Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Why Israel Is the Victim

Why Israel Is the Victim

Israel, the only democracy and tolerant society in the Middle East, is surrounded by Muslim states that have sworn to destroy it and have conducted a genocidal propaganda campaign against the Jews, promising to “finish the job that Hitler started.” A global wave of Jew-hatred, fomented by Muslim propaganda and left-wing anti-Semitism, has spread through Europe and the United Nations and made Israel a pariah nation. The classic Why Israel Is the Victim now updated in the pamphlet below sets the record straight about the Middle East conflict. In addition to restoring the historical record — a chronicle of obsessive agressions first by Arab nationalists and then by Muslim jihadists, this pamphlet brings the story up to date by showing the systematic way in which the fanatical Islamic parties, Hamas and Hezbollah, sponsored by Iran, have subverted peace in the Middle East.
As stated in “tells us why we should reject the ‘Blame Israel First’ narrative that has so thoroughly saturated the mainstream media… It confronts the myth of Arab Palestinian victimhood… and it delivers a rousing restatement of the true history of the hate that led us to all this.” America needs to be Israel’s protector, for as George Gilder has observed, “If the United States cannot defend Israel, it cannot defend itself.” Instead, under the leadership of Barack Obama, it has become Israel’s prosecutor with ominous portents for the future.
Foreword
In “Why Israel is the Victim” tells the ugly tale of the war against Israel, laying bare the sordid hypocrisies and deceits behind its campaign of violence. No volume can contain the full story of Islamic terrorism or the courageous ways in which the ordinary Israeli confronts it in the streets of his cities. What this essay does tell is the story of the lies behind that terror.
Propaganda precedes war; it digs the graves and waits for them to be filled. The war against the Jews has never been limited to bullets and swords; it has always, first and foremost, been a war of words. When bombs explode on buses and rockets rain down on Israel homes, when mobs chant “Death to the Jews” and Iran races toward the construction of its genocidal bomb; the propaganda lies to cover up these crimes must be bold enough to contain not only the murders of individuals, but the prospective massacre of millions.
The lie big enough to fill a million graves is that Israel has no right to exist, that the Jewish State is an illegitimate entity, an occupier, a warmonger and a conqueror. The big lie is that Israel has sought out the wars that have given it no peace and that the outcomes of those wars make the atrocities of its enemies understandable and even justifiable. That is the big lie that the author confronts in “Why Israel is the Victim”.
From the latest outburst of violence to its earliest antecedents under the Palestine Mandate, “Why Israel is the Victim” exposes the true nature of the war and wipes away the lies used by the killers and their collaborators to lend moral authority to their crimes. It shows not only why Israel must exist, but also why its existence has been besieged by war and terror.
 
“Why Israel is the Victim” tells us why we should reject the “Blame Israel First” narrative that has so thoroughly saturated the mainstream media. It challenges the false hope of the Two State Solution in sections such as “Self-Determination Is Not the Agenda” and “Refugees: Jewish and Arab”. It confronts the myth of Arab Palestinian victimhood in “The Policy of Resentment and Hate” and delivers a rousing restatement of the true history of the hate that led us to all this in “The Jewish Problem and Its ‘Solution’”.
Recent history shows us that it was not an Israeli refusal to grant the Palestinian Arabs the right of self-determination that led to their campaigns of terror, but that Arab Palestinian self-determination empowered a people steeped in the hatred of Jews to engage in terrorism.
With the peace process each new level of Arab Palestinian self-determination led to an intensified wave of terror against Israel, as chronicled in this pamphlet. In 2006 when the Palestinian Arabs were able to vote in a legislative election for the first time in ten years, they chose Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization that drew its popularity from its unwillingness to even entertain the thought of peace with the Jewish State.
The 2006 election showed once again that the root cause of terrorism lay in a culture where political popularity came from killing Jews, not from bringing peace.
Hamas’ ability to carry out more spectacular terrorist attacks, employing motivated Islamist suicide bombers, gave it the inside track in the election. Where Western political parties might compete for popularity by offering voters peace and prosperity, Arab Palestinian factions competed over who could kill more Jews. And Hamas won based on its killing sprees and its unwillingness to water down its platform of destroying Israel.
