Chapter 6 Perceptual Metamorphosis 1967 to 1976

Chapter 6

Perceptual Metamorphosis
1967 to 1976

Victories won on the battlefield shall not be lost at the tables of diplomacy.”
­– Theme of Presidents Conference Rally, June 9, 1967

This chapter traces how the perceptions of the Jewish leadership about the zero-sum nature of the Arab-Israel conflict altered between 1967 and 1976. Secondly, key events of the period are analyzed from the vantage point of political suasion, as conducted by the Administrations and, for the first time, elements in the Jewish leadership. This era traverses the solidly state-centered perception of the conflict, to a point where key Jewish leaders endorsed the Administration’s emphasis on the centrality of the Palestinian-Arab conundrum. This period began with the quintessential life-or-death war that had long marked the struggle in zero-sum terms and ended (perceptually) as a conflict open to resolution.

The self-image Jews held of themselves and their image of the Arabs shifted in the years between 1967 and 1976. Within the Jewish community, Joachim Prinz, a former Presidents Conference chairman, illuminated this permutation when he argued that American Jews needed “a Jewish Declaration of Independence” from Israel. Herschel Schacter unhappily conceded that Israel was no longer the “David” of the Arab-Israel conflict. The community crossed over from relative apathy to zealous pro-Israelism to equivocal support, all in the space of less than a decade.

Despite the “easy” victory in the 1967 Six Day War, terrorism threatened the personal security of Israelis and Jews, and colored the image of the Arab. The very real peril posed by the Arab countries, as demonstrated by the casualties of the Six Day War, the War of Attrition and the Yom Kippur War, remained vivid in the Jewish consciousness. Equally striking was the August 1967 message from Khartoum, where Arab leaders declared a policy of: “no peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel and maintenance of the rights of Palestinian people in their nation.”1 Nevertheless, modest signs suggested a turnabout in Arab intentions and this contributed to a significant change in American Jewish attitudes. In 1974, the Palestinian Arabs themselves hinted they would, on an interim basis, be willing to settle for control of Judea and Samaria and Gaza. This message signaled by the Palestine National Council demanded “Palestinian ‘national authority’ in any piece of liberated Palestine.” That same year, the diplomatic emergence of the PLO on the international political scene became a fait accompli, when the Arab powers recognized the PLO as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.” Other ambivalent signals followed. The Saudis hinted that they could tolerate the idea of a Jewish State in the Arab Middle East. Another tangible, if indirect, signal was the temporary non-belligerency pact Egypt signed with Israel in 1975.

Israeli security was the singular sphere of cognitive consistency of the American Jewish leadership. They principally adhered to the stance that Israelis alone should decide issues of security. Consequently, any criticism of Israeli policy had to be made in private. On a psychological level, cognitive dissonance presumably plaguing the liberal sensibilities of the Jewish leadership in connection with the “occupation” was offset by the bellicose rhetoric of the PLO leadership.

The Jewish leadership adhered, throughout this era, to several consistent goals grounded in their perceptual framework. To preserve Israel’s survival, they lobbied for American military, diplomatic and economic support for Israel. They uniformly supported Israel’s demand for direct talks with its Arab neighbors. Ever vigilant against an “imposed solution,” they sought to prevent battlefield victories from being transformed into defeats at the bargaining table. Toward this end, in the absence of peace, they were against withdrawal from the lands captured in 1967 and against the Rogers Plan. They opposed a role for the PLO in the U.S.-led peace process as well as U.S. talks with the PLO. Indeed, they opposed an overriding emphasis on the Palestinian-Arab aspect of the conflict.

Environmental factors in the international political system framed American Jewish attitudes. For instance, world focus on U.S.-USSR tensions, the Vietnam war, relatively warm U.S.-Israel relations during the Johnson Administration (1963-1969), various Arab-Israel wars, terrorist atrocities, and the plight of Soviet Jews, tended to foster admiration and unequivocal support for Israel among American Jews.

Conversely, a long list of environmental factors subsequently undermined Jewish American-Israeli solidarity These included aversion to the occupation of a resentful population; discomfiture over the loss of explicit liberal support for Israeli policies;2 coupled with events that contributed to Jewish insecurity in the United States, such as heightened Black-Jewish tensions. PLO terrorism aimed at Diaspora targets called unwanted attention to Jewish vulnerability; the Arab oil embargo contributed to a resurgence of anti-Jewish sentiment in the U.S.; the confrontational policies of the Ford Administration forced the Jewish leadership into the unwanted role of publicly opposing U.S. policy. Other related environmental ingredients which debilitated American Jewish-Israel solidarity revolved around the need of the U.S. Jewish leadership to be in a constant state of opposition: opposing the UN General Assembly “Zionism is racism” resolution of 1975; having to contest repeated “accidental” U.S.-PLO contacts; having to oppose the opening of PLO offices in the U.S.; having to do political battle with influential elected officials who had come to champion the Palestinian-Arab cause (including Senators McGovern and Mathias).

It is important to recall that the Jewish leadership was simultaneously waging a formidable political campaign on behalf of Soviet Jews wishing to emigrate to Israel and the West. Their strategy was to use the leverage offered by détente to pry open the exits for Soviet Jews.

On the Arab-Israel front, however, Jewish politics was seldom “proactive.” The U.S. Jewish leadership was entangled in an incessant chain of events calling for a “Jewish reaction.” The PLO’s emergence as an actor on the international political stage and the propensity of Administrations to engage the Jewish community in bitter political battle over the sale of advanced weaponry to Israel’s enemies, in the post-Yom Kippur War period, called for reaction. There were still other quandaries necessitating reaction: the establishment of “settlements” – Jewish towns and villages in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and the Golan – began to present itself as a prospective issue on the American Jewish leadership’s agenda. Added to this environment were the mixed signals being sent by respected Israeli figures. For instance Ariel Sharon and Moshe Dayan, independently, suggested that Israel should not make a fetish about not talking to the PLO.

No discussion of Jewish perceptions toward the Arab-Israel conflict would be complete without at least cursory allusion to the issue of approval seeking. The psychological underpinnings of perceptual analysis require an acknowledgement that decision-makers seek the approval of others in their political milieu. This approval-seeking colors their actions. The political milieu of Jewish politics is liberalism. The affinity between the Jewish leadership and liberal causes is well established. As Ruth Wisse argues: “Jews are associated with liberalism the way the French are with wine: it is considered native to their region . . .”3 Not only did the Jewish leadership find themselves in the uncomfortable position of having to do political battle with the conservative Nixon and Ford Administrations on sundry occasions, they also gradually forfeited the support of the liberal media and elected officials because of their defense of Israeli actions.

Approval seeking also takes place on the personal level between Jewish leader and government decision maker. Maintaining the friendship of key U.S. policy makers became an end in itself for some players. Other Jewish leaders prided themselves on their friendship with Henry Kissinger and did not want to take any action which might place so valued a connection at risk. Rabbi Israel Miller, Chairman of the Presidents Conference during the Kissinger years, spoke warmly of his personal friendship with both Kissinger and George Shultz, whom he called a “friend of the Jews.”4 Kissinger played upon these feelings by occasionally cautioning Jewish leaders that he would not always be on the scene to nurture warm U.S.-Israel ties.

A theoretical analysis based on perceptual factors naturally places a heavy emphasis on the role of individuals. It is beyond the realm of this study to pose explanations justifying the perceptions held by the various individual players over time (although exploring “self-justification can be an ingredient in perceptual analysis). Nor can gradations of perceptual change be quantified in order to make the case that a change in perception occurred at a certain point.

The belief system of individuals involved – to the extent that they shared a single set of beliefs – is part of the perceptual equation. The roles played by Joachim Prinz, Herschel Schacter, Jacob Stein, Yehuda Hellman, Israel Miller, Alexander Schindler, Nahum Goldmann and Rita Hauser (and others) were immensely important. It is through their publicly recorded activities that we can chart perceptual shifts.

* * * * * * *
Figure 3: Israel Conquests 1967

The June 1967 Six Day War resulted in permutations in American, Arab and U.S. Jewish politics and perceptions. As a direct outcome of the war’s aftermath, United States foreign policy decision makers became persistently involved in efforts to bring about a regional peace between Arabs and Israelis. Partly because of the larger geostrategic rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States, the war yielded an American diplomatic compulsion to vigorously address the Arab-Israel conflict.

As a result of the War, the dynamics of U.S.-USSR competition in the region shifted from a focus on the inter-Arab arena to the more explosive Arab-Israel problem.5 Since the United States had interests in both Israel and the Arab world, it was uniquely positioned to commence what is now almost euphemistically known as the “peace process.”

New Facts-On-The-Ground: The Palestinians

Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights during the 1967 War created diplomatic possibilities which did not exist previously. Political scientist Nadav Safran argues that the war “marked the beginnings of a new configuration. . . . Essentially, the war gave rise to a ‘bargaining situation’ between Israel and its Arab neighbors, previously conspicuous by its absence, and thus made a settlement of the conflict possible in principle for the first time since 1949.”6 On the very day Israel claimed victory – June 7th – President Johnson recalled McGeorge Bundy from his new post at the Ford Foundation to explore ways to translate the new facts-on-the-ground into a durable peace.7

Israel’s capture of Judea, Samaria and Gaza during the Six Day War together with its 1.5 million Arab inhabitants, “reawakened a question that had been all but dormant since 1948: the political definition of the Palestinian Arabs. As a result of Israel’s conquest, which united the Arabs of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and pre-’67 Israel under one government, it was possible, for the first time since 1948, to relate to the Palestinians as a single political body.”8 Fatah efforts to conduct a “popular liberation war” in the Administered Territories failed. But Fatah continued to attack Israeli targets from Jordan or Lebanon.

Karamah

On March 8, 1968 a bus carrying Israeli children hit a Fatah-planned mine causing serious casualties. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) retaliated against a Fatah staging base at Karameh on the East Bank of the Jordan. Initially, the operation went smoothly with hundreds of Fatah fighters killed or wounded. As they sought to withdraw, the IDF force was surprised to find itself facing a superior Jordanian tank force. In the ensuing battle, the invading Israeli forces suffered heavy casualties.
The guerrillas described the incident as a “joint” battle in which they fought side by side with the Jordanian troops and prevented Israeli tanks from entering Amman. . . . Yasir Arafat was elevated to the status of hero despite the fact he had fled the besieged town and left his lower-ranking fedayeen comrades to their fate. Foreign correspondents were told by publicity-hungry Fatah functionaries that Karameh was the “Alamo” of the Palestinian Arabs and was the event that put an end to the legend of an invincible Israeli army. The propaganda worked and Fatah rose even further in the esteem of Arabs throughout the Middle East. . . .”9

Now, from a position of strength, El Fatah joined the PLO as its dominant power at the May 1968 Palestine National Conference. The Palestine National Covenant was re-written at this PNC session. In February 1969 Arafat finally wrested control of the PLO from Yahya Hammuda who had replaced Shukeiry in the wake of the Six Day War.10 Thereafter, the PLO under Arafat pursued a campaign of terror against Israeli and Jewish targets.11 Eventually, as we shall note later, this activity paid off at the 1974 Rabat Arab Summit which declared the PLO to be the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians.

Propaganda of the Deed

From September until December 1967, the Fatah terror campaign resulted in 61 attacks against mostly civilian targets.12 A survey by the Anti-Defamation League shows that between 1967 and 1977, the PLO killed 1,131 Israelis and Jews across six continents and wounded 2,471. In addition, 2,755 hostages were taken. About seven terrorist incidents occurred per month for the ten-year period including 19 airliner hijackings and six attempted hijackings.13

Fatah terror (military attacks against civilian targets) has had a variety of politico-military objectives. For the purposes of this case study it is enough to emphasize the value of these attacks in promoting the centrality of the Palestinian cause as the crux of the Arab-Israel conflict. The unprecedented nature of the attacks propelled the Palestinian-Arab cause onto the world stage. For instance, the PLO conducted the first airplane hijacking in July 1968; the first destruction of a plane in mid-air in February 1970; and the first gun-and-grenade attack on airline passengers in December 1968. Beginning in 1972, the PLO also targeted non-Israeli and non-Jewish prey including a Lufthansa plane on a flight in the Far East and a JAL flight between Paris and Tokyo.14

Throughout its history, the mission of the PLO – replacement of Israel with a Palestinian state – defined the group’s strategy. Thus the strategy called for elevating the Palestinian cause and the role of the PLO itself as champion of that cause. Tactically, the PLO used diplomacy as well as “armed struggle.” Between 1974 and 1988, for reasons we shall wrestle with later, many observers, including some in the American Jewish community, came to believe that in the process of pursuing its strategy, the PLO’s mission was transformed.

