PURELY COMMENTARY
Legacies Contra Bigotry
Continued from Page 2
want to make for a state-
ment I made in my last
press conference.
I said that Ambassador
Eban was actually in my
office when I made a cer-
tain particular statement
about my attitude toward
the impending Suez crisis
at that time. I have had the
staff look up the records.
Actually, Foster Dulles
came to my office at 6
o'clock in the evening,
stating that he was to see
Eban in a few minutes,
and I made the same state-
ment that I gave you last
time but I made it to him,
and I had confused the
particular — that incident
from what I said then with
other visits, or at least
another visit of Mr. Eban.
So again, it shows that my
memory, at least, is not
perfect.
The entire matter of sanc-
tions has left a rather un-
savory note on the history of
that period and the Suez
crisis. Eisenhower threatened
Israel and not its partners in
the Suez invasion.
I recall a personal involve-
ment in a meeting with Sen.
Knowlands. It was arranged
by non-Jewish Republican
associates of the California
senator. Sen. Knowlands
assured me when we met in
his office that he would urge
Eisenhower to abandon the
sanctions warning. He did it
together with Sen. Johnson
that very week. -
The entire matter of the
Suez 1956 crisis is a chapter
in American-Israel relations
that must not be hidden even
if it so detrimental to the
Eisenhower role. The whole
story was recorded in an arti-
cle in the Sept. 21, 1965, Near
East Report. The accumulated
facts assembled in that arti-
cle are:
Former President Eisen-
hower's published account
of the 1956 Suez crisis —
contained in the new
volume of his memoirs —
shows clearly that he was
surprisingly misinformed
about the basic facts.
Eisenhower writes that
he was told by the late
Secretary of State John
Foster Dulles that "the
French, in violation of the
1950 agreement, covertly
supplied the Israelis with
arms."
That is a startling
statement.
There was nothing
"covert" or "illegal" about
it. Dulles encouraged the
French.
The 1950 Tripartite
Declaration to which
Dulles alluded to did not
make it "illegal" to supply
44
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1989
arms to Israel. On the
contrary.
In that agreement, the
United Kingdom, France
and the United States
recognized that the Arab
states and Israel "all need
to maintain a certain level
of armed forces for the pur-
poses of assuring their in-
ternal security and their
legitimate self-defense . ."
In 1955, the Egyptian
government acquired
tanks, planes and other
equipment from the Com-
munist bloc. These were
based in the Sinai desert,
menacing Israel's frontiers.
The late Moshe Sharett,
Israel's foreign minister,
went to Geneva and
Washington late in 1955 to
plead for American arms.
Dulles refused to sell Israel
arms for fear of Arab reac-
tion. But, on May 8, 1956,
Dulles publicly conceded
that "wide discrepancy in
arms strength would be
likely to create tensions?'
Privately, Dulles then
referred Israel to the
French, British, Canadians
and Italians.
It was no secret that
Dulles and his aides urged
our allies to provide Israel
with arms to balance the
Soviet shipments to Egypt.
Why he led Eisenhower
to believe that the French
were guilty of an "illegal"
act is difficult to
understand.
Moreover, if it was illegal
for the French to sell arms
to the Israelis in 1956, why
was it legal for the United
States to give arms to Iraq
— about $46 million worth
beginning in 1955 — and for
the British to give arms to
Jordan and Egypt? If the
tripartite agreement pro-
hibited France, which sign-
ed it, why didn't it prohibit
the United States and
England, which also sign-
ed it? And most observers
are agreed that it was our
arms shipments to Iraq
which provoked Nasser to
get arms from the Rus-
sians, which forced the
Israelis to get arms from
the French — after the
United States turned Israel
down.
The memoirs reveal that
it was the President
himself who strongly ad-
vocated sanctions against
Israel — the denial of
private gifts and the pro-
ceeds of Israel bonds, total-
ing about $90 million a
year, in addition to the
suspension of economic
aid — in order to force
Israel to withdraw from
Sinai and Gaza.
At that time Israel was in-
sisting on conditions
which would protect Israel
from future fedayeen raids
and from blockades and
other warlike activities.
Eisenhower declares that
Dulles felt that the United
States had gone "as far as
possible to try to make it
easy for the Israelis to
withdraw" and that to go
further would lead the
Arab states to believe that
U.S. policy was "controlled
by Jewish influence . ."
Eisenhower recalls how
both Senators Johnson
and Knowlands, the
Democratic and
Republican leaders of the
Senate, were opposed to
"cracking down" on Israel
because, they claimed, that
would mean we were using
a double standard — "one
for the strong and one for
the weak" — one for the
Russians and one for the
Israelis.