Hamas’ victory cannot be viewed as an isolated response to Israeli actions. Hamas leaders have stated that they were the vanguard of the Arab Spring, and the 2006 elections foreshadowed the regional downfall of Arab Socialists and the rise of the Islamists. The outcome of the elections in Egypt could have been foreseen from across the border in Gaza.
The defining test of any political philosophy in the Middle East is its ability to defeat foreign powers and drive out foreign influences. Israel has been the target of repeated efforts by both Arab Socialists and Islamists to destroy it because it is the nearest non-Arab and non-Muslim country in the region, but the regional ascendance of Islamists in the Arab Spring forces us to recognize that this phenomenon is not limited to Israel.
War is the force that gives Islamists meaning. During the last Gaza conflict, Hamas’ Al Aqsa TV broadcast the message, “Killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah.” Palestinian Arabs, who define themselves through conflict, constructing a conflict-based national identity, were destined to become the vanguard of regional Islamization.
The ascendance of Hamas has made it clearer than ever that Arab Palestinian terrorism is not the resistance of helpless people who only want autonomy and territory, but the calculated choice of determined aggressors.
If occupation were the issue, then the less territory Israel “occupied”, the more peace there would be. But the real world results of the peace experiment have led to the exact opposite outcome.
Israel’s withdrawals from Gaza and Lebanon did not lead to peace, they led to greater instability as Hamas and Hezbollah exploited the power vacuum to take over Gaza and Lebanon, and used that newfound power to escalate the conflict with Israel. The less territory Israel has occupied, the more violence there has been directed against her.
The goal of the terrorists has never been an Israeli withdrawal and a separate peace, but the perpetuation of the conflict, and the elimination of the Jewish state.
Half a year after Israel withdrew from Gaza, Hamas swept the Palestinian legislative elections. Another half a year after that, a Hamas raid netted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit as a hostage. Barely a year after Israel had withdrawn from Gaza; Hamas had found a way to bring Israeli soldiers back into Gaza for a renewal of the conflict.
Cut off from attacking Israel directly by a blockade, Hamas deepened its investment in long-range weapons systems, even while complaining that its people were going hungry. After its takeover of Gaza, it significantly improved its weapons capabilities. In 2004, it had achieved its first Kassam fatality killing a 4-year-old boy on his way to a Sderot nursery school, but by 2006, its capabilities had so dramatically improved that it was able to launch its first Katyusha rocket at Ashkelon, the third largest city in Israel’s south with a population of over 100,000.
As the volume and range of Hamas’ rockets increased, Israel was forced to take action. In 2004, Israel suffered 281 rocket attacks. By 2006, that number had increased to over 1,700. In 2008, the number of rocket and mortar attacks approached 4,000 triggering Operation Cast Lead, also known as the Gaza War.
Operation Cast Lead destroyed enough of Hamas’ stockpiles and capabilities to reduce rocket attacks down to the 2004 and 2005 levels, but another dramatic increase in attacks in 2012, with over 2,000 rockets fired into Israel, combined with the smuggling of Fajr 5 rockets capable of reaching Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, forced Israel to carry out a series of strikes against Hamas in Operation Pillar of Defense.
Both times Israel did not choose a conflict of opportunity, but reacted to a disturbing level of Hamas violence, and had nothing to gain from the conflict except for a temporary reduction of violence.
War is a choice. Hamas has chosen war over and over again and the Palestinian Arabs have chosen Hamas. After six years of fighting, in a recent poll 9 out of 10 Palestinian Arabs agreed with the tactics of Hamas proving that their violence is not a reflexive response to occupation, but a choice. The violence does not spring from the occupation. The occupation springs from their violence.
By choosing Hamas in 2006 and today, the Palestinian Arabs were not rejecting peace, for they had never chosen peace. The difference between Hamas and Arafat’s Fatah lay not in a choice between war and peace, but between overt war and covert war. Both Hamas and Fatah had dedicated themselves to the destruction of the Jewish State. The practical difference between them is that Hamas refuses to even pretend to recognize Israel’s right to exist for the sake of extracting strategic territory through negotiations.
