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“INHERENTLY TENDER AND PRONE TO CRISIS:” U.S.-ISRAELI RELATIONS, 1974-1989

Sean Scanlon University of Nebraska-Lincoln

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Scanlon, Sean, "“INHERENTLY TENDER AND PRONE TO CRISIS:” U.S.-ISRAELI RELATIONS, 1974-1989" (2021). Dissertations, Theses, & Student Research, Department of History. 97. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss/97

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“INHERENTLY TENDER AND PRONE TO CRISIS:” U.S.-ISRAELI RELATIONS,

1974-1989

by

Sean D. Scanlon

A DISSERTATION

Presented to the Faculty of

The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska

In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements

For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Major: History

Under the Supervision of Professor Thomas Borstelmann

Lincoln, Nebraska

July, 2021

“INHERENTLY TENDER AND PRONE TO CRISIS:” U.S.-ISRAELI RELATIONS,

1974-1989

Sean D. Scanlon, PhD

University of Nebraska, 2021

Adviser: Thomas Borstelmann

This dissertation demonstrates how the relationship between the United States and the

State of Israel underwent a significant transformation during 1970s and 1980s. After more than two decades of limited American aid since Israel declared its independence in

1948, the United States under Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and

Ronald Reagan dramatically increased its support for Israel in the wake of the October

War of 1973. This increased level of support is most apparent in the level of U.S. military aid provided to Israel, which Israel received under extremely favorable terms. The deepening of U.S.-Israeli ties from 1973 onwards occurred despite the fact that there were very real differences between U.S. and Israeli national and strategic interests, differences that sometimes erupted into fierce disagreements between American and

Israeli officials. U.S. support for Israel was based on several factors, including Israel’s perceived value as a strategic ally during the Cold War, Americans’ vision of Israel as a fellow democracy with similar political, cultural, and religious values, and the large number of Jewish and Christian supporters in the United States. The 1970s and 1980s are also important for the U.S.-Israeli relationship because these years saw an important shift among Israel’s supporters in the United States. While American Jews had traditionally been Israel’s strongest backers, from the 1970s onwards American evangelical Christians emerged as some of Israel’s most vocal champions in the United States. Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………………1

Chapter 1: The United States, the Middle East, and Israel From the 18th Century to the 1950s…………………………………………………………………………………24

Chapter 2: From Exodus to the Six-Day War………………………………………62

Chapter 3: Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Israel, 1969-1974………………103

Chapter 4: Trouble with “Gallant Little Israel”……………………………………159

Chapter 5: Beyond Camp David: The United States and Israel during the Carter Administration………………………………………………………………………210

Chapter 6: The United States and Israel in the 1980s………………………………266

Epilogue……………………………………………………………………………323

Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………340

1

Introduction The October War of 1973 was a turning point in the history of U.S.-Israeli relations. When Israeli forces were caught unprepared by Egyptian and Syrian attacks on two fronts and suffered heavy losses in the first week of fighting, American officials feared that Israel was on the brink of collapse. To turn the tide in Israel’s favor, the

United States launched a massive aerial resupply effort to deliver thousands of tons of military supplies to Israel. When the war ended after three weeks of fighting, the Israeli military had fully recovered and pushed back Egyptian and Syrian forces while inflicting heavy losses on both countries’ forces. In the months after the October War, the United

States became deeply involved in negotiations between Israel and its Arab neighbors to bring stability to the Middle East and prevent another war.

Spearheaded by U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the United States sought to act as an intermediary between the two sides by shuttling back and forth between the

Israeli and Arab capitals to deliver one side’s position and obtain the other’s response, slowly building toward an agreement that was acceptable to both sides. By the spring of

1975, this effort had produced two limited disengagement agreements, one each with

Egypt and Syria, and Kissinger was working toward a third with Egypt when negotiations with Israel collapsed. After extensive talks with Egypt’s president, Anwar Sadat,

Kissinger and his team believed that they were on the verge of success. But when Israeli negotiators refused to continue talks without an Egyptian commitment of “non- belligerency,” Kissinger, with the support of U.S. President Gerald Ford, halted the talks and returned to the United States. In a letter to Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, Ford expressed his “deep disappointment” at Israel’s uncompromising position and told his 2

Israeli counterpart that he was ordering an “immediate reassessment of U.S. policy in the area, including our relations with Israel, with a view to assuring that the overall interests of America in the Middle East and globally will be protected.”1

Israel’s intransigence stood in marked contrast to what U.S. officials were hearing from Egypt. Under President Sadat, Egypt was slowly distancing itself from the Soviet

Union and inching closer to Washington. Sadat and his advisers badly wanted to secure

American economic and military aid and recover the Sinai Peninsula from Israel, and they saw Kissinger’s negotiations as the best way to achieve these objectives. Following a two-hour meeting with Sadat just days before negotiations with Israel came to a standstill, Kissinger wrote in a message to President Ford that, in his judgment, the

Egyptian president has “carried the political concessions, in return for withdrawal, as far as he is able.”2 While the United States’ alliance with Israel had deeper roots than its emerging alliance with Egypt, Israel was proving to be a difficult and contentious negotiating partner.

These 1975 talks came at a crucial moment in relations between Israel and the

United States. After coming to Israel’s aid following Egypt and Syria’s joint attack on

Israel in October 1973, the United States emerged definitively as Israel’s most important

Western ally and the dominant outside power in the Middle East. But a close alliance with Israel threatened to disrupt broader U.S. strategic goals in the Middle East, which

1 Letter from Gerald Ford to Yitzhak Rabin, Washington, March 21, 1975, Document #156, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969-1976, Volume XXVI: Arab-Israeli Dispute, 1973- 1976 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 2012), p. 553. 2 Memo from Deputy National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft to President Ford containing a message from Secretary Kissinger, Washington, March 18, 1975, Document #151, Ibid., 547. 3 included building a better relationship with the Arab world, maintaining access to the region’s oil, and rolling back the Soviet Union’s influence there. While Israel’s supporters in the United States argued that Israel could be a valuable strategic partner for the United States, the Rabin government’s unwillingness to compromise in negotiations with Egypt signaled that Israel’s interests were never going to be identical to those of the

United States.

At this critical juncture in its burgeoning alliance with Israel, the Ford administration faced a choice: it could pursue a strongly pro-Israel policy in the Middle

East, or it could opt for a more balanced path that did not privilege Israel over its Arab neighbors. Under President Ford and Secretary Kissinger, the United States chose the former path, a decision that had dramatic consequences for the United States, Israel, and the broader Middle East for decades to come. By signing a secret memorandum of understanding (MOU) on September 1, 1975, the Ford administration committed the

United States to supporting Israel’s occupation of Arab lands and supplying its security and energy needs for the foreseeable future. This step was consistent with a longer trend toward closer relations between the two countries since the early 1960s, but the mid-

1970s saw a distinct and dramatic shift toward a closer alliance that went further than anything that came before.

In this dissertation I argue that the bilateral relationship between the United States and the State of Israel changed dramatically during the 1970s. Rooted in their efforts to preserve U.S. global influence in a changing global environment, President Richard

Nixon and his senior adviser Henry Kissinger made Israel a key part of their efforts to check and roll back Soviet influence in the Cold War. As a result of this outlook, which 4 positioned Israel as a piece in a broader U.S. strategy, efforts to reach a comprehensive settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict were buried under geopolitical concerns. This dynamic of seeing the U.S.-Israeli alliance as strategically beneficial to U.S. goals in the

Cold War continued even after the nature of the Cold War shifted in the late 1970s and into the 1980s.

Beginning with the U.S. airlift to resupply Israel with military equipment during the October War of 1973, American military aid to Israel increased significantly in the

1970s, and that upward trend continued into the twenty-first century. In fact, according to a 2020 report from the Congressional Research Service, Israel has been the largest recipient of U.S. military aid in the world since the end of World War II, with most of that aid coming from the 1970s onwards.3 By the end of the 1970s, it was no longer a question of whether Israel would receive American military aid, but how much and what kind. This shift occurred under presidents of both political parties.

While the U.S. alliance with Israel deepened significantly during these years, the tensions that prevented these two countries from coming together sooner remained unresolved. American officials still worried that developing closer ties with Israel would undermine the U.S. position in the Arab world as it tried to maintain access to Middle

Eastern oil and build alliances with Arab countries who could act as buffers against the

Soviet Union and, after 1979, radical Islamist regimes such as Iran. Furthermore,

American officials continued to point out that the interests of Israel and the United States

3 Jeremy M. Sharp, “U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel,” Congressional Research Service Report RL33222, updated November 16, 2020. (URL: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/RL33222). (Accessed 6/2/21). 5 were not always identical. This situation was further complicated by domestic politics in the United States, where pro-Israel activists and organizations pressured government officials and politicians to deepen U.S.-Israeli ties and cried foul at any sign that U.S. policy might endanger Israel’s security. The fact that there was no analogous pro-Arab or pro-Palestinian body in the United States gave these groups a distinct advantage in their efforts to influence U.S. policy. By failing to resolve those fundamental contradictions,

American leaders ensured that, regardless of the friendly and upbeat rhetoric that U.S. and Israeli officials regularly used in public statements and in press conferences, the

United States and Israel continued to clash regularly over their differing priorities and concerns.

For their part, Israeli leaders were extremely sensitive to any sign that the

American commitment to Israel was not absolute. Their concerns about U.S. support were rooted in deep anxieties about Israel’s survivability as a state surrounded by Arab nations, fears about the survivability of the Jewish people after the Holocaust, and the fact that the United States was home to the largest Jewish population in the world outside

Israel. From U.S. officials’ statements about Israeli settlement activity in 1976 to

American plans to sell sophisticated military aircraft to Saudi Arabia in 1981 and beyond,

Israeli leaders protested loudly at any indication that U.S. support for Israel seemed to be wavering. The same was true of Israel’s supporters in the United States, who objected when both Democratic and Republican administrations adopted policies that seemed to threaten Israel’s interests. In this tense climate, any incident could precipitate a crisis in

U.S.-Israeli relations, which would have to be smoothed over before meaningful relations could resume. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Samuel Lewis was correct in February 1982 6 when, after months of repeated disagreements between American and Israeli officials on a host of issues, he described U.S.-Israeli relations as “inherently tender and prone to crisis.”4

While this dissertation is primarily an analysis of Israel’s place in U.S. foreign policy during the second half of the twentieth century, it also aims to embed that story into larger narratives of Middle Eastern, international, and U.S. domestic history.

Likewise, just as U.S.-Israel ties are closely related to U.S. policies in specific regions, they are also inseparable from the context of international relations during the post-World

War II period. Specifically, the Cold War conflict between the United States, the Soviet

Union, and their respective allies had an enormous impact on the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Certainly, from the American perspective, the Cold War confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union has long been the dominant paradigm for understanding American foreign policy throughout the world in the second half of the twentieth century. But when scholars switch their emphasis from the superpowers to local actors in places like Southeast Asia and Latin America, the Cold War appears much less influential in shaping regional realities than it does from an American or Soviet perspective. Instead, it is local politics, culture, and economics that take center stage.

Several historians have also expanded our perspective of the Middle East by shifting the focus away from the superpowers’ relations with individual local actors and toward regional and global analyses. Historian Rashid Khalidi, for instance, argues that the Cold

4 Telegram from Ambassador Lewis to the State Department re “U.S.-Israeli Relations: Prone to Crises,” February 27, 1982, “Israel (2/24/82-3/2/82),” National Security Council, Executive Secretary – Country Files, RAC Box 38, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library (RPL). 7

War prevented the United States from understanding the nuances of Middle East politics and led American presidents to adopt policies that were detrimental to the whole region.5

And as Nathan Citino observed in a recent survey of the literature on the Cold War in the

Middle East, historians of the Middle East will never be able to ignore the American-

Soviet rivalry completely.6

Though the U.S. built a close and, according to some, “special” relationship with

Israel, this development cannot be separated from the U.S. relationship to the broader region, especially U.S. ties with the Arab world. U.S. support for Israel, particularly its support for Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands and its treatment of the Palestinian people, proved to be a significant complication for American efforts to build closer ties to

Arab and Muslim countries around the world. Likewise, U.S.-Israeli relations need to be understood in the context of Israeli politics and society, which underwent a significant political shift in 1977 when the long-dominant Labor party was defeated by the right- wing Likud party of Menachem Begin. Finally, American concerns about access to

Middle Eastern oil shaped U.S. policy in the region and its relationship to Israel. As the oil embargo of 1973-1974 made clear, U.S. support for Israel could have serious diplomatic and economic consequences. As Avi Shlaim noted at the end of the 1988, the

5 See Rashid Khalidi, Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East (Boston: Beacon Press, 2009). 6 Nathan J. Citino, “The Middle East and the Cold War,” Cold War History, 19:3 (2019), 456. For more on the Cold War in the Middle East see also the essays in Yezid Sayigh and Avi Shlaim (editors), The Cold War and the Middle East (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). On the Middle East and the global Cold War, see Matthew Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), Odd Arne Westad’s The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005) and The Cold War: A World History (New York: Basic Books, 2017), and Lorenz M. Luthi, Cold Wars: Asia, the Middle East, Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2020). 8 end of the period covered by this dissertation, by the end of the Cold War there was still no consensus over how to reconcile close U.S.-Israeli relations with the need to contain the Soviet Union, maintain good relations with the Arab world, and ensure that the West had access to Middle Eastern oil.7

The U.S. relationship with Israel also affected U.S. relations with Europe, especially after the 1973-1974 oil embargo, which had a much greater impact in Europe than it did on the U.S. itself, the ostensible target of the embargo. From the 1970s onwards, as the United States deepened its ties with Israel, European governments were going in the opposite direction. European nations, for instance, were much quicker to call for a Palestinian state than the United States. In fact, historian Tony Judt, writing at the beginning of the war in Iraq in March 2003 when global anti-American sentiment was very high, went so far as to call the gap between American and European views of the

Israeli-Palestinian conflict “the biggest impediment to transatlantic understanding today.”8

One of the most common rationales for developing a closer alliance between the two countries, one that Israeli officials repeatedly emphasized over the years, was Israel’s potential as an American ally against Soviet influence in the Middle East. Some of the strongest proponents of this view were neoconservatives, a group of intellectuals and politicians who became disenchanted with détente, the Nixon administration’s effort to reduce tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union during the 1970s. These

7 Avi Shlaim, “The Impact of U.S. Policy in the Middle East,” Journal of Palestine Studies, V ol.17, No. 2 (Winer, 1988), 15-16. 8 Tony Judt, “The Way We Live Now,” printed in Judt, When the Facts Change: Essays, 1995- 2010 (New York: Penguin Books, 2015), 209. 9 neoconservatives, whose numbers included many prominent Jewish intellectuals, urged successive administrations to deepen U.S. ties with Israel against their shared enemies, the Soviet Union and Islamic terrorism.

Finally, U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East cannot be separated from cultural, political, and economic developments within the United States during the second half of the twentieth century. The 1960s saw the end of more than two decades of steady economic growth in the United States after World War II, a highly unpopular war in

Southeast Asia, massive protests calling for basic civil rights for African Americans, and the emergence of a conservative backlash against New Deal liberalism. Together these and other factors created a new political and cultural environment in the United States.

As with any other issue abroad, U.S. foreign policy can never be separated from developments within the United States, and Americans’ attitudes toward Israel are closely linked to their views on a host of other issues, including concerns about energy, race, religion, antisemitism, and the place of Jews in American society.

The 1970s and 1980s witnessed the beginnings of an important shift in Israel’s base of support in the United States. Following Israel’s declaration of independence in

1948, the American Jewish community represented Israel’s strongest supporters in the

United States and remained so throughout the 1950s and 1960s. American Jews’ support for Israel reached its peak in the late 1960s and 1970s following the Six-Day War of June

1967 and the Yom Kippur War in October 1973. But after the election of the right-wing

Likud prime minister Menachem Begin in 1977 and especially after the 1982 Israeli 10 invasion of Lebanon, many American Jews began to question whether the Israeli government deserved their full and unyielding support.9

One of the most important factors that shaped the American public’s views of

Israel was the emergence of widespread public interest in the Holocaust. During World

War II and in subsequent years, American Jews were of course intensely interested in the fate of European Jews. But despite its prominent place in American culture today and its emergence as a prominent academic field in American universities, it took more than a decade after the end of World War II for the Holocaust to become a subject of wide interest among the broader American public. That changed in the 1960s following a series of events that increased Americans’ knowledge of the Holocaust, including the publishing of books such as The Diary of Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night, the trial of perpetrators like Adolf Eichmann, and the emergence of the first serious academic studies of the Nazi effort to eliminate Europe’s Jewish population, starting in

1961 with Raul Hilberg’s The Destruction of the European Jews. Later the 1978 NBC miniseries Holocaust brought the experience of European Jews during the 1930s and

1940s to an even larger audience in the United States and around the world.

Research conducted in recent years by social scientists helps shed a light on the relationship between American Jews and Israel. With a few exceptions, American Jews generally gravitated to the left of the American political spectrum since the early

9 On Jewish Americans’ complex and shifting views of Israel since the 1970s, see Steven T. Rosenthal, Irreconcilable Differences: The Waning of the American Jewish Love Affair with Israel (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, Published by the University Press of New England, 2001), Ofira Seliktar, Divided We Stand: American Jews, Israel, and the Peace Process (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), and Dov Waxman, Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict over Israel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). 11 twentieth century, a fact that has had little to do with their views on Israel. While several

Jewish intellectuals were very prominent in the neoconservative movement mentioned above, they did not represent a majority of American Jews. Instead, most American Jews’ politics had (and continue to have) much more to do with domestic issues than with U.S. foreign policy.10

As Jewish Americans grappled with the actions of Israel’s leaders in Lebanon and the Occupied Territories, another group in the United States was beginning to take a greater interest in Middle Eastern affairs. After keeping a low profile in American politics for decades, white evangelical Protestants emerged as a newly significant force in U.S. domestic politics in the 1970s. In addition to a host of domestic social and cultural priorities, conservative evangelicals also took up the cause of Israel, to the point where it became one of their highest foreign policy priorities, alongside resisting the Soviet Union and communism abroad.11 This trend did not go unnoticed by Israeli leaders, who had recognized long ago the value of having allies in the United States who were not in government but could put pressure on Congress and the President when U.S. policy threatened Israeli interests and goals. Starting with Likud Prime Minister Menachem

Begin and continuing up through the era of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli officials and politicians have made it a point to develop strong relations with conservative evangelicals. They do so in spite of the fact that some of Israel’s strongest Christian

10 See Kenneth D. Wald, The Foundations of American Jewish Liberalism (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019) and Herbert F. Weisberg, The Politics of American Jews (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2019). 11 On the importance of Israel to American evangelicals, see Mark R. Amstutz, Evangelicals and American Foreign Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), especially Chapter 6. 12 supporters believed that Israel’s rise and success were part of a much larger divine plan that presaged the Second Coming of Christ and the onset of a new biblical age, beliefs that Israelis do not share. This created an ironic situation in which American evangelicals embraced the same right-wing Israeli leaders who made American Jews reluctant to whole-heartedly support the policies of the Israeli government.

While American evangelicals’ intense interest in Israel is a recent development, it has its roots in the much older tradition of Christian Zionism, a belief that calls for the return of the Jewish people to Palestine, a region with deep religious significance for

Christians and Jews as well as Muslims.12 Religion has strongly influenced both

American and British thinking about Palestine and the Middle East for centuries. As historian Rashid Khalidi notes in his recent survey of a century of Palestinian history, the deep historical and religious resonances of the region have blinded Jews and many

Christians to the fundamentally modern and colonial elements within the history of the modern state of Israel.13

American support for Israel has been strong in both major political parties since the 1960s, but more recently it has become an increasingly partisan issue in American politics. The Democratic Party, where American Jews have largely made their political home throughout the twentieth century, has shown some willingness to challenge Israel on its continued occupation of Palestinian lands. On the other hand, some of Israel’s strongest supporters are conservative evangelical Christians, who remain one of the most

12 For a useful recent survey of Christian Zionist beliefs, see Samuel Goldman, God’s Country: Christian Zionism in America (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). 13 See Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2020), 9. 13 important constituencies of the Republican Party. While support for Israel is a major concern of many evangelicals, research by political scientists Kenneth Wald, Herbert

Weisberg, and others show that the politics of American Jews are often shaped by domestic issues more than by foreign policy concerns such as the American alliance with

Israel.14

Surveying the Historiography of U.S.-Israeli Relations

In American Orientalism, his history of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East since World War II, Douglas Little captured the complexity of U.S.-Israeli relations when he wrote that a “careful examination of the ambivalent and informal alliance that emerged between the United States and Israel during the fifty years after 1945 reveals that, more often than not, both simple arithmetic and differential calculus were at work.”15 Yet despite the richness of the subject, only two books tackle the entire length and breadth of U.S-Israeli relationship since 1948. Both were published in 1993, before many important diplomatic records were opened to researchers and before a new generation of historians brought new eyes to this “special relationship.”16 Political scientists are also deeply interested in the history of U.S.-Israeli relations and the unique challenges it poses for international relations (IR) theories.17 Much like traditional diplomatic historians, political scientists have been particularly concerned with the views

14 See Weisberg, Chapter 9 and Wald, Chapter 8. See also Jonathan Rynhold, The Arab-Israeli Conflict in American Political Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 15 Douglas Little, American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East since 1945 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 78. 16 David Schoenbaum, The United States and the State of Israel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) and Abraham Ben-Zvi, The United States and Israel: The Limits of the Special Relationship (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993). 17 For an early influential analysis, see Nadav Safran, Israel: The Embattled Ally (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1981). 14 and actions of presidents and senior policymakers.18 Besides historians and political scientists, policymakers have also brought their expertise to bear on the history of U.S.-

Israeli relations to argue for or against the continuation of close U.S.-Israeli relations.19

Most works that address U.S.-Israeli relations focus on very specific aspects of that relationship during narrow timespans. In recent years historians have produced a wide range of studies that analyze U.S.-Israeli relations as well as the United States’ broader relationship with the Middle East in the 1970s and 1980s. Much of this research has focused on the development of cultural ties between the United States and Israel.

Building on the pioneering interdisciplinary scholarship of Melani McAlister, several historians have studied depictions of Israel in journalism, films, novels, and other sources to show that cultural ties between the United States and Israel are heavily based on their common democratic political systems, a similar European heritage, and a shared Judeo-

Christian religious tradition.20 Other works have used newly-declassified records from

18 See George Lenczowski, American Presidents and the Middle East (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), Steven L. Spiegel, The Other Arab-Israeli Conflict: Making America’s Middle East Policy, from Truman to Reagan (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1985), and William B. Quandt, Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict Since 1967 (Washington, D.C. and Berkeley, CA: The Bookings Institution and California University Press, 1993). 19 For an older analysis that is deeply skeptical of close U.S.-Israeli relations, see George W. Ball and Douglas B. Ball, The Passionate Attachment: America’s Involvement with Israel, 1947 to the Present (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992). For a recent and much more sympathetic account, see Dennis Ross, Doomed to Succeed: The U.S.-Israeli Relationship from Truman to Obama (New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2015). 20 See Melani McAlister, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000 (Berkley: University of California Press, 2001), Michelle Mart, Eye on Israel: How America Came to View Israel as an Ally (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2006), Shaul Mitelpunkt, Israel in the American Mind: The Cultural Politics of US-Israeli Relations, 1958-1988 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018), and Amy Kaplan, Our American Israel: The Story of an Entangled Alliance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018). 15 the Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations to examine how U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East shaped and was shaped by individuals and groups in the Arab world.21

Historians have also produced a rich literature on the place of Israel in American domestic politics. Much of the emphasis here is on the individuals, groups, and organizations that support Israel and pressure the U.S. government to adopt pro-Israel policies. In his 2019 book Israel’s Armor, Walter Hixson has written the first history of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States based on archival sources. Hixson’s work emphasizes that during the early decades of Israel’s history the strongest voices calling for closer U.S.-Israeli relations came from American Jews. However, the pro-Israel lobby in the United States has never been an exclusively Jewish effort. As conservative evangelicals became more prominent voices in American politics and society, they emerged as important allies of pro-Israel organizations such as the American Israel Public

Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Studies by Caitlin Carenen and Daniel Hummel trace the history of American Christians’ support for Israel from its earliest iteration among mainline Protestant denominations in the 1940s to conservative evangelicals from the

1970s to the present.22

21 See for instance Craig Daigle, The Limits of Détente: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1969-1973 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), Paul Thomas Chamberlin, The Global Offensive: The United States, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and the Making of the Post-Cold War Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), Roham Alvandi, Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah: The United States and Iran in the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), James R. Stocker, Spheres of Intervention: US Foreign Policy and the Collapse of Lebanon, 1967- 1976 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016), Salim Yaqub, Imperfect Strangers: Americans, Arabs, and U.S.-Middle East Relations in the 1970s (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016), and Seth Anziska, Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018). 22 See Walter L. Hixson, Israel’s Armor: The Israel Lobby and the First Generation of the Palestinian Conflict (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019), Caitlin Carenen, The Fervent Embrace: Liberal Protestants, Evangelicals, and Israel (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 16

Most recently, Kenneth Kolander’s 2020 book America’s Israel illuminates the important role that the U.S. Congress has played in shaping U.S.-Israeli relations during the years 1967-1975. By focusing on Congress rather than of the executive branch,

Kolander aims to unite all the factors that shaped U.S.-Israel relations, from national security and the Cold War to domestic politics and Americans’ sympathy for Israel, into a single narrative. Kolander ultimately argues that Congress, not the White House, was the critical force in pushing the United States into a closer relationship with Israel. He concludes that “At the end of the day, U.S. presidents basically threw up their hands and realized that U.S. policy would become more pro-Israel, like it or not, and that going with that development was the path of least resistance.”23 Kolander is right to emphasize the importance of Congress, but this line of argument has its limits. For example, Ronald

Reagan’s successful effort to push the sale of Air Warning and Control Systems

(AWACS) aircraft to Saudi Arabia through the Senate in 1981, over the vocal objections of the Israeli government and Israel’s U.S. supporters, is a sign that presidents have not ceded the initiative in shaping the U.S.-Israeli relationship to Congress completely.

Despite all that has been written about U.S.-Israeli relations in recent years, there are still important aspects of this area of U.S. foreign policy to explore. First, historians have written a great deal about the State Department’s role in shaping U.S.-Israeli relations, but much less has been said about the role of the Department of Defense.

Among American officials who questioned the need and advisability of establishing a

and Daniel G. Hummel, Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews, and U.S.-Israeli Relations (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019). 23 Kenneth Kolander, America’s Israel: The US Congress and American-Israeli Relations, 1967- 1975 (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2020), 184. 17 closer diplomatic and military relationship with Israel, some of the loudest voices came from both uniformed and civilian officials in the Defense Department. Their arguments are important because they often arrived at their conclusions based on the judgments of professional military and intelligence reports comparing Israel’s military capabilities to those of Israel’s real and potential adversaries. These instances and others further emphasize the divisions within the U.S. government about U.S.-Israeli relations.

Additionally, the fact that Israel has been the largest recipient of American military aid provides a unique opportunity to examine military aid as a tool of foreign policy. A deeper investigation into the national security documentation from the administrations studied here reveals that U.S. officials debated just about every aspect of

U.S. military aid to Israel, from the level of aid (in terms of U.S. dollars), the types of military equipment the U.S. would provide, and the mechanism by which that aid would be provided. The latter usually took the form of loans or grants, which involved the U.S. providing Israel with the funds to purchase American weaponry, in what amounted to a government subsidy for the U.S. arms industry.24

Another aspect of U.S.-Israeli relations that has received little attention to date is the role of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories. Apart from one 2018 article in

Diplomatic History, historians have not closely examined how the Israeli settler movement, which began after the 1967 war and grew steadily from the 1970s onward,

24 Kolander makes this point in his new book, see America’s Israel, 15. It was also made by Haaretz journalist Anshel Pheffer in a recent episode of the podcast Haaretz Weekly, Episode 95, September 6, 2020. 18 affected the U.S.-Israel alliance.25 This is particularly important because the persistence and growth of Israeli settlements emerged during the 1970s was one of the most significant barriers to successful Arab-Israeli negotiations, making it a major concern of

American negotiators.

Finally, this dissertation delves into the ways in which the Ford, Carter, and

Reagan administrations tried to use their efforts to build closer U.S.-Israeli relations in order to develop, strengthen, or rebuild the administration’s relationship to the American

Jewish community. Despite American Jews’ complex feelings toward the State of Israel, political operatives in the Ford administration, for instance, concluded that U.S. relations with Israel were the most important issue for American Jews and thus the key to securing a larger share of the Jewish vote in the 1976 election. White House officials in the Carter and Reagan administrations held similar beliefs and acted accordingly.

Archival Research

This dissertation draws on a wide variety of documents from research in published and digitized collections and archival holdings around the United States.

During the summer of 2019, I conducted extensive research at the Gerald Ford, Jimmy

Carter, and Ronald Reagan Presidential Libraries in collections focused on both foreign policy and domestic politics. That summer I also visited the Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas in Lawrence to access their collection of newspapers and periodicals published by domestic political organizations such as the Moral Majority.

Although I was unable to visit them in person, I also incorporate materials from the

25 Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, “Distraction and Deception: Israeli Settlements, Vietnam, and the Johnson Administration,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 42, No. 3 (June, 2018), 456-483. 19 digital collections of several other archives, including the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential

Library.

In addition to these archival collections, I draw extensively on several important published primary source collections. Foremost of these is the Foreign Relations of the

United States series published by the State Department’s Office of the Historian. Despite their convenient accessibility, FRUS volumes represent only a fraction of the available documentation on U.S. foreign policy. They are a curated window into the inner workings of U.S. foreign policymaking, and the Office of the Historian has not published as many volumes of documents as historians would like.26 Nonetheless, this collection is an extraordinarily useful resource for historians of U.S. foreign policy, and I draw heavily on volumes from all the presidential administrations covered throughout this dissertation.

They are an essential starting point for research into U.S.-Israeli relations. Additionally, publications such as the Department of State Bulletin, the Public Papers of the

Presidents, and the Congressional Record are invaluable sources for U.S. officials’ speeches, public statements, and comments at press conferences.

I also utilize a wide range of other published primary sources, including oral histories, memoirs, diaries, journalistic accounts, novels, periodicals, and newspapers.

Diaries and memoirs from officials are an important source in my research, though they must be used with caution and in conjunction with other sources. While memoirs and oral histories provide an individual’s post facto view of events they participated in, diaries,

26 For instance, several volumes from the Reagan administration that deal with the Middle East have been completed but are still under declassification review. See the “Status of the Foreign Relations of the United States Series” page on the Office of the Historian’s website. (URL: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/status-of-the-series). (Accessed 6/2/2021). 20 newspapers, and archival records compliment these types of sources by showing what those same individuals thought and wrote in the moment. Periodicals such as Foreign

Affairs, Commentary, and the New York Review of Books provide further windows into how concerned individuals (including intellectuals, journalists, and former government officials) reacted to events as they were happening and in their immediate aftermath.

Chapter Summaries

This dissertation primarily focuses on the more recent history of the 1970s and

1980s, but the story I tell has much deeper roots. In Chapter One, I survey the longer history of the role that the territory of Palestine (in which Israel was created) and Jews have played in American culture, politics, and diplomacy from the end of the eighteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. It links the pre-1945 years to what came afterwards while at the same time emphasizing that the foundation of the state of Israel in

1947-1948 marked the start of a distinctly new phase in U.S. foreign policy in the Middle

East. While the United States under President Harry Truman took the important steps of voting to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states in late 1947 and recognized

Israel when it declared its independence in 1948, U.S. officials did not immediately see

Israel as a useful strategic partner in the Middle East. The Truman administration’s approach to Israel continued throughout the first of Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency.

Chapter Two picks up the story in the second half of the 1950s and tracks the development of ties between the United States and Israel from the second term of Dwight

D. Eisenhower to the end of the 1960s and the election of 1968. This chapter explores how American officials began to soften their opposition to aligning more closely with

Israel and selling Israel American military equipment. In 1956, American officials were 21 outraged at Israel’s participation in the joint British-French effort to seize the Suez Canal, but nonetheless impressed with Israel’s military capabilities. Eisenhower’s successors

John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, two politicians who were deeply sympathetic to Israel, were the first to authorize the sale of sophisticated weapons to Israel including surface-to-air missiles, tanks, and attack aircraft. This chapter also delves into the parallel developments in American culture during these same years, which saw the American people develop a deeper knowledge of and sympathy for the Jewish state, and the domestic developments in American society that enabled this shift.

Before his election in 1968, Richard Nixon did not have a special connection to

Israel or a strong relationship to American Jewry. Yet he presided over a vitally important era in U.S.-Israeli relations. As I describe in Chapter Three, though Nixon’s highest foreign policy priorities during his time in the White House were the U.S. war in

Vietnam and relations with the Soviet Union, his administration presided over significant increases in U.S. military aid to Israel, culminating in the U.S. airlift during the October

War of 1973. Richard Nixon’s role in deepening U.S.-Israeli ties is doubly ironic given that he routinely used antisemitic language to refer to Jewish politicians and journalists who criticized his policies. The Nixon administration is also important because it made

Henry Kissinger, a German-born Jewish academic, one of the most powerful and controversial diplomats in the history of U.S. foreign relations. Kissinger played a vital role in shaping U.S.-Israeli relations during his tenure in government.

Chapter Four analyzes the brief but influential tenure of Gerald Ford as president and the role of his administration in deepening U.S.-Israeli ties. In many ways the Ford administration was a continuation of the Nixon administration, including the fact that 22

Kissinger remained Secretary of State, and Ford generally deferred to his more experienced adviser. Nevertheless, several important developments occurred during the years 1974-1976 that merit wider discussion. Most importantly, it was during the Ford administration that Kissinger negotiated the Sinai II Accords, a limited disengagement between Israel and Egypt that would have long-lasting consequences for U.S.-Israeli relations and the Middle East region. Ford’s brief tenure in office also saw controversies related to Israeli settlement building and antisemitism within the U.S. government.

Gerald Ford’s successor, Jimmy Carter, is well-known for his efforts to achieve

Arab-Israeli peace in the Middle East. Through his negotiations at Camp David in

September of 1978, Carter successfully concluded a peace treaty between Israel and

Egypt, the first such treaty between Israel and one of its Arab neighbors. But while this effort was a major development in the history of U.S. foreign policy and Middle East politics, it was not as transformational as Carter and others hoped for. Chapter Five explores U.S. diplomatic initiatives before, during, and after the Camp David negotiations, but broadens the lens for understanding U.S.-Israeli relations during these years. In addition to examining the Carter administration’s efforts to achieve peace in the

Middle East, it examines how U.S. policy toward Israel fits into the larger context of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, particularly the Persian Gulf. It also explores how, in the domestic climate of American politics, American Jews, neoconservatives, and

American evangelicals criticized the Carter administration for taking such a tough line with Israel. This deepening animosity was one factors that contributed to Carter’s loss in the 1980 presidential election to Ronald Reagan. By looking at how U.S.-Israeli relations 23 played into both domestic politics at home in the U.S. and American foreign policy in the

Persian Gulf region, this chapter situates U.S.-Israeli relations into these larger contexts.

The final chapter, Chapter Six, explores U.S.-Israeli relations during the administration of Ronald Reagan. On the one hand, the Reagan administration seemed primed for a deepening of U.S.-Israeli ties. After all, Reagan had on many occasions expressed his sympathy for and support of Israel, and his first secretary of state,

Alexander Haig, was a prominent supporter of Israel. As if to confirm this deepening of the U.S.-Israeli alliance, U.S. and Israeli officials signed a new memorandum of understanding at the end of 1981 that called for greater strategic cooperation between the two countries. But a series of events during Reagan’s first term in office demonstrated that this was not to be. Between the American sale of AWACS aircraft to Saudi Arabia, the Israeli government’s decision to annex the Golan Heights, and Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, events in the Middle East signaled that U.S.-Israeli ties remained troubled by the same differences as in previous years.

The Conclusion follows up on many of the themes discussed throughout this dissertation by offering a brief survey of U.S.-Israeli relations from the 1980s to the present day. It will also review the major themes of this dissertation and suggest some avenues for future research.

24

Chapter 1: The United States, the Middle East, and Israel From the 18th Century to

the 1950s

On May 14, 1948, Elihu Epstein, the representative of the Jewish Agency in the

United States, sent a message to President Harry Truman informing him that an independent Jewish state had been proclaimed in Palestine. Citing the “deep bond of sympathy which has existed and been strengthened over the past thirty years between the

Government of the United States and the Jewish people of Palestine,” Epstein expressed his hope that the United States would immediately recognize Israel and welcome it into

“the community of nations.”27 That same day, Secretary of State George Marshall announced on behalf of the President that “The United States recognizes the provisional government as the de facto authority of the new State of Israel.”28 With this brief statement, the United States became the first country to recognize the new state of Israel and began a new phase of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. The Soviet Union followed three days later, setting up a Cold War rivalry in the region.

But while this moment set the stage for decades of U.S.-Israeli relations, it did not come out of nowhere. To fully understand the United States’ relationship with Israel in the decades after 1948, it is necessary to explore the longer history of American involvement in the Middle East before that fateful moment. Although American policymakers’ interest in the Middle East increased dramatically in the twentieth century, especially following the Second World War, Americans have long been fascinated by the

27 Epstein to Truman, May 14, 1948, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1948, Volume V: The Near East, South Asia, and Africa, Part 2 (Washington, D.C.: Government Publishing Office, 1976), 989. 28 Marshall to Epstein, Washington, May 14, 1948, Ibid., 992. 25 region for its religious and cultural significance, its energy resources, and its role in geopolitics. This chapter surveys the history of American interest and involvement in the

Middle East, especially regarding Palestine and Israel, from the late eighteenth century to the mid-1950s.

The United States and the Middle East before the Twentieth Century

Historians have identified American interests in the Middle East going all the way back to the origins of the United States in the eighteenth century. In his analysis of the long breadth of American involvement in the Middle East throughout American history, historian Michael Oren argues that, from the very beginning, American involvement in the region was shaped by three related and often-intervening factors: power, faith, and fantasy. Long before the United States became a major world power, Americans saw the

Muslim world in what would later be called the Middle East as a stark contrast to the

United States, an inverted image of the society they were trying to build in North

America. The Middle East was also the scene of one of the United States’ first foreign policy crises when pirates from North Africa’s Barbary states attacked American ships and kidnapped American sailors for ransom at the end of the eighteenth century and in the early years of the nineteenth. Americans’ views on racial slavery in the United States and their views of the indigenous peoples in North America shaped their views of foreigners from the very beginning of these encounters. This crisis forced Americans to address the vulnerabilities of their new nation.29

29 See Michael Oren, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2007). On Americans’ views of Islam in the early history of the United States, see Robert J. Allison, The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim World 1776-1815 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). On Americans and the Barbary crises in the Early 26

Jewish people were among the first European settlers to reach North America, though their numbers remained small until the nineteenth century. For Jews living in

North America during the first decades of the United States in the late eighteenth century, their status in a new democracy was foremost in their minds, much more so than the status of the small number of Jews living in Palestine or the prospect of reestablishing a

Jewish state. Far more pressing was the need to carve out a place in the new nation whose people were mostly Christian and saw Jews as either outliers or potential converts.30

Religion was one of the most important lenses through which white Americans viewed the Middle East during the nineteenth century. This manifested itself in a variety of ways. Firstly, as historian Karine Walther points out, Americans saw religion, and specifically Islam, as the key defining feature of Muslim societies in the Middle East and elsewhere, regardless of local history, culture, and economics. These predominantly

Protestant Americans saw their own faith as inherently superior to Islam, and this led them to conclude that the only way to improve the lives of those living in the Middle East was through foreign intervention. To that end, American Protestant evangelists launched missions to the Arab-speaking Middle East to convert the local population to Christianity.

As historians such as Ussama Makdisi have shown, these efforts to convert Muslims to

Christianity were largely unsuccessful, but missionaries did leave their mark on the region, especially through their construction of schools and universities in cities such as

Beirut and Cairo. Finally, Jews, who made up a very small percentage of the U.S.

Republic, see Lawrence A. Peskin, Captives and Countrymen: Barbary Slavery and the American Public, 1785-1816 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). 30 See Peter Grose, Israel in the Mind of America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983), Preface- Chapter 1. 27 population before the nineteenth century,31 played an important role in American diplomacy in the Arab world during these early years as official representatives and unofficial intermediaries.32

Tourism was another lens through which Americans interpreted the Middle East.

One of the most famous accounts of an American in the Middle East from the nineteenth century was Mark Twain’s 1869 travelogue The Innocents Abroad. Twain, author of such classic American novels as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn, traveled to Palestine, then a poor and isolated province of the Ottoman

Empire, in 1867 as part of a larger foreign trip that also took him to Europe. Like many

Americans, Twain was steeped in stories from the Bible, and expected to step into the world of the Old and New Testaments. But when he came to Palestine, he was shocked at how much his image of the place differed from the reality. Trying to understand this discrepancy, Twain wrote that perhaps “it was because I could not conceive of a small country having so large a history.”33 The American writer was particularly disappointed in the Holy City of Jerusalem, writing that “Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history, has lost all its grandeur, and is become a pauper village.”34

31 The American Jewish population grew steadily throughout the nineteenth century, but experienced dramatic growth during the massive waves of immigration from southern and eastern Europe from 1890-1914. For exact figures, see “Total Jewish Population in the United States (1654-Present,” Jewish Virtual Library, (URL: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-population-in-the-united-states- nationally). (Accessed 6/24/2021). 32 See Oren, Power, Faith, and Fantasy; Ussama Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008); and Karine V. Walther, Sacred Interests: The United States and the Islamic World, 1821-1921 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2015). 33 Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrim’s Progress (Washington, D.C.: American Publishing Co., 1869), 486. 34 Ibid., 607. 28

Twain was not the last American who was forced to reconcile his vision of

Palestine with the reality of the place itself. Seeking to capitalize on the many American

Christians who could not afford to travel to the Holy Land but were willing to pay to experience it indirectly, entrepreneurs sought out ways to bring the Holy Land to them.

Through scholarly publications, maps, and images, Americans could see glimpses of the

Holy Land in their own country, without having to travel thousands of miles. These representations were as much a reflection of the time and place in the United States where they were created as they were of the Biblical history they depicted.35

Closer to home, some American Christians were developing new ideas about the land known as Palestine. Even before organized Zionism became a significant political and ideological force in American, European, and Jewish politics, some devoutly religious Protestants in the United States (and a few in Great Britain) foresaw an important role for Jews and the Holy Land. These Christians believed that the Bible should be read literally according to their particular interpretations, and that it laid out how the end of the world would arrive. A key component in the Second Coming of Christ was the return of the Jewish people to the land known as Palestine, a development that was necessary for Christ to return. One of the most significant figures in this nineteenth- century movement was John Nelson Darby (1800-1882), an Anglo-Irish pastor who first articulated the idea that human history was divided into distinct eras or dispensations, a theology known as dispensationalism.

35 On this theme, see Burke O. Long, Imagining the Holy Land: Maps, Models, and Fantasy Travels (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003). 29

Another important figure was an American evangelist named William Blackstone

(1841-1935), author of a document called the “Blackstone Memorial.” Addressed to world leaders including the U.S. president Benjamin Harrison, the “Blackstone

Memorial” was a plea for world leaders to facilitate the return of the Jews to Palestine.

Dated March 5, 1891, the message read in part:

Why not give Palestine back to [the Jews] again? According to God’s distribution of nations it is their home – an inalienable possession from which they were expelled by force. Under their cultivation it was a remarkably fruitful land, sustaining millions of Israelites, who industriously tilled its hillsides and valleys. They were agriculturalists and producers as well as a national of great commercial importance – the center of civilization and religion.36

The letter to Harrison was signed by many prominent Americans from powerful industrialists like John D. Rockefeller Sr. and politicians like House Speaker Thomas

Reed, but Blackstone received no formal response from the White House.

In addition to their humanitarian concerns, some American evangelicals also hoped to convert Jews to Christianity. Throughout the history of Jewish-Christian relations, Christian missions to Jewish communities in the United States was a significant part of that relationship and a major source of tension between Christians and Jews. For many American evangelical Christians, the return of the Jews to the Holy Land was part of their own unique vision of God’s plan for the world, and would later be known as

Christian Zionists. In the second half of the twentieth century, they emerged as some of

Israel’s strongest American supporters.37

36 “‘To Show Kindness to Israel’: William Blackstone’s Memorial,” updated July 1, 2020. (URL: https://fromthevault.wheaton.edu/2020/07/01/to-show-kindness-to-israel-william-blackstones-memorial/). (Accessed 11/25/20). 37 On Christian missions to Jews in American history, see Yaakov Ariel, Evangelizing the Chosen People: Missions to the Jews in America, 1880-2000 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). On the 19th century origins of Christian Zionism in Great Britain and the United States, see Victoria 30

In imagining “the Middle East” as a place of historic and religious wonder and its people, both Christians and Jews, as at times both admirable and inferior, Americans of the nineteenth century were adding their own voices to a broader European intellectual discourse about the region. Surveying primarily British and French writings, the

Palestinian literary scholar and critic Edward Said labeled this discourse “Orientalism.”

According to Said, British and French writers treated the region now called the Middle

East (which included much of the Arab world) not on its own terms but solely in relation to Europe or “the West.” Significantly, the “Orient” was also positioned as inherently weaker and thus under the domination of the West, including colonial powers such as

Great Britain and France.38

From Zionism to the Rise of Nazi Germany

Elsewhere in the world, the end of the nineteenth century saw the emergence of

Zionism, the organized global movement to establish an independent Jewish state in which Jews from around the world could be safe from antisemitism. Zionists discussed several potential locations at different times, but they ultimately settled on Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire, as the location for a future Jewish state. While the notion of

Jews returning to their ancestral homeland was not new in Jewish tradition and thought, it

Clark, Allies for Armageddon: The Rise of Christian Zionism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), Stephen Spector, Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), Donald M. Lewis, The Origins of Christian Zionism: Lord Shaftsbury and Evangelicals Support for a Jewish Homeland (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), and Robert O. Smith, More Desired than Our Owne Salvation: The Roots of Christian Zionism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). 38 See Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), especially 5-6. For a useful essay on how diplomatic historians can use Said’s theories in their work, see Andrew J. Rotter, “Saidism without Said: Orientalism and U.S. Diplomatic History,” American Historical Review, Vol. 105, No. 4 (Oct., 2000), 1205-1217. 31 had diminished by the nineteenth century as many European governments reduced restrictions on Jewish commercial and political activity. By the end of the nineteenth century, many Jews had successfully integrated themselves into predominantly Christian societies of Western Europe and the United States, though antisemitism never disappeared entirely.39

The appearance of peaceful assimilation into Western European society was severely challenged by widespread antisemitism in the Russian Empire in eastern Europe, where the largest Jewish population in Europe lived. Jewish communities in Russia were frequently victims of pogroms, large-scale violence directed against Jewish communities, including waves of violence in 1881-1882 and 1903-1906 that were especially severe.

Even Western Europe was not immune. In France, antisemitism was at the root of the

1895 court-martial of a French army officer, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who was falsely accused of spying for Germany, charges Dreyfus himself consistently denied. The

Dreyfus affair, pogroms in Russia, and other incidents convinced many Jews that Jewish acceptance and safety in Christian European society was impossible. All this occurred against the backdrop of rising nationalist movements around the world and especially in

Europe as national groups chafed under the rule of weaking Austro-Hungarian and

Ottoman empires.40

The most important figure of the early Zionist movement was a man named

Theodor Herzl (1860-1904). Born in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Herzl

39 For a comprehensive analysis of European Jewish history during the “long nineteenth century,” see David Vital, A People Apart: The Jews in Europe 1789-1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 40 On the Dreyfus affair, see Eric Cahm, The Dreyfus Affair in French Society and Politics (London and New York: Longman, 1996). 32 came from a well-off Jewish family and worked as a lawyer, journalist, and writer. But

Herzl’s most important contribution to Jewish history was as an activist for creating a

Jewish state in Palestine. He articulated his views most clearly in the 1896 pamphlet Der

Judenstaat, or “The Jewish State,” in which he called on the world to “Let sovereignty be granted us over a portion of the globe large enough to satisfy the rightful requirements of a nation; the rest we shall manage for ourselves.”41 While Herzl came from a highly assimilated background, he saw the Dreyfus case as evidence that European antisemitism remained strong, and that the only way for Jews to be safe to live as Jews was to create an independent Jewish state. In addition to seeking Jewish support for immigration to

Palestine, Herzl and other Zionists also sought political and financial support from major

Western European powers, especially France and Great Britain.42

Though large numbers of Jews had been expelled from Palestine by the Roman

Empire during the first and second centuries CE, a small Jewish community remained in

Palestine, living under successive Muslim regimes in the Holy Cities of Jerusalem,

Tibereas, Safad, and Hebron. By the eighteenth century, these Jews were living under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and were vastly outnumbered by the Muslim population of the region. Their numbers began to grow as Jewish immigration to Palestine increased significantly in response to the Zionist movement and the waves of anti-Jewish violence in Russia around the turn of the twentieth century. Waves of Jewish immigration to

41 Herzl, The Jewish State (New York: Dover Publications, 1988), 92. 42 On Herzl’s background, see Carl E. Schorske, Fin-De-Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1980), Chapter 3. On his importance to the Zionist movement, see Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), Chapter One. 33

Palestine or “Aliyahs” (literally translated as “going up,” or returning to the Land of

Israel) closely followed anti-Jewish violence in Russia, with the first two major waves arriving in the 1880s and in the first decade of the twentieth century. With the help of wealthy Zionist allies, Zionist activists purchased land in Palestine from absentee Muslim and Christian landlords, built settlements, and established a new governmental structure known as the Yishuv.43

Jewish settlement in Palestine during this era was shaped by the kibbutz movement. Originating in the early twentieth century and heavily influenced by Russian socialist political ideals, the kibbutz movement was dedicated to building agricultural settlements in Palestine on land purchased by Jews from absentee Arab landlords. The kibbutz movement played a critical role in bringing Jews to Palestine, establishing new

Jewish settlements there, and protecting them from outside interference or attack. These new and growing Jewish settlements coexisted uneasily with the local Palestinian Arab population, which still far outnumbered the region’s Jewish population. By 1914, the same year that World War I began, there were around 60,000 Jews living in Palestine, among a Muslim population of over 500,000. The early twentieth century also saw the emergence of what would become a distinct Palestinian national identity, largely (but not exclusively) in reaction to Zionism.44

43 On the early years of the Yishuv, see Morris, Righteous Victims, Chapters One-Two. 44 On the origins of the kibbutz movement, see Henry Near, The Kibbutz Movement, A History, Volume I: Origins and Growth, 1909-1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). On the early history of Palestinian nationalism, see Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010). 34

Palestine was not the only destination of Jewish migrants fleeing Europe and

Russia in search of safety and opportunity. Thousands more emigrated to the United

States during the final decades of the nineteenth century. By the turn of the twentieth century, Jews battled economic hardship, antisemitism, and religious discrimination to build a prosperous and vibrant community. While prejudice against Jews in the United

States would never disappear entirely, one of the factors that contributed significantly to its decline was the gradual acceptance of European Jews (who were the majority of the

Jews entering the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) as racially white. As Jews “became white” instead of racially “Jewish,” they could, in the

American racial hierarchy of the era, be assimilated into white society instead of remaining permanent outsiders.45 This is deeply ironic given that religious communities around the world that identify with Judaism do not fit neatly into the American racial schema.46

Perhaps because of their remarkable success in the United States, American Jews never fully embraced Zionism to the extent that Jews elsewhere did. Instead, Zionism remained a relatively small movement in the U.S. until the 1930s, when the rise of the

Nazi regime in Germany with its increasingly troubling anti-Jewish rhetoric and policies

45 On the history of the Jewish people in the United States, see Howard M. Sachar, A History of the Jews in America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992); Gerald Sorin, Tradition Transformed: The Jewish Experience in America (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997); and Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism: A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004). On Jews and race in the United States, see Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), especially Chapter 5, and Eric L. Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006). 46 On the growing diversity of “world Jewry,” see Nathan P. Devir, New Children of Israel: Emerging Jewish Communities in an Era of Globalization (Salt Lake City, UT: The University of Utah Press, 2017). 35 alarmed many American Jews. But despite greater political and especially financial support, divisions within the Zionist movement in the U.S. prevented it from coalescing into a unified force that could effectively lobby the U.S. government until after World

War II. Even after Israel declared its independence and became a viable state, very few

American Jews left the United States to make Aliyah to live in a Jewish state.47

The First World War had a significant impact on the future of the Middle East.

Eager to break up the Ottoman Empire, an ally of Germany, and enlarge their own colonial possessions, allies Great Britain and France conducted extensive negotiations with Arab representatives to encourage them to revolt against Ottoman rule. The British also negotiated with Zionist leaders, promising them a Jewish homeland in Palestine in exchange for their assistance during World War I. To that end, Britain’s foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, wrote in a letter to Lord Rothschild, a prominent British Jew and Zionist, in November of 1917 that “His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object.”48 This document, which became known as the Balfour Declaration, and was greeted with excitement by Zionists and outrage by Arabs in Palestine, was an important turning point in the history of the

Middle East. For the first time, a European power had committed itself in writing to

47 On American Zionism, see Henry L. Feingold, A Time for Searching: Entering the Mainstream, 1920-1945 (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992) and Mark A. Raider, The Emergence of American Zionism (New York: New York University Press, 1998). 48 “Balfour Declaration 1917,” The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy, Yale Law School. (URL: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/balfour.asp). (Accessed 5/25/20). 36 establishing a Jewish state in Palestine. But despite British promises, events took a different course when the war ended in November of 1918.

Both the British and French broke their promises to both Arabs and Zionists after

World War I as they set about building a postwar world. In the Middle East, the British and French divided the region up between them into “mandates,” which amounted to territories controlled by one empire or the other but were not designated formal colonies.

As was the case elsewhere with other national and ethnic groups hoping for independence from Great Powers such as Great Britain and France, the views and desires of the local populations in Palestine were largely ignored at the Versailles peace conference in 1919.

The Americans, who entered World War I in 1917 and fought alongside British and

French forces throughout 1918, remained largely absent from these post-war discussions on the fate of the Middle East. Though American U.S. president Woodrow Wilson had voiced support for Zionism, the U.S. mostly drew back from trying to shape international affairs following the end of the war.49

The First World War and its aftermath shaped the emerging conflict between

Arabs and Jews in Palestine over the territory’s future. Faced with a majority-Muslim

Arab population angry about Britain’s wartime promise of a Jewish state, the British government pulled back from its own words in the Balfour Declaration. The 1920s and

1930s saw a sharp rise in violence between Palestinian Arabs and Jews, including major clashes in 1920-1921, 1929, and 1936-1939. Feeling betrayed by the British, Jewish

49 On the fate of the Middle East after World War I, see David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2009) and Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World (New York: Random House, 2003), especially Chapters 27-28. 37 leaders in Palestine turned the Yishuv into a shadow Jewish government in waiting and built up Jewish military forces in preparation for a future struggle for independence. In response to these outbreaks of violence, a need to maintain stability in a region with vital oil supplies, and concerns about the growing power of Nazi Germany in Europe, British authorities set strict limits on the number of Jewish immigrants who were allowed to enter Palestine in 1939. Though this restriction seemed to favor Palestinians who opposed

Jewish immigration to Palestine, the British also took steps to make sure that Arabs, who were still the majority of the population, never gained real political power in Palestine.50

As British authorities restricted Jewish entry into Palestine, the rise and consolidation of the Nazi regime in Germany under Adolf Hitler was making Europe a much more dangerous place for Jews. After Germany’s defeat in World War I, the government of the Kaiser was replaced by a democratic government under a new constitution signed in the city of Weimar in August of 1919. The Weimar Republic, as

Germany’s government of the 1920s became known, was beset by economic difficulties and political challenges from both the right and the left throughout the decade. One group vying for power in Weimar Germany was the National Socialist German Workers’ party, better known as the Nazi party, led by Adolf Hitler, a charismatic orator and Austrian- born veteran of World War I. After years as a minority party in Weimar politics, the

Nazis made significant gains in the election of 1932. Thinking that they could control

Hitler and the Nazis by including them in the government, conservative German

50 On events in Palestine between the World Wars, see Morris, Righteous Victims, Chapters Three- Four and Rashid Khalidi, The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006). 38 politicians agreed to make Hitler chancellor in 1933. But once in power, Hitler did not relinquish it until his death in 1945.51

Two of the core tenants of Nazi ideology were a vision of a “pure Aryan German race” and a view of the Jewish people as true and irrevocable enemies of the German nation. Once in power, Hitler and the Nazis took steps to restrict the rights of Germany’s

Jews. This effort culminated in the passage of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, which stripped “non-Aryans” of their German citizenship and forbade Jews from inter-marrying with other Germans. German Jews were victims of state-sanctioned violence under the

Nazi regime, including the events of Kristallnacht on the night of November 9-10, 1938, when hundreds of synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses were attacked and burned.

Thousands of Jews who could escape Germany fled to any place they could get to, including Palestine, Western Europe, and the United States.52

During the 1930s, the United States took few steps to aid European Jews or to increase the number of refugees allowed to enter the United States from Europe. While some critics blamed antisemitism within the State Department and the administration of

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt for the United States’ inaction, careful research by historians such as Richard Breitman, Alan Kraut, and Allan Lichtman reveals that the reality was more complicated. While antisemitism did play a role in some cases, especially for some senior officials of the State Department, it is not the only explanation for American refugee policy during the 1930s. Instead, it was a combination of

51 For a useful summary of Hitler and the Nazis’ rise to power, see Joseph W. Bendersky, A Concise History of Nazi Germany (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), Chapters 2-6. 52 Bendersky, Chapter 10. 39 bureaucratic opposition to change, popular resistance to increased immigration, and

President Roosevelt’s unwillingness to take political risks that resulted in the United

States taking in only a small percentage of Jews trying to reach the United States from

Europe. Unfortunately for European Jews, these restrictions came at the very moment when many were trying to flee persecution in Europe in the 1930s. Among those

European Jews who did escape to the United States was the family of future Secretary of

State Henry Kissinger, who reached the United States from Germany with the help of a cousin in New York City.53

World War II, the Holocaust, and the Birth of the State of Israel

The rise of the Nazi regime in Germany under Adolf Hitler in 1933 and the onset of World War II in 1939 inaugurated the most devastating and tragic era in the history of the Jewish people. Nazi persecution of Jews began almost immediately after Hitler came to power in 1933 and escalated over the coming years. Once World War II began,

German authorities in Nazi-occupied territories began large-scale efforts to deport

European Jews from their homes and into ghettos. This process began in Poland, which was conquered by German forces in 1939, and repeated in other countries captured by

German forces. In addition to ghettoization, the Nazi occupation of Poland also saw the first mass executions of Jews by German occupation forces.

53 On the Roosevelt administration and European Jews during the 1930s and 1940s, see Richard Breitman and Alan Kraut, American Refugee Policy and European Jewry, 1933-1945 (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987) and Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman, FDR and the Jews (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2013). On the Kissinger family, see Jeremi Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), Chapter One. 40

Nazi efforts to exterminate European Jewry expanded dramatically following the

German invasion of the Soviet Union in June of 1941. Initially executions were carried out by German military and occupation forces using small arms and with the help of local collaborators; some scholars have called this early phase of the Holocaust on the Eastern

Front the “Holocaust by Bullets.” The first death camp was established in late 1941, and the pace of killings increased dramatically throughout 1942 and into 1943 as Jews from other parts of Europe were deported to death camps in German-occupied Poland. Nazi efforts to exterminate European Jews continued right up until the end of the war in

1945.54

News of mass killings of Jews on in Europe began reaching Jews in the United

States in 1942. Despite later accusations that American Jews were indifferent to the suffering of their co-religionists across the Atlantic Ocean, the vast majority of American

Jews had relatives living in Europe and were thus deeply concerned with events there.

Desperate to aid European Jews, American Jewish organizations pressured the Roosevelt administration to do what it could to aid European Jews. But either because their priorities were elsewhere or because there was little they could do to halt the mass killing of Jews short of defeating the Nazi regime, Roosevelt and the U.S. government did little specifically to aid European Jews until relatively late in the war, by which time it was too late to save the millions who had already perished. The two most prominent examples of

54 There is an enormous body of literature on the Holocaust. For some of the most important works, see Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992) and The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press/Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2004). For a broader perspective on Nazi and Soviet violence in Eastern Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, see Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2010). 41

American efforts to aid European Jews during the Holocaust were the American Jewish

Joint Distribution Committee (known simply as the Joint or JDC), which conducted extensive operations in Europe to assist European Jews both before and during World

War II, and the War Refugee Board, a governmental body established to coordinate state and private relief efforts to save European Jews and to aid Jewish refugees fleeing the

Nazis. Though their own government did comparatively little to aid the victims of the

Holocaust, American Jews’ efforts were impressive given the challenges they faced.55

The end of World War II was the beginning of a new era in the history of

American foreign relations and in the politics of the Middle East. As the only major industrial nation that went largely untouched by the destruction of the war, the United

States was able to deploy tens of thousands of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines to fight the Germans, Italians, and the Japanese, and supply much of its allies’ military equipment. By the end of the war, the United States had the largest military in the world and its economy grew dramatically during the war, boosting American recovery from the

Great Depression of the 1930s. American allies on the other hand, including Great Britain and the Soviet Union, were in much worse shape. Their economies were badly damaged, and their civilian populations had been devastated (especially the Soviet Union, which suffered the most casualties of any country in World War II). But while the United States

55 On American Jews’ activities during World War II, see Sachar, A History of the Jews in America, Chapter XV. On the activities of the JDC, see Yehuda Bauer, American Jewry and the Holocaust: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 1939-1945 (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 1989). On the War Refugee Board, see Rebecca Erbeldling, Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America’s Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe (New York: Doubleday, 2018). On the Roosevelt administration’s response to the Holocaust, see Breitman and Kraut, American Refugee Policy and European Jewry, 1933- 1945 and Breitman and Lichtman, FDR and the Jews. 42 had rejected an international role following the First World War, American officials acted differently this time around.

In a dramatic break with its pre-war foreign policy, the United States took on a new role as the world’s most important political, diplomatic, and economic power after

World War II and took concrete steps to increase its influence around the world. With the

Marshall Plan, the U.S. dispatched millions of dollars to help rebuild the devastated economies and infrastructures of Western Europe. But despite the wartime alliance between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, growing tensions between the two major powers led American officials to conclude that even the smallest Soviet advance or challenge to the United States, its interests, or to American allies anywhere in the world had to be met with an American response. To this end, President Harry Truman pledged American aid to Greece and Turkey to stave off Soviet domination in what became known as the

Truman Doctrine. The United States also began building a military alliance among

Western European allies that later became known as the North Atlantic Treaty

Organization (NATO). The Truman administration also deployed American military forces to defend South Korea in 1950 as part of the Korean War to defend against what

American officials saw as an attack on an American ally by a Soviet ally. Finally, the

United States also reorganized its entire foreign policy apparatus with the National

Security Act of 1947, establishing among other things, an independent air force, the

National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, and a new cabinet-level civilian post, Secretary of Defense, to oversee this massive new military capability.56

56 On the formation of post-World War II American foreign policy, see John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (New York: 43

Along with Western Europe and East Asia, the Middle East was another area where the Truman administration was extremely worried about expanding Soviet influence. The Middle East was a concern for several reasons, starting with the fact that it was home to some of the world’s largest oil reserves. While the United States in the

1940s produced oil for domestic consumption and exported oil to its allies during World

War II, it was becoming increasingly clear that the U.S. could not continue to supply its own oil indefinitely, sooner or later, it would need to import oil from abroad.

Furthermore, Middle Eastern oil was a vital resource for the recovering economies of

Western Europe and Japan, which the United States was helping to rebuild following the devastation of World War II. As a result, American policymakers took a special interest in the Middle East because of its energy resources. Maintaining Western access to the region’s energy resources emerged as a major goal of American foreign policy.57

At this early juncture, the Truman administration hoped that the United States could rely on its ally, Great Britain, to protect American interests in the Middle East. The

British had significant interests in the Middle East stretching back to the nineteenth century and especially in the aftermath of World War I when they and the French had carved up the region between them. After World War II, the British first tried to maintain

Oxford University Press, 1982) and Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992). 57 On American policymakers’ interest in Middle Eastern oil, see David S. Painter, Oil and the American Century: The Political Economy of U.S. Foreign Oil Policy, 1941-1954 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986); Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, & Power (New York: The Free Press, 2009), especially Chapter 21; Robert Vitalis, America’s Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007); and Irene L. Gendzier, Dying to Forget: Oil, Power, & the Foundations of U.S. Policy in the Middle East (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015). For a fascinating recent study that connects religion and oil in recent U.S. history, see Darren Dochuk, Anointed with Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America (New York: Basic Books, 2019). 44 their influence in the region, but gradually it became clear that this would be impossible.

With its infrastructure and economy devastated by war and a diminishing domestic appetite for an overseas empire, many British officials were looking for ways to cut back

Britain’s overseas commitments. One of those places was Palestine, which had no important oil resources and was the site of tense and increasingly violent relations between Palestinian Arabs and Jews.58

But support for a close American ally and a desire to ensure that the West had reliable access to the region’s oil were not the only factors behind the growing American interest in the Middle East after World War II. While senior American policymakers were focused on the geopolitical implications of the region, a growing number of American

Jews were eager for the United States to become more deeply involved in the region for different reasons. Chief among them was American Jews’ support for establishing a

Jewish state in Palestine that would serve as a refuge for Jews fleeing the Holocaust and would be a safe place for these refugees to live as Jews in the years to come.

