Making David into Goliath. Joshua Muravchik
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denounced Nasser as “crudely aggressive,” a sentiment echoed by its star columnist, James Reston, who wrote: “the key issue has to be clearly defined . . . Nasser has committed an aggressive illegality.” Humorist Russell Baker poured ridicule on the Arabs, going so far, in those days before the advent of “political correctness,” as to make fun of “the Arab mind.”43 TIME carried stories with a pro-Israel slant several weeks running. “The real issue,” it said, “is . . . Israel’s . . . basic right to exist. Most of the world has accepted and acknowledged that right, but not the Arabs.”44 Reporting that “there was little doubt as to where the majority of Americans stood,” the magazine offered a potpourri of illustrations such as: “in Chicago’s Loop, Mayors Row restaurant changes the name of one of its dining rooms from ‘Little Egypt’ to the ‘Tel Aviv room.’”45
Although the executive branch was cautious, worried about what actions might have to follow words, members of congress and senators were less so. When the State Department spokesman declared at the outset of fighting that the position of the United States was “neutral in thought, word, and deed,” Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen, the minority leader, waxed indignant: “what’s neutral? I call it ‘snootral’—when you stick up your snoot at both sides.” His colleague, Republican Senator Hugh Scott, condemned the administration’s position as “very much confused.” Democrats joined in the criticism, and The New York Times branded the neutrality declaration “grotesque.”46 Secretary of State Dean Rusk quickly issued a clarification, saying neutrality did not mean “indifference.”47
Although support for Israel was bipartisan, Israel was above all a cause championed by liberals. In addition to civil rights leaders, AFL-CIO President George Meany warned that failure to defend Israel would imperil “the security of our country, of the entire free world.”48 So militant was labor’s attitude that on the day the war broke out, “a labor rally for Israel almost turned into a riot . . . when some persons got the impression that one spectator was opposing a resolution pledging financial support for Israel,” according to a report in The New York Times.49
John Kenneth Galbraith, the president of the leading liberal advocacy organization, Americans for Democratic Action, appeared on Meet the Press and declared that he would “absolutely” favor direct military intervention in defense of Israel. Like Galbraith, many of the strongest advocates of support for Israel were opponents of the Vietnam War. Senator Wayne Morse, who had cast one of only two votes against the Tonkin Gulf resolution that had originally authorized the war, called on the administration to unilaterally break Nasser’s maritime blockade.50 Senator Eugene McCarthy, who would become the champion of the Vietnam peace movement in the 1968 election, declared that the United States had “the legal and moral obligation” to take military action if Israel were attacked.51 And Senator George McGovern, who would capture the Democratic presidential nomination as a peace candidate in 1972, said on the conclusion of the fighting that he hoped Israel “did not give up a foot of ground” until the Arabs made peace.52
The response in Europe to the Middle East crisis was very much like that in the United States. The British government under Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson worked closely with the Johnson administration to end the Egyptian blockade but got nowhere. London’s caution matched Washington’s but so did the warm support of Israel displayed by the British public and opinion leaders.
Indeed, polls suggested that support for Israel among Britons was even marginally stronger than among Americans. A Gallup survey during the war found that 55 percent favored Israel, 2 percent favored the Arabs, with 43 percent favoring neither or having no opinion.53 Editorials backing Israel appeared in The Times, The Observer, The Guardian, and The Economist.54
After Nasser closed the Straits, a rally in “solidarity with Israel” drew a crowd of ten thousand. They listened to Lord Janner pray to God to “protect the people of Israel [and] give them the strength to go to victory,” then marched to the Israeli embassy.55 Reuters reported a melee at Heathrow Airport as volunteers jockeyed for seats aboard a flight to Israel. The Washington Post reported that “some 5000 Britons have formally applied to go to Israel. . . . Roughly 15% are non-Jewish.”56
In France, which had been Israel’s closest ally, President Charles de Gaulle turned sharply against the Jewish state, but few followed him. According to Flora Lewis in the Los Angeles Times:
By a count which cabinet ministers have leaked personally, there are no more than four of the 28 members of President Charles de Gaulle’s government not opposed to his stand on Israel and the Middle East. At least half a dozen ministers have talked privately of resigning on the issue. Defense Minister Pierre Messmer did, taking it back only at the last minute.57
De Gaulle was defying public and elite opinion. Polls recorded that 56 percent of the French favored an Israeli victory whereas 2 percent backed the Arabs.58 A support rally outside Israel’s embassy in Paris outdid that in London, drawing twenty thousand.59 According to the Los Angeles Times, “several thousand Frenchmen, only about half of them Jews, volunteered to serve as replacements for Israeli workers and farmers who were mobilized as reservists.”60
France’s most luminous literary couple, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, led an intellectual outpouring of support for Israel that included artists like Pablo Picasso. “The press, virtually unanimous except for L’Humanité, the Communist newspaper, recited Israeli military victories with obvious relish under huge headlines,” reported The New York Times.61
In West Germany, reported The Guardian,
The . . . Government has been at pains to maintain a position of strict neutrality in the Middle East war, but the press has almost without exception championed the Israeli cause, more emphatically and more emotionally perhaps than have the newspapers of any other Western country. The Israeli embassy has been bombarded with offers of help, financial, humanitarian, and military, the last by young Germans volunteering to fight for Israel. Needless to say, they have been politely turned down.62
This nearly unanimous Western support made itself felt in the United Nations where, once the reality of Arab battlefield reverses became clear, Arab and Soviet bloc delegates began clamoring for an immediate cease-fire and a return to the status quo ante. This demand, which aimed to force Israel to relinquish its conquests while leaving in place the Aqaba blockade, was a tactical blunder. With each passing hour and day, Israel was consolidating victories on all three fronts, with territorial gains at the expense of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. Because time worked in Israel’s favor, its backers were in a position to insist that a Security Council cease-fire resolution be coupled not with a requirement for undoing the war’s results but rather for an end to the Arab–Israeli conflict, itself.
Having staved off the explicit threat of annihilation by its neighbors, Israel now had two further war goals. The first was to trade its new material leverage over the Arabs for acceptance of its existence. The second was to adjust its borders—which were nothing but the 1948 armistice lines given legal standing—so as to be less vulnerable. At its center it was less than ten miles across. “Auschwitz borders,” they were termed by Israel’s usually restrained UN ambassador, Abba Eban.
The result was Security Council Resolution 242, introduced by the United Kingdom and backed by the United States, which called for “freedom of navigation through international waterways in the area,” meaning Aqaba, “and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace.” In its most crucial section, it specified “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.” The Soviet delegate attempted to insert the word “the” before “territories,” but was rebuffed. It was more than splitting hairs. The absence of “the” meant that Israel must withdraw but perhaps not from all of its conquests. Moreover, Resolution 242 also spoke of each state’s right to “secure and recognized boundaries,” opening the door to Israel’s claim that its existing narrow borders were not secure.