By choosing Hamas, the Palestinian Arabs were sending the message that they felt confident enough to be able to dispense with Fatah’s dissembling and strong enough to no longer need to lie to Israel and America about wanting peace.
The ascendance of Hamas is the logical progression of the entire history of the conflict that you will read about in this pamphlet. It is the inevitable outcome of a war of destruction based on race and religion. It contains within it the inescapable truth that peace is farthest away when the terrorist groups who would destroy Israel are strongest.
Israel’s attempt to make peace with the Arab Palestinians has not ushered in an era of peace; instead it has served as a microcosm of the first fifty years of the conflict chronicled in “Why Israel is the Victim.” A slow bloody recapitulation of the unfortunate truth that the Israeli-Arab conflict is not a war of land, but a war of blood, that is not being fought to settle the ownership of a few hills or a few miles, but to exterminate the nearly 6.5 million Jews living among those miles and hills.
Looking down on the earth from space, Israel appears as only a tiny strip of land wedged at an angle between Africa, Europe and the Middle East against the Mediterranean Sea. From up here there is little to distinguish the otherwise indistinct land and no way to conceive of the terrible life and death struggle taking place in the hills, deserts and cities below.
The Jewish State, like the Jewish People, is small in size but great in presence. The scattered people that half the world has tried to destroy have formed into a nation that half the world is trying to destroy again. Only four years separated the Nazi gas chambers of 1944 from the invading Arab armies of 1948, who, along with the Nazi-funded Muslim Brotherhood, were bent on wiping out the indigenous Jewish population along with the Holocaust survivors who had made their way to the ports and shoals of the rebuilt Jewish State.
Before 1948, the Jews of Israel lived in a state of constant victimization at the hands of Islamic leaders such as Haj Amin al-Husseini, Hitler’s Mufti, and Izz ad-Din al-Qassam of The Black Hand gang, after whom Hamas’ Qassam rockets are named. After 1948 they were forced to live in a state of constant vigilance against the invasions of armies and the bombs, bullets and shells of terrorists. The Arab nations have expelled close to a million Jews and confiscated their homes and properties.
Once Israel had won its independence hardly a single decade passed without another war of aggression against her. From 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 to 1982, the coming of each new decade meant a new war. Nor was there peace between these wars. When Gaza and the West Bank were in Egyptian and Jordanian hands, Fedayeen terrorists used them as bases to invade Israel and carry out attacks within the 1948 borders. When Israel turned these territories over to the Arab Palestinian Authority, they once again became bases of terror.
At no point in time, regardless of the date, the prime minister or the policy, did Israel enjoy peace. Whether Israel was led by the right or by the left, whether it made war or peace, the violence of its enemies remained unchanged. No matter how often Israel changed how it was transformed by waves of immigration, by political and religious movements, by peace programs and technological booms, its enemies remained unwaveringly bent on its destruction.
As a nation of wandering exiles, Jews had lived with the knowledge that they had no rights that could not be taken away at a whim and no certainty of safety that would endure beyond the next explosion of violence. That is still how Israel lives today, no longer as a wandering people, but as a nation alone.
The way that a majority treats a minority is a test of its character. Nazi Germany showed what it intended for Europe with its treatment of the Jews. As did the Soviet Union. The Muslim world has likewise shown its intentions toward the rest of the world with its treatment of Israel; the only non-Muslim country in the region.
Europe’s apathy toward Hitler’s depredations in the 1930s foreshadowed its unwillingness to halt Nazi territorial expansionism. The apathy of the international community toward the war against Israel warns us of a similar apathy in a conflict that will extend as far beyond the borders of the Jewish State, as Nazi atrocities extended beyond the broken windows of the synagogues of Berlin.
Within the pages of this pamphlet you will find the story of this new war against the Jews, as a people, and against Israel, as a Jewish State.
The old saying, “A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on,” is truer than ever in the age of the Internet when the speed of lies has become instantaneous. The pamphlet that you are about to read represents an equally instantaneous response to those lies with the best possible weapon; the truth.
Arm yourself with it.
As stated.