The Holocaust had galvanized American Jews. While American Jews were limited in what they could do to help the victims of Adolf Hitler’s genocide in Europe during World War II, after the war they were determined to do more. Prior to 1945, only a small number of American Jews had supported Zionist causes, but that was about to change dramatically as more details emerged about the Nazi effort to eliminate European

58 On the history of the British Empire in the Middle East, see Elizabeth Monroe, Britain’s Moment in the Middle East 1914-1971 (London: Chatto and Windus, 1981) and William Roger Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East 1945-1951: Arab nationalism, the United States, and Postwar Imperialism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984). For a recent history of the decline of the British and French empires after World War II, see Martin Thomas, Fight or Flight: Britain, France, and Their Roads from Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 45

Jewry during World War II. Given the news of German atrocities committed against

European Jews during the war and the plight of Jewish refugees in Europe after the war had ended, American Jews’ support for a Jewish state in Palestine increased dramatically.

This support took the form of both political activism and financial contributions to

Zionist organizations and causes.59

American and British officials disagreed about what to do with the massive number of Jewish refugees, many of whom had survived death or concentration camps.

Despite the damage done to Britain’s military and economic standing by World War II, the British were initially eager to reassert their power and influence in the Middle East because of the region’s vital energy resources. This effort was undermined by an influx of Jewish refugees who illegally entered Palestine, a violation of strict immigration quotas that British authorities set back in 1936. This alarmed Palestinian Arab leaders, who strongly opposed the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. While the British wanted to keep the issues of Jewish refugees and the fate of Palestine separate, this proved impossible. Disagreements between the American and British governments over what to do about Jewish refugees created a rift between the two allied powers. American

President Harry Truman was a critical figure here. In addition to calling for 100,000

Jewish refugees to be settled in Palestine, Truman tacitly endorsed the Zionist goal of a

Jewish state in Palestine.60

59 On growing support for a Jewish state in Palestine among American Jews after World War II, see Sachar, A History of the Jews in America, Chapter XVI. 60 On British efforts to craft policies toward Jewish displaced persons in Europe and reclaim their influence in the Middle East, see Arieh J. Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics: Britain, the United States, and Jewish Refugees, 1945-1948 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001). 46

While the struggle between Arabs and Jews in Palestine had cooled down considerably during World War II, it quickly heated up again when the war ended. Faced with enormous domestic challenges and growing unrest between Arabs and Jews in early

1947, the British government turned to the newly established United Nations for help in solving their Palestinian dilemma. Before the UN had made a final decision, British leaders decided in the fall of that year to withdraw all British forces from Palestine regardless of the UN’s decision. Ultimately, UN officials proposed a partition plan to create separate Jewish and Palestinian states and put the plan to a vote on November 29,

1947. In a historic vote, members of the UN voted to approve the partition plan, including both the United States and the Soviet Union.

James Forrestal, the United States’ first Secretary of Defense, was particularly concerned about the United States’ ability to access the vast oil resources of the Middle

East. In addition to his other duties overseeing the emergence of the post-war U.S. military, Forrestal was also in charge of ensuring that the United States and its allies had reliable access to oil, a responsibility that carried over from his previous position as

Secretary of the Navy during World War II. During World War II the U.S. supplied to both its own citizens and military forces as well as those of its allies, but by the end of the war American oil reserves were exhausted.61 In a diary entry from October 9, 1947,

Forrestal wrote that “The greatest field of untapped oil in the world is in the Middle

61 For a detailed account of Forrestal’s tenure as Secretary of Defense and his views on the Middle East, see Steven L. Rearden, History of the Office of Secretary of Defense, Volume I: The Formative Years, 1947-1950 (Washington, D.C.: Historical Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1984), especially Chapter VII. 47

East.”62 Given the tense situation in Palestine at this time, Forrestal was very concerned that the United States was going down the wrong path with its vote in favor of the United

Nations plant to partition Palestine. Forrestal, along with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and senior officials of the State Department, worried that such a pro-Zionist policy would anger Arab leaders in the Middle East and threaten American access to the region’s oil.

Truman ordered the United States’ UN representative to vote in favor of partitioning Palestine over the vehement objections of his most senior foreign policy advisers. In addition to James Forrestal and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the senior leadership at the Department of State also opposed recognizing Israel. They included George

Marshall, the Secretary of State and the U.S. Army’s chief of staff during World War II, his deputy and future Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett, and Loy Henderson, a senior foreign service officer who was then director of the Office of Near Eastern Affairs, the department’s office with responsibility for Palestine. Henderson was particularly vocal in his opposition to any hint of U.S. support for a Jewish state in Palestine. According to

Henderson’s biographer H.W. Brands, Henderson’s views were not motivated by antisemitism but by a genuine fear that U.S. support of a Jewish state would alienate the

Arab world and jeopardize the world’s oil supply.63

In addition to his concern about how U.S. policy in Palestine would affect Arab countries’ willingness to sell oil to the United States and its allies, James Forrestal also worried that the debate around Palestine in the U.S. had become too heavily politicized.

62 Forrestal diary entry, 9 October 1947, “Arabian Pipeline,” printed in The Forrestal Diaries: The Inner History of the Cold War (London: Cassell & Company LTD, 1952), 312. 63 H.W. Brands, Inside the Cold War: Loy Henderson and the Rise of the American Empire 1918- 1960 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 191. 48

In meetings with President Truman and other senior officials, he repeatedly called for the

Palestine issue to be “lifted out of politics.” In early December of 1947, after the United

States voted in favor of partition in Palestine, Forrestal confided his frustration with the

Truman administration over Palestine to his diary. Recalling a meeting with James

Byrnes, a former senator from South Carolina and briefly secretary of state, he wrote that

“I thought it was a most disastrous and regrettable fact that the foreign policy of this country was determined by the contributions a particular bloc of special interests might make to the party funds.”64 While pro-Zionist forces in the United States strongly criticized the Secretary of Defense for his views and called them antisemitic, Forrestal’s biographers Townsend Hoopes and Douglas Brinkley denied that his views were motivated by prejudice.65

With Truman’s decision made, senior Defense and State officials resigned themselves to American support for a Jewish state and resolved to carry out the

President’s policies. But they did take the important step of moving to impose an arms embargo on the entire Middle East region. In a November 10, 1947, memorandum to

George Marshall, Loy Henderson wrote that, given the tense situation in Palestine following the partition vote, the U.S. should not allow the export of arms to any of the players in the region, Arab or Jewish. “Otherwise,” he warned, “the Arabs might use arms of U.S. origin against Jews, or Jews might use them against Arabs. In either case,

64 Forrestal diary entry, 3 December 1947: Lunch—Mr. Byrnes, The Forrestal Diaries, 332. 65 Townsend Hoopes and Douglas Brinkley, Drive Patriot: The Life and Times of James Forrestal (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 390. 49 we would be subject to bitter recrimination.”66 This move angered Zionists in both

Palestine and the United States, who had hoped that after its historic vote the Truman administration would supply their forces in Palestine with military equipment and advisers. Marshall agreed with Henderson, and an arms embargo was promptly imposed.

Following the historic United Nations vote, leaders of the Jewish Agency, which would shortly evolve into the first government of the state of Israel, announced that they would declare Israel’s independence in 1948. As with the UN vote, Harry Truman was conflicted over how to respond: many voices were calling on the President to refuse to recognize an Israeli state, and the strongest opposition was coming from his own State

Department. On May 12, 1948, only days before Jewish Agency leaders declared Israel’s independence, Truman met with some of his closest advisers to discuss how the administration would response to such a declaration. Those present included George

Marshall and his deputy, Robert Lovett, two of the President’s closest foreign policy advisers, and Clark Clifford, a senior presidential aid. Clifford strongly supported recognizing a new Israel as soon as possible, calling it inevitable. Lovett and Marshall, on the other hand, strongly disagreed, warning that such a move looked like a transparent effort to win the Jewish vote in the 1948 presidential election and would damage the prestige of the Presidency. Lovett cautioned that the U.S. would not know what kind of government Israel would have and called premature recognition akin to “buying a pig in a poke.” Marshall was even more blunt. According to a record of the meeting, Marshall

66 Memo from Henderson to Marshall re “Suspension of Exports of Arms and Ammunition to Arab States and Palestine,” Washington, November 10, 1947, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1947, Volume V: The Near East and Africa (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1971), 1249. 50 told Truman that “if the President were to follow Mr. Clifford’s advice and if in the elections I were to vote, I would vote against the President.”67

Ultimately, Truman ignored the advice of his closest foreign policy advisers and recognized the State of Israel when it declared its independence on May 14. Contrary to what Marshall, Lovett, and others believed, the President’s action was not a simple political action. Rather, Truman was motivated by a combination of his own personal and political views and pressure from some of his own aides such as Clark Clifford who were sympathetic to Israel. Like many Americans, President Truman was moved by the images of Jewish refugees and Holocaust survivors in displacement camps in Europe to do what he could to provide a haven for the Jewish victims of Nazi Germany. Truman was also, like most Americans at the time, a religious person and, as at least one historian has argued, that religious faith and a knowledge of the Bible, especially the Old

Testament, predisposed the president and many Americans to support a homeland for the

Jewish people in Palestine.68

At the time Truman was under intense pressure from American Jewish groups to recognize the new Jewish state. Zionist organizations in the United States and around the world lobbied the White House to come out in support of establishing a Jewish state in

Palestine. While some commentators accused Truman of recognizing Israel to win votes in a tough reelection campaign in 1948, his actions were more complicated than simply

67 Memorandum of Conversation between the President, George Marshall, Robert Lovett, Clark Clifford, and several other officials, Washington, May 12, 1948, FRUS, 1948, Volume V: The Near East, South Asia, and Africa, Part 2 (Washington, D.C.: Government Publishing Office, 1976), 975. 68 See Clark Clifford with Richard Holbrooke, Counsel to the President: A Memoir (New York: Random House, 1991), 7-8. On Truman’s religious motivations, see Irvine H. Anderson, Biblical Interpretations and Middle East Policy: The Promised Land, America, and Israel, 1917-2002 (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 2005), especially Chapter 4. 51 trying to win Jewish votes. Regardless of his motives, Truman’s actions would have far- reaching consequences. One author went so far as to argue that Truman’s conduct set the tone for U.S.-Israeli relations for the next sixty-plus years. But despite making decisions that contributed significantly to the emergence of a Jewish state, Truman was far from an uncritical Zionist; in fact, he became intensely annoyed with pro-Israel lobbyists, to the point of telling his staff that he did not want to deal with any more spokesmen for the

“extreme Zionist cause.”69

The UN’s vote to partition Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states quickly led to violence. At first this was largely confined to fighting within Palestine between organized Jewish and Arab forces. The Jewish government of Palestine, the Yishuv, was well-prepared for this, having built up its military forces throughout World War II and developing an effective government structure that could quickly step up to lead a Jewish state. Less than six months after the UN vote, the state of Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948, and fighting began the following day between Israelis and forces from

Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. Israeli forces, which were consistently better armed, trained, and equipped than Arab forces at the time, prevailed in fighting throughout 1948 and quickly captured more territory than the proposed Jewish state was granted under the partition plan approved at the UN in the November 29 vote. In addition to being poorly

69 For Truman’s annoyance with Zionist lobbyists, see Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, Volume 2: Years of Trial and Hope (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1956), 160. See also Grose, Israel in the American Mind, Chapters 7-9, Michael J. Cohen, Truman and Israel (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1990) and Zvi Ganin, Truman, American Jewry, and Israel, 1945-1948 (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1979). On the long-term consequences of Truman’s decision, see John B. Judis, Genesis: Truman, American Jews, and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014). 52 armed and organized, Palestinian Arabs were also deeply divided among themselves and thus unable to mount an effective resistance to the new Israeli state.70

Israel’s military operations during the 1948 war created a massive refugee crisis as nearly a million Palestinians fled their homes and sought refuge in makeshift camps in neighboring Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. Israeli authorities initially blamed the

Palestinian refugee problem on the Palestinians themselves and their Arab allies, an interpretation that went unchallenged in Israel for several decades. This changed in the

1980s as a group of Israeli historians gained access to records on the 1948 war that were hidden away in Israeli archives. Using these newly available primary sources, Israel’s

“new historians” such as Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe showed that the flight of

Palestinian refugees from territory seized by forces of the newly independent Israeli state was not voluntary at all, but rather a response to Israeli actions rooted in Zionist ideology, which aimed to create an exclusively Jewish state and land. While Morris and Pappe did not find a specific document from Israeli leaders to military commanders ordering them to remove Palestinians from their homes, they argue that this was the unspoken goal of

Israeli political leaders and battlefield commanders. Israel, the Middle East, and the world are still dealing with the consequences of these events. While this emerging literature effectively challenged Israel’s nationalist narrative, it did not delve into the

Palestinian perspective of these events.71

70 For a detailed history of the 1948 war, see Benny Morris, 1948: A History of the First Arab- Israeli War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008). On the failure of Palestinian resistance in 1948, see Khalidi, The Iron Cage, Chapter 4. 71 See especially Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 60; the essays in Eugene L. Rogan, and Avi Shlaim (ed.), The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 53

In a November 29, 1948, letter to Chaim Weizman, Israel’s first president,

President Truman celebrated both his reelection and the new State of Israel’s military success against invading Arab armies. Noting that they had both overcome steep odds that year, he emphasized that he saw his victory on November 3 as “a mandate from the

American people to carry out the Democratic platform—including, of course, the plank on Israel. I intend to do so.”72 He then pledged that the United States would assist Israel with economic aid and by working to resolve its conflicts with its Arab neighbors. But

Truman’s advocacy of Jewish statehood in the Middle East did not translate into a smooth diplomatic and political relationship with the new Jewish state. On the contrary, despite his own critical role in recognizing Israeli independence, American relations with

Israel remained distant and tense for the remainder of Truman’s presidency. Instead of support for Israel, the primary American interest in the Middle East during the second half of the 1940s was to prevent its new adversary in the Cold War, the Soviet Union, from gaining any further influence in this critical region.73 Truman’s successor as

President would face many of the same challenges throughout the 1950s.

The United States and the Middle East in the Early 1950s

In January of 1953, shortly before Dwight Eisenhower took the oath of office as

President of the United States, analysts at the State Department put together a National

Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that examined the challenges facing the United States in the

2007); and Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2011), xii-xiii. For a critique of the “new historians, see Khalidi, The Iron Cage, 5. 72Printed in Truman, Memoirs, Volume II, 169. 73 On this point see Peter L. Hahn, Caught in the Middle East: U.S. Policy toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1945-1961 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004), especially Chapters 5-10. 54

Middle East at the start of the new year. The authors noted that the United States had a significant interest in the region because of its strategic location and extensive energy resources and had a strong incentive to prevent Soviet influence from growing in the

Middle East. However, the report warned, a number of factors made Arab governments in the region wary of the United States and the West, including the perception that the

United States was responsible for maintaining Israel’s security. “US association with

Israel,” the State Department’s analysts warned, “is a continuing irritant in US-Arab relations and the major obstacle to the acceptance of US influence in the Middle East.”74

This view of Israel would remain strong throughout the remainder of the decade.

Even before his election to the White House in 1952, Dwight David Eisenhower was an extraordinarily popular figure in the United States. During his two terms as president, Eisenhower presided over American domestic and foreign policy for the remainder of the decade, which saw significant developments in everything from civil rights to U.S.-Soviet relations. In fact, one historian recently went so far as to call the years 1945-1961 the “age of Eisenhower,” during which the thirty-fourth president was one of the most admired and consequential Americans in public life and oversaw tremendous changes in many areas of American society.75 In addition to all the other challenges he faced while in office, Eisenhower presided over an important period in the history of U.S.-Israeli relations. Among the many foreign policy priorities facing the

74 Document 114: National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) 76, “Conditions and Trends in the Middle East Affecting US Security,” Washington, January 15, 1953, FRUS, 1952-1954, Volume IX, Part I: The Near and Middle East (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1986). (URL: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1952-54v09p1/d114). (Accessed 10/18/20). 75 See William J. Hitchcock, The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018). 55

Eisenhower administration during the 1950s was the need to craft an effective foreign policy for the Middle East.

When it came to Israel, the Eisenhower administration shared many of the views and frustrations of its predecessor. A career military officer who had commanded Allied forces in Europe during World War II, Eisenhower knew the value of the Middle East’s oil reserves. To the disappointment of Israeli leaders who hoped that a new American administration would improve relations between the two countries, Eisenhower was more interested in maintaining cordial relations with the oil-producing Arab countries of the region than in developing closer ties with Israel. In his calculation, if the United States were to develop closer relations with the Jewish state, it would hurt the administration’s ability to deal with Israel’s Arab neighbors, whose oil was considered an important strategic asset in the Cold War.76

American officials were particularly keen on cultivating ties with conservative regimes ruled by monarchs, and eager to oppose “revolutionary” regimes that might fall prey to Soviet influence. The desire to preserve access to oil and prevent a radical regime from damaging American interests was a major factor behind the Eisenhower administration’s covert action to overthrow the nationalist regime of Mohammed

Mossadegh in Iran. With the help of American and British intelligence operatives, a military coup in Iran overthrew the nationalist government of Mohammed Mossadegh and replaced him with Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, returning a conservative, pro-Western

76 On the Eisenhower administration and Israel, see Isaac Alteras, Eisenhower and Israel: U.S.- Israeli Relations, 1953-1960 (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1993). On the administration’s broader Middle East policy, see Hahn, Caught in the Middle East, Chapter 11. 56 monarch to power in a country with significant oil reserves. More than a simple geopolitical calculation, this effort aligned with a long-standing American tradition of opposing revolutionary change around the world, especially in what was then called the

“developing world.”77

Following Israel’s victory in the 1948-1949 Arab-Israeli war, it turned to the international community for military and economic assistance to build up its defenses.

The Israelis had the most success with European countries, especially with Great Britain and France. The French would go on to become Israel’s most important supplier of military equipment, and a key contributor to Israel’s nascent and highly secretive nuclear program. But while these European alliances were key to Israel’s military development during its early years, Israeli leaders always had their eye on a larger prize, an alliance with the United States. For Israel’s first two prime ministers, David Ben-Gurion and

Moshe Sharrett, cultivating closer ties with the U.S. was a signature foreign policy objective. International divisions created by the Cold War made this a difficult challenge.

As a democracy, Israel was ideologically aligned with the West, but the large numbers of

Jews in the Soviet Union initially made Israeli leaders reluctant to align themselves too closely with the United States, at least at first. Hoping that these Soviet Jews would one day emigrate to Israel and increase the country’s population, Israeli leaders pressured the

Soviet Union to allow these Jews to immigrate to Israel. But the Soviet Union’s close

77 On the Eisenhower administration and Iran, see Mary Ann Heiss, Empire and Nationhood: The United States, Great Britain, and Iranian Oil, 1950-1954 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). On the 1953 coup and its consequences, see Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2003) and Ervand Abrahamian, The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations (New York: The New Press, 2013). On American opposition to revolutionary change, see Michael H. Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987). 57 alliance with Israel’s enemies in the Arab world only reinforced the need for an alliance with the United States.78

Israel’s diplomats in the United States worked hard to build a deeper relationship between Israel and the United States. They did so by working with pro-Israel organizations and individuals in the United States to pressure the U.S. government to strengthen its ties with the Jewish state.79 Israel’s second ambassador to the United

States, Abba Eban, was a key figure in Israeli efforts to shape American policy towards

Israel by influencing the American public. Eban, who was both Israel’s official envoy in

Washington and its ambassador to the United Nations in New York throughout the 1950s, saw his role as much more than that of a regular ambassador. As he wrote in his 1977 memoir, Israel’s ambassador in Washington was Israel’s liaison not only to the U.S. government but also to the American Jewish community. But perhaps even more crucially, Eban also tried to reach the broader American public to create sympathy for

Israel that might someday tip official U.S. Middle East policy in Israel’s favor. “My vocation,” he wrote, “was to develop an American-Israeli tradition based on a public sympathy that might transcend, and sometimes correct, the direction of official policy.”80

78 On Israeli foreign policy in the 1950s, see Uri Bialer, Between East and West: Israel’s foreign policy orientation 1948-1956 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990) and Zach Levy, Israel and the Western Powers, 1952-1960 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997). On the importance of the Cold War in shaping Israeli foreign policy, see Joseph Heller, The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948-67: Superpower Rivalry (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2016). 79 On the place of Israel in American domestic politics during these years, see Zvi Ganin, An Uneasy Relationship: American Jewish Leadership and Israel, 1948-1957 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005) and Natan Aridan, Advocating for Israel: Diplomats and Lobbyists from Truman to Nixon (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017). 80 Abba Eban, An Autobiography (New York: Random House, 1977), 175. 58

One area where the United States and Israel were cooperating extensively was in the world of secret intelligence and covert operations. During the 1950s, the Central

Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Israel’s foreign intelligence service, the Mossad, developed close ties. With the help of American intelligence officials such as the CIA’s long-serving chief of counterintelligence, James Jesus Angleton, the cooperation between the CIA and the Mossad yielded beneficial results for both countries. For the United

States, intelligence cooperation with Israel brought valuable information on the Soviet

Union that American sources had been unable to procure on their own. Two notable examples of this were the text of Nikita Khrushchev’s historic 1956 speech denouncing

Joseph Stalin, smuggled out of Eastern Europe by Israeli agents, and a new Soviet Mig-

21 fighter aircraft, acquired from a defecting Iraqi air force pilot. For Israel, intelligence cooperation served as a backchannel between the Israeli and American governments that circumvented traditional diplomatic channels.81

Having alternative channels to communicate with American leaders and the

American public was important to Israel because it enabled them to bypass major bureaucracies of the U.S. government that dealt with Middle East policy. As exemplified by James Forrestal’s and George Marshall’s opposition to Harry Truman’s decision to recognize Israeli independence, there was significant opposition to Zionism and recognizing Israel among bureaucrats and experts in the State and Defense Departments.

This was particularly true among so-called Arabists, State Department diplomats who had spent their careers serving in Arab countries and rose to senior positions in the State

81 See Ian Black and Benny Morris, Israel’s Secret Wars: A History of Israel’s Intelligence Services (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991), Chapter 6. 59

Department during the Cold War. At least some of this opposition was rooted in antisemitism.82

Early in the first Eisenhower administration, the President and his Secretary of

State, John Foster Dulles, tried to develop an anti-Soviet military alliance in the Middle

East by cultivating ties with different nations in the region. This alliance, whose members included Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan along with Britain and the United States, later became known as the Baghdad Pact. But the Baghdad Pact was beset by internal rivalries among these nations, for whom resisting Soviet influence was a lower priority than local regional and internal concerns. One important nation that never joined the alliance was

Egypt, the largest and most populous country in the Arab world.83

Egypt’s refusal to join the Baghdad Pact had much to do with the rising tide of

Arab nationalism and especially with the man who would soon become synonymous with

Arab nationalism, Gamal Abdel Nasser. Born in 1918, Nasser had served as an officer in the Egyptian army and was one of a group of officers who overthrew Egypt’s King

Farouk in a 1952 military coup. Nasser soon emerged as the leader of the country and would remain a powerful figure in Arab politics until his sudden death in 1970. When

Dulles visited Egypt in May of 1953 to try to enlist Egypt in an anti-Soviet military

82 For a highly critical view of the State Department “Arabists,” see Robert D. Kaplan, The Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite (New York: The Free Press, 1995). On the broader history of American expertise on the Middle East, see Zachery Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), Matthew F. Jacobs, Imagining the Middle East: The Building of an American Foreign Policy, 1918-1967 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2011), and Osamah F. Khalil, America’s Dream Palace: Middle East Expertise and the Rise of the National Security State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016). 83 For more on the internal struggles within the Baghdad Pact, see Elie Podeh, The Quest for Hegemony in the Arab World: The Struggle over the Baghdad Pact (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995). 60 alliance, Nasser told him that Egyptians were more concerned with ending British influence in Egypt than checking Soviet influence in the Middle East. Egyptian leaders also rejected American aid for a project to build a dam on the Nile River near Aswan.84

As American relations with Egypt deteriorated in the wake of Gamal Abdel

Nasser’s rise to power, the Soviet Union saw a chance to increase its influence in the

Middle East. While long-time Soviet leader Joseph Stalin never formulated a coherent

Soviet foreign policy in the region, his successors, beginning with Nikita Khrushchev, saw Arab nationalists as potential allies in their effort to pursue Soviet goals in the

Middle East. In the late 1950s, the Soviet Union cultivated close relations with several

Arab nations, especially Egypt and Syria. As part of these alliances, the Soviets sent large amounts of military equipment to their new Arab allies and thousands of advisers to train

Syrian and Egyptian troops in the use of Soviet military equipment and tactics. But while

Soviet leaders considered their alliances with Arab nationalist regimes to be major diplomatic achievements, their foreign policy toward the Arab world remained closely tied to their Cold War concerns about how the United States would react to these alliances. Soviet leaders were willing to provide their allies in the Arab world with economic and military aid, but they were careful not to appear too aggressive in challenging American influence in the Middle East, which might lead to a superpower disagreement that could escalate into military confrontation. This reticence did not

84 On the rise of Nasser, his importance to Arab nationalism, and Egypt’s rejection of the Baghdad Pact, see Adeed Dawisha, Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century: From Triumph to Despair (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), especially Chapters Six-Seven. On the rocky history of U.S. relations with Egypt under Nasser, see Malcolm Kerr, “‘Coming to Terms with Nasser:’ Attempts and Failure,” International Affairs, Vol. 43, No. 1 (January, 1967), pp. 65-84. 61 always go over well with Syrian and Egyptian leaders, who as a result never fully trusted their Soviet allies.85

But while American officials at the highest levels were trying to craft an effective

American policy toward Israel and the larger Middle East region, significant developments were also taking place closer to home that would have profound implications for U.S.-Israeli relations in the decades to come.

85 On Soviet foreign policy in the Middle East, see Galia Golan, Soviet Policies in the Middle East: From World War II to Gorbachev (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990). For a more recent analysis of Soviet foreign policy during the Cold War based on extensive research in Soviet archives, see Vladislav M. Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). 62

Chapter 2: From Exodus to the Six-Day War

Near the end of Exodus, his epic 1958 novel about the birth of Israel, author Leon

Uris included an episode in which two American pilots, Stretch Thompson and Foster T.

“Tex” MacWilliams, are hired to transport Jewish refugees from Aden to Palestine. At first the Americans, who initially cannot even find “Israel” on a map, only reluctantly agree to undertake the mission. But as Thompson and MacWilliams fly make more and more trips, during which they witness scenes that alternately recall tales from Arabian

Nights and the Old Testament, they become attached to the Yemeni Jews, a “docile little people with olive skins and delicate features.”86 By the end of the chapter, which did not make it into the 1960 film directed by Otto Preminger, both men were fully committed to the mission of transporting Jews from elsewhere in the Arab world, Africa, and Europe.

Thompson even settled down to marry an Israeli-born woman and took an apartment in

Tel Aviv.

This episode in Uris’ novel helps capture an important shift in both the diplomatic relationship between Israel and the United States on the one hand, and the cultural relationship between the American and Israeli peoples on the other. As Eisenhower era of the 1950s gave way to new presidents and new challenges for the United States at home and abroad, the American perception of Israel shifted dramatically among everyone from average Americans to senior policymakers and presidents.

This chapter analyzes the development of U.S.-Israeli relations from the late

1950s to the end of the 1960s. While the United States largely kept its distance from

86 Leon Uris, Exodus (New York: Bantam Books, 1986), 564. 63

Israel during the early years of Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency, that began to change during Eisenhower’s second term in office and especially with Eisenhower’s successors

John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. It was under these two presidents that the

United States first sold sophisticated military equipment to Israel. This chapter also surveys a related and parallel development in U.S.-Israeli relations that began much earlier but truly came to fruition during the years covered here. This was the deepening of cultural ties between the United States and Israel.

A Shift in American Cultural Perceptions of Jews and Israel

Throughout the 1950s and beyond, major cultural developments reshaped the U.S. relationship with Israel. The decline of antisemitism in the United States and the embrace of Judaism as part of a Judeo-Christian front against communism softened gentile

Americans’ attitudes toward the Jewish people and, by extension, Israel. American Jews’ changing attitudes toward Israel, as seen through deepening cultural ties between the two countries and the rise of an organized pro-Israel lobby in the United States, further contributed to growing American sympathy for the state of Israel. One important feature of the history of American foreign relations is that domestic politics and culture in the

United States are never far removed from American actions and policies abroad. The

United States’ relationship with Israel is no exception in this regard.

Antisemitism was a common feature of American life for many years and rising steadily in the 1930s before peaking in 1945. During the same period however, there was a growing movement in the United States among progressive Christians and Jews to reconcile the two faiths and emphasize a shared history and biblical heritage. During

World War II, groups like the American Jewish Committee and the National Conference 64 of Christians and Jews called for unity among Christians and Jews in the face of racist, antisemitic, and antidemocratic regimes in Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and imperial

Japan. Many films produced during World War II, for instance, emphasized religious (if not racial) harmony in American society by portraying military units of diverse

Americans working together to fight a common enemy.87

The years following the end of World War II saw a remarkably rapid decline in prejudice against the American Jewish community, especially among Catholics and

Protestant Christians of many denominations. The postwar years saw American Jews enter educational and professional worlds in unprecedented numbers and more sympathetic portrayals of minority groups (including Jews) in popular culture. Rather than an experience unique to Jews, this gradual acceptance was part of a larger pattern in the history of American immigration that saw white European migrants achieve gradual acceptance as full members of American society following a period of discrimination and progress.88 In the American film industry, for instance, Jews had risen to powerful positions in Hollywood, but much of their focus had been on assimilating into American culture instead of telling specifically Jewish stories.89 This changed in the aftermath of

World War II and the Holocaust and continued in subsequent decades.

87 See Wendy L. Wall, Inventing the “American Way:” The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), especially Chapter 5. 88 For a broad overview of American Jewish history since World War II, see Edward S. Shapiro, A Time for Healing: American Jewry since World War II (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). On the decline of antisemitism in the United States after World War II, see Leonard Dinnerstein, Antisemitism in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), especially Chapter 8. On the treatment of foreigners throughout American history, see Thomas Borstelmann, Just Like Us: The American Struggle to Understand Foreigners (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020), especially Chapter III. 89 On the prominent role of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe in shaping the American film industry, see Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1988). 65

The 1950s was also a period of intense religiosity for Americans of all faiths.

Although Protestant Christianity remained the largest broad religious category for

Americans, this era also saw religious groups such as Roman Catholics and Jews make unprecedented strides into mainstream American society. A significant factor in this growing religious pluralism in the United States was the fear of communism and the

United States’ Cold War adversary, the Soviet Union. In this climate of fear, a growing number of American commentators began speaking of the United States as a “Judeo-

Christian” country to contrast it with the Soviet Union, a society which nominally rejected all religion outright. Though the term had its roots in the 1930s, it became much more widely used after World War II to emphasize the common roots of the three major faith traditions in the United States. In this formulation, Judaism formed an essential piece of the United States’ religious foundation and achieved unprecedented theological legitimacy.90

Just as American Jews reached new levels of acceptance in American culture, their attitudes toward the state of Israel were also shifting. American Jews read about events in Israel in the media, but they also encountered Israel in a wide variety of cultural activities and products, from music and folk dances to books, fashion, and other consumer goods. American Jews were also generous financial donors to organizations that supported Israel and were a vital economic lifeline in the early years of the Jewish state. But more broadly speaking, the cause of Israel emerged as a rare source of unity in

90 See Kevin M. Schultz, Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar America to its Protestant Promise (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 66 the American Jewish community, which was becoming simultaneously more secular and diverse in the second half of the twentieth century.91

One of the most important cultural moments in the development of close U.S.-

Israeli ties was the arrival of author Leon Uris’s historical novel Exodus in American bookstores in 1958. Exodus tells the story of dashing and heroic Israeli soldiers such as the fictional Ari Ben-Canaan, a tough, masculine Haganah fighter who transported

Jewish refugees to Palestine during and after World War II, and later fought heroically to defend Jews against invading Arabs following Israel’s declaration of independence.

Uris’s heroic portrait of Israelis is matched only by his negative portrayals of Arabs. But one of the novel’s most prominent characters is not an Israeli or even a Jew, but an

American Protestant nurse, Kitty Fremont. Initially skeptical of Palestinian Jews, over the course of the novel Kitty practically becomes obsessed with them, first through a young girl named Karen whom she first tries to take back to the United States, and later through

Ari, with whom she falls in love.

Fremont’s presence in the plot allowed Uris’s American readers, especially non-

Jewish readers, to experience the founding of Israel through a sympathetic character who was experiencing the birth of Israel first-hand. By including Kitty and several other

Americans, from an American Jewish woman who has moved to Palestine to a pair of

American pilots who risk their lives to bring Jewish refugees from around the world to

Israel, Uris provides numerous opportunities for American readers to identify with the

91 See Howard M. Sachar, A History of the Jews in America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), Chapter XX. On American Jews’ cultural encounters with Israel specifically, see Emily Alice Katz, Bringing Zion Home: Israel in American Jewish Culture, 1948-1967 (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2015). 67

Israeli people through American characters who are coming to their aid. On the other hand, Uris presents numerous negative orientalist portrayals of Arabs as lazy, incompetent, brutal, and sex-crazed, providing a stark contrast to the pure and heroic

Jews.92 Through these polar-opposite descriptions, Uris establishes Israelis as a people who are very similar to Americans.

In her ground-breaking research into the cultural dimensions of American-Israeli relations in the 1950s, historian Michelle Mart demonstrates that, in addition to geopolitical calculations, cultural products shaped the views of American policymakers toward Israel during that decade. Using works such as Exodus, she shows that Americans came to see Israel not as a nation of foreigners, but rather one of kindred spirits and

“surrogate Americans.” Furthermore, she shows that the story of Israel’s “heroic” resistance to its Arab enemies transformed the image of both American Jews and Israelis from weak minorities to tough fighters who were worthy of American respect and support.93

Exodus sold millions of copies, but Leon Uris’s characters and story reached an even wider audience in 1960 when the novel was adapted into a feature film starring Paul

Newman as Ari Ben-Canaan and Eva Marie Saint as Kitty Fremont. Directed by the

Jewish Austro-American Otto Preminger, the movie was filmed on location in Cyprus

92 On other American characters in Exodus besides Kitty Fremont, see Leon Uris, Exodus (New York: Bantam Books, 1986), 95, 325-328, 523, 570, and 590; for negative portrayals of Arabs, see 226, 229, 252, 258, 266-267, 274, 315, 334, 346, 353, 484, and 551. For more on Uris and Exodus, see M.M. Silver, Our Exodus: Leon Uris and the Americanization of Israel’s Founding Story (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2010). 93 See Michelle Mart, “Tough Guys and American Cold War Policy: Images of Israel, 1948- 1960,” Diplomatic History 20 (Summer 1996): 357-380 and Eye on Israel: How America Came to View Israel as an Ally (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2006). 68 and Israel, which added authenticity to the film’s drama. Preminger’s movie, which softened some of Uris’s anti-Arab views, nonetheless preserved the novel’s core message of heroic Israelis fighting against impossible odds to build a new country. Together, Uris and Preminger were two of a growing number of Americans who visited Israel in search of artistic inspiration.94

Ever since Israel gained its independence, government officials recognized the propaganda value of large-budget Hollywood studios shooting films in Israel about life in the young Israeli state and its history. Israeli officials were involved with the Exodus project from the very beginning. They provided extensive assistance to Leon Uris during his research trip to Israel in 1956, including arranging for transportation, lodging, interviews with Israeli military veterans and political leaders, and a minder from the

Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Later, when director Otto Preminger filmed scenes for the film on location in Israel and Cyprus, the Israeli government did much to facilitate the

American filmmakers’ work. Government officials acted as liaisons between the filmmakers and Israeli businesses and religious institutions, provided security, and help arrange for extras when necessary. Though the Israeli government did not control the final product, what appeared in theaters in 1960, according to historian Giora Goodman,

“fit almost perfectly with Israeli international propaganda themes.”95

Another critical feature of changing ideas about Israel in the United States was the emergence of a well-organized political movement to advocate on behalf of Israel. While

94 See Shalom Goldman, Starstruck in the Promised Land: How the Arts Shaped American Passions About Israel (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2019), Chapter 4. 95 Giora Goodman, “‘Operation Exodus:’ Israeli government involvement in the production of Otto Preminger’s Film Exodus,” Journal of Israeli History, Vol. 33. No. 2 (2014), 223. 69 there is no single specific “pro-Israel lobby” organization, historian Walter Hixson recently defined the Israel lobby as a “continuous campaign of advocacy on the part of

Israel and its American supporters to secure US foreign policies that are perceived as favorable to the Israeli national interest.”96 One organization, the American Israel Public

Affairs Committee (AIPAC), founded in 1951, later emerged as one of the largest and most powerful pro-Israel organizations in the United States, and one of the most powerful lobbying organizations of any kind. Isaiah I. Kenen, AIPAC’s first director and the organization’s leader from 1951-1975, stressed in his memoirs that the Israel lobby was an organic effort by American Jews with the support of Christian leaders in the U.S. to support economic and military aid for Israel. This effort, Kenen later wrote, was “in the moral, economic, and strategic interests of both countries.”97

The existence and power of a pro-Israel lobby in the United States was most recently and controversially highlighted by two political scientists, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, first in a lengthy 2006 article in the London Review of Books and then later in a full-length and extensively researched book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign

Policy. While Mearsheimer and Walt made some compelling arguments in this book, their focus was on the implications of the Israel lobby for American foreign policy in the twenty-first century, and not the lobby’s history. As a result, one of the most serious flaws in their research was that it was based largely on published sources and not grounded in archival sources. More recently several historians have filled this gap by

96 Walter L. Hixson, Israel’s Armor: The Israel Lobby and the First Generation of the Palestinian Conflict (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 1. 97 I.L. Kenen, Israel’s Defense Line: Her Friends and Foes in Washington (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1981), 3. 70 going beyond contemporary debates about the power of the pro-Israel lobby to explore its origins in the 1950s at a time when Israeli leaders were eagerly seeking American patrons.98

The Suez Crisis: A Turning Point in the Middle East

The Suez Crisis of late 1956 was the most serious conflict in the region since the

Arab-Israeli War of 1948. But unlike the 1948 war, this crisis involved the direct participation of European colonial powers in a Middle East war. At this point in the

1950s, both the British and the French were still trying to preserve their international influence, particularly in the Middle East, where both had interests stemming from their energy needs and their dwindling colonial empires. Egyptian president Gamal Abdel

Nasser’s move to nationalize the Suez Canal in late July of 1956 was the final straw for the British and French governments. Fearing the loss of the canal for good, the leaders of both countries resolved to remove Nasser from power and regain control of this vital economic lifeline.

Fearing that Nasser’s action would permanently damage their influence in the

Middle East, the two fading colonial powers joined together to plan a military operation to seize control of the Suez Canal and secure their individual interests. The British and

French also enlisted Egypt’s neighbor Israel in their scheme. The Israelis, for their part,

98 For the Mearsheimer/Walt argument, see “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” London Review of Books, Vol 28, No. 6 (March 23, 2006) and The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007). For historians’ accounts of the Israel lobby’s early years, see Hixson, Israel’s Armor and Doug Rossinow, “‘The Edge of the Abyss:’ The Origins of the Israel Lobby, 1949-1954,” Modern American History, Vol. 1, No. 1 (March 2018), 23-43. See also several accounts by journalists, including Edward Tivnan, The Lobby: Jewish Political Power and American Foreign Policy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987) and J.J. Goldberg, Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., 1996). 71 were concerned about Egypt’s growing power in the region and the rise in cross-border infiltrators from Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Infiltrators, mostly Palestinian refugees returning to their former homes, had been entering Israeli territory since the 1948 Arab-

Israeli war ended, but the 1950s saw a rise in violent attacks on Israeli settlements and towns by Palestinian guerillas and Egyptian soldiers. Israeli leaders authorized reprisal attacks by Israeli forces, but these efforts did not lead to a decline in violence. Believing that stronger action was necessary, Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion and his advisers saw the joint British-French scheme as a chance to check Egypt’s military growth and preserve Israel’s military dominance in the Middle East. The Israeli contribution to the British-French effort, called Operation Musketeer, would be to initiate the conflict by invading the Sinai Peninsula, creating a crisis that Nasser could not handle and creating an excuse for outside intervention. Using the Israeli attack as a pretext,

French and British forces would seize control of the Suez Canal to “secure” it and ensure that it remained open.99

Israel’s attack on the Sinai began on October 29, 1956 and was followed two days later by British and French attacks on Egypt. The entire scheme caught the Americans, especially President Dwight Eisenhower, by surprise. At the time, the American administration was responding to a crisis in Hungary, where Soviet troops were in the

99 On the British and French reasons for launching the Suez operation, see Martin Thomas, Fight or Flight: Britain, France, and Their Roads from Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), Chapter 6. On Israel’s role in the Suez Crisis, see Mordechai Bar-On, The Gates of Gaza: Israel’s Road to Suez and Back, 1955-1957 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994). For a recent analysis of the global origins of the crisis, see Guy Laron, Origins of the Suez Crisis: Postwar Development Diplomacy and the Struggle over Third World Industrialization, 1945–1956 (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center/Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013). On the fighting on Israel’s borders during the 1950s, see Benny Morris, Israel’s Border Wars 1949-1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). 72 midst of crushing a popular revolt in Budapest, Hungary. The Suez crisis also came less than two weeks before the 1956 presidential election in the U.S. While British and French military operations were more limited, Israeli forces advanced rapidly, easily defeating the Egyptian military and capturing the Gaza Strip and much of the Sinai Peninsula.

Furious with Britain, France, and Israel for what looked like a blatant act of imperialism,

Eisenhower demanded a swift end to the fighting and an immediate withdrawal of all three countries’ military forces, which they all did in the next few months. He backed up his words with harsh economic measures intended to punish the British and French for their actions. Britain’s and France’s actions convinced Eisenhower that those countries could no longer be counted on to secure the Middle East, and only the United States could perform that job.100 In a rare point of superpowers finding common ground, the

Soviets also denounced the Sinai campaigns of France, Great Britain, and Israel.

Following the disastrous events of late 1956, the Eisenhower administration launched a new initiative in the Middle East. In a message to Congress on January 5,

1957, President Eisenhower outlined what has since become known as the “Eisenhower

Doctrine,” a blueprint for American policy in the Middle East. Though Eisenhower’s speech emphasized a desire to preserve peace in the Middle East and prevent the Soviet

Union from increasing its influence in the region, the Eisenhower Doctrine also had significant implications for local actors. At the core of this new policy was a commitment

100 On the Eisenhower administration’s response to the Suez War of 1956, see Peter L. Hahn, The United States, Great Britain, and Egypt, 1945-1956 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1991); Diane B. Kunz, The Economic Diplomacy of the Suez Crisis (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1991); Hahn, Caught in the Middle East, Chapter 15; Michael Doran, Ike’s Gamble: America’s Rise to Dominance in the Middle East (New York: Free Press, 2016); and Hitchcock, The Age of Eisenhower, Chapter 13. 73 to resisting the pan-Arab nationalism of Egypt’s Nasser and supporting U.S.-friendly regimes in the region with political, economic, and military aid. Asserting that the United

States sought peace in the region, Eisenhower told his audience that “The occasion has come for us to manifest again our national unity in support of freedom and to show our deep respect for the rights and independence of every small nation—however great, however small.”101 In practice those regimes included conservative monarchies such as

Jordan and Saudi Arabia.102

The most prominent demonstration of the Eisenhower Doctrine was the American response to a series of crises in the Middle East in 1958. A military coup in Iraq and unrest in two pro-Western countries, Jordan and Lebanon, led the Eisenhower administration to fear that the entire region was on the verge of a serious crisis. In July

1958 Eisenhower ordered U.S. Marines ashore in Lebanon to prop up the conservative,

Christian-led regime of Camille Chamoun and prevent the outbreak of civil war in that fragile country. The British also deployed paratroops to Jordan to support the regime of

King Hussein against forces that threatened his regime. Like the Americans and the

British, the Israelis also had an interest in preserving pro-Western regimes in 1958 and used the crises of 1958 as an opportunity to develop closer ties with the Maronite

101 “President Asks for Authorization for U.S. Economic Program and for Resolution on Communist Aggression in Middle East,” The Department of State Bulletin, Vol. XXVI, No. 917 (January 21, 1957), 87. 102 On the Eisenhower Doctrine, see Ray Takeyh, The Origins of the Eisenhower Doctrine: The US, Britain and Nasser’s Egypt, 1953-57 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000); Salim Yaqub, Containing Arab Nationalism: The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); Peter L. Hahn, “Securing the Middle East: The Eisenhower Doctrine of 1957,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 1 (March 2006), 38-47; and Randall Fowler, More Than a Doctrine: The Eisenhower Era in the Middle East (Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2018). 74

Christian community in Lebanon and with Great Powers such as the United States and

Great Britain, with limited results.103

While American and European observers often highlight the Arab-Israeli conflict as the driving force behind all conflict in the Middle East, it is important to remember that there were other factors shaping events in the Arab world. In fact, Arab nations that seemed to be on the same side of the Arab-Israeli conflict were deeply divided when it came to other issues. Throughout the 1950s, supporters of Arab nationalism tried to cultivate a unified front among Arab nations, but the struggle between local national identity (be it Egyptian, Iraqi, or Syrian) and an Arab nationalism that transcended national borders remained. One major line of division was between countries such as

Syria and Egypt, which were ruled by “revolutionary” regimes, and countries such as

Iraq, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, which continued to be ruled by tradition-bound monarchies. One area where these internal divisions within the Arab world took on global dimensions was in the civil war in Yemen, which began in 1962. Seeking to support the revolutionary government there, Egypt’s President Nasser sent thousands of troops to

Yemen where they suffered hundreds of casualties with little apparent gain for Egypt.

103 For analyses of the American intervention in Lebanon based on extensive archival research, see Irene L. Gendzier, Notes from the Minefield: United States Intervention in Lebanon and the Middle East, 1945-1958 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997) and Yaqub, Containing Arab Nationalism, Chapter 7. For a brief, recent analysis by an experienced Middle East intelligence analyst, see Bruce Riedel, Beirut 1958: How America’s Wars in the Middle East Began (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2020). On the Israeli perspective of the crises of 1958, see Avi Shlaim, “Israel, the Great Powers, and the Middle East Crisis of 1958,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol, 27, No. 2 (1999), pp. 177-192. 75

Nasser’s intervention in the Yemeni civil war damaged his country’s relations with other

Arab states and hurt the Egyptian’s military’s ability to challenge Israel in the 1960s.104

Despite the tensions that existed between the United States and Israel at the beginning of the Eisenhower administration, relations began to warm between the two countries as the 1950s came to an end. This was a response to crises in the Middle East in places like Lebanon and Jordan, where generally pro-American regimes seemed on the brink of collapse in 1958. In spite of their anger at Israel’s invasion of the Sinai,

American officials were impressed with the performance of Israel’s military in that conflict. In this troubling climate, the Eisenhower administration began to see Israel, with its powerful and competent military forces, as a potential strategic asset in the region rather than a strategic liability.105

The 1960s: Kennedy, Johnson, and Israel

This trend toward closer U.S.-Israeli relations continued under Eisenhower’s successor, John F. Kennedy. Unlike Eisenhower, Kennedy came to the White House as a firm supporter of Israel stretching back to his days in Congress. Before his presidency was cut short by his assassination in November 1963, Kennedy and his administration

104 Political scientist Malcolm Kerr referred to the divisions within the Arab world as an “Arab cold war.” See Kerr, The Arab Cold War 1958-1967: A Study of Ideology in Politics (London: Oxford University Press, 1967). See also Podeh, The Quest for Hegemony in the Arab World and Dawisha, Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century, especially Chapters Eight-Nine. On the civil war in Yemen, see Jesse Ferris, Nasser’s Gamble: How Intervention in Yemen Caused the Six-Day War and the Decline of Egyptian Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013) and Asher Orkaby, Beyond the Arab Cold War: The International History of the Yemen Civil War, 1962-68 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). 105 See Isaac Alteras, Eisenhower and Israel: U.S.-Israeli Relations, 1953-1960 (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1993); Douglas Little, “The Making of a Special Relationship: The United States and Israel, 1957-68,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Nov., 1993), pp. 563-585; and Abraham Ben-Zvi, Decade of Transition: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Origins of the American-Israeli Alliance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), Chapters II-III and The Origins of the American-Israeli Alliance: The Jordanian Factor (New York and London: Routledge, 2007). 76 took important steps that moved the United States closer to Israel, culminating in the first

American sale of sophisticated weapons to Israel. But American officials also clashed with Israeli leaders on a number of issues, including Israel’s covert efforts to build a nuclear program (initially with French assistance) at a time when the United States was trying to limit the spread of nuclear weapons beyond the existing nuclear powers.106

Israeli leaders continued their efforts to acquire sophisticated American weaponry after Kennedy took office, hoping that their efforts would meet with greater success with a friendlier President in the White House. Their efforts were aided by the presence of several White House aides and advisers such as Meyer Feldman who advised President

Kennedy and were sympathetic to Israel. These efforts bore fruit in 1962, when the

United States finally agreed to provide Israel with sophisticated weapons for the first time. This first arms deal involved Hawk surface-to-air missiles. The Kennedy administration’s unsuccessful overture to President Nasser to try to mend relations between the U.S. and Egypt further encouraged the trend toward friendlier relations with the Jewish state.107

While Israel may have had a more sympathetic friend in President Kennedy than in his predecessor, Israeli leaders were not prepared to abandon other measures to ensure their military superiority in the Middle East even if it meant angering U.S. leaders.

106 On Kennedy’s relationship with Israel, see Warren Bass, Support Any Friend: Kennedy’s Middle East and the Making of the U.S.-Israel Alliance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) and Zachary K. Goldman, “Ties That Bind: John F. Kennedy and the Foundations of the American-Israeli Alliance,” Cold War History, Vol. 9, No. 1 (February 2009), pp. 23-58. For another analysis that emphasizes the importance of the Kennedy years, see Herbert Druks, The Uncertain Alliance: The U.S. and Israel from Kennedy to the Peace Process (Greenwood, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001). 107 See David Tal, “Symbol Not Substance? Israel’s Campaign to Acquire Hawk Missiles, 1960- 1962,” The International History Review, Vol. 22, No. 2 (June, 2000), pp. 304-317 and Abraham Ben-Zvi, John F. Kennedy and the Politics of Arms Sales to Israel (London: Frank Cass, 2002). 77

Before Israel had even declared its independence, David Ben Gurion, who later became

Israel’s first prime minister, became extremely concerned that a Jewish state in Palestine would face an overwhelming invasion from the hostile Arab nations that surrounded it.

Ben Gurion and others feared that such an invasion would quickly strangle a nascent

Jewish state and perhaps lead to a slaughter of Jews on par with the Holocaust. To prevent this doomsday scenario from playing out and to build a deterrence capability against foreign invasion, Israel began developing a nuclear program in the 1950s. Israel initially received significant assistance from France, Israel’s primary source of military equipment since the 1950s. To this day, Israel has never publicly acknowledged its nuclear program, but through the efforts of historians like Avner Cohen and journalists such as Seymour Hersh and Michael Karpin, we know a great deal about the origins of

Israel’s nuclear program. These authors and others have benefited enormously from recently declassified materials, especially from American archives such as the Kennedy and Johnson presidential libraries.108

American intelligence officials only confirmed the existence of Israel’s nuclear program in December 1960 as officials of the Eisenhower administration were preparing to hand over responsibility to Kennedy and his advisers. Several factors combined to make the 1960s a vital era for Israel’s nuclear program. To begin with, Israel’s

108 On the early decades of Israel’s nuclear program, see Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). On American intelligence agencies’ efforts to uncover Israel’s nuclear program, see Jeffrey T. Richelson, Spying on the Bomb: American Nuclear Intelligence from Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006), especially Chapter Six. For two journalists’ investigations into Israel’s nuclear program, see Seymour M. Hersh, The Sampson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy (New York: Random House, 1991) and Michael I. Karpin, The Bomb in the Basement: How Israel Went Nuclear and What That Means for the World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006). 78 relationship with the United States became more important as its relationship with France deteriorated. As France under President Charles de Gaulle brought its war in Algeria to an end and sought better relations with the Arab world, it distanced itself from Israel.

Without French military assistance, Israeli leaders intensified their efforts to obtain sophisticated military equipment from the United States, but Israel’s nuclear program made this a challenging proposition. While soliciting American aid, successive Israeli prime ministers refused to abandon their nuclear program in return for promises of U.S. aid. To get around this impasse, American and Israeli officials engaged in extensive discussions throughout the 1960s to avoid a rupture in relations between the two countries.109

Competing priorities complicated the Kennedy administration’s relationship with

Israel. On the one hand, Kennedy and many members of his administration were sympathetic to Israel and wanted to extend greater aid to the Jewish state. On the other hand, Kennedy entered office publicly committed to halting nuclear proliferation around the world. Fortunately for Israel, Kennedy’s commitment to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons was not as strong as his public statements suggested. Instead of a blanket opposition to the spread of nuclear weapons, Kennedy’s spotty record on non- proliferation was part of a larger pattern in American nuclear policy during the Cold War.

In what historian Shane Maddock has called an “atomic hierarchy,” Israel was included among the countries, especially the United States’ Western European and NATO allies,

109 On American and Israeli discussions about Israel’s nuclear weapons program in the 1960s, see Zaki Shalom, Israel’s Nuclear Option: Behind the Scenes Diplomacy Between Dimona and Washington (Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2005). 79 that were deemed worthy of nuclear weapons. Countries of the decolonized world, including the Arab world, were deemed unworthy of possessing such powerful weapons.

More recently, political scientist Galen Jackson has even suggested that American officials of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations saw a nuclear-armed Israel as advantageous to the United States in the Middle East, since it would enhance the power of an American ally against Soviet-backed Arab countries. The Israeli response to

American qualms about Israel’s nuclear program was to cover up its existence at all costs to give the Kennedy and Johnson administrations cover for supplying Israel with military aid while maintaining their public opposition to nuclear proliferation.110

Like his predecessor, President Lyndon B. Johnson was also a strong supporter of

Israel going back to his days as a powerful senator from Texas. Israel’s longtime ambassador to the United States Abba Eban wrote in his memoirs that Lyndon Johnson could get very emotional when the subject of Israel came up. As Eban recalled decades later, “For all his calculated show of virile toughness there was something about Israel that stirred [Johnson’s] pious memories. When he spoke of our cause there would be a halt in the gruffness, and an untypical tenderness would come into his eyes and voice.”111

As he finished out John F. Kennedy’s term and began serving one of his own following the 1964 election, Johnson repeatedly and publicly proclaimed his support for

Israel. As Olivia Sohns argued in 2017, Lyndon Johnson’s sympathy for Israel predated

110 On American nonproliferation policy, see Shane Maddock, Nuclear Apartheid: The Quest for American Atomic Supremacy from World War II to the Present (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), especially Chapters 6-8. See also Galen Jackson, “The United States, the Israeli Nuclear Program, and Nonproliferation, 1961-1969,” Security Studies, 28:2 (2019), 360-393. 111 Abba Eban, An Autobiography (New York: Random House, 1977), 187. 80 his ascension to the Presidency. In fact, it stretched all the way back to his childhood in

Texas, and then evolved into a major concern during Johnson’s years in the House and

Senate, a unique development for a politician whose major concerns were domestic.112 In

1966, Johnson approved another major arms sale, this time consisting of A-4 Skyhawk attack aircraft, thus continuing the trend Kennedy had started of approving sales of advanced weapons systems to Israel, something which Presidents Truman and

Eisenhower had long resisted.

While officials in the Executive Branch were often very open about their support for Israel, the same was not true of many officials in the State and Defense Departments.

In fact, two of the strongest opponents of Harry Truman’s decisions to support the UN partition of Palestine in 1947 and to recognize Israel in May 1948 came from his two most senior foreign policy advisers, Secretary of Defense James Forrestal and Secretary of State George Marshall. When State and Defense officials failed to convince President

Truman to follow their advice, they settled for implementing an arms embargo on the entire Middle East region that would severely restrict American military aid to Israel and other countries in the region. This debate continued into the 1960s.

As was the case in 1947-1948, career officials in the State and Defense

Departments during the 1960s were much more wary of deepening American ties to

Israel than many politicians in the White House and Congress. In early 1964, officials of the Johnson administration were considering an Israeli request for 500 of the United

States’ most sophisticated tanks to replace its aging armored forces, as well as other

112 Olivia Sohns, “The Future is Foretold: Lyndon Johnson’s Congressional Support for Israel,” Diplomacy and Statecraft, Vol. 28, No. 1 (2017), 57-84. 81 pieces of sophisticated military equipment. In their report to the National Security

Council on the potential consequences of such a sale, State and Defense officials argued that providing Israel with so much American firepower would do serious harm to other

American interests and objectives in the Middle East. In addition to undermining

American arms control initiatives, they warned, agreeing to Israel’s requests would damage American relations with Arab countries (some of which were Soviet allies) and link U.S. foreign policy too closely with that of Israel.113 Furthermore, as General Earle

Wheeler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in a memo to Secretary of Defense

Robert McNamara in March 1964, Israel’s military was already better supplied and trained than any of its Arab neighbors. “There is,” Wheeler wrote, “no need for Israel to augment its tank strength at this time.”114 Despite the intensity of this debate, Lyndon

Johnson’s views eventually won out and the U.S. did supply Israel with more and increasingly sophisticated weaponry, but this was not because there was a consensus among American officials about the proper level of American aid to Israel.115

In 1966 the Johnson administration took another important step in moving the

United States toward a closer military and strategic alliance with Israel when it agreed to sell A-4 Skyhawk aircraft to Israel. But this was not a simple case of the United States

113 Report from the NSC Standing Group re “Israeli Arms Requests,” April 28, 1964, “NSAM 290—Meeting Israeli Arms Requests,” National Security Action Memorandums, Box 3, National Security Files, Lyndon B. Johnson Library. (URL: https://www.discoverlbj.org/item/nsf-nsam-b3-f09). (Accessed 6/8/20). 114 Memo from Earle Wheeler for the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Secretary of Defense re “Military Assistance for Israel,” March 12, 1964, Ibid. 115 On the debates within the Johnson administration over Israel, see Abraham Ben-Zvi, Lyndon B. Johnson and the Politics of Arms Sales to Israel: In the Shadow of the Hawk (London: Frank Cass, 2004) and Arlene Lazarowitz, “Different Approaches to a Regional Search for Balance: The Johnson Administration, the State Department, and the Middle East, 1964-1967,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 32, No. 1 (January 2008), 25-54. 82 bowing to Israel’s requests for additional military equipment. Instead, American officials took this step in response to the Soviet arms to Syria and Egypt. Selling arms to Israel and Jordan, a moderate and pro-Western Arab nation on Israel’s western border,

American officials believed, would help preserve the balance of power in the Middle East between pro-Western regimes and the Soviet-backed Arab countries arrayed against

Israel. The sale of Skyhawks to Israel also served to reassure Israel of American support in the face of arms sales to one of Israel’s potentially hostile neighbors. Despite this important step, the Johnson administration still tried to argue that the U.S.-Israeli relationship had not fundamentally changed.116 While this was an important step in the evolution of U.S.-Israeli relations, events in the first half of 1967 were about to dramatically alter the situation in the Middle East for the foreseeable future.

June 1967

The Six-Day War of June 5-11, 1967, utterly transformed the Middle East and set the stage for the conflicts and negotiations that would occupy Israel, the Arab world, the

United States, and other international players for decades to come. In addition to demonstrating its military capabilities against the armies of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan,

Israel also occupied large swaths of territory from each of these countries (including the

West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the Gaza

Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt). Besides the war’s massive impact on the region,

116 On the 1966 Skyhawks sale, see Zach Levy, “The United States’ Skyhawk Sale to Israel, 1966: Strategic Exigencies of an Arms Deal,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 28, No. 2 (April 2004), 255-276. 83 these events touched off intense reactions within the United States among the American public.117

The long-range causes of the Six-Day War stretched back to the beginning of the

Arab-Israeli conflict in 1948. Ever since Israel declared its independence in 1948, Arab leaders loudly proclaimed their desire to remove the Jewish state from the Middle East, though they took only limited steps throughout the 1950s and 1960s to achieve this goal.

Likewise, Israeli officials feared that at any moment they could be attacked from different directions simultaneously. This fear made many Israel’s leaders, especially its military commanders, believe that Israel needed to strike first. As historian Ahron Bregman notes, the strength of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) was, despite its name, offensive warfare.118

Events in the spring of 1967 convinced Israeli leaders that war with one or more of Israel’s neighbors was close at hand. To the north, Israeli forces repeatedly clashed with Syrian troops in retaliation for attacks against Israeli towns and settlements and to the Syrian effort to divert the flow of the Jordan River. To the south, tensions on Israel’s border with Egypt were also increasing. In May, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser ordered UN forces in the Sinai Peninsula to withdraw and dispatched Egyptian troops to

117 There is a large and growing literature on the June 1967 war. For a history of the Israeli domestic context, see Tom Segev, 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007). On the Israeli military’s role in the decision to go to war, see Ami Gluska, The Israeli Military and the Origins of the 1967 War: Government, armed forces and defense policy 1963-1967 (New York: Routledge, 2007). For a strictly political and military history of the conflict, see Michael Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2002). For an analysis that puts the conflict into a global perspective, see Guy Laron, The Six-Day War: The Breaking of the Middle East (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2017). 118 Ahron Bregman, Israel’s Wars: A History since 1947 (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 78, 84 the Sinai. He also ordered a blockade of the Straits of Tiran, a vital economic lifeline for

Israeli shipping. These steps made Israeli leaders believe that Egypt was preparing for war. To meet these challenges, Israeli leaders took the unusual step of forming a national unity government with all opposition parties, bringing some religious and right-wing ministers (including future prime minister Menachem Begin) into government for the first time. They also called up Israel’s military reserves, ensuring that as many soldiers were in uniform and deployed to the front lines as possible in the event of hostilities.

At the end of May, with war seemingly only weeks away, several Israeli officials visited Washington to pressure the Johnson administration to take a stronger public stance in support of Israel and for specific commitments of military support. Though

Johnson himself was a vocal supporter of Israel, his administration was deeply emersed in the American war to preserve South Vietnam and resisted Israeli pressure to become more involved in the brewing crisis in the Middle East. At the time, Johnson and his advisers were received intelligence reports indicating that Egyptian actions intended to be defensive. Furthermore, contrary to Israeli worries that their forces were inadequate to meet the threat from Egypt, IDF forces, according to American intelligence agencies,

“maintain qualitative superiority over the Arab armed forces in almost all aspects of combat operations.”119 During a meeting with Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban,

119 Document 76: Intelligence Memorandum Prepared in the Central Intelligence Agency re “Military Capabilities of Israel and the Arab States,” Washington, May 26, 1967, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1964-1968, Volume XIX: Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1967 (Washington, D.C.: Government Publishing Office, 2004). (URL: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964- 68v19/d76). (Accessed 6/24/20). 85

Johnson called on the Israelis to hold back, stressing several times that “Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go it alone.”120

Rather than heed Lyndon Johnson’s warning, Israeli leaders opted for preemptive war. The Israeli attack began on June 5, with a massive air attack on Egypt’s air forces and air defenses. Catching the Egyptians completely by surprise, the Israeli strike quickly destroyed Egypt’s air force on the ground. Over the next five days, Israeli forces advanced rapidly into the Sinai Peninsula, seized control of the entire West Bank, including the Old City of Jerusalem, and captured the Golan Heights on the border with

Syria. After six brief days of fighting, a United Nations ceasefire ended the conflict on

June 11. The war was a military triumph for Israel and a humiliating defeat for Israel’s

Arab neighbors.

One of the most puzzling events of the Six-Day War occurred on June 8 as Israeli forces were preparing to attack Syria. On that day, Israeli aircraft and patrol boats attacked an American ship, the U.S.S. Liberty, as it was sailing in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea. An electronic intelligence-gathering vessel, the Liberty had been sent to the area to monitor Israeli and Egyptian communications as war between the two countries seemed increasingly likely. In the ensuing attack, which Israel later claimed was a tragic accident, twenty-five American sailors were killed, dozens more wounded, and the Liberty was badly damaged. Though many details of this incident remain classified, American intelligence reports from the weeks following the attack concluded

120 Document 77: Memcon between LBJ, Eban, and key aides, Washington, May 26, 1967, Ibid. (URL: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d77). (Accessed 6/24/20). 86 that the attack on the Liberty was most likely an accident caused by Israeli commanders’ failure to inform the proper units that the Liberty was an American vessel.121

The Middle East After 1967

On November 22, 1967, the United Nations passed UN Security Council

Resolution 242, a document that would set the terms for negotiations between Israel,

Arab nations, and the United States for decades to come. Seeking to address the concerns of both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Resolution called for an end to belligerency; the termination of all territorial claims and acknowledgment of each state’s territorial sovereignty, integrity, and political independence; and affirmed each state’s right to live in peace within secure and internationally recognized borders. Resolution 242 also called for a UN Special Representative to be appointed to take charge of negotiations to achieve peace in the Middle East.122

Within Israel, the IDF’s quick and overwhelming victory was greeted with tremendous enthusiasm and celebration. In an essay published in The New Republic thirty-five years after the events of June 1967, the historian Tony Judt wrote that during the six years between the end of the Six-Day War and the start of the October War in

1973, Israelis became “dizzy with success.” Recalling a visit to a junior officers’ living quarters on the Golan Heights, Judt observed “an astonishingly quick transition from

121 For American intelligence reports analyzing the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty, see Documents 284-285, 317, 337, and 373 in FRUS, 1964-1967, Volume XIX. Not everyone bought Israel’s explanation for the attack. See. for instance, James M. Ennes, Jr., Assault on the Liberty: The True Story of the Israeli Attack on an American Intelligence Ship (New York: Random House, 1979). 122 “United Nations Security Council Resolution 242,” The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy, Yale Law School. (URL: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/un242.asp). (Accessed 5/25/20). 87 quiet confidence to an air of overwhelming superiority” among the Israeli military.123 The feeling among enlisted Israeli soldiers was more complicated, however. In a series of candid interviews recorded shortly after the Six-Day War ended, junior Israeli soldiers and reservists expressed deep concerns about what Israel’s overwhelming victory meant for its future.124 But despite these discordant voices, the feeling of overconfidence and military superiority among Israel’s senior leaders would carry over into Israel’s next major war, with disastrous consequences.

