The last American president. Chapters Five - Eight excerpted from the book 'Final Judgment -The missing link in the JFK assassination conspiracy' by Michael Collins Piper, Wolfe Press, 1995, paperback https://thirdworldtraveler.com/Assassinations_page/Chapters_Five-Eight_FJ.html >p40 By mid-1963 Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion hated Kennedy with a passion. In fact, he considered JFK a threat to the very survival of the Jewish State. ... Former high-ranking U.S. diplomat Richard H. Curtiss, writing in 'A Changing Image: American Perceptions of the Arab-Israeli Dispute', elaborated on Kennedy's attitude toward the Middle East controversy. In a chapter appropriately titled: "President Kennedy and Good Intentions Deferred Too Long," Curtiss comments: "It is surprising to realize, with the benefit of hindsight, that from the time Kennedy entered office as the narrowly-elected candidate of a party heavily dependent upon Jewish support, he was planning to take a whole new look at U.S. Mideast policy. "He obviously could not turn the clock back and undo the work of President Truman, his Democratic predecessor, in making the establishment of Israel possible. Nor, perhaps, would he have wanted to. "Kennedy was determined, however, to develop good new personal relationships with individual Arab leaders, including those with whom the previous administration's relations had deteriorated. p42 Soon after Kennedy assumed office, Israel and its American lobby began to understand the import of Kennedy's positioning in regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Israel was not happy - to say the very least - and began putting heat on the White House through the egis of its supporters in Congress, many of whom relied upon support from the Israeli lobby for campaign contributions and political leverage. p44 The American President cited four areas causing a strain in U.S.-Israel relations: 1) Israel's diversion-from the Arab States-of the Jordan River waters; 2) Israel's retaliatory raids against Arab forces in border areas; 3) Israel's pivotal role in the Palestinian refugee problem; and 4) Israel's insistence that the United States sell advanced Hawk missiles to Israel. The President outlined to Mrs. Meir what has come to be called the Kennedy Doctrine. Kennedy told Meir that U.S. interests and Israel's interests were not always the same. The Talbot memorandum described Kennedy's forthright stance: "We know," [said Kennedy] "that Israel faces enormous security problems, but we do too. We came almost to a direct confrontation with the Soviet Union last spring and again recently in Cuba... Because we have taken on wide security responsibilities we always have the potential of becoming involved in a major crisis not of our own making... p44 "Our security problems are, therefore, just as great as Israel's. We have to concern ourself with the whole Middle East. We would like Israeli recognition that this partnership which we have with it produces strains for the United States in the Middle East... when Israel takes such action as it did last spring [when Israel launched a raid into Syria, resulting in a condemnation by the UN Security Council]. Whether right or wrong, those actions involve not just Israel but also the United States." Stephen Green believes that Kennedy's position vis-a-vis Israel was an important stand: "It was a remarkable exchange, and the last time for many, many years in which an American president precisely distinguished for the government of Israel the differences between U.S. and Israeli national security interests." Thus it was that John F. Kennedy informed Israel, in no uncertain terms, that he intended - first and foremost - to place America's interests - not Israel's interests - at the center of U.S. Middle East policy. p45 Israel had been engaged in nuclear development during the past decade but continued to insist that its nuclear programs were strictly peaceful in nature. However, the facts prove otherwise. ... When Kennedy was coming into office in the transition period in December 1960 the Eisenhower administration informed Kennedy of Israel's secret nuclear weapons development at a site in the desert known as Dimona. Israel had advanced several cover stories to explain its activities at Dimona. ... Israel had kept the nuclear weapons program as secret as possible, but US intelligence had discovered the project. Kennedy termed the situation "highly distressing." Kennedy, upon taking office, determined that he would make efforts to derail Israel's nuclear weapons development. Nuclear proliferation was to be one of Kennedy's primary concerns. Israel's intended entry into the nuclear arena was, as a consequence, a frightening prospect in JFK's mind, particularly in light of ongoing conflict in the Middle East. p46 Kennedy's friendly overtures to the Arab states were only a public aspect of what ultimately developed into an all-out 'secret war' between Kennedy and Israel. According to Seymour Hersh: "Israel's