The 1968 Sale of Phantom Jets to Israel
by Mitchell G. Bard
The United States and Israel are joined in a de
facto alliance, with
each nation sharing
intelligence with the other, and both cooperating in joint military
exercises. In Fiscal 1997, Israel received from the United States more economic aid — $1.2 billion —
than any other nation, and more military
assistance — $1.8 billion — than any other non-NATO nation.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, the relationship has
not always been so close. For most of Israel’s first two decades of
independence, the United States was not a close ally and did not provide
Israel with significant amounts of either financial or military aid. All
that changed, however, with President Lyndon Johnson's decision to sell
Phantom jets to Israel in 1968.
The U.S. Keeps Its
Distance
Harry Truman is given much of the credit for the
creation of Israel, but his unwillingness to supply arms to the Jews
fighting for independence undermined the diplomatic support he gave to the
UN-sponsored partition of Palestine. The United States continued its arms
embargo, despite persistent pressure from Israel and her supporters, until
the Kennedy Administration.
United States policy for denying American arms to Israel
was based on the following arguments: 1) the country was strong enough to
defend itself without U.S. arms; this belief was reinforced by Israel's
success during the Suez campaign; 2) Israel had access to arms from other
sources; 3) the United States did not want to appear to be starting an arms
race in the Middle East; 4) the U.S. sales of arms to Israel would lead the
Arabs to ask the Russians and Chinese for arms; 5) the U.S. did not want to
risk a Middle East confrontation with the Soviet Union; and 6) U.S.
military aid to Israel would alienate the Arabs.
Not until 1962 did Israel receive its first major
weapons system from the United States when Kennedy agreed to sell HAWK
anti-aircraft missiles to Israel. That sale was opposed by the State
Department, but Kennedy felt justified in ordering its execution after he
failed to dissuade Egyptian President Nasser from escalating the arms race
and after he learned that the Soviet Union had supplied Nasser with
long-range bombers. The HAWK sale was significant not only because it was
the first major direct arms transfer to Israel but also because that system
required that Israeli soldiers be given extensive training in the United
States and that spare parts be supplied to Israel. These were the first
steps on a path which made Israel increasingly dependent on U.S. arms.
From 1948 until the 1962 HAWK sale, the Israeli lobby
(consisting of those individuals and organizations which attempt directly
and indirectly to influence American policy to support Israel) was largely
unaware of any U.S. military aid to Israel. (Actually, there had been a
trickle of arms such as recoilless rifles.) There was nothing unusual about
this since virtually all U. S. aid to the Middle East was secret. In 1956,
Israel's Ambassador to the United States, Abba Eban, told the president of
the American Jewish Committee, Irving Engel, that with the possible
exception of jet fighters, Israel was receiving arms in fair amounts.(1) The main source of these weapons, according
to Eban, was France. In fact, it was U.S. encouragement of third-party arms
suppliers which had enabled Israel to meet its defense needs. In addition,
the United States itself was supplying small amounts of weapons to Israel,
apparently without the knowledge of the Israeli lobby.
Johnson Assumes Command
When Lyndon Johnson became President, the Israeli lobby
was encouraged not only by the fact that he had pledged to carry on the
work of John Kennedy but also by Johnson's own record of support for Israel
which dated back to his leadership in the Senate during the Eisenhower
Administration.
Like most U.S. presidents, Johnson's support for Israel
was based on a combination of realism, romanticism, and cold political
calculation. Viewed realistically, Israel was a relatively powerful,
pro-Western democratic nation in a region of strategic importance where
Communism and Pan-Arabism were seen as serious threats to U.S. interests.
Although the United States did not yet perceive Israel as a strategic ally,
it recognized that a strong Israel was a deterrent to the forces of
radicalism in the Middle East.
Viewed romantically, Israel was the nation of pioneers
who had turned malarial swamps into a land of milk and honey. "We live
by the faith that what has been wrought there," Johnson wrote to one
Jewish leader shortly after becoming President, "someday will be
achieved in all the lands where men aspire to live in freedom, under peace,
enjoying justice as a right and prosperity as a result of their
labors."(2) Five years later, Johnson
told a B'nai B'rith meeting about his biblical connection to Israel.
