How President Jimmy Carter made me a movie star

President Jimmy Carter, who passed away yesterday at the age of 100, released his controversial book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” in 2006. Relations between Carter and the State of Israel have always been complex. The man who brought peace between Israel and Egypt was, on the one hand, very critical of Israel’s policy in the Palestinian territories.

The book created an earthquake in Carter’s relations with Israel and the Jewish community in the US. However, the Israeli Foreign Ministry very wisely issued a directive to diplomats not to respond to the book so as not to complicate Israel’s relations with the Democratic Party and not to give the book further publicity.

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Before coming to Atlanta to assume my office as Israel’s Consul General to the US Southeast, I had great expectations for cooperation with the Carter Center. In my plans, I envisioned joint development projects with the Carter Center in Africa and Latin America. As soon as the book came out, I had to forget about all these dreams and deal with cross-management.

It was like the perfect storm. Abe Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, called the former president a “bigot.” Deborah Lipstadt, who is now the Biden administration’s special envoy against antisemitism, accused him of having a “Jewish problem.” Alan Dershowitz, the US constitutional lawyer and ardent advocate for Israel, said Carter set out to offend Israelis and Jews.

Just before the directive was issued, I was invited to a quarterly meeting at the Carter Center in Atlanta. The former president would convene the center’s staff and invite the city’s diplomatic community to a briefing on his work. What we didn’t know at the time was that Carter was in the middle of filming a documentary about the book and its reactions in the US and around the world.

From the moment I entered the entrance of the hall, one of the president’s aides approached me in an unusual way and asked if he could bring me to him. I politely declined in light of the crisis. During his briefing, I wanted to ask him publicly why he chose this harsh title, but I was not given the opportunity to speak.

After I left at the end of the event, a man with a home camera chased me and asked for my response to the book. I stood in the parking lot and talked to him. I did not realize that after failing to create a personal scene between me and Carter at the event, the producers sent this cameraman to get a response from me.

After the directive from Jerusalem was issued, the film producers had no material to include as an Israeli response, so my interview in the parking lot was included in the film. I was Israel’s voice in the movie and the only one.

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The following year, Jimmy Carter—Man from the Plains became popular in film festivals worldwide. It was an official selection at the Toronto Film Festival and later won the Venice Film Festival award.

It turns out that Hollywood movie websites open an actor page for every character who appears in films, including documentaries. Since then, I have had an actor page in Hollywood.

Now that he is gone, we will remember President Jimmy Carter for his historic peace accords between Egypt and Israel, for the Canal treaty with Panama, and for his support for democratization around the world. Nevertheless, he left the Iranian and Palestinian challenges for us to resolve.