OPINION:
The passing of Jimmy Carter is a good time to recognize the former president’s involvement in the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, an accomplishment for which Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978 (“Jimmy Carter, 39th U.S. president, dies at age 100,” Page 1, Dec. 30).
Concurrently, we can applaud Mr. Carter’s 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, such as the one in the Middle East.
Nevertheless, we should remember that the truly worthy recipient in 1978 was Sadat. Through three wars, Arab leaders had used Egyptian blood and treasure for vicarious satisfaction of their hatred of Jews, which had invigorated their despotic regimes. By the end of the 1973 war, Sadat was certain Egypt’s price for Arab victory would include not only countless military deaths, but also the destruction of the Aswan Dam. This would lead to flooding affecting hundreds of thousands of Egyptians, as well as catastrophic infrastructure damage.
Sadat brought an end to this cycle (and looming national catastrophe) with his historic trip to Jerusalem on Nov. 7, 1977, when he began a process formalized with the signing of the Camp David Accords the following September and the peace treaty of 1979. For Sadat’s extraordinary statesmanship, the Arab League suspended Egypt’s membership. Two years later, Sadat was assassinated by an amalgam of Islamic radicals including Ayman al-Zawahiri, who came from the Muslim Brotherhood and became a leader of al Qaeda.
In comparison, Begin risked nothing politically, and Mr. Carter just served milk and cookies.
NOLAN NELSON
Redmond, Oregon
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