Former US President Jimmy Carter celebrated his 100th birthday by breaking his own record, again becoming the longest-living US president. Carter first broke the record back in 2019, when the politician surpassed former President George H.W. Bush in life expectancy, the latter passed away at the age of 94.
Carter celebrated his birthday on Tuesday in Plains, Georgia, where his modest home was placed in hospice care last year.
He is the oldest living president and the longest-serving president in US history. His enormous legacy is defined by his human rights and humanitarian work after a presidency during which he was heavily criticised. Carter’s grandson, Jason Carter, told the local 11Alive news station ahead of the ex-president’s birthday:
I think he has a complicated legacy but it really boils down, to me and I think, for him, that he lived out his faith and the commandment to love your neighbour as yourself in a way that made him respect people. And he used that respect to tell the truth. He used that respect to promote human rights. He used that respect to work with the least of these, all over the world in a way that gave him partners in the poorest places in the world to do remarkable things.
While Carter did not attend any events to mark his birthday, he was honoured in September with a concert in Atlanta, Georgia, where several former US presidents sent video messages praising Carter’s lifetime of work. A recording of the concert will be shown in the US on Tuesday night.
A year after leaving the presidency, Carter founded the Carter Center Charitable Foundation, which has spearheaded a number of global programmes. These included monitoring the integrity of elections around the world, advancing human rights and promoting public health.
In 2002, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his “peace negotiations, campaigning for human rights and work on social welfare.”
“Silence” on Israel
Carter’s post-presidential legacy owes much to his willingness to break from the norms of the political establishment in the US.
In 2006, he became the rare political figure – let alone a former president – to question Israel’s policies in the occupied Palestinian territory.
Carter denounced the “almost universal silence on anything that might be critical of the current policies of the Israeli government.” He also called the system of control in the occupied territory “apartheid” – a position that some human rights organisations have since adopted. In 2009, he said that Palestinians in Gaza are “treated more like animals than human beings.”
His stance helped pave the way for criticism of Israel’s policies in mainstream US political circles, despite deep-seated support for Washington’s “ironclad” ally among the American political class.
His words also helped lay the groundwork for a growing number of US lawmakers who have called on President Joe Biden’s administration to halt arms shipments to Israel amid the Gaza war, which has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians since October 7, 2023.
The incumbent US president congratulated Carter
Joe Biden was among those praising Carter days before his milestone birthday. In a video message shown on CBS television’s Sunday morning programme, Biden praised the “moral clarity you have demonstrated throughout your career.” Biden also said:
You’re a voice of courage, conviction, compassion, and most of all, a beloved friend of [First Lady] Jill and me and our family.
The former president has been living in hospice care in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, since 2023. Carter last went public last year when his wife Rosalynn, whom he married in 1946, died.
In the summer of 2024, news began circulating in the US media that the former politician had passed away a few months before his anniversary. Later, the Carter Centre denied this information, calling it false. As it was found out in the editorial office of Fox News, the news appeared thanks to “extreme right-wing political activist” Laura Loomer. At the same time, after some time, Loomer herself also denied the information about Carter’s death.
