Advocating for Israel: Diplomats and Lobbyists from Truman to Nixon by Natan Aridan (review)

Without naming names, Aridan sees his study as contributing to a debunking of recent scholarly work on the power of an Israel lobby in the determination of US foreign policy making. He covers the efforts by Israeli officials and their supporters to shape U.S. policy on the Near East from the late 1940s, prior to Israel’s creation in 1948, until 1976. To collect empirical evidence, he undertook laudatory, extensive archival research at various locations in the United States, Israel, and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom. He mined documents in English and Hebrew from a combination of state, academic, press and personal collections, engaged in oral interviews with political and academic figures, and extracted useful information from a long list of secondary sources.

The historical scope of Aridan’s work is significant. His narrative is richest for the 1947–1960 period—under Presidents Truman and Eisenhower—which constitutes sixty percent of the book. He amply demonstrates how difficult it was for leaders of the fledgling Israeli state to assert their foreign policy line amidst the cacophony of crucial international and American Jewish organizational actors, Zionists and non-Zionists alike. He correctly points out that, during this time frame, Israeli officials and their lobbyists encountered both difficulty in acquiring economic aid and strong resistance to arms requests. What Aridan fails to highlight is that early Israeli governments, though democratically elected, were all led by the Labor party, which maintained strong links with the Socialist International. Lest one forget, prior to Israel’s 1948 creation, Zionist forces acquired their weapons from “Czechoslovakia” (actually, the Soviet Union). Post-independence, Israeli officials consistently refrained from signing off on US-led anti-communist foreign policy undertakings, received weapons from France’s Socialist-led government, and as Aridan does note, rebuffed US calls to address the plight of Palestinian refugees and comply with nuclear non-proliferation concerns. Little wonder that Cold War-era Republicans, State Department officials and others remained cool to Israel’s requests.

From the early 1950s until 1967, France served as Israel’s major supplier of sophisticated weapons, including fighter jets. As regional tension mounted in spring 1967, French president Charles de Gaulle threatened to impose an arms embargo on any country initiating warfare. Undaunted, Israel’s leaders decided to strike at Egypt, Syria and Jordan, scoring its stunning six-day victory in June. True to his word, de Gaulle slapped an embargo on Israel, and President Johnson took the United States into the breach. Thus, Aridan only deals with roughly eight years of the “special relationship,” and it is over the past half century that the “Israel Lobby” has kept the U.S. Congress in a virtual headlock, with congressional actors repeatedly rebuking and overriding requests made by American presidents, even when from the same political party.

What is ironic is that, in a book designed to debunk arguments concerning the lobby’s influence, its author serves up a wealth of evidence cementing perceptions of its power. Aridan accurately depicts how decisions by each U.S president were heavily influenced by Jewish Americans benefiting from tremendous access: Eddie Jacobson with Truman; Eli Ginzberg and Jacob Blaustein with Eisenhower; Myer Feldman with Kennedy; Feldman and Abraham Feinberg with Johnson; and Max Fisher with Nixon. Moreover, with the possible exception of Truman, Aridan discusses how every one of these presidents complained vociferously of the enormous pressure imposed by the lobby. The primary bases of the lobby’s power—the influence brought to bear in presidential and congressional elections; its influence in Congress and the media—are duly brought to light, as are the roles played by its dramatis personae, like Isaiah Kenen.

Aridan commits several major errors of omission, among which are the following. He provides no discussion of the USS Liberty incident. On June 8, 1967, during the heat of battle of the Six Day War, the Israelis launched a combined air and sea assault on this...