John F. Kennedy - Israel and the Bomb (Nuke)

7/28/2019 John F. Kennedy - Israel and the Bomb (Nuke)

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Kennedy, the Lobby and the BombLAURENT GUYENOTJUNE 8, 20134

Exactly fifty years ago a crucial episode took place in the history of

U.S. democracy; an epic struggle whose outcome would influencethe future of the entire world. Guynot Laurent revisits those eventsand recalls what was at stake at that critical historical juncture.

by Laurent Guynot

Voltaire Network

Kennedy and the AIPAC

In May 1963, the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations opened an investigation into the

covert activities of foreign agents on U.S. soil, focusing in particular on the American ZionistCouncil and the Jewish Agency for Israel. [1]The investigation was prompted by a report from the

Chairman of that standing Committee, Senator J. William Fulbright, written in March 1961 (declassified in

2010), stating:"In recent years there has been an increasing number of incidents involvingattempts by foreign governments, or their agents, to influence the conduct of American foreign

policy by techniques outside normal diplomatic channels." By covert activities, including "within

the United States and elsewhere,"Fulbright was referring to the 1953 "Lavon Affair" [2], where a group
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of Egyptian Jews was recruited by Israel to carry out bomb attacks against British targets, which were to

be blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood so as to discredit Nasser in the eyes of the British and Americans.

The Senate investigation brought to light a money laundering racket through which the Jewish Agency

(indivisible from the State of Israel and a precursor to the Israeli Government) was channeling tens of

millions of dollars to the American Zionist Council, the main Israeli lobby in the United States. Following

this investigation, the Department of Justice, under the authority of Attorney General Robert Kennedy,

ordered the American Zionist Council to register as "agents of a foreign government," subject to the

requirements of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, involving the close monitoring of its

activities.

This attempt to counter Israels growing interference in U.S. politics undoubtedly enjoyed the support of

the President. At the time when he was still a young journalist covering the United Nations inaugural

conference, John Kennedy was troubled by Israels ability to buy politicians, up to and including the

President himself. By recognizing the State of Israel on May 15, 1948, (just ten minutes after its official

proclamation) despite the unanimous disapproval of his government,President Harry Truman notonly gained a place in biblical history ("Trumans historic act of recognition will remain forever

inscribed in golden letters in the 4000-year history of the Jewish people, declared the Israeliambassador), he also pocketed two million dollars to revitalize his re-election campaign. " Thats

why our recognition of Israel was rushed through so fast, Kennedy told his friend novelist and

essayist Gore Vidal [3].

In 1960, John Kennedy himself received a financial aid offer from the Israeli lobby for his

presidential campaign. He decoded Abraham Feinbergs proposal for his journalist friend Charles

Bartlett in the following terms: "We know your campaign is in trouble. Were willing to pay your

bills if youll let us have control of your Middle East policy." Bartlett recalls Kennedys promise

that "if he ever did get to be President, he was going to do something about it [4]." Between 1962

and 1963, he submitted seven campaign finance reform bills but all were defeated by the

influential groups they sought to restrain.

All government efforts to stymie the corruption of American democracy by Israeli agents were

stopped short by Kennedys assassination and his brothers replacement at the Department of

Justice by Nicholas Katzenbach.The American Zionist Council evaded foreign agent status bydissolving and renaming itself American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Ten years later (April

15, 1973), Fulbright commented on CBS: "Israel controls the U.S. Senate.[...]The great majority of theSenate of the U.S. somewhere around 80 percent are completely in support of Israel; anything Israel

wants Israel gets." AIPAC continued the same practices, dodging any sanction even when its members

were caught red-handed in acts of espionage and high treason. In 2005, two AIPAC officials, Steven

Rosen and Keith Weissman, were acquitted after having received from a member of the Pentagon Office

of Special Plans, Larry Franklin, documents classified as Secret-Defense which they transmitted to a

senior Israeli official.

In 2007, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt demonstrated in their bookThe Israel Lobby and U.S.Foreign Policythat AIPAC and less prominent pro-Israel lobbies were the main cause of the war in Iraqand, more broadly, the determining factor in the foreign policy of the U.S. in the Middle East. Considering

that nothing has changed, there is no reason to believe that the government of Benjamin Netanyahu will

not also obtain from the United States the destruction of Iran that it consistently clamors for.
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On October 3, 2001,

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was reported by Kol Yisrael radio to have said to his Foreign Minister Shimon

Peres that "We, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it." His successor Benjamin

Netanyahu gave a demonstration of that on May 24, 2011, before the U.S. Congress, when members of

both houses stood up to cheer him 29 times, in particular after each of the following remarks: "In Judea

and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers"; "No distortion of history could deny the 4000-

year-old bond between the Jewish people and the Jewish land"; "Israel will not return to the indefensible

boundaries of 1967; "Jerusalem must never again be divided. Jerusalem must remain the united capital

of Israel.