The events of June 1967 had a dramatic impact on how people around the world viewed Israel. While many who were sympathetic to Israel rejoiced at Israel’s military accomplishments, others were in no mood to celebrate. What Israel’s supporters saw as a remarkable victory in the face of Arab provocations against more numerous Arab armies, others saw as an aggressive and unprovoked war of conquest by Israel. This vision of

Israeli actions had a dramatic effect on perceptions of Israel in sub-Saharan Africa, a decolonizing region where Israeli diplomats had worked hard to establish a presence in the 1950s and early 1960s.125 The same was true of Israel’s image in Western Europe, where Israel initially was viewed very sympathetically among European leaders because of the Holocaust. West Germany was a major supporter of Israel during its first two decades. In fact, according to a recent study by Daniel Marwecki, West Germany was a

123 Judt, “Dark Victory: Israel’s Six-Day War,”, reprinted in Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century (New York: The Penguin Press, 2008), 282. 124 These interviews were published in a book called The Seventh Day by Avraham Shapira. The raw footage from many of these interviews was included the 2015 documentary Censored Voices, directed by Mor Loushy. 125 On Israeli diplomacy in Africa, see Zach Levy, “Israel’s Entry to Africa, 1956-61,” Diplomacy and Statecraft, Vol. 12, No. 3 (September 2001), pp. 87-114 and “Israel’s Strategy in Africa, 1961-67,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol 36 (2004), pp. 71-87. 88 more important ally of Israel than either France or the United States before 1967.126 For both African and Western European nations, the 1967 war was a turning point, the beginning of a more distant and tense relationship with Israel.127

Another significant development in the Middle East following the Six-Day War was the beginning of a new era of Palestinian political and militant activity. The primary

Palestinian political and military body, the Palestine Liberation Organization or PLO, was formed in 1964, and was already involved in attacks on Israel from bases in neighboring countries. But Israel’s swift and overwhelming victory over Arab armies in

1967 pushed the PLO to adopt a much more aggressive strategy to achieve its objectives.

Before 1967, Palestinian militants had looked to other Arab nations, especially Egypt under President Nasser for support, but Arab militaries’ extremely poor performance against Israel convinced Palestinian leaders that they could not wait for Arab leaders to defeat Israel and that they needed to act on their own. Palestinian militant activity took several forms, including cross-border raids by fedayeen guerillas into Israel from bases in

Jordan and Lebanon. Palestinian militants also began launching terrorist attacks on civilian targets outside the Middle East, especially in Europe, where Israeli and international civilian airliners became frequent targets. These attacks were intended to

126 On German-Israeli relations, see Carole Fink, West Germany and Israel: Foreign Relations, Domestic Politics, and the Cold War, 1965-1974 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019) and Daniel Marwecki, Germany and Israel: Whitewashing and Statebuilding (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020). 127 For a broad overview of Israel’s relations with Western Europe, see Rory Miller, Inglorious Disarray: Europe, Israel and the Palestinians Since 1967 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 89 raise international awareness of the Palestinian plight by attacking poorly defended targets and drawing the attention of the global media.128

The Israeli occupation of the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank was one of the most important and long-lasting consequences of the Six-Day War.

Contrary to Israeli pronouncements that its attacks on Egypt, Syria, and Jordan were not aimed at territorial conquest, recently historians have shown that territorial expansion was at least part of the reason, if not a significant reason, why Israeli leaders went to war in

June of 1967.129 And despite some reports that Israel immediately offered to return the captured territory in return for peace, recent scholarship casts doubt on Israel’s willingness to exchange land for peace as called for under in the war’s immediate aftermath and was later codified in UN Resolution 242.130

Following the Six-Day War, Israeli leaders were divided over what to do about the occupied territories. One solution proposed by Yigal Allon, then Israel’s labor minister, was for Israel to annex two sections of territory along the Jordan River, creating a buffer zone between Israel and neighboring Jordan. Israel would then build settlements and military bases within these territories and the remainder of the territory would be returned to Jordan. While the Allon Plan, as it became known, was never formally

128 On the history of the PLO, see Helena Cobban, The Palestinian Liberation Organization: People, Power, and Politics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984), Barry Rubin, Revolution Until Victory? The Politics and History of the PLO (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), and Yezid Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). On the PLO’s disillusionment with Nasser and Arab nationalism, see Dawisha, Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century, Chapter Ten. 129 See Avi Raz, The Bride and the Dowry: Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians in the Aftermath of the June 1967 War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012) and Avshalom Rubin, The Limits of the Land: How the Struggle for the West Bank Shaped the Arab Israeli Conflict (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2017). 130 See for instance Avi Raz, “The Generous Peace Offer that was Never Offered: The Israeli Cabinet Resolution of June 19, 1967,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2013), 85-108. 90 adopted by the Israeli government, it became the basis for Israel’s policies in the occupied territories for the next few years.131

Officials of the Johnson administration were committed to the land for peace formula as sketched out in Resolution 242. But after the end of the Six-Day War,

American attention, especially that of the President, turned back to one of its other major concerns, the war in Vietnam. At a time when Israel’s settlement policy was still vulnerable to outside pressure, the United States missed an opportunity to limit or prevent

Israelis from settling in the occupied territories. Instead of calling on the Israelis to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights, the

Johnson administration determined that the onus was on the Arabs, not the Israelis, to make concessions before calling on Israel to withdraw from the territory it seized in June of 1967. In what Gershom Gorenberg called the “Bundy Doctrine,” named for McGeorge

Bundy, the American official who was responsible for the policy, American officials decided that the United States would not pressure Israel to withdraw or make concessions unless it was offered peace from Arab nations in return. Absent actions by American and

Israeli leaders to remove them, settlements became a contentious part of future peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.132

Senior Israeli leaders and American officials were not the only ones with their eyes on the occupied territories. While Israeli leaders were debating what to do about the

131 On the Allon Plan, see Gershom Gorenberg, The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977 (New York: Times Books, 2006), 80-82 and Udi Manor, Yigal Allon: A Neglected Political Legacy, 1949-1980 (Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2017), Chapter 6. 132 On the connection between the Vietnam War and American policy in the Middle East, see Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, “Distraction and Deception: Israeli Settlements, Vietnam, and the Johnson Administration.” Diplomatic History, Vol. 42, No. 3 (June, 2018), 456-483. On the “Bundy Doctrine,” see Gorenberg, The Accidental Empire, 55-56 and 83. 91 occupied territories, grassroots activists were taking matters into their own hands. Secular

Israelis seeking to recreate the adventure of their Zionist forefathers and religious Israelis seeking to settle in what they called “Greater Israel” established small settlements in the

West Bank and the Golan Heights soon after the fighting ended. Although the settler movement initially included both religious and secular Israelis, the religious element came to dominate the movement in later years. As more Israelis moved into the settlements, they became more entrenched and more resistant to removal as part of any peace negotiations that involved exchanging land for peace.133

The June 1967 war also transformed the Cold War in the Middle East. The brief war altered the Soviet Union’s relationship with its Middle Eastern allies, especially

Egypt and Syria. After sending years of sending economic and military aid to Egypt and

Syria, Soviet leaders were shocked by the Arab militaries’ poor performance against

Israeli forces. In response, the Soviets broke off diplomatic relations with Israel and significantly increased the amount of military aid going to the Middle East (especially to

Egypt) and dispatched more military advisers to the region to train Arab military forces.134 While most scholars see these Soviet moves as reactive, Isabella Ginor and

Gideon Remez argue that the Soviet Union was actively working with their Arab allies to

133 On the history of the first decade of the settler movement, see Gorenberg, The Accidental Empire. For broader histories of the settler movement, see Robert I. Friedman, Zealots for Zion: Inside Israel’s West Bank Settlement Movement (New York: Random House, 1992) and Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar, Lords of the Land: The War Over Israel’s Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007 (New York: Nation Books, 2007). 134 See Alvin Z. Rubinstein, Red Star on the Nile: The Soviet-Egyptian Influence Relationship Since the June War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977), especially Chapter One; Zubok, A Failed Empire, Chapter 7; and Golan, Soviet Policies in the Middle East, Chapter 4. 92 undermine the Israeli state. These findings, which rely heavily on accounts from Soviet veterans who served in the Middle East, have not been widely accepted by historians.135

The Impact of the 1967 War in the United States

The events of June 1967 had a dramatic effect on several groups within the United

States. Israel’s dramatic victory in June 1967 set off a burst of enthusiasm and support for the Jewish state in the United States. For many elite commentators in the United States,

Israel’s swift and overwhelming military victory was more than a demonstration of the

Jewish State’s military prowess, it reflected Israeli society itself. At a time when more and more Americans were protesting the war in Vietnam, Israel appeared to many

American observers to be a nation of heroic citizen-soldiers who rose to defend their country in the face of what was perceived to be an existential threat from hostile Arab nations. As historian Shaul Mitelpunkt writes, “The romantic, fictionalized picture of

Israel these elite US commentators shaped was to a large extent based on nostalgia for an imagined, harmonious post-World War II consensus. In adoring Israel, they mourned the demise of their own society’s once proud citizen-soldier model.”136

Pro-Israel sentiment was particularly intense among American Jews, who were simultaneously concerned that Israel faced an existential threat in 1967 and overjoyed at its dramatic victory. While Jews in the United States had been supportive of Israel since its founding in 1948, only a small number of American Jews had moved to Israel, and

135 See Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, Foxbats Over Dimona: The Soviets’ Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007) and The Soviet-Israeli War 1967-1973: The USSR’s Military Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). 136 Shaul Mitelpunkt, Israel in the American Mind: The Cultural Politics of US-Israeli Relations, 1958-1988 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 121. 93 both American Jews and their major organizations generally focused on causes closer to home.137 By 1967, however, American Jews were more fully integrated into American society than they had ever been and felt freer to identify with Israel without fear that they would be seen as Americans more loyal to Israel than to their home country.

For some Jewish intellectuals, support for Israel threatened to undermine another deeply held belief, opposition to the American war in Vietnam. One such individual was

Hans Morgenthau, a prominent political scientist, a proponent of the “realist” school in international relations, and author of Politics Among Nations, a seminal work of international relations theory. Morgenthau was highly critical of the United States’ destructive war in Vietnam. But he came to a different conclusion when looking at

Israel’s behavior in 1967.138 Writing in the New Leader less than two weeks after the war ended, Morgenthau blamed U.S. policy in the aftermath of the 1956 war for helping to create the present situation, and reasoned that Israel was acting as any nation under threat would under similar circumstances.139 In her analysis of the relationship between the Six-

Day War and the Johnson administration’s war in Vietnam, Judith Klinghoffer goes even further to argue that the Six-Day War was a critical moment for those intellectuals who would later be identified as neoconservatives because it opened the door for them to support a tougher American foreign policy if it included support for Israel.140

137 On the American Jewish “establishment” and the 1967 war, see Joshua Michael Zeitz, “‘If I am not for myself…’: The American Jewish Establishment in the Aftermath of the Six Day War,” American Jewish History, Vol. 8, No. 2 (June 2000), 253-286. 138 See M. Ben Mollov, “Responsible Power, Irresponsible Power: Israel and Vietnam According to Hans J. Morgenthau,” Israel Affairs, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Autumn, 2000), pp. 25-48. 139 Hans J. Morgenthau, Jr., “The U.S. & the Mideast,” The New Leader, June 19, 1967, pp. 3-6. 140 See Judith A. Klinghoffer, Vietnam, Jews, and the Middle East: Unintended Consequences (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999). 94

American Jews’ newfound enthusiasm for Israel did not emerge out of nowhere.

While it was certainly motivated by genuine concerns about the security of Israel, it was also a response to several other long-term trends that were coming to fruition during the

1960s. One of these trends was the growing popular and academic awareness of the

Holocaust, Nazi Germany’s massive effort to exterminate European Jewry during the

Second World War. While many scholars have written that American Jews paid relatively little attention to the Holocaust until the 1960s, historian Hasia Diner argues that, on the contrary, American Jews from across the religious and political spectrums made the Holocaust an integral part of their community’s life.141 Israel, where many survivors fled after World War II ended, went through its own process of coming to terms with the Holocaust. American Jews’ growing consciousness of the Holocaust and the dramatic events of June 1967 in the Middle East combined to make Israel and the

Holocaust two of the most important aspects of American Jewish life and culture.142

Two authors whose works had much to do with the growth of Holocaust consciousness in the United States and around the world were Anne Frank and Elie

Wiesel. Frank’s diary of her family’s years hiding in an attic in Amsterdam during World

War II before their discovery and eventual execution was published in English in 1952.

By the end of the decade, it had been made into an award-winning play and film.

141 See Diner, We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust, 1945-1962 (New York: New York University Press, 2009). Diner is challenging claims made by other historians of American Jewry, especially Peter Novick, Edward Shapiro, Gerald Sorin, and Jonathan Sarna, all of whose works are discussed elsewhere in this dissertation in different contexts. 142 On Israeli society’s response to the Holocaust, see Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993) and Idith Zertal, Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005). For a highly critical account of the Holocaust’s prominence in American life, see Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999). 95

Wiesel’s memoir Night, which detailed his family’s experience during the expulsion of

Hungarian Jews to the death camps, was published in English for the first time in 1961.

Both Night and The Diary of Anne Frank became widespread texts in American schools, exposing generations of young Americans to the horrors of the Holocaust.

The Holocaust dramatically returned to global public consciousness in the spring of 1961 when the trial of Adolf Eichmann began. Eichmann, a mid-level official in

Heinrich Himmler’s SS during World War II, had organized deportations of European

Jews from German-occupied countries first into ghettos and later to death camps on the

Eastern Front. While many senior figures from the Nazi regime were tried and convicted at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, many other junior officials like

Eichmann escaped prosecution. Like several other former Nazi officials and perpetrators,

Eichmann escaped to Argentina after the collapse of the Nazi regime and lived in hiding for several years. Alerted to his hiding place by German prosecutor Fritz Bauer, Israeli intelligence operatives kidnapped Eichmann on May 11, 1960, and brought him back to

Israel for trial. The trial was covered widely in the international press, including the political-theorist-turned-reporter Hannah Arendt. Commissioned by the New Yorker magazine to write a series of articles on the trial, Arendt wrote insightfully and critically of the Israeli government’s efforts to try Eichmann in 1961. Her observations were later published in an influential and controversial book, Eichmann in Jerusalem.143

In the 1960s the academic community was also starting to reckon with the

Holocaust as a distinct area of study. In 1961, the same year that the Eichmann trial

143 See Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin Books, 2006). 96 began in Jerusalem, Raul Hilberg published The Destruction of the European Jews, the first comprehensive study of how Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime in Germany sought to expel and eventually eliminate Jews from Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. An Austrian

Jew whose family left Vienna for the United States just before World War II began,

Hilberg earned a doctorate in political science at Columbia University and set about turning his dissertation on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust into a book. Hilberg’s analysis focused on the Nazi perpetrators of the Holocaust, especially the bureaucrats who made it possible. After struggling to find a publisher, The Destruction of the

European Jews was eventually released by Quadrangle, a small publisher in Chicago.

Though not a popular success, the book received widespread notice and mixed reactions from reviewers. Hilberg’s comments on Jewish collaborators were particularly controversial, especially since his book came out around the same time as the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. In the years since, The Destruction of the European Jews became the foundation for an entire tradition of historical scholarship.144

In addition to their ongoing efforts to come to terms with the Holocaust,

American Jews’ reaction to the events of June 1967 was also shaped by their involvement in the American New Left, the civil rights movement during the 1950s and 1960s, and the anti-Vietnam War movement. Throughout the twentieth century, and especially since the

1930s and the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, American Jews had taken an active part in liberal causes, especially the struggle to obtain equal rights for African

144 In her book Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt cited Hilberg’s work in support of her characterizations of Jewish collaborators during the Holocaust. For a recent discussion of the scholarly reception of Hilberg’s research, see Olof Bortz, “Early Reactions to Raul Hilberg’s History of the Holocaust, 1961-7,” Journal of Contemporary History (March 8, 2021), pp. 1-21. 97

Americans. But the political relationship between American Jews and African Americans grew more tense in the mid-1960s as many younger black civil rights leaders moved away from measured and gradual efforts to achieve equality and toward the more confrontational and militant tactics of the Black Power movement. In this context of assertive racial and ethnic pride, American Jews’ commitment to Israel became an assertion of Jewish identity. For some African Americans, on the other hand, voicing support for the Palestinians served as a vehicle for asserting black solidarity with oppressed peoples around the world. Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands during the

Six Day War brought these tensions to the surface.145

In this complex domestic environment, Israel’s triumph in the Six-Day War of

June 1967 gave American Jews the chance to celebrate their pride in the Jewish state and, by extension, their pride in their own Jewish identity. In his analysis of American Jews’ views of foreign policy throughout U.S. history, Michael Barnett writes that the Six-Day

War, coming on the heels of protests against the Vietnam War, the shifting nature of the civil rights movement, a growing interest in the plight of Soviet Jews, and increasing in the Holocaust as a subject of historical and moral analysis, inspired an intense outburst of enthusiasm for Israel. The war, Barnett argues, “not only gave American Jews a glimpse

145 On American Jews and liberalism in the 20th century, see Marc Dollinger, Quest for Inclusion: Jews and Liberalism in Modern America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000) and Michael E. Staub, Torn at the Roots: The Crisis of Jewish Liberalism in Postwar America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). On relations between American Jews and African Americans in the 1960s and beyond, see Cheryl Lynn Greenberg, Troubling the Waters: Black-Jewish Relations in the American Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006) and Dollinger, Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s (Brandeis, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2018). On African Americans and the Palestinian cause, see Michael R. Fishbach, Black Power and Palestine: Transnational Countries of Color (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019). On the tensions within the American Left specifically, see Fischbach, The Movement and the Middle East: How the Arab-Israeli Conflict Divided the American Left (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020). 98 of life without Israel, [Israel’s] victory also instilled in them a self-respect they never knew they had been missing.”146

A small number of American Jews were so inspired by Israel’s victory in 1967 and so concerned for its safety that they emigrated to Israel and became key participants in the Israeli settler movement. According to Sara Yael Hirschhorn, more than 60,000

American Jews joined the settler movement in the years after 1967. These American

Jewish settlers were often characterized as oddballs or fanatics. For instance, in the lengthy story “Judea” in Philip Roth’s collection The Counterlife, one character describes settlers from America as “either religious or crazy or both.”147 However Hirschhorn paints a much more complicated picture. For these American Jews, emigrating to an

Israeli settlement was both a religious and political act. These Americans were often young observant (but not necessarily Orthodox) Jews who were deeply involved in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements of the 1960s. These American settlers’ efforts to transport their values of tolerance and inclusion often ran into serious obstacles as Israeli settlements became increasingly controversial parts of peace negotiations and often clashed with local Palestinians who objected to their presence.148

American Jews were not the only Americans inspired by Israel’s military feats in

June 1967. Israel’s quick victory, and especially its capture of the Temple Mount in the

Old City of Jerusalem, was an important moment for some evangelical Protestants as

146 Michael N. Barnett, The Star and the Stripes: A History of the Foreign Policies of American Jews (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 163. 147 See “Judea” in Philip Roth, The Counterlife (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 77. 148 On the profile of American Jews who moved to Israel and joined the settler movement after 1967, see Sara Yael Hirschhorn, City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), especially Chapter One. 99 well. Among a certain subset of conservative Protestant evangelicals, the return of the

Jews to their ancestral homeland in Palestine was seen as a vital component of God’s plan for humanity, something that had to happen for God’s plan to be realized. Part of this was realized in 1948 with the creation of the state of Israel, but it was Israel’s

“miraculous” victory in June of 1967 that seemed to be definitive proof to some evangelicals that God’s plan for humanity was playing out before their eyes in the Middle

East.149

These American evangelicals’ enthusiastic reaction to Israel’s victory in the Six-

Day War took place against the backdrop of a broader change in the relationship between

American Jews and evangelicals. While for decades evangelical outreach to the Jewish community had focused on converting Jews to Christianity, American evangelicals developed a more positive view of Judaism in the 20th century and gradually moved away from (but never fully abandoned) conversion efforts and negative stereotypes about

Jewish people. Together, these new views of the Jewish people combined with enthusiasm for Israel’s victory in 1967 to set the stage for conservative evangelicals’ embrace of Israel in the 1970s and beyond.150

149 On the relationship between American evangelicals and Israel since 1948, see Caitlin Carenen, The Fervent Embrace: Liberal Protestants, Evangelicals, and Israel (New York: New York University Press, 2012) and Daniel G. Hummel, Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews, and U.S.-Israeli Relations (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019). For a more theological study, see Timothy P. Weber, On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel’s Best Friend (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004). On the importance of prophecy in American religion, especially in the twentieth century, see Paul Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992). 150 On the evolving relationship between Evangelicals and Jews in the United States since the nineteenth century, see Yaakov Ariel, An Unusual Relationship: Evangelical Christians and Jews (New York: New York University Press, 2013). 100

Conclusion

With racial unrest across the country and a highly unpopular war in Vietnam still raging, the Middle East was not a major issue in the 1968 presidential election. Lyndon

Johnson made waves when he announced on March 31 that he would not seek or accept his party’s nomination for a second term as president. Like the man they were trying to replace, the men vying for the Democratic nomination were all strong supporters of

Israel. Hubert Humphrey, who emerged as the Democratic nominee for president, was a strong supporter of Israel ever since his days in the Senate. Robert Kennedy, brother of the assassinated John F. Kennedy and a Democratic Senator from New York, was shot and killed in retaliation for Kennedy’s support of a proposed sale of fifty F-4 Phantom fighter-bombers to Israel that was being debated that fateful year.151

Lyndon Johnson made his final contribution to the development of U.S.-Israeli relations near the end of his presidency when he approved that sale of Phantom aircraft to

Israel in October of 1968. Israeli leaders had been pressing the United States to sell them

Phantom aircraft for several years, but so far, the Johnson administration had refused.

Though the Israelis had decimated Arab air forces in the June 1967 war, Israeli prime minister Levi Eshkol remained concerned that Israel’s air superiority in the Middle East would not last. As was the case two years earlier, when American officials were debating whether to sell Israel A-4 Skyhawk aircraft, the decision to approve the sale was not a simple one. According to David Rodman, the Johnson administration’s decision to

151 The connection between American support for Israel and Sirhan Sirhan’s killing of Robert Kennedy went largely unexplored at the time. For a recent discussion of this, see Salim Yaqub, Imperfect Strangers: Americans, Arabs, and U.S.-Middle East Relations in the 1970s (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016), 1-6. 101 approve the Phantom sale was born out of a feeling that it was the best way to advance

American interests in the broader region, not a specific desire to enhance Israel’s military might.152

While officials within the Johnson administration had mixed feelings about taking such a dramatic step to strengthen Israel’s military might, members of Congress were much less conflicted. As Kenneth Kolander argues in his new book America’s Israel, the

1967 war was an important turning point for senators and congressmen from both parties.

Officials at the Defense Department were on the other hand strongly opposed to selling

Phantom aircraft to Israel in the aftermath of the June 1967 war. While the Joint Chiefs of

Staff were willing to accept some aid to Israel as part of an effort to maintain a military balance in the Middle East between Israel and its Arab neighbors, they felt that Phantoms would tip the balance decisively in Israel’s favor.153

As this chapter has demonstrated, there were important developments in the emergence of the U.S.-Israeli relationship during the late 1950s and 1960s. But there was still a long way to go before that relationship transformed into a close military alliance.

Two strongly pro-Israel presidents in John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson approved the sale of major weapons systems to Israel, but these steps, while major departures for the U.S., were still seen as distinct individual measures, not part of an ongoing aid program. That was all about to change in the 1970s, under the leadership of a man,

152 David Rodman, Arms Transfers to Israel: The Strategic Logic Behind American Military Assistance (Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2007), especially Chapter 4. 153 Kenneth Kolander, America’s Israel: The US Congress and American-Israeli Relations, 1967- 1975 (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2020), especially Chapter 1. On the Defense Department’s view of U.S. military aid to Israel after 1967, see Edward J. Drea, Secretaries of Defense Historical Series, Volume VI: McNamara, Clifford, and the Burdens of Vietnam 1965-1969 (Washington, D.C.: Historical Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2011), especially Chapter XVI. 102

Richard Nixon, who did not share Kennedy or Johnson’s affection and sympathy for the

Jewish state.

103

Chapter 3: Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Israel, 1969-1974

When Richard Nixon landed at Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv on the afternoon of June 16, 1974, he was the first American president to visit the State of Israel. Nixon’s visit came during a larger trip to the Middle East that also took him to Syria and Egypt, two other important countries involved in the Nixon administration’s efforts to facilitate negotiations between Israel and its Arab adversaries. The man who spearheaded those negotiations, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, traveled with the President. In his brief remarks, Nixon said that he was proud to be standing in Israel, “because our two countries have been joined together in friendship from the time of Israel’s birth as a nation in our modern times.” He praised the Israeli people for their “courage, their tenacity, their firmness in the face of very great odds,” and reassured them that the United

States was proud to stand with Israel in times of trouble, and would continue to do so in the future, hopefully in times of peace.154 Neither the President of the United States nor his Israeli welcoming party, which included Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and President

Emphraim Katzir, mentioned the ongoing Watergate crisis in the United States, which ended the Nixon presidency less than two months later.

This first presidential trip to Israel came at a perilous time for both Nixon’s political future and the future of Arab-Israeli negotiations in the Middle East. Nixon,

Kissinger, and their entourage arrived less than a year after the October War of 1973, in which Israel had suffered thousands of casualties repulsing a surprise attack from Syria

154 Document 184: Remarks on Arrival at Tel Aviv, Israel, June 16, 1974, Public Papers of the Presidents (hereafter PPP), Richard Nixon: 1974, page 516. (URL: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/ppotpus/). (Accessed 5/26/20). 104 and Egypt. Israel’s counterattack was fueled by a massive airlift of military equipment from the United States, an act of support that infuriated much of the Arab world and led to an oil embargo against the United States and its European allies. Henry Kissinger had spent the months leading up to this visit flying back and forth between capital cities of the

Middle East to broker negotiations between Israeli, Egyptian, and Syrian leaders, and had successfully concluded two limited disengagement agreements. But despite the lofty and positive rhetoric from the leaders of both countries at the airport welcome ceremony, the national mood in Israel was nowhere near as upbeat. Alexander Haig, an officer in the

U.S. Army who was then serving as Nixon’s chief of staff, recalled seeing a country

“deeply shaken” by the recent conflict and whose young people had seen enough of war.

As he wrote in his memoirs, “There was too much anxiety and the memories of sacrifice were too fresh for anything beyond routine expressions of gratitude to the visitors.”155

The 1970s was a particularly significant decade for American foreign policy in the Middle East. This chapter surveys the development of American foreign policy in the

Middle East, especially the evolving relationship with Israel, from the time that Richard

Nixon took office in January 1969 to his resignation in the summer of 1974. As this chapter shows, the United States and Israel drew significantly closer during these years, though the relationship between the two countries remained rocky and never as close as it was often portrayed in Israeli and American leaders’ public statements. Nevertheless,

American support for Israel, especially in terms of military and economic aid, increased dramatically between 1969-1974. In the words of historian Avi Shlaim, “During the

155 Alexander M. Haig Jr., Inner Circles: How America Changed the World, A Memoir (New York: Warner Books, 1992), 460. 105 presidency of Richard Nixon the relationship between the two countries gradually developed into a close strategic partnership.”156

American military aid to Israel had been on the rise since the early 1960s, but it increased substantially under Richard Nixon, culminating in the unprecedented American resupply effort during the 1973 October War. In the negotiations that followed, the

United States made a series of new commitments to Israel in order to secure two limited but ground-breaking disengagement agreements, first between Israel and Egypt, and then between Israel and Syria. These agreements, which came as part of Henry Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East, were some of the first successful negotiations between Israel and its Arab neighbors, who by 1974 had been in a state of war with each other for more than two decades. The administration’s efforts to broker negotiations in the Middle East culminated in Nixon’s tour to the region. Unfortunately for Nixon, these limited foreign policy successes could not save his presidency from the Watergate scandal, which produced the first presidential resignation in American history.

Though Richard Nixon was one of the most important figures in American politics during the 1970s, it was Henry Kissinger, an unelected adviser, who would have as much impact on American foreign relations during the decade as the presidents he served, perhaps more. Born in 1923 to an Orthodox Jewish family in Germany, Kissinger escaped with his family to the United States in 1938 at the age of fifteen. He served in the

U.S. Army during World War II, earned a PhD in political science at Harvard (where he also became a professor), and produced scholarship designed to be directly relevant to

156 Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000), 309. 106

American foreign policy in the Cold War before he entered government service. First as

National Security Adviser and later as Secretary of State, Kissinger became one of the most important figures in American diplomatic history, and one of the most controversial.

By publishing three giant memoirs, Kissinger did much to shape the narrative about his service in government and his legacy, although these works need to be read in conversation with the archival record. Even before the end of the Cold War, historians and journalists have been grappling with Kissinger’s influence over American foreign relations during the 1970s and continue to do so in the 2020s.157

Though less celebrated in popular culture than the 1960s, the decade of the 1970s was just as impactful for the United States both at home and abroad. Since at least 2001, historians of the United States and of U.S. foreign relations have produced a large body of scholarship that underscores the importance of the 1970s as a transformational era of

American diplomacy, politics, and culture. Coming on the heels of the dramatic political and social upheavals of the previous decade, from the assassination of John F. Kennedy, major achievements in civil rights legislation and backlash against them, and the escalation of the American war in Vietnam, the 1970s saw a wide range of changes in

American domestic political, social, economic, and cultural life come to fruition. These

157 There is an enormous and growing literature on Henry Kissinger and his impact on American foreign relations. See for example Seymour M. Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (New York: Summit Books, 1983); Robert D. Schulzinger, Henry Kissinger: Doctor of Diplomacy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989); Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992); Jussi Hanhimaki, The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Robert Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007); Asaf Siniver, Nixon, Kissinger, and U.S. Foreign Policy Making: The Machinery of Crisis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Jeremi Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007) and Thomas Schwartz, Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography (New York: Hill and Wang, 2020). 107 included everything from changing notions of gender and sexuality to economic and energy crises, a growing distrust of government, and the rise of a powerful conservative political movement.158

Internationally, the 1970s were an important turning point for global politics and for American foreign policy. The Cold War conflict between the United States and the

Soviet Union that dominated international relations since the end of World War II continued, but the 1970s saw the beginning of a new phase in U.S.-Soviet relations.

Specifically, through a policy that came to be known as détente, American and Soviet leaders sought to find ways to cooperate with each other on issues of mutual interest, such as trade and nuclear weapons.159 Many studies of détente focus on the American side and draw predominantly on American sources, but sources from Soviet archives reveal that Premier Leonid Brezhnev also played a key role in shaping this new chapter in the Cold War.160 While the United States and the Soviet Union were embarking on a new course in their diplomatic relations, other factors such as the end of European colonial rule in Asia and Africa, the rise of non-state actors such as human rights groups and

158 For histories of the United States during the 1970s that focus on domestic affairs, see Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (New York: The Free Press, 2001); Jefferson Cowie, Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (New York: The New Press, 2010); Laura Kalman, Right Star Rising: A New Politics, 1974-1980 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010); Judith Stein, Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finances in the Seventies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010); and Meg Jacobs, Panic at the Pump: The Energy Crisis and The Transformation of American Politics (New York: Hill and Wang, 2016). For a study that puts American political, economic, and cultural developments during the 1970s into a global context, see Thomas Borstelmann, The 1970s: A New Global History from Civil Rights to Economic Inequality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012). 159 On the evolution of détente throughout the 1970s, see Raymond L. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1994). For a more recent analysis of the origins of détente, see Jeremi Suri, Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). 160See Vladislav M. Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), especially Chapter 7. 108 terrorist organizations, globalization, and the growing demand for a shrinking oil supply made it clear that the Cold War was not the only force shaping international relations.161

Though they came from very different backgrounds, Richard Nixon and Henry

Kissinger held a similar view of the United States’ place in the world. Both believed that the United States was a central player in global affairs and should remain so, despite the challenges it faced in the 1970s. They also believed that geopolitical issues, especially the

Cold War competition with the Soviet Union, should be the United States’ top priority.

This view had enormous implications for American foreign policy in the Middle East during the 1970s, for both men saw events in this vital region through the lens of the Cold

War and how matters such as the Arab-Israeli conflict and the global energy supply affected U.S.-Soviet relations. But geopolitics and grand strategy were not the only factors that shaped how Nixon and Kissinger understood the Middle East and U.S.-Israeli relations. Both men were also influenced by their respective backgrounds and previous experiences.

Richard Nixon came to the White House in 1969 with a fully developed view of the United States’ role in the world, including its role in the Middle East. The new president had previously dealt with Israel as Vice President under Dwight Eisenhower and later visited the country as a private citizen in the 1960s. Recalling his visit to Israel in June 1967 in the aftermath of the Six-Day War, Nixon wrote in his memoirs that he

161 On the United States in the world during the 1970s, see Niall Ferguson, Charles S. Maier, Erez Manela, Daniel J. Sargent (editors), The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010); Borstelmann, The 1970s, especially Chapter 4; Barbara Zanchetta, The Transformation of American International Power in the 1970s (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014); and Daniel J. Sargent, A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). 109

“was impressed by the courage and toughness of the Israeli leaders and people,” but also worried that Israel’s dramatic military success made the Israelis overconfident in their own abilities.162 He saw the Middle East primarily through the lens of the Cold War, where the influence of Soviet-supported Arab countries like Egypt and Syria needed to be counterbalanced by pro-Western states such as Jordan and Israel. This volatile region could, he feared, erupt into another regional war or, more seriously, a direct confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union.163

In addition to his view of Israel’s place in Cold War international relations,

Nixon’s view of the Jewish state was also shaped by his own personal experiences with

Israelis and his personal views of Jewish people. On the one hand Nixon at times expressed deep admiration for Israelis and their leaders. In his memoir, the former president wrote that Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir “conveyed simultaneously the qualities of extreme toughness and extreme warmth; when the survival of her country was involved, the toughness was predominant.”164 But on the other hand, as both people who knew him and the White House taping system attest, Nixon routinely used antisemitic language as part of his everyday vocabulary.

Nixon’s antisemitic remarks, which first leaked to the press in the early 1970s, were often linked to his responses to criticisms from critics in the Democratic Party or in the media such as long-time New York Times editor Max Frankel, who happened to be

Jewish. According to Leonard Garment, a lawyer who worked on Nixon’s 1968

162 Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), 282. 163 Ibid., 343. 164 Ibid., 478. 110 presidential campaign and then later as a White House aide, Nixon’s antisemitism was not particularly strong, a 15 or 20 on a hypothetical 100-point scale. Garment, who was

Jewish, described Nixon’s view of Jewish people as mixed, “better than most, worse than some, like the rest of the world.”165 Nixon’s own White House taping system tells a more complicated story. According to Stephen Whitfield, the tapes reveal that Nixon’s antisemitism was deeply held and frequently expressed, but they also do not show that these views had an impact on public policy.166 It was ironic then that Henry Kissinger,

Nixon’s highest-profile adviser, was Jewish.

Like Nixon, Henry Kissinger had visited Israel during the 1960s as a private citizen. He also taught Yigal Allon, an Israeli deputy prime minister and foreign minister, in one of his seminars at Harvard. Although he came from an Orthodox Jewish family,

Kissinger did not practice Judaism as an adult. Nevertheless, according to historian

Jeremi Suri, his family’s Jewish faith was an important factor in shaping both his identity and his view of the world.167 Regarding Israel and the Middle East, this translated into a deep sympathy for Israel, but importantly it did not mean that Kissinger believed that

Israel and the United States had the same interests. Nixon’s antisemitism was a source of tension between the President and his National Security Adviser. But as a student of international relations and U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War, Kissinger agreed that

165 Leonard Garment, Crazy Rhythm: My Journey from Brooklyn Jazz, and Wall Street to Nixon’s White House, Watergate, and Beyond… (Cambridge, MA: De Capo Press, 2001), 199-200. 166 See Steven Whitfield, “Nixon and the Jews,” Patterns of Prejudice, Vol. 44, No. 5 (2010), pp. 432-453. 167 See Suri, Kissinger and the American Century and “Henry Kissinger, the American Dream, and the Jewish Immigrant Experience in the Cold War,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 32, No. 5 (November 2008), 719-747. 111 the United States should play a central role in shaping global affairs and that the Middle

East was a particularly dangerous region for U.S. Cold War priorities.

A few years after leaving government service, Kissinger wrote that the Middle

East was “at the vortex of international politics” during the second half of the twentieth century. Even before oil became such a pressing international issue, it was the Soviet

Union’s efforts to expand its influence in the Middle East that worried Kissinger the most. In White House Years, his first memoir, Kissinger recalled that “I had always believed it essential to reduce the scope of Soviet adventurist policies in the Middle

East.”168 Although it would be a few years before Kissinger achieved significant influence over U.S. policy in the Middle East, this concern with the Soviet Union dominated Kissinger’s approach to the region for the remainder of his years in government.

Détente, the Nixon Doctrine, and the Middle East

Nixon and Kissinger came to the White House with two significant and closely related foreign policy objectives. The first of these was to extract the United States from the deeply unpopular war in South Vietnam at minimal cost to U.S. global standing. But ending the Vietnam War was part of Nixon and Kissinger’s second priority, a much broader effort to reshape the Cold War conflict between the United States and the Soviet

Union. This effort, which was often referred to as détente, nominally involved working to reduce tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union by finding ways for the superpowers to work together on issues of mutual interest. But while “détente,” a French

168 Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1979), 346-347. 112 term meaning the relaxation of tensions, implies a lofty goal of easing the tensions that had, at times, pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war, Nixon and Kissinger saw things differently. For them, “détente” was a specific strategy to maintain American global power and reduce Soviet influence around the world. While American officials may have described détente in grander terms, for Nixon and Kissinger it was part of the

United States’ ongoing strategy to maintain its global power in a rapidly changing world.169

This twin effort by the Nixon administration to pull back from Vietnam and refocus on the Great Power competition with the Soviet Union seemed to take practical form in a policy Nixon outlined on July 25, 1969. At an informal press conference on the island of Guam during a visit to the Pacific, Nixon’s answer to a reporter’s question described a plan for the United States to continue to play a major role in the Pacific region while at the same time reducing American military involvement in South Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia. Nixon said that the United States “must avoid that kind of policy that will make countries in Asia so dependent upon us that we are dragged into conflicts such as the one that we have in Vietnam.”170 Instead of deploying tens of thousands of

American troops on the Asian mainland, the U.S. would provide assistance from afar so that local governments could fight their own battles.

169 On the difference between how Nixon and Kissinger framed détente publicly and privately, see Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 32, and Sargent, A Superpower Transformed, 60. For a study that emphasizes the continuity of détente in the tradition of American efforts to contain the Soviet Union since World War II, see John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), especially Chapter 9. 170 Document 279: Informal Remarks in Guam with Newsmen, July 25, 1969, PPP, Richard Nixon: 1969, page 548. (URL: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/ppotpus/). (Accessed 5/10/20). 113

Reporters covering the president’s trip saw these remarks as a major policy pronouncement, and White House officials played along by starting to refer to this policy as the “Nixon Doctrine.” But despite the fuss generated by Nixon’s comments on Guam at the time, the Nixon Doctrine was more of a summary of the President’s own private thinking about American foreign policy than a detailed vision for a new American role in the world. Today, historians are divided on the doctrine’s long-term significance. Jeffrey

Kimball, a historian of the American war in Vietnam, doubts whether the “Nixon

Doctrine” was ever a fully articulated guiding principle for American foreign policy.

Daniel Sargent on the other hand, in his major recent reevaluation of American foreign relations in the 1970s, sees the Nixon Doctrine as part of a broader effort to reconcile long-standing commitments with the new challenges to American foreign policy in the

1970s.171

While discussions of the Nixon Doctrine at the time focused on American involvement in Southeast Asia, the principle of minimizing American military commitments in other areas had major implications for the Middle East and the Persian

Gulf. With its vital importance to the world’s oil supply, American policymakers had long considered the Persian Gulf to be a region of critical strategic importance. If the

United States was not going to station its own military forces in the Gulf, it had to rely on regional surrogates to secure its interests there, and this prompted the Johnson administration to develop close ties with two of the largest oil producers in the region,

171 See Jeffrey Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War (Lawrence, KA: University of Kansas Press, 1998), especially 154-155 and “The Nixon Doctrine: A Saga of Misunderstanding,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 1 (March, 2006), 59-74, and Sargent, A Superpower Transformed, 53-55. 114

Saudi Arabia and Iran, during the 1960s. Iran in particular became a close American ally and received significant American military aid in return for looking after American interests in the area. As historian Roham Alvandi points out, Iran’s leader, Shah

Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, whom the United States had helped install as part of a 1953 coup that toppled the democratically-elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh, was much more than a bystander in this relationship. On the contrary, he was an active player in shaping Iranian-American relations and not an American surrogate. The Shah was also more comfortable with close American ties with Israel, much more than Iran’s neighbor across the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia.172

The Nixon administration’s efforts to dramatically alter U.S.-Soviet relations through détente were complicated by an issue of mutual interest to American Jews and the Israeli government, the plight of Jews in the Soviet Union. Like many other religious and ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union, Jews faced many restrictions on their freedom to practice their religion or change their economic and political circumstances. Soviet leaders also imposed strict limitations on Soviet citizens’ freedom of movement, including their ability to emigrate to another country. Soviet Jews began to push back against these restrictions in the 1960s, especially following Israel’s victory in the Six-Day

War, and these political protests caught the attention of Jewish communities around the world. Starting in the 1960s, Jews in the United States began calling for Jews living in the

Soviet Union to be allowed to leave and pressed their elected representatives to do something about this issue. Through their organizations and protests, American Jews

172 See Roham Alvandi, Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah: The United States and Iran in the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). 115 became some of the most important activists in the broader global effort to aid Soviet

Jews.173

As Nixon and Kissinger worked to improve U.S.-Soviet relations by negotiating a trade deal between the two superpowers, activists seeking to open up Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union pressured the Nixon administration to demand that the Soviet government relax its immigration quotas. Soviet Jewish activists found an important ally in Democratic Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson of Washington. Jackson was a vocal critic of the Nixon administration’s détente policy and one of the forerunners of the

“neoconservatives,” a group of intellectuals and politicians that included many liberal

Democrats who broke with their party over the Democrats’ perceived softness toward the

Soviet Union. He sought to use the issue of Soviet Jewish emigration to undermine the

Nixon administration’s policy of détente. Together with Ohio Representative and fellow

Democrat Charles Vanik, Jackson succeeded in attracting significant bipartisan support for an amendment to the Trade Reform Act that linked trade concessions from the United

States to relaxed Soviet immigration quotas. Nixon and Kissinger vehemently opposed this initiative, but they were ultimately unable to overcome Jackson and Vanik’s high level of bipartisan support in Congress. The Jackson-Vanik amendment became a serious

173 For histories of the movement to aid Soviet Jewry, see William W. Orbach, The American Movement to Aid Soviet Jews (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1979); Stuart Altshuler, From Exodus to Freedom: A History of the Soviet Jewry Movement (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005); Fred A. Lazin, The Struggle for Soviet Jewry in American Politics: Israel versus the American Jewish Establishment (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005); and Gal Beckerman, When they Come For Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010). 116 barrier to détente negotiations between the Nixon administration and the Soviet leadership of Leonid Brezhnev.174

The Nixon administration’s opposition to the Jackson-Vanik amendment damaged the administration’s relationship with leaders of the American Jewish community. While

Nixon was elected in 1968 with only 17% of the Jewish vote, his administration did try to improve relations with the Jewish community.175 Mostly this was done through official intermediaries like Leonard Garment, a White House liaison to the Jewish community.

The Nixon administration also reached out to American Jews through unofficial contacts such as Max Fisher, a wealthy Jewish businessman from Detroit. Fisher was unique in that, unlike many of his peers, he was a Republican and an important fundraiser whose ties to the GOP made him an important intermediary between Republican administrations, the American Jewish community, and the Israeli government.176

Fearing that support for the Jackson-Vanik Amendment would disrupt their plans for détente with the Soviet Union, Nixon and Kissinger tried to convince American Jews to dial back their criticisms. At a meeting with Jewish leaders in New York in late

September 1972, Nixon argued that the best way to aid the Jews of the Soviet Union was to improve U.S.-Soviet relations with measures such as the Trade Reform Act. “If we make this an issue of prestige or a test of manhood between ourselves and the Soviets,”

174 On Henry Jackson, see Robert G. Kaufman, Henry M. Jackson: A Life in Politics (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2000), especially Chapter 14. 175 For data on American Jews’ voting behavior in U.S. presidential elections from 1916-2000, see Ira N. Forman, “The Politics of Minority Consciousness: The Historical Voting Behavior of American Jews” in Sandy Maisel (ed.), Jews in American Politics (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2001), 153. 176 On Max Fisher, see Peter Golden, Quiet Diplomat: The Life of Max Fisher (Cranbury, NJ Cornwall Books, 1992). 117

Nixon warned, “the Soviets will only dig in their heels and the situation will become worse.”177 But despite the efforts of men like Garment and Fisher, American Jewish leaders remained steadfast in their support for the Jackson-Vanik amendment.

The Jackson-Vanik amendment also threatened to disrupt U.S.-Israeli relations.

At this moment in Israeli history, the government of Golda Meir was trying to develop closer relations with the Nixon administration. Israeli officials were particularly eager for the United States to supply Israel with more sophisticated military equipment. In this area, however, the Israeli desire to cultivate closer ties with the United States conflicted with another Israeli priority, which was bringing Jews from around the world to Israel.

Achieving this objective seemed to dictate that Israel should support the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which was expressly intended to force the Soviet Union to allow Soviet Jews to emigrate to other countries, including Israel. However, coming out in support of this amendment threatened to undermine the Nixon administration’s larger goal of détente with the Soviets. While nominally remaining neutral on the Jackson-Vanik amendment,

Israeli officials quietly supported it.178

In addition to the importance placed on aiding Soviet Jews within the American

Jewish community, it was also one element of a broader trend in the United States and elsewhere which saw individuals, non-governmental organizations, and government officials called attention to the plight of religious and ethnic minorities around the world

177 Document 53: Memo written by Alexander Haig for the President’s Files, September 26, 1972, Foreign Relations of the United States (Hereafter FRUS), 1969-1976, Vol. XV: Soviet Union, June 1972- August 1974, 184. 178 See Noam Kochavi, Nixon and Israel: Forging a Conservative Partnership (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2009), especially Chapters 2-3. 118 to secure and protect their human rights. The cause of human rights presented a unique challenge to American policymakers. While it could be harnessed to criticize the Soviet

Union for its poor human rights record, the critical eyes of human rights activists could just as easily be turned on the United States for anything from its treatment of African

Americans in the United States to its support of dictatorships abroad that were guilty of their own human rights violations. As the case of the Jackson-Vanik amendment demonstrates, the cause of human rights could also undermine an administration’s foreign policy goals even when it nominally agreed with the human rights criticisms leveled at the Soviet Union. A growing number of historians of American foreign relations have highlighted this increased concern for human rights around the world, including inside the Soviet Union.179

Besides calling attention to the plight of Soviet Jews living under communist rule, advocating for Soviet Jews was also connected to the tense climate of racial and ethnic politics in the United States during the late 1960s and early 1970s. For many American

Jews, protests against the treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union and calls for the U.S. government to act on their behalf became assertions of Jewish identity. The same was true of activism on behalf of Israel. A small number of American Jews took their efforts to aid Soviet Jews to extreme ends. Under the leadership of Meir Kahane, an ordained

179 On the emergence of human rights in the 1970s, see Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2010). On human rights and American foreign relations specifically, see Barbara J. Keys, Reclaiming American Virtue: The Human Rights Revolution of the 1970s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); Sargent, A Superpower Transformed, Chapter 7; Mark Philip Bradley, The World Reimagined: Americans and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), especially Chapters 5-8; and Sarah B. Snyder, From Selma to Moscow: How Human Rights Transformed U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018). 119 rabbi from Brooklyn, New York, members of the Jewish Defense League (JDL) held violent demonstrations and targeted Soviet diplomats’ homes and offices with pipe bombs in 1971 (remarkably, no one was killed in these attacks). Kahane later moved to

Israel and established an ultra-right and racist political party, Kach, and was briefly elected to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, before being expelled for his racist positions and rhetoric.180

Another major Cold War issue that shaped U.S.-Israeli relations during these years was nuclear weapons. Nixon and Kissinger were much less concerned than their predecessors had been with nuclear non-proliferation, the effort to prevent more nations from developing nuclear weapons. This change in attitude had a direct bearing on

American relations with Israel. Nixon’s predecessors John Kennedy and Lyndon

Johnson, despite their sympathy for Israel, were still committed to non-proliferation, and

Israel’s nuclear program had been a source of tension between the two countries. The

Nixon administration’s solution to the problem of Israel’s nuclear program was essentially to ignore it. During Golda Meir’s visit to the United States in late September of 1969, the Israeli leader and the Nixon reached a private understanding that allowed both countries to strengthen their relationship without publicly acknowledging Israel as a nuclear power. According to historian Avner Cohen, Nixon told Meir that the United

States would be satisfied with a “nonintroduction pledge,” under which Israel pledged not

180 On the relationship between the cause of Soviet Jewry and American Jewish ethnic pride, see Marc Dollinger, Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s (Brandeis, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2018), Chapter Five. On Kahane and the JDL, see Beckerman, When they Come For Us, We’ll Be Gone, Chapter 6 and Robert I. Friedman, The False Prophet: Rabbi Meir Kahane – From FBI Informant to Knesset Member (New York: Lawrence Hill Books, 1990). 120 to be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East. U.S. officials knew, of course, that Israel had nuclear weapons, but Nixon and Meir agreed that Israel would be exempt from U.S. nonproliferation efforts if Israel never publicly acknowledged its nuclear arsenal. This ambiguous relationship has characterized the

United States’ view of Israel’s nuclear program ever since, and it opened the door to closer U.S.-Israeli ties.181

Early Efforts at Arab-Israeli Negotiations: The Rogers Plan

With Nixon and Kissinger focused on the Vietnam War and relations with the

Soviet Union, the Arab-Israeli conflict was initially not a major priority for the Nixon administration. For the first few years of the Nixon presidency, the State Department under Secretary of State William Rogers was the most important force in shaping

American foreign policy in that region. While Rogers, a former Attorney General during the Eisenhower administration without significant foreign policy experience, was an old friend of the President, Nixon held very strong views on foreign policy and preferred to manage major foreign policy issues out of the White House instead of through the State

Department. Nixon and Henry Kissinger dealt with high-priority matters such as the war in Vietnam and relations with the Soviet Union directly and left lower-priority issues

(such as Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East) to Rogers and the State Department during Nixon’s first term. Nixon also worried that, as a Jew, Kissinger could not be effective and objective when it came to matters related to Israel.182 As a result, Rogers

181 Avner Cohen, The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain with the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 31-32. 182 Nixon, RN, 477 and Kissinger, White House Years, 348. 121 and career officials at the State Department were the main forces behind the Nixon administration’s first foray into Middle East politics.

In a speech before the Galaxy Conference on Adult Education on December 9,

1969, Secretary Rogers outlined a series of steps that American officials hoped would lead to “a just and lasting peace” between Arabs and Israelis in the Middle East. Several important characteristics of the speech stand out. First, in principle, Rogers said that

American policy would be a balanced one in which both Israelis and Arabs would make significant concessions on the road to peace. Rogers also saw a role for the Soviet Union, which was closely allied with Arab states such as Syria and Egypt, in any Middle East negotiations. The Secretary of State also committed the United States to supporting an

Israeli withdrawal from the territories it occupied in June 1967 and for Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders. Finally, Rogers stated that there could be no lasting peace in the

Middle East without addressing the plight of the Palestinian people who were expelled from their homes following the wars of 1948 and 1967.183 Taken together, the “Rogers

Plan,” as it became known, was the State Department’s blueprint for a comprehensive solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The Rogers Plan was not well-received in Israel or among Israel’s American allies. On December 22, less than two weeks after Rogers made his announcement, the

Israeli cabinet rejected the Rogers framework outright, calling it a threat to Israel’s security and an attempt to appease Israel’s Arab enemies. That same day, in an interview

183 For the full text of Rogers’ speech, see William P. Rogers, “A Lasting Peace in the Middle East: An American View,” (Washington, D.C.: Department of State Publication 8507, 1970). 122 with the New York Times, Golda Meir called the plan “treasonous.”184 Israeli leaders were especially upset at the prospect of being forced to withdraw from territories captured in

1967 without full recognition of Israel’s right to exist by its Arab neighbors and official peace treaties. Israel’s allies among the American Jewish community were also upset with the Rogers plan. At a meeting between William Rogers and the Council of

Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, Jewish leaders told the Secretary of State that his framework did not enhance American security, Israeli security, or the cause of peace in the Middle East.185 Seeing the Israelis were not going to accept the framework for negotiations outlined by Rogers, the Egyptians did not bother to respond to it.186

One of the major reasons behind the failure of the Rogers plan was a lack of support from the White House. Leonard Garment, a lawyer in the Nixon White House who acted as a liaison between the White House and the American Jewish community and sometimes as a private envoy to the Israeli government, played a role here. As he recounted in his memoirs, Henry Kissinger ordered Garment to tell Golda Meir, who was visiting the United States at the time, to “slam” the Rogers plan at every opportunity.

Surprised and shocked to receive such an order, Garment asked where the order came

184 See James Feron, “Mrs. Meir Indignant: U.S. Appeasement Seen By Mrs. Meir,” Special to the New York Times, December 23, 1969. For the Israeli cabinet’s official statement, see Document 10: Israel Rejects the Rogers Plan, Cabinet Statement, December 22, 1969, Chapter XII, Volumes 1-2, Israel's Foreign Policy - Historical Documents (Jerusalem: English Publications Division of the Government Press Office, 1976). (URL: https://mfa.gov.il/MFA/ForeignPolicy/MFADocuments/Yearbook1/Pages/Israel- s%20Foreign%20Relations%20-%20Introduction.aspx). (Accessed 6/24/20). 185 See Peter Grose, “Group Voices Concern: Rogers Defends Policy Before 14 Jewish Leaders,” Special to the New York Times, December 23, 1969. 186 Mohamed Heikal, Secret Channels: The Inside Story of Arab-Israeli Peace Negotiations (London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1996), 152. 123 from, and Kissinger informed him that it came directly from Nixon.187 This amounted to one part of the U.S. government undermining another. Unsurprisingly, the Rogers Plan, the U.S. government’s first attempt to put forward a comprehensive solution to the Arab-

Israeli conflict, went nowhere.

1970: The War of Attrition and Black September

Only a month after the start of the Nixon administration, a new round of hostilities between Egypt and Israel broke out in the Sinai Peninsula as Egypt took more aggressive steps to reclaim its territory from Israeli forces. This conflict, which became known as the War of Attrition and lasted from early 1969 to the summer of 1970, was both a significant moment in the conflict between Egypt and Israel and an instance where the Arab-Israeli conflict became a proxy conflict in the Cold War between the United

States and the Soviet Union. Though this conflict has not received the same level of scholarly attention as the wars of June 1967 or October 1973, it would have important consequences for the course of Arab-Israeli negotiations and U.S.-Israeli relations going forward.188

Fighting along the Egyptian-Israeli border escalated at the beginning of 1970 when Israel, in response to heavy Egyptian artillery bombardment of IDF positions, launched deep-penetration air raids into Egyptian territory. Without effective air defenses, Egyptian cities and military installations were extremely vulnerable to Israeli

187 Garment, Crazy Rhythm, 192. See also Boaz Vanetik and Zaki Shalom, The Nixon Administration and the Middle East Peace Process, 1969-1973: From the Rogers Plan to the Outbreak of the Yom Kippur War (Eastbourne, UK: Sussex Academic Press, 2014). 188 On the War of Attrition, see Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov, The Israeli-Egyptian War of Attrition, 1969-1970: A Case Study of Limited Local War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980) and David Korn, Stalemate: The War of Attrition and Great Power Diplomacy in the Middle East, 1967-1970 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992). 124 air attack. To remedy this situation, President Nasser traveled secretly to the Soviet

Union at the beginning of 1970 to demand the resources to counter this new Israeli threat from Egypt’s Soviet allies. The Soviets responded by sending both surface-to-air missiles and Soviet crews to operate them to Egypt. Israeli raids deep into Egyptian territory stopped quickly after these new air defense forces became operational.189

Israel’s strikes into Egypt were carried out using sophisticated American aircraft,

F-4 Phantoms, which the Johnson administration had dispatched to Israel at the end of

1968. These were the same aircraft that American forces were using in the air war against

North Vietnam in Southeast Asia and would use in a potential military conflict with the

Soviet Union. In addition to the aircraft themselves, the U.S. also provided Israel with sophisticated electronic countermeasures that could protect an attacking aircraft from

Soviet surface-to-air missiles. While the Nixon administration certainly did want to strengthen Israel’s military against its local adversaries, historian Guy Laron suggests another motive. By helping Israeli forces to use American aircraft and technology against the Egyptians, the Americans could observe their equipment’s performance in real time against an adversary using the same equipment that American pilots were facing over

North Vietnam or could face in a future war with the Soviet Union.190

The arrival of Soviet missiles and personnel in Egypt marked a dramatic escalation in the War of Attrition. On June 30, two Israeli aircraft were shot down by

189 On Nasser’s visit to the Soviet Union in early 1970, see Mohamed Heikal, The Road to Ramadan (New York: Quadrangle/The New York Times Book Co., 1975), 83-89. 190 Guy Laron, “When the U.S. Used Israel to Test Out a Weapon – and Dragged It Into War: Fifty years later, Israel’s attacks in Syria show the lessons weren’t learned,” Haaretz Magazine, September 7, 2019 (URL: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-when-the-u-s-used-israel-to-test- out-a-weapon-and-dragged-it-into-war-1.7802817#article-comments). (Accessed 9/22/19). 125

Soviet missiles, signaling the end of Israel’s advantage in the air. A month later a group of Israeli aircraft encountered a flight of Egyptian MIG aircraft, and in the ensuing battle

Israeli pilots shot down five Egyptian planes. It was later revealed that the pilots of the downed Migs had been Soviet servicemen, not Egyptians. This dangerous situation threatened to transform the Israeli-Egyptian War of Attrition into a much bigger conflict, but this did not happen. Following intense negotiations led by William Rogers, both the

Egyptians and the Israelis agreed to a ceasefire in the first week of August 1970. In the end, the war ended in a stalemate, without either side gaining any significant advantage while simultaneously claiming victory.

Just as one crisis on Israel’s western front facing Egypt was cooling off, another one on its eastern border with Jordan was heating up. Tension had been brewing in

Jordan ever since large numbers of Palestinian refugees settled there after fleeing their homes in Palestine during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Jordan’s King Hussein went further than most other Arab leaders to integrate Palestinians into Jordanian society, granting them Jordanian citizenship and significant autonomy within the country. Despite these measures, Palestinians living inside Jordan began to act more and more like a state within a state, establishing their own governmental, social, and security services.191

By the summer of 1970, the foremost Palestinian political and military organization, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), had established a parallel government within the Jordanian refugee camps. It was also carrying out cross-border raids into neighboring Israel, which often prompted violent Israeli retaliatory attacks.

191 On the complex situation in Jordan during the 1950s and 1960s, see Uriel Dann, King Hussein and the Challenge of Arab Radicalism: Jordan, 1955-1967 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). 126

Israeli retaliatory attacks against Palestinian guerillas threatened to destabilize the regime of King Hussein, a moderate leader and rare American ally in the Arab world. All this put

Hussein in a difficult position: he wanted to retain his standing among Palestinians, but inaction would undermine his position as leader of the Jordanian kingdom.192

In September, Palestinian militant activity touched off a crisis in Jordan that threatened to create a larger war in the region. On September 6, Palestinian guerillas from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a radical militant group linked to the PLO, hijacked four airliners heading for New York City from several European airports and diverted them to Jordan. Both Americans and Israelis were among the passengers of these four flights. One of the aircraft landed in Cairo, where the hijackers were captured, and the passengers freed. The remaining three aircraft landed at Dawson

Field in Jordan, which was quickly surrounded by soldiers from the Jordanian army. On

September 7, the hijackers demanded the release of Palestinian militants being held in

Israeli prisons, or the hostages would be killed. With no good military options, there was little the United States could do on its own to rescue the hostages.

At the same time, relations between the PLO and the Jordanian government had descended into open warfare. On September 1, Palestinian guerillas unsuccessfully tried to assassinate King Hussein. By September 15, PLO forces were openly clashing with the

Jordanian military in the streets of Amman, and King Hussein appointed a military government and declared martial law.

192 On Hussein’s predicament, see Avi Shlaim, Lion of Jordan: The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace (New York: Vintage Books, 2007), Chapter 8, and Nigel J. Ashton, King Hussein of Jordan: A Political Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), Chapter 8. 127

In Washington and Jerusalem, American and Israeli leaders were increasingly concerned about the stability of Hussein’s regime in Amman. The Israeli government of

Golda Meir feared that Hussein would be replaced by a radical regime that was much more hostile towards Israel. In the Nixon administration, American officials also feared this development, for they saw the Jordanian monarch as an important stabilizing force in the Middle East and a critical player in future negotiations between Israelis and Arabs.

American officials were also concerned that neighboring Syria, an ally of the Soviet

Union, would intervene in Jordan and bring down the regime of a moderate ally. Henry

Kissinger captured the U.S. government’s fears in a September 16 memo to Nixon when he wrote that “it does not seem in the U.S. interest that a fedayeen movement urged on by radicals be permitted to impose its will on the government. It could not produce the stability that is necessary for peace.”193

Less than a week later, Hussein’s regime indeed appeared on the brink of collapse. The situation in the Jordanian kingdom appeared so dire that L. Dean Brown, the American ambassador in Amman, reported to his superiors at the State Department that Hussein was requesting direct military intervention to halt a “massive Syrian invasion.” According to Brown’s telegram, the King told him that “Immediate air strikes on invading forces from any quarter plus air cover are imperative.”194 Faced with the seemingly imminent collapse of the Hussein regime, a hostage crisis, and a possible

193 Document 247: Memorandum from Kissinger to Nixon, Washington, September 16, 1970, FRUS, 1969-1976, Volume XXIV: Middle East Region and Arabian Peninsula, 1969-1972; Jordan, September 1970, 686-687. On Israel’s role in the Jordanian crisis, see Ziv Rubinovitz, “Blue and White ‘Black September’: Israel’s Role in the Jordanian Crisis of 1970,” The International History Review, Vol. 32, No. 4 (December 2010), 687-706. 194 Document 284: Telegram from the American embassy in Jordan to the State Department, Amman, September 21, 1970, Ibid., 787. 128 wider war in the Middle East, the United States had few military options. With most

American military resources focused on the war in Vietnam, American officials looked to

Israel to act as a potential military surrogate in the region. On September 20, Kissinger discussed the possibility of Israeli intervention in Jordan with Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s ambassador in Washington, telling him that the U.S. would fully support Israeli airstrikes in Jordan in support of the Hussein government.195

Fortunately for Hussein, the Israelis, and the Americans, such drastic measures proved unnecessary. By the next day, September 22, the situation began to stabilize as

Jordanian forces gradually regained control of Amman and defeated the Syrian invasion force (which proved smaller and weaker than Hussein described in his meeting with

Brown). Hussein’s relationship with the PLO was badly damaged, and the PLO withdrew most of its personnel from the country and moved its main base of operations to Lebanon.

