Summary
President of the United States (1963-1969) who, in Christison’s account, cast the Israel-centered frame of reference in concrete - advancing the U.S.-Israeli relationship to new warmth, reaching new depths of hostility toward the Arab states, and ignoring the Palestinians so totally that he never even made a show of addressing the refugee problem (Perceptions of Palestine, lines 1172-1182).
Details
- On taking office he told a visiting Israeli diplomat that Israel had lost a great friend in Kennedy: “But”, he said, “you have found a better one” (Perceptions of Palestine, lines 1172-1182).
- His friends and advisers included Ephraim Evron, Abe Fortas, Arthur Goldberg, Walt and Eugene Rostow, Harry McPherson, Abraham Feinberg and Arthur and Mathilde Krim, all ardent supporters of Israel close enough to have his ear (Perceptions of Palestine, lines 1172-1182).
- As Senate majority whip in 1952 he sought out Abba Eban hoping “to find out everything essential about Israel in the briefest possible time”, and made no similar effort to learn about the Arabs from the Arabs (Perceptions of Palestine, lines 1172-1182).
- In the three weeks before the June 1967 war he consulted Israeli officials, personally or through intermediaries, at least daily, while maintaining little contact with Arab officials; his primary concern was avoiding U.S. involvement in another war (Perceptions of Palestine, lines 1194-1206).
- His 1971 memoirs asked the region’s peoples to turn “away from the past”, accept Israel as a reality and build modern societies “unhampered by old quarrels, bitterness, and enmity” (Perceptions of Palestine, lines 1208-1220).
Related pages
Perceptions of Palestine, John F. Kennedy, UN Security Council Resolution 242, June 1967 War