June 12, 2008
Last week, Senators Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain addressed the AIPAC convention, focusing upon the Road Map for Peace, Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, and Hamas.
Yet, writing in The New York Times on May 18, Thomas Friedman posited that regarding United States Mideast policy, who the next American president will be is irrelevant. He insisted that there is uniformity in American policy toward the Arab-Israel dispute, which “is not going to change no matter who becomes our president,” and that the notion that the next president — whoever he or she will be — “would have a desire or ability to walk away from this…consensus is ludicrous.”
The history of American-Israel relations, however, indicates otherwise. The personal discretion of the U.S. president has been consequential at the most pivotal points in the 60-year history of the Jewish state.
On May 14, 1948, Harry Truman faced an agonizing decision — whether or not to grant American recognition to the nascent State of Israel. His key advisers were bitterly divided. Opposing recognition were Secretary of State George Marshall and Defense Secretary James Forrestal. They claimed that recognition would unnecessarily antagonize the Arab world and that the Jewish polity, led by immigrants from communist Eastern Europe, inevitably would align with socialism — the Soviet Union — and against capitalism — the United States. Favoring recognition were Truman’s legal counsels, Clark Clifford and David Niles. They pointed out that the Soviets were on the verge of granting de jure recognition, and the absence of at least a “preemptive” de facto American recognition would be a Russian propaganda coup.
Clifford and Niles also reminded the president of the recent barbarity of Nazi death camps, stressing that moral factors demanded that Holocaust survivors not be abandoned again. Truman might have sided with Marshall and Forrestal against medinat Yisrael, permanently damaging the Israel-U.S. relationship. Fortunately, he chose to recognize Jewish sovereignty, styling himself as a modern-day Cyrus, the ancient Persian king who facilitated the second biblical Jewish commonwealth.
Similarly decisive were presidential decisions during the events leading up to and during Israel’s June 1967 Six-Day War. Lyndon Johnson faced a strategic dilemma as war clouds gathered. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser threatened to “drive the Jews into the sea.” Israelis prepared for the dire prospect of a second holocaust, preparing thousands of body bags. When all diplomatic efforts failed to avert the crisis and the Jewish state launched a preemptive strike, an American president again faced a divided array of advisers. Secretary of State Dean Rusk was focused primarily on Vietnam and on stemming the influence of the USSR in the Middle East. Rusk regarded Israel’s needs and survival as a low U.S. priority. A counterview came from both national security adviser Walter Rostow and his brother Eugene, an undersecretary of state. The Rostows, viewing Israel as a strategic and military ally, felt a strong alliance with the Jewish state as a bastion of democracy and for reasons relating to Judeo-Christian tenets of belief.
As the Israel Defense Forces scored rapid initial victories, the Soviets prepared a response to the pending defeat of their Mideast surrogates and set in motion a massive military intervention. Fortunately, President Johnson sided with the Rostows rather than Rusk and instructed his military staff to “find out where the Sixth Fleet is” and tell it to head directly toward Israel.
This display of American force caused the Soviets to stay on the sidelines as Israeli military victories concluded. Several weeks later, during their summit meeting in Glassboro, Johnson recalled, Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin “couldn’t understand why we would support the Jews — three million people — when there are 100 million Arabs. I told him that numbers do not determine what is right. We tried to do what is right regardless of the numbers.”
On Yom Kippur 1973, the Egyptians and Syrians launched a massive surprise assault upon Israel. Unprepared and not mobilized on Judaism’s holiest day, the Jewish state suffered painful initial defeats. Syrian forces were climbing the Golan Heights and preparing to descend into the Galilee. Egyptian forces were on the march from the South. The Arab supply line was being replenished by the USSR. The Israeli weapons arsenal became depleted.
President Richard Nixon could have remained indifferent; yet, he was horrified by the prospect of a victory of countries wielding Soviet arms against an American ally. Accordingly, he responded with clarity and determination on Israel’s behalf. “Whatever it takes,” Nixon instructed the Defense Department, “save Israel.” As a result of Nixon’s decision, U.S. aircraft delivered 22,000 tons of materiel to Israel. Using these essential arms, the IDF drove the Syrians back to Damascus, encircled the Egyptians, and forced a cease-fire.
In his memoirs, Nixon recalled with pride, “If it weren’t for me, there wouldn’t be any Israel. They know that in Israel.” How true! As Prime Minister Golda Meir later wrote to her American sister Clara, who was critical of Nixon, in the post-Watergate period: “You’re an American. You don’t like Nixon. I’m an Israeli. I will never forget that if it had not been for Nixon, we would have been destroyed.”
The importance of the discretionary authority of the American president does not mean American Jews should be one-issue voters nor necessarily favor a particular party. It does suggest, however, that American Jews must assess the nominees’ United States-Israel policies and temperament.
Even Thomas Friedman concedes that if despite his advice, Israel is among a voter’s “priorities, then at least ask the right question…. As president, would this candidate have the smarts, steel, and cunning to seize a historic opportunity [for peace or for self-defense] if it arises?”
Rabbi Alan Silverstein of West Caldwell is the past president of the World Council of Conservative/Masorti Synagogues.
- Comment: comments@njjewishnews.com
