Gaza and JFK

[Sandy Larsen]

7 hours ago, Robert Burrows said:

[Biden's] craven acquiescence to Netanyahu's campaign of genocide equals complicity in war crimes.

 

You know what? Having given it more thought, I think you guys are right. Biden has no sense of morals whatsoever and is just relishing his job as he gets to participate in the killing of thousands of innocent Palestinian! What a lucky guy... I wish I had his job.

</sarcasm>

Biden  haters.

 

[Robert Burrows]

2 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

You know what? Having given it more thought, I think you guys are right. Biden has no sense of morals whatsoever and is just relishing his job as he gets to participate in the killing of thousands of innocent Palestinian! What a lucky guy... I wish I had his job.

</sarcasm>

Biden  haters.

 

Not hatred. Profound disappointment. 

[James DiEugenio]

On 12/30/2023 at 7:43 AM, W. Niederhut said:

Doug,

     Based on your educational background at Georgetown, and your knowledge of American diplomacy and U.S. foreign policy, do you think JFK was the last POTUS who ever said, "No," to Israel?  Ben Gurion was furious at JFK about the Dimona nuclear project, which LBJ later greenlighted.

     LBJ also suppressed the U.S.S. Liberty incident.

     I'm not that familiar with the Middle East policies of Nixon, Ford, and Reagan.

     Cheney and Rumsfeld stacked George W. Bush's administration with PNAC Neocons.

     Bob Woodward reported, in Plan of Attack, that Dubya called Poppy Bush before his Inauguration in January of 2001 and asked, "Dad, who are the Neocons?"

      Poppy replied, "In a word, son-- Israel."

William hit upon the key point.

Kennedy was very aware of how complex morally the Middle East question was.  And this goes back to his young man experience in Palestine. He never lost sight of the Nakba, and he was always aware of how Nasser had fought and defeated the Muslim Brotherhood.  He was also aware of Nasser's attempt to arrange a Pan Arab union, since he thought the oil in the MIddle East belonged to all the Arabs.

But the problem Kennedy had here was that his alleged allies like England did not want Nasser to win in Yemen.  Because they knew if he did, Saudi Arabia would be next, and London would now have to deal with Nasser not the dissolute  King Saud. England knew the longer the war dragged on the tougher it would be for Kennedy to support Nasser.

These are all the complexities about the area that I really did not recognzie until I read Rakove and Muehlenbeck and Dreyfuss.

Very clearly, LBJ did not want to deal with them and neither did Kissinger and Nixon.  Slowly but surely, the Johnson Plan was discarded into the dustbin of history as was Kennedy's policy. And the alleged triumph of Jimmy Carter was not.  He should  have never settled for an agreement without the Palestinians there in some manner.  Any historian will tell you that Sadat was not a follower of Nasser. In order to please the US he discarded the Russians,  and he agreed to an isolated instead of a comprehensive agreement at Camp David. Well,  we can see that result today in Gaza. 

As one historian summed up Camp David:

By the time he left office in January 1981, Carter:

was in an odd position—he had attempted to break with traditional US policy but ended up fulfilling the goals of that tradition, which had been to break up the Arab alliance, side-line the Palestinians, build an alliance with Egypt, weaken the Soviet Union and secure Israel.

A very important point is this:  Egypt was kicked out of the Arab League. And therefore was never in the apogee point in the Middle East or Arab world after Camp David, as it had been under Nasser. Kennedy's whole strategy had been subverted.

Edited December 31, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Douglas Caddy]

 

Israel-Gaza war live: Israeli minister calls for return of Jewish settlers to Gaza Strip after war (theguardian.com)

 

Article cites Democratic Senators criticism of Biden in his handling of Gaza and sending weapons to Israel.

[Douglas Caddy]

On 12/30/2023 at 9:43 AM, W. Niederhut said:

Doug,

     Based on your educational background at Georgetown, and your knowledge of American diplomacy and U.S. foreign policy, do you think JFK was the last POTUS who ever said, "No," to Israel?  Ben Gurion was furious at JFK about the Dimona nuclear project, which LBJ later greenlighted.

