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Robert Kennedy’s 1948 Reports from Palestine

In April 1948, one month before Israel declared independence, Robert Kennedy, then 22, traveled to Palestine to report on the conflict for the Boston Post. His four dispatches from the scene were published in June 1948. The newspaper closed in 1956, and for decades the reports were virtually forgotten.

Jews Have Fine Fighting Force
Make Up for Lack of Arms with Undying Spirit, Unparalleled Courage – Impress World

The Jewish people in Palestine who believe in and have been working toward this national state have become an immensely proud and determined people. It is already a truly great modern example of the birth of a nation with the primary ingredients of dignity and self-respect.

Malca and her family to me are the personification of that determination. She is a young girl of the age of 23 and her husband and four brothers are members of the Haganah. She herself is with the intelligence corps and worked on the average of 15 hours a day, which evidently was not unusual. She had seen and felt much horror and told me the story of a case she had just handled.

A Jewish girl in her teens was picked up by some members of the Haganah on the road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and, as she was injured, she was taken to the Hebrew Hospital in Jerusalem. They believed that she had somehow been separated from a Jewish convoy which had just gone through and which had had a scrap with the Arabs.

She was particularly noticed because of the strange people who were her visitors and by the fact that she insisted on being moved to the English hospital. Malca was sent to question her. She was turned away gruffly by the girl after the girl admitted that she had in reality been in a British tank with a boy friend and wanted nothing to do with the Jews.

The Jewish Agency offered to send the girl out on a farm in order to let her regain her health and give her a new start, but she just demanded her release which they were forced to give her. She continued consorting with the British police despite warnings from the Stern gang.

Brother Shoots Sister

One night the Stern gang followed the tactics of the underground forces in the last war. They shaved all the hair off the girl’s head. Two days after Malca told me this story the sequel took place. The girl’s brother returned for leave from duty with the Haganah up in Galilee and, finding her in such a state, shot her.

Malca’s youngest brother is only 13, but every night he takes up his post as a sentry with the Haganah at a small place outside of Jerusalem.

His mother and father wait up every night until midnight for him and his older brother, 15, to return home. The other two brothers, both younger than Malca, give full time duty with combat troops.

An understanding of the institutions it contains, and of the persons that run these institutions, is most important if one would make up one’s mind as to the worth of this “de facto” Jewish state.

I visited and inspected a community farm [kibbutz] through the kindness of a Jew who 40 years ago was in Boston making speeches for my grandfather, John F. Fitzgerald, when he was a candidate for congress. A third of the agricultural population live in such community farms which were set up originally to help newly-arrived refugees who had no money or prospects.

They are in reality self-sustaining States within a State and all the people in common undergo arduous toil and labor and make great sacrifices in order that their children might become heir to a home. An example of this is that when a child is one year old he is placed in a common nursery, with the result that all but the sick and infirm are able to devote their talents to the common cause. They get paid nothing for they need no money. Everything is financed by a group of elected overseers who get their money by selling what the farms produce. In our country we shrink from such tactics but in that country their very lives depend upon them.

The whole thing is done on a volunteer basis and one may leave the farm with his proportionate share of wealth at any time he chooses.

The one we visited was at Givat Brenner and, although no one paid attention to the firing going on in the plain below, one could see all around preparations being undertaken for the coming fight.

I talked to members of the underground organization Irgun. They were responsible for the King David Hotel disaster and told me proudly that they were responsible for blowing up the Cairo-Haifa train which had just taken place with the loss of 50 British soldiers.

LBJ’s Secret Israel Tapes

On June 25, 1967, shortly after the Six Day War, Johnson confronted the Soviet premier, Aleksei Kosygin, in a summit meeting at Glassboro, N.J. The Soviets had supported Egypt and Syria during the conflict, and had threatened to intervene militarily on the last day of fighting. After the two sides agreed to a cease-fire, Moscow urged the U.N. to demand that Israel withdraw from all occupied territories before Arab states even considered a peace settlement recognizing Israel’s right to exist.

Kosygin, recalling a conversation Johnson had with President Eisenhower later that evening, said, “he couldn’t understand why we’d want to support the Jews — three million people when there are a hundred million Arabs.” Johnson’s reply to his Soviet counterpart was blunt: “I told him that numbers do not determine what was right. We tried to do what was right regardless of the numbers.”

Beyond providing crucial diplomatic support for Israel during the Six Day War and in U.N. debates that followed it, Johnson supplied Israel with three significant arms packages in 1965, 1966, and 1968. His policies laid the foundation for the U.S.-Israeli strategic partnership that continues to exist.

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Johnson’s approach toward Middle Eastern affairs did not come as a result of a differing strategic vision. Like Eisenhower and Kennedy, Johnson’s chief ideological goal was containing Soviet diplomatic influence, especially in Jordan and the Persian Gulf.

Instead, Johnson’s policies stemmed more from personal concerns — his friendship with leading Zionists (such as Abe Fortas, Abe Feinberg, and Arthur Krim), his belief that America had a moral obligation to bolster Israeli security, and his conception of Israel as a frontier land much like his home state of Texas. His personal concerns led him to intervene when he felt that the State or Defense Departments had insufficiently appreciated Israel’s diplomatic or military needs.

 

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."