Now It's History

Now It's History

How Jimmy Carter avoided checkmate

Mideast peace lessons for Trump

Richard Galant
Oct 13, 2025
∙ Paid
Menachem Begin, left, plays the white pieces against Zbigniew Brzezinski (White House photo)

One afternoon during the Camp David peace summit in September, 1978, U.S. national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski walked over to the presidential retreat’s Birch cabin and challenged Israel’s prime minister Menachem Begin to a chess game.

Begin accepted. But…

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