Kennedy, the bomb and Dimona

Had Kennedy lived, Israels influence would most certainly have been curbed on yet another front,

that of nuclear weapons.By the early 1950s, David Ben Gurion, who combined the functions of primeminister and defense minister, had engaged his country in the secret manufacturing of nuclear weapons,

diverting the Atoms for Peace cooperation program, naively launched by Eisenhower, from its intended

goals. Briefed by the CIA about the real purpose of the Dimona facility as soon as he moved into the

White House, Kennedy put heavy pressure on the Israelis not to pursue it. He demanded that Ben Gurion

open up Dimona for regular inspections, at first in person in New York in 1961, then through formal and

increasingly insistent letters. In the last one, dated June 15, 1963, Kennedy urged that a first visit should

take place immediately, followed by regular visits every six months, otherwise "This Governments

commitment to and support of Israel could be seriously jeopardized[5]." The reaction to this message

was astonishing: Ben Gurion resigned on June 16, thus avoiding receipt of the letter. As soon as the new

Prime Minister Levi Eshkol took office, Kennedy sent him a similar letter, dated July 5, 1963.

Kennedys intention was not to deprive Israel of a power which was reserved to the United States and its

NATO allies. The Presidents approach was part of a much more ambitious project, which he had

announced on September 25, 1961, nine months after taking office, before the General Assembly of the

United Nations:"Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planetmay no longer be inhabitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of

Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident
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or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish

us.[...]It is therefore our intention to challenge the Soviet Union, not to an arms race, but to apeace race to advance together step by step, stage by stage, until general and complete

disarmament has been achieved[6]."The message was well received by Nikita Khrushchev, whoresponded favorably in a 26-page confidential letter dated September 29, 1961, delivered through secret

channels. After the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the nuclear war that was narrowly avoided thanks

to their composure brought the two heads of State even closer to the awareness of their shared

responsibility to liberate humanity from the nuclear threat. Khrushchev sent Kennedy a second private

letter in which he expressed the hope that at the end of Kennedys eight years of presidency, "we could

create good conditions for peaceful coexistence on earth and this would be highly appreciated by the

peoples of our country as well as by all other peoples [7]." Despite other crises, Kennedy and Khrushchev

continued this secret correspondence, now declassified, comprising a total of 21 letters in which the

intention to abolish nuclear weapons was a prominent concern.

In 1963, negotiations led to the first limited test ban treaty prohibiting nuclear weapon tests in the

atmosphere, outer space and underwater, which was signed on August 5, 1963, by the Soviet Union, the

United States and the United Kingdom. Six weeks later, on September 20, 1963, Kennedy manifested his

pride and hope before the United Nations:"Two years ago I told this body that the United States hadproposed and was willing to sign a limited test ban treaty. Today that treaty has been signed. It

will not put an end to war. It will not remove basic conflicts. It will not secure freedom for all. But it

can be a lever, and Archimedes, in explaining the principles of the lever, was said to have

declared to his friends: Give me a place where I can stand and I shall move the world. My fellow

inhabitants of this planet, let us take our stand here in this Assembly of nations. And let us see if,

in our own time, we can move the world to a just and lasting peace [8]."In his last letter to Kennedy,handed to U.S. Ambassador Roy Kohler but which was never forwarded to the addressee, Khrushchev

also took pride in this first historic treaty that "has injected a fresh spirit into the international atmosphere."

He formulated other proposals, borrowing Kennedys words: "Their implementation would clear the road

to general and complete disarmament and, consequently, to the delivering of the peoples from the threat

of war[9].

For Kennedy, the nuclear weapon was the negation of all historical efforts

to civilize war by sparing civilians. He said to his friend and assistant Kenneth ODonnell during his

campaign for the Test Ban Treaty, "I keep thinking of the children, not my kids or yours, but the children

all over the world. In his televised speech on July 26, 1963, he reiterated: "This treaty is for all of us. It is

particularly for our children and our grandchildren, and they have no lobby here in Washington [10].
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In the sixties, nuclear disarmament was a realistic goal. Only four countries had a nuclear weapon. There

was a historic opportunity to be seized, and Kennedy was determined not to pass it up."I am hauntedby the feeling that by 1970, unless we are successful, there may be ten nuclear powers instead of

four, and by 1975, fifteen or twenty[11],"he uttered prophetically during his press conference of March21, 1963. While all NATO member states and countries of the communist bloc were following the example

of the USA and the USSR and taking a first step towards nuclear disarmament, Israel was acting secretly

on its own, and Kennedy was determined to prevent it.