In addition to their impact on U.S. Middle East policy, the events of September

1970 also illuminated how the Arab-Israeli conflict could directly impact Americans overseas. Since the 1967 war, Palestinian militants turned to international terrorism, especially airplane hijackings, to draw attention to their cause by attacking prominent but poorly guarded targets. These attacks usually came against Israel’s airline, El Al, or against American aircraft carrying Israeli passengers. For PLO, these attacks were part of a larger campaign of violence to take matters into their own hands and rely less on Arab powers like Egypt. As Bruce Hoffman, a leading terrorism scholar, notes, Palestinian

195 Document 287: Transcript of conversation between Kissinger and Rabin, September 20, 1970, FRUS, 1969-1976, Volume XXIV, 796. 129 terrorist groups were the most active in the world throughout the 1970s, and their success served as a model for other groups.196

The September 1970 hijackings were the first time that Americans had been singled out their government’s support of Israel in the Middle East, and the U.S. government was simply not prepared to respond. In his history of American counterterrorism policy, historian Timothy Naftali notes that the Nixon administration was the first to take terrorism seriously as a national security issue and to try to formulate a strategy for responding to this problem. At first the U.S. strategy was to treat hijackings and other terrorist attacks as challenges best handled by the State Department, but after the September 1970 hijackings Nixon ordered U.S. officials to develop a more sophisticated and tougher response to what he called “air piracy.”197

From the beginning, the Israelis developed a tougher policy to respond to terrorist attacks against Israeli targets than many other Western countries. After the first hijackings in the late 1960s, Israeli authorities adopted more strict security measures at airports and on board El Al aircraft, including placing armed sky marshals in civilian clothes among the passengers to disrupt potential hijackings. The Israeli government also responded to terrorist attacks with a broader policy of retaliatory raids on Palestinian military camps and targeted assassinations of Palestinian officials living abroad. Israel’s violent counterterror policy during this period is perhaps best exemplified by its response to the terrorist attack on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games in September

196 See Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), Chapter 3. 197 See Timothy Naftali, Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism (New York: Basic Books, 2005), especially Chapter Two. 130

1972. Carried out by Black September, a secretive group named for the events in Jordan less than two years before and had close ties to the PLO leadership, the Munich attacks led to the deaths of eleven Israeli athletes. Israel responded with a campaign of targeted assassination against those it held responsible for the attacks.198

With Hussein’s victory over the PLO and their Syrian allies, Jordan remained an important player in the region. Among other things, it convinced the Nixon administration that Jordan under Hussein could be a reliable ally going forward and an invaluable partner in future Arab-Israeli negotiations. U.S. officials also concluded that relying on King Hussein as an intermediary was the best way to address the fate of the

Palestinians going forward.199

While outside military intervention in Jordan ultimately proved unnecessary,

Nixon and Kissinger were impressed at Israel’s willingness to consider taking military action on behalf of the United States during a crisis. In their view, the United States and

Israel had a shared interest in preserving the status quo in the Middle East, and Israel had shown that it was ready to aid its American ally. Recalling this moment in in his memoirs, Ambassador Yitzhak Rabin wrote that “We were considered a partner—not equal to the United States, but nevertheless a valuable ally in a vital region during times

198 On Israeli counterterrorism policy, see Ami Pedahzur, The Israeli Secret Services and the Struggle Against Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009) and Daniel Byman, A High Price: The Triumphs and Failures of Israeli Counterterrorism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). On the 1972 Munich Olympics terrorist attack and Israel’s response, see Aaron J. Klein, Striking Back: The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel’s Deadly Response (New York: Random House, 2005). For a comprehensive history of Israel’s targeted killing policy, see Ronen Bergman, Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations. (New York: Random House, 2018). 199 According to Simen Zernichow and Hilde Henriksen Waage, in late 1970 U.S. officials briefly explored direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians to create a Palestinian state, but ultimately decided against it, choosing instead to shore up relations with U.S. allies Jordan and Israel. See Zernichow and Waage, “The Palestine Option: Nixon, the National Security Council, and the Search for a New Policy, 1970,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 38, No. 1 (2014), pp. 182-209. 131 of crisis.”200 As historian Paul Thomas Chamberlin put it more recently, “Israel was fast proving its value as a strategic asset in the Middle East and a model regional policeman in the Third World.”201

Israel’s military usefulness to the United States in the Jordanian crisis raised anew the issue of American military aid to Tel Aviv. While Nixon and Kissinger were showing a greater willingness to supply Israel with more military equipment after the Jordanian crisis, not all U.S. officials were onboard with this new policy. Notably, Melvin Laird,

Nixon’s first Secretary of Defense and a former Republican congressman from

Wisconsin, repeatedly questioned whether backing Israel so strongly served American interests in the Middle East. In a memo to Richard Nixon from June of 1970, Laird warned the president against selling additional attack aircraft to Israel on the grounds that tilting so heavily in favor of Israel would hurt American efforts to achieve peace in the region. Reminding Nixon that it was imperative for the United States to avoid a war with the Soviet Union in the Middle East, Laird concluded his memorandum by stressing that

“The critical consideration is one of our basic national security and in our considered judgment an expansion of US commitments to Israel…would constitute a significant and dangerous threat to our security interests.”202 Laird reiterated this view to the president in the aftermath of the Jordanian crisis, but was overruled.203 Melvin Laird was not the first

200 Yitzhak Rabin, The Rabin Memoirs (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1979), 189. 201 Paul Thomas Chamberlin, The Global Offensive: The United States, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and the Making of the Post-Cold War Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 138. 202 Document 121: Memorandum from Melvin Laird to Richard Nixon, Washington, May 21, 1970, FRUS, 1969-1976, Volume XXIII, Arab-Israeli Dispute (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 2015), 409. 203 Many of the relevant files dealing with Laird’s views on American military aid to Israel remain closed to researchers at the Gerald Ford Presidential Library where they are housed. For more on Laird’s 132

American defense official to raise questions about levels of U.S. military aid to Israel, and he would not be the last.

Just as the Executive Branch was divided over how much support the United

States should extend to Israel, similar divisions existed within the U.S. Congress. On one side was Senator J. William Fulbright, a Democrat from Arkansas and the powerful chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. A vocal critic of the U.S. war in Vietnam,

Fulbright also opposed increasing U.S. military aid to Israel in favor of a more balanced approach to the Middle East. He was opposed by a faction of legislators led by Henry

Jackson, a vocal supporter of Israel and co-sponsor of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment that aimed to pressure Soviet leaders to allow more Soviet citizens (including Jews) to leave the Soviet Union. As Kenneth Kolander argues in his recent book America’s Israel, this latter group led by Senator Jackson was part of an important shift in U.S.-Israeli relations. While presidents and policymakers in the Executive Branch strove for a more even-handed approach to the Middle East, pro-Israel members of Congress enthusiastically and successfully pushed for a more explicitly pro-Israel policy, including significant military aid for Israel, from the 1970s onwards.204

The Rise of Anwar Sadat

One of the most important developments for the U.S.-Israeli relationship during this period occurred in neither Israel nor the United States, but in Egypt. Since coming to

view of American foreign policy in the Middle East during his tenure as Secretary of Defense, see Dale Van Atta, With Honor: Melvin Laid in War, Peace, and Politics (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), Chapter 15, and Richard A. Hunt, Melvin Laird and the Foundations of the Post- Vietnam Military, 1969-1973 (Washington, D.C.: Historical Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2015), Chapter 17. 204 Kenneth Kolander, America’s Israel: The US Congress and American-Israeli Relations, 1967- 1975 (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2020), Chapter 2. 133 power in a coup in 1952, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser had been the dominant political figure in the Arab world. Nasser’s sudden death then, on September 28, 1970, was a major turning point in the modern history of the Middle East. Nasser’s successor Anwar

Sadat, the Egyptian vice president and a relatively unknown figure outside of Egypt, would have an enormous impact on the Arab-Israeli conflict during his ten years as president. Unlike Nasser, Sadat proved more willing to sacrifice transnational Arab solidarity and the cause of the Palestinians in the service of Egyptian national interests.

Sadat was willing to do what was unheard of for most leaders in the Arab world, negotiate directly with Israel. His efforts came to fruition at the end of the decade with the signing of a U.S.-mediated peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in March of 1979, the first such treaty between Israel and an Arab nation.205

After officially taking power in October of 1970, Anwar Sadat reached out to the

Nixon administration in hopes of improving relations between Egypt and the United

States. Despite several attempts in the 1950s and 1960s to improve relations with Nasser,

American leaders had generally kept their distance from Egypt since the end of World

War II. Much of this had to do with the fact that the Soviet Union had been supplying

Egypt with significant military and economic aid since the 1950s. At the time of Nasser’s death, U.S.-Egyptian relations were, according to the Egyptian journalist Mohamed

205 On Anwar Sadat’s influence on Egypt and the broader Middle East, see Yoram Meital, Egypt’s Struggle for Peace: Continuity and Change, 1967-1977 (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1997); Kirk J. Beattie, Egypt During the Sadat Years (New York: Palgrave, 2000); Steven A. Cook, The Struggle for Egypt: From Nasir to Tahrir Square (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), Chapter IV; and Thomas W. Lippman, Hero of the Crossing: How Anwar Sadat and the 1973 War Changed the World (Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2016). 134

Heikal, in the midst of an uneasy truce because leaders of both countries fundamentally distrusted each other.206

Sadat knew that to earn the Americans’ trust, he would have to distance himself and Egypt from the Soviet Union. This was easier for Sadat than it would have been for his predecessor Nasser. While Nasser had his quarrels with Soviet leaders, Sadat never warmed to the Soviet Union. He took a major step in that direction when, on July 18,

1972, he ordered all Soviet military personnel and their dependents to leave Egypt. As

Sadat described it in his autobiography, his move to expel Soviet personnel from Egypt was an assertion of Egyptian independence: “I wanted to tell the Russians that the will of

Egypt was entirely Egyptian; I wanted to tell the whole world that we are always our own masters.”207 He hoped that if the Americans could see that he was not a Soviet puppet, they would be more willing to negotiate with him. Noting the close relationship between

Israel and the U.S., Sadat also believed that the only way that he could hope to influence

Israel diplomatically was through the United States.

1973

1973 was a critical year for U.S.-Israeli relations. While talks to jumpstart the

Middle East peace process and to repair U.S.-Egyptian relations were going nowhere,

Egypt’s Sadat and Hafez Assad of Syria began planning an attack on Israel that would dramatically reshape diplomacy and politics in the region for decades to come. That war, referred to here as the October War (known in Egypt as the Ramadan War and in Israel as

206 Heikal, The Road to Ramadan, 114. 207 Anwar Sadat, In Search of Identity: An Autobiography (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978), 231. 135 the Yom Kippur War), caught both Israeli and American leaders by surprise. It prompted the United States to intervene on Israel’s behalf to a degree unprecedented in the history of American foreign policy in the region. While Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger certainly wanted to ensure Israel’s survival, they were also eager to expand the American role in the Middle East and to undermine the Soviet Union’s influence there. A number of important developments in the nine months leading up to the outbreak of war shaped both the American response to the war and the war’s aftermath.

One key element in the leadup to the October War of 1973 was the deterioration of relations between Egypt and the Soviet Union. While the Soviets built a close relationship with Nasser, things were different with his successor. Despite signing a 15- year treaty of friendship in May of 1971, the Soviets were concerned by Anwar Sadat’s efforts to reform Egypt’s economy and to purge Nasser’s allies from the Egyptian government. The Egyptians, for their part, were upset at the Soviet Union’s reluctance to resupply the country’s military with offensive weapons. Soviet leaders feared that providing such weapons would encourage the Egyptians to take aggressive military action against Israel and upset détente negotiations with the United States. The deterioration of Egyptian-Soviet relations in 1971-1972 created an opening for Anwar

Sadat to reach out to the Americans in the hopes that the United States could deliver concessions from Israel.208

208 On the deterioration of Soviet-Egyptian relations, see Alvin Z. Rubinstein, Red Star on the Nile: The Soviet-Egyptian Influence Relationship Since the June War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977); Galia Golan, Soviet Policies in the Middle East: From World War II to Gorbachev (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990), Chapter 5; and Zubok, A Failed Empire, Chapter 8. 136

At the beginning of 1973, Henry Kissinger had the first of several meetings with

Egyptian envoys to discuss restoring U.S.-Egyptian relations. As Nixon’s first term in office ended and his second began, Kissinger was emerging as the most important official in shaping U.S. foreign policy after the President. This came at the expense of William

Rogers, whom Nixon announced in late August would be replaced by Kissinger as

Secretary of State. But despite deteriorating relations between Egypt and the Soviet

Union and a more sympathetic Egyptian leader, these informal U.S.-Egyptian talks went nowhere. When Sadat reluctantly concluded that talks with the Americans were not going to produce the desired results, Sadat decided that he would have to take drastic action in the Middle East to achieve his objectives.209

Another one of these factors was the growth of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. In April 1973, two officials on the National Security Council, William Quandt and Harold Saunders, raised concerns about Israel’s policies in the Occupied Territories in a memo to Henry Kissinger. They reported that Israeli officials, including Defense

Minister Moshe Dayan, were encouraging Israeli settlers to buy land in the West Bank, an indication that the Israeli government did not expect to withdraw from the West Bank any time soon. According to Quandt and Saunders, King Hussein of Jordan, who had a special interest in the fate of the West Bank, had already expressed his concern to

American officials about the growing permanent presence of Israelis in the West Bank, territory that could be returned to Jordan as part of Israeli-Jordanian negotiations. Quandt

209 Hiekal, 198-203. 137 and Saunders warned Kissinger that “At present we have no framework for dealing with these changes other than to regret any actions that make a settlement more difficult.”210

On September 1, only a month before war broke out, Kissinger raised the issue of

Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories with the President. He warned Nixon that the principal consequences of increased Israeli settlement activity “will be to make Israeli relinquishment of the West Bank and Jerusalem even more unlikely than at present and to establish an enclave of Jewish settlements in northeastern Sinai, cutting off the Gaza Strip from the rest of the former Egyptian territory.”211 Nixon apparently agreed with

Kissinger, for he replied in a handwritten note on the memo that Israel’s actions were “an enormous mistake” and ordered Kissinger to “tell the Israelis in unmistakable terms that I believe they hurt their cause and jeopardize our (my) support by such brutal tactics.”212

In addition to being an uneasy time for politics in the Middle East, 1973 was also a critical year for the world’s energy supply. As countries in Western Europe and Asia recovered from the destruction of World War II, they built thriving economies through manufacturing, shipping goods abroad, and importing them from overseas. The two decades after World War II also saw one of the largest periods of economic expansion in

U.S. and world history. All this economic growth meant that there were more people who could afford homes that required heating oil and personal vehicles that required gasoline.

As a result, global energy consumption, especially of petroleum, increased dramatically

210 Document 45: Memorandum from Saunders and Quandt to Kissinger, Washington, April 9, 1973, FRUS, 1969-1976, Volume XXV: Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1973 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 2011), 137. 211 Document 86: Memorandum from Kissinger to Nixon, Washington, September 1, 1973, FRUS 1969-1976, Volume XXV, 259-260. 212 Ibid, 260. 138 from the 1940s onward. For many years the United States was one of the world’s largest oil producers, supplying most of its domestic energy needs and exporting oil around the world, but this could not go on forever. By the 1970s, the United States’ developed oil reserves were drying up and it had to import more oil from abroad to fulfill domestic demands.213

This trend, combined with the underdevelopment of oil resources elsewhere in the world and few efforts to develop alternative energy sources, meant that an increasing percentage of the world would be looking to Arab oil producers in the Middle East and

North Africa to supply their energy needs in the coming decades. Though the United

States itself did not import a significant amount of petroleum from the Middle East, its allies in Western Europe and Japan were heavily dependent upon oil from that energy- rich region. Any disruption of this supply would have serious consequences for the global economy. To make the world energy situation even more volatile, many of the largest

Arab oil-producing nations (especially Saudi Arabia) were very concerned with Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian territory and disturbed by the United States’ ongoing support of Israel. Several analysts warned of this brewing crisis, but their warnings went largely ignored.214

A final critical factor that shaped the American response to the October 1973 war was the expanding Watergate investigation. The crisis began with little fanfare when, on

June 17, 1972, police arrested several burglars breaking into the headquarters of the

213 On the global energy situation in the early 1970s, see Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, & Power (New York: The Free Press, 2009), especially Chapter 28. 214 See for instance James E. Akins, “The Oil Crisis: This Time the Wolf Is Here,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 51, No. 3 (April, 1973), pp. 462-490. 139

Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate complex in

Washington, D.C. As federal agents and journalists expanded their investigations in late

1972 and into 1973, they uncovered more and more links between the burglars and the

Nixon White House. By May of 1973, the Senate had begun holding hearings on the

Nixon administration’s involvement in the scandal and subsequent coverup and appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the President and his aides. If this was not enough,

Nixon’s vice president, Spiro Agnew, was also under investigation for corruption, a charge that eventually led to his resignation. Though Henry Kissinger and White House

Chief of Staff Alexander Haig kept the President abreast of events in the Middle East throughout the crisis, Nixon’s attention was on his administration’s legal troubles. With the President heavily focused on defending his actions in the face of ongoing investigations, Kissinger emerged as the most important person in shaping American foreign relations at just the moment that a crisis was about to explode in the Middle East.

The October War of 1973

Like the Six-Day War of June 1967 less than a decade earlier, the October War of

1973 transformed the Middle East for decades to come. Although Israel ultimately halted and pushed back surprise attacks by Egypt and Syria, Arab forces’ initial military successes against Israeli troops shattered the myth of the Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) invincibility. The war also had enormous implications for the Cold War contest between the United States and the Soviet Union. Though the two superpowers each had difficult relations with their Middle Eastern partners, both launched massive aerial resupply efforts to replenish their allies’ stores of arms and ammunition, turning the war into another proxy conflict in the global Cold War. This was a crucial turning point in the 140 history of U.S.-Israeli relations as U.S. aircraft flew more than five hundred missions to deliver over 22,000 tons of military supplies to Israeli forces as part of Operation Nickel

Grass.215

While there are numerous studies of the Six-Day War of June 1967, the secondary literature on the 1973 October War is much smaller. While there are abundant sources on the American role in the conflict at U.S. archives and in published collections like the

Foreign Relations of the United States series, sources from Israel, Egypt, Syria, and the

Soviet Union are much more difficult to access. This has forced historians and journalists to rely heavily on published sources such as media reports and memoirs to understand the conflict. Histories of the October War, especially those published in or translated into

English, reflect these archival limitations in their focus on the Israeli and American perspectives and the fighting between Israeli and Arab forces rather than the conflict’s larger economic and political dimensions.216

Anwar Sadat was perhaps the most influential figure in the history of the October

War. As Egypt began distancing itself from the Soviet Union, Sadat tried to improve his country’s relationship with the United States. But when these discussions produced no significant changes to the political and military situation in the Middle East, the Egyptian president decided that it was time to take dramatic steps to transform the region without

215 For figures on how much supplies were delivered to Israel by U.S. aircraft as part of Operation Nickel Grass, see Walter J. Boyne, “Operation Nickel Grass,” Air Force Magazine, December 1, 1998. (URL: https://www.airforcemag.com/article/1298nickel/). (Accessed 12/28/20). 216 See for instance Howard Blum, The Eve of Destruction: The Untold Story of the Yom Kippur War (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003) and Abraham Rabinovich, The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter that Transformed the Middle East (New York: Schocken Books, 2004). On the limitations of the existing academic literature on the October War, see Carly Beckerman-Boys, “Assessing the Historiography of the October War” in Asaf Siniver (ed), The Yom Kippur War: Politics, Legacy, Diplomacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). 141 superpower initiatives. Fearing that American and Soviet leaders were preparing to cooperate on a joint Middle Eastern peace initiative as part of détente, Sadat decided to take military action to transform the situation. By launching a surprise attack against

Israel, Sadat aimed to create what historian Craig Daigle has called a “crisis of détente,” one that would disrupt U.S.-Soviet negotiations and involve the superpowers in a Middle

Eastern war on his terms.217

Seeking allies for this effort to use an attack on Israel to disrupt détente, Sadat enlisted Syrian leader Hafiz Al-Assad to join him in a surprise attack against Israel sometime in 1973. Assad came to power in Damascus in a military coup shortly after

Sadat replaced Nasser as president of Egypt. Both leaders badly wanted to recover the

Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula, territories Israel seized during the Six-Day War, and restore Arab military pride following the humiliation of June 1967. But while Sadat had the larger goal of engineering an international diplomatic crisis, Assad’s more limited goal was solely to recapture the Golan Heights through a conventional military victory over Israeli forces. Sadat did not reveal to Assad that they had different objectives for the upcoming attack, and this discrepancy in Egyptian and Syrian endgames shaped the outcome of the October War.218

As Egyptian and Syrian leaders prepared for war with Israel, Egyptian president

Anwar Sadat took steps to use the “oil weapon” in the upcoming war. In August 1973 he

217 Craig Daigle, The Limits of Détente: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1969-1973 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 297-298. 218 On Syria’s role in the October War, see Patrick Seale, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988), especially Chapters 13-14, and Eyal Zisser, “Syria and the October War: The Missed Opportunity” in Siniver (ed), The Yom Kippur War. 142 traveled to Saudi Arabia to appeal to its leader, King Faisal, to support his efforts with an oil embargo if the United States came to Israel’s aid. Though Faisal was furious with

Israel after it seized East Jerusalem in June 1967, Saudi authorities at the time refused to use oil as a weapon against Israel and its supporters in the West. But by 1973, things had changed. With no sign that the Nixon administration was putting any pressure on Israel to withdraw from the Occupied Territories and under increasing pressure from supporters of the Palestinian cause, the Saudis agreed to impose an embargo in case of an Egyptian attack on Israel. Faisal’s only condition for Sadat was that the war last long enough to attract significant international attention.219

Following meetings between their respective military commanders, Sadat and

Assad decided that their joint attack would begin on October 6. This day fell during both the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, when many Israeli military personnel were at home and away from their units. Despite Israel’s powerful military and extensive intelligence-gathering apparatus, Israeli leaders only realized that an attack was imminent approximately 24 hours before it began. This did not leave enough time for Israel to fully mobilize its military reserves, which were a vital part of its planning for war. Several factors explain how Israel was caught by surprise in the first week of October 1973, starting with hubris. Following its swift and overwhelming victory over three Arab militaries in June 1967, Israeli political and military leaders had become overconfident and complacent, believing that their military forces could deal with any threat from a neighboring Arab country. Instead, Egyptian forces only

219 On Egyptian-Saudi discussions in 1973, see Rachel Bronson, Thicker than Oil: America’s Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 115-117. 143 advanced as far as they could while remaining under the protection of their Soviet- supplied surface-to-air missiles, which diminished Israel’s ability to launch attacks against Egyptian forces using its air force, undermining one of Israel’s most important military advantages.220

Israel’s allies in the United States, who had come to rely on the Israelis for information about Arab states’ military capabilities, were also caught by surprise. This was the opposite of what happened in 1967, when U.S. intelligence agencies correctly predicted that Israel’s military would prevail handily in any conflict with its neighbors.

This time on October 1, less than a week before the war began, Kenneth Keating, the

U.S. ambassador in Tel Aviv, reported in a telegram to his superiors at the State

Department that the “Israelis do not perceive a threat at this time from either Syria or

Egypt.”221 But while the Israelis were caught unprepared for the Syrian-Egyptian attack, this intelligence failure actually helped them in the eyes of the Americans. As Israel’s ally, the United States would have had a more difficult time coming to Israel’s aid if it appeared that Israel had been the one to initiate the conflict. On October 6, Prime

Minister Golda Meir met with Ambassador Keating to assure the Americans that, even though the Israelis had intelligence that an Egyptian-Syrian attack was imminent, the

Israelis were not planning a pre-emptive strike.222

220 On Israel’s intelligence failure in 1973, see Uri Bar-Joseph, The Watchman Fell Asleep: The Surprise of the Yom Kippur War and Its Sources (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005). 221 Document 94: Telegram from the Embassy in Israel to the Department of State, Tel Aviv, October 1, 1973, FRUS 1969-1976, Volume XXV, 280. 222 Document 99: Memorandum from William Quandt to Brent Scowcroft, Washington, October 6, 1973, Ibid., 287. 144

With the President preoccupied with the Watergate investigation, Henry

Kissinger, recently confirmed as Secretary of State, was the most important official shaping the U.S. response to the outbreak of war in the Middle East in October 1973.

From the very beginning of the conflict, Kissinger saw the fighting between Israel and

Egypt and Syria as not only a regional war that needed to be halted, but also as an opportunity to increase U.S. influence in the Middle East and to reduce Soviet influence in the region. On the morning of October 6, only hours after the fighting began in the

Middle East, Kissinger told Nixon in a phone call that “My view is that the primary problem is to get the fighting stopped and then use the opportunity to see whether a settlement could be enforced.”223 Furthermore, as Kissinger said to Nixon’s chief of staff,

Alexander Haig, the following day, it was important to support Israel in its time of need because the U.S. would need an Israel that was receptive to American advice to achieve

American objectives. “My profound conviction,” Kissinger told Haig, “is that if we play this the hard way, it’s the last time they [the Israelis] are going to listen. If we kick them in the teeth, they have nothing to lose. Later if we support them they would be willing to help with Jewish emigration or MFN or other stuff.”224 It would not be long before the

U.S. would get the opportunity to demonstrate its loyalty to Israel.

But even with the growing American commitment to supporting Israel with military equipment, the massive U.S. military airlift to resupply Israel did not begin until

223 Document 104: Transcript of Telephone Conversation between Nixon and Kissinger, 9:25 a.m., October 6, 1973, Ibid., 307. 224 Transcript of a Telephone Conversation Between Kissinger and Haig, October 7, 1973, printed in Kissinger, Crisis: The Anatomy of Two Major Foreign Policy Crises (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), 86-87. 145 the conflict was nearly a week old. There are a couple of reasons for this, starting with the fact that U.S. intelligence initially predicted that Israeli forces would recover quickly and that there was no need for U.S. intervention. But just as U.S. officials missed the approach of war, they were also ignorant of the heavy losses Israeli forces were suffering in the early days of the war. This changed on October 9, when Israel’s ambassador to the

United States, Simcha Dinitz, told Henry Kissinger that the Israelis had lost dozens of aircraft and hundreds of tanks in just a few days of intense combat with Egyptian and

Syrian forces.225

Another factor that contributed to the American decision to resupply Israel with military equipment was the Soviet Union’s efforts to resupply its Syrian and Egyptian allies. According to Victor Israelyan, a Soviet diplomat and scholar who in October 1973 was stationed in Moscow at the Soviet Foreign Ministry, the Soviet government knew about Sadat and Assad’s plans for war from Soviet military and diplomatic officials in their respective nations days before the attack and began evacuating its personnel from both countries. In his 1995 account of Soviet decision-making during the October War,

Israelyan wrote that Soviet leaders knew about the Egyptian-Syrian plan to attack Israel but, because of strained relations with Assad and Sadat, neither encouraged or discouraged it. But if the Soviets were not behind the war, they nonetheless did not want to see their Arab allies crushed by U.S.-supported Israeli forces and quickly launched an

225 Document 134: Memorandum of Conversation, Washington, October 9, 1973, FRUS 1969- 1976, Volume XXV, 392-393. 146 aerial resupply effort. Soviet leaders’ desire to aid Syria in particular was enhanced by the deaths of Soviet citizens in Israeli air attacks inside Syria.226

The combination of Israel’s dire military situation and the Soviet move to aid its

Arab allies against Israel convinced American officials to launch their own effort to resupply Israel with ammunition and military equipment. But there is debate over how

Nixon, Kissinger, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, and other U.S. officials came to order a massive airlift directly from the United States to Israel using U.S. military aircraft and personnel. After meeting with Simcha Dinitz on October 9, Kissinger met with President Nixon that same day, where Nixon bluntly told his advisers that “The

Israelis must not be allowed to lose.” Kissinger agreed, arguing that “We want to stick by

Israel now so they won’t turn on you during the diplomatic phase.”227 But even after

Nixon and Kissinger agreed that an American airlift was needed, it took several days for officials to work out the details. For one thing, U.S. officials first tried to avoid using

American aircraft, but it quickly became clear that only a full-fledged American airlift, using U.S. aircraft and personnel, would be able to deliver the sheer volume of equipment needed to replenish Israeli stores. There was also the matter of arranging for a place for

U.S. aircraft to refuel, a problem that U.S. officials eventually solved by working out an agreement with Portugal for U.S. aircraft to land and refuel at U.S. bases in the Azores.

There is some disagreement over who was responsible for the delay between

October 9, when Nixon authorized the airlift, and October 14, when the first U.S. aircraft

226 See Victor Israelyan, Inside the Kremlin During the Yom Kippur War (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), especially Chapters 1-3. 227 Document 140: Memorandum of Conversation, October 9, 1973, FRUS 1969-1976, Volume XXV, 412. 147 landed in Tel Aviv. In his conversations with Henry Kissinger, Ambassador Dinitz blamed military officials at the Defense Department.228 There are some indications that senior military officials were not enthusiastic about the United States taking an active role in Israel’s defense, though that seems to have disappeared once Nixon gave the order to begin the airlift.229 Other sources blamed Kissinger himself for the delay. Elmo

Zumwalt, who served as Chief of Naval Operations and a member of the Joint Chiefs during the October War, later wrote in his memoirs that Kissinger “simply wanted Israel to bleed just enough to soften it up for the post-war diplomacy he was planning.”230

Regardless of these reports, it also took time for such a large and complex operation, officially labeled Operation Nickel Grass, to get off the ground, but eventually it did, and lasted for a month from October 13 to November 13.231

Even as the Americans and the Soviets rushed to resupply their allies in the

Middle East with ammunition and military equipment, both recognized that the best outcome (at least as far as the superpowers were concerned) was not a decisive victory by either side but a negotiated settlement. To that end, once the American resupply effort

228 Document 166: Memorandum of Conversation, Washington, October 12-13, 1973, Ibid., 460. 229 See for instance an entry in Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Thomas Moorer’s diary from October 10, 1973, printed in Ibid., Document 145, 424-425. 230 Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., On Watch: A Memoir (New York: Quadrangle/The New York Times Book Co., Inc., 1976), 433. 231 For an early narrative history of Operation Nickel Grass, see Walter J. Boyne, The Two O’Clock War: The 1973 Yom Kippur Conflict and the Airlift That Saved Israel (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2002). Boyne, a former U.S. Air Force officer, drew exclusively on published and English-language sources. Since 2002 multiple historians have analyzed the origins and roots of the U.S. airlift using newly declassified sources in both Israel and the United States, including: Zach Levey, “Anatomy of an airlift: United States military assistance to Israel during the 1973 war,” Cold War History, Vol. 8, NO. 4 (November 2008), 481-501; David Tal, “A Tested Alliance: The American Airlift to Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War,” Israel Studies, Vol. 19, No. 3 (2014), 29-54; and Arnon Gutfeld and Boaz Vanetik, “‘A Situation That Had to Be Manipulated:’ The American Airlift to Israel During the Yom Kippur War,” Middle Eastern Studies, 52:3 (2016), 419-447. 148 was up and running, Kissinger made an important trip to the Soviet Union on October 20 to negotiate a plan for a cease-fire between Israel and Egypt and Syria with Soviet leader

Leonid Brezhnev. But while both sides sought a ceasefire, each side pushed for one on its own terms, terms that would be more advantageous to their respective allies in the

Middle East. For Kissinger, this meant pushing for a ceasefire agreement that did not require the Israelis to immediately withdraw from the territory they occupied when the shooting stopped.

The U.S.-Soviet dimension of the October War produced one of the most frightening moments in the history of the Cold War when Henry Kissinger ordered that the U.S. military, including U.S. nuclear forces, be brought to DEFCON 3, an increased level of readiness for war. This dramatic escalation was a response to a message from

Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev to Nixon which called for the United States and the

Soviet Union to launch a joint peacekeeping mission to the Middle East to put a stop to the fighting between Israeli and Arab forces.232 Fearing that this suggestion of a joint mission was a thinly-disguised Soviet attempt to increase their influence in the Middle

East, Kissinger and other senior American officials ordered the nuclear alert as a warning that the United States would not stand for such a move. The alert, which in the context of the Cold War nuclear confrontation was a dramatic and dangerous move, was ordered without consulting the President, who was preoccupied with the Watergate investigation.

But while the Soviet message appeared to the Americans to be an aggressive move,

232 Document 267: Message from Secretary Brezhnev to President Nixon, undated, FRUS 1969- 1976, Volume XXV, 734-735. 149

Victor Israelyan writes that it was instead a misguided attempt to force the Americans’ hand in pushing for negotiations, to which the Americans overreacted.233

While Kissinger was trying to negotiate a suitable ceasefire with Soviet leaders, the battlefield situation in the Middle East was changing rapidly. After the initial shock of the Syrian and Egyptian attacks and heavy losses of men, equipment, and territory in the first days of the war, Israeli forces recovered and regained ground on both the Egyptian and Syrian fronts. Initially Israel faced a significant challenge in fighting a two-front war, but Israeli commanders’ efforts were aided by the divide between Egypt and Syria over military objectives. Unbeknownst to Syrian leader Assad, Sadat’s forces were only planning to advance as deep into the Sinai as they could while remaining under the protection of their Soviet-supplied anti-aircraft missiles, which limited Israel’s ability to attack Egyptian forces from the air. Instead of having to contend with a coordinated assault from two directions, Israel successfully defeated and pushed back Arab forces on both fronts, recovering all lost territory and pressing deeper into both countries before the war ended in a ceasefire on October 26.

1973-1974: Turmoil in Israeli Politics, Oil Crisis, and the Beginning of Shuttle

Diplomacy

While the October War had an enormous impact on Israel’s international position, it also shook Israeli politics and society to their core. On November 21, less than a month after the fighting ended, the Israeli government established a commission under Shimon

Agranat, the chief justice of Israel’s supreme court, to investigate the IDF’s performance

233 See Israelyan, Chapter 6. 150 during the recent war. Israel’s military losses were high, with more than 2,500 killed and thousands more wounded. In a country with mandatory male military conscription, the

IDF and the Israeli public were, as the commission’s report would later put it, “linked by a thousand threads.”234

Though IDF forces eventually defeated Egyptian and Syrian forces on the battlefield and inflicted heavy losses on both countries’ militaries, the combination of

Egypt and Syria’s surprise attack and the high numbers of dead and wounded made the outcome seem more like a defeat than a victory. In the words of Bernard Avishai, an

Israeli academic who in 1974 chronicled this fraught period in Israeli political history in a series of dispatches published in the New York Review of Books, “This is a society facing its short-comings; the achievements can wait.”235 In many respects it was the polar opposite of what followed the June War of 1967: instead of inspiring confidence in the government of Golda Meir, the October War shook Israelis’ faith in their political and military leadership.236

In postponed national elections on December 31, Israeli voters opted for continuity in a time of crisis and returned the government of Golda Meir to power, but it became clear that major changes to Israel’s political scene were on the horizon. This was made abundantly clear in the first week of April 1974 when the Agranat Commission released its interim report. Although the Commission praised the skills and bravery of

234 The Agranat Commission: Report (1974), Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin (ed), The Israeli- Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict (New York: Penguin Books, 2001), 166. 235 Bernard Avishai, “Israel: Three Months of Yom Kippur,” New York Review of Books, January 24, 1974. 236 See Anita Shapira, Israel: A History (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2012), Chapter 15. 151

Israeli soldiers, it strongly criticized the military leadership of the IDF, including the chief of staff, General David Elazar, for serious disciplinary and intelligence failures.237

Ten days after the interim report was released, Golda Meir resigned as prime minister, and Israel began the process of forming a new government.

Weeks later a new governing coalition emerged led by Yitzhak Rabin, the former

IDF chief of staff and Israeli ambassador to the United States. Approved on June 3, 1974, this new government proved to be a deeply divided one. In addition to Rabin, the new government included another prominent Israeli politician and future Nobel Prize recipient, Shimon Peres, who became defense minister. Although there was significant continuity between the Meir and Rabin governments, Israel was on the cusp of a giant political upheaval. Only three years later, the long-dominant leftist, Mapai (Labor) coalition that had governed Israel since its founding in 1948 was defeated by a right-wing coalition in 1977. The shock and trauma of the October War and its aftermath played a significant role in producing this rupture in Israeli politics.238

Negotiations on the future of the Arab-Israeli conflict began even before the fighting of the October War ended on October 26. While some other parties involved in the negotiations wanted to pursue a comprehensive, long-term agreement that would address all aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict, from the beginning Henry Kissinger had a different plan. Instead of a comprehensive agreement, Kissinger favored more limited

237 For an excerpt of the report, see The Agranat Commission: Report (1974), in The Israeli-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict, 164-166. 238 On the Yom Kippur War’s impact on Israeli society and politics, Howard M. Sachar, A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), Chapter XXV; Shapira, Israel, Chapter 16; and Colin Shindler, A History of Modern Israel (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), Chapter 6. 152 disengagement agreements involving Israel and one Arab nation at a time. He would pursue these agreements using a step-by-step approach, with Kissinger personally acting as an intermediary between the Israelis, the Egyptians, the Syrians, and any other interested party to the negotiations. Over the course of the next few months, Kissinger traveled back and forth between Middle Eastern capitals as he and his negotiating party transmitted Israeli and Arab views on different elements of the proposed disengagement agreements. In order to be an effective intermediary between Israelis and Arabs, each side had to believe that Kissinger (and by extension the United States) was being fairly and accurately represented. In making himself integral to these negotiations, Kissinger secured a vital role for the United States in the Middle East and effectively excluded the

Soviet Union from Arab-Israeli negotiations for the remainder of the Cold War.239

Negotiations throughout November and December of 1973 produced the disengagement agreement between Egypt and Israel. This first agreement between Israel and Egypt to withdraw their forces has since become known as Sinai I (to distinguish it from Sinai II, which was signed in September 1975). One key component of Sinai I was a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed by the United States and Israel. In addition to its other provisions, the MOU pledged that “the United States will make every effort to be fully responsive on a continuing and long-term basis to Israel’s military equipment requirements.”240

239 For a concise summary of Kissinger’s negotiating strategy following the October War, see Walter Isaacson, Kissinger, 538-539. 240 Document 14: Memorandum of Understanding Between the United States Government and the Government of Israel, January 18, 1974, FRUS, 1969-1976, Volume XXVI: Arab-Israeli Dialogue, 1973- 1976, 91. 153

After successfully negotiating Sinai I by shuttling back and forth between Cairo and Tel Aviv, Kissinger attempted to do the same between Israel and Syria. Negotiations with Syria’s President Assad proved more difficult than negotiations with Sadat. Between the beginning of March, when Kissinger flew to Damascus and met Assad for the first time, and the conclusion of these talks nearly three months later, he flew back and forth between Damascus and Tel Aviv numerous times to meet with Syrian and Israeli officials. After initial meetings with each side to get things started, Kissinger listened to one side’s position and take it to the other for review. As one side changed its position or made a concession, he took that new position to the other side for a reaction, and so on, until finally, on May 29, the two sides arrived at terms that were mutually acceptable.

The Syrian-Israeli negotiations hinged on the Golan Heights, territory that Israel had captured in June of 1967 and which Syrian forces had briefly retaken during the

October War the previous year. From the beginning of the Syrian-Israeli negotiations, it was clear that Israel was not going to withdraw from the Golan Heights completely. In addition to valuing their strategic importance in any future conflict with Syria, Israelis began settling in the Golan in small numbers back in July of 1967, just over a month after the Six-Day War ended. Although the settlers were evacuated before being overrun by

Syrian forces, they were eager to return and had no intention of giving up on their settlements.241 In addition to disengaging their and Israel’s military forces in the Golan

241 According to Gershom Gorenberg, the first Israeli settlement in the Golan Heights (and the first Israeli settlement in any of the Occupied Territories) was established on July 16, 1967, just over a month after the end of the Six-Day War. See Gorenberg, The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977 (New York: Times Books, 2006), 78. 154

Heights, Assad was also interested in addressing the issue of the Palestinians and reestablishing diplomatic relations between the United States and Syria.

At several points during the negotiations, Kissinger expressed his frustration with domestic politics in both Israel and Syria. In Israel, he found that the chaotic domestic political situation made Israeli officials quibble over a kilometer here or there, instead of moving decisively to reach a solution. This delay, he believed, damaged the American position (which depended upon his ability to act as a trustworthy representative of the

Israelis) and threatened to open the door to a larger Soviet role in the negotiations. The situation was different for Assad: though he did not face losing a popular election, Assad needed to be able to explain to his supporters why he was negotiating (even indirectly) with Israel if he was not even going to be able to recover the Golan Heights.242

Finally, on May 29, the two sides agreed to terms for disengaging their forces on the Syrian-Israeli border. As with the first Egyptian disengagement agreement, the

Americans and the Israelis signed a memorandum of understanding clarifying how this agreement would affect U.S.-Israeli relations. This MOU contained identical language about how the U.S. promised to remain “fully responsive” to Israel’s future military needs.243 But while the first Egyptian-Israeli disengagement agreement was a first step toward a full-scale diplomatic rapprochement between those two countries, Israeli-Syrian

242 Document 51: Memorandum From the President’s Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs (Scowcroft) to President Nixon, Washington, May 9, 1974, FRUS, 1969-1976, Volume XXVI: Arab- Israeli Dialogue, 1973-1976, 270-271. 243 See Document 84: Memorandum of Understanding Between the United States Government and the Government of Israel, undated, Ibid., 364-365. 155 negotiations stalled after this first disengagement agreement and tensions remained high between the two countries.

As American military aircraft were flying into Tel Aviv carrying tanks, aircraft, ammunition, and other military supplies to resupply Israeli forces, Arab oil producers retaliated against the United States for its support of Israel. While Saudi Arabian leader

King Faisal, an American ally, had been reluctant to use the “oil weapon” in the past, in

August of 1973 he agreed to Anwar Sadat’s request to use it against the United States in the event of a war. Two of the largest Arab oil producers, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, moved to reduce their oil production and imposed complete oil embargoes on the United

States and several other countries that aided the American airlift, including the

Netherlands and Portugal. While the United States was the primary target of this effort, it had an even greater effect on Western Europe and Japan, which were heavily dependent upon Middle Eastern oil to keep their economies going. Knowing that this would happen, leaders of Arab OPEC countries had hoped that European and Japanese leaders would pressure the United States to halt its support of Israel and force the Israeli government to negotiate directly with its Arab neighbors.244

At the same time that Kissinger and other American officials were getting negotiations in the Middle East off the ground, the Nixon administration was also working to end the oil embargo imposed by Saudi Arabia during the October War in retaliation for the American military airlift to Israel. Since the United States still imported very little Middle Eastern oil in 1973, it did not experience an oil shortage. But average

244 On the 1973 oil embargo, see Yergin, The Prize, Chapter 30 and David S. Painter, “Oil and the October War” in Siniver (ed), The Yom Kippur War. 156

Americans were affected when a decrease in the total oil available globally drove up oil prices everywhere. Far from inactive bystanders, U.S. officials worked to mitigate the embargo’s impact at home, efforts that met with only limited success. Henry Kissinger and other American officials also moved to convince the Saudis and others to end the embargo by promising them American aid and progress in negotiations with Israel. These efforts were ultimately successful when, in response to the Syrian and Egyptian disengagement agreements, Arab officials agreed to lift the embargo in March of 1974.245

The 1973-1974 oil embargo was an instance where American aid to Israel had serious consequences for other areas of American foreign relations. Western European nations like Great Britain and France, which were heavily dependent upon Middle

Eastern oil and had been for decades, were hit much harder than the United States. As a result, Western Europe felt the brunt of the embargo, including both an oil shortage and a steep rise in oil prices. Unsurprisingly, only two countries in Western Europe, Portugal and the Netherlands, contributed to the American airlift to resupply Israel.246 An

American National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) from December 1973 warned that the embargo could have serious consequences for the United States’ European alliances.

Intelligence analysts wrote that “The Middle East crisis has aggravated existing problems between the US and its allies across a broad spectrum. During negotiations, and so long

245 On the Nixon administration’s actions at home, see Jacobs, Panic at the Pump. For more on how the United States and other embargoed states responded to the oil embargo, see Rudiger Graf, “Making Use of the ‘Oil Weapon’: Western Industrialized Countries and Arab Petropolitics in 1973-1974,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 36, No. 1 (January 2012), 185-208. 246 For more on the October War’s impact on Europe, see Rory Miller, “Faraway Causes, Immediate Affects: The War and European Consequences” in Siniver (ed), The Yom Kippur War. 157 as the oil crunch is on, it will be difficult to enhance a sense of shared common interests among the US and its allies.”247

Conclusion

The three-week war between Israeli, Egyptian, and Syrian forces, and indirectly between their superpower backers, helped transform the Cold War in the Middle East.

Despite Soviet efforts to reestablish their influence in the Middle East, the Americans successfully prevented this and largely kept them out of subsequent Arab-Israeli negotiations, a trend that continued for the remainder of the decade. The October War also transformed the U.S.-Israeli relationship in a profound way. For the first time, the

U.S. had provided Israel with significant military aid in the midst of a conflict, the most dramatic and public U.S. commitment to Israel’s security in decades. Historians Arnon

Gutfeld and Boaz Vanetik wrote in 2016 that Operation Nickel Grass, the American airlift to resupply Israel during the October War, had tremendous military and political significance, but its greatest impact was psychological. The airlift, they wrote, “restored

Israeli morale and gave the leadership and the IDF the confidence they needed to overcome their precarious situation.”248

In her memoirs, Golda Meir had this to say about Richard Nixon: “However history judges Richard Nixon—and it is probable that the verdict will be very harsh—it must be put on the record forever that he did not break a single promise he made to us.”249 Israeli leaders would not be so kind to Nixon’s successor, Gerald R. Ford.

247 Document 262: National Intelligence Estimate, Washington, December 5, 1973, FRUS, 1969- 1976, Volume XXXVI: Energy Crisis, 1969-1974, 738. 248 Gutfeld and Vanetik, “‘A Situation That Had to Be Manipulated,’” 441. 249 Golda Meir, My Life (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1975), 430. 158

Chapter 4: Trouble with “Gallant Little Israel”

In 1978, Fredrick Wiseman released Sinai Field Mission, a two-hour black-and- white documentary chronicling daily life for nearly 200 American diplomats and private contractors in the Sinai Peninsula. These Americans were part of a small observer mission tasked with monitoring the movement of Egyptian and Israeli forces into and out of the area between the Mitla and Gidi passes, two strategically important points for anyone trying to control the entire peninsula. At one point in Wiseman’s film, an unnamed diplomat briefing a small group of visitors said that the best analogy for the

American observer mission’s purpose in the Sinai was that of a referee in sports: “The referee has to make a call. There are rules, the two parties who are in conflict understand what the rules are, but somebody has to see that the rules are obeyed and that any infractions are called, and that the actions stops and starts over again.”250 The presence of these Americans in such a tense environment signaled the beginning of a new era of U.S. involvement in the Middle East.

The American observer mission deployed to the Sinai Peninsula as a condition of the Sinai II Accords. Sinai II was the second of two disengagement agreements that

Henry Kissinger facilitated between Israel and Egypt in the aftermath of the October War of 1973. Signed in September 1975, Sinai II followed months of intense negotiations during which Kissinger, acting as intermediary, shuttled back and forth between

Jerusalem and Cairo. Although these step-by-step negotiations began under Richard

Nixon, this second disengagement agreement was concluded under his successor, Gerald

250 Frederick Wiseman (dir.), Sinai Field Mission (1978). 159

Ford. The Sinai II Accords proved to be an important milestone in the history of U.S. involvement in Middle East diplomacy, but the process of getting there was long and difficult, and almost fell apart completely.

To understand how the United States arrived at this point, we must return to

August 9, 1974, when for the first time in the history of the United States, an American president resigned from office. Following his surprise announcement on August 8,

Richard Nixon’s vice president, Gerald R. Ford, became the thirty-eighth President of the

United States. While much of the nation’s attention was focused on the Watergate crisis,

Nixon’s resignation came at an important moment in the history of U.S.-Israeli relations.

Though the Middle East was not one of Richard Nixon’s top international concerns during his first term, it gradually became one following his 1972 reelection, and especially following the October War of 1973. Throughout his political life Nixon had taken a close interest in foreign policy, but his replacement was much less experienced in international affairs. As this chapter demonstrates, the fact that Ford, not Nixon, was in the Oval Office mattered for the direction that U.S.-Israeli relations took during the years

1974-1976.

In the Middle East, the United States was dealing with several complex problems at the same time in the aftermath of the October War of 1973. First and foremost, the

United States faced an international energy crisis stemming from oil-producing Arab states’ decision to raise oil prices in retaliation for the Nixon administration’s decision to resupply Israel with vital military supplies in the middle of a war. The new Ford administration also had to contend with a dramatically altered U.S. relationship with

Israel, which was rapidly becoming one of the largest recipients of American military aid 160 in the world.251 American military aid to Israel had risen throughout the 1960s but reached unprecedented levels after the October War of 1973 and remained high and never returned to pre-1973 levels. When the October War ended in a ceasefire, the United

States became deeply involved in Arab-Israeli diplomacy as Henry Kissinger shuttled back and forth between Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and other places in order to negotiate the disengagement of Israeli and Arab forces and prevent the resumption of hostilities.

To signal continuity in U.S. foreign relations at a time of domestic political turmoil, Ford quickly announced that Henry Kissinger would retain his twin roles of

Secretary of State and National Security Adviser to the President. During his first national security briefing with the new president on August 12, only days after Ford took the oath of office, Kissinger called the Middle East “the worst problem we face.”252

When Ford recalled this moment a few years later in his memoirs, he wrote that “We would have to watch the area carefully.”253 In this as in many other areas of foreign policy, Ford largely deferred to Kissinger’s judgment on what direction U.S. foreign policy should take. As historian Thomas Schwartz put it bluntly and succinctly in his

2020 political biography of Kissinger, “Gerald Ford thought that Henry Kissinger was brilliant, and Henry Kissinger agreed.”254

251 On December 19, 1973, Congress approved $2.2 billion in emergency military aid for Israel, the largest item of a foreign aid bill that altogether amounted to $5.5 billion. See John W. Finney, “Senate- House Conference Approves Foreign Aid Bill,” New York Times, December 20, 1973. 252 Document 95: Memorandum of Conversation (Memcon) between Ford, Kissinger and Scowcroft, Washington, August 12, 1974, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969-1976, Volume XXVI: Arab-Israeli Dispute, 1973-1976 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 2012), 406. 253 Gerald R. Ford, A Time to Heal (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 3. 254 Thomas Schwartz, Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography (New York: Hill and Wang, 2020), 272. 161

Though Ford’s successor Jimmy Carter is better known for his efforts to achieve

Middle East peace, developments during the Ford administration were necessary and important precursors for the September 1978 Camp David Accords between Egypt and

Israel and the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty that followed six months later. As this chapter demonstrates, by expanding negotiation efforts initiated under Richard Nixon and spearheaded by Henry Kissinger, the Ford administration oversaw and shaped trends in

U.S.-Israeli relations that characterized the unique relationship between these two countries for decades to come. Specifically, from the 1970s onwards the United States supported Israel with unprecedented levels of economic and military aid and significant political and diplomatic support. As one scholar has described it, the Ford presidency was a critical phase in the development of the “special relationship” between Israel and the

United States.255

This chapter also explores the intersection between the United States’ diplomatic relationship to Israel and American domestic politics during a particularly volatile period for both countries. As they had done for decades, American Jewish community and organizational leaders paid close attention to the U.S. administration’s relations with the

Israeli government and met frequently with American officials to share their concerns about the status of U.S.-Israeli relations during this period. As Gerald Ford ran for reelection in 1976, American relations with Israel became part of his campaign’s efforts to convince Jewish voters to choose Ford over his Democratic challenger, former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter.

255 See Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov, “The United States and Israel since 1948: A ‘Special Relationship’?” Diplomatic History, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Spring 1998), 248. 162

Finally, this chapter also emphasizes the importance of the Ford administration’s contributions to American foreign policy in the 1970s. Gerald Ford is much better known for his impact on domestic policy in the 1970s, and the literature on the Ford presidency reflects this. The early scholarship on the Ford administration characterized Ford as little more than a caretaker president, but more recently scholars have moved away from this label and highlighted the thirty-eighth president’s limited but real accomplishments during his two-plus years in office.256 This chapter extends this discussion into the realm of American foreign policy in the Middle East to show that the Ford administration made significant changes to the American relationship with Israel that would have long-term consequences.

“Gallant Little Israel”

Gerald Ford’s connection to Israel began long before he joined the Executive

Branch in late 1973. During his more than two decades in the House of Representatives, the future Vice President and President was more focused on the U.S. economy than U.S. foreign policy. Ford’s vision for the United States’ role in the world was shaped by his service in the Pacific theater during World War II. Before the United States entered the

Second World War after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the

Michigan Republican shared the view of many other Midwestern Republicans that the

United States should focus on its own security and not the security of others. But his

256 For analyses of the Ford administration that emphasize domestic affairs, see John Robert Greene, The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford (Lawrence, KA: University of Kansas Press, 1995); Yanek Mieczkowski, Gerald Ford and the Challenges of the 1970s (Lexington, KY: The University of Kentucky Press, 2005); Jason Friedman, “Just a Caretaker?” in A Companion to Ford and Carter (Malden, MA: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2016), 196-210; and Scott Kaufman’s Ambition, Pragmatism, and Party: A Political Biography of Gerald R. Ford (Lawrence, KA: University of Kansas Press, 2017). 163 experiences aboard the U.S.S. Monterey in the Pacific theater helped change his views.

Rather than sticking to its own affairs, Ford’s military service convinced him and many other Americans that the United States had a unique responsibility to preserve global peace and order in the face of challenges from the Soviet Union.257

Ford brought these views with him to Washington when he was elected to the

House of Representatives in 1948 as a Republican from Michigan’s Fifth Congressional

District. From the beginning of his career in Congress, Ford espoused strong anticommunist views and supported some of the most significant foreign policy initiatives of the early Cold War, such as the Marshall Plan. Ford’s internationalist views resembled those of his fellow Michigan Republican, Senator Arthur Vandenberg, a key supporter of Democratic President Harry Truman’s Cold War policies. In the Republican primary of 1952, Gerald Ford supported General Dwight Eisenhower, a fellow internationalist, over Senator Robert Taft, who opposed many of President Truman’s international initiatives. Ford remained a strong supporter of Eisenhower’s foreign policy throughout the 1950s.258

In Congress Ford did not make U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East one of his top priorities, but he did address events in the Middle East on several occasions. For instance, on June 13, 1967, two days after a United Nations cease-fire ended the Six-Day

War, then-Republican Minority Leader Ford praised Israel for its recent military victory.

Speaking before a gathering of fellow Republicans in Philadelphia, Ford chastised the

257 For more on how Ford’s military service influenced his view of the United States’ role in the world, see Kaufman, Ambition, Pragmatism, and Party, 21-24 and Mieczkowski, Gerald Ford and the Challenges of the 1970s, 273-274. 258 Kaufman, Ambition, Pragmatism, and Party, Chapter 2. 164 administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson for doing nothing to ensure a positive outcome during the recent Middle East crisis. Israel’s victory was more than a military victory for the Jewish state, Ford claimed, it was also a blow to the United States’ adversary in the Cold War, the Soviet Union. As Ford told his audience, “Gallant little

Israel has handed the Soviet Union a severe setback because the Israelis displayed a courage which has been sadly lacking in the western democracies in recent years.”259 In

Ford’s view, Israel had done what other Western countries, including the United States under Lyndon Johnson, had failed to do—dealt a blow to the Soviet Union by defeating

Arab countries that were allied with the United States’ Cold War enemy. In his view,

Israel was an ally of the West, doing what the United States and other democracies could be doing if they had better leadership.

Over a year later in September 1968, during an intense and divisive presidential campaign, Ford again took aim at the Johnson administration’s policy failures in the

Middle East. This time, he weighed in on the debate over whether the United States should supply Israel with F-4 Phantom fighter aircraft, then some of the most sophisticated aircraft in the American military arsenal. The F-4s became an issue in that year’s presidential election between Republican candidate Richard Nixon and Vice

President Hubert Humphrey. Ford criticized President Johnson, who had recently announced that he would not seek reelection, for failing to articulate a real Middle East policy. Although the Humphrey had been a strong supporter of Israel during his years in

259 Press Release: Excerpts from a speech at a meeting of the Philadelphia Republican Policy Committee, Philadelphia PA, “Foreign Affairs, 1965-1967,” Ford Congressional Papers, Box D8, Gerald Ford Presidential Library (hereafter GFPL), Ann Arbor, Michigan. 165 the Senate, Ford portrayed the Vice President as indelibly linked to the Johnson administration’s “non-policy” in the Middle East. Ford charged that the administration of

Johnson and Humphrey “has gone off and left the gallant defenders of Israel’s independence without adequate arms to match the massive Russian buildup in the Middle

East.”260 As with his Philadelphia remarks the previous year, Ford’s admiration for Israel and respect for its accomplishments are evident here.

Though these references to Israel and the Middle East in the records from Gerald

Ford’s time in Congress are infrequent, they do reveal several aspects of the future president’s views of the region. First, they demonstrate that Ford saw Israel and the

Middle East primarily through the lens of the Cold War struggle to contain the global influence of the Soviet Union. Secondly, Ford’s reference to “gallant little Israel” reveals a sympathy and respect for Israel as a fellow Western power, an underdog nation fighting against overwhelming odds and without adequate assistance from its supposed allies.

Finally, both statements show that Ford was perfectly willing to use Middle East policy to criticize his political opponents. When he was in the Oval Office, Ford discovered that crafting an effective policy for the Middle East was an extremely difficult endeavor, and that he was also vulnerable to those same criticisms from his domestic political opponents.

Israel and the Middle East in the Early Days of the Ford Administration

The first days of the Ford administration were hectic ones. In addition to managing the transition from one president to another, Ford and his advisers also needed

260 Press Release: Statement by House Minority Leader Ford, September 9, 1968, “Foreign Affairs, 1968,” Box D8, Congressional Papers, GFPL. 166 to reassure the American people and the world that the U.S. government was in good hands and that President Nixon’s resignation would not disrupt the United States’ relations with other countries. On August 9, 1974, the same day Nixon officially resigned as president and Ford took the oath of office as his replacement, Ford and Henry

Kissinger met with diplomats from fifteen Arab nations, including the ambassadors from

Jordan and Saudi Arabia and Ismail Fahmy, the Egyptian foreign minister. At this meeting, Kissinger and Ford assured the assembled Arab diplomats that the United States would continue its foreign policy in the region, including the initiative to negotiate peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors.261

The President and Secretary of State delivered that same message to Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Simcha Dinitz, later that day. This meeting was more friendly than the previous one with Arab diplomats. Ford, who had known Israel’s new prime minister Yitzhak Rabin from his time as Israel’s ambassador in Washington, remarked that he probably knew the Israeli ambassador better than any other country’s ambassador. He told Dinitz that he looked forward to working with the Israelis to continue Nixon’s policies in the Middle East. Dinitz in turn assured the President that he had many friends in Israel, and that he looked forward to working with the new administration.262

261 See Memorandum of Conversation (hereafter Memcon) between Ford, Kissinger, and Arab Envoys, August 9, 1974, Box 4, National Security Adviser Memcons, Digital Collections, GFPL. (URL: https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/guides/findingaid/Memoranda_of_Conversations.asp#Ford). (Accessed 1/5/20). 262 Memcon between Ford, Kissinger, and Simcha Dinitz, August 9, 1974, Ibid. 167

Three days later, on August 12 during a nationally televised address before a joint session of Congress, President Ford delivered the same message to the American people and the world. He again pledged to continue his predecessor’s foreign policy abroad, calling it “outstanding.” Turning to the Middle East, he pledged to continue American efforts to achieve peace in a volatile region that had seen multiple wars in the past three decades. Americans, he promised, “shall carry out our promise to promote continuing negotiations among all parties for a complete, just, and lasting settlement.”263 Fulfilling that promise would prove extremely difficult and frustrating for the new administration.

The Ford administration’s highest priority in the Middle East was to restart negotiations between Israel and its neighbors. Less than a week after Ford addressed the nation for the first time as President, he and Henry Kissinger met with King Hussein of

Jordan, Jordan’s longtime monarch and one of the United States’ strongest allies in the

Arab world. Hussein, who was one of the first heads-of-state to meet with the new president, told the Americans that his country wanted a just peace in the Middle East and expressed his hope that Jordan would play a major role in achieving that outcome. As

Israel’s eastern neighbor and home to tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees, Jordan had a significant stake in the outcome of any Middle East peace process. Unlike the leaders of other Arab nations that took in Palestinian refugees, King Hussein made the

Palestinians citizens of Jordan, but he had also endured the events of September 1970, when his regime nearly collapsed because of conflict with the Palestine Liberation

263 Document 41: Address by President Ford, Washington, August 12, 1974, FRUS 1969-1976, Volume XXXVIII: Part 1, Foundations of Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2012), 219. 168

Organization (PLO). As a result, Hussein believed that he had a special responsibility to act on behalf of the Palestinians who remained in his country. “The end result for us,”

Hussein told Ford and Kissinger, “is to get back to 1967 border and to achieve the return to Arab sovereignty of the Arab portions of Jerusalem.”264 From Hussein’s perspective, the best option for the Palestinians was not a fully sovereign state of their own, but a self- governing territory with Jordanian sovereignty.

Hussein also mentioned his desire for additional American military aid, which the

King claimed was integral to Jordan’s ability to play a constructive role in the peace process. “We need to be strong to negotiate withdrawal and to be moderate and reasonable. Otherwise, our options diminish and we lose the positions which present realities have opened for us.”265 One of these positions Jordan might have to give up on was its role as negotiator for the Palestinians. At this, Ford and Kissinger replied that they were firmly committed to supporting Jordan, but that Congress was dragging its feet on additional military aid for the Kingdom. The Americans promised to continue asking for additional aid, while urging Hussein not to give up his influence with the Palestinians.

For the United States, which refused to negotiate openly with the PLO and its leader

Yasser Arafat, it was critical to have a sovereign state like Jordan to address the

Palestinian issue.

264 Memcon between Ford, Kissinger, U.S. ambassador Thomas Pickering, Hussein, and Jordanian Prime Minister Ziad Rafai, page 7, August 16, 1974, Box 5, Digital Collections, GFPL. (URL: https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/guides/findingaid/Memoranda_of_Conversations.asp#Ford). (Accessed 1/6/20). 265 Ibid, page 10. 169

In addition to meeting with Arab leaders, Ford and Kissinger were also preparing to host the Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, at the White House in early September.

The President and Rabin already knew each other, but this was the first time they had dealt with each other as national leaders. Ford respected Rabin as a dour and serious man, a tough negotiator who dressed conservatively and spoke softly. But toughness, Ford recalled years later, “was not the only ingredient needed to resolve the Middle East impasse. Flexibility—on both sides—was essential as well, and I wasn’t sure how flexible Rabin could be.”266 As the successor to a president who resigned in disgrace and the leader of a divided government that came together after the collapse of its predecessor, Ford and Rabin actually shared a similar political predicament. But a similarly precarious political position did not translate into a smooth working relationship between these two leaders.

Rabin’s September 1974 meeting with Ford, which came during his first trip to the United States as Prime Minister of Israel, occurred at a complex political moment in

Israeli history. At home, Rabin presided over a fragile coalition government and a country still reeling from the trauma of the October 1973 war. After being caught by surprise on two fronts and suffering thousands of casualties in three weeks of intense fighting, Israel had emerged victorious with the help of a massive American airlift to resupply Israel with aircraft, tanks, ammunition, and other vital pieces of military equipment. In addition to the dead and wounded, the October War had also badly damaged the Israeli economy. Rabin and other Israeli officials were determined to ensure

266 Ford, A Time to Heal, 183. 170 that Israel was prepared to meet the next major threat. To that end, Israeli leaders worked to strengthen old alliances and cultivate new ones to rebuild Israel’s military deterrent and revive its economy.

Seeking allies wherever they could be found, Israeli officials established closer ties with many right-wing military regimes such as those in Chile, Argentina, and especially South Africa. Governed by a white supremacist regime under the racist apartheid system, South Africa was also home to a large Jewish population and the birthplace of several prominent Israelis, including Abba Eban, Israel’s foreign minister from 1966 to 1974. While right-wing Israelis such as politician Menachem Begin had been calling for closer ties between Israel and South Africa for years, for decades Israel had tried to keep its distance from the apartheid regime (at least publicly) so as not to alienate decolonizing African nations elsewhere in Africa with which it was trying to build stronger relations.

This began to change in the aftermath of the 1967 war as Israel’s occupation of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan

Heights turned it into a de facto colonial power. This turn of events badly damaged

Israel’s reputation in Africa, a region where it worked hard to build relationships with decolonizing nations during the 1950s and 1960s. In the aftermath of the October War of

1973, Israeli and South African leaders forged a covert and mutually beneficial alliance.

For Israel, arms sales to South Africa were a boon to its sagging economy, especially the defense industry. The South African government, for its part, was happy to have the benefit of Israeli arms and military advisers in its fight against neighboring countries whose black African leaders were hostile toward the apartheid regime. While the Israeli- 171

South African relationship would become even closer after Menachem Begin and his right-wing Likud party came to power in 1977, this development started under Israel’s long-dominant Labor party.267

But an alliance with South Africa could only produce so much return. What their country really needed, Israeli leaders had long believed, was a major ally and arms supplier in the West. As former allies like France distanced themselves from Israel after the 1967 war and its ongoing occupation of majority-Arab territories, the United States was the obvious nation for Israeli leaders to court. As a result, Yitzhak Rabin made securing more military equipment from the United States for the Israeli Defense Forces

(IDF) a high priority for his government. As he recorded in his 1979 memoir, military superiority was vital to Israel’s survival: “Only a very powerful IDF could convince the

Arab leaders that the only course open to them was political negotiations.”268 The need to rebuild Israel’s armed forces following the October 1973 war added a new urgency to

Israel’s dealings with the United States. Israeli prime ministers had long believed that close relations with the United States were a vital national interest, but Rabin had consistently favored closer ties with the U.S. throughout his military and diplomatic career. Though he valued Israeli self-reliance, Rabin believed that a close relationship

267 On Israel’s deteriorating relations with African nations, see Zach Levey, “Israel’s Exit from Africa, 1973: The Road to Diplomatic Isolation,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 35, No. 2 (August 2008), pp. 205-226. On the history of Israeli-South African relations, see Sasha Polakow- Suransky, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa (New York: Pantheon Books, 2010), Chapters 4-6. 268 Rabin, The Rabin Memoirs (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1979), 242. 172 with the United States was the only way to guarantee Israel’s freedom of action in the

Middle East.269

In preparing to meet with the Israeli prime minister, American officials were debating how much economic and military aid the United States should send to Israel in the coming years. The December 1973 foreign aid bill had allotted more than $2 billion in emergency military aid for Israel following the October War, but now U.S. officials had to determine aid levels for the future. On August 12, the same day of his first national security briefing as President, Ford signed a National Security Study Memorandum

(NSSM) directing members of the National Security Council to study Israel’s future military requirements. In particular, the NSC was to study Matmon-B, an Israeli plan submitted to American officials that called for significant military aid from the United

States to maintain Israel’s military superiority over its neighbors for the next decade.270

In their first meeting at the White House in the afternoon of September 10, 1974,

Ford told his Israeli counterpart that he and the United States were committed to continuing to support Israel, but he also warned Rabin that such support was not unlimited. As he told Rabin, “We want Israel to be strong and capable of defending itself.

