Kissinger Under Fire

Guest Post By Dr. Harold Goldmeier

The Jewish former Secretary of State, Dr. Henry Kissinger, is caught on a recently released White House tape discussing the free Soviet Jewry movement with President Richard Nixon back in the 1970’s.  Kissinger tells the President  “If they (the Soviets) put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern.”  Since its release, Dr. Kissinger has been attacked and defended. He says now that he used this example to make the most extreme point that nothing would deter or interfere with the President’s foreign policy agenda at the time.

The free Soviet Jewry advocates at the time were lining up allies in Congress and Europe to pressure the Soviets with sanctions at the expense of Kissinger’s foreign policy to achieve détente with Russia. Kissinger argued that through détente, Soviet Jewry had a better chance to be free of persecution in their homelands or choose to emigrate if they so desired.

Why would Kissinger say such an outrageous and callous thing to the President? Was Kissinger a craven and cruel person, or was he trying to persuade Nixon to stay the course Kissinger set out as their foreign policy? He was known as a diplomat who always chose his words carefully, and employed the most thoughtful analysis before expressing himself.

            In this instance, Dr. Kissinger was not addressing foreign policy matters.  He was reassuring an anti-Semitic President, always suspicious of the loyalty of his Jewish advisors, that Kissinger would always put the President’s interests first, even if it meant another act of genocide on his own kind. President Nixon was obsessed with outmaneuvering the Soviets on foreign policy matters, and limiting their spheres of influence for world domination. Kissinger was a master strategist, and Nixon knew it, at turning his philosophy in to foreign policy successes on the ground. More than that, though, Kissinger’s example of gassing Soviet Jews, must be understood in the context of Kissinger’s own agenda; that was, first and foremost, to prove to the President that he may have been born a Jew, but he was loyal to the President and deserving of Nixon’s utmost trust and confidence.

Kissinger’s friends in the media and political allies defend him for his personal commitment to the right issues and towering diplomatic achievements while in office. His critics hold him in public contempt, ridicule, and scorn for what he said, and can find no excuse or justification for it. There is none, but he is right when he argues that we should consider it in the context of the times.  The “times” called for Jews who wanted to work for Nixon to bend-over-backwards to prove their loyalty.  His character shaped his foreign policy, and that is why Kissinger endured years of ignobility listening to extravagantly wild anti-Semitism from the leader of the free world.

Kissinger’s example of gassing Jews becomes nauseating when you hear him say it in that hallmark thick German accent void of emotion (his brother spoke in an almost perfect American accent. Many people often wondered if Henry practiced his accent at night in front of the mirror before he went to bed just to sound more authoritative before audiences and in the media?). The fact that he survived the Holocaust, while some thirteen members of his family perished, makes it more shameful and horrific.

The context of the time, he argues, was on the one hand, the contentious public outcry by the free Soviet Jewry movement. American and Europeans smuggled Hebrew books and matzos behind the Iron Curtain. They took their demands into the streets, to the United Nations, on every news and talk show, and to Congress. They lobbied for economic and military sanctions against the Soviet Union. They worked tirelessly until Soviet Jews could emigrate, and be free of KGB persecution for simply expressing their desires to live as Jews or move to countries that would welcome them as Jews. Meantime, America and Russia were faced off in a cold war with nuclear weapons pointed at one another.  Kissinger believed that the plight of Soviet Jewry was a humanitarian cause and should not be made an American government foreign policy issue that would threaten his goal of détente.  The Kremlin, our own President, and many Congressmen were paranoid enough in those days to believe an American government mixing in to Soviet internal affairs would only stir the pot that might encourage other minorities and nationalists under Soviet domination to revolt as well.  The Kremlin did not take this foreign interference lightly. We lived in those days, as the University of Chicago Professor Hans Morgenthau called it, with “a balance of terror’ with Russia.  Any provocation and misjudgment of intentions could spark a nuclear war.

        Here is another context in which to consider Kissinger’s example.  Back at home from world travels, sitting around the Oval Office chewing the fat, as they say, sharing a laugh over an off-color joke, Kissinger pandered and pimped to Nixon’s anti-Semitic bigotry, captured many times on tape, by using the Jews in gas chambers as an example that Nixon would understand and appreciate. He regularly spouted vile anti-Semitic ranting and racist characterizations of Blacks, the Irish, and others. Kissinger never seems to correct or quarrel with this horrible side of Nixon, let alone threaten to quit. Kissinger wanted to pass for white, to be accepted, and fit in. He was not alone. He had a soul mate in those meetings, and neither one ever took umbrage at the excoriations from Nixon. The other powerful player in the White House crowd, James R. Schlesinger, the Secretary of Defense, was born to Jewish parents then converted to the Lutheran Church. Can you imagine the two of them listening to all this degrading hatred from the leader of the free world, and never saying a word of protest or expressing their disgust at Nixon’s bigotry and verbal abuse?  This is the real context in which Kissinger’s example takes meaning.