Eisenhower found it
"somewhat disheartening
that partisan considera-
tions could enter so much
into life-or-death, peace-or-
war decisions:'
The opposition to sanc-
tions was not a partisan af-
fair. It was bipartisan. Both
Republicans
and
Democrats
sincerely
believed that the ad-
ministration position was
one-sided and unjust, that
we were minimizing Presi-
dent Nasser's provocations
and punishing Israel's
reply.
Speaker John McCor-
mack, then Democratic
floor leader, said that he
believed it was a great
mistake for the Israelis to
withdraw from Suez until a
peace settlement had been
reached and that an oppor-
tunity to bring about peace
might be forever lost by
premature withdrawal.
The late President Ken-
nedy, then a member of the
Senate, protested against
unconditional withdrawal
on the very day that Sen.
Johnson sent his widely
publicized letter of protest
to Dulles. And many
leading Republicans, in-
cluding Javits, Scott, Ives,
and Wiley, joined
Knowland in protests
against the administra-
tion's stand.
It was on the basis of
"assumptions" — a nice
euphemism for the word
"conditions" — that Israel
agreed to the withdrawal
in March.
Israel's Foreign Minister
Golda Meir announced in
the U.N. General Assembly
that Israel would evacuate
the Gaza Strip and Sharm
el-Sheikh
with the
understanding that the
Straits of Tiran would re-
main open to Israel shipp-
ing, that the U.N. force
would remain in both
Sharm el-Sheikh and Gaza
to prevent a recurrence of
armed raids, that Israel
would reserve the right to
defend freedom of passage
by force. If conditions
arose in the Gaza Strip in-
dicating a repetition of the
disturbances that took
place before the Israel oc-
cupation, Israel would
reserve her right to act in
defense of her rights.
And Mr. Eisenhower
himself, in his speech of
Feb. 20, made the pledge:
"We should not assume
that, if Israel withdraws,
Egypt will prevent Israeli
shipping from using the
Suez Canal or the Gulf of
Aqaba. If, unhappily,
Egypt does hereafter
violate the Armistice
Agreement or other inter-
national obligations, then
this should be dealt with
firmly by the society of na-
tions."
The
Israelis
did
withdraw. The United
States did stand firmly
with Israel against a
reinstatement of the Egyp-
tian blockade of the Straits
of Than. Israel was able to
transit the Gulf and open
its port at Eilat, expanding
its shipping to Africa.
But the Eisenhower ad-
ministration failed to carry
out its promise on the Suez
Canal, and in 1959, when
Egypt barred Israel shipp-
ing there, the administra-
tion retreated.
There was then no talk of
sanctions against Egypt,
although Egypt's conduct
violated a U.N. decision.
On the contrary. And when
Congress protested and
voted to end economic aid
to countires which persist
in economic warfare
against other recipients of
our aid, the Eisenhower
administration fought
hard to preserve aid to
Egypt "without strings."
The Truman memoirs also
call for a realization of other
Eisenhower faults and grave
errors. They reveal his failure
to act against McCarthyism.
Truman spoke out firmly
when he vetoed the ugly
McCarran-Walter immigra-
tion bill. Eisenhower was
blind to realities on these
questions. They will be
analyzed in a supplementary
column.
In a footnote to her article
on her father's unpublished
memoirs, Margaret Truman
wrote:
For the record, my father
was rated ninth in the list
of 31 presidents, and fourth
in an associated list of
"near-great" presidents. I
think he'd rank even
higher in a poll conducted
today. I also think
Eisenhower would rank
lower.
It is a privilege to endorse
the daughter's rating of her
father as one of the greatest
presidents. fl
Irving Berlin:
Some Addenda
c
omments in last
week's Commentary
about Irving Berlin's
Jewish concerns gave his
memory the appellation of
"Pinetle Yid." There is more
to it than had been implied.
A noteworthy paragraph in
"Irving Berlin's America: The
Melody Lingers On" by Bob-
by Short in the New York
Times Oct. 1 arts and leisure
section emphasized the
following:
Perhaps no other
American composer of
Irving Berlin
popular music was quite so
vocal about his love of
everything American as Ir-
ving Berlin, who died
Sept. 22. Lacking the high-
brow musical education of,
say, Gershwin, Rodgers or
Porter, Berlin drew from a
bank of melodies that
seemed to encompass all of
American culture and at
the same time included
enough of his Russian
Jewish roots to add spice
when needed.
These are interesting obser-
vations about the famous
songwriter who never denied
his Jewish background and
the fact that his father was a
synagogue functionary.