"Most if not all of you," he said, "have very deep ties with
the land and with the people of Israel, as I do, for my Christian faith
sprang from yours." The President explained that "the Bible
stories are woven into my childhood memories as the gallant struggle of
modem Jews to be free of persecution is also woven into our souls."(3)
Also the consummate politician, Johnson recognized that
Jews are a political force in this country. As a leader of the Democratic
Party, he developed close associations with a number of influential Jewish
leaders, several of whom were among his closest friends.
Johnson's dependability was tested immediately when the
Israelis began to pressure the Administration to sell them tanks and
planes. As early as January 1964, Deputy Secretary of State Robert Komer
was complaining that Myer Feldman was badgering him about supplying Israel
with tanks.(4) Feldman, the holder of the
"Jewish portfolio" as an aide in the Administration, meanwhile
wrote to the President in May that he had "rarely been exposed to as
much pressure as I have had recently on the question of tanks for
Israel." In the same memo, however, Feldman reveals how the White
House successfully exerted its own pressure: "It has only been after
considerable effort that members of Congress have been restrained against
making speeches on the question, the Anglo-Jewish press has killed several
articles and responsible leaders of the Jewish community have demonstrated
their confidence in the Administration by keeping silent."(5)
The Administration had, in fact, begun to consider a
tank sale to Israel in January of 1964, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff
reported that Israel had no need for tanks, and that the United States
should place highest priority on restraining the flow of arms to the Middle
East. If the Administration decided nevertheless to sell tanks to Israel,
then the Joint Chiefs recommended they be sold only as replacements for
obsolete tanks and that they be supplied discreetly. This became impossible
when it was revealed, in early 1965, that the United States had been
indirectly supplying arms to Israel through West Germany since 1962 under
the terms of a secret 1960 agreement. The Arab nations responded to this
revelation by threatening to recognize East Germany and by pressuring the
West German government to halt the sales. The United States then stepped in
and fulfilled the remainder of the $80 million 1960 arms agreement.(6)
President Lyndon Johnson and Prime Minister Levi Eshkol negotiated a deal for Patton tanks based in Germany, which were to be transferred to Israel after being upgraded in Italy. This sale was consistent with the U.S. policy of
evenhandedness since it was matched by a similar sale of tanks to Jordan.
That policy was best explained by Peter Solbert, Deputy Assistant Secretary
of Defense. In a letter to Senator Len Jordan, Solbert wrote that the
Administration refrained from supplying large amounts of arms to either the
Arabs or Israel because it wished to remain impartial, but that the United
States was willing to make limited sales to both sides to strengthen the
ability of Middle Eastern countries to defend themselves. "In no
case, however, will the U.S. contribute to providing one state in the area
a military advantage against another" (emphasis added).(7) This statement is highlighted because it
reveals a fundamental difference between U.S. policy prior to the Phantom
sale and after. That is, the Phantom sale represented a shift in U.S.
policy from maintaining a stance of neutrality to one of providing and
maintaining Israel with the arms it needed to build and keep a qualitative
advantage over its Arab neighbors.
In February 1966, the State Department announced the
U.S. sale of 200 Patton tanks to Israel. In May, it announced a new
agreement to provide Israel with Skyhawk jet bombers. Militarily, these
sales dramatically improved Israel's offensive capability. The symbolic
impact was also great, since this was not only the first major sale of
offensive weapons to Israel, but also the first public acknowledgment that
the U.S. was not only willing to sell; but was actually selling, the
equipment Israel needed to maintain its defenses.
Still, the sales represented no more than U.S.
willingness to counterbalance Soviet arms supplies to the region. The
Johnson Administration was not yet willing to abandon its policy of not
providing any nation in the region with a strategic advantage. This was
evident when it was learned that about the same time the U.S. had decided
to sell Israel Skyhawks, it had also concluded secret agreements to sell
F-5 bombers to Morocco and Libya as well as to supply additional military
equipment to Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia.