Why Israel is the Victim
The Gaza Strip is a narrow corridor of land, 25 miles long and about twice the area of Washington, D.C. situated between the State of Israel and the Mediterranean Sea, and has a small southern border with Egypt. When the U.N. created the State of Israel out of the ruins of the Turkish Empire, in 1948, eight Arab countries launched an attack on the infant regime with the stated goal of destroying it. The attackers included Egypt whose tanks invaded Israel through the Gaza land bridge. In its defensive war against the invaders, Israel emerged triumphant but did not occupy Gaza.
In 1949, Egypt annexed the Strip. In 1967, the Egyptian dictator Gamel Abdel Nasser massed hundreds of thousands of troops on the Israeli border with Gaza and closed the Port of Eilat in an attempt to strangle the Israeli State. Israel struck back and in a “Six Day War” vanquished the Egyptian armies and drove them out of Gaza. After the war, Israel refused to withdraw its armies from Gaza and the West Bank because the Arab invaders, which included Iraq, Jordan and several other states, refused to negotiate a formal peace treaty. In the years that followed, a few thousand Jews settled in Gaza.
By 2005 they numbered 8,500, a tiny community compared to the 1.4 million Palestinian Arabs. While they lived in Gaza, the lives of the Jewish settlers were in constant danger, particularly after the formation in Gaza of one the world’s leading terrorist organizations, Hamas, whose stated goal is the destruction of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic state “from the [Jordan] River to the Sea.”
After the rejection of the Oslo Peace process in 2001 by Yassir Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinians launched four years of unrelenting terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians. The attacks were led by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an arm of the Palestinian Authority. As a result of the Arab Palestinian rejection of the peace process and the unrelenting terrorism, the Israeli government decided that a secure peace could probably not be negotiated with its Arab Palestinian antagonists. It therefore built a fence along its borders both on the West Bank and Gaza to prevent further infiltration by suicide bombers, a measure which dramatically reduced the attacks. The Israeli government further decided to remove all Jews living in the Gaza Strip and to withdraw the Israeli Defense Forces which protected them. By September 2005, the Israeli government evacuated every Jew who had been living in the Gaza Strip.
Forget for a moment all the strategic and geopolitical rationales for the Gaza pullout and consider only the reason that the Jewish settlements in Gaza were an issue at all: Palestinian Arabs and indeed all the Arab states of the Middle East hate Jews and want to dismantle the Jewish state. They hate Jews so ferociously that they cannot live alongside them. There is not an Arab state or Arab controlled piece of territory in the Middle East that will allow one Jew to live in it. This is why in 1948 the Arab states rejected the two- state solution that would have created an Arab Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza alongside the State of Israel. They wanted to destroy the Jewish state more than they wanted to create a Palestinian one.
In contrast to the hostility of all Arab states to any Jew, Israel has welcomed Palestinian Arabs to its communities. There are more than a million Arabs living safely in Israel where they enjoy more citizen rights than the Arabs living in any Arab country, or for that matter the Muslims living in any Muslim country. If Arabs treated Jews half as well, there would be no Middle East “problem.”
But the ethnic cleansing of the Jews has always been the objective of Arabs and Palestinians. The real goal of Arab nationalism has always been an Islamic Arab Middle East with no competing nationalities or cultures. Palestinians Arabs have shown twice in 1948 and again in 2001 that they want to kill Jews more than they want an Arab Palestinian state.
The tiny Jewish population of Gaza created an agricultural industry in fruits, vegetables and flowers. During their years in Gaza, they constructed greenhouses that produced an abundance of vegetables. In just this industry alone, Jews, representing less than one-hundredth of the Gaza population, produced nearly 20% of its gross domestic product. Now, the entire gross domestic product of Gaza is only $770 million.1 If the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza weren’t consumed with ethnic hate, they would have done everything in their power to import more Jews rather than agitate to get rid of them. With 50,000 Jews – still a small minority in a population of 1.4 million they could have doubled their economy.
When the Jews left, there remained the problem of what to do with the existing greenhouses. A Jewish philanthropist in America stepped forward to solve the problem. Mortimer Zuckerman, the publisher of U.S. News and World Report,’ raised $14 million to buy the greenhouses from their Jewish owners and give them to the Palestinians in Gaza. It was a gesture of peace, an effort to encourage the Palestinians to look on the withdrawal from Gaza as a step in the process of ending the fifty year war of the Arab states and the Palestinian Arabs against Israel.
