As we now know from the Nixon tapes, the president, despite his crucial role in re-supplying Israel during the Yom Kippur War, was an anti-Semite who relished making his secretary of state squirm over his Jewish background. Kissinger stood by quietly when Nixon gave vent to anti-Jewish prejudices, and remained mute when Nixon talked about him to Arab dictators as “my Jew boy.”
Once, after Kissinger had analyzed an issue relating to Israel, Nixon asked: “Now can we get an American point of view?” In one of the Nixon tapes, the president, referring to Kissinger, agreed that “it is wrong for the country for American policy in the Middle East to be made by a Jew.”
Many observers of Kissinger’s career argue that as Nixon’s hofjude – the “Jew in the King’s Court” – Kissinger had to bend over backward not to be seen as elevating Israeli interests over those of the United States. But in light of his extensive public record, it is very difficult to support an argument that Kissinger was a friend of the Jews in general or Israel in particular.
To quote Rabbi Norman Lamm: “Dr. Kissinger is an illustration of how high an assimilated Jew can rise in the United States, and how low he can fall in the esteem of his fellow Jews.”