Meanwhile, Nasser continued to express a desire to
develop good relations with the U.S. and therefore announced that Egypt was
willing not only to accept nuclear safeguards if Israel did, but also to
keep the Israel issue "in the icebox."(8) Thus, as long as Nasser wished to improve relations, hinting that it was
not inevitable that Egypt would join the Soviet camp, U.S. officials were
interested in preserving as much influence as they could in the region. In
their view, this required that the U.S. not become too closely allied with
Israel.
The Pressure Builds
Israel and her supporters were not satisfied with the
U.S. arms supply agreements reached in 1966; still outstanding was their
request for Phantom jets. This request took on greater urgency as the
bellicose rhetoric of Nasser began to push the nations of the Middle East
toward war. The Americans remained unconcerned, however, and Levi Eshkol told U.S. News
and World Report (April 21, 1967) that the American attitude was:
"Don't spend your money. We are here. The Sixth Fleet is here."
But Eshkol, fearing that the
U. S. fleet might not be available fast enough, preferred that Israel be
strong enough to defend itself.
The pressure to provide Phantoms to Israel not only
failed to move Johnson, but even had the opposite effect. He was
particularly irritated because those exerting pressure for Israel were not
willing to support his Vietnam policies. He was especially concerned about
the opposition of the pro-Israel lobby since he counted on the support of
American Jews in his campaign for reelection.
The U.S. unsuccessfully pursued diplomatic efforts to
recruit Israel government support for its Vietnam policy. At the same time
it mounted a similar effort at home to make Johnson's support for the
Israel lobby's objectives conditional upon that lobby's support on Vietnam.
On September 9, 1966, for example, the National Commander of the Jewish War
Veterans, Malcolm A. Tarlov, paying his annual courtesy call to the
President, was told that "Jews who seek U.S. support for
coreligionists in Russia and for Israel should vigorously identify with
Administration actions in Vietnam." The President could not understand
why the American Jewish community was not supporting his Vietnam policy
when he was improving U.S.-Israel relations.(9)
Although Administration officials denied that Johnson
had made support for his Vietnam policy a condition for U.S. support for
Israel, the President's obsession with protecting his own credibility led
him to suspect Israel lobby demands were somehow responsible for the
opposition to Vietnam. When it comes to Israel, he told Israeli Minister
Evron, American Jews are interventionists, but when it comes to Vietnam,
they want the United States to be a pacifist. Johnson could not understand
the contradiction and believed that the Jewish community was too selective.
Abba Eban recalled being told by Johnson how a group of rabbis who had come
to visit him in May 1967, asked him to put the whole American fleet in the
Gulf of Aqaba to show the U.S. flag in the Straits of Tiran. In the
meantime, Johnson asserted, they didn't think he should send a screwdriver
to Vietnam.(10)
The Aftermath of June 1967
Although American policy during the Six Day War is not an issue here,
the one U.S. action relevant to this paper was the decision by Johnson to
embargo the shipping of arms to the Middle East. Just as Truman believed
that an embargo might avert bloodshed, so too apparently did Johnson.
Johnson also was disappointed that Israel had ignored his admonition not to
go to war; moreover, he remained committed to a policy of evenhandedness
and was anxious not to alienate the Arabs who would surely blame the United
States for Israel's "aggression."
Just as Truman's 1948 embargo had a one-sided impact, so
too did Johnson's in 1967: the Soviet Union continued to supply the Arabs
with weapons, while Israel's secondary military supplier, France, imposed
an embargo of its own. After the war, the Administration failed once again
to persuade the Soviets to join in limiting arms sales to the Middle East.
Consequently, Johnson was under increasing pressure to end his embargo and
sell military planes to Israel.
At the beginning of October 1967, Senator Stuart
Symington informed the White House that the Israelis were anxious and
bitter over U.S. arms policy and warned that he could easily get a bill
through Congress supporting military aid to Israel. Walt Rostow, who had
replaced Bundy as national security adviser, called the situation
"political dynamite." Finally, in mid-October, after Egypt sank
an Israeli ship (the destroyer Elath) the Administration leaked
the news that the embargo was being lifted.