Israel has the backing of the United States. It is a matter of how much you need and how much we can make available. We have constraints but we will keep the commitment that was made about your strength and your survival.” Rabin thanked the president for his comments, arguing that American support for Israel was integral to successful

269 On Rabin’s U.S.-centric view of Israeli foreign policy, see Efraim Inbar, Rabin and Israel’s National Security (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), especially Chapter 2. 270 Document 96: National Security Study Memorandum 207, August 12, 1974, FRUS, Volume XXVI, 408. 173 peacemaking: “The stronger Israel is the better the chance for peace, and we are ready to move toward peace.”271

While U.S. officials were debating the appropriate level of military aid for Israel in late 1974, there were signs that some senior military officials were not happy that

Israel was receiving so much American military equipment. On November 13, the

Washington Post reported that George Brown, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the President’s senior military adviser, had complained about Israel’s level of influence in U.S. government circles to an audience at the Duke University Law School on October 10. Furthermore, as journalist Michael Getler reported, Brown had done so in blatantly antisemitic terms. In a long answer to a question about possible U.S. military intervention in the Middle East to secure oil reserves, Brown complained about Israeli officials who seemed to believe that Congress would approve any request they made for

U.S. military hardware. “Now this is someone from another country,” Brown remarked,

“but they can do it. They own, you know, the banks in this country, the newspapers, you just look at where the Jewish money is in this country.”272 Brown’s remarks prompted a series of condemnations from members of Congress and Jewish organizations and a rebuke from the White House press secretary, Ron Nessen, and Brown later apologized for his comments in a brief letter to the Jewish War Veterans organization.273 But Brown kept his post as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and faced no other disciplinary action. This

271 Document 99: Memorandum of Conversation, September 10, 1974, FRUS, Volume XXVI, 418. 272 Michael Getler, “Head of Joint Chiefs Criticizes Jewish Influence in the U.S.,” Washington Post, November 13, 1974. 273 Getler, “Ford Scores General on Jewish Remarks, Washington Post, November 14, 1974. 174 was not the last time that the General’s comments would cause problems for the Ford administration and Israel.

As 1974 drew to a close, Ford and Kissinger met with a variety of Israeli and

American Jewish officials to listen to their views on U.S.-Israeli relations. In a meeting on December 18 with former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir, Ford again stressed his commitment to supporting peace talks between Israel and its Arab neighbors but cautioned that there needed to be progress in these talks soon. Without movement, he warned, his administration could not guarantee that Congress would continue to approve such large amounts of military aid for Israel.274

Two days later, on December 20, Ford met with a group of American Jewish leaders organized by Max Fisher. A Michigan native like the President, Fisher was a business leader and philanthropist who emerged as an important fundraiser for the

Republican Party in the 1960s. After Richard Nixon’s victory in 1968, Fisher became an unofficial adviser to the president on matters concerning American Jews and U.S.-Israeli relations and received significant access to the Oval Office. Under Ford, Fisher continued in this role, and he used the December 20 meeting to introduce his fellow Michigan

Republican to Jewish leaders and demonstrate to the White House that U.S.-Israeli relations were an issue about which American Jews cared deeply. For Ford, it was an

274 Memcon between Ford, Kissinger, and Scowcroft with Golda Meir, Simcha Dinitz, and Mordechai Shalev, 3:30 p.m., December 18, 1974, Box #8, Digital Collections, GFPL. (URL: https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/guides/findingaid/Memoranda_of_Conversations.asp). (Accessed 1/17/20). 175 opportunity “to confirm that we will not betray Israel and that we are entering the next phase of negotiation in the closest cooperation with Israel.”275

The Ford administration’s efforts to negotiate peace in the Middle East were a direct continuation of the initiative Henry Kissinger launched at the end of 1973. Instead of pushing for an ambitious and comprehensive solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict,

Kissinger pursued smaller bilateral negotiations between Israel and each of its neighbors, focusing on one problem at a time. This step-by-step process would, in theory, build toward a broader solution to all conflict in the Middle East. But in practice, for the remainder of the Ford administration, Kissinger’s efforts to negotiate Arab-Israeli peace were directed toward securing another disengagement agreement between Israel and

Egypt in the Sinai Peninsula. This came at the expense of other negotiation efforts, namely those involving Syria, Jordan, and the Palestinians.

After concluding the first disengagement agreement between Israel and Egypt

(later referred to as Sinai I), Kissinger turned his attention to the Syrian-Israeli border region. After months of difficult negotiations, Israel and Syria agreed to a limited withdrawal of their forces. Both sides expected that negotiations would continue over

Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights, which Israeli forces had captured back in 1967 and which Syria had briefly recaptured in the early days of the October War. This effort was significant not only because Syria had attacked Israel less than a year earlier, but also

275 Memo for the President from Kissinger re “Meeting with American Jewish Leaders,” December 20, 1974, “Presidential Meeting with Jewish Leaders, Dec. 20, 1974,” Box 16, National Security Adviser – Presidential Subject Files, GFPL. For Fisher’s perspective on this meeting, see Peter Golden, Quiet Diplomat: The Life of Max Fisher (Cranbury, NJ: Cornwall Books, 1992), 309-310. 176 because the United States and Syria restored diplomatic relations for the first time since

1967, when Syria had cut ties with Washington following the Six-Day War.

Meeting with Ford and Kissinger at the White House on August 23, Syrian foreign minister Abdul Halim Khaddam spoke of his government’s desire to negotiate further and to continue to improve U.S.-Syrian relations. Upon hearing the President’s pledge that Kissinger’s efforts to negotiate peace in the Middle East would continue,

Khaddam thanked the Americans and told them that “Syrians and Arabs are eager and dedicated to a just peace in the Middle East. We believe the U.S. as a great power should and can play a key role in this respect.”276 But despite this friendly meeting, negotiations with Syria over the Golan Heights ground to a halt as the Israelis proved unwilling to make further withdrawals from the Golan Heights. Facing a stalemate on the Syrian front,

Kissinger and Ford concentrated their efforts on more promising initiatives, especially negotiations between Egypt and Israel.277

American efforts to negotiate peace between Israel and its neighbors suffered another setback in 1974 when talks between Israel and Jordan stalled over disagreements related to Palestinian refugees and territory. Ever since thousands of Palestinians displaced by the Arab-Israeli War of 1948 settled in Jordanian refugee camps, King

Hussein presented himself as the Palestinians’ representative in negotiations with the

United States and Israel. But since any negotiations between Israel and Jordan would

276 Memcon between Ford, Kissinger, Khaddam, and aides, August 23, 1974, Box 5, Digital Collections, GFPL. (URL: https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/guides/findingaid/Memoranda_of_Conversations.asp). (Accessed 1/8/20) 277 On U.S.-Syrian negotiations, see Lars Hasvoll Bakke and Hendriksen Waage, “Facing Assad: American Diplomacy Towards Syria, 1973-1977,” International History Review, Vol. 40, No. 3 (2018), pp. 546-572. 177 inevitably involve issues related to the Palestinians (including the status of the occupied

West Bank and Jerusalem and the possibility of negotiating directly with the PLO),

Israeli officials proved unwilling to make any significant concessions in this area.278

The fallout from the failure of these negotiations came a few months later at a large gathering of Arab nations in Rabat, Morocco. On October 28, representatives voted to recognize the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and called for the creation of a Palestinian state. This was bad news for American negotiators, who, following Israel’s lead, refused to negotiate with the PLO because of its involvement in cross-border raids into Israel, terrorist attacks abroad, and its refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Not being able to negotiate with Arab countries over

Palestinian concerns only made the Israelis more reluctant to take part in negotiations in the first place. American officials recognized this was a significant setback for American foreign policy in the Middle East. Kissinger, for one, was not pleased, and said so in a message to the President. He wrote that, “While all the returns on Rabat are not yet in, there is no question that the decisions reached there have greatly complicated the task of engaging Israel in negotiations.”279

American intelligence agencies echoed this grim prognosis. In a classified analysis produced a month after the Rabat Conference, analysts from the Central

Intelligence Agency (CIA) reported that the conference’s outcome was deeply concerning

278 On the stalled negotiations between Israel and Jordan in 1974, see Madiha Rashid Al Madfai, Jordan, the United States, and the Middle East Peace Process, 1974-1991 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993), Chapter 2; Avi Shlaim, Lion of Jordan: The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace (New York: Vintage Books, 2007), Chapter 17; and Nigel J. Ashton, King Hussein of Jordan: A Political Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), Chapter 10. 279 Message from Kissinger to Ford (delivered to the President in a memo from Brent Scowcroft), Washington, October 30, 1974, FRUS, Volume XXVI, 449. 178 to Israeli leaders, who felt that events were getting out of control. This was bad news for the Americans, whose credibility as an intermediary was critical to their success as arbiter between Israel and its Arab neighbors. “This sense of being swept along by the tides of history,” wrote the report’s authors, “by forces beyond Israeli control, is not really countered by US support, reassuring as this undoubtedly is for most Israelis.”280

The PLO was also making important inroads in the international community. On

November 13, 1974, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat addressed the United Nations General

Assembly for the first time. In a wide-ranging speech, Arafat called Zionism a racist movement that was rooted in European imperialism and colonialism and denounced

Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians, its attacks against Israel’s Arab neighbors, and for allying itself with racist settler-colonial regimes such as apartheid South Africa. He also connected the Palestinian struggle for statehood to the struggles of other decolonized nations and liberation movements around the world and touted the legitimacy of the

Palestinian cause under the United Nations Charter. Arafat concluded his remarks by appealing to his audience to “aid our people’s return to its homeland from an involuntary exile imposed upon it by force of arms, by tyranny, by oppression, so that we may regain our property, our land, and thereafter live in our national homeland, free and sovereign, enjoying all the privileges of nationhood.”281 Shortly after Arafat’s speech, on November

22, the UN voted to grant the PLO observer status.

280 “Interagency Intelligence Memorandum: The Rabat Watershed,” “Middle East – General (3),” Box 1, National Security Adviser Presidential Files for the Middle East and South Asia, 1974-1977, GFPL. 281 PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat Address to the UN General Assembly, November 13, 1974, in Laquerur and Rubin (ed), The Israeli-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict (New York: Penguin Books, 2001), 182. 179

Negotiations with Egypt and Israel, 1975

The stalled negotiations between Israel and Jordan ensured that, going forward, the Ford administration would focus entirely on bilateral negotiations between Israel and

Egypt. These negotiations centered around Israel’s occupation of the Gidi and Mitla passes in the Sinai Peninsula, passes that were strategically vital for any power that hoped to control the Sinai, and the peninsula’s oil fields. From the Egyptian perspective, it was vital to obtain an Israeli withdrawal, even a limited one, as the first step toward a complete withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, which was sovereign Egyptian territory.

For their part, the Israelis demanded that Egypt renounce violence as an option for regaining the Sinai.

Recalling these negotiations, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and his foreign minister, Ismail Fahmy, both wrote in their memoirs that no country except the United

States could successfully mediate negotiations between Egypt and Israel. However, they also recalled that this second round of negotiations was much more difficult than the first and complained about how closely the United States and Israel seemed to be cooperating throughout the process. In his 1978 autobiography, Sadat called Israel America’s stepchild and warned that Israel could not be trusted; he nevertheless continued to work with American leaders until his death in 1981. Fahmy, who later resigned from Sadat’s government because he disagreed with Sadat’s decision to pursue a peace deal with Israel at the expense of the Palestinians, wrote that Kissinger was nothing more than Israel’s 180 envoy and never brought the Egyptians a genuine American proposal.282 U.S. records of

U.S.-Israeli negotiations during this period do show close cooperation between the two countries, but also deep frustration with Israeli leaders.

Henry Kissinger began a new round of shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East on

March 9, 1975, intending to conclude a second disengagement agreement between Israel and Egypt as quickly as possible. For the next two weeks, Kissinger, his team, and a group of reporters were in constant motion across the region, traveling from Jerusalem to

Damascus, Amman, and Cairo and back again. Their travels were interrupted by long meetings with leaders and senior advisers in each of these countries. Kissinger’s strategy was to personally convey one country’s terms to another world leader and take their responses back to the others, all the while building toward a formula that would be accepted by all. Throughout his travels in the Middle East, Kissinger kept President Ford informed of his progress in a series of reports to Brent Scowcroft, the deputy National

Security Adviser.

These reports demonstrate that Egyptian and Israeli leaders had serious concerns about the other’s willingness to meet their desired conditions for reaching a settlement.

Early on it became clear to all parties that one of the largest hurdles to reaching an agreement between Israel and Egypt was the Israeli government’s call for Egypt to make a formal “non-belligerency” declaration towards Israel. In effect, this would mean that

Anwar Sadat would agree that Egypt would agree not to use military force to recover the

282 See Sadat, In Search of Identity: An Autobiography (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978), 295-296, and Ismail Fahmy, Negotiating for Peace in the Middle East (Kent, UK: Croom Helm Ltd, 1983), 168. 181

Sinai Peninsula. Following a private meeting with Sadat on March 9, Kissinger reported to Ford that, while he expected the coming negotiations to be difficult, he was optimistic, because Sadat agreed to make significant concessions. “The most positive element we have received,” he reported, “is a willingness by Sadat to in effect agree to a no-war pledge. The form of words in which this is expressed is likely to be haggled over.”283

Kissinger’s final point on the wording is an important one, for this issue proved to be a major sticking point for both Israelis and Egyptians in the coming weeks.

Things came to a head a week later during one of Kissinger’s meetings with the

Israeli negotiating team on March 16. After listening to Kissinger’s updates on his trips to

Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, Yitzhak Rabin leveled with the American Secretary of State.

After expressing his appreciation for all of Kissinger’s efforts, Rabin said that “when I try to sum it up, I see on the three main points crucial to us--the question of non-use of force, the question of a real significant move toward peace, and the question of duration of the agreement--basically very little has been achieved.”284 If the Israelis did not accept

Egypt’s terms, the negotiations would collapse and no progress would have been made.

For Kissinger, the prospect of these negotiations breaking down had enormous implications for American foreign policy beyond the Middle East. In March 1975, the

United States had already withdrawn its troops from Vietnam, and North Vietnam was in the midst of its final campaign to defeat the American-backed regime in Saigon and

283 Memo from Scowcroft to Ford, March 9, 1975, “March 7-22, 1975 – Kissinger’s Trip – Vol. I (2),” Box 3, National Security Adviser Reports on USSR, China, and Middle East Discussions, 1974-76, GFPL. (URL: https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/guides/findingaid/Kissinger_Reports.asp). (Accessed 12/22/20). 284 Memcon between Kissinger, Rabin, and their senior advisers, “March 7-22, 1975 – Kissinger’s Trip – Vol. II (1),” Ibid. 182 reunite Vietnam under communist rule. Around the world, Kissinger worried, American allies and adversaries alike would begin to ask why the United States could not bring

Israel, a country of only a few million people, around in the face of Egyptian proposals that seemed generous. “It would be considered,” Kissinger wrote, “a sign of U.S. decline and impotence compounding events in Cambodia, South Vietnam, Turkey, and Portugal.

Sooner or later a multiplier effect will set in.”285 Ford agreed with his secretary of state, telling him that he was “totally and completely behind your current efforts and the strategy which they represent.”286

With President Ford’s blessing, Kissinger made one final attempt to salvage the negotiations. He dutifully conveyed Israel’s new demands to Anwar Sadat, but the

Egyptian leader, believing that he had already made significant concessions to the

Israelis, refused to bend anymore, and this impasse signaled the collapse of this round of talks. In a message to Ford, Kissinger expressed his deep frustration with the Israeli government. Blaming Israeli domestic politics for Israeli leaders’ refusal to give ground, he wrote that the Israelis “have nailed themselves to propositions they could not fulfill and are jeopardizing our entire position in the Middle East in the pursuit of entirely marginal points.”287

The collapse of talks in late March 1975 produced one of the most difficult periods in the history of U.S.-Israeli relations. In a letter to Yitzhak Rabin dated March

21, 1975, President Ford expressed his “deep disappointment” with Israel’s conduct

285 Ibid, 546. 286 Document 150: Telegram from Scowcroft to Kissinger, March 18, 1975, FRUS, Volume XXVI, 546. 287 Document 155: Memo from Scowcroft to Ford, March 21, 1975, FRUS, Volume XXVI, 552. 183 during the recently-collapsed talks and informed the Israeli prime minister that he had ordered “an immediate reassessment of U.S. policy in the area, including our relations with Israel, with a view to assuring that the overall interests of America in the Middle

East and globally will be protected.”288 To the dismay and annoyance of Ford and

Kissinger, the letter was quickly leaked to the Israeli press.289

The next day, Kissinger met with the Israeli cabinet before flying back to the

United States. After conveying a message from Sadat saying that he would make no further concessions, he told Rabin that the U.S. government agreed with the Egyptians, who believed that fault for the breakdown in negotiations lay with Israel alone. But despite these unfortunate circumstances, Kissinger insisted that the United States was not trying to force the Israelis to do something they did not want to do. On the contrary, he wanted to convince Israel’s leaders that making the concessions called for by the United

States and Egypt was in fact in Israel’s best interest. Even at this low point in U.S.- brokered talks, Kissinger expressed his hope that negotiations would soon resume and that he did not regret cooperating closely with Israel in recent months. But, he continued, circumstances might not be so favorable to Israel in the future. “There will,” he said, “be enormous pressure to separate us, instead of enabling us to stay together and enabling the

U.S. to protect Israel’s position.”290

288 Document 156: Letter from President Ford to Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, March 21, 1975, FRUS, Volume XXVI, 553. 289 Just as Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy was falling apart, Israeli authorities were also trying to prevent the publication of a book by Haaretz journalist and columnist Matti Golan, whose revelations threatened to embarrass both Kissinger and the Rabin government. See Golan, The Secret Conversations of Henry Kissinger: Step-By-Step Diplomacy in the Middle East (New York: Quadrangle/The New York Times Book Co., 1976). 290 Document 158: Memorandum of Conversation, March 22, 1975, FRUS, Volume XXVI, 558. 184

President Ford took the collapse of Kissinger’s negotiations with Israel personally, and comments he made to Henry Kissinger and Max Fisher at the end of

March reveal where his views of Israel and Jewish people intersected. At the time Fisher was preparing to travel to Israel as an informal intermediary between the Ford administration and the Rabin government. Complaining that he and Kissinger had spent a great deal of time on the Middle East only to be disappointed by the Israeli government,

Ford worried that American Jews might be souring on his presidency because of his stance toward Israel. The President ended the meeting by saying that “I supported Israel because I think it is right. Some of my best friends are Jews because I admire strength and brains. I feel awful to be put in this kind of position.”291

The Ford administration’s “reassessment” of U.S.-Israeli relations took the form of several high-level meetings between senior White House officials and several groups who were deeply concerned with and had extensive knowledge of and experience with

U.S.-Israeli relations. First Kissinger invited a small group of Jewish intellectuals, including international relations expert Hans Morgenthau and author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, to the State Department, where he warned of serious and domestic consequences for the United States if the rift between the Israeli and U.S. governments was not repaired. After giving his guests an overview of the administration’s position on recent events, Kissinger told them that the President was outraged at Israel’s conduct and felt betrayed. Furthermore, he warned, “If the Jewish community attacks the President you will see for the first time an American President attacking Israel and this could

291 Document 165: Memorandum of Conversation, March 27, 1975, Ibid., 580. 185 unleash the most profound consequences.”292 Though Kissinger claimed that he did not want anything from his guests, briefing them on the administration’s position was a way for him to put indirect pressure on the Israeli government. The next week, Kissinger met with a group of former senior foreign policy officials who had served in both Republican and Democratic administrations. Sometimes known as “wise men,” their number included former Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Cyrus Vance, and George Shultz, two future Secretaries of State, and former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. This group, which included former officials with extensive experience with U.S. Middle East policy, included many who supported taking a tougher stance on Israel.293

Kissinger also met with several senior State Department officials, including most of the department’s Middle East ambassadors, who were summoned to Washington to give their perspectives on how to move forward with Israel. During meetings in April

1975, officials discussed several options, including convening a peace conference in

Geneva, Switzerland, restarting bilateral negotiations, and shifting toward a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel, Egypt, and potentially Syria and

Jordan.294

In the meantime, U.S. officials took steps to reduce U.S.-Israeli cooperation, including canceling a visit to the U.S. by Israeli Minister of Defense Shimon Peres, reducing intelligence cooperation, and delaying planned arms deliveries. When Kissinger

292 Document 168: Memorandum of Conversation, March 31, 1975, Ibid., 601. 293 See Document 169, Ibid. 294 See Documents 170-171, Ibid and Memcon between Ford, Kissinger, Elits, Keating, Murphy, Atherton, and Scowcroft, April 14, 1975, Box #10, National Security Adviser Memcons, Digital Collections, GFPL. (URL: https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/guides/findingaid/Memoranda_of_Conversations.asp). (Accessed 11/20/20). 186 and Ford met with Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was about to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, the Secretary stressed that, given the current state of U.S.-Israeli relations, Israel needed to be handled carefully at the UN. Kissinger told Moynihan that

Israel needed to be treated as a normal country to avoid tying the United States too closely to Israel’s uncompromising position. But Kissinger also argued that doing so was in Israel’s best interest because it would help prevent Israel from becoming a Sparta-like state, one that used force to solve every single problem. He concluded by saying that

“Israel must be treated like Great Britain, not the Department of the Treasury.”295

While American officials were “reassessing” the state of U.S.-Israeli relations following the collapse of Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy, domestic forces intervened to make the situation even more complicated. On May 22, three-quarters of the U.S. Senate, including members of both parties, signed a letter to President Ford protesting his administration’s recent stance on military aid for Israel. The letter, which was introduced and read aloud in the U.S. Senate by George McGovern, a Democrat, stated that a strong

Israel both ensured that an outside power like the Soviet Union would not dominate the

Middle East and would deter Israel’s neighbors from renewing hostilities in the region.

“Withholding military equipment from Israel,” the letter warned, “would be dangerous, discouraging accommodation by Israel’s neighbors and encouraging a resort to force.”

The letter concluded by calling on President Ford to be responsive to Israel’s military and economic needs and to make it clear that the White House, like the Senators, stood firmly

295 Memcon between Ford, Kissinger, Moynihan, and Scowcroft, April 12, 1975, Ibid. 187 with Israel in the search for Middle East peace.296 Moments like this one revealed just how deeply U.S.-Israeli relations were linked to American domestic politics.297

According to contemporary press accounts, the letter had been circulating among senators for two weeks before its release. The New York Times reported that letter was originally drafted by Republican Jacob Javits and eighteen other senators and was enthusiastically supported by Israeli government officials and the American Israel Public

Affairs Committee (AIPAC). As reporter Bernard Gwertzman wrote at the time, the letter was intended as a show of strength by pro-Israel forces on Capitol Hill, who were

“determined to convince the Ford administration that they have the votes to insure that

United States policy is not to Israel’s disadvantage.”298 More recently, historian Kenneth

Kolander identified the Israeli embassy, especially Ambassador Simcha Dinitz, as the driving force behind the Senate letter.299

After months of discussions and meetings, including Ford’s meetings with both

Anwar Sadat and Yitzhak Rabin, U.S. officials decided to resume negotiations toward an agreement that closely resembled the one they had abandoned in March. Kissinger did not receive a warm welcome when he returned to Israel in August 1975 to resume his shuttle diplomacy between Jerusalem and Cairo. When the American Secretary of State and his delegation landed in Tel Aviv on August 21, they were met by thousands of protestors. These demonstrators objected to American efforts to get Israel to withdraw

296 Congressional Record—Senate, May 22, 1975, 15959. 297 See, for instance, Galen Jackson, “The Showdown That Wasn’t: U.S.-Israeli Relations and American Domestic Politics, 1973-75,” International Security, Vol. 39, No. 4 (Spring 2015), 130-169. 298 Gwertzman, “75 Senators Back Israel’s Aid Bids,” New York Times, May 22, 1975. 299 Kenneth Kolander, America’s Israel: The US Congress and American-Israeli Relations, 1967- 1975 (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2020), Chapter 4. 188 from the Sinai and claimed that such a withdrawal would only harm Israel’s security and would not increase the chances for peace. Thomas Dunnigan, a career foreign service officer who was then the deputy chief of mission at the American embassy in Tel Aviv, recalled that their motorcade was pelted by rocks as they drove to the Israeli parliament from the airport in Tel Aviv. According to Bernard Gwertzman, the American delegation was trapped at the Knesset with the Israeli cabinet for an hour because demonstrators had blocked all exits.300

After negotiations throughout August, the parties eventually reached a new limited disengagement agreement. The major provisions of the new agreement were very similar to what had been discussed before negotiations collapsed in March. In return for a pledge that Egypt would look to diplomatic negotiations to recover the remainder of the

Sinai Peninsula and not military force, the Israelis agreed to make a limited withdrawal from the Milta and Gidi passes. A key provision of the agreement was a U.S. commitment to overseeing the implementation of and compliance with its terms. To that end, the agreement called for the deployment of American civilian observers to the Sinai

Peninsula to oversee the implementation of the agreement and to ensure Egyptian and

Israeli compliance. Despite its limitations, the September 1 disengagement agreement was an important step toward peace between Egypt and Israel, but the agreement was especially beneficial to Israel.301

300 Interview with Thomas Dunnigan, September 7, 1990, The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST) Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, page 42. (URL: https://adst.org/oral-history/). (Accessed 5/28/20). See also Bernard Gwertzman, “Kissinger Starts Tour of Mideast,” New York Times, August 22, 1975. 301 On the Israeli perspective of the Sinai II Accords, see Louise Fischer, “Turning Point on the Road to Peace: The Government of Yitzhak Rabin and the Interim Agreement with Egypt (Sinai II),” Israel Studies, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Fall, 2014), 55-80. 189

As with the Egyptian and Syrian agreements of 1974, this deal, which came to be known as Sinai II, was capped off with a new Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between the United States and Israel, but this time the terms went even further than both these earlier agreements. In this newest memorandum, signed by Kissinger and Israeli foreign minister Yigal Allon, the United States pledged to coordinate its negotiating strategy with Israel during future negotiations in Geneva. Next, the U.S. pledged to conduct a joint study with Israel of its military needs and to be sympathetic to Israel’s requests for military aid to fulfill its defense requirements, including requests for

“advanced and sophisticated weapons.” But the agreement went even further in several respects. The Sinai II MOA also committed the United States to ensuring that Israel’s energy needs were met for the next five years if Israel could not secure enough oil on its own. This would be achieved by making U.S. oil available to Israel for purchase and, if necessary, providing the Israelis with the means to transport that oil to Israel.302

The MOA also had important ramifications for Israel’s relationship with the

Palestinians. In addition to looking favorably upon Israel’s military requirements and ensuring Israel’s energy supply, the United States also agreed to continue its policy of refusing to recognize or negotiate with the PLO until it recognized Israel’s right to exist and accepted UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.303 While the United States had publicly refused to negotiate with the PLO, American intelligence officials had met with PLO representatives multiple times during the 1970s. These contacts included an

302 Document 227: Memorandum of Agreement, September 1, 1975, FRUS, Volume XXVI, 828- 829. 303 Ibid., 831. 190 ongoing liaison between CIA case officer Robert Ames and Ali Hassan Salameh, the chief of the PLO’s intelligence department and someone with close personal ties to

Yasser Arafat. The MOA’s language surrounding the PLO, writes Kathleen Christison, amounted to a “diplomatic straightjacket” that actually hindered progress in Arab-Israeli negotiations for years to come.304

Following the conclusion of the Sinai II accords, American efforts to facilitate negotiations between Israel and its neighbors largely stalled for the remainder of the Ford presidency. But the cessation of shuttle diplomacy did not make all controversies in U.S.-

Israeli relations disappear. On the contrary, for the remainder of the Ford administration,

American officials dealt with a series of other issues related to American military aid to

Israel and Israel’s presence in the Occupied Territories.

The Ford Administration and Israel, September 1975-November 1976

On January 31, 1976, President Ford approved $2 billion in new military aid for

Israel. These funds were later included in a massive foreign aid bill totaling more than $9 billion, a bill approved by the Senate the following June. In total, the bill included $4.6 billion in economic and military aid for Israel and covered the period from July 1, 1975-

September 30, 1977.305 This massive figure made Israel the largest single recipient country (the next largest was Egypt) and represented the largest package of American aid for Israel since the United States recognized Israel in 1948. This continued a trend that

304 See Kathleen Christison, Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on U.S. Middle East Policy (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 155-156. On Henry Kissinger and U.S.-Palestinian contacts, see James R. Stocker, “A Historical Inevitability? Kissinger and the US Contacts with the Palestinians (1973-76),” The International History Review, 39:2 (2017), 316-337. On the CIA’s covert relationship with Ali Hassan Salameh, see Kai Bird, The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames (New York: Broadway Books, 2014). 305 See Gwetzman, “Senate Approved $9.4 Billion in Aid,” New York Times, June 15, 1976.). 191 began in the early 1960s, but this measure was unique in both its size and the fact that it came when Israel was not at war. But while this was an important moment in the history of U.S.-Israeli relations, this massive increase in American aid to Israel did not go unchallenged. There were voices within the U.S. government who questioned whether such massive aid for Israel was in the national security interests of the United States.

Even in late 1975, before the massive aid package for Israel was approved, officials in the Department of Defense were warning the White House that not only did

Israel not need large new amounts of American military aid but that such aid could be counterproductive and harm U.S. interests in the Middle East. In a Top-Secret memorandum for the President, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger gave the DOD’s perspective on future levels of military aid for Israel. He wrote that the Israeli Defense

Forces (IDF) “currently has sufficient military strength to defeat any combination of Arab forces in a renewed war and would require little or no emergency resupply in order to win.” He went on to point out that fully complying with MATMON B, Israel’s request for American military aid over the next decade, was based on worst-case scenario planning and would be difficult (if not impossible) for the DOD to fulfill. Schlesinger also warned that such an aid package could be damaging to American interests in the

Middle East. It would likely, he wrote, “exacerbate Arab perceptions of Israel as a kind of

Western spearhead and would be seen as giving Israel a kind of lien on our Middle

Eastern policy.”306

306 Memo from the Secretary of Defense to Ford re “Military Cooperation with Israel,” undated, “Israel (15),” Box 16, National Security Adviser Presidential Files for the Middle East and South Asia, 1974-1977, GPFL. Although this document is undated, other documents in the file indicate that it is from October 1975. 192

As they debated the proper level of American aid for Israel for 1977 and beyond,

American officials predicted that Israel would need less military aid from the United

States going forward. This was because Israel’s military was in good shape and should be able to hold its own against any possible combination of Arab countries until at least

1981. But they also pointed out that the U.S. government had an ulterior motive for setting high aid levels for Israel. As NSC officials Robert Plowden and Robert Oakley wrote in a memo for Brent Scowcroft, “there continues to be a political requirement for substantial aid levels, which enable us, inter alia, to avoid substantial cuts in assistance for Arab countries.”307 In other words, American military aid to Israel made it easier for the United States to supply military aid to Arab countries, presumably by mollifying the

Israeli government and pro-Israel forces in the United States.

As the largest recipient of American military aid, Israel was an important part of a

National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) that reviewed U.S. policies on arms transfers to other nations. This study, NSSM 223, was initiated by Henry Kissinger in

May 1975, during the Ford administration’s reassessment of U.S.-Israeli relations and was to be conducted by the National Security Council, with a final report to be delivered approximately a month later.308 In an Executive Summary of the final report produced in response to NSSM 223, the authors described arms transfers as important tool of foreign policy and national security. According to the review, U.S. arms deliveries for the year

307 Memo from Plowden and Oakley to Scowcroft re “FY 1978 Middle East Assistance Package,” October 23, 1976, “Middle East – General (18),” Box 2, National Security Adviser Presidential Files for the Middle East and South Asia, 1974-1977, GPFL. 308 See NSSM 223: “Review of U.S. Policy on Arms Transfers,” May 19, 1975, National Security Adviser NSSMs File, Box 2, Digital Collections, GFPL. (URL: https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/guides/findingaid/nssmnsdm.asp). (Accessed 5/29/20). 193

1974 were worth $5.4 billion while other services and transactions (which included spare parts, support equipment, and support services) over several years added up to another

$12.8 billion. As the report noted, these numbers far surpassed both other free-world arms suppliers and all communist countries. The report also pointed out that arms transfers were a means to an end, not an end in and of themselves, and to be effective,

American officials had to carefully balance competing objectives. This was especially true with Israel and the Middle East.309

In their discussion of Israel, the review’s authors noted that since 1967, American arms transfers were a major contribution to Israel’s emergence as a formidable military power in the Middle East. But they also warned that American support could backfire if it went too far. Lending too much military support to Israel could in turn trigger an Arab military buildup, which might lead to a renewal of hostilities, the opposite of what the

U.S. was trying to achieve in the Middle East. Arms transfers to the Middle East were also becoming even more complicated, because not only was the U.S. supplying military equipment to Israel, but it was also increasing its sales of military equipment to Arab countries such as Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. While acknowledging that some arms transfers were necessary to achieve short-term objectives, they cautioned that these benefits would be “purchased at the price of long-term injury if smoldering local conflicts later flare up anew and are fought out with more violence, destruction, and potential for

309 NSSM 223: “Review of US Policy on Arms Transfer,” undated, i-ii, “Responses – NSSM 223 – Review of the U.S. Policy on Arms Transfers (1),” Box 50, NSC Institutional Files, GFPL. 194 greater power involvement than would have been true in the absence of US defense transfers.”310

Barely two months after the Sinai II accords were signed, the Ford administration was confronted with a new Israel-related problem, this one originating much closer to

Washington. On November 10, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution

3379 which determined that Zionism was “a form of racism and racial discrimination.”311

The authors of the resolution based their conclusion on Israel’s ongoing occupation of

Palestinian lands, which they likened to racist regimes in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and

South Africa. The American ambassador to the UN, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, delivered a strong rebuke to the General Assembly. This incident brought together American foreign policy in the Middle East, the issue of human rights, the growing influence of the decolonized world, and American Jews’ attitudes toward Israel.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan became U.S. ambassador to the United Nations after serving as an aide in the Nixon White House and as the American ambassador to India. In his speech laying out the United States’ opposition to the General Assembly’s resolution,

Moynihan called the notion that Zionism was a form of racism “a political lie of a variety well known to the twentieth century and scarcely exceeded in all that annual of untruth and outrage.”312 Moynihan’s attack on the resolution centered on his belief that Zionism, which he defined as the Jewish equivalent of a national liberation movement based on belief and not birth, was utterly incompatible with racism. On top of that, he charged that

310 “Review of US Policy on Arms Transfers,” 24, Ibid. 311 “U.S. Denounces U.N. Resolution Equating Zionism with Racism,” The Department of State Bulletin, Vol. LXXIII, No. 1901 (December 1, 1975), 795. 312 Ibid., 792. 195 the authors of the resolution and those who had voted for it failed to properly define

Zionism. Finally, Moynihan denounced the resolution for the damage he predicted it would do to the cause of human rights.

According to one sympathetic scholar, Moynihan’s speech denouncing Resolution

3379 was one of the highpoints in Moynihan’s long political career, a symbol of the organic, deep, and enduring relationship between the United States and Israel and an extension of Moynihan’s love for America and liberal democracy.313 But despite the passion of Moynihan’s response to Resolution 3379, it completely ignored the underlying issue at the heart of the General Assembly’s resolution, which was Israel’s undemocratic rule over millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Although the United States had pledged not to talk to the PLO in the September 1,

1975, MOA, some American officials acknowledged that successful Arab-Israeli negotiations would, at some point, have to include the Palestinians in some capacity. One of those officials was Harold H. Saunders, director of the State Department’s Bureau of

Intelligence and Research. Saunders had extensive experience with American foreign policy in the Middle East, having served on the National Security Council since the early

1960s, where he was the White House’s Middle East expert during the Six-Day War in

June 1967 and later a key member of Henry Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy delegation. In testimony before the House of Representatives on December 1, 1975, Saunders stated that the United States was not currently prepared to talk to the PLO (at least not publicly), which still refused to recognize Israel and was behind terrorist attacks that killed Israeli

313 See Gil Troy, Moynihan’s Moment: America’s Fight Against Zionism as Racism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 5. 196 civilians. But he did state that peace in the Middle East would be impossible without addressing the plight of the Palestinians. Resolving the many problems facing the Middle

East following the 1947 partition of Palestine, the emergence of the State of Israel, and

Arab opposition to the Jewish state, Saunders testified, “will not be possible until agreement is reached defining a just and permanent status for the Arab peoples who consider themselves Palestinians.”314

One of the factors that complicated the Ford administration’s relationship with

Israel was the expanding settler movement in the Occupied Territories, especially in the

West Bank. As discussed in earlier chapters, previous U.S. administrations failed at critical moments to put pressure on the Israeli government to halt the settlers. Since the very first settlements were established in the late 1960s, the social and political background of the settlers themselves underwent a distinct shift. While the initial settlers came from both secular and religious backgrounds, by the early 1970s religiously motivated settlers came to dominate the movement, especially after Menachem Begin’s victory in 1977.

A vital moment in this transformation of the settler movement came in February of 1974 when an organization called Gush Emunim (translated as “Bloc of the Faithful”) was founded. Gush Emunim’s goal was to promote settlement in the Occupied Territories that Israel had controlled since June of 1967. According to the settlers’ beliefs, these territories were not captured lands but part of Eretz Israel (“the Land of Israel”), the land that God had designated as the homeland for the Jewish people. The West Bank, which

314 “Department Gives Position on Palestinian Issue,” The Department of State Bulletin, Vol. LXXIII, No. 1901 (December 1, 1975), 797. 197 settlers referred to by its biblical names Judea and Samaria, was considered especially important because it included such religiously significant cities as Hebron and Jerusalem.

The members of Gush Emunim believed that it was essential for Jews to occupy the entirety of Eretz Israel and made it their mission to encourage settlement in the Occupied

Territories and to defend those settlements once established from outside interference, including from the Israeli government.315

From the very beginning, the religious settler movement was strongly influenced by several important rabbis. Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, the son of a former Chief Rabbi of

Palestine and a long-time head of a Jerusalem yeshiva (a Jewish religious school), was one of the most important ideological supporters of Gush Emunim and the settler movement. According to Motti Inbari, a scholar of religion specializing in Jewish fundamentalism in modern Israel, it was not the excitement of June 1967 but the shock and outrage of October 1973 that gave rise to Gush Emunim. Faced with the prospect of an Arab army overrunning part of Eretz Israel or an Israeli government potentially returning that same territory as part of peace negotiations, religious settlers were determined to do everything they could to ensure that a Jewish government retained control of the Occupied Territories.316 Israel was not the only place which saw the rise of religious fundamentalist movements in the 1970s. As scholars such as Gilles Kepel have

315 On the origins of Gush Emunim, see Gershom Gorenberg, The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977 (New York: Times Books, 2006) and Michael Feige, Settling in the Hearts: Jewish Fundamentalism in the Occupied Territories (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2009), Chapter 1. On the ideology of Gush Emunim and its influence on Israel, see David Newman, “From Hitnachalut to Hitnatkut: The Impact of Gush Emunim and the Settlement Movement on Israeli Politics and Society,” Israel Studies, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Fall, 2005), 192-224. 316 Motti Inbari, Messianic Religious Zionism Confronts Israeli Territorial Compromises (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), Chapter 1. See also Feige, Settling in the Hearts. 198 shown, the decade saw the emergence of religious movements around the world as Jews,

Christians, Muslims, and others sought to counter the perceived failures of the modern, secular world by trying to recover the sacred foundations of organized society.317

The Israeli government’s conflict with the settler movement came to a head in

December 1975. Following a confrontation between the IDF and a group of settlers at

Sebastia in the West Bank, Yitzhak Rabin compromised with Gush Emunim activists. He also authorized four new settlements in the Golan Heights.318 Though Rabin gave in to pressure from the settler movement in this instance, this would not be his last clash with

Israeli settlers. They would clash again during Rabin’s second premiership in the 1990s, with tragic consequences.

American officials in the Ford administration were very sensitive to the controversy surrounding Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and tried to make sure that neither the President nor any other American official took any action that seemed to endorse the Israeli presence in the West Bank. For instance, NSC officials recommended that the White House reject an invitation from the Jewish National Fund (JNF) to celebrate the bicentennial anniversary of the United States on the grounds that the JNF was involved in land reclamation projects such as tree planting in the Occupied

Territories. According to a White House memorandum attached to the invitation, it was

U.S. policy to avoid any official or unofficial appearance that would acknowledge or

317 See Kepel, The Revenge of God: The Resurgence of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism in the Modern World (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1995). See also the essays in Martin Marty and R. Scott Appleby (ed.), The Fundamentalism Project, Volume 1: Fundamentalisms Observed (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991) and Thomas Borstelmann, The 1970s: A New Global History from Civil Rights to Economic Inequality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), pages 247-270. 318 On the confrontation at Sebastia, see Gorenberg, Chapter 11. 199 encourage the permanency of Israel’s occupation. Instead, the memo read, “Our policy remains that the status of the Occupied Territories is a matter for negotiation among the parties and we do not recognize unilateral efforts by one side or the other to claim these territories.” At the same time, not wanting to damage relations with the American Jewish community, the NSC officials urged that the invitation be declined on the grounds that the President was too busy, and that some other, less controversial event be found for the

President to address the American Jewish community.319 The same thing happened a few months later when the President was invited to address a convention of the Zionist

Organization of America (ZOA). NSC officials objected to the ZOA’s “militant support of Israeli expansionism,” which stood in the way of the U.S. objective of securing a

Middle East settlement based on UN Resolutions 242 and 338.320

As these events transpired, American diplomats in Israel observed Gush

Emunim’s activities and reported on them to their superiors at the State Department.

According to Thomas Dunnigan, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tel

Aviv, leaders of Gush Emunim pledged at a February 11, 1976, press conference that they planned to settle a million Jews and establish a hundred new settlements in the West

Bank over the next decade. While acknowledging that these specific claims were little more than hyperbole, Dunnigan stressed that such statements had to be taken seriously.

As he wrote to his superiors in Washington, “Gush Emunim intends to continue to press

319 Memo from Jeanne W. Davis to Bill Nicholson re “Invitation to the President to Attend Jewish National Fund Bicentennial Gala,” February 9, 1976, “Israel (1),” Box 7, National Security Adviser Files, NSC Middle East and South Asian Affairs Staff: Country Files, GFPL. 320 Memo from Jeanne W. Davis to Bill Nicholson re “Invitation for President to Address Zionist Organization of America,” “Jewish Groups (6),” Box 33, National Security Files, NSC Middle East and South Asian Affairs Staff: General Subject Files, GFPL. 200 its case for additional Israeli settlements particularly in Samaria, and that tough showdown awaits the [Israeli] cabinet.”321

While in these instances American concerns about Israel’s occupation and the growing settler movement were raised in private, the Ford administration also objected to

Israeli settlements in public. On March 23, 1976, the new American ambassador to the

United Nations, William Scranton, stated that the American position on the Occupied

Territories had been clear since 1967. Calling the settlements in the West Bank, including

East Jerusalem, illegal under international law and an obstacle to peace between Israel and its neighbors, he stated that an occupier must “maintain the occupied area as intact and unaltered as possible, without interfering with the customary life of the area, and any changes must be necessitated by the immediate needs of the occupation and be consistent with international law.”322

While the Americans did not see this statement as a departure from their established position, the reaction in Jerusalem was very different. Two days after

Scranton’s speech at the UN, Malcolm Toon, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, was summoned to a meeting with the Israeli foreign minister, Yigal Allon, on March 25. As

Toon recounted in a telegram to the State Department, the Israeli government interpreted

Scranton’s remarks as a departure from existing U.S. policy and a violation of the agreement reached between the U.S. and Israel in September 1975 following the

321 Telegram from Thomas Dunnigan at the American Embassy in Tel Aviv to the Secretary of State, February 12, 1976, Ibid. 322 “U.S. Vetoes Security Council Resolution on the Situation in the Territories Occupied by Israel: Statements by Ambassador Scranton,” Department of State Bulletin, Vol. LXXIV, No. 1921 (April 19, 1976), 528. 201 conclusion of the Sinai II Accords. Allon defended Israeli settlements in the Occupied

Territories as militarily necessary for Israel’s security and defended Israel’s occupation of the full city of Jerusalem. While leaving open the possibility of international management of Jerusalem’s holy sites, Allon pledged that Israel would never agree to a divided

Jerusalem.323 This was one of many instances where Israeli leaders reacted strongly at even the hint of the U.S. taking a position that was different from its own.

Violence in Lebanon was another area of the Middle East that was causing concern for U.S.-Israeli relations. In addition to Lebanon’s own internal divisions between ethnic and religious groups, Lebanon was also home to a large population of

Palestinian refugees, some of whom had lived in refugee camps for decades. After the

Palestine Liberation Organization was expelled from Jordan in 1970, its leaders had moved their operations to Lebanon, especially the capital city of Beirut. PLO militants were launching attacks into Israel from Lebanon, which prompted the Israelis to retaliate with shelling and raids into Lebanese territory. To make this volatile situation even more dangerous, neighboring Syria was also becoming more deeply involved in Lebanese internal politics.324

As the security situation in Lebanon deteriorated, the U.S. embassy in Beirut came to rely heavily on its informal, covert relationship with the PLO. On June 16, 1976, two American diplomats, including the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon Francis Meloy, were

323 Telegram from Toom at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to the Secretary of State, March 25, 1976, “Israel (2),” Box 7, National Security Adviser Files, NSC Middle East and South Asian Affairs Staff: Country Files, GFPL. 324 On the situation in Lebanon, see David W. Wight, “Kissinger’s Levantine Dilemma: The Ford Administration and the Syrian Occupation of Lebanon,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 37, No. 1 (January 2013), 144-177 and James R. Stocker, Spheres of Intervention: US Foreign Policy and the Collapse of Lebanon, 1967-1976 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016). 202 killed along with their driver by a Palestinian faction that opposed the PLO. Four days later, President Ford ordered the evacuation of all U.S. embassy personnel from Lebanon.

The evacuation was a success, in part thanks to assistance from the PLO, which provided security for the American withdrawal. But while these events showed how U.S. cooperation with the PLO could serve American interests, it was overshadowed by

American officials’ focus on Egyptian-Israeli negotiations and their commitments to

Israel.325

Israel and the U.S. Election of 1976

When Gerald Ford announced that he would run for President in 1976, he began his campaign in what one journalist at the time called a “climate of apathy at best and public disillusionment at worst.”326 Facing a popular Southern governor in Jimmy Carter, a tough economy, growing dissatisfaction with détente and its chief architect Henry

Kissinger, the shadow of Watergate, and the fallout from Ford’s decision to pardon

Richard Nixon, the Ford campaign looked for potential supporters wherever they could find them. To this end, the President Ford Committee made a concerted effort to appeal to Jewish voters in critical swing states, including New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey,

Illinois, Maryland, and Ohio. Though American Jews had largely voted for the

Democratic Party since the beginning of the twentieth century, Republican strategists had

325 On the deaths of U.S. diplomats in Beirut, see James M. Markham, “U.S. Ambassador and Aide Kidnapped and Murdered in Beirut Combat Sector,” New York Times, June 17, 1976. On the U.S.- Israeli cooperation during the Lebanese civil war, see Bird, The Good Spy, Chapter 7 and Osamah Kahlil, “The Radical Crescent: The United States, the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and the Lebanese Civil War, 1973-1978,” Diplomacy and Statecraft, Vol. 27, No. 3 (2016), pp. 496-522. 326 Jules Witcover, Marathon: The Pursuit of the Presidency 1972-1976 (New York: The Viking Press, 1977), x. For another journalist’s account of the 1976 campaign, see Elizabeth Drew, American Journal: The Events of 1976 (New York: Random House, 1977). 203 some cause for optimism. After winning only 17 percent of the Jewish vote in 1968,

Richard Nixon received more than twice that number in his 1972 reelection campaign. If

Ford could do the same, his aides reasoned, he stood a chance in the election.327

The Ford campaign made the American relationship with Israel the centerpiece of its effort to convince American Jews to vote Republican in the 1976 presidential election.

Through meetings with leaders of American Jewish organizations and members of the

Jewish press and targeted campaign advertisements in Jewish newspapers and periodicals in critical states, the Ford campaign hoped to win the Jewish vote, or at least a significant percentage of it, in states with large Jewish populations to offset the Democrats’ electoral advantage in the South.

Max Fisher, the wealthy Detroit businessman and Republican donor who often acted as an unofficial liaison between the White House and the Israeli government, was the leading figure in the Ford campaign’s efforts to court the American Jewish vote in

1976. In a memo dated August 2, to presidential chief of staff Richard Cheney, Fisher argued that the Ford campaign had an opportunity to win substantial support from

American Jewish voters in vital states. Fisher specifically pointed out that American Jews held the President in high regard for both his personal integrity and his strong support of

Israel. He wrote that “If there is one thing the Jewish community is united on it is the preservation and security and viability of Israel. We will emphasize the President’s long

327 For data on American Jews’ voting behavior in U.S. presidential elections from 1916-2000, see Ira N. Forman, “The Politics of Minority Consciousness: The Historical Voting Behavior of American Jews” in Sandy Maisel (ed.), Jews in American Politics (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2001), 153. For more on the Ford campaign’s strategy for the 1976 election, see Kaufman, Ambition, Pragmatism, and Party, Chapter Eight and Mieczkowski, Gerald Ford and the Challenges of the 1970s, Chapters 17-18. 204 record of specific action, his deep personal commitment[,] and the fact that in the two budgets he has submitted, he has requested 40% of all the aid Israel has received from the

United States since 1948.”328 Those exact arguments soon found their way into campaign advertisements and brochures funded and produced by the Ford campaign.

At a gathering of more than a hundred Jewish leaders on September 20, 1976,

Ford emphasized his own, and his administration’s, deep commitment to supporting

Israel. He pointed to his “excellent personal rapport” with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak

Rabin, who “knows that the decisions we make or that I make are indicative of our close allegiance and alliance with Israel, he knows I mean what I say, and I do.” Ford promised that under his watch, the United States would not impose a solution to the Middle East peace process on the Israelis and would not accept a peace plan that asked for one-sided concessions from Israel. He told his audience that “This administration is totally committed to the security and safety of Israel.”329

Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign also recognized the importance of the

Jewish vote in 1976. On September 30, in a speech to the Conference of Presidents of

Major Jewish Organizations, Carter argued that he was the better candidate for the

American Jewish community. He criticized the Ford administration for inaction on the issue of Jews seeking to leave the Soviet Union, for failing to counter the Arab boycott of

American companies that did business with Israel, and the growing American

328 Memo from Max M. Fisher to Richard B. Cheney, August 2, 1976, “Jewish Desk – Campaign Strategy,” Box F36, President Ford Campaign Committee Records, GFPL. 329 “Reparks of the President and Question and Answer Session to the Jewish Leaders,” p. 2-3, “Presidential Meeting with American Jewish leaders, Washington, D.C., 9/20/76, David Lissey Papers, Box 41, GFPL. 205 relationship with Saudi Arabia. On relations with Israel, Carter was clear on his position:

“We must stand staunchly with Israel. We must let the world know that there will never be any deviation in our commitment to the right of Israel to exist -- to exist in peace -- to exist as a Jewish state. This is a commitment of the American people and our government. And we must provide whatever aid -- economic or military aid -- that’s necessary to permit Israel to live and to live strongly and to live in peace.”330 Carter also tried to counter the perception that his Baptist faith was a liability for American Jews by pointing to the Bible as a common text that Christians and Jews share.

Despite the Ford campaign’s appeals to Jewish voters, more comments from Air

Force General George Brown came to light as Election Day approached that undermined the campaign’s message to American Jews. In a wide-ranging interview with the Israeli journalist and political cartoonist Ranan Lurie in October, Brown said that Israel and its armed forces were more of a burden than a blessing for the United States because supplying Israel with American military equipment took that equipment out of the hands of U.S. troops. Brown also made incendiary comments about the armed forces of U.S. ally Great Britain and the leadership of the Shah of Iran.331 At a Pentagon briefing alongside Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Brown defended himself by saying that he meant his comments in a strictly military sense. He did not, Brown emphasized,

330 Speech to the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, released September 30, 1976, “Conference on Presidents of Jewish Organizations,” Container 309, Pre-Presidential Papers, Jimmy Carter Library (JCL). 331 Lee Lescase, “Gen. Brown Is in Hot Water Again,” Washington Post, October 19, 1976. 206 disagree with the U.S. commitment to Israel and touted his own actions in support of

Israel.332

In the end, despite the Ford campaign’s best efforts, the Democrat Jimmy Carter prevailed in 1976 in what proved to be a surprisingly close contest. Ford received 34% of the Jewish vote, the same percentage Nixon won in 1972, but not enough to make a difference in the overall results.333 It would be up to Carter and his team to take the next step toward revitalizing peace negotiations in the Middle East.

Conclusion

The years 1974-1976 saw a deepening of the U.S.-Israeli alliance without a resolution of the tensions inherent in the complex relationship between these two countries. On the one hand, the United States dramatically increased its military aid to

Israel, and, as part of its post-Sinai II agreement with Israel, committed itself to guaranteeing Israel’s military and energy needs in the coming years. But at the same time, there were those within the Ford administration and the U.S. government who questioned both the level of American aid to Israel and the long-term value of U.S. military aid to Israel in the first place.

Henry Kissinger had a deep personal stake in the final evaluation of the Ford administration’s foreign policy. After writing two massive memoirs within six years of leaving government service, the former secretary of state waited seventeen years to

332 Transcript of News Conference with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and General George S. Brown at the Pentagon, October 18, 1976, The Rumsfeld Papers. (URL: https://papers.rumsfeld.com/library/). (Accessed 9/17/20). 333 For data on the Jewish vote in 1976, see Forman, “The Politics of Minority Consciousness” in Maisel (ed.), Jews in American Politics, 153. 207 publish his third memoir, Years of Renewal, which covered the years 1974-1976.

Published in 1999, Kissinger argued in this volume that the Ford administration made a vital contribution to the United States’ ultimate victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold

War. Historian Robert Kagan challenged in his review of Years of Renewal, calling it a poor attempt to defend Kissinger’s (and by extension, Richard Nixon’s and Gerald

Ford’s) policy of détente and link their efforts to those of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.334

In his final evaluation of the Ford administration’s actions in the Middle East,

Kissinger did something similar in order to defend his and Gerald Ford’s record in that region. Near the end of Years of Renewal, he wrote that “in the Arab-Israeli conflict, [the

Ford administration] had maintained America’s central diplomatic role, and advanced from removing the residue of war to initiating firsts steps toward peace.”335 This narrative established Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy and the Sinai II accords as important precursors for the Carter administration’s successful conclusion of a peace treaty between Egypt and

Israel in 1979.

Journalist Edward Sheehan looked ahead to the future of American foreign policy in the Middle East in his 1976 account of Kissinger’s Middle East diplomacy, the year of a presidential election and the last full year of the Ford administration. While recognizing the achievements of Kissinger and Ford, Sheehan concluded that shuttle diplomacy would not be enough to secure peace in the Middle East going forward. Going forward,

334 For Kissinger’s claim about his and Ford’s contribution to victory in the Cold War, see Years of Renewal (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999), 40. For Robert Kagan’s response, see Kagan, “The Revisionist: How Henry Kissinger won the Cold War, or so he thinks,” The New Republic (June 21, 1999), 38-48. 335 Kissinger, 1064. 208

Sheehan wrote, “the task of American diplomacy is to pursue a general settlement with stamina and speed.”336 Ford’s successor in the White House would try to just that, and quickly discovered how difficult such an ambitious goal would be to achieve.

336 Edward R.F. Sheehan, The Arabs, Israelis, and Kissinger: A Secret History of American Diplomacy in the Middle East (New York: Reader’s Digest Press, 1976), 215. 209

Chapter 5: Beyond Camp David: The United States and Israel during the Carter

Administration

In March 1979, nearly six months removed from his triumph at Camp David,

President Jimmy Carter traveled to the Middle East in hopes of finally securing a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. When Carter had addressed a joint session of Congress nearly six months earlier on September 18, 1978, he spoke triumphantly of the breakthrough Egyptian and Israeli negotiations had achieved after nearly two weeks of intense negotiations. But the subsequent talks, which were supposed to take three months to reach a final peace treaty between the two former enemies, dragged on for more than twice that long. Hoping to wrap up the negotiations personally, Carter first traveled to

Egypt, where he met with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. As had been the case throughout the administration’s Middle East negotiation efforts, Carter found a much more sympathetic reception in Cairo than he did in Jerusalem. As Carter confided to his diary on March 8, 1979, “As I’ve said many times, I have never been pleasantly surprised by the Israelis.”337

When Jimmy Carter replaced Gerald Ford in the White House in January 1977, he inherited a slate of pressing international and domestic challenges, including a stalled peace process in the Middle East. Since the end of the 1973 October War, Henry

Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy had produced a limited disengagement agreement between

Israel and Syria and two more between Israel and Egypt. But negotiators had made little to no progress since the Sinai II Accords were signed on September 1, 1975. That

337 Jimmy Carter, White House Diary (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2010), 300. 210 agreement was an important intermediary step toward peace between Israel and Egypt, the leading power in the Arab world, and deepened the U.S.-Israeli alliance by committing the United States to ensuring Israel’s military edge.

At the beginning of 1977, the Arab-Israeli conflict was entering a new phase.

After decades as the Soviet Union’s most important ally in the Middle East, Egypt was moving steadily into the Western camp under President Anwar Sadat. Instead of looking to Moscow for foreign aid, Sadat increasingly turned to Washington for assistance in building up his military and addressing Egypt’s increasingly dire economic situation. In

Israel, the fallout of the 1973 October War was still being felt in the country’s domestic politics. After replacing Golda Meir in 1974, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had tried to rebuild Israeli security, but his government was unstable and deeply divided. Israeli forces still occupied the majority-Arab territories of the West Bank and Gaza. On the political front, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was achieving new prominence and acceptance in the international community and continued to carry out terrorist attacks against Israel from bases inside Lebanon.

This stalemate led many American experts to reexamine some of their core assumptions about the Arab-Israeli peace process and look for alternatives to Kissinger’s step-by-step “shuttle diplomacy.” Perhaps the most prominent example of this was a report by a group of scholars from the Brookings Institution, a major Washington, D.C. think tank. Originally published in 1975, the “Brookings Report on the Middle East” concluded that not only was a new approach to Arab-Israeli negotiations badly needed, but also that the United States had strong political, economic, and moral interests in securing a stable peace in the Middle East. The report also laid out a detailed list of the 211 elements that a comprehensive peace agreement in the Middle East should include.338

Other experts were similarly calling for the U.S. to revise its relationship with Israel in order to secure a peace agreement in the Middle East. Writing in the journal Foreign

Affairs in early 1977, George Ball, a former senior official in the State Department whom

President Carter considered for the post of Secretary of State, argued that the United

States should do more to pressure Israel to accept Arab leaders’ demands for concessions.339

At the beginning of 1977, Jimmy Carter was moving into the White House at a tenuous moment in American political history. Carter, the former governor of Georgia, ran for President in the 1976 election as an outsider from Washington. Touting himself as a moral and honest candidate untouched by the Watergate controversy, Carter pledged to restore Americans’ faith in their government and to tackle persistent domestic and international challenges. But despite the optimistic note on which it began, Carter’s presidency proved to be a difficult and frustrating one. In addition to serious economic problems from persistent unemployment and inflation to rising energy prices, a series of international crises in the Carter administration’s final years soured many Americans on the reformer from Georgia. By the time it ended with Ronald Reagan’s victory over

Carter in the 1980 presidential election, the Carter administration was largely seen as a failure. This view has changed in recent decades as historians, journalists, and former aides to President Carter have reassessed his presidency with the benefit of time and more

338 For the full text of the Brookings report, see “The Brookings Report on the Middle East,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Winter, 1977), pp. 195-205. 339 George W. Ball, “How to Save Israel in Spite of Herself,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 55, No. 3 (April, 1977), pp. 453-471. 212 primary sources. Two of the most recent efforts to revive President Carter’s reputation come from Stuart Eizenstat, a former adviser to the president on domestic politics, and journalist Jonathan Alter, author of a most recent comprehensive biography of the thirty- ninth president. Both Alter and Eizenstat agree that, despite his failures, Jimmy Carter was one of the most consequential and accomplished presidents in recent American history.340

Along with his record on domestic policy and the economy, Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy record was strongly criticized both during his term and in the years immediately afterward. This largely negative view has changed over the years as more and more documents become available at archives such as the Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta, Georgia. Writing less than twenty years after Carter left office, historian

Douglas Brinkley concluded that, despite its poor reputation, the Carter administration achieved many notable successes. Beginning with Gaddis Smith’s 1986 study, several scholars have reached the same conclusion about President Carter’s foreign policy.

Though most of his advisers lacked the public profile of Henry Kissinger, scholars are also demonstrating how officials such as the political scientist and National Security

340 See Stuart E. Eizenstat, President Carter: The White House Years (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2018) and Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020). For an early historian’s evaluation of the Carter administration, see Burton I. Kaufman, The Presidency of James Earl Carter, Jr (Lawrence, KA: University of Kansas Press, 1993). For two recent histories of the 1970s that put Jimmy Carter and his presidency into the context of that eventful decade, see Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (New York: The Free Press, 2001), especially Chapter 5, and Thomas Borstelmann, The 1970s: A New Global History from Civil Rights to Economic Inequality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 263-277. 213

Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski played important roles in shaping U.S. foreign policy during the late 1970s.341

The Carter administration took office at a pivotal moment in the history of the

Cold War. Under Presidents Nixon and Ford, the United States had pursued a strategy of détente with the Soviet Union in hopes of reducing tensions with the communist superpower while retaining U.S. power in the world. This strategy had produced some notable successes, including successful agreements with the Soviets over grain exports and limitations on nuclear weapons. But détente also inspired fierce criticism from both hawkish Republicans and Democrats, who believed that the U.S. was losing its edge to the Soviet Union. Others complained that détente’s acceptance of the status quo abandoned American ideals of democracy promotion and human rights.342 These criticisms also arose in the context of the Middle East peace process when critics charged that Carter’s tense relationship with Israel was alienating an ally and fellow democracy in a volatile region.

During the 1960s and 1970s the struggle between the United States and the Soviet

Union for influence in the Middle East had played an important role in the conflict

341 See Douglas Brinkley, “The Rising Stock of Jimmy Carter: The ‘Hands on’ Legacy of Our Thirty-ninth President,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Fall 1996), 505-529. For some of the first serious studies of Carter’s foreign policy record based on archival research, see Gaddis Smith, Morality, Reason, and Power: American Diplomacy in the Carter Years (New York: Hill and Wang, 1986), Robert A. Strong, Working in the World: Jimmy Carter and the Making of American Foreign Policy (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2000), Scott Kaufman, Plans Unraveled: The Foreign Policy of the Carter Administration (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008), and Betty Glad, An Outsider in the White House: Jimmy Carter, His Advisors, and the Making of American Foreign Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009). On the influential role played by Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, see Justin Vaisse, Zbigniew Brzezinski: America’s Grand Strategist (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018). 342 On criticisms of détente, see Jeremi Suri, “Détente and Its Discontents,” in Schulman and Zelizer (ed.), Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008). 214 between Israel and its Arab neighbors. U.S. officials supported Israel as an anti- communist bastion amongst a sea of Soviet-backed Arab countries, and in 1970 and 1973

Arab-Israeli wars became proxy conflicts between the superpowers. But by the end of the

1970s this dynamic was changing. After Anwar Sadat replaced Gamal Abdel Nasser at the end of 1970, Egypt, the most powerful Arab state in the Middle East, distanced itself from the Soviet Union and drifted further and further into the American camp. As Lorenz

Luthi observes in his recent global history of the Cold War, by 1979 the U.S.-Soviet rivalry was no longer a major factor in shaping the Arab-Israeli conflict.343 This was a significant development because it undermined the Cold War rationale for a close U.S.-

Israeli alliance and shifted the focus away from outside superpowers and back to local actors. Nonetheless, American officials continued to view the Middle East through a Cold

War lens.