     LBJ also suppressed the U.S.S. Liberty incident.

     I'm not that familiar with the Middle East policies of Nixon, Ford, and Reagan.

     Cheney and Rumsfeld stacked George W. Bush's administration with PNAC Neocons.

     Bob Woodward reported, in Plan of Attack, that Dubya called Poppy Bush before his Inauguration in January of 2001 and asked, "Dad, who are the Neocons?"

      Poppy replied, "In a word, son-- Israel."

I have to think about this more before answering.

This fairly recent interview of General Wesley Clark raises the question who would benefit most from taking out the seven counties. It would be Israel. 

 

Edited December 31, 2023 by Douglas Caddy

[Sandy Larsen]

The U.S. News & World Report article

Democratic Support for Biden Ticks up on Handling of Israel-Hamas War, AP-NORC Poll Says

reports the following:

Fifty-nine percent of Democrats approve of Biden's approach to the conflict, a tick up from 50% in November.

Greg Baird, 61, said Biden is "doing the best he can with a really, really bad situation.”

“It’s a high wire act," Baird said. The owner of a print shop in Georgia, he began voting for Democrats after President Donald Trump took office.

“Israel is an ally," Baird said. "Our strongest ally in that part of the world. We have to stand by them.”

Ginger Sommers, 47, had a similar view.

“I think what he’s doing right now is the best that he can do," said Sommers, a registered Democrat who owns a restaurant in Arkansas.

....

Biden has .... argued that his closeness with Israeli leadership has enabled more humanitarian aid to reach civilians in Gaza. He's also expressed increased reservations about the Palestinian death toll and emphasized the need for an independent Palestinian state.

“I’ve been very straightforward and blunt with our Israeli friends in private about what I think they have to do and the burden they have and the commitment they have from me and my administration,” Biden said at a campaign fundraiser in Boston this week.

Biden has needed to balance several goals during the conflict, some of which could prove to be in contention with each other as fighting between Israel and Hamas continues.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

This Dec. 19 NYT/Sienna poll reports the following:

Do you approve or disapprove of the way Joe Biden is handling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

Democrats who approve:        55%
Democrats who disapprove:   37%

 

[Kirk Gallaway]

It's good to get a number of views. This is a bit academic.Not that I like academic writing that much, but it tries to be balanced. " Perspectives on power by April Summit."

One recurring theme among others, is  that JFK paid off a number of countries in the Middle East, as many countries in the region tried to exploit the general U.S. fear of Soviet influence in the region. But the country that benefited most was Ben gurion and Israel.

It doesn't necessarily say that  was by design, or we could infer that RK's Jrs current very Pro Israel War policy was an extension of JFK's.  I don't think that's the central message about JFK's policy. It's more that JFK, given time effort and money was being played. Other Presidents are criticized as well.

 

I start with some bullet points  that shed a different light but are a bit critical of JFK in the assorted categories. Then a pro and con summary, which uses historian quotes that are  generally all over the map. 

This is  dual topic thread, the first    being the JFK/ Nasser relationship and then the future under  Heny scoop Jackson and then a  title referring to  a third topic,  the present day war in Gaza,which has turned out to be a huge focus of response. I I then focus on some paragraphs about JFK/ Nasser.relationship that Jim has mentioned before. At the end.  There's a repetition.  .

 

 

 

The Legacy of Kennedy’s Approach to the Middle East, by country and issue

Saudi Arabia---Of the major players, Saudi Arabia probably needed American money the least. However, it did need Kennedy’s support in view of the growing tides of pan-Arabism and Nasser’s rhetoric campaigns against what he considered a corrupt regime.Their oil and location, however, were enough reasons for Kennedy to preserve the royal regime. In spite of efforts to stay out of the fight over Yemen, the U.S.sent an air squadron to help bolster Saud and persuade Nasser to back down. While American military support to Saudi Arabia did not force Nasser out of Yemen, it did ensure the stability of the Saudi royal family and kept the conflict from spreading. In the end, the Saudis did little except preserve Western access to oil in return for American support.