Soon after the embargo ended, the Israelis requested 27
more Skyhawks and 50 Phantoms. The State Department recommended selling the
former, but preferred to put off a decision on the latter until the middle
of the following year. The Joint Chiefs, on the other hand, opposed all
arms sales whatsoever. The State Department opposition to selling the
Phantoms was based not only on strategic grounds - that is, the Joint
Chiefs' opinion that Israel did not need them - but also on State's
persistent belief that the U.S. could prevent an escalation of the arms
race by simply refusing to supply Israel with more sophisticated weapons;
as a consequence, it was hoped, arms limitation would make it possible to
reach a diplomatic solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. No decision was
reached during the remainder of the year despite a deluge of letters from
Congressmen urging Johnson to sell the planes to Israel.
Another factor underlying the President's decision was
the probable impact of his actions on his chances for reelection. Prior to
the war, Johnson had received a memo titled "1968 -American Jewry and
Israel" which observed that though the Administration enjoyed great
support among Jews, they were upset by the United States'
"overreaction" in joining the Security
Council's censure of Israel the previous November for its retaliatory
attack against Jordan; by State Department policies calling for the return
of the Arab refugees; and by U.S. arms sales to the Arabs without
counterbalancing sales to Israel. The memo also made it clear that the
Vietnam policy remained a problem. If Vietnam persisted, it warned, "a
special effort to hold the Jewish vote will be necessary."(11) Nevertheless, overall, Johnson seemed to
be in good standing with Jewish voters.
The Last Big Push
The pressure to sell Phantoms to Israel mounted at the
beginning of January 1968, as the Administration prepared for the visit of
Israel's Prime Minister Levi
Eshkol. In anticipation of Eshkol's renewed request for Phantoms, the various agencies prepared their
assessments and without exception recommended against the sale. The Navy
and Air Force were opposed to the sale not only of Phantoms but also of
Skyhawks, fearing that reducing American stocks of these weapons would have
"a serious effect on the operational forces" in Vietnam.(12) On the other hand, a briefing book
prepared for the visit expressed the willingness to sell 27 Skyhawks to
Israel but to keep that decision secret to avoid upsetting the peace
negotiations then being pursued under the auspices of United Nations mediator Gunnar Jarring.
The briefing book also noted, naively, that the sale of Skyhawks would
reduce pressure for the Phantoms.(13)
When Johnson met with Eshkol, he promised to keep
Israel's military needs under "active and sympathetic
examination," but he made no commitment to sell Israel the needed
Phantom jets. The President did say, however, that he would make a decision
during the coming year. Johnson offered to provide 30 Skyhawks, and he
agreed to sell 10 more if they were requested. Informally, the President
was less tentative about the Phantoms as well. "Awh, Eppie," he
is reported to have told the concerned Israeli Ambassador, "you know
I'm going to give you the Phantoms ...."(14) In the meantime, no deal was made, but the speculation and publicity
associated with the Eshkol visit helped stimulate further pressure for the sale.
Congress Steps In
Throughout Johnson's term, individual Congressmen
lobbied on behalf of Israel but it was not until June 1968 that a
legislative effort was made to force military sales to Israel. The first
stage of that effort was initiated by Senator Stuart Symington. Johnson
needed to get the Military Sales bill passed to complete arms transactions.
Symington threatened to kill the bill if the President did not deliver the
Phantoms. Besides the usual motivation provided by pro-Israel voters and public opinion, Symington was no
doubt interested in the sale because the planes were built in his home
state of Missouri.
The Administration took the threat seriously and began
to discuss possible tradeoffs. State Department Near East expert Harold
Saunders wrote to Rostow asking, "What are [the] advantages of holding
off on Phantoms longer versus having no military sales bill? Would Phantoms
insure passage? If F-4s are going to be sold anyway, might as well go ahead
and get credit with Israel and Congress now. In exchange [we] might get [a]
commitment to consult before acquiring missiles, [a] commitment to sign
NPT, or some limited agreement regarding negotiations with Jordan and
UAR."(15) The President, still
unwilling to announce a decision, suggested that the decision had not yet
been made.
The pressure was turned up another notch at the end of
July 1968, when the Senate adopted a "Sense of Congress"
resolution calling upon the President to sell an unspecified number of
supersonic military planes that would provide Israel with a deterrent
force. The resolution was subsequently approved by the House; nevertheless,
the President remained unmoved. Johnson then began facing new pressures,
however, from both inside and outside the White House.