The Palestinian answer to this peace offering was unambiguous and swift. As soon as the Israeli troops left, Palestinians Arabs rushed in to loot the greenhouses that had been given to them, stripping them of the pumps, hoses and other equipment that had made them so productive.2
The withdrawal from Gaza is an emblem of the entire Middle East conflict. It is not a conflict of right versus right. It is a conflict inspired by ethnic hate, by the unwillingness of the Arabs of the Middle East to live as neighbors with a people that are democratic, non-Arab and non-Muslim. The cause of the conflict is that the Arabs hate Jews more than they love peace.
The Jewish Problem and Its “Solution”
Zionism is a national liberation movement, identical in most ways to other liberation movements that leftists and progressives the world over—and in virtually every case but this one—fervently support. This exceptionalism is also visible at the reverse end of the political spectrum: In every other instance, right-wingers oppose national liberation movements that are under the spell of Marxist delusions and committed to violent means. But they make an exception for the one that Palestinians have aimed at the Jews. The unique opposition to a Jewish homeland at both ends of the political spectrum identifies the problem that Zionism was created to solve.
The “Jewish problem” is just another name for the fact that Jews are the most universally hated and persecuted ethnic group in history. The Zionist founders believed that hatred of Jews was a direct consequence of their stateless condition. As long as Jews were aliens in every society they found themselves in, they would always be seen as interlopers, their loyalties would be suspect and persecution would follow. This was what happened to Captain Alfred Dreyfus, whom French anti-Semites falsely accused of spying and who was put on trial for treason by the French government in the 19th Century. Theodore Herzl was an assimilated, westernized Jew, who witnessed the Dreyfus frame up in Paris and went on to lead the Zionist movement.
Herzl and other Zionist founders believed that if Jews had a nation of their own, the very fact would “normalize” their condition in the community of nations. Jews had been without a state since the beginning of the Diaspora, when the Romans expelled them from Judea on the west bank of the Jordan River, some 2,000 years before. Once the Jews obtained a homeland—Judea itself seemed a logical site— and were again like other peoples, the Zionists believed anti-Semitism would wither on its poisonous vine and the Jewish problem would disappear.
But something altogether different happened instead.3 In the 1920s, among their final acts as victors in World War I, the British and French created the states that now define the Middle East out of the ashes of the empire of their defeated Turkish adversary. In a region that the Ottoman Turks had controlled for hundreds of years, Britain and France drew the boundaries of the new states, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. Previously, the British had promised the Jewish Zionists that they could establish a “national home” in a portion of what remained of the area, which was known as the Palestine Mandate. After WWI between 1919 and 1920. Insofar as the Ottoman Turkish Empire was concerned, the settlement embraced the claims of the Zionist Organization, the Arab National movement, the Kurds, the Assyrians and the Armenians.
As part of the settlement in which the Arabs received most of the lands formerly under Turkish sovereignty in the Middle East, the whole of Palestine, on both sides of the Jordan, was reserved exclusively for the Jewish people as their national home and future independent state.
But in 1921, the British separated 80% of the land of Israel and established “Transjordan.” It was created for the Arabian monarch King Abdullah, who had been defeated in tribal warfare in the Arabian Peninsula and lacked a seat of power. Abudllah’s tribe was Hashemite, while the vast majority of Abdullah’s subjects were Palestinian Arabs.
What was left of the original Palestine Mandate—between the west bank of the Jordan and the Mediterranean sea—had been settled by Arabs and Jews. Jews, in fact, had lived in the area continuously for 3,700 years, even after the Romans destroyed their state in Judea in 70 AD. Arabs became the dominant local population for the first time in the 7th Century AD as a result of the Muslim invasions. These Arabs were largely nomads who had no distinctive language or culture to separate them from other Arabs. In all the time since, they had made no attempt to create an independent Arab Palestinian state west or east of the Jordan River and none was ever established.