 

 

 

Nasser:/Egypt The fact that both superpowers wanted his cooperation meant that Nasser could take from both and give little or nothing to either. He was, in many ways, the most appealing consort, fending off rival suitors while accepting their gifts. Although Kennedy would sometimes complain to Nasser about anti-American rhetoric in the Egyptian press,or his later involvement in Yemen, there seemed little the president could do besides give or withhold money.

 

In the end, however, Kennedy was not able to push Nasser toward economic or democratic reforms that he thought Egypt needed. Nor was he able to persuade Nasser to eschew all Soviet aid or disengage from Yemen. While it is not certain what direction the relationship would have taken if Kennedy had lived, Congress was already withdrawing aid to Egypt before Kennedy died and Lyndon Johnson would later give up completely on Nasser. 

.

The third prong of Kennedy’s plan - the Arab Refugee Problem - was another failure. In the beginning, Kennedy had high hopes for the Johnson Refugee Plan, and while talks continued, Nasser, Hussein, and Ben-Gurion all pretended to cooperate. In fact, Joseph Johnson probably did make significant headway with Arab leaders, but both he and Kennedy failed to understand that Israel was only pretending cooperation. This plan was doomed from the beginning because Israel would never agree to repatriation of any Arabs, nor would it ever agree to give up any amount of land in exchange for peace.
Thus ended Kennedy’s biggest hope for an Arab-Israeli peace.

 

Israel:Circumstances had forced Kennedy to choose between loyalty to conservative Arab regimes and a new openness and friendship with Nasser’s form of Arab nationalism. The choice to sell HAWK missiles to Israel also completely dashed any hope for a solution to the Arab refugee issue or of demonstrating a tough hand with Israel. In fact, while American military aid to Israel between 1953 and 1961 had only amounted to slightly less than a million dollars total, by the end of 1963 it reached nearly 13 million each year.

 

Israel:The problem was, of course, Israel. Why Kennedy decided to sell HAWK missiles to Israel is frequently debated. It is clear that the President hoped to use the missile to gain Israeli cooperation on the refugees and the Dimona reactor. In both cases, this policy failed. His willingness to sell the missiles before Israel signed any agreements, however, leads one to believe that he would have sold the missiles anyway. If Israel maintained, not just military equality, but superiority, then Arab countries might think twice before attacking.

The result of this reasoning was two-fold: the creation of an arms race in the Middle East,and a tip in the balance o f U.S. policy toward Israel.

 

In both cases, Israel continued its own policies while giving lip service to American interests. Kennedy’s fear that Israel would develop nuclear weapons became a valuable tool Ben-Gurion used, along with the refugee negotiations, to obtain HAWK missiles.

 

 

 

The Legacy of Kennedy’s Approach to the Middle East
Not many historians or even the policy-makers themselves have assessed Kennedy’s 

Middle East strategy, but among those who have, there are differences o f
opinion. On the one hand are the positive assessments. No one should be expected to
perform miracles, they argue. Improving the U.S.-Middle East relationship is probably
the best anyone could do. Mordechai Gazit argued that when Johnson cut aid to Nasser
and he turned for help to the Soviets, it only demonstrated the fact that Kennedy’s aid to
Egypt had been a good decision.20 Herbert Parmet argued that even though military ties
with Israel increased under Kennedy, so did “a better dialogue.. .with the other side.”21
He suggested that these small beginnings would eventually lead to the Egyptian-Israeli

peace treaty. Douglas Little argued that in spite of many failures, Kennedy “came closer
than any other American president to solving the bloody riddle that has bedeviled the
Middle East for more than a generation.”22 Unfortunately for Kennedy, the war in Yemen
derailed his best intentions.