Joachim Prinz

Though his tenure as head of the Presidents Conference ended in December 1967, even a succinct sketch of Joachim Prinz’s life and ideas encapsulates a world view that long dominated organized Jewish life, disappeared briefly between 1967 and 1977, and was then resurrected with vitality.

Joachim Prinz was Chairman of the Presidents Conference from 1965 until shortly after the June 1967 War. Prinz was born in Burchartsdorf, Germany in 1902. He became a strong supporter of Zionism early in his career. Imprisoned several times by the Gestapo, he was eventually expelled from Germany in 1937. Prinz made his way to the United States where he took a Conservative pulpit in Newark, New Jersey. He became active in Essex County Jewish affairs, the World Jewish Congress, and the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. Prinz assumed the position of Chairman of the Presidents Conference in his capacity as president of the American Jewish Congress.15 He was a staunch civil rights advocate as well as a resolute civil libertarian.16

After 1948 Prinz quit the Zionist movement, “contending that the establishment of Israel made it obsolete.”17 In 1962 he wrote: “To be a Jew in the United States under the specific freedom which is spelled out in the American idea, and lived in accordance with the mores of the country is radically different from anything which the Jews ever experienced.”18 The Jews were not a nation, nor a race nor a faith. Rather, Prinz argued, they are a people. Israel’s place, in the Prinz world view, is captured in the following passage:
It is probably one of our unavoidable dilemmas that the symbol of our relationship with Israel is the check which represents our annual contribution. Israel accepts it because she could not exist without it. We give it because it seems to be an expression of our participation. Whether we wish so or not, it creates a relationship of benefactor and beneficiary, not the happiest of human relations. And not one to win friends. But we are not here concerned with a popularity contest. What is lacking on the part of leaders of Israel is the simple comprehension of the facts of Jewish life in America, of the very special nature and structure of American Jewry. . . . We need, indeed, a Jewish Declaration of Political Independence. . . . This does not mean that American Jews should not take an active interest in the affairs of Israel, political and otherwise. But they can do this effectively only if they themselves have no political ties with any country other than their own. . . .19


Joachim Prinz’s tenure as head of the Jewish community ended just as pro-Israelism came to prevail as a driving force in Jewish affairs. It was just as well. For Prinz, Israel’s purpose to American Jews was in the spiritual realm. Pro-Israelism smacked of nationalism and Jewish nationalism in the American context made no sense to Prinz. For the next ten years or so, subsequent incumbents in the Presidents Conference leadership defined their roles in ways Prinz would never have found comfortable. With some adaptation, the pendulum began to swing back in Prinz’s direction by 1977. Meanwhile, Prinz became an outspoken advocate of a U.S.-PLO dialogue and of Israeli withdrawal from the territories captured in the 1967 War.

Early Perceptual Milieu

The Six Day War unleashed a sense of identification and a feeling of unity among U.S. Jews with Israel that was remarkable in its scope, intensity of spirit and commitment. American television coverage of the war served as a catalyst to mobilize the Jewish community behind pro-Israelism.

Mindful of President Eisenhower’s pressure on Israel to withdraw from lands captured in the 1956 Sinai Campaign, the President’s Conference organized a pro-Israel rally in Lafayette Park opposite the White House on June 9, 1967. The theme of the demonstration was “victories won on the battlefield shall not be lost at the tables of diplomacy.” Fifty thousand Jews from across the nation participated.20

Some days later Abba Eban, the Israeli Foreign Minister, explicitly reiterated Israel’s primary demand: face-to-face negotiations with its Arab neighbors. Eban made the call at the United Nations on June 19, 1967: “History summons us forward to permanent peace and the peace that we envisage can only be elaborated in frank and lucid dialogue between Israel and each of the states which have participated in the attempt to overthrow her sovereignty and undermine her existence. . . . In free negotiations with each of our neighbors we shall offer durable and just solutions to our mutual advantage and honour.”21 This was a stance the organized U.S. Jewish leadership could confidently promulgate in the American political system. The task was made easier by Arab reaction to the war.

Arab leaders made clear that they were not prepared to enter into a direct dialogue with Israel. Instead, they called for a complete and unconditional Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 boundaries. President Nasser of Egypt asserted: “Israel wants direct negotiations and wants a peace treaty signed. We reject this. Israel thus won a military victory but has so far been unable to achieve the political objective – signing a peace treaty with any of the Arab States surrounding it.”22

Johnson Administration policy reassured the pro-Israel community that the Eisenhower approach would not be repeated. In an address before the Department of State’s Foreign Policy Conference for Educators in Washington on June 19, 1967, the President said: “There are some who have urged, as a single, simple solution, an immediate return to the situation as it was on June 4 . . . this is not a prescription for peace, but for renewed hostilities.”23 Five months after the war, the U.S. policy of “land for peace” became embodied in U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which was adopted November 22, 1967. Among other things the Resolution called for:
“Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;

Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for an acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;

Achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem.”24

A golden era in Israel – American Jewish relations prevailed. American and Israeli policies were largely in sync. This harmony combined with Arab bellicosity contributed to the Jewish perception of the conflict as state centered and zero-sum. Nasser not only refused to provide Israel with a diplomatic triumph to match its military one, but the warlike situation continued to simmer and Israel’s security troubles continued unabated. Terrorist attacks against civilian targets from the Egyptian and Jordanian borders commenced soon after the war ended.

Within months, Egypt initiated a prohibitively expensive War of Attrition on Israel’s southern front. President Nasser’s warlike rhetoric was given added resonance by the number of Israeli dead and wounded.25 From the end of the Six Day War until the end of the War of Attrition, 738 Israelis were killed, and 2,700 wounded.26 In this context, American Jews had little reason to abandon their perception that the nature of the conflict was anything but zero-sum.

First Jewish Settlements

Weeks after the conclusion of the Six Day War, the IDF’s Nahal branch established the first Jewish settlement (Yishuv) in the captured areas. A settlement was established on the strategic Golan Heights near Banyas.27 Three months later, another Yishuv was erected at the militarily essential Etzion Bloc (or Gush Etzion). The Gush Etzion villages, located east of the north-south Jerusalem-Hebron road near the Armistice lines, had been lost to the Arabs in the 1948 War. Subsequently, other settlements were also erected on the Sinai coast and in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem.28

Nascent disharmony over the settlement issue began to emerge, within the U.S. Jewish community, as early as October 1967. The dissension engaged groups at opposite ends of the pro-Israel periphery while the establishment center stood aloof. On one end of the Jewish political spectrum, a new group, Americans For Permanent Peace, sought to mobilize public opinion behind LBJ’s pro-Israel’s policies. They complained that “Arabists” at the State Department were not adequately supporting the President’s own position. This group was spearheaded by Meshulam Riklis, an expatriate Israeli millionaire. Among other things, Riklis sponsored two advertisements in The New York Times articulating what can be termed a “peace for peace” approach.29 This element of Jewish thinking, which perceived the Arab-Israel conflict as an unremitting zero-sum struggle, continued to grow at a modest pace. In making the case for Jewish settlement in the areas captured during the war, proponents were divided over whether to emphasize strategy, religion, culture, history, international law or a combination of these. Thus fragmented, their movement would fail to develop as a major broad-based force within the U.S. Jewish community and virtually none of the ideological organizations supporting settlement and peace-for-peace would ever take a leading role in the Presidents Conference. At the other end of the Jewish political spectrum were elements associated with the Israeli Left who wanted to use the period immediately after the war to pursue concessions supporting the concept of “land-for-peace.” Americans for a Progressive Israel called on the Jewish State to relinquish parts of the lands captured from the Arabs in exchange for free navigation through the Suez Canal.30 In hindsight, it is apparent that the sentiments they espoused were close to what would later become the American Jewish political center. Others in the Jewish community, still further to the left, wanted to use the new facts-on-the-ground to address the Palestinian-Arab problem. I.F. Stone, for example, called for the creation of “an Arab state on the West Bank” linked “with Israel, perhaps also Jordan.”31 However, to a pro-Israel community concerned about direct negotiations and continued violence, settlements and Palestinian aspirations remained marginal issues.

Political Suasion: U.S.

Soon after the Six Day War, American policy makers demonstrated a sense of strategic mindedness regarding a possible solution of the Arab-Israel conflict. This strategy was embodied by U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 of November 1967. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. made clear its interest in parlaying changes on the ground into a bargaining situation which would have Israel trade (most) of the captured lands for peace with the Arab states. By making strategic choices, such as publicly criticizing Israeli actions in the captured territories, the U.S. was forcing other players in the arena to make their own choices. It had already set the all important agenda for the peace process by identifying “land for peace” as the only avenue of conflict resolution. It was in this context that the State Department issued its first condemnation of Jewish settlement activity in January 1968. It criticized the building of housing units in the Mt. Scopus and Sheikh Jarrah areas of Jerusalem.32 Then, in July 1969, the U.S. joined in a U.N. Security Council vote on the status of Jerusalem making it clear that America did not recognize Jewish claims to Jerusalem.33

Herschel Schacter’s pro-Israelism

Rabbi Herschel Schacter succeeded Joachim Prinz as chairman of the Presidents Conference at the end of 1967.34 Unlike his predecessor, Schacter was comfortable with the new orientation of pro-Israelism sweeping the community. Schacter’s tenure as Chairman of the Presidents Conference came at a pivotal point in American Jewish relations with Israel. Arab terrorism – including airliner hijackings – was helping to spotlight the Palestinian cause. As the first Presidents Conference chairman to assume office after the 1967 War, Schacter helped set an energetic tone for handling disputes with the White House and State Department. He believed that the Arab-Israel struggle remained zero-sum in nature. Yet he recognized that Israel’s capture of Judea, Samaria, Gaza and the Golan changed the perception that the Jewish State was the aggrieved party to the dispute. Under Schacter’s leadership, the Presidents Conference took a strong stance against an imposed solution to the conflict as well as efforts to circumvent Israel’s insistence on direct talks with the Arab states. Among Schacter’s first public actions was to critique the State Department for its Mount Scopus condemnation. He warned that America’s pro-Israel line was in danger of eroding if the mutuality of American and Israeli interests was not publicly articulated.35

The job of chairman is essentially the same regardless of the incumbent. Schacter, like other Chairmen, expended much time seeking to build an internal strategic and tactical consensus. The Chairman is largely dependent on a small professional staff and in particular on the Executive Director (during Schacter’s tenure, Executive Vice Chairman Yehuda Hellman). The Executive Director wields formidable day-to-day power over the activities of the organization. Schacter attributes this simply to the fact that many of the Presidents Conference members are busy running their respective organizations or otherwise professionally engaged. With regard to external politics, he expresses awareness of subtle White House efforts to circumvent the Presidents Conference when it disapproves of the group’s policy direction.36

With increasing regularity, Schacter found it necessary to lobby the Administration in support of Israeli positions: supporting Israel’s continued insistence on direct talks with its Arab neighbors; defending Israel’s policy of retaliatory strikes following terrorist attacks; and calling on the U.S. to sell Israel advanced American military aircraft. He called on President Johnson to “make good America’s commitment to Israel by providing it with the necessary arms that would serve as a deterrent to war.”37 Eventually, the U.S. did agree to such a sale.

Perceptually, ten months after the War, Israel presented, and the Jewish leadership accepted, a zero-sum assessment of the struggle. Israel’s UN Ambassador Yosef Tekoah told the Presidents Conference that Arab hostility toward Israel remained unchanged.38

Politically, pro-Israel activity solidified the Presidents Conference in its role as the central address of American Jewry. While it took no position in the Presidential race between Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon, both candidates presented their positions on the Middle East conflict before the organization.

