The Kennedy years marked a decisive positive shift in American relations with Israel. For JFK, who had personally visited Eretz Yisrael (1939 and 1951), Zionism was a legitimate national movement of the Jews. He saw in the Jewish democratic state a natural partner of the United States, and he was the first American president to invite an Israeli prime minister to Washington for official talks at the executive level. Describing the protection of Israel as a moral and national commitment, he was the first to characterize the bond between the two nations as a “special relationship.”
Kennedy initiated the creation of security ties with Israel and ended the arms embargo by the Eisenhower and Truman administrations; became the first American president to sell arms (albeit only defensive arms) to Israel, overruling both the State Department and the Pentagon in the process; tripled the amount of American financial assistance; and, perhaps most significantly, sold ground-to-air Hawk anti-aircraft missiles to Israel (1962). The president personally assured Golda Meir (then Israel’s foreign minister) that the U.S. would rush to Israel’s support in the event of an invasion, the strongest assurance to date ever offered by an American administration. JFK alerted the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean when subversion in Jordan by the United Arab Republic threatened to undermine the stability of the entire region, and he increased shipments of military supplies to Israel when Soviet weapons sent to the Arab states threatened to give military superiority to the Arabs.
Kennedy also provided diplomatic support for Israeli policies opposed by the Arabs, including a water project on the Jordan River and the development of an Israeli desalination plant to expand Israel’s water and power resources.
However, by no means was everything entirely rosy between the Kennedy administration and Israel. See, for example, “The Best Thing JFK Ever Did for the Jews,” Jewish Press Senior Editor Jason Maoz’s November 5, 2010 front-page essay in this newspaper, where he presents an important counterpoint, including the facts that Kennedy:
* Promoted large increases in support for Egypt in an attempt to win Gamal Abdel Nasser’s affection and to bring Egypt more under the American sphere of influence.
* Directed Ambassador Adlai Stevenson to condemn Israel in the United Nations Security Council for a retaliatory attack against Syria.
* Wrote a letter to Nasser – which, to JFK’s great embarrassment, the Egyptian leader made public – in which he indicated his support for the harsh actions taken by Eisenhower against Israel during 1956 the Suez crisis.
* Appointed Dean Rusk, who was vehemently anti-Israel, as his secretary of state.
* Repeatedly pressed Israel to make unreasonable accommodations on the issue of “Arab refugees,” including a proposal that Israel absorb at least ten percent of the Arabs who’d left Israel since 1948.
* Remained a resolute opponent of Israel’s nuclear development at the Dimona facility, which he believed could instigate a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. The skeptical president went so far as to write a May 1963 letter to Ben-Gurion stating that American support for Israel could be in jeopardy if reliable information on the Israeli nuclear program was not forthcoming.
After Kennedy’s untimely murder, the people of Israel, who generally viewed him as a friend, did not forget him. In a speech to Jewish National Fund supporters in 1958, JFK had praised them for tree-planting in “the great forest of Jerusalem,” and it is there, in the Mateh Yehudah region near Jerusalem, that Israel dedicated Yad Kennedy (the John F. Kennedy Memorial) and the John F. Kennedy Peace Forest on American Independence Day, July 4, 1966.
