I wrote: > > > > > > >And that is why the US is so closely allied with Israel on the > > Hamas problem, > > > >Minoru. It reflects a common interest in fighting the joint > > enemy of the day.
And John G. responded: > > > > > Surely this US-Israeli connexion dates back 4 decades: > > > > > > http://badley.info/history/Nixon-Doctrine-USA.event.html > > > > > > I seem to recollect that the National Security Council > > recommended that Israel > > > could provide a barrier to Arab nationalism in 1958 (I was still young). > > > And I agreed: > >Yes, absolutely, > > Hmm, but how does the following address my point about the US-Israel nexus? > And I responded: [snip] Do you have your dates straight, John? You are talking about the Nixon administration from 1968 on, but I am talking about the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s. Again, the key turning point in US policy towards Israel came not with Nixon's presidency in 1969, but rather the Kennedy administration in 1961. Again, Avner Cohen's book shows this decisively, through the prism of the Israeli nuclear program. There was an excellent review of Cohen's book (I think it was in the New York Review, or perhaps the London Review) when it came out that underscored this point and provided some more detail on the extent of the transformation. Of course, Israel (along with Iran, and Nicaragua, and a few other states) were selected as "regional gendarmes" as part of the Nixon Doctrine, and more military aid flowed to all of them as a result, but in Israel's case the decisive shift to closer ties with the US had occurred about a decade earlier. Not even the USS Liberty incident in 1967 derailed the new relationship. Sorry if I have misread your question/point again. Watching Blagojevich on CNN. Someone told me his name means "bad hair" in Serbo-Croatian. Could be. John M. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Persons posting messages to not_honyaku assume all responsibility for their messages. The list owner does not review messages, and accepts no responsibility for the content of messages posted. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