In the wake of negative U.S. reaction to Israel’s retaliatory attack against Beirut Airport, a Presidents Conference delegation met with outgoing Secretary of State Dean Rusk in early January 1969. From the viewpoint of political suasion, the U.S. stance can be understood as an instance of situational advantage-seeking. IDF retaliation in response to terror attacks delayed an Israeli political response, thus postponing addressing the fundamental problem. In a refrain that would be heard time and again, the American Secretary of State told the delegation of Jewish leaders that “basic” U.S. policy on Israel was unchanged.39 Insinuating change while denying it was taking place can be interpreted as a further manifestation of political manipulation. These assurances did not, at any rate, assuage the Jewish leadership. The Jewish leadership launched an educational and public relations campaign aimed against an imposed solution. In March 1969, the Presidents Conference brought a large contingent of Jewish groups to Washington for a forum on U.S.-Israel relations.40

The following month, Schacter met with Secretary of State William Rogers. Again the topic was a perceived drift in U.S. policy away from Israel, and again the Jewish leader received fresh assurances that there was no change in policy. Nevertheless, the Jewish leaders were aware of important trends within the American political system: A pro-Arab group now lobbied for the creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank41; while an American Jewish Committee report divulged that anti-Israel propaganda in the U.S. had become a significant factor in public opinion.42

In this context, with Israel fast becoming ever more dependent on U.S. economic and military aid,43 with the tide of public sentiment slowly shifting, tensions in the U.S.-Israel relationship would have grievous consequences for Israel’s ability to insist on direct negotiations to solve the conflict. Such direct talks would represent tacit Arab acknowledgement of Israel’s legitimacy. Schacter, keenly aware of the gravity of perceptual factors, returned to the theme of Israel’s image in a speech delivered at an international parley of Jewish leaders held in Geneva. The Presidents Conference, he declared, would conduct public relations activities on behalf of Israel in the United States.44 There is no evidence of any follow up to this pledge or that the Presidents Conference ever did more, in connection with public relations, than issue sporadic statements and press releases.

Back from Switzerland, Schacter and Hellman made plans to welcome Prime Minister Golda Meir to the United States. She visited Washington, New York and Los Angeles. Meir was immensely popular in the United States, especially among American Jews. Nevertheless, arrangements had to be made so that she was greeted everywhere by adoring (often large) crowds. It is worth recalling her view of the Palestinian-Arab issue which was largely shared by the U.S. Jewish leadership. Meeting with President Nixon, she addressed the Palestinian problem this way: “Between the Mediterranean and the borders of Iraq, in what was once Palestine, there are now two countries, one Jewish and one Arab, and there is no room for a third. The Palestinians must find the solution to their problem together with that Arab country, Jordan, because a ‘Palestinian state’ between us and Jordan can only become a base from which it will be even more convenient to attack and destroy Israel.”45 The Jewish leadership also largely embraced Israel’s overall negotiating strategy regarding the Administered Territories as outlined to the Knesset by Foreign Minister Abba Eban: “Three demands which Israel will not waive are a permanent presence at Sharm el-Sheikh [southeastern coast of Sinai], a unified Jerusalem despite concessions to Jordan over the Holy Places, and a Golan Heights for ever out of Syrian hands.”46

In the late 1960s cleavages within the Presidents Conference did not involve U.S.-Israel relations. There was a conflict of visions over politics and religion. In December 1969, Rabbi Wolf Kelman threatened to pull the (Conservative) Rabbinical Assembly out of the Presidents Conference because the chairman was not from the Conservative or Reform branches.47

The Rogers Plan

In a further instance of political suasion, where U.S. policy was intended to force Israel and the American Jewish community into making an accommodating response, the United States unveiled the “Rogers Plan.” On December 9, 1969, Secretary of State William Rogers, speaking in Washington, unveiled a forceful statement of U.S. policy embracing “land-for-peace” and a number of Palestinian-Arab demands: “We believe that while recognized political boundaries must be established and agreed upon by the parties, any changes in the pre-existing lines should not reflect the weight of conquest and should be confined to insubstantial alterations required for mutual security. We do not support expansionism.”

On the Palestinian issue, Rogers said: “There can be no lasting peace without a just settlement of the problem of those Palestinians whom the wars of 1948 and 1967 have made homeless. . . . The problem posed by the refugees will become increasingly serious if their future is not resolved. There is a new consciousness among the young Palestinians who have grown up since 1948 which needs to be channeled away from bitterness and frustration toward hope and justice.”48

U.S. plans to offer a binding solution to the Arab-Israel conflict were based on talks the U.S. had held with its European allies and with the Soviet Union. Nadav Safran explains:
During the month of October 1969 the American and Soviet negotiators hammered steadily at the outlines of an Egyptian-Israeli settlement. On October 28, 1969, the agreed results were summarized by the American side in a brief, which the United States government, for some unknown reason, submitted under its sole sponsorship to the governments of the Soviet Union, Britain and France as well as Israel, Egypt and Jordan. The brief envisaged essentially a binding peace agreement and an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 boundaries, except for the Gaza Strip, which was to be subject to discussion between Israel, Egypt and Jordan. The Palestinian refugees were to have the right to either repatriation on the basis of an agreed annual quota, or resettlement outside Israel with compensation. . . .”49


Given their perception of the Arab-Israel conflict the Jewish leadership’s reaction was predictable. The struggle still seemed moored in a zero-sum categorization; the image of the Palestinian-Arabs remained highly negative and associated with terror; the Rogers Plan materialized as precisely the imposed solution the American Jewish leadership had sworn to oppose. Consequently, the leadership viewed vehement opposition to the Rogers Plan as its only course of action. Within two weeks of Rogers’ address, Schacter arranged for a meeting between a Presidents Conference delegation and the Secretary. Afterwards, Schacter let it be known publicly that there had indeed been a “serious erosion” in State Department Mideast policy.50 In an “emergency” follow-up session held in late January 1970, the leadership again voiced concern over the prospect of an “imposed solution” which would force Israel out of the lands it had captured during the war without any direct contact between the principles. The Jewish leaders implored the Department of State not to make specific proposals and to rescind those already enunciated.51

First Clandestine U.S.-PLO Contacts

Imperfect information is a property of manipulation. While American Jewish perceptions about Palestinian-Arab intentions remained fixed, United States officials determined early on that they could do business with the PLO. Shortly after Henry Kissinger became the Director of the National Security Council (NSC), and unbeknownst to the Jewish leadership, he initiated a secret dialogue covering security issues with the PLO. Robert C. Ames was ostensibly a junior diplomat assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. In fact, he was a key CIA operative whose task was to serve as Kissinger’s conduit to Ali Hassan Salameh, the PLO security chief. Befittingly, Ames was personally sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. He began what turned out to be years of contact with the PLO. Kissinger and Nixon were mostly interested in working out security arrangements with the PLO in order to protect American diplomats from attacks by “radicals.” Later, the CIA would learn that Salameh was actually head of Arafat’s Black September unit responsible for airliner hijacking. According to Arafat biographers Janet and John Wallach:
Ames embodied American policy towards the PLO. He became the CIA’s national intelligence officer, its chief Middle East analyst and top undercover operator. He became George Shultz’s resident Palestinian expert and a close personal friend. Ames’ relationship with Khaled al-Hassan and with Hassan Salameh reaped dividends for the United States.52


“Salami Tactics”

Typically, political suasion takes place in an environment in which a frontal political assault is unavailing. In such an ambiance decision-makers can achieve their goals by taking gradual and incremental measures. The Rogers Plan directly threatened Israel’s American Jewish supporters with the prospect of an imposed solution. Their sense of gloom was only exacerbated by the continued casualties in the War of Attrition. Nixon decided to re-define the Rogers Plan. In late January, he sent Meir a message re-stating the U.S. commitment to the Jewish State. It was a partial tactical success hailed in Israel as halting the “erosion” in relations but leaving U.S. Jewish leaders restive.53 On July 24, 1970, Nixon sent another note to Meir providing important mitigating assurances on the Rogers Plan.54 According to Safran:
These included: (1) American recognition of the need to preserve the Jewishness of Israel – to allay Israeli fears about the refugee provisions in the Rogers Plan and recent statements on the subject by Nasser; (2) American acknowledgement that Israel’s borders would not be the same as those of June 4, 1967 – a more favorable rephrasing of Rogers’ “insubstantial modification” clause; (3) an assurance that the United States would not be a party to an imposed solution – allaying a long-standing Israeli fear and unequivocally rejecting a long-standing Egyptian demand; (4) support for a peace settlement based upon secure and recognized boundaries as the outcome of negotiations between the parties to the conflict; (5) agreement that Israeli troops would remain on the cease-fire lines until a contractual peace agreement was signed; (6) a pledge to maintain the military balance in the Middle East core and to continue the supply of arms to Israel; and (7) a promise of continuing large-scale American economic aid.55


Even a modified Rogers Plan implied Israel’s evacuation from the areas captured in the Six Day War; Menachem Begin’s Gahal faction (Herut dominated), which had been serving in the Cabinet since before the war, left the Meir Government.56 Begin accepted the cease-fire component of the plan but opposed a peace process predicated on an exchange of land for peace.

Acceptance of the Rogers Plan contributed, haltingly, to an end to the War of Attrition. Beginning in the fall of 1969, the Meir Government “was receiving conflicting signals” about the War of Attrition “from Richard Nixon’s Byzantine Administration . . . Rogers was pressing for a cease-fire . . . Kissinger . . . [for] escalation.”57 Following a spate of military and diplomatic brinkmanship involving the U.S., USSR, Egypt and Israel, the United States helped broker a cease-fire standstill agreement ending the War of Attrition on August 6, 1970. This was accomplished without direct talks between the parties. Nevertheless, Israel and her supporters in the U.S. were relieved the fighting had ended because from the Six Day War until the fall of 1970, 738 IDF soldiers had been killed, most on the Egyptian front.58


Perceptual Shift

Nasser’s acceptance of the Rogers Plan (and Jordanian assent) made untenable the claim that the Arab states sought only Israel’s destruction. It also became ever more difficult to play down the Palestinian-Arab component of the conflict. Palestinian terrorist attacks against civilian targets served to radiate media awareness to the Palestinian issue. People were asking who the Palestinians were and what they wanted. This negative attention to the PLO cause was an improvement, from its point of view, over no attention at all. The events of Black September are a case in point. The Hashemite regime found its sovereignty threatened by the PLO which had created a “state-within-a-state” inside Jordan. The PLO’s ability to capture international attention reached a turning point with a spate of airliner hijackings to Jordan. On September 15, 1970, with behind-the-scenes support from Israel and the United States (to obstruct a Syrian advance into Jordan), King Hussein preserved Hashemite sovereignty by eliminating the PLO as a military presence in Jordan. Far from resulting in political oblivion, the PLO’s military defeat further heightened interest in the Palestinian cause.59

Further undermining the zero-sum perceptual impression was the call made by Anwar Sadat, Nasser’s successor, in February 1971. Sadat declared that: “If Israel withdrew her forces in Sinai to the Passes, I would be willing to reopen the Suez Canal; to have my forces cross to the East Bank . . . to make a solemn official declaration of a cease-fire; to restore diplomatic relations with the United States; and to sign a peace agreement with Israel through the efforts of Dr. Jarring, the representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations.”60 Whether one ascribes Israel’s lack of positive response to internal Israeli politics or to doubts about Sadat’s veracity, the offer was an added manifestation of a changing political environment.

In this new perceptual milieu – four years after the Six Day War – the outline of American policy had begun to define itself: The U.S. would be supportive of Israel’s overall security concerns but not its diplomatic strategy for direct talks with the Arab states. Concurrently, the U.S. would not countenance the Jewish State’s permanent control over the territories captured as a result of the 1967 War. Sporadic violence in Judea and Samaria, as well as terrorist attacks abroad, reinforced the perception that the Palestinian component of the conflict had become a compelling factor. Now, resolving the Palestinian issue, while perhaps not the linch-pin of the peace process, had emerged as a collateral goal.

Buying Time

The U.S. Jewish leadership was, understandably, in no position to develop its own agenda for an Arab-Israel peace. Scanning the political landscape, they found an Israeli government which did not claim the captured territories (other than Jerusalem); and appeared willing to exchange some land for peace in return for direct talks which would connote Arab recognition of Israel.61 Domestically, the U.S. Jewish leadership was taxed politically by its Israel-related responsibilities and the emerging issue of Soviet Jewry. Specialized agencies and a division of labor did not absolve the Presidents Conference from addressing the full gamut of communal concerns.

During the first term of the Nixon Administration, Jewish leaders would routinely meet with various U.S. officials. These discussions invariably covered old ground, with American policy-makers arguing that geography should not be the determining factor in a possible settlement and Jewish leaders countering that an imposed solution would backfire and make the area even more violent.62 The consistent goal of the Jewish leadership was to forestall Nixon Administration pressure on Israel to make concessions in the absence of direct talks; to counter U.S. criticism of Israeli policies in the Administered Territories; and simultaneously, to lobby for the sale of U.S. military hardware to Israel. In some ways, American Jewish and Israeli roles had become reversed. By the end of 1971, when Meir again visited with Nixon, the Israeli leader found it necessary to reassure the Presidents Conference that, despite differences, Nixon and Rogers had received her with warmth and that the U.S. was not pressuring Israel diplomatically, economically or politically.63

Jewish support for Israeli policies was not based on an ideological conviction regarding the West Bank (or Sinai for that matter – Sadat’s offer was still being debated internally by the Israeli leadership), nor upon the expectation of a more propitious diplomatic opportunity over the horizon. Indeed, the American Jewish response to Sadat’s expulsion of Soviet advisers in July 1972 took its cue from the Israelis who were highly dubious about Egyptian intentions. Thus, in the absence of a proactive Israeli diplomatic strategy, the actions of the U.S. Jewish leaders were premised on little more than the need to buy time. Such efforts met with mixed results.