bomb, and what to do about it, became a White House fixation - part of the secret presidential agenda that would remain hidden for the next thirty years." p46 ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR AGENDA There was an added wrinkle. although Israel and the American CIA had established a longtime close and ongoing working relationship, the CIA was monitoring Israel's nuclear weapons development. In March, 1963, Sherman Kent, the Chairman of the Board of National Estimates at the CIA, wrote an extended memorandum to the CIA's Director on the highly controversial subject entitled "Consequences of Israeli Acquisition of Nuclear Capability." According to Stephen Green, for the purposes of this internal memorandum, Kent defined "acquisition" by Israel as either (a) a detonation of a nuclear device with or without the possession of actual nuclear weapons, or (b) an announcement by Israel that it possessed nuclear weapons, even without testing. Kent's primary conclusion was that an Israeli bomb would cause 'substantial damage to the U.S. and Western position in the Arab world. According to Green's accurate assessment, "The memorandum was very strong and decidedly negative in its conclusions" which were as follows: "Even though Israel already enjoys a clear military superiority over its Arab adversaries, singly or combined, acquisition of a nuclear capability would greatly enhance Israel's sense of security. In this circumstance, some Israelis might be inclined to adopt a moderate and conciliatory posture... "We believe it much more likely, however, that Israel's policy toward its neighbors would become more rather than less tough. [Israel would] seek to exploit the psychological advantages of its nuclear capability to intimidate the Arabs and to prevent them from making trouble on the frontiers." In dealing with the United States, the CIA analyst estimated, a nuclear Israel would "make the most of the almost inevitable Arab tendency to look to the Soviet Bloc for assistance against the added Israel threat, arguing that in terms of both strength and reliability Israel was clearly the only worthwhile friend of the U.S. in the area. "Israel," in Kent's analysis, "would use all the means at its command to persuade the U.S. to acquiesce in, and even to support, its possession of nuclear capability." In short, Israel would use its immense political power - especially through its lobby in Washington - to force the United States to accede to Israel's nuclear intentions. However, the CIA did not make known its concerns about Israel's determination to produce a nuclear bomb. According to Green, "It is perhaps significant that the memorandum was not drafted as a formal national intelligence estimate (NIE), which would have involved distribution to several other agencies of the government. No formal NIE was issued by CIA on the Israeli nuclear weapons program until 1968." ... According to [New York financier Abe] Feinberg, "B.G. [Ben Gurion] could be vicious, and he had such a hatred of the old man." The "old man" in this case was the president's father, former Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, long considered not only an "anti-Semite" but a Hitler partisan. Ben-Gurion's contempt for the younger Kennedy was growing by leaps and bounds-almost pathologically. According to Hersh, "The Israeli prime minister, in subsequent private communications to the White House, began to refer to the President as 'young man.' Kennedy made clear to associates that he found the letters to be offensive." Kennedy himself told his close friend, Charles Bartlett, that he was getting fed up with the fact that the Israeli "sons of bitches lie to me constantly about their nuclear capability." Obviously, to say the very least, there was no love lost between the two leaders. The U.S.-Israeli relationship was at an ever-growing and disastrous impasse, although virtually nothing was known about this to the American 4) public at the time. p49 President Kennedy's efforts to resolve the problem of the Palestinian refugees also met with fierce and bitter resistance by Ben-Gurion. The Israeli leader refused to agree to a Kennedy proposal that the Palestinians either be permitted to return to their homes in Israel or to be compensated by Israel and resettled in the Arab countries or elsewhere. Former Undersecretary of State George Ball notes in his book, The Passionate Attachment, that "In the fall of 1962, Ben-Gurion conveyed his own views in a letter to the Israeli ambassador in Washington, intended to be circulated among Jewish American leaders, in which he stated: 'Israel will regard this plan as a more serious danger to her existence than all the threats of the Arab dictators and Kings, than all the Arab armies, than all of Nasser's missiles and his Soviet MIGs... Israel will fight against this implementation down to the last man." Clearly, then, by this point, Ben-Gurion perceived the American president's policies to be a very threat to Israel's survival. (continues ...)