The Debacle of the Middle East and JFK, Pt. 4

Lyndon Johnson Breaks the Mold: Forever

Tzipi Hotovely is the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom. She has held other positions in Likud formed governments. She is well known for making comments like the Nakba was an Arab lie, labeling Israelis married to Arabs as “mixed marriages” which she is opposed to, and she favors a one state solution that withholds citizenship from West Bank Palestinians. (Haaretz, 11/15/2021 story by Tommer Spence) She also once said there should be a Citizenship Law that would condition full Israeli citizenship on joining the Israeli army. (Middle East Eye, story by Elis Gjevori, 12/15/23)

How did modern Israel get to such a point, with such representatives? With little official protest to what is happening in Gaza as starvation conditions for children are now fully exposed? As I previously said, part of the path there was due to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. But it is also due to the policy shift after John Kennedy’s death performed by President Lyndon Johnson.

Johnson’s father and grandfather ended up joining Christadelphian churches. Today this is a very rare religion, one that minimizes the New Testament for the Old Testament. It therefore accents the primacy of Jewish figures. (“LBJ and Religion”, at LBJ Presidential Library) That system holds that Christ was the Jewish Messiah. And that when he returns to Earth he will set up a kingdom to fulfill the promises of Abraham and David, and Israel will be the center of it. Consequently, LBJ liked to say to Jewish audiences, “My Christian faith sprang from yours.” (The Lobby, by Edward Tivnan, p. 59)

His aunt, Jesse Hatcher, was a member of the Zionist Organization of America. His family was appalled by the injustice of the horrible Leo Frank lynching. But there was also a tendency to embellish his connections to the Jewish cause.

In December of 1963, there was a dinner in honor of Johnson in Austin. Jim Novy belonged to an old Jewish family and was Johnson’s treasurer for his first winning senate campaign. (Tivnan, p. 59) Novy prefaced the proceeding by saying the following: In 1938, Johnson had helped scores of Jews from Germany and Poland escape to safety in America. He used his congressional office to obtain travel visas and got them into Texas youth camps under the National Youth Administration. Johnson sat in silence as this gripped the audience: a pre-Schindler’s List paradigm.

As Claudia Anderson, an archivist at the LBJ Library has stated, this story has meager evidence to support it. And, at best, it is greatly exaggerated. (Bryan Stone, Jewish Herald Voice, 7/28/2011) Therefore, it appears that Johnson and his friends were willing to use a rather large exaggeration for political purposes. But it illustrates his almost slavish devotion to Israel.

To use one example, during the Suez Crisis of 1956, Israel dropped paratroopers into the Sinai and the Gaza Strip. It was the first step—along with England and France-- to take over the canal and dislodge Egyptian President Nasser. As we have seen, this was an act of aggression since Nasser had offered to pay for the canal. Yet Senator Johnson sided with Israeli President David Ben Gurion. In a wild comparison, he thought President Eisenhower’s policy was unfair since he had not threatened the Russians for their invasion of Hungary. He told Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Abba Eban, that the White House would not get a thing out of congress on the issue. (Tivnan, p. 50) And the Senate Majority Leader duly pressed the White House not to sanction Israel for the invasion. (“How LBJ Forged the US-Israel Alliance”, by Ronan Mainprize, 1/22/2024)

Why should we keep this in mind? Because, as we shall see, what Eisenhower did during Suez contrasts sharply with what LBJ did in June of 1967 with the Six Day War. In fact, as author Edward Tivnan has written, “Johnson became the best friend the Jewish state has ever had in the White House.” (Tivnan, p. 59) Or as Donald Neff has written, “A sea change was about to take place in America’s relations with Israel….Up to Johnson’s presidency, no administration had been as completely pro-Israel and anti-Arab as his.” (Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November/December, 1996)

For example, no president had ever received the prime minister of Israel at the White House. Johnson did that with Levi Eshkol in June of 1964. It was said of this meeting that LBJ “established …the kind of intimate confidence that had never before existed between heads of American and Israeli governments” (Tivnan, p. 60)

No American president had ever shipped offensive weapons to Israel before. In just fiscal year 1966, Johnson authorized 92 million worth of military assistance; close to one billion today. This was more than the cumulative total of all military aid given to Tel Aviv going back to President Truman in 1948. (Monica Wiesak, Echoes of a Lost America, p. 23) This sale of arms directly by America, and through a proxy sale through West Germany, included—among other items,-- 250 M-48 tanks and 48 Skyhawk jets. (Middle East Review of Int’l Affairs, Vol. 8, No. 2.)

With the acquisition of these—and other-- weapons, there began to be a broader debate in Israel about whether they should now go from a defensive to an offensive posture. In other words, Eshkol was deemed as too moderate. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) now attacked an irrigation project that was inside Syrian borders. (Stephen Green, Taking Sides, p. 191). This was a prelude to the 1967 war.