While most Administration officials remained opposed to
the sale on military grounds, they were becoming increasingly concerned
over the political costs of delaying what they believed to be inevitable.
On August 21, 1968, Ernest Goldstein wrote a revealing memo to the
President in which he pointed out that he had avoided expressing his views
relating to Israel throughout his service as an aide but warned that the
Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia provided evidence that the Soviets' lack
of restraint "might find its counterpart in the Middle East."
Therefore, he hoped that Johnson would provide Phantoms to Israel before
the election.(16)
Johnson also faced pressure from the two political
parties. In August, both national conventions adopted platform planks,
which had been suggested by the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), calling for military aid to
Israel. In addition, both presidential candidates made strong statements in
support of the Phantom sale. At the B'nai B'rith convention in Washington
on September 8, Hubert Humphrey warned that "Want of strength whets
the appetite for war, for aggression .... Israel must have the means to
defend itself, including such items as Phantoms." Richard Nixon told
the same audience that the balance of power must be tipped in Israel's
favor to deter Arab aggression; therefore, he said, he believed Israel must
have "a technological military margin to more than offset her hostile
neighbors' numerical superiority. If maintaining that margin should require
that [the] U.S. supply Israel with supersonic Phantom F-4 jets - we should
supply those Phantom jets."(17)
In his first major Middle East speech since June 1967,
President Johnson told the same B'nai B'rith convention which just
forty-eight hours earlier had heard the presidential candidates urge
support for the Phantom sales that he had "no intention of allowing
the balance of forces in the area to become an incentive for war .... We
have proposed .... the urgent need now for an international understanding
on arms limitations for the region."(18)
Once again, Johnson had returned to the leitmotif of
arms control; meanwhile, he closed a $100 million deal with King Hussein for U.S. HAWK missiles and, two weeks after his speech, approved the sale
of an additional 12 Skyhawks to Israel. The Skyhawk sale was not expected
to eliminate the pressure for Phantoms, but rather to demonstrate that the
Administration was not totally insensitive to Israel's security
requirements. In addition, the Administration hoped that by holding the
Phantoms hostage, the U.S. would gain the leverage needed to encourage the
Israelis to cooperate with the Jarring peace talks. The Israelis argued,
conversely, that they could not negotiate from weakness, and that they
therefore needed the Phantoms before they could engage in serious
negotiations.
Johnson had also hoped to arrange a summit meeting with
the Soviets to discuss, among other things, a limitation on the sale of
arms to the Middle East, but this option was effectively eliminated by the
Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in August. As the election approached,
Johnson was under almost constant pressure from a broad coalition of
Israel's American supporters. Johnson also wanted to help Humphrey who,
after the President's September speech, had reiterated his position that
Israel should be sold Phantoms.
The only real opposition to the sale remained within the
Administration, where the Defense and Intelligence departments were still
unconvinced of Israel's need for Phantoms. Nevertheless, the Secretary of
State concluded, after two days of fruitless discussions with the Soviet
Foreign Minister, that the Phantom deal "is the most we can get away
with in the light of the action of the Congress" (emphasis
added).(19) The next day, October 9,
President Johnson signed the Foreign
Assistance Act of 1968 and announced that he had not only taken note of
the section concerning the sale of planes to Israel but was also asking the
Secretary of State to initiate negotiations with Israel.
The significance of the sale was explained by Assistant
Secretary of Defense Paul Warnke in a discussion with Yitzhak Rabin. The United States
had avoided becoming Israel's arms supplier, he said, because it wanted to
reduce the risk of a U.S.-U.S.S.R. confrontation in the Middle East. The
U.S., he said, would have preferred to continue that policy but could not
because of the refusal of the Europeans, especially the French, to arm
Israel. "We will henceforth become the principal arms supplier to
Israel, involving us even more intimately with Israel's security situation
and involving more directly the security of the United States" (emphasis
added). It was not just the agreement to provide 50 Phantoms that was
significant, he said, but also the sale of the Phantoms plus 100 Skyhawks
and other equipment requested by Israel, which made the policy a distinct
change from that of the past.(20)
The sale was announced on December 27. Israel was to
receive 16 Phantoms in late 1969 and another 34 in 1970. It was the largest
single arms deal signed to that point by Israel. The cost was $285 million
and Israel paid in cash to avoid the need to pay interest on loans.(21)
In response, the Soviet Union reportedly began
delivering 200 MIG 23s to Egypt. The MIGs were capable of carrying nuclear
weapons and were more maneuverable than Phantoms.(22) With this decision the United States found itself enmeshed in the Middle
East arms race.
