LBJ tapes show a strong connection to Israel

JERUSALEM - Tapes of Lyndon Johnson's Oval Office conversations, released to the public for the first time on Wednesday, reveal that the American president had a personal and often emotional connection to Israel, a scholar said.

In the first public presentation of the tapes Wednesday at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Professor Robert Johnson said this connection influenced his policy decisions and helped lay the foundation for the special relationship between the two nations.

"I sure as hell want to be careful and not run out on little Israel," Johnson said in a March 1968 conversation with his ambassador to the United Nations, Arthur Goldberg. The recording was released to researchers on May 1, according to the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum, in Austin, Texas.

President Johnson was known by his initials, LBJ. While he was in office from 1963 to 1969, the United States became Israel's chief diplomatic ally and primary arms supplier. He was also the first U.S. president to invite an Israeli premier on a state visit when he brought Prime Minster Levi Eshkol to Washington, D.C. in 1964.

"This is really the foundation of what we think of as U.S.-Israeli strategic partnership," said Johnson, a professor of history at Brooklyn College in New York and this year's Fulbright chair in the humanities at Tel Aviv University. He is not related to Lyndon Johnson.

The tapes document LBJ's growing belief in the importance of Israel throughout his administration.

Relations solidified when the United States offered to support Israel against its Arab neighbors in the 1967 Mideast war, as long as the Jewish state did not act as an aggressor.

In a taped conversation from June 25, 1967, about three weeks after Israel defeated three Arab armies, LBJ relates a conversation with Soviet Premier Alexey Kosygin.

"He couldn't understand why we'd want to support the Jews — 3 million people — when there are 100 million Arabs," the president said. "I told him that numbers do not determine what was right. We tried to do what was right regardless of the numbers."

Professor Johnson said, "It's one of the starkest expressions of a moral obligation to Israel that came from an American President."

Regina Greenwell, the foreign policy archivist at the LBJ Library and Museum, said all existing evidence backs up the argument that LBJ had positive feelings for Israel.

"He did always have support for Israel," said Greenwell, who has listened to all the existing Oval Office tapes. But "he was also trying to balance both sides in the Cold War atmosphere."

For example, other taped conversations reveal that LBJ supported bolstering King Hussein of Jordan with U.S. military assistance, she said.

"Hussein was a moderating force and the theory was that if Hussein couldn't get arms from us he'd turn to the Soviets, just as (late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel) Nasser got assistance from the Soviets," Greenwell said.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080528/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_lbj_tapes_2

The US doesn't always act on its values, and doesn't always take the best course when it does act out of its sense of right. But it does it more often and better than any country before. That's something that Democrats can be proud of.

but it is not 1967 any more, things have changed a bit for Israel.