In 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy overcame Zionist apprehensions about his approach to the Middle East because of his father's alleged anti-Semitism and because Hubert Humphrey was far better known and liked by courting US Jewish leaders. Though Kennedy was privately offended by their demands.
The "key incident in the Kennedy wooing," per Melvin Urofsky's Zionist book, "We Are One!" was a meeting in New York after the Democratic convention in July 1960 led by the man who had helped finance Truman's whistlestop tour. Seymour Hersh tells the story in "The Samson Option":
"[Governor Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut said] 'I told Kennedy I was going to get in touch with Abe Feinberg, who I thought was a key Jew. I arranged a meeting [with Kennedy] in Feinberg's apartment in the Hotel Pierre and we invited all the leading Jews.' About 20 prominent businessmen and financiers showed up.
"... The group agreed on an initial contribution of $500,000 to the presidential campaign, with more to come.
"Kennedy was anything but grateful the next morning in describing the session to Charles L. Bartlett, a newspaper columnist and close friend. He had driven to Bartlett's home in northwest Washington and dragged his friend on a walk, where he recounted ... the meeting the night before. 'As an American citizen he was outraged,' Bartlett recalled, 'to have a Zionist group come to him and say: 'We know your campaign is in trouble. We're willing to pay your bills if you'll let us have control of your Middle East policy.' Kennedy, as a presidential candidate, also resented the crudity with which he'd been approached. 'They wanted control,' he angrily told Bartlett.
"Bartlett further recalled Kennedy promising to himself that if he ever did get to be President, he was going to do something about it -- 'a candidate's perennial need for money and resulting vulnerability to the demands of those who contributed.'"
Urofsky says that Kennedy reversed the policy of the Eisenhower administration and quietly abandoned Palestinian refugees without saying so.
"[As president, Kennedy] recognized that in such areas as refugee repatriation, Arab-Israel negotiations, and plans to divert Jordan River waters for large-scale agriculture and power projects, all of which had become extremely sensitive matters thanks to Eisenhower and [former Secretary of State John Foster] Dulles, no government in Israel could survive which conceded as much as some of the State and Defense departments analysts demanded. What Kennedy did, much of it through [Kennedy lawyer Myer] Feldman, was to signal Israel on how to distinguish between rhetoric and action.
"[A]lthough the American government publicly called on Israel to settle the refugee problem and joined in the United Nations censure of Israel after the 1962 retaliatory raids on Syria, the Administration also increased foreign aid, quietly buried a number of potentially dangerous anti-Israel proposals, and entered for the first time into a long-term military-assistance program."
BTW, Kennedy also sought to have the American Zionist Council register as foreign agents with the Department of Justice. Justice and AZC battled for years over this demand. In 1962 the AZC lost, and was required to register and the AZC vanished, and AIPAC took its place! So the Kennedy administration was questioning the lobby's allegiance, something Ilhan Omar would be slammed for more than 50 years on.
3. Lyndon Johnson and Israeli nukes.
Kennedy had angrily demanded inspections of Israeli nuclear facilities to make sure Israel wasn't making a bomb. Lyndon Johnson let the Israelis slide. Israel got the bomb. And it is reasonable to conclude that Johnson gave in on the matter because of his dependence on the Israel lobby.
Johnson came to understand that nuclear nonproliferation "made for bad politics," Seymour Hersh wrote, because it alienated the Jewish community. "By 1968, the President had no intention of doing anything to stop the Israeli bomb," Hersh says. So Johnson ultimately suppressed intelligence reports that Israel was becoming a nuclear power.
Johnson was surely way too close to two Israel lobbyists: Arthur Krim, the chair of the Democratic National Finance Committee, and Krim's wife Mathilde, a scientist and socialite who had lived in Israel and who, like many other members of the Zionist lobby, was not Jewish. The Krims held Johnson so tight he couldn't even wriggle. They had a room in the White House and built a house on Lake Lyndon B. Johnson in the Texas hill country so as to be near the LBJ ranch. Johnson stayed at the Krims' house in New York, and in the run-up to the '67 war, Mathilde was a "key channel" for the Israelis to signal their plans to Johnson and to get signals in return, Helena Cobban writes:
"The huge role that Mrs. Krim played in 1967 is well-known to everyone who has seriously studied US-Israeli relations at that time. After all, she was an integral part of a well-oiled pro-Israeli influence movement at the heart of the US political system, and the DC-Tel Aviv signaling process that she was part of worked strongly in Israel's favor to transform not just the Middle East but the whole shape of global politics."
In his book on the 1967 war, former Time correspondent Donald Neff said that the Krims' influence swayed American policy: Johnson "left himself more open to a passionately partisan voice than was prudent or even healthy during the accelerating crisis."
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