Summary
The President's reluctance to sell Phantoms to Israel
was based largely on the Pentagon's evaluation that Israel did not need
supersonic jets; moreover, other governments had U.S. backing to provide
the Israelis with sufficient weapons to balance the Arab threat. In
addition, it was felt that the sale of Phantoms was likely to harm
America's relations with the Arabs, particularly Nasser, whom the U.S. was
still trying to court. Johnson was also intent on reaching an agreement
with the Soviet Union to limit arms sales to the Middle East. For all these
reasons, Johnson could argue that the national interest would not be served
by the sale of Phantoms to Israel.
Of course, the Israeli lobby and its supporters in
Congress saw the national interest from a different perspective. The lobby
was less sanguine about Israel's strength vis-a-vis the Arabs, not only
because its members were not aware of the amount of arms aid Israel was
actually receiving, but primarily because the lobby would not consider the
possibility that Israel might not need the arms it requested. Moreover, the
lobby asserted that U.S. -Arab relations would not be hurt by the sale of
arms to Israel since the Arabs already considered U.S. policy unbalanced,
and since repeated efforts to bring Nasser into the Western camp had
failed. Finally, the notion that supplying Phantoms to Israel would
undermine efforts to limit arms sales to the region was rejected as
hypocritical because both the Soviet Union and the United States were
pouring weapons into the Arab states.
Johnson consented to the sale after the position
of the Israel lobby was proven correct by subsequent events.
Nasser continued to defy the West and then provoked the Six
Day War; the Russians refused to limit their shipments
to the region; and third countries — France and West
Germany — that the U.S. had relied upon to arm Israel
stopped the flow of weapons. Thus, the national interest
in supporting Israel took precedence over the other American
interests in the region. Moreover, it became clear that the
interest of the United States no longer lay in seeking to
maintain a balance of power in the region, but rather in
seeking to insure that Israel enjoyed qualitative military
superiority. This in itself does not explain the outcome;
domestic politics did play a greater role.
Johnson complained to Lucius Battle, then the Assistant
Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, that "never in all his
years of political life did he have such political pressure — Jewish
groups and congressional pressures."(23) Johnson was already pro-Israel when he assumed the Presidency. Throughout
his long record of political service he had been subject to the influence
of both the formal and the informal lobbies. He also had close friendships
with influential Jewish leaders who used their frequent visits to put
forward arguments for the Phantom sale. On the other hand, except for some
input from the oil industry and occasional letters from members of the Arab
lobby, there was little countervailing interest-group pressure.
One of the factors that enabled Johnson to resist the
pressure of the lobbies was his strong domestic position. He had inherited
from Kennedy a large congressional majority which became even larger after
the 1964 elections. He was abetted in his opposition by the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee Chairman, J. William Fulbright, and the Senate Majority
Leader, Mike Mansfield, who were among the most anti-Israel members of the
Congress. The sympathetic congressional majority, believing that the
President had the final responsibility for making arms sales decisions, was
content to let Johnson handle the issue. In addition, Johnson was extremely
popular at the beginning of his term, averaging well over 60 percent public
approval in the 1965 opinion polls.
The situation began to change, however, as the country
became more deeply involved in Vietnam. Johnson's popularity plummeted to
45 percent in 1967. The Israel lobby's constituents, composed primarily of
liberal Jews, became increasingly disenchanted with the President's Vietnam
policy. Congress, following the mood of the nation, also became more active
and, in 1968, introduced legislation to pressure Johnson into making the
arms sales. In addition, when France embargoed arms sales to Israel,
Johnson began to increase the U.S. commitment, as he had already done when
West Germany stopped its sales.