Kennedys death a few months later eased the pressure on Israel. Johnson chose to turn a blind eye on

the activities at Dimona. John McCone, the CIA director appointed by Kennedy, resigned in 1965,

complaining of Johnsons lack of interest in the subject. Israel acquired its first bomb around 1967, without

ever admitting it. Nixon was just as unconcerned as Johnson, while his National Security Adviser Henry

Kissinger privately expressed his satisfaction at the idea of having friendly Israel as a nuclear ally. Nixon,

who ushered the deep state into the White House so to speak, played a double game: at the same time

as he publicly supported the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (which was not a U.S. initiative), he sent a

contradictory top-secret National Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM-6) saying:"There should beno efforts by the United States government to pressure other nations[...]to follow suit.The

government, in its public posture, should reflect a tone of optimism that other countries will signor ratify, while clearly disassociating from any plan to bring pressure on these countries to sign

or ratify[12]."

According to 2011 figures from SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), there are today

across the world about 20,000 nuclear bombs with an average power 30 times that of Hiroshima, which

equals 600,000 times Hiroshima. Of these, 1,800 nuclear warheads are on alert, i.e. ready to be launched

in only a few minutes. With less than 8 million people, Israel is the worlds sixth nuclear power.

If the President had his way, therewould be a nuclear war each week [13], Kissinger was reported to have said. In the 1950s, Nixon had

recommended to Eisenhower the use of the atomic bomb in Indochina and Korea.
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It was not until 1986, with the publication in theSunday Timesof

photographs taken by Israeli technician Mordechai Vanunu inside Dimona, that the world discovered thatIsrael had secretly developed the atomic bomb. After being kidnapped by the Israeli secret services,

Vanunu was convicted of the charge of "betraying state secrets." He spent 18 years in prison, including

11 in complete isolation. Since his release in 2004, he is prohibited from leaving Israel and

communicating with foreign countries.

Johnson and the USS Liberty

Kennedy would not be remembered in Tel Aviv

as a friend of Israel. In addition to his attacks against the outrageous lobbying activities of Israel and its

nuclear power ambitions, Kennedy defended the right of return of the 800,000 Palestinian refugees

expelled from their neighborhoods and villages in 1947-48. On November 20, 1963, his delegation to the

United Nations called for the implementation of Resolution 194 crafted for this purpose. Kennedy probably

never got the chance to read Israels hysterical reactions in the newspapers: two days later, he was

dead.Johnsons rise to power was greeted with relief in Israel: " There is no doubt that, with theaccession of Lyndon Johnson, we shall have more opportunity to approach the President directly

if we should feel that U.S. policy militates against our vital interests," considered Israeli

newspaperYedio Ahoronot.Far from reproaching Israel for its ethnic cleansing, Johnson fullyembraced the myth of "a land without people for a people without a land", even going so far as to

compare in front of a Jewish audience, "Jewish pioneers building a house in the desert" with his own

ancestors colonizing the New World which, in fact, unintentionally underscored the equivalence
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between Israels denial of its ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and the denial by the Americans of their own

genocide history.

While Kennedy had cut down aid to Israel, Johnson increased it from 40 million to 71 million and

to 130 million the following year. While the Kennedy administration had authorized the sale of a limited

number of defensive missile batteries to Israel, under Johnson more than 70% of the aid was earmarked

for military equipment, including 250 tanks and 48Sykhawkoffensive aircraft. Military aid to Israelreached 92 million in 1966, more than the total of all previous years combined. Conversely, by denying

them U.S. aid, Johnson forced Egypt and Algeria to turn to the Soviet Union to maintain and upgrade their

defense systems. In June 1967, Johnson gave Israel a "yellow light" for its so-called "preventive" war

against Egypt, by a letter dated 3 June, when he assured Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol of his

determination to "protect the territorial integrity of Israel[...]and provide as effective American support aspossible to preserve the peace and freedom of your nation and the area."

Kennedys death deeply affected the Arab world, where his portrait graced many homes. "Now, De Gaulle

is the only Western head of state on whose friendship the Arabs can rely," said Gamal Abdul Nasser.