In his memoir published in the New York Times, President Johnson tries to convey that he was completely surprised by the news of the outbreak of war in the Middle East by aide Walt Rostow at about dawn on June 5, 1967. (October 23, 1971). He also tries to convey that National Security Advisor Rostow and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara were also taken aback by the devastating Israeli sneak attack bombing of the Egyptian Air Force.

This element of surprise is undermined by former Mossad Director Meir Amit. In fear that what happened under Eisenhower during Suez would happen again--a forced pullback-- he had visited Washington and warned them about possible upcoming hostilities. McNamara asked him: How long would it all take? Amit replied, about a week. The Defense Secretary then asked how many casualties would it entail? Amit said: Less than in the 1948 war. McNamara told him he was now free to go home. (BBC documentary, USS Liberty: Dead in the Water)

The ‘surprise’ motif is also countered by the actions of President Johnson. On May 24^th, Johnson requested estimates on how a war between Israel and her neighbor(s) would end up. He already had one in hand from the CIA. But now he asked for an update from not just them, but the National Security Agency and the State Department. (Richard Helms interview, LBJ Library, April 4, 1969) They all agreed that Israel would win in about a week.

But the day before Johnson made that request he had done something as revealing. Recall that he had approved, by far, the largest American shipment of offensive weapons to Israel by any president. But on May 23^rd, LBJ sent an emergency air shipment of armored personal carriers, tank spare parts, spare parts for Hawk Missile air defense, bomb fuses, artillery ammo, and gas masks, among other items. Please note the spare parts orders: as if he knew the tanks and missiles were going to be used. (Green, p. 201).

Arthur Goldberg was Johnson’s ambassador to the United Nations. He resisted approving any cease fire passed on the second day of war that included labeling Israel as the aggressor, or a demand for a troop withdrawal to the June 4^th borders. (ibid, p. 202) As the reader can deduce, Israel could not have done any better from Johnson if it had all been planned. Which Amit said it was and, as we shall see, there are other convincing indications.

What Goldberg did at the UN pretty much cinched that the 1950 Tripartite Declaration would be violated by Israel. This was an agreement made by the USA, the United Kingdom and France that guaranteed the territorial status quo outlined in the 1949 Arab-Israeli Armistice Agreements. In defiance of that pledge, Israel now seized the following areas: from Egypt, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai; from Jordan, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem; from Syria, the Golan Heights. (It should be noted that the Sinai was returned in a peace treaty in 1982)

The excuse for the sneak attack was that it was actually a preemptive strike. The Russians had given Nasser information that Israel was going to invade Syria. So Nasser moved troops into the Sinai and closed the Strait of Tiran to Israeli shipping. But on May 19^th Secretary General U Thant reported to the UN Security Council that his observers reported that there were no significant troop movements in that area. Therefore, the Russian report was likely wrong. As to the massing of Egyptian troops and preparations for an attack by Nasser, both the CIA and Secretary of State Dean Rusk said they could not find any evidence of intent of such. (Rostow memorandum to LBJ of 5/25/67; Rusk memorandum to LBJ of 5/26/67).

But further Egypt had accepted more than one overture to mediate the dispute by U Thant. UN officer Brian Urquhart wrote in his memoir that, “Israel, no doubt having decided on military action, turned down U Thant’s ideas.” Nasser had even agreed to send his Vice President to Washington in order to secure a diplomatic solution. In his book, As I Saw It, Rusk said that the Israelis attacked on Monday, knowing that Nasser’s VP would arrive on Wednesday to talk about re-opening the Strait of Tiran.

Just how involved was the USA with the sneak attack? There is more than one source that says America supplied reconnaissance planes and pilots to assess the bomb damage done during the initial Israeli attack on Egypt’s Air Force. (BBC documentary, Dead in the Water, testimony of Greg Reight; Green pp. 204-11). These American pilots were routed from West Germany, to Spain, to Beersheba in Israel. In case they were shot down, they were given cover identifications to disguise them as private contractors hired by Tel Aviv. The planes—RF-4C’s, a modified version of the Phantom jet—were painted and disguised as Israeli aircraft. In their exit debriefs, the Americans involved were pledged to secrecy and then given back their real identification materials. They were rewarded with early promotions.

I ask the reader: Could such a top secret operation have occurred without the knowledge of the Secretary of Defense and/or the President of the United States? Johnson’s alleged lack of knowledge about this Israeli attack is looking more and more like a fig leaf of disguise. And in stark juxtaposition with Eisenhower, there is no record of LBJ using any kind of pressure—either diplomacy or sanctions—to force the Israelis to return the occupied lands described above. In other words, in reality, Johnson aided Israel in their breaking of the Tripartite Agreement both before the fact and after the fact. As we shall see, this was a landmark in American foreign policy that was adhered to by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. And has been followed by every president since.

Ending in the horror we see going on in Gaza each and every day.