The pressure for a Jewish homeland was dramatically increased, of course, by the Nazi Holocaust which targeted the Jews for extermination and succeeded in killing six million, in part because no country—not even England or the United States— would open their borders and allow Jews fleeing death to enter. In 1948, the United Nations voted to partition the remaining portion of the original Mandate, which had not been given to Jordan, to make a Jewish homeland possible.
Under the partition plan, the Arabs were given the Jews’ ancient home in Judea and Samaria—now known as the West Bank, and the “Gaza Strip” on the border with Egypt. The Jews were allotted three slivers of disconnected land along the Mediterranean and the Sinai desert. They were also cut off from the slivers, surrounded by Arab land and under international control. Sixty percent of the land allotted to the Jews was the Negev desert. The entire portion represented only about 10% of the original Palestine Mandate. Out of these unpromising parts, the Jews created a new state, Israel, in 1948. At this time, the idea of an Arab Palestinian nation, or a movement to create one did not even exist.
Thus, at the moment of Israel’s birth, Palestinian Arabs lived on roughly 90% of the original Palestine Mandate— in Transjordan and in the UN partition area, but also in the new state of Israel itself. There were 800,000 Arabs living in Israel alongside 650,000 Jews (a figure that would increase rapidly as a result of the influx of refugees from Europe and the Middle East). At the same time, Jews were legally barred from settling in the 35,000 square miles of Palestinian Transjordan, which eventually was renamed simply “Jordan.”
The Arab population in Israel had actually more than tripled since the Zionists first began settling the region in significant numbers in the 1880s. The reason for this increase was that the Jewish settlers had brought industrial and agricultural development with them, which attracted Arab immigrants to what, had previously been a sparsely settled and economically destitute area.
If the Palestinian Arabs had been willing to accept this arrangement in which they received 90% of the land in the Palestine Mandate, and under which they benefited from the industry, enterprise and political democracy the Jews brought to the region, there would have been no Middle East conflict. But they were not.
Instead, the Arab League—representing five neighboring Arab states— declared war on Israel on the day of its creation, and five Arab armies invaded the slivers with the aim of destroying the infant Jewish state. During the fighting, according to the UN mediator on the scene, an estimated 472,000 Arabs fled their homes and left the infant state. Some fled to escape the dangers; others were driven out in the heat of war. They planned on returning after what they assumed would be the inevitable Arab victory and the destruction of the infant Jewish state.
But the Jews—many of them recent Holocaust survivors— refused to be defeated. Instead, the five Arab armies that had invaded were repelled. Yet there was no peace. Even though their armies were beaten, the Arab states were determined to carry on their campaign of destruction and to remain formally at war with the Israeli state. After the defeat of the Arab armies, the Palestinians who lived in the Arab area of the UN partition did not attempt to create a state of their own. Instead, in 1950, Jordan annexed the entire West Bank and Egypt annexed the Gaza Strip. There were no international protests.
Refugees: Jewish and Arab
As a result of the annexation and the continuing state of war, the Arab refugees who had fled the Israeli slivers did not return. There was a refugee flow into Israel, but it was a flow of Jews who had been expelled from the Arab countries. All over the Middle East, Jews were forced to leave lands they had lived on for centuries. Although Israel was a tiny geographical area and a fledgling state, its government welcomed and resettled 600,000 Jewish refugees and made them citizens.
At the same time, the Jews resumed their work of creating a new nation. Israel had annexed a small amount of territory to make their state defensible, including a land bridge that connected to Jerusalem.
In the years that followed, the Israelis made their desert bloom. They built the only industrialized economy in the entire Middle East. They built the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. They treated the Arabs who remained in Israel well. To this day the very large Arab minority, which lives inside the state of Israel, has more rights and privileges than any other Arab population in the entire Middle East. This is especially true of the Arabs who lived under Yasser Arafat’s corrupt dictatorship, and live presently under the Arab Palestine Authority, which inherited his totalitarian rule and today administers the West Bank.