While reducing aid to Israel, Kennedy had generously provided grain to Egypt as part of the Food for

Peace program. For that country, the short-lived presidency of John F. Kennedy will have been anenchanted interlude, a dream shattered all too soon. In 1954, under Eisenhower, Egypt had been the

target of false flag terrorist acts perpetrated by Israel in order to "break the Wests confidence in the

existing Egyptian regime[and]to prevent economic and military aim from the West to Egypt[14],"according to the very words of the head of military Intelligence (Aman) Benjamin Givli in a secret, today

declassified, telegram. The accidental ignition of an explosive device led to the exposure of the

conspiracy, sparking the scandal which became known as the Lavon Affair" after defense minister

Pinhas Lavon, a scandal which was quickly stifled by Israel and the United States. Prime Minister Moshe

Sharett, who advocated a moderate brand of Zionism, respectful of international rules, acknowledged at

that time (but only in private) the irresistible rise of extremists, among which he included future President

Shimon Peres, who "wants to frighten the West into supporting Israels aims"and that "raises terrorism to

the level of a sacred principle [15].

Kennedys death gave free rein to this Machiavellian terrorism which Israel has developed into an

art form.Two days before the end of the Six Day War, the Israeli army launched against theUSSLibertythe most famous and disastrous of its false flag attacks. On the sunny day of June 8, 1967, threeunmarked Mirage bombers and three torpedo boats flying an Israeli flag bombed, strafed and torpedoed

for 75 minutes this NSA (National Security Agency) ship -unarmed, floating in international waters and

easily recognizable with the obvious intention of leaving no survivors, machine-gunning even the

lifeboats. They only stopped at the approach of a Soviet ship, after killing 34 crew members, mostly

engineers, technicians and translators. It is assumed that if they had succeeded in sinking the ship

without witnesses, the Israelis would have attributed the crime to Egypt, so as to drag the United States

into war on the side of Israel.

According to Peter Hounam, author ofOperation Cyanide: Why the Bombing of the USS LibertyNearly Caused World War III(2003), the attack on theLibertywas secretly authorized by the WhiteHouse as part of the project labeled Frontlet 615, "a secret political arrangement in 1966 by which

Israel and the U.S. had vowed to destroy (Egypts Gamal Abdel Nasser)." The orders issued by the

White House that day, which delayed the rescue mission by several hours, suggest that Johnson

not only covered up the Israelispost-facto, but also conspired with them. Oliver Kirby, the NSADirector for Operations at the time, reported to journalist John Crewdson of the Chicago
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Tribune(October 2, 2007) that the communications transcripts from the Israeli planes interceptedby the NSA and sent to Washington immediately, left no doubt as to the identity of the attackers,

and about the fact that they were aware it was a U.S. target before the attack: " Im willing to swear

on a stack of Bibles that we knew they knew [that it was a U.S. ship]." Unmasked, Israel claimed it

was a case of mistaken identity and offered its apology, which Lyndon Johnson meekly accepted

on the grounds that "I will not embarrass our ally." When, in January 1968, Johnson received

Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol to Washington and then invited him to his Texas ranch,

relations were cozy.

Israel will have drawn a lesson of impunity whose influence on its future behavior should not be

underestimated:the price for failure in a false-flag operation against the United States is zero. In fact,failure is impossible, since the Americans will themselves step in to cover up Israels crimes. Better yet,

Johnson rewarded Israel by lifting any restriction on military equipment: weapons and U.S. aircraft

immediately flocked to Tel Aviv, soon turning Israel into the top customer of the U.S. military industry.

Translation

Gaia Edwards

End Notes:

[1]The Senate Foreign Relations Committee Investigates the Israel Lobby.

[2]Declassified Preliminary Report: Senate Investigates Foreign Agents 1961 1963.

[3] Quoted by Gore Vidal in his foreword to Israel Shahaks bookJewish History, Jewish Religion,1994.

[4] Quoted by Seymour M. Hersh in The Samson Option.

[5] Quoted by Seymour M. Hersh,op.cit.

[6] Quoted by James Douglass inJFK and the Unspeakable.

[7] Quoted by James Douglass,op.cit.





[12] Quoted by Seymour M. Hersh,op.cit.

[13] Quoted by Anthony Summers inThe Arrogance of Power.
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[14] Quoted by Livia Rokach,Israels Sacred Terrorism, 1980.

[15] Quoted by Livia Rokach,op.cit.

Also see

The Kennedys vs Israels Lobby

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About the author: Laurent GuyenotView all posts byLaurent Guyenot

Laurent Guynot: Engineer (National School of Advanced Technology, 1982) and medievalist (PhD in Medieval Studies at Paris IV-

Sorbonne, 2009). He has authored numerous books on the subject. He has dedicated the past three years to studying the behind-the-scenes

history of the United States, where he lived for five years.
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John F. Kennedy - Israel and the Bomb (Nuke)

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