 

Others are less generous in their evaluation o f Kennedy’s policy. Bruce Miroff
argued that Kennedy’s legacy was largely negative because he “made the central
philosophy o f his presidency the idea o f a monolithic communist drive, headed by the
Soviet Union, to achieve world domination.”23 Arie Shpiez charged that Kennedy failed
in the Middle East because of his support o f conservative regimes. This support only
radicalized some regimes further and eroded Arab support for Western policies.24 Richard
Walton accused Kennedy o f misunderstanding the nature o f Arab nationalism in the
region, thinking he could “manipulate” it for Western purposes.25 Tura Campanella
further accused Kennedy of creating an arms race in the Middle East that would
eventually lead to more war.26

 

Perhaps the most balanced view o f Kennedy’s legacy came from Thomas
Patterson. He assessed Kennedy’s foreign policy in the following way:
At times there seems to be two John Kennedys: the confrontationist and the
conciliator, the hawk and the dove, the decisive leader and the improviser, the
bellicose politician and the cautious diplomat. Kennedy’s foreign policy was a
mixture o f sincere idealism and hard-headed pragmatism, o f traditional anti

communist fervor, on the one hand, and weariness over the constraints o f knee-
jerk anti-communism on the other.27
Perhaps this view o f Kennedy’s dual-character is not surprising, since American aims in
the Middle East were also often conflicting and confusing. Any assessment of Kennedy’s
policy toward this region needs to consider this fact.

 

Kennedy had a unique opportunity to change American policy toward the Middle
East. Unlike the two presidents before and the two after him, Kennedy did not have to
deal with an Arab-Israeli war during his tenure. This factor made it easier for him to take
a fresh approach to the region. The problem was, however, that there remained the age-
old conflict: the clash between what might appear to be a fair and "even-handed”
approach to both Israel and Arab states, and what might have to be done to suit the
immediate wishes and interests of the United States. Kennedy, no less than the presidents
before and after him, struggled with this dilemma.

 

His second prong, however - to draw Nasser closer to the West - was at least
partially successful. Nasser did appreciate Kennedy’s attempts to communicate with him
and understand his viewpoints on the region. He also was happy to receive American
assistance and assured Kennedy that he would never allow the Soviets to direct his
policies. His willingness to keep the issue o f Israel “in the ice-box” was partly to
encourage the American relationship, and mostly because he could not afford a war. For a
while, then, Kennedy and Nasser’s aims coincided enough to create a working
relationship.

 

In the end, however, Kennedy was not able to push Nasser toward economic or
democratic reforms that he thought Egypt needed. Nor was he able to persuade Nasser to
eschew all Soviet aid or disengage from Yemen. While it is not certain what direction the
relationship would have taken if Kennedy had lived, Congress was already withdrawing
aid to Egypt before Kennedy died and Lyndon Johnson would later give up completely
on Nasser. Thus, Kennedy’s second prong was also an eventual failure.

 

The third prong o f Kennedy’s plan - the Arab refugee problem - was yet another
failure. In the beginning, Kennedy had high hopes for the Johnson Refugee Plan, and

while talks continued, Nasser, Hussein, and Ben-Gurion all pretended to cooperate. In
fact, Joseph Johnson probably did make significant headway with Arab leaders, but both
he and Kennedy failed to understand that Israel was only pretending cooperation. This
plan was doomed from the beginning because Israel would never agree to repatriation of
any Arabs, nor would it ever agree to give up any amount of land in exchange for peace.
Thus ended Kennedy’s biggest hope for an Arab-Israeli peace.

 

 

Edited January 1 by Kirk Gallaway

[W. Niederhut]

On 12/31/2023 at 12:40 PM, Douglas Caddy said:

I have to think about this more before answering.

This fairly recent interview of General Wesley Clark raises the question who would benefit most from taking out the seven counties. It would be Israel. 

 

Doug,

     George W. Bush's former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill reported in his memoir, The Price of Loyalty, that Donald Rumsfeld had spoken to him as early as January of 2000 about contingency planning for a U.S. invasion of Iraq.

      As you probably know, both Rumsfeld and Cheney were members of the Neocon think tank, the Project for a New American Century, in the 1990s.  PNAC's agenda, even prior to Dubya's controversial election in 2000, and 9/11, was to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein.