The present Middle East conflict is said to be about the “occupied territories”—the West Bank of the Jordan and the Gaza strip—and about Israel’s refusal to “give them up.” But during the first twenty years of the Arab Israeli conflict, Israel did not control the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. When Jordan annexed the West Bank and Egypt annexed the Gaza strip after the 1948 war, there was no Arab outrage. But the war against Israel continued. In the early 1950s, Egypt violated the terms of the Egyptian-Israeli armistice agreement and blocked Israeli ships from passing through the Suez Canal, a major international waterway. It also began to block traffic through the Straits of Tiran, a narrow passage of water linking the Israeli port of Eilat to the Red Sea. This action effectively cut off the port of Eilat -- Israel's sole outlet to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. Closure of the Suez Canal and the Tiran Straits damaged Israel's trade with Asia, for it meant that foreign ships carrying goods bound for Israel and Israeli ships carrying goods bound for the Far East had to travel a long and costly circuitous route to the Atlantic and Israel's Mediterranean ports.
At the same time, Palestinian Arab fedayeen launched cross-border infiltrations and attacks on Israeli civilian centers and military outposts from Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Arab infiltration and Israeli retaliation became a regular pattern of Arab-Israeli relations. Israel hoped that its harsh reprisals would compel Arab governments to restrain infiltrators into Israel. In 1955 alone, 260 Israeli citizens were killed or wounded by fedayeen.
In July 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, threatening British and French interests in oil supplies and western trade. Their interests converging, Israel, Britain and France planned an attack on Egypt, with the former seeking free navigation through international waters and an end to terrorist attacks and the latter two hoping to seize control of the Suez Canal.
On October 29, 1956, Israel began its assault on Egyptian military positions, capturing the whole of the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula. On October 31, France and Britain joined the fray and hostilities ended on November 5. The U.S. was caught completely by surprise and voiced strong opposition to the joint attack. The U.S. pressured Israel to withdraw from Egyptian territory. United Nations forces were stationed along the Egyptian-Israeli border to prevent an Egyptian blockade and deter cross-border infiltrations. Israel declared that if Egyptian forces would again blockade the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba, it would consider this a casus belli.
 
The Arab Wars Against Israel
In 1967, Egypt, Syria and Jordan—whose leaders had never ceased to call for the destruction of Israel—massed hundreds of thousands of troops on Israel’s borders and blockaded the Straits of Tiran, closing the Port of Eilat; Israel’s only opening to the East. This was an act of war. Because Israel had no landmass to defend itself from being overrun, it struck the Arab armies first and defeated them as it had in 1948. It was in repelling these armies that Israel came to control the West Bank and the Gaza strip, as well as the oil rich Sinai desert. Israel had every right to annex these territories captured from the aggressors, which historically belonged to the Jews—a time honored ritual among nations and in fact the precise way that Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan had come into existence themselves. But Israel did not do so. On the other hand, neither did it withdraw its armies or relinquish its control.
The reason was that the Arab aggressors once again refused to make peace. Instead, they declared themselves still at war, a threat no Israeli government could afford to ignore. By this time, Israel was a country of 2 to 3 million surrounded by declared enemies whose combined populations numbered over 100 million. Geographically, Israel was so small that at one point it was less than ten miles across. No responsible Israeli government could relinquish a territorial buffer while its hostile neighbors were still formally at war. This is the reality that frames the Middle East conflict.
In 1973, six years after the second Arab war against the Jews, the Arab armies again attacked Israel. The attack was led by Syria and Egypt, abetted by Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and five other countries who gave military support to the aggressors, including an Iraqi division of 18,000 men. Israel again defeated the Arab forces. Afterwards, Egypt— and Egypt alone—agreed to make a formal peace.
The peace was signed by Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, who was subsequently assassinated by Islamic radicals, paying for his statesmanship with his life. Sadat is one of three Arab leaders assassinated by other Arabs for making peace with the Jews.
Under the Camp David accords that Sadat signed, Israel returned the entire Sinai with all its oil riches. This act demonstrated once and for all that the solution to the Middle East conflict was ready at hand. It only required the willingness of the Arabs to agree.
Even to this day, the Arabs claim that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are the obstacle to peace. But the Arab settlements in Israel—they are actually called “cities”—are not a problem for Israel so why should Jewish settlements be a problem for the Arabs? The claim that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are an obstacle to peace is based first of all on the assumption that the Jews will never relinquish any of their settlements, which the Camp David accords proved false. It is really based, however, on the assumption that Jewish settlements will not be allowed in an Arab Palestinian state—which is an Arab decision and is the essence of the entire problem: the unwillingness of the Arabs to live side by side with “infidel” Jews.