One of the most significant features of the incoming Carter administration’s approach to the world was an emphasis on human rights. International organizations like the United Nations and non-governmental organizations were already calling for governments to take protecting human rights around the world seriously, especially since

World War II and the Holocaust. In a significant break with his predecessors, Jimmy

Carter made the promotion of human rights around the world a key objective of U.S. foreign policy. It was, according to historians David Schmitz and Vanessa Walker, an attempt to create a “post-Cold War foreign policy.”344 Carter also signaled his

343 See Lorenz M. Luthi, Cold Wars: Asia, the Middle East, Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2020), especially Chapter 20. 344 See David Schmitz and Vanessa Walker, “Jimmy Carter and the Foreign Policy of Human Rights: The Development of a Post-Cold War Foreign Policy,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 28, No. 1 (January 215 commitment to promoting human rights abroad by tapping Andrew Young to be his ambassador to the United Nations, a cabinet-level position. Young, who as a young minister had been a close associate of Dr. Martin Luther King and an active participant in

1960s civil rights campaigns, later served in the House of Representatives as a Democrat from Georgia, Carter’s home state. As UN ambassador, Young would make many key contributions to the Carter administration’s foreign policy in Africa but was forced to resign after failing to report a meeting with a representative of the Palestine Liberation

Organization (PLO) to the State Department.345

The 1970s had already seen the United States become involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict to an unprecedented degree. As Secretary of State under Presidents Richard

Nixon and Gerald Ford, Henry Kissinger had traveled back and forth across the Middle

East to negotiate limited disengagement agreements between Israel and Egypt and Israel and Syria. These efforts were aimed at both increasing stability in the region and further reducing the Soviet Union’s influence there. Under Jimmy Carter these efforts expanded further for, unlike his two Republican predecessors, this president took a deep personal interest in the Middle East and made the region a cornerstone of his foreign policy. The administration demonstrated the importance of the Middle East to its foreign policy from the outset when on January 21, exactly one day after taking office, Carter signed a memo

2004), pp. 113-143. For more on the relationship between human rights and U.S. foreign policy in the 1970s, see Barbara J. Keys, Reclaiming American Virtue: The Human Rights Revolution of the 1970s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). 345 On Young’s service in the Carter administration, see Andrew J. DeRoche, Andrew Young: Civil Rights Ambassador (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Inc., 2003), especially Chapters 4-5. 216 directing his senior advisers to produce a report on the short-term issues facing the

Middle East and the long-term prospects for Arab-Israeli peace.346

Historians who analyze the Carter administration’s record on the world stage usually cite American efforts to facilitate peace talks between Israel and Egypt as one of

Carter’s most important foreign policy achievements. Betty Glad, for instance, wrote that the negotiations at Camp David in September 1978 saw Jimmy Carter at his peak as president, “tenacious, well-informed, and flexible.”347 But in the past decade scholars have become more critical of Carter’s actions in the Middle East. As more and more classified documents become available to researchers and as historians broaden their lens to include more discussions of domestic politics and international actors such as the

Palestinians, a more complicated picture emerges. Instead of an unparalleled triumph, today historians are more likely to see the Camp David talks as a limited success and a missed opportunity. Seth Anziska went even further by calling the Camp David talks a conscious case of “state prevention,” in which the Palestinians were denied the right to participate in the very talks that would shape their future.348

Jimmy Carter’s interest in the Middle East was based on both his own personal experiences and a deep religious faith. In his book The Blood of Abraham, Carter

346 Document 1: Presidential Review Memorandum/NSC 3, “Middle East,” Washington, January 21, 1977, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1977-1980, Volume VIII: Arab-Israeli Dispute, January 1977-August 1978 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2013). 347 Glad, 154. 348 Seth Anziska, Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), 4. For other recent studies of Carter’s Middle East policies, see Daniel Strieff, Jimmy Carter and the Middle East: The Politics of Presidential Diplomacy (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015), Salim Yaqub, Imperfect Strangers: Americans, Arabs, and U.S.-Middle East Relations in the 1970s (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016), Chapter 8, and Jorgen Jensehaugen, Arab-Israeli Diplomacy under Carter: The U.S., Israel and the Palestinians (New York and London: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2018). 217 recounted a trip to Israel that he made in May 1973 while still governor of Georgia.

Arriving in Israel months before the trauma of the October War, Carter describes how he and his wife Rosalyn visited several kibbutzim and met with Israeli leaders, archeologists,

Jewish and Muslim politicians, and recent Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union.

Reflecting his deep Southern Baptist faith, Carter wrote that, for him, “there is no way to approach or enter Israel without thinking first about the Bible and the history of the land and its people.”349 As several authors have shown, Carter’s deep religious faith was an important factor behind his efforts to promote peace in the Middle East.350

President Carter’s desire to address the Palestinian issue further distinguished his

Middle East policy from that of his predecessors. In his memoirs, Carter explicitly tied the plight of the Palestinian people to his administration’s emphasis on human rights, writing that “The continued deprivation of Palestinian rights was not only used as the primary lever against Israel, but was contrary to the basic moral and ethical principles of both our countries.”351 But despite the president’s interest in the Palestinian issue, his administration was hamstrung by several factors, including intense opposition from

Israeli leaders. Carter’s desire to make progress on the Palestinian issue was also hindered by the Ford administration’s commitments to Israel under the September 1975

349 Jimmy Carter, The Blood of Abraham: Insights into the Middle East (Fayetteville, AK: University of Arkansas Press, 1993), 29. 350 See Gary Scott Smith, Faith and the Presidency: From George Washington to Georg W. Bush (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 316-317; William Steding, Presidential Faith and Foreign Policy: Jimmy Carter the Disciple and Ronald Reagan the Alchemist (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), Chapter 5; and Darren M. McDonald, “Blessed are the Policy Makers: Jimmy Carter’s Faith-Based Approach to the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 39, No. 3 (June 2015), 452-476. For a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between American foreign relations and religion, see Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (New York: Anchor Books, 2012). 351 Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (Fayetteville, AK: University of Arkansas Press, 1995), 284. 218

Memorandum of Agreement (MOA). Under this agreement, Henry Kissinger pledged that the United States would not negotiate with the PLO unless it met several very specific conditions, including renouncing violence and recognizing Israel’s right to exist within its established borders. The Carter administration’s policies toward the

Palestinians have been a subject of intense discussion by historians in recent years. This literature acknowledges how President Carter’s rhetoric and policies toward the

Palestinians were a departure from his predecessors, but it also emphasizes the limitations on U.S. outreach to the PLO during the late 1970s. No matter how strongly the President or others felt about the plight of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, their cause was always secondary to the U.S. relationship with Israel and broader regional concerns.352

Throughout his presidency Jimmy Carter had a difficult relationship with the

American Jewish community, especially its leadership. While most American Jews voted for Carter in 1976, many were wary of the new president for several reasons. One factor was Carter’s religious faith. During a period when Protestant evangelicals were emerging as an important force in American domestic politics, especially on the right, some

American Jews were concerned about what Carter’s devout Southern Baptist faith would mean for the American tradition of religious freedom and evangelicals’ views of the

Jewish people. Ironically, the same deep theological convictions that made the president care so deeply about the Middle East also made American Jews nervous. American

352 See for instance Kathleen Christison, Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on U.S. Middle East Policy (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), Chapter 7; Victor V. Nemchenok, “‘These People Have an Irrevocable Right to Self-Government:’ United States Policy and the Palestinian Question, 1977-1979,” Diplomacy & Statecraft, Vol. 20 (2009), 595-618; Jeremy Pressman, “Explaining the Carter Administration’s Israeli-Palestinian Solution,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 37, No. 5 (2013), 1117- 1147; and Craig Daigle, “Beyond Camp David: Jimmy Carter, Palestinian Self-Determination, and Human Rights,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 42, No. 5 (November 2018), 802-830. 219

Jewish leaders were also disturbed by what they saw as Carter’s even-handed approach to the Middle East, an approach in which Israeli concerns were weighed alongside those of other Arab nations and, to some extent, the Palestinians.

All of this made for a tense relationship between Carter and the Jewish community, one of the Democratic Party’s core constituencies. In addition to his domestic policy responsibilities, Stuart Eizenstat was also deeply involved in discussions of the administration’s policies in the Middle East. As an American Jew who was deeply concerned about Israel, Eizenstat emerged as an important adviser to the President on

Israeli matters and often served as a liaison between the White House and American

Jewish leaders. Reflecting on this relationship in 2018, Eizenstat argued that the Carter administration had many successes, but its poor relations with the American Jewish community was one of its most important failures.353

From Comprehensive Hopes to Bilateral Realities, 1977-1978

Early on in its tenure, the Carter administration made the Arab-Israeli conflict a centerpiece of its foreign policy. The “Brookings Report on the Middle East” had a significant impact on the administration’s early approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Instead of continuing Henry Kissinger’s strategy of pursuing piecemeal agreements that might someday lead to a more comprehensive solution, the authors of the Brookings

Report called for the United States to take a comprehensive approach to the peace process, one that included Israelis, Arabs from multiple countries, the Palestinians, and

353 See Eizenstat, President Carter, 494. For more on Carter’s difficult relationship with the American Jewish community during his presidency, see Arlene Lazarowitz, “Ethnic Influence and American Foreign Policy: American Jewish Leaders and President Jimmy Carter,” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Fall 2010), 112-136. 220 the Soviet Union. This approach mirrored the one outlined by Secretary of State William

Rogers in December 1969 but never implemented by the Nixon administration (see

Chapter 3). Among the report’s authors were political scientists Malcom Kerr, Nadav

Safran, and Steven Spiegel, each of whom had written extensively about the Arab world and/or U.S.-Israeli relations. More significantly, two more of the report’s co-authors would go on to hold senior foreign policy posts in the Carter administration: Zbigniew

Brzezinski as National Security Adviser, and William Quandt as the National Security

Council’s point man for the Middle East.354

Shortly after taking office in January, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance traveled to the Middle East, stopping first in Israel before moving on to Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and

Syria. Reporting on his visit with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Vance wrote in a telegram to President Carter that he had been warmly received by the Israelis, who were eager to continue the close American-Israeli relationship and appeared open to restarting stalled peace negotiations.355

Several weeks later Yitzhak Rabin himself visited the United States and met with

Carter at the White House. At their first meeting on March 7, Carter told the Israeli prime minister that he was firmly committed to the U.S.-Israeli partnership, calling it a

“commitment of the Executive branch, the Legislative branch, and the American people, based on long-standing policy.”356 Recalling this meeting in his memoirs, Rabin wrote

354 On the report’s impact on Carter’s Middle East policy, see Jorgen Jensehaugen, “Blueprint for Arab-Israeli Peace? President Carter and the Brookings Report,” Diplomacy & Statecraft, Vol. 25 (2014), 492-508. 355 See Document 8: Telegram from Vance to Carter, Jerusalem, February 17, 1977, FRUS, 1977- 1980, Volume VIII. 356 Document 18: Memorandum of Conversation, Washington, March 7, 1977, Ibid., 133. 221 that Carter’s words were “music to my ears.”357 Over the course of this meeting and another the following day, the American and Israeli leaders and their aides discussed a range of issues from resuming peace talks in Geneva to Israel’s borders, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, settlement activity, and levels of American aid to Israel.

While there remained major differences between the United States and Israel on many issues, Carter went out of his way to assure the Israeli prime minister that he was fully committed to Israel’s security. He emphasized that the American commitment to Israel went beyond politics. Noting that many Americans of his faith background regarded the founding of Israel as the fulfillment of a religious prophecy, Carter said that this deep commitment “offers a permanence in our relationship that will guarantee the future against change.”358

Less than two months into his presidency, Carter’s remarks at a town hall meeting in Clinton, Massachusetts, generated a stir among both American Jews and Israeli leaders. When asked by a Reverend Richard Harding about what needed to be done to establish a “meaningful and lasting” peace in the Middle East, Carter answered that the three most important prerequisites were for Arab countries to recognize Israel’s right to exist, for Israel to return to its pre-June 1967 borders, and for the Palestinian issue to be addressed in a meaningful way. On the third issue, the Palestinians, Carter told the town hall crowd that “There has to be a homeland provided for the Palestinian refugees who

357 Yitzhak Rabin, The Rabin Memoirs (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1979), 292. 358 Document 20: Memorandum of Conversation between Carter, Rabin, and their senior aides, Washington, March 8, 1977, FRUS, 1977-1980, Vol. VIII, 156. 222 have suffered for many, many years.”359 Israeli leaders and their allies in the United

States seized on this remark, accusing the president of endorsing a separate and independent Palestinian state.

While U.S. officials were laying the groundwork for a new peace initiative in the

Middle East, national elections in Israel introduced a new element into the region’s politics. Ever since the founding of the State of Israel, the country’s politics had been dominated by the Labor party and other left-wing parties. But this changed on May 17 when, to the surprise of political observes in both Israel and the United States, right-wing and religious parties led by Likud and its leader Menachem Begin received the most votes. Facing a difficult economy, the lingering effects of the 1973 October War, a growing movement to settle Israelis in the Occupied Territories, and widespread disillusionment with Yitzhak Rabin’s government, Israeli voters rejected the country’s longstanding status quo.360

In the spring of 1977, Samuel Lewis was getting ready to take up his post as the new U.S. ambassador to Israel. An experienced diplomat who had worked under both

Henry Kissinger in Washington and Daniel Patrick Moynihan at the UN in New York,

Lewis was careful not arrive in Israel while the 1977 elections were still underway.

Recalling this time in an oral history interview for the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Lewis said that no one at the State Department or the Central Intelligence

359 Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session at the Clinton Town Meeting, Clinton, Massachusetts, March 16, 1977, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Jimmy Carter, 1977, Book I—January 20 to June 24, 1977 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977), 387. 360 On the Israeli context of the May 1977 elections, see Howard M. Sachar, A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), especially Chapter XXVI; Anita Shapira, Israel: A History (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2012), Chapter 16; and Colin Shindler, A History of Modern Israel (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), Chapter 7. 223

Agency (CIA) predicted that Begin and his Likud party would come out on top.361 During his nearly eight years as the U.S. ambassador in Tel Aviv, Lewis emerged as an astute observer of Israeli politics and U.S.-Israeli relations in his dispatches to Washington.

While the Americans failed to predict Begin’s victory, they immediately recognized the historic importance of this election for the Middle East. According to a telegram addressed to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, American diplomats in Israel believed that recent tensions in the U.S.-Israeli relationship and particularly disagreements over U.S. military aid to Israel had contributed to Labor’s poor performance in Israeli national elections. Instead of trusting the Israeli political establishment yet again, Israeli voters had apparently opted for something new. As

Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher wrote to Cyrus Vance, “the Israeli electorate foresees hard times ahead and has prepared to batten down the hatches by taking a strong swing to the right.”362

Likud’s unexpected victory was driven in part by Israeli voters who were born in

Arab countries, many of whom did not feel fully accepted in an Israel long dominated by leaders with European heritage. Rooted in disillusionment with the Labor government of

Yitzhak Rabin, allegations of government corruption, and lingering trauma of the 1973

October War, the elections of May 1977 brought about a sea-change in Israeli politics. As

Bernard Avishai observed in an essay for the New York Review of Books, “In voting for the Likud, Israelis have changed their political direction on many fundamental issues of

361 Interview with Samuel W. Lewis, Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST), (1998), 47. 362 Document 35: Telegram for Cyrus Vance, Washington, May 18, 1977, FRUS, 1977-1980, Vol. VIII, 266. 224

Israeli life: a quite different Israel has pushed through the accumulated layers of the old

Labor Zionist establishment, and neither Israel nor ‘Zionism’ can be the same.”363

Menachem Begin was not a new figure in Israeli politics. Born in 1913 in what is today Poland, Begin joined the Revisionist Zionist movement as a teenager. Founded by

Vladimir Jabotinsky, the Revisionists were a small right-wing group within the broader

Zionist movement who rejected the left-wing ideology of other Zionists and called for creating a Jewish state in Palestine by force if necessary. After escaping to Palestine during World War II, Begin joined the Irgun underground movement, which launched attacks against British authorities and installations, including the infamous bombing of the King David Hotel on June 22, 1946, in which nearly 100 people were killed. During the Israeli War of Independence, the Irgun was responsible for the attack on the Arab village of Der Yassin on April 9, 1948, where around 200 Arab civilians were killed by

Irgun fighters. Begin and the Irgun were also involved in a confrontation with Jewish forces loyal to the new Israeli government of David Ben Gurion over the Altalena, a ship carrying arms for the Irgun. After a tense confrontation between the Irgun and the newly created Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on June 19-20, 1948, Begin and the Irgun accepted the Ben Gurion government’s authority and joined the new country’s democratic political process. Begin soon emerged as the leader of the right-wing Herut party which, apart from one brief period in the late 1960s, was always in opposition to the ruling Labor- dominated Israeli governments.364

363 Bernard Avishai, “A New Israel,” New York Review of Books, June 23, 1977. 364 For biographies of Menachem Begin, see Avi Shilon, Menachem Begin: A Life (Yale University Press, 2012) and Daniel Gordis, Menachem Begin: The Battle for Israel’s Soul (New York: Schoken Books, 2014). On the roots of the Israeli right in the Revisionist Zionism of Vladimir Jabotinsky, 225

The May 1977 elections in Israel had enormous implications for Israeli foreign policy. Begin’s view of Israeli foreign policy and security was deeply influenced by the

Holocaust, which he narrowly escaped. The Nazis’ attempt to exterminate the Jewish people had convinced Begin that Israel (and by extension Jews everywhere) were in constant danger of attack and discrimination. Consequently, Israel needed to be strong militarily and prepared to defend itself at all times. In order to reassure domestic and international audiences that he was not trying to bring about a radical departure in Israel’s relationship with the world, Begin asked two experienced officials, Moshe Dayan and

Ezer Weizman, to serve in his cabinet as his ministers for foreign affairs and defense respectively. But despite these gestures toward continuity, most scholars agree that Israeli foreign policy under Menachem Begin was much more ideologically driven than it was in previous governments.365

Begin’s ideology would prove influential in shaping U.S.-brokered peace negotiations between Israel and its Arab neighbors. While he showed a strong commitment to negotiations with Egypt, Begin approached the Palestinian question very differently. A firm believer in Eretz Israel, Menachem Begin was a strong supporter of the settler movement that emerged in the Occupied Territories, especially in the West

Bank. Determined to hold onto the territory that he and others referred to by the biblical names Judea and Samaria, Begin tapped Ariel Sharon to be his Minister for Agriculture,

see Colin Shindler, The Land Beyond Promise: Israel, Likud, and the Zionist Dream (London: I.B. Tauris, 2002) and The Triumph of Military Zionism: Nationalism and the Origins of the Israeli Right (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006). 365 On Menachem Begin’s influence on Israeli foreign policy, see Ilan Peleg, Begin’s Foreign Policy, 1977-1983: Israel’s Move to the Right (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987) and Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000), especially Chapter 9. 226 the ministry that oversaw settlement building activities. Sharon, an experienced military commander and politician who later became defense minister and prime minister, was equally committed to expanding Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories and helped make Begin’s plan for settlement expansion a reality. As David Landau, Israeli journalist and biographer of Ariel Sharon, described it, “Begin was the architect; Sharon was the master builder.”366

Menachem Begin made his first visit to the United States as Prime Minister of

Israel in July 1977. Over the course of two days of high-level meetings between Carter,

Begin, and their senior advisers, the Americans and Israelis held extensive discussions about their respective priorities and hopes for the future of the Middle East. Recalling that first meeting in his diary, President Carter wrote that he was surprised at how much he and the new Israeli leader got along. Unlike Begin’s predecessor Yitzhak Rabin,

Carter found Begin to be a strong leader who would “be eager to work with me, compatible with what he considers to be the best interest of Israel.”367 This was not to say that the Americans and Israelis agreed how to proceed with peace negotiations in the

Middle East. On the contrary, American and Israeli negotiators had serious differences over many issues, especially the continued presence of Israeli military forces and settlers in occupied Arab lands and the political status of the Palestinians in the Occupied

Territories of the West Bank (including Jerusalem) and Gaza Strip. Despite these differences, both sides vowed to continue negotiations.368

366 David Landau, Arik: The Life of Ariel Sharon (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), 155. 367 July 19, 1977, entry in Carter, White House Diary, 71. 368 For full accounts of U.S.-Israeli discussions on July 19-20, 1977, at the White House, see Documents 52 and 57 in FRUS, 1977-1980, Vol. VIII. 227

In keeping with his hopes for a comprehensive solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, President Carter hoped to involve the Soviet Union in those negotiations. This was a distinct departure from the strategy of Henry Kissinger, who had sought to keep the

Soviet Union at arm’s length in the Middle East to reduce its influence in that vital region. Instead, the Carter administration released a joint U.S.-Soviet statement at the beginning of October 1977 calling for all parties to convene in Geneva, Switzerland, for direct negotiations involving all parties. Signed by Cyrus Vance and Soviet Foreign

Minister Andrei Gromyko, the statement asserted that both superpowers agreed that peace in the Middle East was vital for international peace and security, and that Arab and

Israeli leaders should convene in Geneva as soon as possible to achieve “a just and lasting settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict.”369

In addition to the difficulties Carter faced in negotiating with Israeli leaders, his administration was also dealing with criticism of its Middle East policy from much closer to home. In a memo to White House chief of staff Hamilton Jordan and presidential counsel Robert Lipshutz, Edward Sanders and Roger Lewis warned that the President and his administration faced a serious public relations problem with the American Jewish community. Writing that the President was seen as too friendly toward the Palestinians and too critical of Israel, Sanders and Lewis bluntly warned that the Carter administration

“is seen as less friendly to the Israeli democracy than its predecessors.”370

369 For the full text, see “Joint U.S.-Soviet Text,” Washington Post, October 2, 1977. 370 Saunders and Lewis to Jordan and Lipshutz re “Reasons Why the Jewish Community and Other Israeli Supporters are Disturbed by Administration Actions and Inactions Since the July 6 Meeting,” September 19, 1977, “Israel,” 8-9/77,” Container 35, National Security Affairs 6 – Country Files, JCPL. 228

While U.S. negotiations with Israel seemed to be making little progress, Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat decided to take matters into his own hands. After promising in a

November 9, 1977, speech to the Egyptian parliament that he would go to Jerusalem and the Knesset itself in pursuit of peace, the Egyptian president did just that ten days later.

Sadat’s visit to Israel on November 19 caught many people by surprise, including the

Americans. While he was welcomed by cheering crowds in Israel, some members of

Sadat’s own government vehemently opposed the trip. Ismail Fahmy, the Egyptian foreign minister, went so far as to resign his post because of his opposition to Sadat’s trip.

Recalling this moment in his 1983 memoirs, Fahmy wrote that Sadat had been “wooed and manipulated” into believing that he could work with the Israelis, only to be forced into a position where he had no choice but to agree to a separate peace with Israel, one that abandoned the Palestinians.371

But Anwar Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem, which included meetings with Israeli officials, a speech before the Knesset, and a visit to Yad Vashem, was an important symbolic moment, it did not immediately produce a breakthrough in the peace process.

While Egyptian officials were beginning to develop a rapport with Israeli officials, especially Moshe Dayan and Ezer Weizman, Sadat’s Knesset speech was not well- received by his Israeli audience, and Begin’s response was equally partisan. Boutros

Boutros-Ghali, an Egyptian academic and diplomat who later became Secretary General of the United Nations, was a member of the Egyptian delegation that traveled with Sadat to Jerusalem. Recalling the atmosphere as Sadat’s visit was coming to an end, he wrote in

371 Fahmy, Negotiating for Peace in the Middle East (Kent, UK: Croom Helm Ltd, 1983), 282. 229 his memoirs that “It was now evident how wide a gap separated the Egyptian and Israeli positions. The hope of bringing down psychological and political barriers through this visit was fading.”372 A subsequent summit between Sadat and Begin in Ismailia, Egypt, was similarly inconclusive, and both leaders increasingly turned to the United States as an intermediary.

As 1977 gave way to 1978, officials of the Carter administration continued their efforts to broker a comprehensive peace in the Middle East. As American officials met with representatives from Israel, Egypt, and Jordan to discuss terms for a future peace conference, they were also dealing with the issue of American military aid to U.S. allies in the Middle East. As previous chapters have emphasized, the United States had dramatically increased its military aid to Israel in recent years, but the United States was also increasing its levels of military aid to Arab allies in the Middle East, especially

Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. U.S. officials believed that military aid would incentivize these countries to participate in peace negotiations, but they proved highly controversial for Israelis and their allies in the United States.

On February 14, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance announced that the Carter administration would proceed with a package of aircraft sales to Israel, Egypt, and Saudi

Arabia. The sales, which would take place over the next few years, designated fifty F-5 aircraft were for Egypt, and sixty newer and more sophisticated F-15s were designated for Saudi Arabia; Israel was to receive fifteen F-15s and seventy-five F-16s. In his statement, Vance argued that these sales would fulfill the three countries’ legitimate

372 Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Egypt’s Road to Jerusalem: A Diplomat’s Story of the Struggle for Peace in the Middle East (New York: Random House, 1997), 22. 230 security requirements, would not alter the military balance in the Middle East, and were

“consistent with the overriding objective of a just and lasting peace.”373 Israeli leaders saw the sales differently, and so did their American allies. Pro-Israel politicians and

Jewish groups strenuously objected to the sale, arguing that providing Arab nations with such sophisticated weaponry endangered Israel. The Carter administration stubbornly refused to back down, and the sales were eventually approved by Congress.374

The controversy over the 1978 Middle East arms package caused a serious rupture in the Carter administration’s relationship with leaders of the American Jewish community. One member of the White House staff, Mark Siegel, even resigned in protest over the arms sale after he was booed while giving a speech to the United Jewish Appeal group defending the Carter administration’s policy.375 Before leaving, Siegel had worked on domestic policy issues and acted as a liaison between the White House and the

American Jewish community. In a meeting with Carter and White House chief of staff

Hamilton Jordan on March 9, the President reluctantly accepted Siegel’s letter of resignation, and Siegel bluntly told his former superiors his reasons for leaving. He argued that Carter’s advisers were giving him bad advice, that the aircraft sales to Egypt and Saudi Arabia would endanger Israel, and that arming Israel’s enemies would only divide Israeli leaders and the American Jewish community from the administration.

373 Cyrus Vance, “Middle East Aircraft Sales,” February 14, 1978, Department of State Bulletin (March 1978), pp. 37. 374 On the Congressional fight over the 1978 Middle East arms package sales and how this fight connected foreign policy and domestic politics, see Daniel Strieff, “Arms Wrestle: Capitol Hill Fight Over Carter’s 1978 Middle East ‘Package’ Airplane Sale,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 40, No. 3 (June 2016), 475- 499. 375 Siegel claimed that he had been given incorrect information by a member of the National Security Council (NSC) staff. See Judy Bachrach, “The Man Who Walked Out the White House Door,” Washington Post, March 24, 1978. 231

Emphasizing that Jewish people like himself felt insecure for “very good and substantial reasons,” Siegel told Carter and Jordan that “If we are to make leaps of faith toward peace, if we are to be fully able to take quantum leaps of faith that may be necessary, we must proceed from a position of security. And in this regard, that is the fundamental problem with your arms sales decision.”376

At the same time that the Middle East aircraft package was being debated, U.S. officials were also reviewing a massive new Israeli request for American military aid.

Matmon C, as it was known, was intended to modernize Israel’s armed forces over the next decade at the cost of $1.5 billion per year in foreign military spending (FMS). At a meeting of the Principals Review Committee (PRC), U.S. officials decided that, since

Israel’s request was based on a maximum evaluation of the Arab military threat, there was no need to give Israel everything that it was asking for. Instead, the U.S. would make no multi-year commitment and would insist that Israel use some of its own money to pay for American equipment instead of relying entirely on American grants (which Israel would not have had to pay back). U.S. officials felt comfortable with this decision because, as was the case during the Ford administration, the U.S. intelligence community continued to believe that “Israel has a significant margin of military superiority over the

Arabs and that this will continue through the early 1980’s regardless of how we respond to Matmon C.”377

376 Document 227: Record of a meeting between Carter, Mark Siegel, and Hamilton Jordan, Washington, March 9, 1978, FRUS, 1977-1980, Vol. VIII, 1052. 377 Document 220: Summary of Conclusions from a PRC meeting, Washington, February 27, 1978, FRUS, 1977-1980, Vol. VIII, 1023. 232

Another factor complicating U.S. negotiations with Israel in the first half of 1978 was violence along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. As historian Javier Gil

Guerrero points out in a recent article, scholars of the Carter administration’s Middle East policy tend to forget about Lebanon and instead focus on Egyptian-Israeli negotiations and events in Iran. During the late 1970s a civil war was raging in Lebanon between its

Muslim and Christian communities, a conflict that was made more complicated by the presence of large numbers of Palestinian refugees. After fleeing Jordan following the events of September 1970, leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had moved their headquarters to Beirut and, as had happened in Amman, established what amounted to a state-within-a-state. From Lebanon, Palestinian militants launched ground, rocket, and artillery attacks on northern Israeli towns, attacks which prompted retaliatory attacks by Israeli forces. In a preview of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the summer of

1982, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) launched a major ground incursion into Lebanon in

March 1978, withdrawing after several weeks of heavy fighting. With its attention focused elsewhere, the Carter administration never developed a coherent and effective

Lebanon policy, and instead saw Lebanon as an annoyance that had to be dealt with whenever it threatened to upend Egyptian-Israeli peace negotiations.378

In the midst of tense negotiations over war and peace between Arabs and Israelis and the Palestinian situation, Menachem Begin came to Washington at the beginning of

May to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of Israel’s independence. At a White House ceremony where both the President and the Israeli prime minister spoke, Carter told his

378 See Javier Gil Guerrero, “Overshadowed Crisis: The Carter Administration and the Conflict in Southern Lebanon,” Middle East Critique, Vol. 25, No. 4 (2016), pp. 401-421. 233 audience that it was a point of pride for the United States to have been the very first nation to recognize Israeli independence in 1948. Celebrating both the “indomitable will and character” of the Israeli people and the United States’ “unshakable” commitment to the Jewish state, Carter asserted that the “the existence of the State of Israel will ensure for all times that the Jewish people will not be condemned to repeat the Holocaust.”379

In connecting American support for Israel to the trauma of the Holocaust, Carter recalled his own 1973 trip to Israel. During that trip, the future president read journalist

Arthur Morse’s 1968 book While Six Million Died, a highly critical account of the U.S. response to the Holocaust. Morse was particularly critical of the administration of

President Franklin D. Roosevelt for failing to aid European Jews fleeing Adolf Hitler’s

Nazi regime in Germany during the 1930s and remaining bystanders for far too long while the Nazis were slaughtering Jews during World War II.380 Besides celebrating

Israel’s independence and strong U.S.-Israeli ties, Carter used this occasion to announce the creation of a presidential commission to make recommendations for establishing a

Holocaust memorial in the United States, “To ensure that we in the United States never forget.”381 This was a unique moment in the history of Holocaust commemoration because, apart from Israel’s Yad Vashem, no country in the world (certainly, no country

379 Remarks of the President and Prime Minister Menachem Begin at a White House Reception, May 1, 1978, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Jimmy Carter, 1978, Book I—January 1 to June 30, 1978 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979), 813. 380 See Arthur D. Morse, While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy (New York: Random House, 1968). Since 1968 historians such as David Wyman, Deborah Lipstat, Richard Brietman, and Allan Lichtman have written a great deal more about the U.S. government’s policies and failures regarding European Jews. These scholars draw on a much wider range of primary sources than were available to Morse in 1968. 381 Remarks of the President and Menachem Begin at a White House Reception, May 1, 1978, 813. 234 in Europe, where Jews were actually murdered during World War II) had such a memorial.

The Carter administration’s announcement of its desire to build a Holocaust memorial in the United States marked the continued growth of Holocaust consciousness in the United States. Following the 1967 and 1973 wars in the Middle East, American

Jews’ concern for Israel’s security grew steadily, as did their interest in the Holocaust. As historian Michael Barnett put it in 2016, “American Jews relived the Holocaust as they watched events unfold in the Middle East.”382 This interest and concern was not confined to Jews alone but rather occurred among the larger American population as the number of accounts of the Holocaust on the page and on the screen increased.

In his analysis of the effort to establish the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in

Washington, D.C., historian Edward Linenthal writes that Carter’s announcement of a

Holocaust Memorial Commission was a signal “that the Holocaust had moved not only from the periphery to the center of American Jewish consciousness, but to the center of national consciousness as well.”383 Linenthal also explicitly connected Carter’s commission to his administration’s efforts to repair relations with the American Jewish community and the Israeli government. Facing skepticism about his personal faith and his administration’s perceived tough treatment of Israel and his sympathy for the

382 Michael N. Barnett, The Star and the Stripes: A History of the Foreign Policies of American Jews (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 162. See also Edward S. Shapiro, A Time for Healing: American Jewry since World War II (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), Chapter Seven. 383 Edward T. Linenthal, Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America’s Holocaust Museum (New York: Viking, 1995), 12. 235

Palestinians, Carter needed to shore up his support with these groups if he wanted to continue pursuing negotiations in the Middle East.384

Just two weeks before Begin’s visit, the American television network NBC broadcast a miniseries entitled Holocaust on four straight nights from April 16-19.

Starring a largely American and British cast, including a young and relatively unknown

Meryl Streep, the series was directed by Marvin Chomsky and written by Gerald Green, both of whom were Jewish. It told the story of the Holocaust through the experiences of a single family, the Weiss family, of German and Polish Jews during the 1930s and 1940s.

Holocaust was one of many long-form programs from the 1970s that told epic historical tales over the course of multiple episodes. One of the most prominent was ABC’s Roots, which chronicled the history of slavery in the United States from the enslavement of native Africans by slave traders in the 18th century to the liberation of African Americans following the Civil War.385

From Kristallnacht in November 1938 to the killing fields on the Eastern Front to the death camps, the fictional Weiss family witnessed all the horrors of the Holocaust.

The series, which stretched to over nine hours and five episodes, received mostly positive reviews. It won multiple awards, including two Golden Globes, eight Primetime Emmys, and a Peabody Award. Tom Shales, a long-time television critic at the Washington Post, called Holocaust “the most powerful film made for television.”386 The reaction from the

384 See Linenthal, Chapter One and Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999), especially Chapter 10. 385 Roots aired on ABC at the end of January 1977. Martin Chomsky, who directed all four episodes of Holocaust, also directed two episodes of Roots. 386 Tom Shales, “NBC’s Powerful ‘Holocaust,’” Washington Post, April 12, 1978. 236

New York Times were more critical, however. TV critic John O’Connor wrote that, despite the series’ good intentions, it amounted to “a sterile collection of wooden characters and ridiculous coincidences.”387 The writer and Holocaust survivor Elie

Wiesel was even harsher, calling the whole series “an insult to those who perished and to those who survived.”388 But while much of the commentary surrounding Holocaust focused on its depictions of history, fewer observers took notice of the miniseries’ references to the present-day Middle East.

In subtle and overt ways, Holocaust celebrated Zionist voices among European

Jews, denounced national governments for not doing enough to help European Jews during the Holocaust, and positioned the creation of Israel in Palestine as the proper and logical response to the Holocaust. A moment early in Holocaust was particularly fitting for the state of U.S.-Israeli relations in the spring of 1978. One of the series’ major characters was Eric Dorf, a fictional lawyer who reluctantly joined the Nazi Party and the

SS. In Episode 1, Dorf met with his boss Reinhard Heydrich to discuss the fallout from two days of attacks against Jewish buildings, synagogues, and businesses, during which an unknown number of Jews were killed and thousands more arrested in Germany and

Austria. These events, which took place from November 9-10, 1938, are commonly known as Kristallnacht for the shattered glass from Jewish storefronts that littered the streets. Commenting on how the world would respond to these events, Dorf, played by

Michael Moriarty, says calmly, “Few governments will stick their neck out for Jews.”389

387 John J. O’Connor, “TV Weekend,” New York Times, April 14, 1978. 388 Elie Wiesel, “Trivializing the Holocaust: Semi-Fact and Semi-Fiction,” New York Times, April 16, 1978. 389 Episode 1, Marvin Chomsky (dir.), Holocaust (1978). 237

David Warner’s Heydrich made a similar remark two episodes later at a meeting of senior

SS officials to discuss planning for the “final solution,” the effort to systematically eliminate all European Jews in Nazi-occupied territories. Dismissing suggestions that people will object to the wholesale slaughter of Jews, he confidently states that “No one will lift a finger to help Jews.”390 Intentionally or not, Carter’s words at the White House on May 1 were a direct response to these feelings of guilt and a clear indication that at least one country, the United States, would stand up for the Jewish State.

Even as NBC’s Holocaust program was helping educate American and European audiences about the genocide of European Jews during World War II, the miniseries simultaneously told a more subtle story about the importance of Israel to the survival of the Jewish people. Throughout the series Zionists, who wanted to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine, are consistently portrayed positively and sympathetically, especially through the character of Helena, an Austrian Jew who fell in love with and married Rudi Weiss. Helena is a committed Zionist who imagines a future for herself and

Rudi in Palestine and dies heroically in battle while fighting as a partisan on the Eastern

Front. Elsewhere, scenes in the Warsaw Ghetto portray Zionists as the first to recognize that the German authorities are planning to exterminate Jews on a massive scale. Instead of cooperating with the German authorities, the Zionists of the Ghetto call for armed resistance and help lead the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.391

Holocaust’s portrayal of Zionists was in keeping with a broader trend in

American films and television of the late 1970s. Time and again, Israel and Israelis,

390 Episode 3, Marvin Chomsky (dir.), Holocaust (1978). 391 See Episodes 3-4 in Chomsky, Holocaust (1978). 238 especially soldiers and intelligence operatives, were portrayed heroically and sympathetically, while Arabs and Palestinians appear as bloodthirsty radicals and terrorists. Playing upon American government and popular concerns about declining

American military power in the wake of the Vietnam War and international terrorism, especially terrorism rooted in the turmoil of the Middle East, multiple films from this era portrayed Israelis as much more competent and successful at stopping terrorism than their

American counterparts. One of the most prominent examples was the 1977 film Black

Sunday, an action thriller in which an Israeli agent rushes to stop a fanatical Palestinian terrorist from setting off a bomb during the Super Bowl. Other films were based on real historical events. Soon after Israeli special forces successfully rescued over a hundred hostages from Palestinian terrorists at the Entebbe airport in Uganda in July 1976,

American filmmakers acted quickly to produce and release not one but two films based on this Israeli accomplishment.392 Recognizing the power of the American film industry,

Israeli officials used Hollywood’s interest in the Entebbe story as a chance to put a positive vision of Israel and U.S.-Israeli relations, before the American public.393

Holocaust also had a significant impact outside the United States. According to the historian Tony Judt, when NBC’s The Holocaust series was broadcast in West

Germany over four consecutive nights in January of 1979, it was seen by more than

392 The films were Victory at Entebbe (1976) and Raid on Entebbe (1977). The former was directed by the same Marvin Chomsky who directed episodes of Roots and Holocaust. Israeli filmmakers also produced their own version of the Entebbe operation, Operation Thunderbolt, in 1977, which was nominated for an Academy Award the following year. Even forty years later, the events of Entebbe proved so compelling to filmmakers that another film, 7 Days in Entebbe, was released in 2018. 393 On the Israeli government’s efforts to shape views of Israel through these two Entebbe films, see Tony Shaw and Giora Goodman, “Hollywood’s Raid on Entebbe: Behind the Scenes of the United States-Israel Alliance,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 42, No. 4 (September, 2018), 590-612. 239 twenty million viewers or at least half the country’s adult population. Though panned by many intellectuals as “the purest product of American commercial television—its story simple, its characters mostly two-dimensional, its narrative structured for maximum emotional impact,” the series had a significant impact on German viewers because of the moment in which it appeared on their screens.394 In fact, the series seemed to have a greater impact in Germany than it did in the United States, the country where it originated.395 Besides their depictions of European Jews, the creators of Holocaust also presented a disturbing view of the German people’s complicity in the murder of Jews and other minorities, and it helped inspire the West German government to abolish the statute of limitations on murder to allow for new prosecutions of German perpetrators.

By the summer of 1978, it was clear to American officials that a comprehensive peace in the Middle East was nowhere in sight. Instead of continuing down that road,

President Carter and his advisers pivoted to the one avenue of Arab-Israeli negotiations that showed signs of progress, bilateral negotiations between Israel and Egypt. Following a preliminary conference of the American, Egyptian, and Israeli foreign ministers in

Leeds, England, Carter took the dramatic step of inviting both Begin and Sadat to Camp

David, the American presidential retreat in Maryland, for direct talks that Carter himself would manage personally. Both men accepted, and the Camp David talks began on

September 5.

394 Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), 811. 395 See, for instance, Toby Axelrod, “40 years ago, an American miniseries changed the way Germans thought about their history. Now ‘Holocaust’ is being shown there again,” Jewish Telegraph Agency, January 23, 2019. (URL: https://www.jta.org/2019/01/23/global/40-years-later-the-holocaust- miniseries-returns-to-germany). (Accessed 2/19/21). 240

Camp David

The Camp David talks between the Israeli and Egyptian delegations led by

Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, with President Carter acting as intermediary and host, are usually remembered as the high point of the Carter administration, especially its foreign policy. These negotiations, which lasted for a remarkable thirteen days, paved the way for the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty that was signed the following year at the White

House on March 26. They provided a dramatic (but ultimately temporary) boost to

Carter’s approval ratings, which, according to the Washington Post, brought his favorability rating up by eleven points to 56% in just two weeks.396 Writing in The

Atlantic magazine in 1979, journalist and former White House staffer James Fallows said that the Camp David talks were the best demonstration of Jimmy Carter’s optimistic belief that he could resolve complex foreign policy issues if he could only get the major players in the same room with each other.397

The story of the Camp David negotiations has been told frequently by participants who recount the talks in their memoirs. The first comprehensive account of the Camp

David talks was written by William Quandt, a political scientist who worked on Middle

East issues for the National Security Council during the Nixon and Carter administrations. Quandt, who was actively involved in the Camp David talks, wrote his account based on his personal observations and his scholarly training but without the benefit of archival sources. In his 1999 study of Arab-Israeli negotiations during the

396 William Gredler and Barry Sussman, “Poll Finds Carter Popularity Soars,” Washington Post, September 24, 1978. 397 James Fallows, “The Passionless Presidency,” The Atlantic, Vol. 243, No. 5 (May, 1979), 35. 241

1970s, historian Kenneth Stein credits Jimmy Carter, along with Henry Kissinger, Anwar

Sadat, and Menachem Begin, with engaging in “heroic diplomacy.” More recently, the journalist Lawrence Wright published a new account of the talks in 2014, drawing on some recently declassified sources from the Carter Library. Though all these sources acknowledge the limitations and failings of the Camp David talks, they generally agree that the U.S.-brokered negotiations in September of 1978 were a major success for U.S. diplomacy and the cause of peace in the Middle East.398 The Camp David talks have also been extensively chronicled in memoirs written by participants on all sides.399

For thirteen days from September 5-17, the participants held intense negotiations.

Discussions were closed to the press and conducted entirely in English, with American officials acting as intermediaries shuttling back and forth between the buildings where the

Egyptian and Israeli delegations were staying. The American objective at Camp David was to arrive at two broad sets of principles that would form the basis of a future

Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty and the future of the Occupied Territories of Gaza and the

398 For histories of the Camp David talks, see William B. Quandt, Camp David: Peacemaking and Politics (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1986); Kenneth W. Stein, Heroic Diplomacy: Sadat, Kissinger, Carter, Begin, and the Quest for Arab Israeli Peace (New York: Routledge, 1999), especially Chapter 8; and Lawrence Wright, Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014). 399 For the Egyptian perspective, see Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Egypt’s Road to Jerusalem, especially Chapter 5, and Mohamed Ibrahim Kamel, The Camp David Accords: A Testimony (London: KPI Limited, 1986). For the Israeli perspective, see Moshe Dayan, Breakthrough: A Personal Account of the Egypt-Israeli Peace Negotiations (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981), Chapters 12-15 and Ezer Weizman, The Battle for Peace (New York: Bantam Books, 1981), Chapter 25. For the American perspective, see Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977- 1981 (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1983), Chapter 7; Carter, Keeping Faith, “Thirteen Days;” and Cyrus Vance, Hard Choices: Critical Years in America’s Foreign Policy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), Chapter 10. 242

West Bank, and that were acceptable to both the Israelis and Egyptians.400 Apart from a visit to the nearby Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg on September 10, the talks continued without interruption. At several points during those thirteen days, the talks nearly collapsed as one delegation or the other threatened to give up and go home, but each time the Americans were able to convince them to return to the negotiating table.

There were intense disagreements within both the Egyptian and Israeli delegations, but divisions were especially deep among the Egyptian delegations, several of whom believed that the “American” proposals were in fact Israeli proposals with an American gloss, and that Anwar Sadat was willing to accept anything the Americans put forward.401

The fate of Israeli settlements in the Sinai Peninsula and in the West Bank proved to be a major stumbling block as Begin, Carter, and Sadat worked to find mutually acceptable terms for a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. This was an instance where

Israeli domestic politics played a significant role in shaping the discussions at Camp

David. As a committed supporter of the settler movement, Begin strongly resisted calls that Israel remove its settlers from any territory captured in June 1967 because of his own personal beliefs and ideology. But Begin was also the leader of a coalition government that included many right-wing and pro-settler parties. If Begin were to agree to remove settlements, he would put his domestic political position at risk.402

400 Document 6: Paper Prepared in the Department of State entitled “Planning for Camp David,” Washington, Undated, FRUS, 1977-1980, Volume IX: Arab-Israeli Dispute, August 1978-December 1980 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2018), 14. 401 See especially Kamel, The Camp David Accords. 402 On the importance of Israeli domestic politics to Menachem Begin’s negotiating positions throughout Egyptian-Israeli peace negotiations, see Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov, Israel and the Peace Process 1977-1982: In Search of Legitimacy for Peace (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994) and Gerald M. Steinberg, and Zvi Rubinovitz, Menachem Begin and the Israel-Egypt Peace Process: Between Ideology and Political Realism (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2019). 243

In this moment, input from a member of Begin’s own cabinet proved crucial.

During a call with Begin on September 14, Ariel Sharon, himself a major supporter of the settler movement, argued that the Sinai Peninsula was neither Eretz Israel nor part of the original British Mandate, and thus less important than territories such as the West Bank.

As Sharon’s biographer put it, Sharon was able to convince his prime minister that he was “breaking a promise, not betraying an article of faith.”403 This gave Begin the political cover he needed to resolve this critical impasse. In what was for him a major concession, Begin agreed to ask the Knesset to vote on whether or not to remove Israel’s settlements in the Sinai.404

An underappreciated element of the Camp David negotiations was the role that

U.S. military assistance to Israel played in making the talks a success. In addition to the

Israeli settlements there, another reason that Israeli leaders were reluctant to give up the

Sinai Peninsula was that they would have to give up several oil fields and two strategically important airfields. As the talks neared an end, Israeli defense minister Ezer

Weizman asked U.S. Defense Secretary Harold Brown if the U.S. could build Israel new airfields in the Negev Desert of southern Israel to compensate for giving up these valuable bases. Weizman, who was one of the strongest advocates for peace with Egypt within the Israeli government, remembered this as a pivotal moment in the talks.405

According to a memo from Secretary Brown to President Carter, for the U.S. to build two

403 Landau, Arik, 160. Interestingly, Sharon did not mention this conversation in his 1989 autobiography. 404 With the help of Labor votes, the measure to withdraw settlers form the Sinai eventually did pass the Knesset. Some of Begin’s own supporters denounced this decision. 405 See Weizman, The Battle for Peace, 371. 244 new Israeli air bases in the Negev would cost more than $1.5 billion, a figure that was separate from existing U.S. military aid to Israel.406 Most accounts of Camp David focus on the negotiations over Israel’s withdrawal from the Sinai, its occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, and other issues, but promises of U.S. military aid to both Egypt and

Israel played an important role in incentivizing Israeli and Egyptian leaders to come to an agreement as the talks came to an end.407

In recent years, scholars have turned a more critical eye toward the Camp David talks. For one thing, the fact that only two parties, Israel and Egypt, took part was a significant step back from comprehensive negotiations in Geneva. President Carter, who set out to conduct comprehensive negotiations to resolve the entire Arab-Israeli conflict at once, was forced to accept bilateral talks, and was fortunate that both parties agreed to come to the U.S. at all. Given the important role that Jordan was expected to play as a representative of the Palestinians, the absence of King Hussein was very significant.408

Historians also point to the Camp David talks’ failure to make progress on the issue of

Palestinian statehood as a significant failure. In addition to the bilateral negotiations over peace between Egypt and Israel, negotiators at Camp David were also trying to reach an agreement on the future of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank (including Jerusalem)

406 See Memo from Secretary Brown to President Carter re “Relocating Israeli Airbases from the Sinai to the Negev,” December 16, 1978, collected in the Documentary Supplement to Edward C. Keefer, Harold Brown: Offsetting the Soviet Military Challenge, 1977-1981 (Washington, D.C.: Historical Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2017), Chapter 9: The Middle East. 407 On the role of Harold Brown and the Defense Department in Egyptian-Israeli negotiations, see Edward C. Keefer, Harold Brown: Offsetting the Soviet Military Challenge, 1977-1981 (Washington, D.C.: Historical Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2017), especially Chapter 9. 408 On the deterioration of U.S.-Jordanian relations in the late 1970s, see Madiha Rashid Al Madfai, Jordan, the United States, and the Middle East Peace Process, 1974-1991 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993), especially Chapters 3-4, and Nigel J. Ashton, “Taking Friends for Granted: The Carter Administration, Jordan, and the Camp David Accords, 1977-1980,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 41. No. 3 (June 2017), 620-645. 245 and the Gaza Strip. These talks proved no less difficult and frustrating than they were before Camp David, when Menachem Begin had stubbornly defended Israel’s right to settle in the West Bank for both historical and security reasons. The most significant work to make this argument is Preventing Palestine by Seth Anziska. Anziska argues that by agreeing to facilitate bilateral talks between Israel and Egypt, the U.S. allowed Israeli

Prime Minister Menachem Begin to solidify Israeli control over the Occupied

Territories.409

Negotiating the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty

After all the drama and promise of the Camp David talks in September 1978, the next phase of negotiations toward a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt proved difficult and frustrating for the Carter administration. Negotiations toward a mutually- acceptable peace treaty that were supposed to take just three months were still going on when 1978 gave way to 1979 and stretched into March of that year.

The delay in reaching an Egyptian-Israeli treaty after Camp David also worried

American Jews, who were already uneasy with the Carter administration’s Israel policy.

In a memo to President Carter at the beginning of 1979, Edward Sanders wrote that the administration’s relationships with Israel and the American Jewish community were in serious trouble. Noting that both Israelis and American Jews distrusted the Carter administration, Sanders warned that “The position we find ourselves in with respect to

409 See Anziska, Preventing Palestine, especially Chapters Two-Four. 246 the Jewish community (and the Israeli public) is potentially disastrous for the attainment of a comprehensive peace.”410

The world of secret intelligence was another area where U.S.-Israeli relations seemed to be faltering at the beginning of 1979. On January 22, operatives from the

Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, killed Ali Hassan Salameh with a car bomb in Beirut. Salameh had been a senior official in the PLO and, since the early 1970s, an intermediary between the PLO and the CIA, often communicating directly with CIA case officer Robert Ames. Israeli leaders had long objected to any contacts between the

Americans and the PLO, and to any sign that the American government was considering recognizing the PLO as the legitimate government of the Palestinian people. Salameh had long been an Israeli target for assassination because of his involvement in terrorist activities, but his killing also shut down a U.S.-Palestinian channel that threatened to undermine Israel’s complete objection to any negotiations with the PLO. As journalist

David Ignatius reported in 1983, Salameh’s death was a reminder that, despite their apparent closeness, U.S. and Israeli interests often differed sharply.411

In March 1979 Carter once again plunged into the minutiae of Egyptian-Israeli negotiations, this time by traveling personally to the Middle East. Once again, Carter had a much easier time negotiating with Anwar Sadat than with Menachem Begin, but after days of negotiations the Israelis finally accepted the Americans’ version of an Egyptian-

410 Memo from Edward Sanders to the President, “Observations on Where We Stand,” January 3, 1979, Container 36, National Security Affairs – Country File, JCPL. 411 David Ignatius, “Mideast Intrigue: PLO Operative, Slain Reputedly by Israelis, Had Been Helping U.S.,” Wall Street Journal, February 10, 1983. See also Kai Bird, The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames (New York: Broadway Books, 2014) and Ronen Bergman, Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations. (New York: Random House, 2018), 214-219. 247

Israeli treaty. On March 26, just over six months after the Camp David talks were concluded with great fanfare, Begin and Sadat again joined Carter at in Washington for a signing ceremony on the White House lawn.

The signing of a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, which ended the state of war that existed between the two countries for three decades and established full diplomatic relations between them, was a momentous occasion. But while the treaty was celebrated in Cairo, Jerusalem, and Washington, it was widely denounced in other places.

It was harshly condemned by countries such as Iraq, Syria, and Libya, where Arab leaders saw Anwar Sadat as having abandoned his fellow Arabs, especially the

Palestinians, by choosing Egyptian national interests over Arab solidarity. The reaction was more muted in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan, countries which hoped to maintain good working relations with the U.S., but even there Egypt’s treaty with Israel was strongly criticized.412 Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, whom the Americans had initially hoped would take part in comprehensive Middle East peace negotiations in

Geneva, also condemned the Egyptian-Israeli treaty in a letter to President Carter, calling it “advantageous only to Israel.”413

The new Egyptian-Israeli treaty was certainly a victory (albeit an incomplete and hard-fought one) for American diplomacy during the Carter administration. It also signaled the beginning of new American commitments to its allies in the Middle East.

412 On the Arab world’s reaction to the Egyptian-Israeli treaty, see Document 213: CIA Intelligence Memorandum, “Arab Reactions,” Washington, March 15, 1979, FRUS, 1977-1980, Volume IX: Arab-Israeli Dispute, August 1978-December 1980 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2018), 745-747. 413 Document 221: Letter from Brezhnev to Carter, March 19, 1979, Ibid., 778. 248

Israel was already the largest individual recipient of American military aid in the world, and it would receive even more as compensation for signing the peace treaty with Egypt.

Egypt would also receive increased levels of U.S. aid in return for both the treaty but also for moving into the American or Western camp and away from the Soviet Union.

Altogether start in in 1979, the U.S. committed $13 billion worth of military assistance to

Egypt and Israel over the next three years, nearly a third of which was funded by the U.S. taxpayer.414

These new military aid levels were heavily weighted in favor of Israel, which U.S. intelligence officials had already concluded was in no danger of losing its military edge to its neighbors. Not only was Israel slated to receive more military aid than Egypt ($3 billion, versus $1.5 billion for Egypt), but they were also receiving that aid on more favorable terms that the Egyptians. In a memo to President Carter, National Security

Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski pointed out this discrepancy, calling the proposal

“extremely lopsided in Israel’s favor.”415 With those additional funds, the Israelis could purchase newer and more sophisticated tanks, aircraft, and other weapons systems from

American defense contractors, while much of the American aid to Egypt was geared towards modernizing their Soviet-supplied military equipment.

One final aspect of post-treaty U.S. military aid to the Middle East tipped the balance in Israel’s favor. Similarly to the Sinai II Accords negotiated by Henry Kissinger and Yigal Allon in the summer of 1975, the Carter administration agreed to a new

414 Document 226: Memo from William Quandt to Zbigniew Brzezinski re “U.S.-Egyptian Military Assistance Agreement,” Washington, March 20, 1979, Ibid., 790. 415 Document 228: Memo from Brzezinski to Carter re “Credits for Egypt,” Washington, March 21, 1979, Ibid., 792. 249 memorandum of agreement (MOA) with Israel. This MOA, which the Egyptians were unaware of until after it was signed, stipulated that the United States would come to

Israel’s aid if any of the treaty provisions were violated and stated that it would

“endeavor to take into account and will endeavor to be responsive to military and economic assistance requirements of Israel.”416 In another similarity with the 1975 MOU, the Carter administration committed the U.S. to ensuring that Israel had adequate supplies of oil and to protecting Israel from the volatility of international oil prices.417

By agreeing to withdraw Israeli settlers from the Sinai Peninsula, Menachem

Begin angered some of his strongest supporters in the settler community. While most other Israelis (and their representatives in the Knesset) saw giving up the Sinai settlements as an acceptable price to pay for peace with Egypt, hardliners in the settler community saw it as a betrayal of their core belief that no Jew should be forced to give up any territory or settlement. This was an important moment for the Israeli right because it split the movement into those moderates who would accept some territorial withdrawal, and those who would resist any withdrawal at all costs, including through violence. The most extreme of this latter group would go on to form the Jewish Underground, a Jewish terror group that launched attacks against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories during the 1980s.418

416 Document 232: Draft Memorandum of Agreement Between the Governments of the United States of America and the State of Israel, Washington, undated, Ibid., 800. 417 Document 241: Telegram from the State Department to Multiple Posts containing the text of a U.S.-Israel MOU on oil, Washington, March 29, 1979, Ibid., 812-813. 418 On the emergence of the radical right in Israel following the negotiations of 1978-1979 and the rise of Jewish terrorism, see Ehud Sprinzak, The Ascendance of Israel’s Radical Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) and Ami Pedahzur and Arie Perliger, Jewish Terrorism in Israel (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). For the broader political context of Begin’s role in reshaping right-wing 250

As happened several years earlier after the Sinai II Accords were signed,

American diplomacy in the Middle East stalled after a major milestone had been achieved. Though the Americans had agreed to facilitate talks between Israel and Egypt,

U.S. officials had not given up on resolving the broader Arab-Israeli conflict for good.

Ideally, the peace treaty that eventually emerged from the Camp David Accords would be only the first step toward a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace agreement. But, as historian Avi Shlaim wrote in 1988, while “Carter and Sadat saw the Camp David

Accords as the first step in a process that would lead to a comprehensive peace between

Israel and her neighbors, Begin saw the peace with Egypt as the end of the road.”419 By the time Egypt and Israel finally signed a peace treaty at the White House, President

Carter and his advisers were increasingly drawn away from the peace process and toward other pressing international and domestic issues.

Turning Away from Arab-Israeli Peace: The Crises of 1979-1980

After American, Egyptian, and Israeli leaders signed the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in late March, their attention then turned to the second element of the Camp David

Accords, the effort to negotiate an autonomy agreement for the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and Gaza. As contentious as Egyptian-Israeli bilateral talks had been, negotiations over the fate of the majority-Palestinian territories that Israel had occupied since the June 1967 war were equally difficult, if not more so.

politics in Israel, see Colin Shinldler, The Rise of the Israeli Right: From Odessa to Hebron (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), especially Chapters 14-16. 419 Avi Shlaim, “The Impact of U.S. Policy in the Middle East,” Journal of Palestine Studies, V ol.17, No. 2 (Winer, 1988), 20. 251

In May, Prime Minister Begin announced his support of a law in the Knesset that would establish the united city of Jerusalem, not Tel Aviv, where most countries had their embassies, as Israel’s official capital city. The bill, entitled “Basic Law: Jerusalem,

Capital of Israel,” was introduced by Geula Cohen, a right-wing politician with a long record of opposing Israeli withdrawals from the Occupied Territories. Cohen had earlier condemned Begin’s decision to withdraw Israeli settlers from the Sinai Peninsula, but in this case she welcomed his support. With sites holy to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the fate of Jerusalem was a particularly contentious element of Arab-Israeli negotiations.

By taking this step, Begin signaled that Israel had no intention of giving up the Holy City of Jerusalem in future negotiations.420

After securing peace between Egypt and Israel, U.S. officials’ attention was increasingly drawn away from the Arab-Israeli peace process and toward other crises in the Middle East. With Egyptian-Israeli peace in hand and negotiations with the

Palestinians showing no signs of progress, officials of the Carter administration increasingly turned their attention away from the Arab-Israeli conflict and toward other conflicts in the broader Middle East region, where a growing movement of Islamic fundamentalists threatened the stability of U.S.-allied regimes.

The first of these came in Iran, where the U.S.-backed regime of Reza Shah

Pahlavi was becoming increasingly unstable. After U.S. intelligence operatives had helped re-install the Shah in a 1954 coup, Iran had become an important American ally in the Persian Gulf and a significant purchaser of U.S. military equipment. Iran also became

420 On Begin’s reasons for taking this step, see Arye Naor, “Menachem Begin and ‘Basic Law: Jerusalem, Capital of Israel,’” Israel Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Fall, 2016), 36-48. 252 an important base for American efforts to spy on the Soviet Union. But behind its public image as a powerful regional player in the Persian Gulf with massive oil resources and the backing of a superpower, the regime in Tehran was much more fragile than it appeared.421

After fleeing Iran for Egypt in January 1979, the Shah of Iran appealed to the

Carter administration for permission to come to the United States for cancer treatment.

Despite his emphasis on human rights, President Carter was sympathetic to the Shah, and in October permitted the Shah to enter the U.S. This proved to be a serious mistake because it touched off protests in Iran and led directly to the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran. Protestors breached the embassy gates on November 4 and overwhelmed U.S. security forces, taking more than fifty Americans hostage. Though thirteen of the Americans (all women and African Americans) would be released on

November 20, the others remained hostages in Iran until January 1981, when they were finally released at the exact moment when Ronald Reagan replaced Jimmy Carter in the

White House. After failing to secure the hostages’ release through negotiations, Carter authorized an ambitious rescue operation by American military forces. That operation,

Operation Eagle Claw, ended in disaster on April 24, 1980, and the Carter administration’s inability to deal with the crisis in Iran seriously undermined its credibility on foreign policy in the midst of a tough reelection campaign.422

421 On the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, see Gary Sick, All Fall Down: America’s Tragic Encounter with Iran (New York: Random House, 1985), James A. Bill, The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989) and Roham Alvandi, Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah: The United States and Iran in the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). 422 On Americans’ reaction to the hostage crisis in Iran, see David Farber, Taken Hostage: The Iran Hostage Crisis and America’s First Encounter with Radical Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton 253

Ironically, the hostage crisis in Iran briefly created an opportunity for cooperation between the United States and the PLO. After the Mossad killed Ali Hassan Salameh,

Yasir Arafat was looking for other opportunities to rebuild the PLO’s relationship with the United States. Arafat and other PLO tried to position their organization as an intermediary between the U.S. government and the revolutionary regime in Tehran.

Despite the provision of Sinai II that prevented the U.S. from negotiating with the PLO on political matters, U.S. officials in Lebanon routinely cooperated with Palestinian authorities on security matters. According to Jorgen Jensehaugen, the PLO intercession likely contributed to the release of the thirteen American hostages from Iranian captivity on November 20, 1979, and the return of bodies of the eight American servicemen killed during the disastrous rescue operation on April 24, 1980. Unfortunately for the PLO leadership, these releases did not produce the desired rapprochement with the U.S. government.423

As U.S. officials struggled to manage the situation in Iran, events elsewhere in the world further heightened the global atmosphere of crisis and seemed to further underscore the Carter administration’s foreign policy shortcomings. On November 20, the same day that the American hostages were released, militants seized the Grand

Mosque in Mecca, one of the two Islamic holy cities in Saudi Arabia. The next day, protestors attacked the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, and nearly breached the

University Press, 2005). For a detailed account of the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran, the experience of the American hostages in captivity, and the failed military operation to rescue them, see Mark Bowden, Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America’s War with Militant Islam (New York: Grove/Atlantic, 2006). 423 See Jorgen Jensehaugen, “A Palestinian window of opportunity? The PLO, the US and the Iranian hostage crisis,” British Journal of Middle East Studies (2019), pg. 1-15. See also Bird, The Good Spy, especially Chapter 10. 254 compound’s walls. On top of all this, tensions in the Middle East were further heightened by Soviet leaders’ decision one month later to send military forces into Afghanistan to prop up a pro-Soviet regime that was on the verge of collapse.424

President Carter addressed the growing climate of crisis in the Persian Gulf during his 1980 State of the Union address before Congress on January 23. Denouncing the

Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as an attempt to restrict the flow of Middle Eastern oil,

Carter warned that any effort by the Soviets to gain control of the Persian Gulf would be seen as a threat to U.S. national interests, and would be “repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” 425 The speech signaled a new American emphasis on security in the Persian Gulf, and Carter pledged to work with American allies in the region to meet the Soviet threat.426

These crises in the Persian Gulf had significant implications for the U.S. relationship with Israel, especially when it came to oil. Under the September 1, 1975,

424 On the attack on the Grand Mosque in Mecca, see Yaroslav Trofimov, The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam’s Holiest Shrine and the Birth of Al Qaeda (New York: Doubleday, 2007). On the attack on the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, see Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), Chapter 1. On the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, see Vladislav M. Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), especially Chapters 8-9. 425 Document 138, FRUS, 1977-1980, Volume I: Foundations of Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2014), 695. 426 On the shift in U.S. national security priorities in the Persian Gulf, see Olav Njolstad, “Shifting Priorities: The Persian Gulf in US Strategic Planning in the Carter Years,” Cold War History, Vol. 4, No. 3 (April 2004), 21-55; William E. Odom, “The Cold War Origins of the U.S. Central Command,” Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Spring 2006), 52-82; Daniel J. Sargent, A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), especially Chapter 9; Andrew J. Bacevich, America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History (New York: Random House, 2016), especially Chapter 1; and Hal Brands, Making the Unipolar Moment: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Rise of the Post-Cold War Order (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016), especially Chapter 5. On the Carter administration’s stance toward the Soviet Union in 1979-1980, see Thomas M. Nichols, “Carter and the Soviets: The Origins of the US Return to a Strategy of Confrontation,” Diplomacy and Statecraft, Vol. 13, No. 2 (June 2002), 21-42 and Brian J. Auten, Carter’s Conversion: The Hardening of American Defense Policy (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2008). 255

U.S.-Israeli Memorandum of Agreement signed by then-Secretary of State Henry

Kissinger, the United States was committed to making sure that Israel had adequate oil supplies. Israel had traditionally bought much of its oil from Iran, which under the Shah had developed a close (if discrete) relationship with Israel. But when the Shah’s government collapsed in early 1979 and the Shah himself fled, turmoil in Iran sent shockwaves through the global energy market. A decline in Iranian oil production reduced the amount of oil available for purchase on the international market and caused global oil prices to skyrocket.427

In early 1979, U.S. officials were trying to figure out how the United States could fulfill its commitment to ensuring Israel’s oil supplies. In a January 8 memo to the

President, Energy Secretary James Schlesinger wrote that the U.S. should first try to help

Israel find alternative sources of oil, specifically countries such as Norway, the United

Kingdom, or Mexico. He noted, however, that since European countries have recently rejected Israeli requests for oil because of their own domestic and foreign policy considerations, using U.S. influence with Mexico was the administration’s best option.