Meanwhile, the State Department advanced the position that any measures taken by the Jewish State to buttress a continued presence in the Territories, including Jerusalem, were inappropriate. William Wexler, who had taken over from Schacter as Chairman of the Presidents Conference in December 1969, urged the State Department not to oppose Israeli stewardship of Jerusalem and to halt its critical rhetoric.64 Wexler’s term was relatively uneventful insofar as the U.S.-PLO issue was concerned. Apprehensive about the military balance of power in view of Soviet support to the Arab states, the Presidents Conference forcefully urged the White House to permit the sale of Phantom jet aircraft to the Israel Air Force.65 When U.S. aid was promised or forthcoming, the leadership complained that it was being made contingent on Israeli concessions.66

In February 1972, Jacob Stein of Long Island, N.Y., replaced Wexler as Chairman of the Presidents Conference. Stein maintained close ties with the Republican Party and would later serve as White House liaison to the Jewish community in 1981. Initially, at least, Stein’s primary focus was not Israel. He met a number of times with Rogers on the plight of the Jews of the Soviet Union.67 He also warned about the dangers of the oil lobby to pro-Israel interests and sought to draw attention to the plight of Iraq’s persecuted Jewish community.68 In March 1973, Stein hosted a visit to the Presidents Conference by Meir, who discussed the status of U.S. aid, terrorism, Soviet Jewry and other issues. In April, he brought a delegation of Jewish leaders to the White House for a meeting with President Nixon on Soviet Jewry.69

Whispers of Discontent

Until after the 1973 Yom Kippur War voices within the Jewish community critical of Israeli policies were scarcely granted a communally sanctioned platform. “Respectable” criticism was muted and private. That it existed at all can be inferred from speculative remarks about critiquing Israeli policy. For example, Jewish Agency Chairman Louis Pincus told a meeting of the Presidents Conference held in Jerusalem that mutual criticism between Israel and the Diaspora should be encouraged, it being understood that final decisions should be left with Israel’s decision-makers.70 In any event, Israel’s new Ambassador to the United States, Simcha Dinitz, said in March of 1973 that he would keep lines of communication with American Jewry open through its “authoritative roof organization,” the Presidents Conference.71

Meanwhile, U.S.-PLO contacts between Robert Ames and Ali Hasan Salameh resumed during the summer of 1973. Only months earlier Black September had murdered Cleo Noel, the U.S. Ambassador to Sudan, and his deputy George Curtis. Ames was led to believe that Black September was not controlled by the PLO. “Salameh . . . told Ames that Arafat opposed Black September’s tactics and was willing to undertake a commitment in the future to protect the lives of American diplomats.”72

New Opportunities for Political Suasion

On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel in what came to be known as the Yom Kippur War. The outbreak of war presented U.S. policy-makers with opportunities to promote an exchange of land for peace. Nixon and Kissinger could not have agreed more with Karl Von Clausewitz who wrote: “War is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means.”73 The Administration now intended to capitalize on the war as a political instrument in order to accomplish goals stymied by its absence.

Conor Cruise O’Brien suggests the Administration did more than take advantage of the opportunities war presented. He poses the provocative query: “Did Henry Kissinger, during 1973, encourage Anwar Sadat to launch an attack on Israel?” Apparently, according to evidence collated by O’Brien, “Kissinger did just that.”74
If Kissinger did indeed suggest – indirectly and/or implicitly – to Sadat the need for a military initiative (“heating up”), this was sound advice in terms of realpolitik, from a statesman in Kissinger’s position, to one in Sadat’s position. Kissinger had strongly urged the Israelis – through Ambassador Rabin – to respond favorably to Sadat’s initiative of February 1971. Israel’s response had been negative from the beginning and became – by 1973 – triumphalist and defiant. Nor was the Nixon Administration, at any time from 1971 to 1973, in a position to shift Israel’s position by the usual kinds of pressure.75


Even if O’Brien’s analysis is correct, there was, of course, no way for American Jews to know it at the time. When the war broke out the Presidents Conference held an emergency meeting attended by 300 Jewish leaders on October 8, mostly to help the United Jewish Appeal gear up for a massive crisis fund-raising drive. Privately, several of the leaders may have known from Ambassador Dinitz that the emergency airlift of military supplies to Israel was being delayed by Kissinger or Defense Secretary Schlesinger or both. Within the week, the group reconvened in Washington to demonstrate solidarity with Israel and to urge the Nixon Administration to deliver “military, political and moral support” to the Jewish State.76 Meanwhile, in the midst of the Yom Kippur War, the PLO leadership contacted the U.S. and offered to join the peace process if the Administration would stop supplying weapons to Israel.77

Militarily, Israel had “won” the war and captured additional territory from the attacking states. But in actuality, Israel had been trounced. Beyond the ghastly loss of life, the war paved the way for a diplomatic and public relations debacle. The repercussions of the Arab oil embargo sent shock waves of insecurity through the American Jewish polity. In the war’s aftermath, the tradition of American Jewish support for Israeli policies became slowly unraveled. Simultaneously and not coincidentally, the Administration went to great lengths to placate the Jewish leadership about its goals and intentions. One repercussion of the war was intense U.S. pressure, orchestrated by Kissinger, on Israel to make territorial concessions. Immediately after the war, Meir traveled to Washington in an effort to prevail upon Nixon to attenuate U.S. demands. She then traveled to New York for meetings with Jewish leaders at the Conference of Presidents. Afterwards, they launched a major political effort to get the Administration to appropriate $2.2 billion in emergency aid to Israel, block Soviet pressure on the Jewish State and assist in bringing about the release of Israeli PoWs.78 At the same time, they grappled with how to address the negative effect the Arab oil embargo was having on Israel’s standing in public opinion.79

According to Safran, the war dramatically changed the American perspective on the Arab-Israel conflict: “The United States sought to trade off the Israeli assets for the establishment and reinforcement of American influence in Egypt in order to advance peace, avert war, and remove the Arab oil embargo.”80 On November 11, 1973, forceful U.S. diplomatic pressure on Israel led to its acceptance of an initial Six Point Agreement with Egypt signed at Kilometer 101.

Toward the end of November, Stein, accompanied by Yehuda Hellman, led a Presidents Conference delegation to Tel Aviv. They told Israeli leaders of new assurances they had received from the Nixon Administration that the United States would not pressure Israel.81 Nixon’s promise is understandable given his attitude about Jews and his Watergate travails. The President, according to Kissinger, believed that “Jews formed a powerful cohesive group in American society . . . that they put the interests of Israel above everything else . . . that their control of the media made them dangerous adversaries.”82 Matters were further complicated because of Kissinger’s own Jewish heritage. He believed his ethnic background to be a handicap. “I was born Jewish, but the truth is that has no significance for me.”83 However, this attitude did not stop Kissinger from exploiting his Jewishness when it suited him.

International Conference and PLO Participation

Kissinger made plans to convene an international peace conference in Geneva. According to Safran:
One remaining obstacle in the way to the conference was the problem of Palestinian participation. Kissinger had tentatively worked out with Sadat a proposal wherein the invitation to the conference would say that the question of Palestinian participation will be taken up at the first stage of the conference. The Israeli government strongly opposed any specific reference to the Palestinians and wanted it stated that invitations to any other countries or groups could be sent only with the agreement of all the primary participants – in other words, it wanted a veto-power over any invitation to the Palestine Liberation Organization. Kissinger realized that the issue was fundamental to Israel and therefore made a special effort to accommodate it. . . . The United States gave Israel a written private assurance that it would oppose, to the point of veto, any invitation to the PLO without Israel’s consent.84


An international Conference was convened, briefly, in December 1973 attended by Israel, Egypt, Jordan, the United States and the Soviet Union. Syria had refused to participate. Nevertheless, further momentum was achieved on both the Egyptian and Syrian fronts as a consequence of Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy. On January 18, 1974, at Kilometer 101, Israel and Egypt signed the first disengagement agreement. An Israeli-Syrian agreement regarding the Golan was signed on May 31, 1974. Jewish leaders who had been meeting with Kissinger periodically hailed these latest achievements.85

Walters Meets Salameh in Rabat

Kissinger was also operating on a second track. On November 3, 1973, General Vernon Walters, the deputy director of the CIA, had been dispatched by Kissinger to meet secretly with Ali Hassan Salameh. According to Kissinger, the meeting assured “PLO quiescence” while the Secretary was trying to bring about the Arab-Israel disengagement agreements.86 In his book Silent Missions, Walters says that as a result of this meeting: “Attacks on Americans, at least by Arafat’s faction of the PLO, ceased. . . . I saw them alone and unarmed in a part of the world sympathetic to their cause. My position made me a major target. I had studied their past, their hopes, their dreams, even their poetry. I was able to convey to them the message that I had been ordered to deliver. We were able to communicate and there were no further acts of blood between us.”87

Walters also met with Khaled al-Hassan, a leading PLO ideologist, on March 7, 1974 in Rabat. This meeting went beyond strictly security issues. According to Janet and John Wallach, al-Hassan had “resigned from the PLO Executive Committee and was publicly supporting a two-state solution and coexistence with Israel.”88 The purpose of this meeting was to discover PLO intentions on a variety of issues. The PLO’s political offensive was closely tied to Arafat’s perception of what the Americans wanted with regard to moderation. “We thought we heard an instruction from the United States in 1973,” Hassan told the Wallachs.” We followed through at Rabat on what the United States said it wanted and we didn’t get anything for it.”89

Miller Presidents Conference Chair

In February 1974, Baltimore born Rabbi Israel Miller, head of the New York based Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America, was elected Chairman of the Presidents Conference, replacing Stein. Miller’s extensive resume of communal credentials included the presidency of the American Zionist Foundation and a prestigious administrative position at Yeshiva University. He was nominated to the post by Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg.90

Situational Advantage Seeking

The American reaction to Arab terrorist attacks against Israel can be viewed from the vantage point of political suasion analysis. On April 11, 1974, a George Habash-led Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine squad attacked an apartment house in the northern Israeli settlement of Kiryat Shemona. The resulting bloodbath left eighteen persons including eight children dead. Afterwards, the United States supported a UN resolution condemning Israel for launching a retaliatory mission against PLO targets in Lebanon. In fact, the American reaction was characteristic of a strategically minded actor. The U.S. routinely took advantage of the aftermath of an Arab terror attack (and an Israeli retaliation) to point out that the fundamental problem of the Palestinians could not be dealt with militarily. In this particular case, Kissinger explains the American UN vote as both regrettable and expedient:
The built-in hesitations and complexes of the parties were sufficient problems in themselves. But circumstances continually threatened the fragile imagery of progress. . . . I was about to launch the Syrian shuttle. . . . The right course here was to condemn either both sides or neither. ... Eager to accumulate capital in the Arab world for the imminent shuttle, we voted for this resolution.91


Miller expressed “shock” that the U.S. favored a resolution which criticized Israel but made no mention of the original terror attack. The Jewish leaders took advantage of their previously scheduled meeting with Kissinger to convey their chagrin at the UN vote.92 Privately, Kissinger had no patience with their protestations. “Israel was outraged with good reason. Yet its votaries overdid their protests. They had witnessed an unwise tactical move, not, as they clamored, a shift in our policy – but a move that heightened the sense of beleaguerment and insecurity in Israel.”93 Kissinger forcefully argues that the repercussions were inadvertent. Still, political suasion thrives in a crisis atmosphere.