      The other PNAC/Wolfowitz agenda items, which were disclosed to Wesley Clark at the Pentagon shortly after 9/11, were based, in part, on Israel's Oded Yinon Plan-- to use the U.S. military to weaken and de-stabilize Israel's Muslim neighbors.

"Greater Israel": The Zionist Plan for the Middle East - Global ResearchGlobal Research - Centre for Research on Globalization

Edited January 6 by W. Niederhut

[Douglas Caddy]

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

Doug,

     George W. Bush's former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill reported in his memoir, The Price of Loyalty, that Donald Rumsfeld had spoken to him as early as January of 2000 about contingency planning for a U.S. invasion of Iraq.

      As you probably know, both Rumsfeld and Cheney were members of the Neocon think tank, the Project for a New American Century in the 1990s.  PNAC's agenda, even prior to Dubya's controversial election in 2000, and 9/11, was to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein.

      The other PNAC/Wolfowitz agenda items, which were disclosed to Wesley Clark at the Pentagon shortly after 9/11, were based, in part, on Israel's Oded Yinon Plan-- to use the U.S. military to weaken and de-stabilize Israel's Muslim neighbors.

"Greater Israel": The Zionist Plan for the Middle East - Global ResearchGlobal Research - Centre for Research on Globalization

President Reagan maintained in his public speeches that the Soviet Union was the Evil Empire. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. 

Today, as a result of America's subsequent foreign policy actions you recite above the United States has emerged as the new Evil Empire. What is unique about the U.S. Empire is that a foreign country, Israel, exerts much control today over America's foreign policy.

 

 

[Douglas Caddy]

Professor Juan Cole writing today in Informed Comment:

The longer the Biden administration allows this savage carnage on the part of Israel to continue before the eyes of the world, the more likely it is that the whole Middle East and perhaps the Muslim world more widely will be destabilized. The US and its allies will not be left untouched by such a development, as the Red Sea debacle already demonstrates. But that interruption of container ship traffic could be a minor consequence of the Israeli genocide against Gaza compared to what is coming.

[Paul Rigby]

On 12/23/2023 at 5:09 PM, James DiEugenio said:

I just posted this last night at my substack and its getting a nice response.

I think its because, like most of Kennedy's policies, very few people know what his Middle East policy really was.  The letters Monica Wiesak uncovered from when JFK was in Palestine are really something.  They explain Kennedy's backing of the right of return for the Palestinians.

One of the comments I got is that people do not understand how far to the right the Democratic Party has gone.  I agree and that is one thing I am trying to show.  The other thing is that the JFK case is not a subject for a museum.  If you know what Kennedy was trying to do and how much he opposed Foster Dulles, it impacts today's headlines.  In other words, it lives.

https://jamesanthonydieugenio.substack.com/p/gaza-and-jfk

Biden has often traced his unyielding support for Israel to dinner-table conversations with his father about the horrors of the Holocaust and to a 1973 meeting in Israel with Prime Minister Golda Meir during his first year as a senator. Even so, it took “a long, long discussion” with Henry “Scoop” Jackson, a famously hawkish Democratic senator from Washington state, for Biden to adopt a more hardline position. As Biden explained in a 1983 eulogy of Jackson, he had not felt “nearly as strongly” about backing Israel before his senior colleague encouraged him to make multiple visits to Israel and Nazi concentration camps. As a result, Biden said, Jackson “changed a major part of my political life and my attitude about a whole segment of society that I did not understand before.”

Jackson was once seen as Israel’s strongest defender in the Senate. As a Saudi ambassador put it, he appeared “more Zionist than the Zionists,” despite being the Protestant son of Norwegian immigrants. That was reflected in extreme rhetoric that alienated some liberal American Jews and fellow Democrats. But many American Jews saw Jackson as their champion—in part because of his advocacy for Jews persecuted in the Soviet Union. (Jackson would later be called a “patron saint of neoconservatism”; his former aides Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, and Paul Wolfowitz were architects of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq.)