Schlesinger went on to argue that, for a variety of reasons, direct U.S. oil sales to Israel should be seen as a last resort.428

Close U.S.-Israeli relations increasingly set the United States apart from its closest allies in Western Europe. Largely left out of U.S.-mediated Arab-Israeli talks,

427 On the Iranian Revolution’s impact on global oil supplies, see Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, & Power (New York: The Free Press, 1991), Chapters 33-34. On the U.S. role in helping create this second oil crisis of the 1970s, see Andrew Scott Cooper, The Oil Kings: How the U.S., Iran, and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011). 428 Jim Schlesinger to the President, “U.S. Oil Supply Commitment to Israel,” “Israel, 1-4/79,” Container 36, National Security Affairs – Country File, JCPL. 256 members of the European Economic Community (EEC) developed closer relations with the PLO. On June 13, 1980, during a meeting in Venice, Italy, leaders of the EEC released a document known as the Venice Declaration, in which they emphasized

Europe’s close ties with the Middle East and called for a comprehensive approach to peace in the region. This stood in contrast to the American-brokered Israeli-Egyptian negotiations in 1978-1979, which focused on bilateral talks and produced an Egyptian-

Israeli treaty. The European leaders called for a just solution to the Palestinian problem, one that acknowledged the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, and called for an end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.429 The growing rupture between the

United States and Europe over Arab-Israeli negotiations was the result of both European and Palestinian diplomacy.430

Closer to home, the issue of U.S.-Palestinian relations led to a personnel crisis within the highest levels of the Carter administration. On July 26, 1979, Andrew Young,

U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, held a discrete meeting with Zehdi Terzi, a professor at Columbia University and the PLO’s representative at the UN. The meeting took place because Young was hoping to delay the release of a UN report that called for the establishment of a Palestinian state, but the controversy that emerged focused less on the purpose of the meeting and more on the fact that the meeting took place at all. When news of Young’s meeting with Terzi appeared in the press, Young initially downplayed

429 “Venice Declaration, June 13, 1980,” Venice Declaration – English (1980), The Israeli- Palestinian Conflict: An Interactive Database. (URL: https://ecf.org.il/media_items/1476). (Accessed 3/12/2021). 430 See Rory Miller, Inglorious Disarray: Europe, Israel and the Palestinians Since 1967 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), especially Chapters 4-5. 257 its importance to his superiors at the State Department, but eventually told the full story, which was that the meeting was a deliberate, scheduled meeting between a senior U.S. government official and a member of the PLO leadership. When the full truth eventually came out, the Israeli government and American Jewish organizations protested loudly.

When Secretary of State Cyrus Vance learned the full truth, he was furious, and bluntly told President Carter that Young had to resign. Young did so, and Carter reluctantly accepted his resignation.431 Given the Carter administration’s hopes to eventually bring the PLO into the fold as a full partner in Middle East peace negotiations, several commentators pointed to the disconnect between Young’s fate and official U.S. government policy.432

Domestic Backlash

Running for reelection in 1980, the Carter campaign again made a concerted effort to appeal to Jewish voters. But as Election Day approached, members of the campaign became concerned that Carter was not doing as well with Jewish voters as he had in 1976. In a September 30, 1980, memo to the President, aides Al Moses and Stuart

Eizenstat wrote that “we have still not seen a strong turnaround in your standing in the

Jewish community. While many Jews are increasingly skeptical of Reagan … they have still not returned in historic numbers to the Democratic fold.”433 Moses and Eizenstat argued that this was due in part to the perception among American Jews that during a

431 See DeRoche, Andrew Young, 110-115. 432 Columnist Joseph Kraft pointed out that, only months before, the U.S. ambassador to Austria had met with a PLO representative and had suffered no repercussions. See Kraft, “Andrew Young’s Transgression,” Washington Post, August 16, 1979. 433 Memo from Al Moses and Stu Eizenstat to Carter titled “Measures Necessary to Assist You with the Jewish Community,” September 30, 1980, “Campaign Strategy, 9/30/80-10/9/80,” American Jewish Affairs, Container 18, JCPL. 258 second term, when he did not need to run for reelection, Carter would increase pressure on Israel and that this would jeopardize Israeli security. To counter this misconception, they suggested that Carter give a public demonstration of his belief that Israel was a strategic ally of the United States, specifically by announcing the creation of a joint U.S.-

Israeli military facility in Israel.

Another campaign memo from October 9 put things more succinctly. President

Carter’s problem, it stated, was “simple distrust. The American Jewish voters,” its author concluded, “believe that President Carter, if reelected, will recognize the PLO or put an untenable amount of pressure on the State of Israel to make concessions to the Arabs that would run counter to their national interests and security.”434 To combat this distrust, the memo suggested that Carter needed to do several things, including demonstrating all the things that he had done for Israel while in office and to connect his opponent Ronald

Reagan to the Moral Majority, the evangelical political organizing group, and charges of antisemitism by some evangelical preachers.

The Carter campaign tried to do just that. In a briefing book comparing Carter’s record on issues important to the American Jewish community to the records of his opponents Republican Ronald Reagan and independent John Anderson, campaign officials argued that “The single most significant achievement of the Carter

Administration has been its contribution to peace between Israel and Egypt.” In an echo of the argument made by the President Ford Committee in 1976, the document went on to state that “During President Carter’s Administration, the U.S. has approved some $10.4

434 “Outreach: American Jewish Voters,” October 9, 1980, “Campaign Strategy, 9/30/80-10/9/80,” American Jewish Affairs, Container 18, JCPL. 259 billion in military and economic assistance to Israel -- about half of the aid Israel has received from America since the founding of the Jewish state in 1948. During Jimmy

Carter’s Presidency, Israel has received more U.S. aid than in all the previous 29 years of its existence.”435

When it came to international affairs, some of President Carter’s strongest critics were members of his own party who had become increasingly concerned about the direction of U.S. foreign policy during the 1970s. As the détente policy of the Nixon and

Ford administrations moved forward, this loose group of public intellectuals, politicians, and policymakers became worried that the United States was giving up too much ground to the Soviet Union and was forfeiting its military and ideological position in the world.

While the Cold War and U.S.-Soviet relations were their greatest concern, these

“neoconservatives” were also very concerned with the security of Israel. This was in no small part due to the large number of Jews among the ranks of neoconservative intellectuals and to the rightward shift in Israeli politics. Jewish neoconservatives often published their criticisms of American foreign policy and calls for stronger support of

Israel in the pages of Commentary magazine. First published in 1945 by the American

Jewish Committee, Commentary began as a bastion of the Jewish left, but by the 1970s it moved steadily to the right under the editorship of Norman Podhoretz.436

435 “Briefing Book: President Carter’s Record of Achievement on Issues of Concern to the Jewish Community, Including an Analysis of the Records of Ronald Reagan and John B. Anderson,” “Carter Record, 3/14/80-10/20/80,” American Jewish Affairs, Container 18, JCPL. 436 On the intellectual history of neoconservatism, see John Ehrman, The Rise of Neoconservatism: Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs, 1945-1994 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995) and Justin Vaisse, Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010). On the important place of American Jews to neoconservatism, see Murray Friedman, The Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005). On the political journey of Commentary magazine, 260

President Carter was also facing growing criticism from another group, Christian evangelicals. Carter was a self-described born-again Christian and talked openly about his deep Baptist faith, something that had concerned some American Jews during the

1976 election. His candidacy came as white evangelical Christians were taking a much greater and more prominent role in national politics, especially within the Republican

Party. Newsweek magazine took note of evangelicals’ growing political prominence, declaring 1976 the “year of the evangelical” in its October 25, 1976, issue, but this phenomenon did not spring out of nowhere. On the contrary, the modern emergence of evangelical Christianity in the United States had its roots in the changes that reshaped

American society after the Second World War. To achieve their political goals, conservative activists established organizations like the Moral Majority to elect political candidates who could turn conservative beliefs into laws and government policies.437

Carter’s popularity declined among conservative evangelicals when he failed to act on major domestic issues that religious conservatives cared deeply about, including abortion and homosexuality. Many of these voters would abandon Carter and the Democratic

Party for Ronald Reagan and the Republicans in 1980, and this trend would continue as

see Benjamin Balint, Running Commentary: The Contentious Magazine that Transformed the Jewish Left into the Neoconservative Right (New York: Public Affairs, 2010). 437 For a sample of this literature, see Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith Since World War II (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), Joel A. Carpenter, Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), Daniel K. Williams, God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), Darren Dochuk, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011), Matthew Avery Sutton, American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2014), and Frances FitzGerald, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017). 261 conservative evangelicals became a vital constituency of the GOP in subsequent years.438

In addition to these domestic concerns, evangelicals also took issue with American foreign policy during the Carter administration, including its policies in the Middle East.

In a sign of both American evangelicals’ deepening interest in Israel and their growing visibility in American society and politics during the 1970s, a group of fifteen prominent evangelical pastors and theologians paid for a full-page ad in the New York

Times near the end of Carter’s first year in office. Under a headline that read, in large bold print, “Evangelicals’ Concern for Israel,” the signatories affirmed their belief in

Israel’s right to exist as a free and independent nation and voiced their “grave apprehension” at the direction of American policy in the Middle East. Using justifications grounded in the Old Testament, these evangelicals argued that Israel’s “rebirth” as a nation was foretold in the Bible, as were Israel’s modern borders. While acknowledging that the exact borders were open to discussion, they wrote that “we, along with most evangelicals, understand the Jewish homeland generally to include the territory west of the Jordan River.”439

The years that Carter was in the White House saw the beginning of a “symbiotic relationship” between conservative evangelicals in the United States and the Israeli Right of Menachem Begin’s Likud party. According to historian Colin Shindler, these two political movements paralleled each other during the 1970s, rising to prominence and

438 For two studies that emphasize the domestic roots of evangelicals’ disillusionment with Jimmy Carter, see J. Brooks Flippen, Jimmy Carter, the Politics of Family, and the Rise of the Religious Right (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 2011) and Andrew P. Hogue, Stumping God: Reagan, Carter, and the Invention of a Political Faith (Waco, TX: Baylor University, 2012). 439 “Evangelicals’ Concern for Israel,” New York Times, November 1, 1977. 262 political power around the same time and sharing similar beliefs about the importance of religion in public life. Rather than a break with the past, right-wing Israeli politicians saw the support of American evangelicals as a continuation of Christian support for an independent Jewish state from 1948 onwards.440

Two months before the 1980 election, Republican presidential candidate Ronald

Reagan gave a speech to a convention of the B’nai B’rith organization in Washington,

D.C., sharply denouncing the Carter administration for its policies in the Middle East and for its treatment of Israel. Charging that the President’s “weak and confused” leadership was both empowering the Soviet Union and putting both the United States and Israel in danger, Reagan called Israel “a strategic asset to America.” Asserting that U.S. relations with Israel under Carter were marked by “doubt and distrust,” Reagan warned his audience that “Israel today is in grave danger, and so is freedom itself.” According to the

Washington Post’s Lou Cannon, who covered Reagan throughout his political career,

Reagan’s speech was received enthusiastically by his audience, who interrupted the

Republican candidate thirty times with loud applause.441

Jimmy Carter’s defeat in the 1980 presidential election was the result of many factors, including his administration’s inability to show significant economic improvement and its foreign policy failings. Republican Ronald Reagan won a slight majority of the popular vote, but an overwhelming share of the electoral college vote.

Although their vote was not the only vote cause of Carter’s loss, it was one of many

440 See Colin Shindler, “Likud and the Christian Dispensationalists: A Symbiotic Relationship,” Israel Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1, The Americanization of Israel (Spring, 2000), pp. 153-182. 441 Lou Cannon, “Reagan: Carter Imperils Israel,” Washington Post, September 4, 1980. 263 factors that shaped the outcome of the 1980 election, American Jews’ vote tallies in that year’s election were notable because, for the first time in decades, the Democratic candidate won less than a majority of the Jewish vote (only 45%). Independent candidate

John Anderson took another 15%, but the remaining 40% went to Reagan. This was the largest percentage of the Jewish vote won by a Republican in American political history.442

Reagan’s victory was also due in part to evangelical Christians shifting their votes from Carter to Reagan. While there were undoubtedly many reasons for this, one of them had to do with Carter’s Middle East policy. In particular, Carter’s support for a

Palestinian state on land claimed by Israel compared to Reagan’s staunch support for

Israel and rejection of a Palestinian state pushed many evangelicals to choose the latter over the former. Ironically, this shift came despite the fact that Carter was more overtly devout in his religious observance than Reagan was. Evangelicals were also concerned about the rise of fundamentalist Islam and faulted Carter for the rise of an Islamist regime in Iran. In the wake of Reagan’s victory over Carter, one author set out what he saw the new administration’s Middle East policy should be: “What then specifically should the

Middle East policy of the Reagan administration be? It should be built on what little is left as the result of the disastrous policy that saw us abandon Iran to its present chaos. In the first case that means support for Israel.”443

442 For data on American Jews’ voting behavior in U.S. presidential elections from 1916-2000, see Ira N. Forman, “The Politics of Minority Consciousness: The Historical Voting Behavior of American Jews” in Sandy Maisel (ed.), Jews in American Politics (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2001), 153. 443 Rael Jean Isaac, “Toward a New Middle East Policy: PLO Would Annihilate Israel,” pp. 7, Moral Majority Report, Vol. 1, No. 15 (December 15, 1980), Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KA. See also Thomas S. Kidd, American Christians and Islam: Evangelical Culture 264

Conclusion

Carter’s critics charged that his policies were anti-Israel, but the truth is more complicated. Firstly, U.S. aid to Israel to Israel actually increased following the

Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. But secondly and more significantly, if the Carter administration was indeed trying to pressure Israel to make dangerous concessions, those efforts were unsuccessful. Recognizing the limits of his presidential diplomacy after office in 1981, Jimmy Carter continued to work for peace in the Middle East as part of a wide-ranging post-presidential career that included many international peace and development initiatives.444

and Muslims from the Colonial Period to the Age of Terrorism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), Chapter 7. 444 On Carter’s post-White House career, see Douglas Brinkley, The Unfinished Journey: Jimmy Carter’s Journey Beyond the White House (New York: Viking, 1998). 265

Chapter 6: The United States and Israel in the 1980s

After his tense relationship with Jimmy Carter, Menachem Begin hoped that the new American president, Ronald Reagan, would be a more reliable partner. A 1981 meeting between the Israeli prime minister and Max Fisher, a prominent Jewish

Republican fundraiser and frequent unofficial intermediary between the American and

Israeli governments, gave him reason for hope. According to Yehuda Avner, an experienced Israeli civil servant and diplomat who served under four Israeli prime ministers, Fisher predicted that Begin and Reagan would quickly develop a rapport.

Noting Begin’s deep religious devotion, Fisher told the Israelis that “[Reagan] is also a devout man, and because of his innate commitment to Israel, I think you and he will eventually get along just fine once you get to know each other.”445 Reagan’s affection for

Israel, Fisher continued, was based on its place in Biblical history, the horrors of the

Holocaust, and Israel’s value as an ally in the Cold War against the Soviet Union.

Ronald Reagan’s interest in Israel stretched back to Israel’s first days of independence and was deeply influenced by both ancient and recent history. In his memoir An American Life, Reagan identified land and religion as the two most important sources of unrest in the Middle East, and he traced those conflicts all the way back to

Biblical times. Here Reagan clearly identified the Jewish descendants of Abraham and

Moses as the first inhabitants of Palestine where, he wrote, they built a vibrant Hebrew civilization before it was overrun by successive pagan, Christian, and Islamic invaders and the Jews were forced into exile from their homeland. There followed centuries of

445 Yehuda Avner, The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership (New Milford, CT: The Toby Press, 2010), 559. 266 antisemitism and persecution, culminating in the Holocaust of the twentieth century.

Similarly to his predecessor Jimmy Carter, Reagan saw the Nazi effort to exterminate

European Jews as one of the key reasons that the United States should support Israel. For him, the Holocaust “left America with a moral responsibility to ensure that what had happened to the Jews under Hitler never happens again.”446 Reagan was also a devout anticommunist and Cold Warrior, and he saw the divisions and conflict in the Middle

East as opportunities for the Soviets to exploit and challenge the United States and its allies. The fortieth president’s support for Israel was, in the words of historian Gary Scott

Smith, “compensation for their long-standing persecution, as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy, and as a strategic bulwark to help stop Soviet intervention into the Middle

East.”447

As journalist Lou Cannon wrote in his detailed account of the Reagan presidency,

Reagan’s support for Israel remained strong even as many of his other political views shifted dramatically.448 In August 1979, months before he announced his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Reagan published an op-ed in the Washington

Post where he wrote that the United States’ chief objective in the Middle East was to prevent the region from falling under Soviet domination. The key to achieving that objective, the future president argued, was strong support for Israel, a country with a democratic system like the United States’ own, a powerful military, and highly competent

446 Ronald Reagan, An American Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), 410. 447 Gary Scott Smith, Faith and the Presidency: From George Washington to Georg W. Bush (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 343. 448 Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 340-341. 267 intelligence services. “Only by appreciation of the critical role the State of Israel plays in our strategic calculus,” Reagan wrote, “can we build the foundation for thwarting

Moscow’s designs on territories and resources vital to our security and our economic wellbeing.”449 A year later during a speech to the B’nai B’rith organization in

Washington, D.C., the former governor of California criticized President Jimmy Carter for breaking the United States’ covenant with Israel, which had been established when

Israel declared its independence in 1948.450 In describing the U.S. relationship with Israel as a “covenant” established in 1948, Reagan both underscored the religious roots of his enthusiasm for the Jewish state and skipped over the fact that the U.S.-Israeli alliance was younger than he implied.

Reagan’s criticisms of the Carter administration’s tense relationship with Israel resonated with the American Jewish community. When the votes in the 1980 election were tallied, Reagan had not only won an overwhelming majority of the electoral vote and a plurality of the popular vote, but he also received 40% of the Jewish vote. This was the largest share of the Jewish vote that a Republican candidate had won since such statistics were first kept in the early 20th century.451 Certainly not all of this was because of Israel – American Jews were as likely to be disappointed by and disillusioned with

Jimmy Carter as other groups of Americans – but the perception that Carter’s policies were harmful to Israel certainly hurt damaged his popularity with American Jews and

449 Ronald Reagan, “Recognizing the Israeli Asset,” Washington Post, August 15, 1979. 450 Lou Cannon, “Reagan: Carter Imperils Israel,” Washington Post, September 4, 1980. 451 For data on American Jews’ voting behavior in U.S. presidential elections from 1916-2000, see Ira N. Forman, “The Politics of Minority Consciousness: The Historical Voting Behavior of American Jews” in Sandy Maisel (ed.), Jews in American Politics (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2001), 153. 268 convinced many traditionally-Democratic Jewish voters to cast their votes for the

Republican candidate in 1980.

Ronald Reagan entered the White House after defeating Carter in the 1980 election. Though he began his political career as a New Deal Democrat, Reagan moved to the right in the 1950s and 1960s, becoming a major supporter of ultra-conservative candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964 before running for and winning the governorship of

California in 1966. After unsuccessful campaigns for the presidency in 1968 and 1976,

Reagan’s victory in 1980 was seen by many as a triumph for the post-World War II conservative movement. His presidency proved to be an extremely eventful one for both domestic and international affairs.452

Reagan’s presidency came at a transformational moment in the history of international relations and U.S. foreign policy. After decades of tense and at times violent competition between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their allies, the Reagan administration came to Washington determined to carry on the struggle. To the surprise of many, by the end of the 1980s the two superpowers had taken significant steps to reduce the danger of nuclear war and finally bringing the Cold War to an end. Given this history, the literature on Reagan’s foreign policy has understandably focused heavily on

U.S.-Soviet relations and the relationship Reagan developed with Soviet leader Mikhail

Gorbachev.453 After more than three decades, more and more primary documents are

452 On Reagan’s place in the history of conservatism, see Sean Wilentz, The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008 (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008). For detailed chronicles of the Reagan presidency, see Cannon, President Reagan and Richard Reeves, President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005). 453 See, for instance, Beth A. Fischer, The Reagan Reversal: Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1997); Frances FitzGerald, Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War (New York: Touchstone, 2000); James Mann, The 269 becoming available to researchers at the Reagan Presidential Library and through the

Foreign Relations of the United States series.454

The literature on the Reagan administration’s policies in the Middle East is much smaller than it is on other topics. As of today, there is only one book that directly focuses on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East during the Reagan presidency, and this book was published before many records became available at the Reagan Library.455 This is bound to change in the coming years as more records become available from American and Israeli archives. But while historians have justifiably focused on the Cold War dimensions of the Reagan presidency, Ronald Reagan’s eight years in the White House were also important ones for U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.456

As previous chapters demonstrate, American support for Israel had increased dramatically from the 1960s onwards and especially in the 1970s following the 1973

October War. That support had remained strong during the Carter administration, even though many critics of President Carter criticized his “harsh” treatment of Israel.

Amongst the many other ways that Ronald Reagan sought to break with his predecessor,

Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War (New York: Penguin Books, 2009); John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), especially Chapter 11; and James Graham Wilson, The Triumph of Improvisation: Adaptability, Reagan's Engagement, and the End of the Cold War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014). See also the essays in Bradley Lynn Coleman and Kyle Longley (ed.), Reagan and the World: Leadership and National Security, 1981-1989 (Lexington, KY: The University of Kentucky Press, 2017). 454 Multiple FRUS volumes on the Middle East are under declassification review, but they are currently unavailable to researchers. 455 See Nicholas Laham, Crossing the Rubicon: Ronald Reagan and US Policy in the Middle East (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004). When I visited the Reagan Library in the summer of 2019, I was able to see documents whose declassification was prompted by Laham’s FOIA requests. 456 On the difficulty of researching Reagan’s Middle East policies, see Clea Bunch, “Reagan and the Middle East” in Andrew L. Johns (ed.), A Companion to Ronald Reagan (Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2015). 270 the new president made it clear that his administration would be a vocal supporter of the

Jewish state. This vocal support was not mere rhetoric, instead it was accompanied by action. Besides continuing the policies of previous administrations that annually provided

Israel with more than a billion dollars in military and economic aid, the Reagan administration also took steps to formalize the U.S.-Israeli alliance by establishing official working groups and holding regular meetings between American and Israeli officials to coordinate their countries’ response to shared military and strategic concerns.

As a historian and diplomat with decades of experience working on Arab-Israeli negotiations, Aaron David Miller has a unique perspective on U.S.-Israeli relations. After leaving the State Department, Miller conducted hundreds of interviews with a wide range of American and Israeli participants in peace negotiations for his 2008 book The Much

Too Promised Land. Drawing on these interviews and his own experience in government,

Miller identifies the presidency of Ronald Reagan as a key moment in the development of modern U.S.-Israeli ties, writing that “the rise of Ronald Reagan and conservative

Republican support for Israel laid the foundation for the current strategic relationship and created the beginnings of wall-to-wall political support.”457 Israeli officials observed something similar by the end of the 1980s. During his more than two decades in Israeli politics, Moshe Arens served as Israel’s ambassador in Washington and as defense and foreign minister in the Likud governments of Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir.

Recalling this decade of U.S.-Israeli relations in his 2018 memoir In Defense of Israel,

Arens wrote that before the Reagan administration, Israel’s support had come mostly

457 Aaron David Miller, The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace (New York: Bantam Books, 2008), 84. 271 from Democrats and that “It wasn’t until Reagan’s presidency that support for Israel became truly bipartisan.”458

Yet while the United States and Israel did increase cooperation on a range of issues during the 1980s, the Reagan years were often difficult and frustrating ones for officials in Washington and Jerusalem. As was the case with other aspects of the Reagan presidency, the President’s personal statements and beliefs did not always match his administration’s official policies. Despite Reagan’s frequent and heart-felt expressions of support for Israel, his administration often butted heads with the Likud government of

Menachem Begin during the early 1980s on a wide range of issues. As the journalist

Wolf Blitzer observed in his 1985 book Between Washington and Jerusalem, “Ronald

Reagan’s relationship with Israel was defined by its contradictions.”459

Besides the President himself, there were several notable supporters of Israel in senior foreign policy posts of the incoming Reagan administration. One was the new

Secretary of State, Alexander Haig, a career Army officer who previously served as

Richard Nixon’s chief of staff during the 1970s. In April 1981, while visiting Israel, Haig attended a dinner at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem hosted by Israel’s foreign minister

(and future prime minister) Yitzhak Shamir. In a toast thanking his hosts for their hospitality and highlighting the close relationship between their two countries, Haig tried to describe what it was about Israelis that Americans admired so much. Telling his

458 Moshe Arens, In Defense of Israel: A Memoir of Political Life (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2018), 150. 459 Wolf Blitzer, Between Washington and Jerusalem: A Reporter’s Notebook (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 238. 272 audience that he was confiding a secret to them, the chief American diplomat had this to say:

Americans admire Israelis. Lacking resources, surrounded by hostility, and seared by catastrophe, you have managed against all odds to fashion a society remarkable for its dedication to justice, to freedom, and to equality. We admire these qualities, we Americans. We admire them in others especially, because they inspire us--to seek them for ourselves.460

During his brief tenure at the State Department, Haig was a key supporter of Israel and an important counterweight to another member of the Reagan administration, Secretary of

Defense Caspar Weinberger, who was much less sympathetic toward Israel than his colleague Haig or their boss, President Reagan.

Another Israeli sympathizer in the new administration was Reagan’s new

Ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick, a rare woman to serve in a senior foreign policy post during the Cold War. A trained political scientist, Kirkpatrick’s essay

“Dictatorships and Double Standards” in Commentary magazine brought her the attention of Ronald Reagan and other conservatives. In that essay, she strongly criticized the Carter administration for its failure to support pro-American autocratic regimes in countries like

Iran and warned of the dangers posed by extremists such as the Ayatollah Khomeini and

Yasir Arafat.461 During her four years at the United Nations, Kirkpatrick was a staunch defender of Israel.462

460 For the full text of Haig’s toast, see “Toasts by FM Shamir and Secretary of State Haig After Dinner Hosted by FM Shamir, King David Hotel, April 5, 1981,” Telegram from the American Consulate in Jerusalem to the State Department, April 6, 1981, “Israel (04/06/1981-04/07/1981),” Country Files, Executive Secretariat, National Security Council (NSC), RAC Box 37, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library (hereafter RRPL). 461 See Kirkpatrick, “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” Commentary, (November 1, 1979), pp. 34-45. 462 Peter Collier, “When Israel Had a Champion at the UN,” Jerusalem Post, May 30, 2012. 273

A Succession of Crises, 1981-1982

From the beginning, U.S.-Israeli relations during the Reagan administration were much more difficult than many expected given the new President’s comments about

Israel and the pro-Israel members of his administration. The first year and a half of the

Reagan administration faced a series of crises that tested the U.S.-Israeli relationship and challenged the new president to square his pro-Israel rhetoric with the realities of shepherding American foreign policy in the Middle East during the Cold War. After criticizing the Carter administration for its treatment of Israel, Reagan was determined that his administration would be vocally pro-Israel. But Reagan and his advisers also inherited a dangerous situation in the Middle East and Persian Gulf. Reeling from the rise of an Islamist regime in Iran and the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, the Carter administration sought to build an anti-Soviet alliance with moderate Arab regimes, and to increase the American military presence in the Middle East. The Reagan administration continued this effort through Secretary of State’s efforts to build a “strategic consensus” between the U.S. and its allies, both Israeli and Arab, in this vitally important region. In addition to concerns about the Soviet Union, American officials also sought to counter the influence of another power in the region, Iran.463

Besides Israel, one of the most important American allies in the Middle East was the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Saudis, who shared U.S. concerns about the Soviet

Union, were also concerned about the rising influence of Iran, a Shia Islamist regime that directly challenged the authority of Saudi Arabia’s Sunni Islamic theology. To shore up

463 On the United States’ long, covert struggle with Iran since 1979, see David Crist, The Twilight War: The Secret History of America’s Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran (New York: Penguin Books, 2012). 274 the pro-American regime in Riyadh, U.S. officials decided to sell them sophisticated Air

Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft. The sale, which was initiated by the

Carter administration, would, in the Americans’ view, strengthen an important ally in the

Arab world against the threat of Soviet expansion into the oil-rich Middle East. In her survey of U.S.-Saudi relations, political scientist Rachel Bronson argues the AWACS sale was part of a deepening relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, which has continued ever since.464 Alexander Haig in his second memoir wrote that that American arms sales to Arab states in the Persian Gulf were a key piece in his effort to establish closer ties between them and the U.S. He further argued that arming states like Saudi

Arabia would simultaneously make Israel safer and advance the Middle East peace process.465 Israeli officials saw things very differently: fearing that American military equipment would inevitably be turned against Israel, they objected to all proposed

American arms sales to the Saudi kingdom.

Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories were another issue that complicated

U.S.-Israeli relations in early 1981. These settlements had long been a source of tension between the American and Israeli governments, but in early 1981 the Reagan administration took a different position from its predecessors. Officials in the Ford and

Carter administrations had routinely argued that Israeli settlements were illegal under international law, but in a February interview with reporters, Reagan said that they were

464 See Rachel Bronson, Thicker than Oil: America’s Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), especially Chapter 8. For a more recent analysis of U.S.-Saudi relations, see Victor McFarland, Oil Powers: A History of the U.S.-Saudi Alliance (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020). 465 Alexander M. Haig Jr., Caveat: Realism, Reagan, and Foreign Policy (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1984), 168-169. 275 not, and distanced himself from the previous administration’s position on settlements.466

In a memo to Richard Allen, Reagan’s first National Security Adviser, National Security

Council (NSC) staffer Douglas Feith laid out the administration’s position. Believing that the issue of sovereignty in the West Bank would not be solved until the parties involved reached a formal peace agreement and noting that the U.S. had not recognized anyone’s sovereignty over the area since the British Mandate of the early twentieth century, Feith concluded that, in the meantime, “there is now law that bars Jews from settling on the

West Bank. No one should be excluded from an area simply on account of his nationality or religion.”467 Instead of a legal issue, Feith reasoned, the settlements were a political one that could only be resolved later through negotiations.

Feith’s legalistic argument drew heavily on a 1980 journal article written by another member of the Reagan administration, Eugene Rostow, director of the Arms

Control and Disarmament Agency. Rostow, whose brother Walt had been National

Security Adviser to President Lyndon Johnson and was a key figure in the escalation of

U.S. involvement in Vietnam during the 1960s, had been the dean of Yale’s law school before becoming Under Secretary of State during the Johnson administration. A life-long

Democrat from a secular Jewish family, Rostow was one of many so-called neoconservatives, liberal Democrats with hardline foreign policy views, who supported

Ronald Reagan on foreign policy grounds over Jimmy Carter in 1980.468 In an article in

466 “Excerpts From Interview With President Reagan Conducted by Five Reporters,” New York Times, February 3, 1981. 467 Memo from Douglas Feith to Richard Allen, “Notes on Legality of Israel’s West Bank Settlements,” June 16, 1981, “Israel/Iraq – Book II (4),” RAC Box 37, Country Files, Executive Secretariat, NSC, RRPL. 468 Eugene Rostow’s foreign policy views were heavily influenced by the 1973 October War. See John Rosenberg, “The Quest against Détente: Eugene Rostow, the October War, and the Origins of the 276 the Yale Journal of International Law, Rostow argued that Jews had the right to settle in the West Bank under the British Mandate, and as a result, the U.S. government could not argue (as previous administrations had) that Israel’s settlements in the West Bank were illegal. In addition to claiming that early-twentieth century colonial arrangements still applied decades later, Rostow argued that establishing a new Arab state (a Palestinian state) in the region would empower the Soviet Union and endanger both the West and its most important ally in the region, Israel.469

Soon U.S. officials would have bigger problems to worry about. On June 7, 1981, on Begin’s orders, the Israeli air force launched a large operation involving dozens of aircraft to destroy a nuclear reactor that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was building with the help of French technicians. During the Israeli operation, eight U.S.-built F-16 aircraft dropped sixteen thousand-pound bombs on the Osirak reactor, destroying it completely and killing ten Iraqi soldiers and a French technician on the ground.470 The Israeli aircraft had a long and difficult flight to and from their target, including passage through Saudi

Arabian airspace. In addition to using American aircraft, journalist Rodger Claire also reveals that many of the Israeli pilots involved in the raid had received training in the

Anti-Détente Movement, 1969–1976,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 39, No. 4 (2015), pp. 720-744. On the influence of neoconservatives on the Reagan administration’s Middle East policies, see Seth Anziska, Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), Chapter Five. 469 See Eugene Rostow, “‘Palestinian Self-Determination:’ Possible Futures for the Unallotted Territories of the Palestinian Mandate,” Yale Journal of International Law, Vol. 5, Is. 2 (1980), 169. I found multiple copies of this article in the files at the Reagan Library. 470 Ronen Bergman, Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations. (New York: Random House, 2018), 353-354. 277

United States. One of the Israeli pilots on the Osirak raid, Iftach Spector, had also led the

Israeli attack on the U.S.S. Liberty on June 8 during the June War of 1967.471

In a statement dated the same day as the attack, the Israeli government took responsibility for destroying Iraq’s nuclear reactor and defended its actions. The statement alleged that the reactor was being used to produce atomic weapons, not peaceful energy, and would soon become operational. Asserting that the reactor could produce enough plutonium to build a nuclear weapon the same size as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, the Israeli government concluded that the Osirak reactor represented “a mortal danger to the people of Israel” and pledged that “We shall defend the citizens of Israel in time and with all the means at our disposal.”472 U.S. officials criticized the Israeli government for its raid on Iraq, and days after the attack, the

President took the rare step of suspending the delivery of four F-16 aircraft to Israel, the same aircraft flown by Israeli pilots during the raid, though this step was only temporary.473 In his private diary, Reagan accepted the Israeli rationale for attacking Iraq, calling Saddam Hussein a “no good nut” who was trying to build a nuclear weapon and had called for the destruction of Israel.474

471 Claire was one of the first journalists to speak to the Israeli pilots who carried out the raid on Iraq. See Rodger W. Claire, Raid on the Sun: Inside Israel’s Secret Campaign that Denied Saddam the Bomb (New York: Broadway Books, 2004). 472 Statement by the Government of Israel, Jerusalem, 8 June, 1981, “Israel [06/06/1981- 06/09/1981],” RAC Box 2, Geoffrey Kemp Files, RRPL. 473 On the Reagan administration’s response to the Israeli raid, see Giordana Pulcini and Or Rabinowitz, “An Ounce of Prevention—A Pound of Cure? The Reagan Administration’s Nonproliferation Policy and the Osirak Raid,” Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Spring, 2021), pp. 4-40. 474 Entry for Thursday, June 11, 1981, Ronald Reagan with Douglas Brinkley (editor), The Reagan Diaries (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 25. 278

After the raid on Iraq and controversies over settlements, American and Israeli officials were eager to put U.S.-Israeli relations back on the right track. The first meeting between the Israeli prime minister and the new American president seemed to confirm

Max Fisher’s prediction that Menachem Begin and Ronald Reagan would indeed get along very well. During Begin’s September 9-10, 1981, visit to the United States, he met with Reagan at the White House, and the two discussed their mutual desire to open a new era of U.S.-Israeli relations and develop closer security ties. Speaking to the New York

Times after a meeting at the State Department, Begin remarked that he had received “the warmest atmosphere I ever enjoyed in Washington.” In a joint statement from the White

House, Reagan only added to this impression. In his remarks, the President emphasized the similarities between Israel and the United States. Calling the two countries

“philosophical neighbors,” he said that “The United States and Israel share similar beginnings as nations of immigrants, yearning to live in freedom and to fulfill the dreams of our forefathers.”475

But these upbeat remarks concealed very real differences between the American and Israel governments on Middle East policy. Of these differences, perhaps the most significant, was the planned sale of aircraft carrying the sophisticated airborne warning and control system (AWACS) to Saudi Arabia. The sale was initiated before Reagan entered the White House as the Carter administration sought to support its allies in the

Persian Gulf against Iranian and Soviet expansion. During Begin’s White House visit that

September, the American and Israeli leaders had expressed their views about the

475 Bernard Gwertzman, “Reagan and Begin Said to See a Need for Stronger Ties,” New York Times, September 10, 1981. 279

AWACS deal and essentially agreed to disagree. But as the Senate vote on the AWACS deal approached, it became increasingly controversial as Israel officials called for the sale to be cancelled and Israel’s American allies took up the cause. Writing just over a month after Menachem Begin visit the White House with such fanfare and friendly rhetoric,

New York Times journalist Bernard Gwertzman observed that “a chill has settled over

Israeli-American relations.”476

For all his public commitment to Israel, Ronald Reagan was also committed to countering the Soviet Union and to living up to U.S. commitments to its allies. Despite

Reagan’s image in some accounts as a passive leader who left many important decisions to his subordinates, Nicholas Laham argues that the AWACS debate was a case where

Reagan took an active part in securing passage of his agenda.477 With the help of the

President’s appeals to critical senators, the Reagan administration succeeded in preventing Congress from canceling the AWACS sale. White House chief of staff and future secretary of state James Baker was a key figure in this fight. 478

As the AWACS debate continued to complicate U.S.-Israeli relations, tragic events in Cairo threatened to undermine the fragile diplomatic relationship between Israel and Egypt. On October 6, 1981, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was assassinated by members of his own military during a parade ceremony. During his years as leader of

Egypt, Sadat had distanced Egypt from the Soviet Union and moved it into the Western

476 Gwertzman, “Awacs Sale Putting Unusual Strain on U.S.-Israeli Relations,” New York Times, October 6, 1981. 477 For a detailed history of the AWACS controversy, see Nicholas Laham, Selling AWACS to Saudi Arabia: The Reagan Administration and the Balancing of America’s Competing Interests in the Middle East (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002). 478 See Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James Baker (New York: Doubleday, 2020), 179-181. 280 camp. He also broke with most of his contemporary Arab leaders with his willingness to negotiate directly with Israel. A key player in U.S.-brokered Egyptian-Israeli negotiations during the 1970s, Sadat had done what no other Arab leader had done or would do for many years afterwards when he signed a peace treaty with Israel and opened diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. While Sadat claimed that he was not abandoning his fellow Arabs, especially the Palestinians, his actions were motivated by his view of

Egyptian national interests and the need to shore up Egypt’s troubled economy with

American economic and military aid. But while Sadat became very popular internationally, his actions angered many of his own countrymen, including several senior diplomats who resigned in protest of his agreements with Israel. He also alienated

Islamists within his own country, and a group of them tried to overthrow the Sadat regime by assassinating its leader.479

Throughout 1981, the ongoing debate over the AWACS sale continued to complicate relations between the Reagan administration and Israel. This was an instance where the United States’ close relationship with Israel created problems for its other priorities, including countering the Soviet Union in the Persian Gulf and shoring up pro-

American regimes in that region. After receiving the largest share of the Jewish vote of any Republican candidate, events during Reagan’s first year in office threatened to erase those gains. The Senate’s October 29, 1981, vote to approve the sale of Air Warning and

Control Systems (AWACS) aircraft to Saudi Arabia and upgrade the F-15 fighter aircraft that the Saudis had already purchased from the United States soured many American

479 On the background to Sadat’s assassination, see Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trial of Political Islam (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002), especially Chapter 4. 281

Jews on the Reagan administration. Privately, Reagan could not understand why Israeli leaders and their American allies did not trust his administration to simultaneously help maintain Israel’s military superiority in the Middle East while also sending military aid to

Saudi Arabia. In an April 23 diary entry, Reagan expressed his frustration with the

American Jewish community, which failed to appreciate that “they’ve never had a better friend of Israel in the W.H. than they have now.”480

It did not take long for Reagan’s Jewish supporters to make their views known to the administration. In a memo to Elizabeth Dole, then the head of the White House’s

Office of Public Liaison, a wealthy Republican Jewish donor named George Klein assessed the situation. Klein, who had previously worked with Max Fisher on the

President Ford Committee’s efforts to attract Jewish voters to the Republican Party in

1976, warned Dole that Reagan’s support among American Jews had seriously deteriorated due to the fierce fight to get the AWACS sale through the Senate. Klein recommended that the President do several things, including publicly emphasizing

Israel’s strategic value to the United States, increasing the administration’s outreach to

Jewish Republicans as well as Jewish politicians and leaders of Jewish organizations, appointing Jews to senior administration posts, and strengthening the post of liaison to the Jewish community. Klein concluded by saying that “The worst thing that could happen is that a feeling of finality settles upon this community--that this administration

480 Thursday, April 23, 1981 entry in The Reagan Diaries, 14. 282 and the Republican party has written off their votes, involvement--both politically and economically, and has shifted its previously stated policies.”481

In addition to their objections to the AWACS sale itself, American Jewish leaders objected to antisemitic insinuations that their opposition to the deal was part of an effort by a “Jewish lobby” to shape American foreign policy. In a letter to Jacob Stein, White

House Special Adviser for Jewish Affairs, Hyman Bookbinder of the American Jewish

Committee expressed his anger and frustration with recent events. Writing on October 31, two days after the Senate vote, Bookbinder wrote that “I hate to say the following, but my heart and my mind force me to do so: Once again, Jews (and Israel) are being prepared for our centuries-old curse, being scapegoated for problems not of our doing.”482 Officials in the Reagan administration tried to repair the damage, but the AWACS controversy dealt a serious blow to Reagan’s standing in the American Jewish community.

After the Senate voted to permit the AWACS sale to Saudi Arabia, the Reagan administration sought to mollify its Israeli allies by negotiating a new memorandum of understanding between the two countries. In late November, just over a month after

Congress’s vote on the AWACS sale, U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and

Israeli Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon gathered for a private, informal ceremony at the

Pentagon to sign an agreement calling for greater strategic cooperation between the two countries. This was an important milestone in U.S.-Israeli relations. After all, though the

United States supplied countries such as Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia with military

481 Memo from George Klein to Elizabeth Dole, November 16, 1981, “Jewish – September thru Dec 1981 (2/5),” Box 32, Elizabeth Dole Files, RPL. 482 Letter from Hyman Bookbinder to Jacob Stein, October 2, 1981, Ibid. 283 equipment, it had no such strategic agreement with any of those nations. The November

1981 MOU also continued a long-standing practice in U.S.-Israeli relations by laying out the U.S. commitment to Israel in a document that did not have to be approved by

Congress. However, the newly signed MOU was as notable for what it did not say as for what it did. Specifically, it did not commit the United States to coming to Israel’s protection, but instead laid out more limited forms of military and security cooperation.

Israeli officials had hoped to secure a more expansive agreement with the Reagan administration, but officials at the Defense Department rejected more extensive cooperation with the Jewish State. Caspar Weinberger had even gone so far as to ensure that the signing ceremony took place privately in the Pentagon, without reporters and celebratory speeches.483

Just weeks after Ariel Sharon and Caspar Weinberger had signed the joint U.S.-

Israeli MOU, the Begin government took actions that caused the Reagan administration to suspend it. On December 14, the Knesset voted to impose Israeli law over the Golan

Heights, a section of strategically important territory Israel seized from Syria during the

June 1967 war. The first Israeli settlement in the Golan was established on July 16, just over a month after Israel seized the Heights, and more Israelis had followed in subsequent years. Imposing Israeli law over the Golan Heights was widely interpreted as a prelude to annexation, which would pose a serious problem for future negotiations with

483 For the full text of the agreement, see Memorandum of Understanding Between the Governments of Israel and the United States [November 30, 1981], “Strategic Cooperation Between Israel and the United States,” Document 359, American Foreign Policy Current Documents 1981 (Washington, D.C.: Department of State, 1984), 772-773. See also Gwertzman, “U.S. and Israel Sign Strategic Accord to Counter Soviets: Senate Vote Not Needed,” New York Times, December 1. 1981. 284

Syria to exchange land for peace as called for under UNSCR 242. As Ambassador

Samuel Lewis reported to Washington in a telegram from Tel Aviv, Menachem Begin gave the United States no warning that he was about to present a Golan Heights bill to the

Knesset. After talking with officials at the Israeli foreign ministry, Lewis wrote that at least part of Begin’s reasons for taking this step had to do with his vulnerable position in

Israeli politics.484

The Begin government’s actions were also having an impact on American Jews’ views of Israel in early 1982. Writing in the New York Review of Books, Rabbi Arthur

Hertzberg observed that events such as the Israeli strike on Iraq’s nuclear reactor, disagreements over the Occupied Territories, and the disputed AWACS sale to Saudi

Arabia had turned many American Jews against the Israeli government of Menachem

Begin. While major Jewish organizations, oldline Jewish Republicans such as Max

Fisher, and Jewish neoconservatives continued to support the Begin government, many others were increasingly uncomfortable with its policies. American Jews, who had embraced a version of Zionism that was compatible with their worldview back in the

1940s, were also uncomfortable with Begin’s revisionist Zionism.485 Hertzberg’s essay appeared in February of 1982, just months before the Israeli invasion of Lebanon would exacerbate many of the same divisions he warned about.

At the same time that American Jews were raising concerns about the Begin government and its policies, officials within the Reagan administration were worried

484 Samuel Lewis, “The Golan Law – Why Did Begin Do It,” Telegram from the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to the State Department in Washington, December 14, 1981, “Israel (12/13/81-12/17/81)),” RAC Box 38, NSC Executive Secretary, Country Files, RRPL. 485 Arthur Hertzberg, “Begin and the Jews,” New York Review of Books, February 18, 1982. 285 about what the tense U.S.-Israeli relationship would mean for the Republican Party’s prospects for winning over Jewish voters in future elections. After receiving more than

40% of the Jewish vote in the 1980 presidential election, Elizabeth Dole warned that

Reagan’s level of support among American Jews had fallen sharply to the point where it was amongst all other demographic groups except African Americans. Dole attributed this decline in support to several factors, but especially to the rocky relationship between the Reagan administration and the Israeli government. She warned that “Without a comprehensive and acceptable policy on Israel, it will be exceedingly difficult to regain much meaningful support within the Jewish community.”486

Lebanon, 1982-1984

Israel’s northern border with Lebanon had long been a tense region. In addition to

Lebanon’s own internal divisions, the country was also home to thousands of Palestinian refugees, who lived in camps in the south of the country. After being forced out of Jordan in late 1970 following the events of Black September, the leadership of the Palestine

Liberation Organization (PLO) relocated to Lebanon. The presence of large numbers of

Palestinian refugees inside Lebanon added a new element to an already tense and divided society. The combination of a population divided along religious and sectarian lines and the interest of outside powers such as Israel, Syria, and the United States in Lebanese politics made Lebanon an extremely unstable place in the 1970s. By the end of the decade, Lebanon was already in the midst of a brutal civil war between its different

486 Memo from Dole to Edwin Meese III, James A. Baker III, Michael Deaver, and William Clark, “Jewish Strategy,” March 24, 1982, “Israel (3/16/82-3/25/82),” Country Files, NSC Executive Secretary, RAC Box 38, Country Files, RRPL. 286 religious and political factions, which began in 1975 and had already killed or displaced tens of thousands of people.487

By the end of the 1970s, the PLO had established a formidable political and military infrastructure within Lebanon. While the PLO had some allies within Lebanese society, their increasing involvement in Lebanese national politics had also alienated many other Lebanese. The PLO became even more unpopular when the Israelis retaliated for Palestinian attacks inside Israel by attacking targets in Lebanon, attacks which killed

Palestinian fighters but also many Lebanese civilians. Recognizing that the Israelis were likely to launch a new ground operation inside Lebanon in the near future, the PLO built up a formidable conventional arsenal in the years leading up to Israel’s 1982 invasion.488

Palestinian guerillas frequently launched attacks inside Israel from bases in southern Lebanon, to which Israel had responded with frequent air and artillery fire and, in several instances, limited ground operations into Lebanese territory. This happened several times in 1978, but the Israeli-Lebanese border again erupted in violence again in the summer of 1981. Fearing that the border conflict would expand into a wider war, the

State Department tapped Philip Habib, an experienced diplomat from a Lebanese-

487 To my knowledge there is no comprehensive history of Lebanon’s civil war (1975-1990) based on extensive archival research, at least not in English. On the modern history of Lebanon, see Kamal S. Salibi, Crossroads to Civil War: Lebanon 1958-1976 (Delmar, NY: Caravan Books, 1976), Itamar Rabinovich, The War for Lebanon 1970-1985 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), Charles Winslow, Lebanon: War and politics in a fragmented society (London: Routledge, 1996), Farid el Khazen, The Breakdown of the State in Lebanon 1967-1976 (Cambridge, MA Cambridge University Press, 2000), and David Hirst, Beware of Small States: Lebanon, Battleground of the Middle East (London: Faber and Faber, 2010). For a global perspective that puts Lebanon’s civil war into the broader context of post-Cold War violence, see Paul Thomas Chamberlin, The Cold War’s Killing Fields: Rethinking the Long Peace (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2018), especially Chapter 14. 488 On the PLO’s activities in Lebanon on the eve of Israel’s 1982 invasion, see Rashid Khalidi, Under Siege: P.L.O. Decisionmaking During the 1982 War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), Chapter 1. 287

American background, to serve as the U.S. special envoy for the Middle East. After weeks of shuttling back and forth between Israel and Lebanon, Habib successfully negotiated a ceasefire starting on July 24, but this proved to be only a temporary reprieve.489

If there was one key figure in Israel’s decision to invade Lebanon in June of 1982, it was Ariel Sharon. By the beginning of the 1980s, the future prime minister of Israel was already an experienced soldier and politician. He had served in each of Israel’s four major wars since 1948, and as minister of agriculture in the first Likud government of

Menachem Begin, where he worked to expand Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. After Likud’s narrow victory in Israel’s May 1981 parliamentary elections,

Sharon pushed for and eventually received the defense portfolio. Looking at the tense and violent situation along Israel’s border with Lebanon, Sharon began planning for an ambitious military operation that would go beyond what Israeli forces had done in

Lebanon before 1981. Instead of a limited operation that focused on PLO fighters and infrastructure in southern Lebanon, Sharon’s plan called for a full-scale invasion that would permanently expel the PLO from Lebanon and install a pro-Israel regime in Beirut that would sign a peace treaty with Israel.490

In preparing for a broader military operation inside Lebanon, Israeli leaders sought out allies within Lebanon’s Maronite Christian community. According to Benny

489 On Habib’s time as the Reagan administration’s special envoy to the Middle East, see John Boykin, Cursed Is the Peacemaker: The American Diplomat Versus the Israeli General, Beirut 1982 (Belmont, CA: Applegate Press, 2002). 490 On Sharon’s ambitious plans for Lebanon, see Ze’ev Schiff and Ehud Ya’ari, Israel’s Lebanon War (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1984), Chapter 2, and David Landau, Arik: The Life of Ariel Sharon (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), Chapter 5. 288

Morris, the first Israeli overtures to Lebanese Christians took place during the years

1948-1951, just as Israel emerged as an independent nation. Desperate for allies in a hostile region, the first Israeli government of David Ben Gurion authorized talks between

Israeli diplomats and representatives from the Phalange, a Christian political party and militia in Lebanon. These early contacts laid the foundation for the covert alliance between Israel and the Phalange in the 1970s and 1980s.491 In the months before Israel’s invasion, Ariel Sharon traveled secretly to Lebanon to meet with Bashir Gemayel, the son of Phalange founder Pierre Gemayel and a leader of Christian militia forces in Lebanon.

Both Sharon and Menachem Begin sympathized with Lebanon’s Maronite Christians, whom Sharon compared in his autobiography to the Jews of Israel, fellow minorities in a hostile region.492

In planning for an extended military operation inside Lebanon, Israeli officials were extremely conscious of how the United States might react. In the early months of

1982, several senior Israeli officials visited Washington to ascertain how the Americans would respond to a large-scale Israeli incursion into Lebanon. In May 1982, less than a month before the Israeli invasion began, defense minister Ariel Sharon met with

Secretary of State Haig and other American officials. As Haig recalled in his memoirs, the Americans were shocked when Sharon presented his two options for a Lebanon operation, one a limited border operation and one that would take Israeli forces all the way to Beirut, where they would install a pro-Israel regime. Fearing that an Israeli

491 See Benny Morris, “Israel and the Lebanese phalange: The birth of a relationship, 1948–1951,” Studies in Zionism, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1984), pp. 125-144. 492 See Ariel Sharon with David Chanoff, Warrior: The Autobiography of Ariel Sharon (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 423. 289 invasion of Lebanon would lead to a destructive war that could expand beyond the

Israeli-Lebanese border region, Haig “strenuously” told Sharon in that very same meeting and then later in private that the United States could not support Israeli action inside

Lebanon unless it was a proportionate response to an internationally-recognized provocation. The Israeli journalist Ze’ev Schiff, an experienced and respected observer of

Israeli foreign policy, painted a slightly different picture a year after the meeting took place. In 1983, Schiff reported in the journal Foreign Policy that Israeli leaders believed, after their meeting with Haig, Israel had at least tacit permission from the Reagan administration, an unspoken “green light,” to launch a limited military operation inside

Lebanon.493

Israel’s preparations for war in Lebanon were well-known to the Americans months before the war began. Reporting from Tel Aviv in early April 1982, Ambassador

Samuel Lewis warned his superiors in Washington that “Recent statements and troop movements indicate that the Israelis, angry and frustrated, are close to making a major strike on the PLO in Lebanon. We think they are only one provocation away from doing so.”494 The incident that touched off Israel’s invasion came less than two months later, but in Europe and not on the Israeli-Lebanese border. On June 4, Israel’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, Shlomo Argov, was shot and badly wounded by a Palestinian gunman in London. While it was quickly determined that the gunman was a member of

493 For Haig’s account, see Caveats, 335. For Schiff’s account, see Ze’ev Schiff, “The Green Light,” Foreign Policy, No. 50 (Spring, 1983), pp. 73-85. I was not able to find a memorandum of conversation or transcript of this meeting at the Reagan Library. 494 Telegram from Lewis to the State Department, “Israel Preparing to Act in Lebanon,” April 9, 1982, “Israel (4/4/82-4/9/82),” RAC Box 38, Country Files, NSC Executive Secretariat, RRPL. 290 the Abu Nidal Organization, a Palestinian militant group that split from Yasser Arafat and the PLO, Israeli leaders responded by ordering air strikes against PLO bases in

Lebanon. When the PLO responded to these attacks by firing on northern Israeli towns, the Israeli cabinet voted overwhelmingly in favor of a massive ground invasion of

Lebanon. Israel’s leaders initially told the public that IDF troops would only advance forty kilometers into Lebanon to destroy the PLO’s ability to threaten Israelis in the north of the country.

As Israeli forces advanced into Lebanon, they encountered surprisingly strong resistance from PLO conventional forces and suffered heavy casualties. They also engaged Syrian armored and air forces, destroying dozens of Syrian tanks and aircraft during the early weeks of fighting. After more than a week of fighting and advancing,

Israeli forces reached the outskirts of Beirut and linked up with Christian militia forces of the Phalange, cutting the city off from the outside world. By this point it had become clear that the Israeli military leaders, especially Ariel Sharon, had larger goals in mind, beyond the forty-kilometer limit they cited when the invasion began. Throughout the remainder of June and through July and August, fighting continued between Israeli,

Lebanese, PLO, and Syrian forces, causing major damage to the city of Beirut and heavy casualties on all sides but especially among the city’s civilian population. Israeli airstrikes were particularly destructive and were widely condemned by the press and in the international community. Throughout this period, the fighting was interrupted only by at least six ceasefire agreements, none of which lasted for more than a few days.495 While

495 For an early history of the Israeli military campaign in Lebanon, see Schiff and Ehud Ya’ari, Israel’s Lebanon War. For a more recent account, see Ahron Bregman, Israel’s Wars: A History since 1947 291 fighting raged within Lebanon, the war had an enormous impact on Israeli society at home. For the first time in the country’s history, Israelis turned out in large numbers to protest their government’s foreign policy. Among the protestors were active-duty soldiers and officers, some of whom refused to serve in Lebanon. This activism did not arise out of nowhere but out of a nascent peace movement that had been growing throughout the

1970s and received a significant boost when Israel made peace with Egypt in 1979.496

In the weeks and months after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, American diplomats worked intensely to arrange a ceasefire. Special envoy Philip Habib shuttled back and forth between Israel and Lebanon, and after months of talks, a lasting ceasefire was finally reached on August 18. Under the deal reached with the Lebanese government, the PLO, and the Israelis, PLO forces would be evacuated on ships, and international forces would deploy to Beirut as peacekeepers. These peacekeeping forces included

French and Italian troops and hundreds of U.S. Marines, the United States’ second military deployment to Lebanon after the events of July 1958. As PLO military forces were withdrawn, thousands of Palestinian civilians remained in refugee camps in western

Beirut, including the Sabra and Shatila camps.

Ronald Reagan’s decision to deploy U.S. forces to Beirut in late 1982 was one of the largest military deployments of his presidency. In ordering U.S. Marines ashore in

Beirut, Reagan overruled his Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, who was

(London and New York: Routledge, 2016), Chapter 5. For two Western journalists’ accounts of the war in Lebanon, see Thomas Friedman, From Beirut to Jerusalem (New York: Anchor Books, 1989) and Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). 496 On the emerging peace movement in Israel, see Magnus Norrell, A Dissenting Democracy: The Israeli Movement ‘Peace Now’ (London: Frank Cass, 2002) and Mordechai Bar-On, In Pursuit of Peace: A History of the Israeli Peace Movement (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, 1996). 292 skeptical of both significant U.S. support for Israel and, more generally, using U.S. troops in a peacekeeping role.497 Instead, Reagan sided with his new Secretary of State, George

Shultz. Like Haig, Shultz had served in the Nixon administration and was a strong supporter of Israel, the latter despite Shultz’s time as an executive in the Bechtel

Corporation, which had significant contracts in Saudi Arabia.498 This Marine deployment was meant to be temporary, and after the last PLO fighters departed Beirut, the Marines returned to their ships offshore on September 10.

As American diplomats were negotiating the evacuation of PLO forces from

Beirut, officials in the Reagan administration were also exploring how they could use this moment to make real progress in Arab-Israeli negotiations. In a national address on

September 1, 1982, President Reagan laid out a peace plan that would build on the accomplishments at Camp David by focusing on Jordan and the Palestinians, neither of whom were present at the September 1978 conference. Calling the U.S. initiative a

“moral imperative” as well as a step toward securing American security interests, Reagan called for a “fresh start” in the effort to “reconcile Israel’s legitimate security concerns with the legitimate rights of the Palestinians.”499

The peace plan Reagan announced at the start of September was indeed an important step toward addressing the fate of the Palestinians. But in trying to address

497 On the so-called Weinberger Doctrine and Lebanon, see Gail E. Yoshitani, Reagan on War: A Reappraisal of the Weinberger Doctrine, 1980-1984 (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2012), especially Chapter 4. For Weinberger’s perspective on these events, see Caspar W. Weinberger, Fighting for Peace: Seven Critical Years in the Pentagon (New York: Warner Books, 1990), Chapter V. 498 For Shultz’s perspective, see George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993). 499 “Address to the nation on United States Policy for Peace in the Middle East,” September 1, 1982, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Ronald Reagan, 1982, Book II—July 3- December 31, 1982 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983), 1094. 293 both Palestinian and Israeli concerns, the Reagan peace plan contained the seeds of its own demise. Under the plan’s terms, there would be free elections in the Occupied

Territories followed by a five-year period of autonomy during which the Palestinians would govern their own affairs. This process, which was already a part of the Autonomy

Talks begun after Egypt and Israel signed their peace treaty in 1979, but those talks quickly stalled and made little to no progress in the ensuing years. Notably, this entity was not a full Palestinian state, which Reagan rejected outright in his speech. Instead, this new Palestinian governing authority would govern in association with Jordan. There were even more limitations on the proposed Palestinian entity, starting with the fact that, while

Reagan called for a halt to Israeli settlement building in the West Bank, he said nothing about withdrawing existing settlements and what would happen after the five-year period ended. Furthermore, Reagan rejected a full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank to the country’s pre-1967 borders.500 Given these limitations, it was unsurprising when Arab countries did not rush to embrace the new American plan, though they were more enthusiastic than Israel was. The Israeli government rejected the plan outright, calling it a break from the Camp David framework and a precursor to a Palestinian state that “‘could create a serious danger’ to Israel's security.”501

Despite the Israeli rejection, American officials still hoped to salvage some progress toward Arab-Israeli negotiations, but this effort was quickly overshadowed by renewed violence in Beirut, including some of the worst atrocities of the entire conflict.

500 Ibid., 1095-1097. 501 David K. Shipler, “Israel Rejects Reagan Plan for Palestinians’ Self-Rule; Terms It ‘A Serious Danger,’” New York Times, September 3, 1982. 294

After months of fighting between Israeli, Lebanese, PLO, and Syrian forces, the country was on the verge of seating a new government. On August 23, Christian Phalangist leader

Bashir Gemayel was elected President of Lebanon and set about putting together a government to rebuild the country in the aftermath of Israel’s invasion. But less than a month later, Gemayel was killed in a massive bombing at his party headquarters. The following day Israeli forces and Phalange militia troops entered West Beirut, the part of the city formerly occupied by PLO forces. Taking up positions in West Beirut, Israeli forces did not enter the Palestinian camps, but Christian militia forces did. In what former

Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban called a “gruesome pogrom against undefended civilians,” Christian militias massacred hundreds of Palestinian civilians in the camps from the night of September 16 to the morning of September 18.502

Though these atrocities were carried out by Israel’s allies and not by uniformed

Israeli soldiers, from the beginning there were indications that Israeli military and civilian officials knew what was happening and did not stop the killings. Outraged at Israel’s complicity in the killings, thousands of Israelis demonstrated in the weeks following the massacres at Sabra and Shatila, and many called for Begin’s resignation. A commission appointed to investigate Israel’s role in the events of September 16-18, 1982, under

Yitzhak Kahan, the President of Israel’s Supreme Court, and released its report in

February of 1983. Though the Kahan Commission, as it became known, placed direct responsibility for the massacres on the Phalangists, the report did find Sharon, Begin, and

502 Eban, Introduction to The Beirut Massacre: The Complete Kahan Commission Report (New York: Karz-Colh, 1983), XIII. 295 several senior IDF officers indirectly responsible for the massacres.503 Within days Ariel

Sharon was forced to resign from his post as Minister of Defense, and months later

Menachem Begin submitted his own resignation. In recent years, newly unearthed appendix material from the Kahan Commission report demonstrates, in the words of historian Seth Anziska, “a pattern of extensive cooperation and planning between Israeli and Maronite leaders” that went beyond “indirect responsibility.”504

Shocked at the atrocities, President Reagan ordered U.S. Marines back to Beirut on September 29, thus beginning the second U.S. military deployment in Lebanon in under a year. Other U.S. personnel were tasked with training a new professional

Lebanese army. For the next year, U.S. troops were in the uneasy position of being nominal peacekeepers in a city with multiple warring factions while at the same time operating with heavily restricted rules of engagement. Those factions including Syrian and Israeli forces, Lebanese Muslim and Christian militias, and Iranian-backed militant groups who increasingly targeted American and international forces in Beirut. One such attack came against the American embassy in Beirut on April 18, 1983, which killed dozens of Lebanese and Americans, including most of the embassy’s CIA personnel.

Though intermittent fighting raged on around the Marines, for the most part U.S. forces held their fire and did not try to impose order on the country.505

503 See “The Responsibility for the Massacre,” Ibid. 504 See Seth Anziska, “Sabra and Shatila: New Revelations,” September 17, 2018, New York Review of Books (URL: https://www-nybooks-com.libproxy.unl.edu/daily/2018/09/17/sabra-and-shatila- new-revelations/). (Accessed 6/5/2021). 505 On the experience of U.S. Marines in Beirut from 1982-1984, see Benis M Frank, U.S. Marines in Lebanon, 1982-1984 (Washington, D.C.: History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1987). 296

During this time, U.S. peacekeepers had repeated run-ins with the warring factions in the city of Beirut, including the Israeli Defense Forces. Despite the longstanding military relationship between the United States and Israel, tense encounters between U.S. Marines and IDF troops become commonplace. One such confrontation occurred on February 2, 1983, when two U.S. Marines approached an IDF patrol asking them to stop where they were going, whereupon the IDF forces allegedly pointed their guns at the Americans.506 A month later, American officials again complained that IDF troops were interfering with U.S. patrols in Beirut.507 American and Israeli diplomats agreed that such confrontations only damaged U.S.-Israeli relations, and tried their best to resolve them.

The perception that U.S. forces were non-aligned peacekeepers ended when, on

September 19, U.S. forces intervened directly in the civil war around them by firing shells from American naval ships offshore in support of the Lebanese army. According to the journalist Thomas Friedman, this American use of force “turned the Marines from neutral peacekeepers into just another Lebanese faction.”508 Just over a month later, on

October 23, 1983, a suicide bomber drove a truck loaded with explosives into the

American Marines’ barracks in Beirut, killing more than 240 American servicemen. A short while later, another suicide bomber attacked a French military barracks not far away, killing dozens of French soldiers. Subsequent investigations revealed that these

506 Telegram from the American Embassy in Tel Aviv to the State Department re “February 2 IDF-USMC Incident,” February 3, 1983, “Israel (2/3/83-2/4/83),” RAC Box 39, Country Files, NSC Executive Secretariat, RRPL. 507 Telegram from the American Embassy in Tel Aviv to the State Department re “Incidents Between USMC and IDF,” “Israel (3/13/83-3/17/83),” Ibid. 508 Friedman, From Beirut to Jerusalem, 200. 297 attacks were carried out by groups backed by Syria and Iran. Though the Reagan administration claimed that it was not withdrawing in the face of terrorist attack, it withdrew U.S. forces from Lebanon just a few months later.

With the collapse of the Reagan peace plan and the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Beirut, Ronald Reagan’s Lebanon policy must be considered one of the greatest failures of his presidency. In the words of journalist Lou Cannon, even with years of hindsight, if it were measured solely in terms of lives lost, the Marine barracks bombing was “the greatest disaster of the Reagan presidency.”509 Writing in the months after the

Marines withdrew from Lebanon, William Quandt, who had extensive experience working on Middle East issues during the Nixon and Carter administrations, argued that it was not the Reagan administration’s end goals that were flawed, but the means it used to achieve them, which amounted to mistakes of “analysis, judgment, and execution.”510

American officials’ inability to perceive the conflict in Lebanon as rooted in complex local issues instead of a proxy conflict between the pro-Western Israel and pro-Soviet

PLO and Syria was a particular failure by the Reagan administration.511

Rebuilding the Special Relationship

In the aftermath of the attacks on American and French forces in Beirut, U.S. officials began reconsidering their level of cooperation with Israel. Less than a week after

509 Cannon, 339. 510 William Quandt, “Reagan’s Lebanon Policy: Trial and Error,” The Middle East Journal, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Spring 1984), 250. For a more recent analysis that reaches a similar conclusion, see Charles F. Brower IV, “Strangers in a Dangerous Land: Reagan and Lebanon, 1981-1984,” in Reagan and the World, Chapter 12. 511 For a recent analysis along these lines, see Magnus Seland Andersson and Hilde Henriksen Waage, “Stew in Their Own Juice: Reagan, Syria and Lebanon, 1981-1984,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 44, No. 4 (September 2020), 664-691. 298 the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks, President Reagan signed National Security

Decision Directive (NSDD) 111, which called for, among other things, “a stronger strategic relationship with Israel and those moderate Arab states willing to work with us militarily.”512 NSDD 111 argued that it was essential for the United States to work with its allies in the region to counter the influence of Soviet-backed Syria.