One month later, in the midst of U.S. efforts to achieve a Syrian-Israeli disengagement deal on the Golan Heights, a second terror attack took place against another northern Israeli town, Ma’alot. This raid, against a school, was conducted by another PLO faction, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine led by Nayef Hawatmeh. Sixteen children were killed and 68 wounded when the IDF stormed the building at the precise time the terrorists had set as a deadline. For the Israelis, these and other PLO actions reinforced the idea that the Palestinian-Arab problem was fundamentally a security – not a diplomatic – issue. Strangely, in March 1974, Hawatmeh told an American reporter that he wanted to establish a dialogue with Israel.94 Kissinger sensed that the Israeli polity was gripped by an aura emphasizing the zero-sum nature of the conflict. Consequently, he temporarily abated U.S. pressure for further concessions: “Israel’s premonition of living in a hostile and friendless world determined on the nation’s destruction was fulfilling itself.”95

In response to Ma’alot, Miller called for concerted international action against terrorism. He also held meetings with various officials including UN Ambassador John Scali.96 But attention quickly shifted back to the Syrian-Israel front. The Presidents Conference, mirroring Israeli apprehensions about Syrian military intentions on the Golan, sought to play an ancillary role by expressing their misgivings both publicly and privately.97 The importance of maintaining the support of the U.S. Jewish leadership made it expedient for Kissinger to again meet with Miller before leaving for an extended diplomatic mission in the Middle East.98

Beginning April 28, 1974, Kissinger spent 34 days traveling in the Mideast in an effort to bring about a Syria-Israeli deal. On May 31, 1974, Kissinger was able to announce an agreement which required Israel to cede parts of the Golan it had only recently captured during the Yom Kippur War. The painful dilemma of Israeli PoWs held by Syria was also solved by the deal.

American Jewish leaders acclaimed the accord. On June 5, Miller led a delegation to the White House so that the Jewish leaders could personally thank President Nixon for the country’s efforts. Nixon had gone out of his way to invite contacts between the Presidents Conference and the White House. The President personally met with Miller in 1973 and 1974. Miller’s access to Kissinger had been virtually open-ended. Perhaps as a result of these contacts, Miller became a champion, within the Jewish community, of Kissinger’s work and would later describe the Secretary of State as “one of the greatest intellects I’ve ever had the pleasure to know.”99 Kissinger deftly played on his Jewishness, telling Miller that getting the list of Israeli PoWs in Syrian hands was “one of the most moving events in my life.”100 For many in the top echelon of Jewish communal life, the opportunity to develop personal relationships with high-level U.S. officials is part of the “power game.” Years later, Secretary of State George Shultz would follow the Kissinger model by maintaining an open-door policy toward the Jewish leadership. Miller gave equally high marks to Shultz, terming him a “righteous Gentile” forced by circumstances to open the U.S.-PLO dialogue.101

During the Nixon presidency, a pattern of political suasion, which would take on a concerted quality in the Carter years, began to take shape. The Nixon-Kissinger targets of suasion included the U.S. Jewish leadership, American Jewish public opinion and Israeli decision-makers who were in close contact with the U.S. Jewish leadership. A sense of American strategic-mindedness had emerged (i.e., manipulator has strategy): The United States sought to parlay changes on the ground into a bargaining situation in which Israel would trade (most) of the conquered lands for peace (the nature of which would be defined at a later date). In this context, the Administration followed a pattern commonly identified with political suasion: situational advantage seeking; manipulating dimensions (expanding the political loop, for instance, using the Presidents Conference to reinforce messages meant for Israeli leaders); agenda setting; exploiting imperfect information (secret talks with PLO); using insinuation (gradually shift U.S. policy toward a Palestinian focus); utilizing time constraints (the crisis atmosphere associated with shuttle diplomacy); and engaging in “salami tactics” especially with regard to the Rogers Plan. The Ford Administration, in which Kissinger continued to play the central Arab-Israel conflict foreign policy role, pursued much the same course.102

The Kissinger-arranged Syria-Israel Disengagement deal forever changed the Arab-Israel conflict perceptually. The idea that the conflict was permanently locked into a zero-sum mode was now crippled. Israel could no longer claim U.S. Jewish acquiescence to its policies on grounds that the Jewish State was in a life-or-death struggle. One highly consequential aspect of the accord was, for instance, Assad’s vow that PLO terrorism from the Syrian border would be “policed.”103 Kissinger was hardly oblivious to the perceptual factor even though he downplayed the “psychological” aspects: “The significance of the Golan disengagement was not all or even primarily psychological. On the political plane, it marked a major breakthrough. If radical Syria could sign an agreement with Israel, there were no ideological obstacles to peace talks with any other Arab state.”104

PNC Moderation

Angered that the Rabin Government was not prepared to relinquish the West Bank to Jordan, Kissinger instructed Joseph Sisco to hint that Arafat had abandoned terrorism and might want to attend a Geneva peace conference. “What Jerusalem was upset about,” writes Matti Golan, “was that a high U.S. official had contemplated the possibility of negotiations between Israel and the PLO. Kissinger was in effect signaling Rabin that the Palestinian option existed for the United States if the prime minister continued to be stubborn about Jordan.”105

The fruits of moderation, which had paid off for both Syria and Egypt, now began to entice moderates in the PLO leadership. In July 1974, the Palestine National Council (PNC) met in Cairo to signal a measured permutation of policy. According to Safran, the PLO “decided, among other things, to establish Palestinian ‘national authority’ in any piece of ‘liberated’ territory, thus enabling the organization to play a role in a possible disengagement in the West Bank.”106 The PNC would now accept “the establishment of the people’s national independent and fighting authority on any part of Palestinian land to be liberated.”107 As we shall see, this set the stage for the Arab states to designate the PLO as the official representative of the Palestinian Arabs. Conor Cruise O’Brien raises two fundamental questions that, henceforth, were to consume policymakers. The first issue involves the fundamental nature of the conflict: “Would the Palestinian State be based on compromise with Israel, or would it be a springboard for the overthrow of Israel?” The second query is of special interest to this study: “Is the cession of territory to the PLO for a Palestinian State something which Israel is expected to accept voluntarily; or will it have to be imposed on Israel; and if so, how?”108 I argue that political suasion made the choice less stark by allowing decision-makers the possibility of “imposing” a solution in an amiable manner.

“Gloves Off”: Ford Years

The Presidency of Gerald Ford represents a turning point in American-Israel relations. Excluding Dwight Eisenhower, the American Jewish leadership had not encountered a president so unsympathetic to Israel. Since 1967 the United States adhered to a consistent policy for addressing the Arab-Israel conflict. Ford dispensed the policy with a blunt tool and relations between the two countries became decidedly strained. He startled Israel and the U.S. Jewish leadership by raising the issue of a “disengagement” scheme for Judea and Samaria at a White House session with Jordan’s King Hussein. None of the requisite political ground had been laid and the Presidents Conference negative reaction came as little surprise.

The Administration did not discount the need for domestic Jewish support for its policies or as leverage with the Israelis. It merely sought to obtain that support by circumventing the Presidents Conference. Ford reached out to long-time supporter and Republican campaign contributor Max Fisher. They met shortly before Fisher was due to travel to Israel on Jewish Agency business.109 In Jerusalem, “Fisher trumpeted the backing of the Administration, telling reporters that Israel had ‘no reason to fear a cooling of President Ford’s longtime support.’”110

Press leaks, however, now insinuated that secret U.S.-PLO talks were already underway. The State Department used innuendo in responding to the report, saying it would not “rule out” or “rule in” future possible U.S.-PLO talks.111 While the agenda of the Presidents Conference continued to be strongly dominated by the Soviet Jewry issue, U.S. policy toward the PLO was raised at an October meeting between the group and Kissinger.112

Rabat – Political Turning Point for PLO

The formal emergence of the PLO onto the international political stage can plausibly be traced to October 1974 when an Arab summit meeting in Rabat, Morocco affirmed “the right of the Palestinian people to set up an independent national authority under the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization, in its capacity as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, on any liberated Palestinian land.”113 The PLO thus had an internationally stipulated role on the West Bank. According to Safran: “The summit decided unanimously to divest Hussein of any role and to invest it all in the PLO, which was recognized as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. This decision paved the way for the recognition of the PLO by the United Nations and the formal appearance of its leader before the General Assembly not long after, and killed any Jordanian option for any foreseeable time.”114

In mid-October of 1974, the United Nations General Assembly voted 105-4 to invite the group to participate in its debate on the Arab-Israel conflict. The immediate reverberation among the Jewish leadership was “shock and anger.”115 The Presidents Conference made plans to greet the UN debate on the “Palestine question” with a mass demonstration outside the world body.116 In view of American Jewish perceptions of PLO intentions, the community reacted to Arafat’s ascendance on the ladder of international political legitimacy with “uniform gloom.”117 To no avail, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith obtained a show cause court order aimed at blocking the PLO leader from entering the country to address the UN.118 As scheduled, to protest Yasir Arafat’s forthcoming entry into the United States 200,000 people demonstrated at Dag Hammarshald Plaza near the UN on November 5, 1974. All segments of the affiliated Jewish community, including Agudath Israel (strictly orthodox non-Zionist movement), took part.119 Never had the Jewish polity been so united, and isolated, in their perceptions.

American Jewish efforts notwithstanding, Arafat was warmly welcomed to the UN on November 13, 1974. His speech summarized the Arab-Israel conflict as a struggle between the Palestinian people and the European Zionists. Arafat implicitly suggested, as a solution to the conflict, the dismantling of the Jewish State: “I proclaim before you that when we speak of our common hopes for the Palestine of tomorrow we include in our perspective all Jews now living in Palestine who choose to live with us there in peace and without discrimination. . . . We offer them the most generous solution, that we might live together in a framework of just peace in our democratic Palestine.”120

Ostensibly the U.S. stance toward the PLO and the PLO cause remained constant.121 But harbingers of change could be gleaned from the U.S. decision to grant twenty PLO representatives entry visas and from UN Ambassador John Scali’s decision to meet with Dr. M.T. Mehdi, who was a naturalized American Arab activist sympathetic to the PLO.122 Then, in December 1974, Vice President-designate Nelson Rockefeller expressed affinity for the PLO position, observing that Israel “took the land” of the Palestinian Arabs.123 Earlier, speaking before the House Judiciary Committee, Rockefeller indicated that he did not know whether he would recognize the PLO in the event he assumed the Presidency.124 Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, president of the American Jewish Congress, took Rockefeller to task:
Your failure to condemn the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization for the murder of innocent civilians and for its avowed goal of annihilating the State of Israel represents an astonishing omission which is irreconcilable with your long and distinguished participation in international concerns. . . . 70 percent of the territory that became the State of Israel in 1948 was state land belonging to the (British) mandatory government and, previously, to Turkey – land that passed to Israel from Britain, just as Britain inherited it from Turkey. . . . Of the remainder, 8.6 percent was owned by Jews, 3.3 percent by Israeli Arabs and 16.9 percent by Arabs who quit the new state and abandoned their property. . . . More than half the Jewish land purchases over the years involved large tracts belonging to absentee landlords. . . .125


Rockefeller soon tempered his public stance in response to Jewish criticism. Moreover, in a scene that would be repeated at regular intervals, Israeli and American Jewish leaders reassured each other that all was well. Foreign Minister Yigal Allon, briefing the Presidents Conference at the conclusion of his mid-December talks with U.S. officials, said relations with Washington were “satisfactory.”