By 1968, Johnson was under siege from Congress, the
public, and the Israel lobby. The pressure generated by public opposition
to his Vietnam policy led him to withdraw from the election campaign, but
it did not relieve him of the demands to provide Israel with Phantom jets.
"Johnson was too much of a politician," Spiegel notes, "to
ignore the assistance the sale announcement could give Humphrey."
Thus, the election played a role in the timing of the U.S. decision to sell
Phantom jets to Israel.(24)
Sources: 1. Etta Z. Bick, "Ethnic
Linkages and Foreign Policy: A Study of the Linkage Role of American Jews
in Relations Between the United States and Israel, 1956-1968,"
(Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, City University of New York, 1983), p. 95.
2. Letter, LBJ to Louis Segal,
12/28/63, LBJ Library.
3. Speech on September 10, 1968,
cited in Bernard Reich, Quest For Peace, (NJ: Transaction Books,
Inc., 1977), p. 423n; Steven L. Spiegel, "Religious Components of U.S.
Middle East Policy," Journal of international Affairs, (Fall/Winter
1982-83), pp. 241-242.
4. Memo, Robert Komer to McGeorge
Bundy, 1/16/64, LBJ Library.
5. Memo, Myer Feldman to LBJ,
5/11/64, LBJ Library.
6. Memo, J.W. Davis, Deputy Director
JCS, to Secretary of Defense, 1/18/64; Memo, Earle Wheeler, chairman of
JCS, to Secretary of Defense, 3/12/64; Memo, David Klein to McGeorge Bundy,
2/17/65; Memo, Robert Komer to LBJ, 4/23/65, LBJ Library; Robert H. Trice,
Jr., "Domestic Political Interests and American Policy in the Middle
East: Pro-Israel, Pro-Arab and Corporate Non-governmental Actors and the
Making of American Foreign Policy, 1966-1971, " (Unpublished Ph.D.
Dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1974), pp. 132 and 226.
7. Letter, Peter Solbert to Senator
Len Jordan, 7/2/65, Gen CO 303 Box 75, LBJ Library.
8. Memo for the Record, Harold
Saunders lunch with Ambassador Kamel, 8/10/66, Country File, UAR, Vol. IV,
National Security File, Boxes 159 and 161.
9. Near East Report, (September
20, 1966), p. 74.
10. Bick, pp. 208-209.
11. Memo, unsigned but written by
Dave Ginsberg for LBJ, "1968-American Jewry and Israel," Undated
but approximately April 1967, LBJ Library.
12. Memo, Charles Baird to Assistant
Secretary of Defense/ISA, 1/5/68, LBJ Library.
13. Briefing book for Eshkol visit,
1/3/68, LBJ Library.
14. Steven L. Spiegel, The Other
Arab-Israeli Conflict, (University of Chicago Press, 1985), p. 160; Near
East Report, (January 9, 1968), p. 1; Marshall A. Hershberg,
"Ethnic Interest Groups and Foreign Policy: A Case Study of the
Organized Jewish Community in Regard to the 1968 Decision to Sell Phantom
Jets to Israel," (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of
Pittsburgh, 1973), pp. 27-28; Trice, pp. 231-232.
15. Memo, Harold Saunders to Walt
Rostow, 6/19/68, LBJ Library.
16. Memo, Ernest Goldstein to LBJ,
8/21/68, LBJ Library.
17. New York Times, (September
9, 1968). Nixon's statement may be the first to call for Israel's military
superiority.
18. Near East Report, (September
17, 1968); Hershberg, p. 35.
19. Memo, Walt Rostow to LBJ,
10/8/68, LBJ Library; Trice, pp. 238-239.
20. Memo of conversation between
Yitzhak Rabin et al., and Paul Warnke et al., 11/4/68,
LBJ Library.
21. Jerusalem Post, 4/23/99.
22. UPI dispatch, 11/30/68, Gen CO
304, UAR, Box 75, LBJ Library.
23. 22. Bick, op. cit., p.
165.
24. Spiegel, op. cit., p.
163.
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