        The result of a strategic foreign policy devoid of human rights considerations is not a successful policy but tragedy for everyone. Kissinger violated Americans’ sense of values and caused turmoil at home.  Theirs was a policy conceived and administered in an environment of prejudice, utter intolerance, stubbornness, and ruthlessness. Christopher Hitchens’ compendium best exemplifies the price people paid for Kissinger’s foreign policies:

         “the secret and illegal bombing of Indochina, explicitly timed and prolonged to suit the career prospects of Nixon and Kissinger. The pair's open support for the Pakistani army's 1971 genocide in Bangladesh, of the architect of which, Gen. Yahya Khan, Kissinger was able to say: "Yahya hasn't had so much fun since the last Hindu massacre." Kissinger's long and warm personal relationship with the managers of other human abattoirs in Chile and Argentina, as well as his role in bringing them to power by the covert use of violence. The support and permission for the mass murder in East Timor, again personally guaranteed by Kissinger to his Indonesian clients. His public endorsement of the Chinese Communist Party's sanguinary decision to clear Tiananmen Square in 1989. His advice to President Gerald Ford to refuse Alexander Solzhenitsyn an invitation to the White House (another favor, as with spitting on Soviet Jewry, to his friend Leonid Brezhnev). His decision to allow Saddam Hussein to slaughter the Kurds after promising them American support. His backing for a fascist coup in Cyprus in 1974 and then his defense of the brutal Turkish invasion of the island. His advice to the Israelis, at the beginning of the first intifada, to throw the press out of the West Bank and go for all-out repression. His view that ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia was something about which nothing could be done. Forget the criminal aspect here (or forget it if you can). All those policies were also political and diplomatic disasters.” (Slate.com, Dec. 27, 2010)

        Another point at which Kissinger’s character and American foreign policy intersected was the Yom Kippur War.  The West and Russia had been for years pulling and tugging Middle East governments to each suck them in to their spheres of influence.  Neither could keep the lid on violence among Arab states or between Israel, the Palestinians and Arab states.  The Middle East was always a tinderbox with superpowers fanning the flames for political hegemony and domination of the oil fields.

At a gala dinner speech before members of United Synagogue in upstate New York, I heard former U.N. Ambassador Abba Eban retell some of the behind-the-scenes story about what went on in Prime Minister Golda Meier’s offices on the eve of the Yom Kippur War. Reports came to her attention that Egypt and Syria were about to launch an invasion of Israel on Yom Kippur.  U. S. Ambassador kennth Keating was informed who rushed to notify the U. S. State Department. Kissinger was contacted directly, but urged Israel not launch a preemptive attack like in 1967.  European countries would not stand for it, Japan and other Asian nations would condemn Israel, and it would ensure an Arab oil embargo that America could not crack nor endure for long. Besides, everyone believed Israel would rout the Arab armies in short order, and embarrass the Soviets who had armed and trained them for years.

It did not go that way. Israel was seriously unprepared for a major war.  Losses mounted on every front; soldiers and tanks ran out of ammunition; tanks were particularly vulnerable to new, powerful Russian weapons given to Egypt and Syria.  Dayan would later offer his resignation. Russia rearmed Egypt and Syria, and even supplied modern cruise missiles that Egyptian Air Force Commander, Hosni Mubarak, relished launching against Tel Aviv. An Arab win and the defeat of an American ally would boost the Kremlin’s prestige and influence throughout the world.

Kissinger did not want America to be blamed for another lost war by an Israel using American weapons and air support. While he did not outright refuse to resupply Israel with desperately needed arms and ammunition, he dragged his feet. Kissinger told Israel’s Ambassador Simcha Dinitz, that he was thinking of the long term rearming of Israel for what she would lose in the Yom Kippur battles. America gave reassurances, but only limited arms to her ally at war. Whatever El Al planes could carry out of America on them, once their Stars of David were painted over, would be allowed to leave America.  Walter J. Boyne’s stellar book, THE YOM KIPPUR WAR, tells the story of the war better than most.

Prime Minister Gold Meier tried to reach President Nixon. He was preoccupied with Watergate and the troubles of then Vice President Spiro Agnew. He left foreign policy to Kissinger. The Israelis soon believed that Syrian armies were unstoppable and on the road to Tel Aviv. Golda Meier, Foreign Minister Eban, and  Dinitz (who had just gotten up from shiva on the eve of the War--seven days of morning for the loss of his father), pleaded with Kissinger for arms and ammunition. Kissinger loved it! He was at the epicenter of world foreign diplomacy handling the Arabs and Europeans, communicating directly with Moscow’s political and military leaders, and of course, Israel, and he could not be happier. Here was Kissinger proving to Nixon how wrong he was when the President had told Kissinger that “Anybody who is Jewish cannot handle” Middle Eastern policy. To make sure no one mistook his Jewishness for sympathy with the Jewish State, Kissinger even delayed informing the President about the war until it was four hours old. He ignored Israel’s pleadings.  He dragged out a final decision until the second week of the war before agreeing an airlift was necessary and should begin.