A month later, the President signed another NSDD, this one coming just days before the new Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, visited the United States.

According to the authors of NSDD 115, Sharmir’s forthcoming visit “affords us a unique opportunity to make progress on our Middle East agenda and to develop a more mature strategic relationship with the Government of Israel.” They went on to state that “Our objective is to undertake combined military planning to protect common interests and defend shared objectives focusing first on the Soviet-Syrian threats to our interests.”513

Shamir’s trip to the United States was aimed at repairing the fissures in U.S.-Israeli relations that developed under Shamir’s predecessor during the war in Lebanon and restoring strategic cooperation, which was halted at the end of 1981 after the Golan annexation. At the White House, Shamir found a very different environment in

Washington compared to his previous visit. Recalling the moment in his memoirs,

Shamir wrote that “The contrast between this visit and my last one was so sharp I could

512 National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 111: “Next Steps Toward Progress in Lebanon and the Middle East,” October 28, 1983, “NSDD Digitized Reference Copies, RRPL website. (URL: https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/reagans/reagan-administration/nsdd-digitized-reference-copies) (Accessed 5/9/21). 513 NSDD 115: “Visit of Prime Minister Shamir,” November 26, 1983, “NSDD Digitized Reference Copies, RRPL website. (URL: https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/reagans/reagan- administration/nsdd-digitized-reference-copies) (Accessed 5/9/21). 299 hardly believe that the cast of characters and scenery were the same.”514 At this meeting,

American and Israeli officials agreed to set up joint committees to coordinate military and intelligence cooperation between the two countries. The Reagan administration also agreed to resume U.S. deliveries of cluster bombs to Israel, which had been halted during the Lebanon war, and to renegotiate aid levels for the coming year so that Israel would receive more than a billion dollars in grants instead of loans, which Israel was not required to pay back.515

But despite these moves toward greater cooperation with Israel, there were still

American officials who were warry of a closer alliance with Jerusalem. According to

New York Times journalist Bernard Gwertzman, U.S. officials in the Defense Department repeated their long-standing concern that a closer alliance with Israel would only damage the United States’ standing in the Arab world and its ability to act as a neutral arbiter between Israelis and Arabs in peace negotiations.516

One consequence of these efforts was closer cooperation between the Reagan administration and the Israeli government on terrorism. The attacks on the U.S. embassy and the Marine barracks had demonstrated how Islamist terrorists could pose a threat to

American interests and personnel overseas, and in this the Americans had a logical ally in the Israelis.517

514 Yitzhak Shamir, Summing Up: An Autobiography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1994), 147. 515 Bernard Gwertzman, “Reagan Approves More Cooperation with Israel,” New York Times, November 29, 1983. 516 Gwertzman, “Reagan Turns to Israel,” New York Times, November 27, 1983. 517 On the counterterrorist policies of the Reagan administration, see David C. Wills, The First War on Terrorism: Counter-Terrorism Policy during the Reagan Administration (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003); Timothy Naftali, Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism (New York: Basic Books, 2005), especially Chapters Six-Seven; and Mattia Tolado, The 300

Another result of this meeting in late 1983 between Prime Minister Shamir and

President Reagan was the approval of U.S. funding for an initiative known as the Lavi project. Lavi was an Israeli program to build an advanced fighter aircraft in Israel, which would replace the F-4 Phantoms that Israel had purchased from the United States starting in the late 1960s. Up until this point, American military aid to Israel took the form of grants or loans, which Israel would use to purchase American hardware. This ensured that

American defense contractors and American workers were the ones who benefited from

U.S. aid to Israel. Under the new deal, however, Israel would be allowed for the first time to use American funds to pay for research and development in Israel. Unsurprisingly, some of the strongest opponents of the Lavi project were in Caspar Weinberger’s

Defense Department.518

Israeli officials such as defense minister Moshe Arens welcomed this news from the Reagan administration. In addition to his government service as Israel’s ambassador in Washington and then as defense minister, Arens was also a former senior official of

Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI), the manufacturing company behind the Lavi project.

Looking back on this moment in his 2018 memoir, Arens called it the start of an

“unprecedented level of U.S.-Israeli cooperation.”519 Others were not so enthusiastic, including senior officials at the Defense Department such as Secretary of Defense Caspar

Weinberger, who had long been a skeptic of the close U.S.-Israeli alliance. Weinberger

Origins of the US War on Terror: Lebanon, Libya, and American Intervention in the Middle East (London: Routledge, 2013). 518 For a sympathetic account of the Lavi project, see John W. Golan, Lavi: The United States, Israel, and a Controversial Fighter Jet (Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2016). 519 Arens, In Defense of Israel, 88. 301 and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Fred Iklé assigned Dov Zakheim to investigate the Lavi program, with the objective of terminating the program. Unsurprisingly, given senior DOD officials’ initial skepticism, Zakheim’s report, which was completed at the beginning of 1986, concluded that the Israelis had dramatically underestimated the cost of manufacturing this new fighter aircraft and called for the Lavi project to be scrapped.

In his 1996 memoir of the Lavi saga Zakheim, who was an observant Orthodox Jew, described painful moments in his work where he was called a traitor for undermining the

Lavi project, and by implication Israel’s security.520

Some former U.S. government officials also warned that a closer alliance with

Israel did not serve U.S. national interests and foreign policy priorities. One voice of dissent came from Henry J. Shaw, who had previously served as the chair of the military assistance branch of the Office of Management and Budget during the 1970s. Writing in the journal Foreign Policy, Shaw rejected the argument that Israel could be a useful strategic ally in the Cold War. Instead, he argued that, by supporting Israel with such large levels of economic and military aid, the United States alienated its allies in the Arab world and enabled Israel to continue its occupation of Palestinian territories. While acknowledging that some U.S.-Israeli cooperation was useful, especially in the realm of intelligence, Shaw claimed that both countries would benefit from “quietly discarding the strategic partnership myth and grounding their relationship in greater realism.”521

520 For an insider perspective on U.S. involvement with the Lavi project, see Dov S. Zakheim, Flight of the Lavi: Inside a U.S.-Israeli Crisis (Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 1996). 521 Harry J. Shaw, “Strategic Dissensus,” Foreign Policy, No. 61 (Winter, 1985-1986), 141. 302

Other criticisms of the Reagan administration’s special relationship with Israel came from long-standing American allies in Europe. One important feature of the Reagan presidency was the close relationship Reagan developed with British prime minister and fellow conservative champion Margaret Thatcher. But while that relationship proved mutually beneficial in other areas of international affairs, the Middle East was an area where real differences emerged between the Reagan administration and the Thatcher government. While the Reagan administration remained a steadfast ally of Israel despite all the instances where the two governments clashed, Margaret Thatcher’s view of Israel was more complex and less sympathetic. Thatcher visited Israel in 1976 as a leading conservative politician and had developed a reputation as a supporter of Israel and a critic of the British Foreign Office (FO), which had a pro-Arab reputation, not unlike the U.S.

State Department had in some circles. But despite her frequent criticism of the British foreign policy establishment on other matters, the archival record reveals that Thatcher and leading FO policymakers shared similar views when it came to the Middle East. Both were critical of Likud governments and especially Israeli Prime Minister Menachem

Begin. Thatcher appealed to President Reagan to put greater pressure on Israel to withdraw from the Occupied Territories and agree to peace talks with the Palestinians.

This disagreement was a source of tension in a relationship that was otherwise very close.522

522 On Margaret Thatcher’s the Middle East policies, see Neill Lochery, “Debunking the Myths: Margaret Thatcher, the Foreign Office and Israel, 1979-1990,” Diplomacy & Statecraft, Vol. 21 (2010), 690-706, Nigel Ashton, “Love’s Labours Lost: Margaret Thatcher, King Hussein and Anglo-Jordanian Relations, 1979-1990,” Diplomacy & Statecraft, Vol. 22 (2011), 651-677, and Ariel Bermant, Margaret Thatcher and the Middle East (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016). 303

New Domestic Challenges

Even as the Reagan administration sought to improve ties with Israel from 1983 onwards, international events that touched on the Middle East brought new domestic controversies for the Reagan administration to deal with in its second term. Tensions between the Reagan administration and American Jews again rose to the surface in the spring of 1985 when the President visited to the Bitburg military cemetery in West

Germany. The Reagan administration portrayed the visit as an opportunity for reconciliation between the United States and Germany on the fortieth anniversary of the end of World War II. West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl strongly encouraged

Reagan to make the trip and likened it to a similar ceremony he took part in with French

President Francois Mitterrand at the World War I battlefield of Verdun. In that ceremony, the West German and French leaders laid a wreath at a military cemetery where both

German and French soldiers were buried.523

Unlike the Verdun cemetery, however, there were only German soldiers buried at

Bitburg, including several members of the SS. This outraged both veterans’ such as the

American Legion and Jewish groups in the United States. In addition to the role of the SS in perpetrating the Holocaust against European Jews, several German soldiers buried at

Bitburg were responsible for the deaths of American soldiers during the Battle of the

Bulge in late 1944. Jewish groups were particularly upset with President Reagan when the found out he was going to visit Bitburg. At a White House ceremony where he received the Congressional Gold Medal of Achievement, Elie Wiesel, the noted writer

523 See Reuters, “Mitterrand and Kohl Honor Dead of Verdun,” reprinted in the New York Times, September 23, 1984. 304 and Holocaust survivor, called on the President to cancel his trip. After receiving his medal from Reagan, Wiesel memorably told him that his place was not with the SS members buried at Bitburg, but rather with their victims.524 Criticism of this sort did not go over well with some members of Reagan’s staff. According to Headrick Smith, White

House correspondent for the New York Times, White House communications director

Patrick Buchanan expressed his frustration by repeatedly writing “succumbing to the power of the Jews” on a notepad during a meeting with Jewish leaders about the upcoming Bitburg visit.525

Many Americans were also outraged at Reagan’s decision to visit the Bitburg cemetery with Chancellor Kohl. In typed letters on personal stationary and handwritten letters and notes, dozens of Americans wrote to the President and Marshall Breger, one of

Reagan’s special assistants who often dealt with Jewish affairs for the White House. One such letter came from doctor in Boston named Richard Goldstein, a prominent internist at

New England Deaconess Hospital. Goldstein’s letter is notable because he explicitly connected Reagan’s visit to Bitburg to the ongoing violence in the Middle East.

Acknowledging at the outset that he had voted for Reagan twice and agreed with most of his policies, Goldstein called Reagan’s determination to visit the Bitburg cemetery

“nauseating” and suggested that the President and his family visit Auschwitz instead.

Goldstein concluded his letter by predicting that the visit would be used to undermine

U.S.-sponsored peace talks with Jordan or Syria. “If you the American President cannot remember German history correctly for forty years,” he warned, “what good are

524 Bernard Weinraub, “Wiesel Confronts Reagan on Trip,” New York Times, April 20, 1985. 525 Smith, The Power Game: How Washington Works (New York: Random House, 1988), 337. 305

American guarantees of Israeli concessions in the Middle East.” Goldstein also charged that Reagan’s visit would help revive the far-right in Israel and would doom the

Republican Party’s chances for the 1988 election.526

Surprised at the intensity of the criticism from Jewish groups and individual

Americans, Reagan stubbornly insisted on going to Bitburg during his visit to West

Germany. At his staff’s urging, the President did agree to include a visit to the Bergen-

Belsen concentration camp on the same day as his visit to the military cemetery. Before the trip, Reagan’s speechwriters worked diligently to craft speeches for Reagan at both

Bergen-Belsen and Bitburg that would allow him to both acknowledge the crimes of the

Nazi regime while also calling for reconciliation between the United States and Germany in the face of a shared threat from the Soviet Union.527

American Jews were not the only ones upset at Reagan for his visit to Bitburg. In making the visit to a German military cemetery alongside Helmut Kohl, Reagan also angered Israeli leaders across Israel’s political spectrum. As New York Times journalist

Thomas Friedman reported from Jerusalem, everyone from the current Labor prime minister Shimon Peres, the former Labor prime minister and current defense minister

Yitzhak Rabin, and former Likud prime minister Menachem Begin denounced the visit.

Shlomo Hillel, the speaker of the Knesset, called the visit to Bitburg “an attempt to blur history” and, as he told Friedman, such attempts “cannot fail to arouse in us a feeling of

526 Letter from Richard L. Goldstein to President Reagan (c.c. Marshall Breger and Robert Dole), “Re: Bitburg Visit,” April 29, 1985, “[Bitburg Letters], [Envelope],” Box 1, Marshall Breger Files, RRPL. 527 For a detailed analysis of Reagan’s rhetoric at Bergen-Belsen and Bitburg, see Richard J. Jensen, Reagan at Bergen-Belsen and Bitburg (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2007). Journalists including Lou Cannon have blamed poor staff work and especially the departure of longtime White House chief of staff James Baker for allowing the Bitburg visit to become so controversial. See Cannon, President Reagan, Chapter 18. 306 deep pain and burning insult, and also an oppressive worry that they are intended to harm us, and possibly even to prepare the ground anew.”528

Unbeknownst to the Reagan administration, that same year also saw the beginning of a new crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations, this time in the realm of secret intelligence. By the second half of the 1980s, U.S.-Israeli strategic cooperation seemed stronger than it had ever been. Therefore, it came as a surprise to many when an American was arrested by federal agents outside the Israeli embassy in Washington on charges of stealing classified U.S. military documents for Israel. Jonathan Jay Pollard was arrested on

November 21, 1985, and within six months pled guilty to espionage charges and was sentenced to life in prison. According to the indictment presented to a Washington, D.C. grand jury, Pollard worked with representatives of the Israeli government to knowingly and willfully transmit to the government of Israel and its representatives “information and documents related to the national defense of the United States, having and intent and reason to believe that the same would be used in advantage of Israel.”529 Pollard’s wife,

Anne Henderson Pollard, was also indicted on lesser charges as a co-conspirator and accessory to Pollard’s activities.530

Wolf Blitzer, then the Washington correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, was the only reporter who gained access to Pollard while he was awaiting trial. As Blitzer recounted in his book Territory of Lies, Pollard specifically sought him out because, as an

528 Thomas Friedman, “Outraged Israelis Denounce Reagan,” New York Times, May 7, 1985. 529 “United States of America v. Jonathan Jay Pollard,” United States District Court for the District of Columbia, page 4, “Pollard, Jonathan Jay v. United States of America (2 of 2),” Box 4, Peter Wallison Files, RRPL. 530 “United States of America v. Anne Henderson Pollard,” United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Ibid. 307

American journalist writing for an Israeli paper, Blitzer could speak to both American and Israeli audiences. In addition to the breach of American national security, Pollard’s case also represented a challenge for the American Jewish community. As Blitzer wrote,

“For the American Jewish community, it was a nightmare come true—an America Jew spying for Israel.”531 Blitzer later concluded that Pollard was motivated by a genuine desire to aid Israel by providing the Jewish state with information that the United States was not providing to its ally. But he also believed that the Israelis had been reckless to run Pollard as an agent in the first place, and that the whole incident did serious damage to the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

Born in 1954, Pollard went to work for the U.S. Naval Intelligence Service as an intelligence research specialist in September 1979. As a watch officer at the Anti-

Terrorist Intelligence Alert Center in Suitland, Maryland, Pollard had access to an enormous amount of information, much of it highly classified. As a watch officer, Pollard carried a “courier card,” which allowed him to come and go from his office without being searched by security guards. For more than a year from June 1984 to November 21, 1985, when he and his wife were arrested outside the Israeli embassy in Washington while seeking political asylum, Pollard provided the Israelis with thousands of pages of highly

531 Wolf Blitzer, Territory of Lies: The Exclusive Story of Jonathan Jay Pollard, The American Who Spied on His Country for Israel and How He Was Betrayed (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1989), xi. For a more recent history of the Pollard case by a federal agent who interrogated Pollard, see Ronald J. Olive, Capturing Jonathan Pollard: How One of the Most Notorious Spies in American History Was Brought to Justice (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006). 308 classified materials. For his efforts, Pollard received monthly payments from his Israeli handlers, who also paid for several international trips taken by Pollard and his wife.532

Pollard’s Israeli contact was a man named Aviem Sella, an officer in the Israeli

Air Force and a veteran of the Israeli raid on Iraq’s nuclear reactor at Osirak. After meeting Pollard at a party in April 1984, Sella reported his contact with an American

Jewish intelligence analyst to his superiors. The news eventually made its way to Rafi

Eitan, an experienced Mossad case officer, counterterrorism adviser to Israeli prime ministers, and chief of Israel’s scientific intelligence bureau, LAKAM. Eitan approved running Pollard as an agent, and for nearly a year Pollard provided the Israelis with valuable intelligence, including details on Soviet weaponry in Iranian, Iraqi, and Syrian arsenals and on U.S. intelligence sources and methods. Eitan, Sella, and two other junior

Israeli diplomats were named in the indictment of Pollard.533 Pollard also gave the

Israelis information on security of the PLO’s headquarters in Tunis, where it had relocated after leaving Beirut. Israeli aircraft bombed the PLO headquarters in Tunis on

October 1, 1985, killing dozens of PLO personnel and Tunisian workers but missing

Arafat himself.534

Six months after his arrest, Pollard agreed to plead guilty to a single charge of conspiring to deliver national defense information to a foreign government, a crime that carried with it a $250,000 fine and a sentence of life imprisonment. As part of his guilty

532 On Pollard’s contacts with Israeli intelligence and the details of his espionage, see “United States of America v. Jonathan Jay Pollard,” United States District Court for the District of Columbia, page 4-9, “Pollard, Jonathan Jay v. United States of America (2 of 2),” Box 4, Peter Wallison Files, RRPL. 533 Ibid. See also Gordon Thomas, Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015), especially 83-87. 534 See Ronen Bergman, Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations. (New York: Random House, 2018), 305-306. 309 plea, Pollard agreed to fully cooperate with U.S. government investigators, but did not receive a reduced sentence.535 After Pollard’s arrest, Aviem Sella and the two other

Israeli officials involved in running Pollard left the United States and returned for Israel.

Leonard Garment, the lawyer who had worked in the Nixon administration and conveyed

Nixon’s rejection of the Rogers Plan to Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, was briefly retained to represent Sella. With Pollard pleading guilty, U.S. officials decided not to pursue criminal charges against Sella and the other Israelis involved in the Pollard episode.536 In a heavily redacted assessment obtained by the National Security Archive at

Georgetown University, U.S. intelligence officials acknowledged that there were red flags in Pollard’s background that should have prevented him from obtaining a security clearance or getting a job dealing with sensitive intelligence, including failed polygraph tests, lies about his background, and drug use. They also concluded that Pollard’s activities had done real damage to U.S. national security, putting “at risk important US intelligence and foreign-policy interests.”537

Israel and the Iran-Contra Affair

Israel was at the center of the most serious scandal in American politics since the

Watergate affair of 1972-1974, which had brought an end to Richard Nixon’s presidency and fueled a crisis of confidence in the country’s leadership. On October 26, 1986, the

535 Letter from the U.S. Attorney, District of Columbia, to Richard A. Hibey re “United States v. Jonathan Jay Pollard, Criminal Case No. 85-778M,” May 23, 1986, “Pollard, Jonathan Jay v. United States of America (2 of 2),” Box 4, Peter Wallison Files, RRPL. 536 See Leonard Garment, Crazy Rhythm: My Journey from Brooklyn Jazz, and Wall Street to Nixon’s White House, Watergate, and Beyond… (Cambridge, MA: De Capo Press, 2001), Chapter 11. 537 “The Jonathan Jay Pollard Espionage Case: A Damage Assessment,” available on the National Security Archive page “Jonathan Pollard: Revisiting a Still Sensitive Case,” updated November 24, 2020. (URL: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/intelligence/2012-12-14/jonathan-pollard-spy-case-cias- 1987-damage-assessment-declassified). (Accessed 6/4/2021). 310

Lebanese magazine al-Shiraa published a report that the United States had sold military supplies to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages in Lebanon. As later investigations revealed, a junior Marine officer on the staff of the National Security

Council, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, had taken some of the Iranian funds and sent them to the Contras, a right-wing anticommunist rebel group in Nicaragua. This was a direct violation of several laws passed by Congress that prohibited the U.S. government from giving aid to the Contra rebels. But this was no rogue operation carried out by a junior officer without the President’s knowledge. Over the objections of senior advisers,

Reagan authorized North’s efforts and misled the public on his part in this effort.538

One of the key figures in the Iran-Contra scandal was Robert McFarlane, a former

Marine officer and State Department official who served as President Reagan’s third

National Security Adviser. According to McFarlane’s 1994 memoir, in July of 1985, he was approached by David Kimche, an experienced Israeli intelligence officer and diplomat, who told him that the Israelis were in contact with “dissidents” in the Iranian government who wanted to repair relations with the United States and might be able to obtain the release of Americans being held hostage in Lebanon.539 Unbeknownst to the

Americans, these intermediaries, including Iranian Manucher Ghorbanifar and Saudi businessman Adnan Khahoggi, were lying about these “moderate” forces in Iran, and instead were out to make a profit by acquiring arms for the Iranian government. This was

538 For detailed histories of the Iran-Contra scandal, see Theodore Draper, A Very Thin Line: The Iran-Contra Affairs (New York: Hill and Wang, 1991) and Lawrence E. Walsh, Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Coverup (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997). For a more recent history based on extensive archival research, see Malcolm Byrne, Iran-Contra: Reagan’s Scandal and the Unchecked Abuse of Presidential Power (Lawrence, KA: University of Kansas Press, 2014). 539 Robert C. McFarlane, Special Trust (New York: Cadell & Davies, 1994), 17. 311 a high priority for the Iranian government, which at the time was fighting a brutal and destructive war with Iraq. One weapon that the Iranians were eager to acquire was the

American TOW missile, which Israel had in its arsenal, courtesy of U.S. military assistance, but it could not sell those weapons to a third country without U.S. authorization.

According to journalist Theodore Draper, a number of factors combined to produce the arms-for-hostages scheme, including the United States’ deepening ties to

Israel in the aftermath of the war in Lebanon. These factors included concerns about the fate of American hostages being held in Lebanon, and the U.S. government’s respect for

Israel’s intelligence services. In his memoirs McFarlane confirmed this, recalling that despite the obvious dangers of the operation, “I maintained rock-solid confidence in

Kimche’s assurances about the people involved.”540 Another was the fact that both the

Americans and the Israelis wanted to believe that there were moderate forces in Iran with whom they could negotiate. In Draper’s words, “Israeli receptiveness fed into American receptiveness, and they reinforced each other.”541 During the 1980s, senior Israeli officials, including Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, were aware of these efforts and supported them out of a desire to rebuild relations with Iran and to assist their American allies.542 Israel was, in the words of historian Malcolm Byrne, “a crucial and enthusiastic partner” of the Reagan administration.543

540 McFarlane, 33. 541 Draper, 148. 542 For the Israeli side of the Iran-Contra story, see Samuel Segev, The Iranian Triangle: The Untold Story of Israel’s Role in the Iran-Contra Scandal (New York: The Free Press, 1988). 543 Byrne, xii. 312

The joint American-Israeli plan was to transport TOW missiles from Israeli arsenals to Iran, and for the United States to replenish Israel’s stocks with new missiles.

In return, the Iranian government would use its contacts with Islamist groups in Lebanon to secure the release of American hostages. On September 15, 1985, after two planeloads of approximately 500 missiles were delivered to Tehran, a single American hostage,

Benjamin Weir, was released. A third missile delivery in November was a fiasco and nearly brought the whole scheme to an end. But instead of halting the operation, the

Americans decided that more such deliveries should go forward, this time with more direct American involvement and less Israeli participation.544 This proved to be a serious mistake because, as American involvement deepened, the arms-for-hostages scheme became wrapped up in the Reagan administration’s efforts to supply arms to the Contras, when Oliver North began diverting profits from the arms sales to Iran to the Contras. The subsequent scandal was a major embarrassment for the Reagan administration and nearly brought down his entire presidency. Subsequent investigations and the documentary record reveal that, despite his denials, President Reagan knew of and authorized the arms- for-hostages scheme.

“Devoted and Sincere Friends of Israel:” American Conservatives Embrace Israel

in the 1980s

One final aspect of U.S.-Israeli relations during the 1980s must be addressed.

While Reagan’s support from the American Jewish community declined throughout his presidency after winning more than 40% of the Jewish vote in 1980, another group,

544 Draper, 201. 313 conservative evangelical Christians, were becoming more active in supporting Israel. One of the key figures in this effort was the Reverend Jerry Falwell, a prominent evangelical pastor at the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. Falwell was one of the founders of the conservative political organization called the Moral Majority and key figure in the Religious Right, which since the 1970s had become a powerful force in conservative politics and the Republican Party.545 From the 1970s onwards, he emerged as a prominent evangelical defender and advocate of Israel.

During the early 1980s, the Moral Majority Report, the official publication of the

Moral Majority group, published numerous articles highlighting the deep connection between American evangelicals and the State of Israel. These articles often coincided with significant moments in U.S.-Israeli relations during the 1980s. For instance, one article from March 1981 celebrated the inclusion of pro-Israel members of the Reagan administration, including National Security Adviser Richard Allen and Alexander Haig.

“With appointments such as these by President Reagan,” wrote associate editor Deryl

Edwards, “the views of the vast majority of moral Americans, channeled through a friendly and unimpeding government, can be upheld.”546 Moral Majority Report also trumpeted the close relationship between Jerry Falwell and Menachem Begin. A month after Israeli planes destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor, MMR described how Menachem

Begin telephoned Falwell personally to explain Israel’s rationale for the attack. Falwell

545 For a lengthy journalistic profile of Falwell, see Frances FitzGerald, “A Disciplined, Charging Army,” The New Yorker, May 18, 1981. For a recent history of the Religious Right, see Daniel K. Williams, God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 546 Deryl Edwards, “Key Posts Please Conservatives,” pp. 7, Moral Majority Report (MMR), Vol. 2, No. 3 (March 16, 1981), Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KA. 314 told the Israeli prime minister that the United States should be congratulating Israel, not condemning it, and assured him that Israel had the support of “millions of Bible-believing

Christians in America.” The article also included a picture of a telegram from Begin to

Falwell thanking the American preacher for his friendship with Israel and for his

“incessant efforts in the service of a just cause.”547

The following year, after Israeli forces invaded Lebanon, authors in MMR came to

Israel’s defense. Cal Thomas, a conservative columnist and vice president of the Moral

Majority, wrote in August 1982 that the PLO, and not Israel, was to blame for civilian deaths. Accusing the PLO of deliberately forcing Israeli forces to enter areas where there were large numbers of civilians, Thomas wrote that “The PLO is nothing more than a terrorist organization whose central aim has been, is and probably will continue to be the liquidation of Israel and the Jewish people of that region.”548 At other times, MMR highlighted the plight of Lebanese Christians, including Saad Haddad, the leader of the

South Lebanese Army, a Christian militia allied with Israel.

Ever since the State of Israel was founded in 1948, the United States had maintained its embassy in Tel Aviv. This continued even after the Israeli government voted to make Jerusalem the official capital of Israel, over American objections. In

September 1983, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of Washington State called for the

U.S. to accept Israel’s decision and move its embassy to Jerusalem. The following month on October 31, a bill calling for the U.S. embassy to be moved from Tel Aviv to

547 “Israel’s Begin Explans Attack on Reactor,” pp. 4, MMR, Vol. 2, No. 7 (July 20, 1981), Ibid. 548 Cal Thomas, “Lebanon: Infected by Hypocrisy,” pp. 9, MMR, Vol. 3, No. 6 (August 1982), Ibid. 315

Jerusalem was introduced in the Senate. Jerry Falwell strongly endorsed this decision bill.

Testifying before Congress in May 1984, Falwell asserted that Israel was being treated unfairly and had the right to move its capital wherever it wanted. He argued that moving the American embassy to Jerusalem would demonstrate the United States’ strong commitment to Israel, and that Americans, “regardless of economic or political conditions, we stand behind Israel’s right to exist, free from outside predators, and that no surplus or shortage of oil or any other reason will allow us to sacrifice our friend on the altar of expediency.”549

In addition to calling for the United States to adopt pro-Israel policies and defending Israel’s actions in the Middle East, Falwell and MMR were also strong proponents of Christian tourism to Israel. The issues of MMR and its successor the

Liberty Report contain numerous advertisements for guided trips to Israel, including some led by Falwell himself. In her analysis of Jerry Falwell and the rhetoric of conservative Christians during the 1980s, anthropologist Susan Friend Harding noted that in some ways, a Falwell-sponsored tour of Israel had a lot in common with a secular tourist excursion to Greece. Both allowed visitors to walk through historical places, which gave one the sense of walking through history. But in one very specific way, a tour of the Holy Land with prophecy-minded evangelical Christians was nothing like secular historical tourism. According to Harding, “Jerry Falwell’s Holy Land tourists also find themselves inside the future, walking upon its landscape, knowing its actors, foreseeing its events. They know that they are living in the last days, the end-times, and that shortly

549 “Dr. Falwell urges Congress to switch embassy,” pp. 20, MMR (June 1984), Ibid. 316

Christ will rapture them, bodily lift them up, off the earth.”550 But while these trips were nominally focused on history and faith, politics was never far from the surface.

During the 1980s, journalist Grace Halsell accompanied several evangelical trips to Israel organized by the Reverend Jerry Falwell. On one such trip in 1989, she observed that present-day politics often overshadowed the experience of traveling to places mentioned in the Bible. “On each tour,” Halsell wrote, “Falwell gave the impression he was more interested in selling us on the idea that Israel needs more U.S. weapons … than he was in promoting reconciliation and peace.”551 Likewise, historian Melani McAlister recently argued that Falwell “explicitly linked his American nationalism to an evangelical form of nationalism-for-Israel.”552

Another American who traveled to Israel as a religious tourist was Dorothy

Helms, the wife of the powerful Republican Senator Jesse Helms from North Carolina. A deeply conservative politician and a staunch opponent of civil rights legislation, Helms was an important Republican voice on foreign policy and later rose to become chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In 1985 he made a private visit to Israel during which he and his party “decided to follow in the footsteps of the prophets” by visiting the cities of Hebron and Bethlehem in the West Bank, which Helms referred to as

Judea and Samaria. In addition to the religious significance of his trip, Helms also called

Israel “our only reliable ally in the Middle East” and defended American military aid to

550 Susan Friend Harding, The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 228. 551 Grace Halsell, Prophecy and Politics: The Secret Alliance Between Israel and the U.S. Christian Right (Revised and Updated, Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1989), 122. 552 Melani McAlister, The Kingdom of God Has No Borders: A Global History of American Evangelicals (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 84. 317

Israel as a defense cost akin to American aid to allies in the Pacific Ocean or in the North

Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).553 This was a significant change for Helms, who had initially been skeptical of a close U.S.-Israeli alliance, but by the end of the 1980s he had become a strong defender of Israel.554

Jesse Helms’ embrace of Israel in the second half of the 1980s was echoed by other major voices of American conservatism. Writing in the flagship conservative journal National Review, Joshua Muravchik, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, celebrated the success of Israel’s military, as well as the American military hardware the Israelis employed. But he also argued that Israel’s military success also derived from qualities that Israel shared with the United States. Israel, he wrote, reminded Americans and Westerners of the advantages that democracies had over totalitarian or dictatorial regimes: “Free men raised in a society that cherishes individual initiative can bring to their soldiering qualities of dedication and ingenuity that the conscripts of dictators cannot match.”555

Recognizing the PLO

For much of the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the focus had been on military conflicts between states and militant groups or on high-level negotiations between national leaders. But at the end of 1987, an uprising in the Occupied Territories drew unprecedented international attention to the living conditions of the Palestinian

553 For Helms’ account of his trip to Israel and his defense of a close U.S.-Israeli alliance, see Jesse Helms, “Keeping Faith: A Baptist Deacon Reflects on American Policy Toward Israel,” Policy Review 35 (Winter, 1985), 26-30. 554 On Helms’ changing views of Israel, see William A. Link, Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and the Rise of Modern Conservatism (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008), 318-319. 555 Joshua Muravchik, “Is Israel Good for America?” National Review (March 28, 1986), 43. 318 people in the West Bank and Gaza. Months before the uprising, which became known as the First Intifada, erupted, Israeli journalist and writer David Grossman traveled extensively in the West Bank and wrote extensively about the Palestinian experience living under Israeli occupation.556

The last year of the Reagan presidency saw one of the most important developments in the Arab-Israeli peace process since the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in 1979. Throughout the 1980s, Jordan’s King Hussein had been working with the PLO on an agreement on the future of Palestine. But those talks broke down in

1988, and on July 31, Hussein renounced any legal or administrative ties to the West

Bank. This ended any possibility of an independent Palestinian entity associated with

Jordan. This had been a key component of multiple American peace initiatives, including the autonomy talks and the Reagan peace plan.557

After years of rejecting Israel’s right to exist, Yasser Arafat, the longtime chairman of the PLO, announced that the PLO leadership was changing its position on this critical issue. In a statement at a press conference in Geneva, Switzerland, on

December 14, 1988, Arafat not only accepted Israel’s right to exist, but he also renounced terrorism as a tactic for achieving Palestinian statehood.558 These developments cleared the way for direct talks between the United States and the Palestinians, something that

556 Grossman’s observations of the West Bank were initially published in the left-leaning magazine Koteret Rashit and then later as a book. See David Grossman, The Yellow Wind (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2002). 557 See Avi Shlaim, Lion of Jordan: The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace (New York: Vintage Books, 2007), Chapter 22 and Nigel J. Ashton, King Hussein of Jordan: A Political Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), Chapter 13. 558 For the full text of Arafat’s statement, see “Statement by Arafat on Peace in Mideast,” New York Times, December 15, 1988. 319

American officials since the Ford administration had promised Israel would not take place.

U.S. intelligence officials had informal contacts with the PLO throughout the

1970s and 1980s. These discussions were always carried out covertly by officials from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), especially case officer Robert Ames. Ames, who was killed in the attack on the U.S. embassy in Beirut in April 1983, had cultivated a relationship with PLO official Ali Hassan Salameh, who was killed by the Israeli Mossad in 1979. Under this covert relationship, the PLO pledged not to target Americans and even provided security to American diplomats in Beirut during the 1970s, all in hopes of winning American recognition of their cause.559

Conclusion

One of the most common criticisms of the Reagan administration was its internal divisions. This was especially true when it came to U.S. foreign policy in the Middle

East. Writing at the end of the 1980s, historian Avi Shlaim wrote that “the Reagan administration was split in so many ways that its factionalism began to resemble that of the Middle East.”560 This was especially apparent in the clashes between Reagan’s pro-

Israel secretaries of State, first Alexander Haig and then George Shultz, and Secretary of

Defense Caspar Weinberger.

While American support for Israel remained strong throughout the 1980s, the decade was a turning point for American Jews and Israel. Following events such as the

559 For a contemporary review of covert U.S.-PLO cooperation, see David Ignatius, “The Secret History of U.S.-PLO Terror Talks,” Washington Post, December 4, 1988. 560 Avi Shlaim, “The Impact of U.S. Policy in the Middle East,” Journal of Palestine Studies, V ol.17, No. 2 (Winer, 1988), 22. 320

Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the arrest of Jonathan Pollard for espionage, and Palestinian uprisings in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, American Jews’ views of Israel were becoming more circumspect and critical.561 Likewise, despite the Reagan administration’s consistently pro-Israel stance, American Jews never voted in such high numbers for a Republican candidate again after 1980.

Near the end of Reagan’s presidency, David Ignatius published a novel about

American spies in the Middle East. Titled Agents of Innocence, the book told the story of a fictional American CIA case officer, Tom Rogers, and his relationship with the also- fictional Jamal Ramlawi, a senior aid to PLO chairman Yasser Arafat. Ignatius, an experienced journalist who covered the Middle East for the Wall Street Journal and the

Washington Post, based his fictional espionage tale on the real relationship between Ali

Hassan Salameh and Robert Ames. Though Ignatius’ novel was praised on the dust jacket for its grasp of intelligence tradecraft, it was criticized for its depictions of Palestinians and other Arabs, who, apart from Ignatius’ protagonist Ramlawi, are often portrayed as sex-crazed, liars, or religious fanatics.562

Ignatius’ negative portrayals of Arabs are matched by his positive depictions of

Israelis, who mostly appear in the novel as operatives of the Mossad, Israel’s secretive intelligence service. Despite the very real tensions between the United States and Israel in the 1980s, including the fact that, both in real life and in the novel, the Israelis were furious at the CIA for developing a covert relationship with the Palestinians, Israelis are

561 See, for instance, Jonathan Marcus, “Discordant Voices: The US Jewish Community and Israel During the 1980s,” International Affairs, Vol. 66, No. 3 (1990), pp. 545-558. 562 For an insightful critique of Agents of Innocence, see William H. Brubeck, “Review: An Exegesis on Arabs,” Journal of Palestinian Studies, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Summer, 1988), pp. 125-129. 321 invariably depicted as competent and respectable, in stark contrast to the Arabs. One fictional CIA official went so far as to call the Mossad “the most competent intelligence service in the world.”563 The Israelis in turn respect and admire the Americans, even if they have serious disagreements with them. But there is another moment near the end of the novel that further emphasizes the complex but inseparable bond between the United

States and Israel. Tom Rogers’ agent Fuad, who often served as an intermediary between the CIA and their PLO contact Ramlawi, laments that despite his fondness for the

American Rogers and the United States as a whole, Palestinians and Arabs would never be as valued and respected by the Americans as the Israelis were. If the Arabs were the

Americans’ mistress, Fuad sadly concluded, the Israelis were their wife, and the

Americans would always return to their wife.564

563 David Ignatius, Agents of Innocence (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1987), 385. 564 Ignatius, 442. 322

Epilogue

On his 2006 album Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, & Bastards, the American singer-songwriter Tom Waits included a rare topical song entitled “Road to Peace.”

Written during the Second Intifada, a period of intense violence between Israelis and

Palestinians from 2000-2005 in which thousands of people were killed and wounded, the song used the story of one suicide bombing in Jerusalem and Israel’s violent response the following day to highlight what was, to American eyes, the futility of Israeli-Palestinian violence.565 Waits’ lyrics describe how actions on both sides lead to the deaths of innocent civilians and convey despair that there seems to be no end to this violence in sight. But the song also grappled with the United States’ role in Middle East violence during the early twenty-first century. To start, Waits denounced former Secretary of State

Henry Kissinger and then-President George W. Bush for prioritizing national interests and domestic political concerns over peace in the Middle East. Moments later, Waits sang about how fundamentalists on both sides stood in the path of peace, but then addressed the American role in the ongoing violence, asking “why are we arming the

Israeli army with guns and tanks and bullets?”566 After decades of U.S. military aid for

Israel totaling more than a billion dollars per year and in the aftermath of yet another round of violence between Israel and Hamas which has prompted some members of

Congress to call for limits on U.S. aid to Israel, Waits’ question remains a relevant one.

565 For a contemporary account of the events described in Waits’ song, see Ian Fisher, “The Mideast Turmoil: Suicide Bomber; A Sudden, Violent End for a Promising Youth,” New York Times, June 13, 2003. 566 Tom Waits, “Road to Peace,” Track 10 on Disc 1 of the album Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards (ANTI Records, 2006). 323

Throughout this dissertation, I have argued that the U.S.-Israeli relationship underwent an enormous transformation during the 1970s and 1980s, one that continues to shape this important and controversial relationship up until today. These years saw a significant increase in American economic and especially military aid to Israel, and a deepening level of military and strategic cooperation between the two allies. This occurred despite serious differences between successive American and Israeli governments of different political parties and ideologies.

The remaining pages will briefly survey how U.S.-Israeli relations have evolved in the decades since the end of the Cold War. Those years saw important new developments in Arab-Israeli negotiations, including direct talks between Israelis and

Yasser Arafat of the PLO and a peace treaty between Israel and Jordan. But efforts to build a comprehensive peace between Arabs and Israelis were derailed by renewed violence and declining Israeli enthusiasm for the peace process. The period since the end of the Cold War also saw important continuities in the bilateral U.S.-Israeli relationship as American aid continued and U.S.-Israeli cooperation remained close even when the

Soviet Union no longer threatened American interests in the Middle East. Finally, I will suggest three avenues for future research that have emerged from my study of U.S.-

Israeli relations.

The United States and Israel Since 1989

The post-Cold War years initially saw the United States return to playing a key role in facilitating Arab-Israeli negotiations. Under Ronald Reagan’s successor, George

H.W. Bush, Secretary of State James Baker made a concerted effort to bring Arab and

Israeli leaders together for comprehensive peace talks in Madrid, Spain. Baker had 324 initially stayed away from Middle East peace talks, but that changed in the wake of the end of the Cold War, which left the United States as the only remaining superpower in the world, and after the overwhelming U.S. and coalition victory over Iraqi forces in the

Persian Gulf War. These efforts eventually produced the Madrid peace conference, an important milestone but one that did not produce any new agreements. Unlike his two predecessors at the State Department, James Baker was willing to press Israel for concessions. At one point, Bush and Baker delayed $10 billion in loans for Israel to resettle Jews from the former Soviet Union in retaliation for the Israeli government’s refusal to halt settlement construction in the West Bank.567

Bush’s successor, President Bill Clinton, made Middle East peace talks a top foreign policy priority, and throughout his presidency a core group of American diplomats worked constantly to conclude agreements between Israeli and Palestinian leaders.568 But the major breakthrough in Israeli-Palestinian relations came not as a result of American-mediated talks, but rather secret discussions between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in Norway. The “Oslo Talks,” as they became known, were the first direct talks between the Israeli government and the PLO, and eventually led to the PLO taking a direct role in governing the Occupied Territories. The talks culminated in a dramatic ceremony at the White House on September 13, 1993, when Israeli Prime Minister

Yitzhak Rabin shook hands with Yasser Arafat and called for an end to bloodshed. The

567 On James Baker’s involvement in Middle East peace talks, see Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James Baker (New York: Doubleday, 2020), especially Chapter 24. 568 For extensive interviews with those American negotiators, who included Martin Indyk, Aaron David Miller, and Dennis Ross, see the 2021 documentary The Human Factor, directed by Dror Moreh. 325

Israelis however never fully surrendered their influence in the Occupied Territories, maintaining security forces within Gaza and the West Bank and refusing to uproot Israeli settlements. This tension between the Palestinians’ desire for an independent state and

Israel’s refusal to grant full autonomy to the Palestinians remained unresolved.

Furthermore, American negotiators’ unwillingness to press Israel to make difficult choices and concessions undermined Israeli-Palestinian talks during the 1990s and the

United States’ image as a neutral arbiter.569

The new level of cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian authorities was undermined by forces who opposed any concessions to the other side. Attacks by

Palestinian Islamist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad who opposed talks with Israel killed dozens of Israeli citizens in the months following Rabin’s handshake with Arafat. Within

Israel itself, right-wing and pro-settler groups loudly protested the Rabin government’s agreements with the Palestinians, and their cries only grew louder when terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians seemed to confirm their warnings. One Israeli took his opposition to the Oslo peace process even further when, on November 4, 1995, Yigal Amir shot and killed Yitzhak Rabin after the Prime Minister finished addressing a rally for peace.

Subsequent Israeli prime ministers Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Ehud Barak made varying efforts to continue negotiations in coordination with the United States, but momentum had stalled.570

569 American negotiator Aaron David Miller made this point in 2005, see Miller, “Israel’s Lawyer,” Washington Post, May 23, 2005. 570 For an excellent account of the events leading up to Rabin’s assassination and its aftermath, see Dan Ephron, Killing a King: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015). 326

Little progress was made on Middle East peace during the administration of

George W. Bush. While Bush accepted the need for a Palestinian state, his administration also had a poor relationship with Palestinian leaders (especially Yasser Arafat). On the other hand, Bush developed a close relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who emphasized the common battle that Israel and the U.S. were fighting against terrorism in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Political scientist

Daniel Zoughbie, who conducted dozens of interviews for his book Indecision Points, argues that the Bush administration’s Middle East policy was crippled by the conflict between U.S. officials’ vision of a democratic Middle East and the harsh reality of the region’s politics in the early twenty-first century. Elliot Abrams, who had extensive foreign policy experience in multiple Republican administrations, defended the Bush administration, arguing that some progress was made toward reducing violence even though the fundamental conflict between Israelis and Palestinians remained unresolved.571

President Barak Obama came into office hoping to reinvigorate the Israeli-

Palestinian peace process, but when his efforts to pressure Israel into concessions met intense resistance, he backed off.572 One member of his administration who consistently

571 On the idea that U.S. and Israel faced a common enemy in terrorism, see Amy Kaplan, Our American Israel: The Story of an Entangled Alliance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), especially Chapter 7. For a critical account of the Bush administration’s Middle East policy, see Daniel E. Zoughbie, Indecision Points: George W. Bush and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2014). For a defense of the Bush administration, see Elliot Abrams, Tested by Zion: The Bush Administration and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 572 For a useful analysis of Obama’s record on Israel during his first term in office, see Peter Beinart, The Crisis of Zionism (New York: Picador, 2012). See also Dana H. Allin and Steven N. Simon, Our Separate Ways: The Struggle for the Future of the U.S. Israeli Alliance (New York: Public Affairs, 2016), especially Chapters 3-6. 327 opposed putting pressure on Israel was then-Vice President Joe Biden, a longtime

Democratic senator with a strong pro-Israel record.573

One of the Obama administration’s most important diplomatic initiatives was a

2015 nuclear agreement with Iran. Formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of

Action (JCPOA, or simply the “Iran nuclear deal), this agreement laid out a path for Iran to develop peaceful nuclear energy resources and for preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a vocal critic of the

Iran nuclear deal, calling it a “historic mistake.”574 Many Republicans in the United

States shared this view and invited Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress in

March of 2015. To assuage Israel’s concerns about the threat from Iran, the Obama administration signed a new Memorandum of Understanding with Israel in September of

2016, under which the United States would provide Israel with $38 billion in military aid over the next ten years.575

The presidency of Donald Trump was unique for a host of reasons, but one of its distinguishing features was an extremely close relationship between Trump and Israeli

Benjamin Netanyahu. The Trump administration took a number of steps that aligned the

United States even more closely with Netanyahu’s right-wing government, including recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s official capital and moving the U.S. embassy from Tel

573 On Joe Biden’s views of Israel, see Peter Beinart, “Joe Biden’s Alarming Record on Israel,” Jewish Currents, January 27, 2020. (URL: https://jewishcurrents.org/joe-bidens-alarming-record-on- israel/?mc_cid=05a5db2979&mc_eid=1c554a916a). (Accessed 6/8/21). 574 Isabel Kershner, “Iran Deal Denounced by Netanyahu as ‘Historic Mistake,’” The New York Times, July 14, 2015. (URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/15/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear-deal- israel.html). (Accessed 5/22/20). 575 Matt Spetalnick, “U.S., Israel sign $38 billion military aid package,” Reuters, September 14, 2016. (URL: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-israel-statement/u-s-israel-sign-38-billion-military-aid- package-idUSKCN11K2CI). (Accessed 6/24/2021). 328

Aviv to Jerusalem, a move that previous American administrations had delayed out of deference to the ongoing peace process.576 This move, which broke with years of

American diplomatic precedent, was celebrated by both Israeli leaders and by many

American evangelicals, who were both strong backers of the move and among President

Trump’s strongest supporters. Days after the new embassy was dedicated, Netanyahu met with a group of American evangelical leaders to thank them for their support.577

The Trump administration also launched its own Middle East peace initiatives, including one that aimed to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and several others that established diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab nations for the first time since the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty of 1994. Under the Trump administration’s plan, which was drafted by President Trump’s adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, Israel would achieve several of its long-standing goals, including control of a unified Jerusalem and sovereignty over Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The Palestinians, who unlike the Israelis were not involved in drafting the plan, in turn would be grated limited autonomy in the remaining West Bank territory and billions of dollars in development money from the international community. Unsurprisingly for a deal tilted so heavily in

Israel’s favor, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas rejected the proposal outright.578 In

576 “Full Video and Transcript: Trump’s Speech Recognizing Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel,” New York Times, December 6, 2017. (URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/world/middleeast/trump- israel-speech-transcript.html). (Accessed 5/22/20). 577 David Kirkpatrick, Elizabeth Dias, and David M. Halbfinger, “Israel and Evangelicals: New U.S. Embassy Signals a Growing Alliance,” New York Times, May 19, 2018. (URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/19/world/middleeast/netanyahu-evangelicals-embassy.html). (Accessed 6/1/20). 578 Michael Crowley and David M. Halbfinger, “Trump Releases Mideast Peace Plan That Strongly Favors Israel,” New York Times, January 28, 2020. (URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/world/middleeast/peace-plan.html). (Accessed 5/22/20). 329 the words of political scientist James Stocker, the Trump administration’s peace plan “did not even pretend to be balanced” and “offered Israel almost only carrots, most of which were delivered in advance of the deal’s announcement.”579 U.S. officials were also deeply involved in between Israel and the leaders of several Arab countries, including Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), to establish full diplomatic ties between them and

Israel. While the normalization of relations between Israel and any Arab country is notable, these moves were more a recognition of the status quo rather than a real diplomatic coup. What they definitely did not do was resolve the fundamental issue of the

Arab-Israeli peace process, the fate of the Palestinians.580 Despite all the efforts of

American negotiators and all the military aid the United States has given to Israel to ensure its security, this problem remains unresolved.

This question of American complicity in the ongoing violence between Israelis and Palestinians is an important one in light of the history discussed in this dissertation and in light of recent events. In his 2020 analysis of the U.S. role in the Arab-Israeli conflict, political scientist Jerome Slater argues that the nearly-unconditional American support extended to Israel has been a detriment to both Israeli and U.S. national interests.581 In the aftermath of fighting between Israel and Hamas in May 2021, some

579 James R. Stocker, “Revisiting Historical Legacies of US Policy in the Middle East: The Trump Administration,” “America and the World—The Effects of the Trump Presidency,” H-Diplo ISSF Policy Series (25 March, 2021). (URL: https://issforum.org/roundtables/policy/ps2021-16). (Accessed 6/14/21). 580 On these negotiations, see Fred Kaplan, “A Big Deal but Not a Peace Deal,” Slate, September 15, 2020. (URL: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/trump-israel-uae-bahrain-deal.html). (Accessed 6/24/2021). 581 See Jerome Slater, Mythologies Without End: The US, Israel, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1917-2020 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020). 330 progressive politicians in the United States called for restrictions on American military aid to Israel, something that has been rare in the history of this relationship.582

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War was a significant turning point in global history and for U.S. foreign policy. Without an enemy to contest its influence in regions like the Middle East, one might think that the United States could reduce its military aid to allies such as Israel. But this did not happen. On the contrary,

American aid to Israel has remained steady and significant ever since the end of the Cold

War. According to the Congressional Research Service, Israel received nearly $4 billion in economic and military aid from the United States in 2020.583 As historian Douglas

Little has recently argued, one reason was that from the 1990s onward the threat of violent Islamic extremism gradually replaced the Soviet Union in the minds of many

Americans as a serious threat to U.S. national security.584

Studying the history of U.S.-Israeli relations forces historians to grapple with the issue of Israel’s “special” relationship with the United States. Given the high level of

U.S. aid Israel receives every year and the deep well of support Americans have for Israel from average citizens to presidents, this term is very much appropriate. Within this framework, the U.S.-Israeli relationship is distinct from U.S. relations with all other countries. But it is also worth exploring the areas where U.S. support for Israel resembles

582 Alex Kane, “Progressive Legislators to Introduce Resolution Blocking Bomb Sale to Israel,” Jewish Currents, May 19, 2021. (URL: https://jewishcurrents.org/aoc-to-introduce-resolution-blocking- bomb-sale-to-israel/). (Accessed 5/29/2021). 583 See Jeremy M. Sharp, “U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel,” Congressional Research Service Report RL33222, (Updated November 16, 2020), pp. 2. (URL: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/RL33222). (Accessed 6/2/21). 584 On this transition, see Douglas Little, Us versus Them: The United States, Radical Islam, and the Rise of the Green Threat (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2016). 331

U.S. relationships with other countries, especially during the Cold War. In backing leaders and groups who are culturally, religiously, ideologically, ethnically similar to cultures in the United States (in this case, an Israeli society seen as rooted in Europe, anti- communist, and adhering to a Judeo-Christian faith), U.S. support of Israel looks less unique and more like U.S. support for Christian anti-communist leaders in East Asia during the Cold War.585

Things look very different from the Israeli perspective. Two recent books situate

Israel’s relationship with the United States into the broader history of Israel’s foreign relations. In his 2020 study of Jewish diplomacy from ancient times to the present day, political scientist Emanuel Navon notes that Israel’s importance to the United States has declined since the end of the Cold War but that in two areas, military aid and public opinion, the U.S.-Israeli relationship has remained remarkably stable since the 1970s.

Likewise, Uri Bialer argues that the United States has been a full ally of Israel since the late 1960s and that Israel’s relationship to the U.S. is at the core of its foreign and defense policy.586

While a close alliance with the United States has clearly been a boon to Israel’s national security, some observers noted how this close association with the U.S. could have a negative effect on Israeli society. In his 2002 extended essay Elvis in Jerusalem, the Israeli journalist and historian Tom Segev argued that Israel’s close relationship to the

585 See, for instance, Seth Jacobs, “‘Our System Demands the Supreme Being’: The U.S. Religious Revival and the ‘Diem Experiment,’ 1954-55.” Diplomatic History 25 (Fall 2001): 589-624. 586 See Uri Bialer, Israeli Foreign Policy: A People Shall Not Dwell Alone (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2020), especially Chapter 10, and Emmanuel Navon, The Star and the Scepter: A Diplomatic History of Israel (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2020), especially Chapter 14. 332

United States has contributed to the rise of a “post-Zionist” stage of development in

Israel’s history. “Americanization,” Segev wrote, “has weakened social solidarity and, in contrast with original Israeli Zionism, has made the individual the centerpoint of life.”587

This is in keeping with Israel’s transition from a labor/socialist economy in its early history to today’s “start-up nation,” the global rise of neoliberalism, and the decline of state power since the 1970s.588

In addition to its enduring political and diplomatic alliance with Israel, the United

States and especially its citizens remain deeply connected to Israel after the Cold War ended and into the twenty-first century. This is particularly true of American Jews who have made their homes in Israeli settlements. After the first Americans settled in the

Occupied Territories after the 1967 war, many became key contributors to and defenders of the settlement project. In her study of American Jews’ participation in the Israeli settler movement, Sara Yael Hirschhorn points to their increasingly prominent role as defenders of settlements before American and international audiences. Following the horrific massacre of twenty-nine Palestinian Muslims at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in

Hebron on the West Bank on February 25, 1994, most American Jewish settlers quickly distanced themselves from its perpetrator, Dr. Baruch Goldstein. Goldstein was born in

Brooklyn, New York, and in 1983 emigrated to the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba in the West Bank. Goldstein’s identity as an American-born settler drew attention to

587 Tom Segev, Elvis in Jerusalem: Post-Zionism and the Americanization of Israel (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002), 49. 588 On Israel’s “economic miracle,” see Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle (New York: Twelve, 2009). On the decline of the state, see Thomas Borstelmann, The 1970s: A New Global History from Civil Rights to Economic Inequality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), Chapter 3. 333

American Jews living in the Occupied Territories and exposed rifts between American and native Israeli settlers. To push back against efforts to connect them with Goldstein’s actions, some prominent American Jewish settlers became active defenders of settlements in the media. As Americans who spoke English, they were effective spokespersons for the U.S. and international media.589

The deep connection between Americans and Israeli settlements in the Occupied

Territories has also found its way into contemporary Israeli fiction. In his 2013 novel The

Hilltop, Israeli novelist Assaf Gavron tells the story of daily life in a small settlement in the West Bank. Living in the fictional illegal settlement of Ma’aleh Hermesh C.,

Gavron’s characters live their lives in the face of hostility from nearby Palestinian communities and threats of eviction from the Israeli military. While this is very much an

Israeli story, there are numerous links to the world beyond the Middle East, including the

United States. Several of the settler characters are from the U.S., or spent significant time there, but it is an American journalist from the Washington Post who creates a minor crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations when he reports that U.S. taxpayer dollars are indirectly funding illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories. In an attempt to control the damage from the journalist’s report, the Israeli defense minister travels to Washington to meet with senior U.S. officials and to accompany the U.S. ambassador to Israel on a visit to Ma’aleh Hermesh C. To the defense minister’s annoyance, the settlers of Ma’aleh

589 See Sara Yael Hirschhorn, City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), Chapter Five. 334

Hermesh C. are less than welcoming, accusing him of bowing to American pressure to remove them.590

American evangelicals remain deeply engaged with Israel, especially through religious tourism and pilgrimages. According to a 2014 report from the Israeli Ministry of

Foreign Affairs, evangelical Christians from the United States were among the largest groups of tourists who visited Israel in 2013.591 Academics and journalists have become deeply interested in the American evangelical experience of traveling to Israel, often accompanying large groups of American Christians to Israel on trips organized by their churches. There is of course a strong political element to such trips, and journalists’ accounts of American Christian pilgrimages to Israel tend to concentrate on this element.

For instance, the writer Tom Bissell wrote about his experience traveling to Israel with a group of American evangelicals on a trip organized by Dennis Praeger, a popular conservative talk-radio host who is also Jewish. In an essay for Harper’s Magazine,

Bissell reflects that for many Americans Israel is “just another way for Americans to refract their own views of America.” To the conservative Christians he encountered on this trip, Israel and the United States were similarly blessed by God, and this Israel “lies beyond history, beyond the deaths and wars that made it, beyond the United Nations, beyond the Oslo Accords, beyond any conventional morality.”592

590 See Assaf Gavron, The Hilltop: A Novel (New York: Scribner, 2014), 190-193, 207-208, and 219-226. 591 That same report stated that, in 2013, Christians from all over the world represented more than half of all tourists visiting Israel. See “Christian tourism to Israel,” 23 Dec 2014, Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (URL: https://mfa.gov.il/MFA/AboutIsrael/Spotlight/Pages/Christian-tourism-to-Israel.aspx). (Accessed 6/5/21). 592 Tom Bissell, “My Holy Land Vacation: Touring Israel with 450 Christian Zionists,” Harper’s Magazine (July 2016), 29-30. 335

For some American evangelicals, Israel retains a very real place in their vision of the future and the coming fulfillment of Biblical prophecies. Interpreting the history of

Israel through the lens of Biblical prophecy, fundamentalist Christians saw the seizure of the Temple Mount by Israeli forces in June 1967 as the next important step after the establishment of Israel. For them, writes journalist Lawrence Wright, “the Jewish possession of the Temple Mount meant that the clock of the apocalypse had begun to tick.”593 Wright and Gershom Gorenberg also found that these American Christians were not the only ones to hold apocalyptic views related to possession of the Temple Mount, some Jews and Muslims did as well, albeit in different form.594

But American Christians’ trips to Israel are about more than prophecy or politics.

In 2008, for instance, Faydra Shapiro found that on her travels to Israel with Christian

Zionists from the United States, the Americans were as interested in and affected by their experience of Israel as a modern developed state as they were by the religious sites they visited.595 Hillary Kaell further argues that traveling to the Holy Land is a powerful experience for American Christians for reasons that sometimes have very little to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict or U.S. military support of the Jewish State. After taking part in multiple trips to Israel with both Catholics and Protestants from the United States, Kaell wrote that these pilgrimages to Israel were spiritually powerful because they juxtaposed

593 Lawrence Wright, “Why do a Pentecostal cattle breeder from Mississippi and an Orthodox rabbi from Jerusalem believes that a red heifer can change the world?” The New Yorker, Vol. 74, No. 20 (July 1998), 46. 594 In addition to Wright, see Gershom Gorenberg, The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount (New York: The Free Press, 2000). 595 Faydra L. Shapiro, “To the Apple of God’s Eye: Christian Zionist Travel to Israel,” Journal of Contemporary Religion, 23:3 (2008), 307-320. 336 the pilgrims’ religious beliefs with the experience of tourism, international travel, and commercialism.596

American Jews’ views of Israel have also shifted greatly in recent decades. While

Israel had long been an important source of unity within the American Jewish community, a distinct generational divide has emerged between older American Jews, who argue for Israel’s importance to American Jewry and feel deeply connected to the

Jewish state, and younger Jews, feel less connected to Israel. Younger American Jews are also more likely to be critical of specific Israeli government policies than previous generations, while still recognizing the significance of Israel’s existence.597 Two recent reports from the Pew Research Center underscore the generational difference among

American Jews over their views of Israel.598

Directions for Future Research

Just as the image that appears in a microscope changes as we adjust its focus, research into one topic inevitably reveals many more subjects that are worthy of further investigation. Like any research project, this investigation into U.S.-Israeli relations since

1948 has raised new questions about the history of U.S. foreign relations even as it seeks to answer those posed at the outset. Here I will outline three avenues of future research

596 See Hillary Kaell, Walking Where Jesus Walked: American Christians and Holy Land Pilgrimage (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 5. 597 For an important early study of divisions between American Jews and Israeli Jews, see Charles S. Liebman, and Steven M. Cohen, Two Worlds of Judaism: The Israeli and American Experiences (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990). For more recent discussions, see Samuel G. Freedman, Jew vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), Beinart, The Crisis of Zionism, and Daniel Gordis, We Stand Divide: The Rift Between American Jews and Israel (New York: Ecco, 2019). 598 For the 2013 study, see “A Portrait of American Jews,” October 21, 2013, Pew Research Center (URL: https://www.pewforum.org/2013/10/01/jewish-american-beliefs-attitudes-culture-survey/); for the 2020 study, see “Jewish Americans in 2020,” May 21, 2021, Ibid. (URL: https://www.pewforum.org/2021/05/11/jewish-americans-in-2020/). (Accessed 5/11/21). 337 that I believe would be particularly fruitful, though this is by no means a comprehensive list.

Oftentimes, zeroing in on one very specific topic, such as U.S.-Israeli relations during the 1970s and 1980s, illuminates smaller pieces of a larger story that merit only a short mention in one research project but are worthy of a dedicated study of their own.

One example that leaps out from this project is the Jewish Defense League (JDL), the violent Jewish militant group formed in New York City during the early 1970s and discussed briefly in Chapter 3. Apart from one dissertation in sociology from 1981 and one journalist’s 1990 biography of JDL leader and extremist rabbi Meir Kahane, there is no comprehensive study of this organization.599 Though only a small organization that by no means represented the views of the majority of Jewish Americans, studying this one group can tell us more about divisions within American Judaism and why some

American Jews took such a different path from most of their contemporaries. There is also an international component to the story of the JDL: several NSC memos from the

Ford administration reveal that the American embassy in Israel was contacted by members of the JDL who had moved to Israel (as did Meir Kahane, where he was briefly elected to the Knesset).

Zooming further out from a single group in a specific moment in time, this dissertation also underscores the fact that there has been no comprehensive history of

U.S.-Israeli relations since David Schoenbaum’s The United States and the State of Israel

599 See Shlomo Modechai Russ, “The ‘Zionist Hooligans:’ The Jewish Defense League,” PhD Dissertation in Sociology (City University of New York, 1981) and Robert I. Friedman, The False Prophet: Rabbi Meir Kahane – From FBI Informant to Knesset Member (New York: Lawrence Hill Books, 1990). 338 was published in 1993. In the nearly thirty years since, many more primary sources have become available from archives in the United States and around the world that can shed new light on events of the 1970s and early 1980s. Furthermore, even more documents will become available from the late 1980s and early 1990s from the Reagan and George

H.W. Bush presidential libraries in the coming years which will illuminate how the end of the Cold War affected this important diplomatic relationship. New analytical lenses, especially cultural history, can also provide new insights into the history of U.S.-Israeli relations.

Finally, by zooming out even further, exploring the history of U.S.-Israeli relations forces historians to grapple with the broader subject of U.S. foreign aid, especially military aid, as a key feature of U.S. foreign policy. As these chapters have demonstrated. Israel not only received massive amounts of U.S. military aid throughout its history, especially from the 1970s to the present, but also received that aid on extremely favorable terms. This is one particularly notable feature of the “special” relationship Israel enjoys with the United States, but it is important to remember that

Israel is not the only recipient of U.S. military aid in the world. By broadening their analysis to include other countries, historians can explore how the United States has sought to use military aid to support its allies around the world. They can also explore how the introduction of American weaponry and equipment has shaped the lives and experiences of people around the world, especially in conflict zones.

Finally, an analysis of U.S. military aid to countries around the world gives scholars an opportunity to explore what President Dwight Eisenhower called the

“military-industrial complex.” One notable feature of American military aid to Israel is 339 that it was often extended in the form of grants, not loans, which did not have to be paid back. This meant that the U.S. administrations from the 1970s onwards were essentially giving American funds to Israel for Israel to use to purchase American military equipment. Since that money then went to American defense contractors, the U.S.-Israeli aid relationship was in part a subsidy to the American defense industry. This topic reveals an explicit financial link between American foreign policy and the domestic economy in the United States and demands further investigation.

340

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