Since his return from Israel, Fisher had been striving to set up a meeting between Ford and the Jewish leadership. The first White House meeting between the Jewish leadership and Ford was finally held on December 20th. “The Israelis can count on our economic and military aid. Israel is vitally important to overall American policy in the Middle East,” Ford reassured. He said the U.S. opposed a Geneva peace conference because the PLO would have to attend. “The crux of Ford’s program was precisely what American Jewish leadership wanted to hear: the President would be a champion of Israel.”126

Next came the turn of the U.S. Jewish leadership to reassure the Israelis. At the end of the month, Miller took a Presidents Conference delegation to Jerusalem for meetings with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He offered assurances that America would honor its commitments to Israel.127 Miller pointed to continued American aid to Israel in rejecting the notion that U.S. support had eroded. But the leadership was not oblivious to the writing on the wall. They were dubious about step-by-step diplomacy which they saw as “salami tactics.”128 Several weeks later, Miller openly admitted the Jewish community was indeed “uneasy” about Ford Administration plans to sell F5Es military aircraft to Saudi Arabia.129 He continued to painstakingly calibrate Jewish criticism of the Ford Administration, noting that “certainly there is a pressure there but there is a pressure on the Arabs too.”130

By the start of 1975, the idea that Israel was engaged in a life-or-death struggle was not credible outside the Jewish community. The PLO had enhanced its image and political position worldwide. The new Administration willfully balanced support for Israel with criticism and arms sales to pro-U.S. Arab states. Arab inroads in U.S. public opinion drew the attention of the Jewish leadership. The issue of Israel’s image in U.S. public opinion became a staple for speeches given by Jewish and Israeli officials.131 Self-critical Jewish media reports observed that Zionist propaganda was inadequately responding to Arab propaganda.132 The American Jewish Committee and Anti-Defamation League announced that they would join forces in combating “growing Arab propaganda.” Forgetting Lincoln’s credo: “We must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we cannot,” the Presidents Conference announced that it would “coordinate” efforts to counter Arab propaganda, especially the work of the PLO’s New York office.133

The Jewish leaders did not deliver a public relations offensive. It is by no means certain that such a campaign would have had its intended effect. Indeed, it is not clear what goal the leaders had in raising the specter of a public relations onslaught. Arguably, however, a concerted effort aimed at American Jews would have bolstered support inside a community which had been buffeted by negative media messages. But what would such a campaign advocate? There was no ideological unanimity about Jewish rights, only about Arab wrongs. That the Jewish leaders so much as raised the specter of public relations conveys their disquietude. But by the mid-1970s, the political and media environment had recognized the Palestinian cause as the crux of the conflict and Arab intentions toward Israel as non-malevolent.134 It was only a matter of time before the Jewish leadership embraced these very ideas. At the time, the Jewish leaders were united in their antipathy toward the PLO. In an effort to limit the PLO’s role at the UN, the President’s Conference sought the intercession of UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim. Miller said he wanted a “narrow interpretation of what ‘observer’ means.”135

The extent to which the image of the PLO image had gone through a metamorphosis can be gauged by the number of distinguished mainstream politicians willing to embrace its cause. Former 1972 Democratic Presidential candidate George McGovern, for example, became the first major American political personality to publicly endorse the PLO. McGovern met with Arafat in Beirut and called for the establishment of a Palestinian homeland.136 Later, McGovern protested that his views had been incorrectly portrayed and that he favored a Palestinian homeland alongside a Jewish state.137

Ford’s “Reassessment”

When Kissinger’s step-by-step efforts to broker an Egyptian-Israel deal faltered in March 1975, the Administration blamed Israel for the failure. Egypt had rejected an Israeli stipulation that in exchange for the Abu Rodeis oil fields and the Mitla and Gidi passes, Sadat explicitly pledge non-belligerency. As a result, personal relations between Kissinger and Rabin corroded. The Jewish leadership took Ford’s private threat to “reassess” U.S.-Israel relations seriously. A shaken Ambassador Dinitz met with the Presidents Conference almost immediately upon his return from Israel where he had participated in the Kissinger negotiations.138 Ford publicly declared a “Total reassessment” of United States policy in the Middle East at the beginning of April 1975. American ambassadors from Israel, Egypt, Syria and Jordan were all summoned for talks at the State Department. Kissinger also convened “the foreign policy establishment’s wise men – including John McCloy, Averell Harriman, George Ball, Dean Rusk, McGeorge Bundy, and David Rockefeller – (who) not unexpectedly” favored a revived Genera Conference and Israeli withdrawal to the 1948 borders.139 Ostensibly, however, reassessment was not aimed exclusively against Israel. In point of fact, Israel bore the brunt of the policy’s negative publicity. The Presidents Conference expressed solidarity with Israel’s position and sought to mobilize support on Israel’s behalf, arguing that it was Egypt which was responsible for the breakdown.140 Prior to the breakdown of the Kissinger mission, public support had been with Israel by a margin of 52 percent to 7 percent.141 Meanwhile, Ford, Kissinger and Undersecretary of State Joseph Sisco met with Max Fisher at the White House on March 27, 1975. Ford said: “Max, it is the most distressing thing that has happened to me since I became president. Rabin and Allon misled us into thinking they would make a deal. I never would’ve sent [Kissinger] if I didn’t think we had an agreement. The Israelis took advantage of us.”142 Ford wanted “Max to get us the background information on what the unofficial thinking of the Israeli government was.”143

Ford began speaking publicly about the need for “even-handedness” in U.S. Middle East policy. He could not meet with Rabin unless he also met with Arab leaders, Ford explained. The Presidents Conference interpreted the presumed “evenhandedness” as an invitation to the Arabs to harden their position.144 In any event, Ford again warmly received King Hussein at the White House in April.145

The reassessment was now drawing to a close. Relations with Kissinger being at a low point, a large delegation from the Presidents Conference held an informal and reportedly friendly meeting at the State Department with Joseph Sisco and Alfred Atherton. The Jewish leaders requested the session to express concern over the public and private pressure to which Jerusalem was being subjected.146 Meanwhile, seventy-six U.S. senators had signed a letter critical of Ford’s reassessment, with behind-the-scenes encouragement from AIPAC.147 Another factor was an April 9 meeting between Fisher and the President in which the Jewish leader reported on his talks with Israeli officials. Fisher assured Ford that Rabin had not meant to mislead Kissinger. Fisher also delivered the message that Rabin could not negotiate while the “reassessment” was underway. By mid-May the reassessment policy had come to a close.148

Image Problem

Some Jewish leaders believed that their fundamental political problem was not substantive but perceptual. To that end, they monitored Arab propaganda in the United States and found that the other side had made few inroads on campus. But Aharon Yariv, the Israeli Minister for Information (a portfolio seldom maintained), was less sanguine. He asserted that Israel was losing the public opinion battle in the United States.149 In May, the Presidents Conference held a leadership meeting in New York at the Delmonico Hotel to mobilize further support for Israel.150 The gravity with which the Presidents Conference viewed the image issue was heightened by news that Gulf Oil Corporation had been funding a pro-Arab public information campaign in the United States.151

It was in this political environment that Saudi Arabia launched a peace offensive in the American media. In an interview with the Washington Post, Saudi King Faud conceded that Israel had a right to exist within its pre-1967 borders in return for the establishment of a PLO-led state. The Israelis dismissed the interview, which they pointed out was not publicized within Saudi Arabia, as a tactic to gain Israeli withdrawal from the Territories.152 Clearly, however, this was another nail in the coffin of the zero-sum idea.

In addition to vague manifestations of conciliation from Saudi Arabia, the Jewish leadership was challenged by a political and perceptual climate which did not augur well for Israel’s image. The ever increasing pressure from the Administration on Israel to accept American terms for the next phase of Egyptian-Israel disengagement was having negative consequences on how the public perceived the Jewish State. The PLO cause was, meantime, making public relations strides in the international arena (at the International Year of the Women conference in Mexico). A proposed $350 million arms sale to Jordan created further tensions in the U.S.-Israel relationship. The interminable Soviet Jewry quandary coupled with lesser issues seemed to forever cast the Jewish community in an unfavorable, adversarial, and ungracious light. In this setting, President Ford’s cordial greeting to a PLO official at a diplomatic reception in Bucharest (which all sides sought to downplay) left Jewish leaders uneasy.153

The Jewish community seemed hunkered-down. Some blamed all the troubles on Kissinger.154 In this environment, Rabbi Alexander Schindler urged American Jews not to “scapegoat” Ford or Kissinger for the difficulties in U.S.-Israel relations.155 Albert Chernin, of NJCRAC, also cautioned Jews not to be overwhelmed with worry over the state of U.S.-Israel relations.156 But the Administration did not make it easy to follow such advice. It told Israel to accept the second interim disengagement plan or else the U.S. would propose its own plan at Geneva. In retort, the Presidents Conference lambasted “a tendency in some circles to accept Arab statements of peaceful intent toward Israel at face value without requiring tangible demonstrations of peaceful coexistence. “While Israel is being asked to take chances for peace by giving up strategic territories, the Arab states’ major contribution is a willingness to accept the return of territories.”157

Milestone Event: Second Israel-Egyptian Sinai Agreement
and Memorandum of Agreement on U.S.-PLO Dialogue

On September 4, 1975 the Second Israeli-Egyptian Sinai Agreement was signed. The deal called for a further Israeli pullback in the Sinai, a 3-year non-belligerency pledge and the presence of U.S. technicians in a buffer zone. The accord gave additional credence to the perception that the nature of the struggle was shifting to an entirely new plane. In fact, no direct talks between Israel and an Arab state had taken place. Moreover, the Egyptians refused to sign the agreement in the presence of the Israeli delegation.

In the face of misgivings within the Jewish community and among the Israeli opposition, the White House sought and received American Jewish support for the accord. Fisher and American Jewish Committee President Elmer Winter ushered a delegation of Jewish leaders to the White House to hear the President suggest that they lobby the Congress in support of Sinai II (which required the stationing of several hundred American observers).158

It was clear from the outset that Sinai II was less than the non-belligerency agreement Israel wanted. But it included important provisions about the PLO. Safran points out: “The most important American contribution, however, took the form of a whole array of assurances, undertakings, and commitments given to Israel to induce it to make the concessions that made the agreement possible.” One memorandum “specifically committed the United States to continue to adhere to a policy of not recognizing or negotiating with the PLO so long as that organization did not recognize Israel’s right to exist and did not accept Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. . . .”159 The annexes were leaked to the New York Times in mid-September. The Second Clause says:
The United States will continue to adhere to its present policy with respect to the Palestine Liberation Organization, whereby it will not recognize or negotiate with the PLO so long as the PLO does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and does not accept Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. The United States Government will consult fully and seek to concert its position and strategy at the Geneva Peace Conference on this issue with the Government of Israel. . . . It is understood that the participation at a subsequent phase of the Conference of any additional state, group or organization will not require the agreement of all the initial participants.160

Years later, Kissinger would deny that this agreement was intended to be binding on subsequent presidents. ‘I’m tired of having my position misrepresented. I never gave the Israelis veto power over our dialogue with the PLO. All I said was that we wouldn’t officially recognize them nor negotiate with them. I didn’t say we couldn’t have any contact with them.”161

Divisions Surface Among Leadership

Following on the heels of Ford’s reassessment policy, the Sinai II accords contributed to bitterness among some in the communal leadership. Much like the proverbial old couple fighting over who would take the garbage out when what was really bothering them was much more fundamental, some in the leadership now questioned whether the Presidents Conference had been sufficiently vigorous in its representations to the Ford Administration. Joseph P. Sternstein, head of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), charged that the Conference of Presidents was no longer effectively representing the interests of American Jewry. He complained that the Presidents Conference (of which ZOA is a member) had failed to rally American Jewry against the “one-sided and discriminatory” Sinai II agreement with Egypt.162

Parenthetically, a ZOA press release implied that Sternstein’s criticism of the Presidents Conference had the support of Philip Klutznik. The statement quoted Klutznik, one of the first Chairmen of the Presidents Conference, as calling for “an independent American Jewish voice not constrained by the Israeli government.” Later, ZOA issued a correction, saying that Klutznik had been misquoted.163 Rejecting Sternstein’s charges, Miller countered: “I believe that responsibility for the crucial decisions on territories, borders, and relations with surrounding Arab states rightfully belongs to the democratically elected representatives of the citizens of Israel.”164

Meanwhile, Rabbi Meir Kahane, of the Jewish Defense league, launched Democracy in Jewish Life, a crusade against the organized leadership with a public relations offensive intended to debilitate the Presidents Conference.165 More than anything else, Kahane despised the Jewish establishment for its liberal credo. He instructed his young disciples: “The Holocaust was the unbelievably horrifying climax to century after century of persecution. . . . If in the twentieth century a nation of culture and science could do this – there was no more hope for the Jew in relying upon liberalism. . . .”166

The PLO achieved another enormous diplomatic triumph which greatly enhanced the legitimacy of its cause, as a result of the UN’s Third Committee vote to equate “Zionism with racism.” Once more, the Jewish community came under criticism. Israeli Ambassador to the UN Chaim Herzog reproached American Jewish leaders – though he singled out Miller as an exception – for not exerting sufficient influence against the resolution. Miller noted, however, that “the Conference of Presidents and its constituents were actively engaged – and remain so – in public statements and private representations giving voice to the Jewish community’s indignation at the immoral assault on Zionism and to our recognition of the dangers it poses. . . .”167 Indeed, the Presidents Conference organized a “Kristallnacht” mass rally 100,000-strong, to protest the UN action.168 Though the U.S. staunchly opposed the “Zionism is racism” resolution, the leadership was undoubtedly frustrated by its inability to substantively influence the larger picture. In December, when the U.S. opted not to block PLO participation at a UN Security Council, the Presidents Conference conceded its inability to change Administration policy.169

Schindler Takes Over Presidents Conference

In January 1976, Rabbi Alexander Schindler, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, succeeded Miller as the Chairman of the Presidents Conference. He was the first leader of the Reform branch to hold this position.170 Born in Munich in 1925, Schindler emigrated to the United States and enrolled in City College. During World War II he was awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. He was ordained, after the war, and quickly rose through the leadership ranks of the Reform movement.171 At the outset, Schindler made plain that he would take a maverick stance and not necessarily tell Israel what “it wants to hear.” He warned that “the Israeli viewpoint did not necessarily oblige American Jews to ignore other considerations.”172 Nevertheless, Schindler adhered to the dominant belief system of the Jewish leadership and did not condone public criticism of Israel.

