June 1967: Zionists Lay Siege to President Johnson

Today is the 50th anniversary of the second day of the June/Six Day War of 1967, so here's another extract from Tom Segev's 1967: Israel, the War & the Year that Transformed the Middle East (2007) on what the usual suspects were up to in the United States at the time:

"[President Lyndon] Johnson himself was troubled by an announcement issued by the State Department on the first day of the war, saying that the US was taking a neutral position 'in thought, word, and deed. ' The announcement provoked a storm of protest because it read as if the United States had abandoned Israel to its fate, and [Secretary of State Dean] Rusk was forced to clarify it... It marked the beginning of a wave of public pressure to stand by Israel. At no other time could Johnson have been more certain that when it came to Israel, there was no distinction between foreign and domestic policy. For no sooner had the State Department spokesman finished his neutrality announcement than Johnson received a piece of legal advice from a friend: David Ginsburg called to direct his attention to the fact that invocation of the Neutrality Act would bar Israel from raising money for its war effort in the United States. The president's advisers quickly contacted some of his Jewish supporters.

"John Roche, a Boston professor described as Johnson's intellectual in residence, sent him a firm letter that opened with a quote from the Book of Isaiah: 'If favor is shown to the wicked, he does not learn righteousness; in the land of uprightness he deals perversely.' The neutrality declaration had proven to Roche that State Department officials wanted to 'kiss some Arab backsides.' He found this to be 'worse than unprincipled - it is stupid. The Arabs have to hate us - and the rougher the Israelis are on them, the more they will hate us NO MATTER WHAT WE DO. They must create the myth that the United States, not Israel single-handed, clobbered them.' The Americans' 'sweet-talking' of the Arabs would only make them view the United States with contempt and alienate American Jews.

"Johnson hated being pressured in this way, according to Roche. The White House log documents the president's response to a commentary he overheard on a special CBS broadcast, in which the analyst took a pro-Israel position. 'It's easy to tell that he has some sort of Jewish background,' Johnson observed. Levinson and Wattenberg, two Jewish assistants who advised the press to issue an announcement of support for Israel, got an earful from him in the hallway. 'You Zionist dupes!' he yelled at them and raised his fist. 'You're Zionist dupes in the White House.' By the evening of that day, he had received 17,445 letters and telegrams from citizens responding to the war. Ninety-eight percent of them supported Israel, approximately two percent warned him against intervening in the war, and only a handful expressed support for the Arabs." (pp 364-65)