights champion. A humble man. He taught us how to
live with principles and how to die with grace."
During his term,
Carter helped to broker peace between Israel and Egypt, finalized a treaty that
returned control of the Panama Canal to Panama, and signed an agreement with
the Soviet Union to limit strategic weapons. But conservatives attacked him for
presiding over a period of high unemployment and inflation, the Iran hostage
crisis, and an energy crisis in which the price of oil tripled.
Carter was
credited with being ahead of his time regarding environmental
concerns—installing solar water heater panels on the White House that were
later removed by his Republican successor.
"A
generation from now,” he said at a televised event when the panels were
installed, "this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece,
an example of a road not taken, or it can be just a small part of one of the
greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American
people."
He lost his
reelection campaign to Ronald Reagan in a landslide in 1980. As the Republican
president set about promoting trickle-down economics, with lasting effects on
corporate power and income inequality in the U.S., Carter turned his attention
to building affordable housing with Habitat for Humanity and promoting human
rights and peacemaking around the world.
With his wife
Rosalynn—who died in November 2023—Carter established the Carter Center in the
early 1980s. The organization's health programs have been credited with helping
to cure and control diseases including river blindness, trachoma, and Guinea
worm disease in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.
Carter was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 "for his decades of untiring effort
to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts," including his
leadership during the painstaking negotiations that ended decades of conflict
between Egypt and Israel in 1978. In his acceptance speech, Carter warned
against the invasion of Iraq.
He published the
book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid in 2006, comparing Israel's treatment of
Palestinians to apartheid in South Africa. The book was treated as
controversial, but he vehemently defended its central argument.
"The word
'apartheid' is exactly accurate," he told Democracy Now!
"Palestinians can't even ride on the same roads that Israelis have created
in Palestinian territory... The Israelis completely dominate the life of the
Palestinian people."
In October 2023,
the Carter Center issued a statement saying there was "no military
solution" to the conflict between Hamas and Israel, and demanded a
cease-fire.
Carter also
distinguished himself among former presidents by speaking out against the
Citizens United Supreme Court decision, saying the U.S. had become an
"oligarchy with unlimited political bribery."
"My father
was a hero, not only to me but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights,
and unselfish love," said Chip Carter, the former president's son.
"My brothers, sister, and I shared him with the rest of the world through
these common beliefs. The world is our family because of the way he brought
people together, and we thank you for honoring his memory by continuing to live
these shared beliefs."
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