Perceptual Factors

Various environmental ingredients contributed to a continuing shift in the categorization of the conflict. But any turnabout seemed to extend to the PLO only haltingly. While the PLO was now prepared to accept the West Bank as an interim measure, Farouk Kaddoumi, the group’s foreign minister, said that “the final settlement as far as we are concerned is a secular, democratic state of Palestine.” He reiterated that Israel had no right to exist, saying that “the Zionist ghetto of Israel must be destroyed.”173

Outside the American Jewish leadership, at least one international Jewish figure would not take the PLO’s “no” for an answer, believing that the Palestinian-Arab problem was at the root of the conflict. Nahum Goldman, the iconoclastic head of the World Jewish Congress, based in Switzerland, published an essay in the Op-Ed pages of The Washington Post asserting that: “Once the PLO is ready to recognize Israel, Israel will have to recognize the existence of the Palestinian problem.”174

The Administration’s enduring need to foster support and assuage skepticism is exemplified by Assistant Secretary of State Joseph Sisco’s remarks at a luncheon honoring Miller, the outgoing Chairman of the Presidents Conference. Sisco maintained that he had never detected substantive long-range policy differences between the Jewish leadership and the Ford Administration.175 Whether many Jewish leaders were comforted by this patently false assertion is unknown. However, further cause for disquiet resulted from a Foreign Policy magazine article by Edward R.F. Sheehan which asserted that Presidents Nixon and Ford had both assured Arab leaders that the United States favored a total Israeli withdrawal to the 1948 armistice lines.176 Of still more immediate concern to the Presidents Conference were the Ford Administration plans to sell military aircraft to Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Speaking to a “mixed” delegation of Jewish leaders, including Schindler, Max Fisher, Yehuda Hellman, Arthur Hertzberg, Elmer Winter of the AJCommittee and Miller, the President and NSC Adviser Brent Scowcroft spent 85 minutes undertaking to justify the premise behind the sale of weaponry to pro-American Arab regimes.177 He also denied the veracity of Sheehan’s Foreign Policy article by contending that he merely favored UN Resolutions 242 and 338.178

Assurances aside, the Administration made strategic choices intended to elicit a response from Israel and its American Jewish supporters. For instance, Governor William Scranton, the Administration’s special Middle East envoy, pointedly declared that Jewish settlements in the Administered Territories were “obstacles to peace.” On the surface, this position did not reflect a change in policy. Indeed, the United States had often protested the establishment of Jewish communities in the Territories. Still, to many in the Jewish leadership, the tone of criticism seemed unduly one-sided, centering exclusively on concessions Israel was expected to make in fulfillment of UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. Having consulted in Jerusalem with Rabin, Schindler and Hellman made plans to meet with Scranton.179

Parenthetically, it is worthwhile recalling the context of these events within the American political system. Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter, seeking victory in the upcoming New York State Democratic Primary, declared his support of Jewish settlement in the Administered areas. Carter also said that he would never want Israel to relinquish the Golan or East Jerusalem.180

Both U.S. and American Jewish leaders engaged in agenda-setting activities. In the wake of Scranton’s comments and an upsurge in violence in the Territories, Schindler made good on his pledge to tell the Israelis what was on his mind. Speaking in Jerusalem, he said that Israel was projecting an image of a nation without strong leadership. He urged the Jewish state to resolutely address the Palestinian problem.181 In Israel, Fisher said: “I see the Palestinian problem as the gut issue of the conflict.” He also noticed “a definite shift in the attitude of Israeli intellectuals towards the Palestinian problem,” not “reflected in government circles.”182 United States Ambassador Malcolm Toon warned that an anti-Israel backlash was possible unless Israel demonstrated greater flexibility regarding its security needs.183 The chorus of criticism, and attendant U.S.-Israel tensions, continued unabated. Promised financial aid was withheld, while State Department official Harold Saunders reiterated that the Palestinian problem was at the heart of the Arab-Israel conflict. Meanwhile, a Haifa academic conference revealed that the United States was embarked upon an effort to bring about PLO participation in the peace process.184 To lend further credence to the idea of ongoing U.S.-PLO contacts, and to the notion that the group had emerged as a full-fledged diplomatic player, United States Senator Charles Mathias met with PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat in Lebanon late in April.185

Concerted Jewish Criticism

Evidence now began to accumulate that outside elite Jewish political suasion was becoming increasingly purposeful. World Jewish Congress head Nahum Goldman, speaking in Israel, implied that the Jewish State should return to its pre-1967 borders. Regardless of who was elected president of the United States, Goldman predicted, American pressure on Israel would continue.186 Also around this time, active U.S. Jewish opposition to settlement activity in the Territories began to crystallize. Rabbi Joachim Prinz, a former Chairman of the Presidents Conference, joined with I.F. Stone, the left-wing intellectual, in supporting demonstrations by Israelis opposed to a new Jewish settlement at Kaddum.187

This frenzy of criticism was too much for former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. Speaking at the Presidents Conference in New York early in June 1976, she reproached American Jews who doubted Israeli policies in the Territories.188 Perhaps taking cognizance of Meir’s admonition, Schindler said that American Jewish support for Israel was undiminished despite criticism of some of its policies: “The debate of late has focused on those territories that Israel should or should not surrender. But the essential questions are: What kind of peace will result from Israel’s concessions?”189

While arguing that criticism of specific Israeli policies was best handled in private, Schindler offered the first ever Presidents Conference platform to Eugene Borowitz of Breira. Borowitz defended Breira’s policies and its public criticism of Israel. Breira’s program was vigorously opposed by Rabbi Fabian Schonfeld, of the orthodox Zionist Poalei Agudath Israel movement. Somewhat incongruously, Schindler himself joined in to decry “public dissent [that] gives aid and comfort to the enemy.”190 Plainly, Schindler was endeavoring to set parameters for American Jewish criticism of Israel.

In the meantime, Kissinger seemed to be probing just how far open contacts with the PLO could be taken. He sent Farouk Kaddoumi a message expressing U.S. gratitude in connection with the evacuation of Americans from Beirut. Though delivered through “third parties,” it was the first publicly acknowledged contact between the United States and the PLO.191 Incrementally, with little fanfare, and largely as a result of ostensibly random events, the PLO’s stature blossomed as a legitimate actor in the American as well as in the international political arena. For instance, technically, PLO officials affiliated with its UN Observer office were restricted to remaining within a 25-mile radius of Manhattan’s Columbus Circle. But publicized exceptions were now made. In June 1976, Shawfiq Al-Hut was invited to a Capitol Hill luncheon tendered by Senator James Abourezk. About a dozen senators participated, among them: Abraham Ribicoff, Charles Mathias, Gaylord Nelson, George McGovern, and Thomas Eagleton. The State Department acknowledged that it gave Al-Hut permission to travel to Washington but claimed that it “in no way reflects a change in U.S. government policy toward the PLO.” The State Department also confirmed that, in November of 1975, Abdul Salleh, another PLO official connected with the UN Observer office, visited Chicago and Washington D.C. in violation of federal regulations.192 The Untied States continued to maintain direct contact with the PLO on the procedural aspects of evacuating Americans from Lebanon.193 The Department of State explained that it was in contact with “all parties” to facilitate the evacuation.194

So as not to endow the nascent U.S.-PLO relationship with added legitimacy, the Israeli Embassy in Washington opted to voice its unhappiness with the contacts in a low-key complaint to the State Department.195 The State Department insisted that the contacts with the PLO, which it said had been taking place since June, were limited to security matters involving the evacuation of U.S. civilians from Beirut.196 The PLO had begun providing protection to U.S. personnel stationed in Beirut after the June 15, 1976 murders of U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon, Francis Malloy, an embassy official, Robert Waring, and their Lebanese driver. While taking their cue from the Israelis, the organized Jewish community was equally apprehensive about the direction the U.S.-PLO relationship was taking.197 The last thing they wanted was a U.S.-PLO dialogue which circumvented the 1975 memorandum of understanding.

Domestic Parameters: 1976 Campaign

With the GOP Convention approaching, Ronald Reagan said he favored a Republican Party platform which supported compromise in settling the Arab-Israel conflict. Such a compromise needed to take into account the “legitimate needs” of the Palestinians.198 Rita Hauser, destined to play a pivotal role in fostering a U.S.-PLO dialogue years later, urged the U.S. to stop flirting with the PLO and the idea of a Palestinian state. A former State Department political appointee (she had been a United States Representative to the UN Human Rights Commission during the Nixon administration), Hauser had close ties to the Jewish community as well as with the Republican party. In a speech prepared and distributed, but not delivered, at a B’nai B’rith International meeting, Hauser called upon the State Department to stop “creeping toward tacit recognition” of the PLO; urged a halt to American support of Arab refugee camps; and demanded “hard-nosed insistence” that the Arab world absorb the refugees.199 An essay published several days later in the Jerusalem Post further elucidated her thinking:
The events in Lebanon support fully Israel’s refusal to accept a Palestinian state on the West Bank dominated by the PLO, as it would be the staging ground for a relentless irredentist attack on the Jewish nation. . . . Having created the Palestinian “people” by their refusal to integrate several thousand refugees and their descendants, the Arab states now find they cannot contain fully or, even in war, destroy totally these very people. . . . American policy, which has been creeping toward tacit recognition of the PLO and support for an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank . . . is both unrealistic and, in many respects, unconducive to peace in the area. . . . America should stop flirting with the idea of a Palestinian state.200

Democratic presidential candidate Jimmy Carter made several forays into the Jewish community offering his position on the Arab-Israel conflict. He told Jewish leaders in New York that Israel did not cause the Palestinian problem.201 Some days later, at a Presidents Conference appearance, he charged the Ford Administration with caving-in to Arab blackmail in its arms sale policies and failing to support legislation opposed to the Arab economic boycott of Israel.202 Then, in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Carter was asked to assess the nature of the PLO:
“. . . The PLO is not the group to deal with in solving the Palestinian problem. The PLO is an alliance of guerrilla organizations, not a government in exile. The PLO is unrepresentative of the Palestinians and un-elected. The PLO should not participate as an equal partner in any resumed Geneva peace conference because the PLO’s stated aims are diametrically opposed to any peace which envisions the continued existence of Israel.”203


Later, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s chief foreign policy adviser, held a 90-minute meeting with the Presidents Conference to discuss the campaign’s position on the Middle East.204 Not surprisingly, leaders of Arab-American groups, meanwhile, announced they were supporting President Ford’s re-election campaign.205

Multitude of Mixed Messages

Since 1967, the Israeli polity had been unable to decide between autonomy or annexation for the Administered Territories. Unilateral withdrawal in the absence of peace was never considered. This ambivalent message was formalized by the publication, in Foreign Affairs, of an essay by Foreign Minister Yigal Allon. Allon offered to “demilitarize” Judea, Samaria and the Gaza District, while asserting that Israel would not return to the 1948 borders.206 Allon promoted, on security grounds, large-scale Jewish settlement in those areas of Judea and Samaria away from Arab population centers. The Allon approach was, de facto, the Israeli plan-on-the-ground between 1967 and 1977. By 1977, there were 32 settlements regarded as defensive in character populated by Labor oriented kibbutz and moshav movements.207 Whatever the strategic merits of the plan, it failed to give the U.S. Jewish leadership a clear-cut political solution they could back. It implied that Arab intentions were mellowing but only erratically. It did not make a spirited case for Jewish rights to the land.