According to what I remember hearing Ambassador Eban say, Golda telephoned the White House repeatedly, but Kissinger blamed Schlesinger and the Defense Department for the delays.  Jacob Stein, then Conference President of Major American Jewish Organizations would later write that Jewish groups responded fast and repeatedly throughout the first days of the war trying to get Kissinger to move, but were stymied  “by Secretary of State Kissinger's ‘handling’ of Simcha Dinitz….” 

As the war losses became critical, Israel’s leaders knew only two things could save her from annihilation: American rearmament or the nuclear option. Jericho missiles were deployed, but not tipped with nuclear weapons. Golda called the White House throughout one night, but was told by Kissinger that Nixon was asleep and could not be woken. By now, she was sick with fear and rage at Kissinger, and trembling that a Holocaust survivor would risk the lives of more Jewish innocents. According to Eban, he, as best I can recall now, attributed to Kissinger the infamously callous and defining quip of something like, "Let the Jews bleed a little." Others have denied this attribution to Kissinger, but I distinctly recall Eban making a point of it in his speech. The New York Times reported the rest of the story of Kissinger’s “handling” of Dinitz and others; as he had explained to his colleague, the Chief of U.S. Naval Operations, Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr.it was his intention to see Israel “bleed just enough to soften it up for the post-war diplomacy he was planning.” (New York Times, March 17, 1976). Kissinger must have “forgotten” that Jews already bled in one Holocaust, and he was prepared to risk more Jewish lives in possibly another for the sake of his foreign policy strategies should Israel not be able to stem the tide. His commitment to his global strategy at the expense of more Jewish people would show Nixon he was as loyal as any gentile in the administration.

To everyone’s surprise, and it seems to have been a shock to Kissinger and Schlesinger as well, when President Nixon directly ordered Operation Nickel Grass to begin without delay or hesitation. Ambassador Eban told a side story to Nixon’s order.  No European nation would approve fly overs of their air space with weapons bound for Israel. American planes with heavy loads needed but would not be allowed to land and refuel in Europe. They could not fly non-stop to Tel Aviv.  Nixon asked where we had tankers that could refuel the planes in mid air? He was told that we had such planes in Europe, but Spain and others would not allow it over their air space.  Nixon told Kissinger to call the Spanish ambassador, and suggest he not shoot our planes out of the sky should they find themselves refueling over Spain’s air space.

Some American Jewish movers and shakers have responded to the comments on the tape by glorifying Kissinger. They dismiss his example of America’s response to the gassing of Jews as not meaningful of anything but perhaps poor taste. From other things Kissinger did for Jews in his public life, I would not call him a “self-hating Jew,” but he did sacrifice the lives of Jews caught without arms and ammunition who died during the Yom Kippur and could have been save by an early airlift.  Whereas President Nixon talked like a hateful, vile anti-Semite, but ordered the airlift that saved Israel from defeat or worse, Kissinger took negative actions to prove he was a good “court Jew.”  

A postscript: At a Saturday night class before several hundred people in the late 1970’s in the lunchroom at Maimonides School in Brookline, Mass., I personally heard the late Rav J. B. Soloveitchik speak directly to this matter. Rav Soloveitchik was the intellectual and Rabbinic leader of the modern Orthodox Zionist movement for some four decades. He admonished the Jewish community for any criticism of President Nixon, for Watrergate and all other failings. Nixon was a malach (angel) sent by God if for no other purpose than to save Israel, according to the Rav. Regardless of why he did, Jews will always be in his debt with full honor and respect for his angel good deed. There has never been a better explanation for President Nixon's ordering the airlift, despite all the coarse food bandied about by intellectual historians, partisan and not. 

Dr. Harold Goldmeier Chicago, Ill. 773-764-4357 hgoldmeier@aol.com Dr. Goldmeier was a Chicago Public School teacher, a Research and Teaching Fellow at Harvard University earning a Doctorate in Education, and taught as an Assistant Professor at Tufts Medical School. He worked in government for three Governors, the U. S. Surgeon General, and in children and youth advocacy for nearly two decades. He recently sold his business after nearly three decades. He has been married more than forty years with children living in America and Israel, and a son who recently served with the Israel Defense Forces. He has published more than two-dozen articles in professional journals and popular magazines and newspapers. Dr. Goldmeier currently a writer, consultant to government agencies, and to small businesses on economic growth and marketing. His most recent articles appeared in The Jewish Press on terrorism, and in Haaretz of Israel and he writes a guest post for LifeinIsrael.blogspot.com., Open.Salon.com., and more.