Under Jackson’s influence, Biden could similarly come across as a pro-Israel zealot. In 1982, the year Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu first met, Israel launched an invasion of Lebanon that caused massive civilian casualties. Israel’s tactics in Lebanon as it tried to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization and empower the country’s Christian minority outraged people in the Arab world and were opposed by key American officials.

How Joe Biden Became America’s Top Israel Hawk

The president once said “Israel could get into a fistfight with this country and we’d still defend” it. That is now clearer than ever.

NOAH LANARD

DECEMBER 22, 2023

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/12/how-joe-biden-became-americas-top-israel-hawk/

 

[W. Niederhut]

44 minutes ago, Paul Rigby said:

Biden has often traced his unyielding support for Israel to dinner-table conversations with his father about the horrors of the Holocaust and to a 1973 meeting in Israel with Prime Minister Golda Meir during his first year as a senator. Even so, it took “a long, long discussion” with Henry “Scoop” Jackson, a famously hawkish Democratic senator from Washington state, for Biden to adopt a more hardline position. As Biden explained in a 1983 eulogy of Jackson, he had not felt “nearly as strongly” about backing Israel before his senior colleague encouraged him to make multiple visits to Israel and Nazi concentration camps. As a result, Biden said, Jackson “changed a major part of my political life and my attitude about a whole segment of society that I did not understand before.”

Jackson was once seen as Israel’s strongest defender in the Senate. As a Saudi ambassador put it, he appeared “more Zionist than the Zionists,” despite being the Protestant son of Norwegian immigrants. That was reflected in extreme rhetoric that alienated some liberal American Jews and fellow Democrats. But many American Jews saw Jackson as their champion—in part because of his advocacy for Jews persecuted in the Soviet Union. (Jackson would later be called a “patron saint of neoconservatism”; his former aides Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, and Paul Wolfowitz were architects of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq.)

Under Jackson’s influence, Biden could similarly come across as a pro-Israel zealot. In 1982, the year Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu first met, Israel launched an invasion of Lebanon that caused massive civilian casualties. Israel’s tactics in Lebanon as it tried to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization and empower the country’s Christian minority outraged people in the Arab world and were opposed by key American officials.

How Joe Biden Became America’s Top Israel Hawk

The president once said “Israel could get into a fistfight with this country and we’d still defend” it. That is now clearer than ever.

NOAH LANARD

DECEMBER 22, 2023

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/12/how-joe-biden-became-americas-top-israel-hawk/

 

Excellent article, Paul.  Thanks for posting this.

Incidentally, on the subject of the Neocon PNAC agenda, here's an interesting new article about some of the Neocons who have been working behind the scenes during the past 15+ years to start a U.S. war against Iran.

We're currently on the brink.

United Against Nuclear Iran, by Alan Macleod - The Unz Review

Edited January 17 by W. Niederhut

[James DiEugenio]

Nice one Paul.

Did not know about the Jackson/Biden alliance.

In my talk in Pittsburgh, I noted that the core of the Neocon movement, which flowered under Reagan, originated with Jackson, a Democrat.

This was: Perle, Abrams, Wolfowitz, Kirkpatrick and Gaffney, who was even extreme for Reagan. They all came from Jacksons's camp.

IMO, Jackson would never had have the prominence he did if the Kennedys were not murdered.

 

I think that second article about UANI was from MIntPress originally.  They are a truly independent source of info. They sponsored Whitney Webb.  Joe Lieberman turned out as this generation's Henry Jackson.

Edited January 18 by James DiEugenio

[Paul Brancato]

4 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Excellent article, Paul.  Thanks for posting this.

Incidentally, on the subject of the Neocon PNAC agenda, here's an interesting new article about some of the Neocons who have been working behind the scenes during the past 15+ years to start a U.S. war against Iran.

We're currently on the brink.

United Against Nuclear Iran, by Alan Macleod - The Unz Review

I read quite a bit of this way too long article, and then got curious and followed some links on the right side of the page. I was unfortunately introduced to some horribly anti-semitic crap, which likewise took some deep reading but is undeniably true, and I’m not confused between anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel. I know from first hand accounts of survivors what happened. Perhaps you were not so privileged.