The PLO came under heightened U.S. public scrutiny. The PLO information office had originally been established in New York in 1965 and been registered with the Justice Department. A PLO Observer Office was subsequently authorized by the United Nations. Columnist Jack Anderson reported that Zaidi Terzi netted $4,984 worth of contributions at a Virginia fund-raising appearance. The amount itself was a pittance but what signal was the U.S. sending by allowing Terzi to travel freely, lecture and fund-raise? In response to the disclosure, the U.S. Mission to the UN advised Terzi that PLO fund-raising activities were inappropriate. Meanwhile, the State Department insisted that the U.S.-PLO contacts in Beirut did not constitute de facto or de jure recognition of the PLO.208

To further befog matters, Moshe Dayan, a former Defense Minister in the Meir Government, suggested that Israel should now consider talking with the PLO about setting up a Palestinian homeland in Jordan.209 Dayan was not alone in proposing this line. General Ariel Sharon (ret.) also advocated an Israel-PLO dialogue. Sharon favored “Speaking with all Arabs. . . . We need to talk to Arabs including the PLO. We shall have no other way. . . . We talked with the Germans after they exterminated six million of our brethren, we talked with Syria after they tortured our prisoners. Why shouldn’t we talk with Palestinians? We don’t have to exclude anyone.”210

The American vote, at the UN in mid-November, to criticize Israel for establishing Yishuvim (settlements) in the Administered Territories, hammered home the enormous political cost of maintaining control over the disputed lands.211 The meeting between three U.S. Senators – John Glenn, Robert Griffin, and Paul Laxalt – and PLO representatives based in Cairo, demonstrated how far perceptions of PLO intentions had evolved.212 Such meetings had become cavalier and unremarkable. In late November, the PLO opened an information office in Washington D.C. and formally registered with the Justice Department. A high-ranking PLO member was granted a U.S. visa for the occasion.213 PLO entree into the corridors of U.S. power was not without obstacles. The United States ordered the Washington PLO post closed just days after it opened. A U.S. spokesman explained that it was “not a propitious time” for the group to open an office. Two PLO diplomats, Sibri Jiryis and Isam Sartawi, were constrained to leave the country. But if there was a message in all this it is hard to discern. The PLO’s New York information office, meantime, continued to operate.214

Carter Victory

Jimmy Carter’s November 1976 election victory led to an almost audible sigh of relief from the pro-Israel community. The Jewish leadership felt that Carter’s victory over President Ford “augurs well” for strong U.S.-Israel ties. The President-Elect was known to oppose the PLO and was believed to favor a liberal domestic agenda.215 Upon closer examination, the election results revealed some fairly startling data. About 33% of the Jewish vote went to Ford (Fisher says the figure is probably 40%) despite the commonly held perception that his policies were unfriendly to Israel.216 The fact remains that, for a variety of reasons, Carter captured the Jewish vote.

* * * * * * *

Nine years after the Six Day War, as the Nixon-Ford years drew to a close, both Arabs and Israelis came to the realization that the United States had become the main non-military arena of their struggle. The two sides knew how utterly dependent Israel had become, diplomatically, politically, and economically, on the United States. On this battleground the goal was to capture, or hold, public opinion support. To accomplish this goal the parties engaged in the use of propaganda.217 This effort was not centrally controlled, systematic or coherent. That was beyond the capabilities of either side despite their best efforts.218

Propaganda is the ultimate manipulative communication. Practitioners aim, not so much to change people’s minds, as to condition particular responses over time. Propaganda is “based on slow, constant impregnation.”219 The Arabs came to the struggle for public opinion at a decided disadvantage. Americans tended to place blame on the Arab camp for its bellicosity after each military conflict with Israel.220 Indeed, while Israel would now and then garner the wrath of public opinion, dissatisfaction with the Jewish State seldom translated itself into public opinion gains for the Arab cause.221

In the communications age, popular opinion matters to a greater extent than ever before in history. Still, it is not the only factor in the formulation of foreign policy. Therefore, the foci of efforts to change perceptions about the conflict were directed at mobilizing and decision-making elements, including those in the U.S. Jewish community.

The American Jewish community was a cardinal target of Arab and pro-Arab efforts to redefine the nature of the struggle. This campaign was grounded on the humanization of the Palestinian cause. The most significant goal was the reconfiguration of the struggle from Arab-Israeli to Palestinian-Israeli. By 1976 fulminations about “driving the Jews into the sea” had been supplanted with messages arguing that the Jews posed a genocidal threat to the Palestinians. Zionist symbols had been co-opted by the Arab side. While it was premature to present the PLO with a friendly face, its armed struggle was referred to as the Palestinian Resistance and the Palestinian Arabs who lived outside Israel were referred to as the Palestinian Diaspora. A concerted effort to change symbolic places with Israel had been successfully accomplished.222 While such messages were not well received by the pro-Israel community at-large, there was a certain reservoir of receptivity among Jewish elites. A segment of the liberal-left coalition against the Vietnam War had mobilized its resources on behalf of the Arab cause. Their strident, often vitriolic, messages were rejected by the Jewish mainstream.223 However, the moderate wing of the anti-War movement did enjoy easy access to the Jewish establishment.

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In December 1976, the PLO launched a peace offensive reaching out to Israeli doves and elements of the organized U.S. Jewish community. The essential message of this venture was that the nature of the conflict had been transformed and that a non-zero-sum condition now prevailed.

As Cooley notes, “The possibility of active cooperation between the radical Israeli Left, and Palestinian individuals or organizations, guerrilla or otherwise, has always been a specter haunting the Israeli security establishment.”224 By 1976 Israeli-PLO contacts had become a fact. For instance, retired general Matityahu Peled and three other Israel doves met with PLO members in Paris. Peled reported “very little argument” in rejecting Arab claims to parts of Israel within its 1948 borders. He favored the establishment of a PLO Government-In-Exile on the theory that it would make the organization more responsible. Ultimately, Peled said, he wanted to see a demilitarized PLO entity on the West Bank but insisted that Israel maintain a security border at the Jordan River. Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria were an “ill-advised adventure and a sheer waste,” and should be dismantled.225 As early as 1968, ninety-eight intellectuals had signed a denunciation of Israeli activities in the occupied territories.226 But, in the prevalent view on the Israeli Left summed up by one academic: “The only way to change Israeli opinion is through the Diaspora. It’s useless for a non-Jew to waste his breath criticizing Israel. A ‘goy’ doesn’t count here. But if American Jews were to criticize our attitude towards the Arabs we would take notice because we need their money!”227 But to be successful, such criticism would have to come from a new direction. Left-wing intellectuals such as I.F. Stone and Noam Chomsky had paved the way.228 But only mainstream and identifiably Jewish individuals and organizations could deliver on American Jewish public opinion.

Concurrent with efforts to reach out to Israeli doves, the PLO also began contacts with elements of the American Jewish leadership. Under the auspices of Tartt Bell, Director of the American Friends Service Committee, meetings were arranged in Washington and in New York between PLO diplomats and mid-level Jewish leaders. In Washington, Jiryas and Sartawi met with Herman Edelsberg of B’nai B’rith International, David Gorin of the American Jewish Congress, Olga Margolin of the National Council of Jewish Women, Max Ticktin of Breira and Arthur Waskow of the left-oriented Institute for Policy Studies. Waskow had also been a key figure in Breira and would reappear in the New Jewish Agenda. In New York the two PLO representatives met with Dr. George Gruen of the American Jewish Committee.229

When the press picked up the story (likely because it was leaked), mainstream Jewish organizations scrambled to distance themselves. B’nai B’rith denied it played a role in the meeting; Richard Cohen, associate executive director of the American Jewish Congress, deplored the meeting and revealed that AJCongress president, Arthur Hertzberg, had rejected an invitation to attend; The AJCongress staffer who did attend the meeting, David Gorin, was described as being new to the organization and unaware that the PLO representatives would be present at the meeting.230 Marjorie Merlin Cohen, director of the National Council of Jewish Women, said that the organization wanted to “disassociate ourselves completely from” the actions of Olga Margolin in meeting with the PLO representatives.231

Edelsberg, of B’nai B’rith, in an effort to set the record straight, provided the following details of the meeting:
The PLO, (Sartawi) said, “accepts the principle of a Jewish State in Palestine, alongside a Palestinian state composed of the West Bank, Gaza and some small pieces of land now held by Syria and Egypt.” But, the Jews were told that this could not be made public because the PLO considered this position to be its “trump card.” I said recognition of Israel was not a trump card; it did not even warrant any Israeli concessions. . . . The real trump card would be the conduct of a future Palestinian entity – would it live in peace or become a revanchist force.232

Significantly, Sartawi told Edelsberg that the PLO held out little hope Israeli doves could influence their government. Instead, the PLO hoped that the American Jewish community would sway Israeli policies.233

The State Department now shifted policy again, letting it be known that while it still felt the time not “propitious” for the PLO to open an office in Washington, the U.S. had no legal means to stop them. In light of the earlier expulsion of Sabri Jiryas and Isam Sartawi, the State Department said it did not know who would be running the PLO’s Washington office. But it said that as far as the U.S. was concerned, “the PLO office in Washington was already open.”234

The Presidents Conference reacted by sending Ford a telegram appealing to him to prohibit the PLO from maintaining the Capital office. Schindler and Hellman urged Ford to find a “law or principle of law that can be invoked that can protect the American people from the criminal conspiracy that constitutes the PLO. In the interests of public safety, in the cause of peace in the Middle East, our country must not permit the killers of Jewish children and the assassins of American diplomats to open an office in Washington D.C.”235 Arguing the PLO’s New York operation which had been open since 1965 did little damage to Jewish interests, some American Jewish organizations believed that a public battle to force the closing of the Washington office would provide the PLO with valuable free publicity.236

Incoming members of Congress and the new Administration were petitioned by the American Friends Service Committee to include the PLO in future Middle East peace efforts.237 The Presidents Conference rejoinder was to reiterate its opposition to PLO participation in efforts to resolve the Arab-Israel conflict. A Presidents Conference statement, drafted by David Blumberg of B’nai B’rith, said: “The only purpose and possible result of such meetings is PLO propaganda aimed at providing this terrorist federation with an image of moderation and conciliation.”238


Conclusion

Oscar Wilde wrote: “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”239 The PLO’s chief perceptual and political achievement was that it was everywhere talked about. This public relations triumph in the United States was matched abroad with the opening of PLO offices in many of the world’s capitals. Support for a Palestinian homeland also came from America’s Western European allies. At the threshold of the Carter Administration, the Palestinian cause permeated the American political environment. Aided by persistent, albeit episodic, violent disorders in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, public attention almost never waned.

The nature of Arab intentions was no longer clear-cut, and it was certainly less ghoulish. As early as 1970 even the zero-sum goal had taken on a friendly face:
The creation of a democratic non-sectarian state where Christians, Jews and Moslems can live, work and worship without discrimination. . . .

A revolutionary change of attitude on the part of the Palestinians may be observed in the fact that these do not see the Jews as monsters, superman, or eternal enemies. They clearly identify their enemy as the racist-settler State of Israel and its Western allies. Reading Jewish literature, joining hands with progressive Jews around the world, and acquiring self-confidence – all have helped the Palestinians change their attitudes. Racist-chauvinistic solutions epitomized by the “throwing-the-Jews-into-the-sea” slogan have been categorically rejected, to be replaced by the goal of creating the new democratic Palestine.240


Now, official PLO policy went further to emphasize the desire to establish Arab control over any part of Palestine which came under its authority. This pragmatic approach did not negate the PLO Covenant. But it did allow “progressive” Jews to find cause for hope in the ambivalence of Palestinian pronouncements.

In 1969, Golda Meir went largely unchallenged, within the American Jewish community, when she reminded a reporter:
There was no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was either southern Syria before the First World War, and then it was a Palestine including Jordan. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.241

By the end of 1976, the Palestinian Arabs commanded a presence on the political scene that could not be impugned. Arabists in the State Department and Administration decision-makers had earlier discovered the Palestinians. Later, “progressive” Jews and elements of the Jewish leadership elite took greater cognizance of the Palestinian cause. These changes took place in a period of less than ten years, even allowing for a certain amount of hyperbole in Meir’s comments. Plainly, Israel’s control over the Palestinian Arab population of Gaza, Judea and Samaria and the prominence gained for the Palestinian Arab cause by PLO terror and diplomacy unalterably transformed the political environment.

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It is important to recall that the sympathy of the American people remained with the Israelis.242 In their 1972 evaluation of why this was so, Siegel and Gephart offered the following explanation:
The causes of Arab failures to achieve a measurable degree of success in their persuasive efforts in America go beyond the rhetorical strategies employed by pro-Arab forces. Perhaps the underlying and consistent support for Israel in America is a cultural phenomenon in which religion and history have created a bond that seems impenetrable by rhetoric.243

In the decade or less recounted in this chapter, the American Jewish community had come full circle. The trend of assimilation had been slowed by Jewish identification with pro-Israelism. A 1972 Time magazine cover story noted the symbiotic relationship; “Jewish developments in the Diaspora influence the homeland, and the homeland in turn shapes the Diaspora.”244 By the end of the Nixon-Ford years the American Jewish community began its first hesitant steps at redefining the nature of pro-Israelism. In the process, ironically, they gave sanction to future Administration and Arab efforts to change perceptions about the nature of the conflict.