Why America Backs Israel_1967

Richard Yaffe, Why America Backs Israel, Jewish Chronicle, December 15, 1967, 7.

‘What are the motives for the U.S.A.’s steady support for Israel since June? Will it last? –

The British resolution on the Middle East, adopted by the Security Council last month, became possible for two basic reasons Israel’s resounding defeat of the Arab armies, and American’s full and almost immediate recognition of the implications flowing from it.

‘The Arabs’ defeat, it was obvious, was also a defeat for the Soviet Union, which had supported their anti-Israel intransigence with masses of modern weapons and a defeat for the Russians in the Middle East is per se a victory for American policy, whose cornerstone has always been to keep or try to boot the U.S.S.R. out of there. . . .

This policy has been, and obviously remains, a simple one: to keep the Soviet Union out of Middle East States where it does not yet have a toehold; to undercut it where it has gained influence, and to do all this short of war, and, of course, short of allowing Israel’s destruction.

‘Only the implementation of this has failed since Mr. John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State in the Eisenhower Administration, put it into words in the early ’fifties.

The Soviet Union’s power and prestige in the Middle East gained rather than lost from then on, until the fateful June 5 of this year.

‘. . . There was something of a panic among certain sections of the State Department during the tense days preceding the Six-Day War.

America did not know quite what to do. She surely did not want to see Israel destroyed, yet the policy of appeasing the Arabs was so strong that there was an impasse. The first action was to clamp down an arms embargo, as happened in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. This has not yet been entirely lifted.

‘. . . Israel is no doubt extremely grateful to America for everything it has done since the eventful days of June, and America is no doubt friendlier and warmer to Israel than at any time since 1948. But friendships change, and warm days turn chilly.

‘Israel does not need to be told this. After all, she has President de Gaulle as a constant reminder.’

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