The Middle East conflict is not about Israel’s reoccupation of its rightful territories; it is about the refusal of the Arabs to make peace with Israel, which is an inevitable byproduct of their desire to destroy it. This desire is encapsulated in the word all Palestinians Arabs – “moderates” and extremists – use to describe the creation of Israel. They call the birth of Israel the “Nakhba,” the catastrophe.
Self Determination Is Not The Agenda
The Palestinians Arabs and their supporters also claim that the Middle East conflict is about the Arab Palestinians’ yearning for a state and the refusal of Israel to accept their aspiration. This claim is also false. The Palestine Liberation Organization was created in 1964, sixteen years after the establishment of Israel and the first anti-Israel war. The PLO was created at a time the West Bank was not under Israeli control but was part of Jordan. The PLO, however, was not created so that the Arab Palestinians could achieve self determination in Jordan, which at the time comprised 90% of the original Palestine Mandate. The PLO’s express purpose, in the words of its own leaders, was to “push the Jews into the sea.”
The official “covenant” of the new Palestine Liberation Organization referred to the “Zionist invasion,” declared that Israel’s Jews were “not an independent nationality,” described Zionism as “racist” and “fascist,” called for “the liquidation of the Zionist presence,” and specified, “armed struggle is the only way to liberate Jewish Palestine.” In short, “liberation” required the destruction of the Jewish state.
For thirty years, the PLO covenant remained unchanged in its call for Israel’s destruction. Then in the mid 1990s, under enormous international pressure following the 1993 Oslo accords, PLO leader Yasser Arafat agreed to revise the covenant. However, no new covenant was drafted or ratified. Moreover, Arafat simultaneously assured Arab Palestinians that the proposed revision was purely tactical and did not alter the movement’s ultimate goals. He did this explicitly and in a speech given to the Arab Palestine Legislative Council when he called on Arab Palestinians to remember the Prophet Muhammad’s Treaty of Hudaybiyah. The Prophet Muhammad had entered into a 10 year peace pact with the Koresh tribe back in the 7th century, known as the Hudaybiyah Treaty. The treaty was born of necessity. Two years later, when he had mustered enough military strength, Muhammad conquered the Koresh who surrendered without a fight. Arafat was signaling that whatever he might say, he intended to follow the example of the Prophet.
Even during the “Oslo” peace process—when the Palestine Liberation Organization pretended to recognize the existence of Israel and the Jews therefore allowed the creation of a “Palestine Authority”—it was clear that the PLO’s goal was Israel’s destruction, and not just because its leader invoked the Prophet Muhammad’s own deception. The Arab Palestinians’ determination to destroy Israel is abundantly clear in their newly created demand of a “right of return” to Israel for “5 million” Arabs. The figure of 5 million refugees who must be returned to Israel is more than ten times the number of Arabs who actually left the Jewish slivers of the British Mandate in 1948. Moreover, a poll of Arab Palestinian refugee families in the West Bank conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in the spring of 2003 revealed that only 10% of those questioned said they actually wanted to return.
In addition to its absurdity, this new demand has several aspects that reveal the Arab Palestinians’ genocidal agenda for the Jews. The first is that the “right of return” is itself a calculated mockery of the primary reason for Israel’s existence—the fact that no country would provide a refuge for Jews fleeing Hitler’s extermination program during World War II. It is only because the world turned its back on the Jews when their survival was at stake that the state of Israel grants a “right of return” to every Jew who asks for it.
But there is no genocidal threat to Arabs, no lack of international support militarily and economically, and no Arab Palestinian “Diaspora” (although the Arab Palestinians have cynically appropriated the very term to describe their self inflicted quandary). The fact that many Arabs, including the Arab Palestinian spiritual leader—the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem— supported Hitler’s “Final Solution” only serves to compound the insult. It is even further compounded by the fact that more than 90% of the Arab Palestinians now in the West Bank and Gaza have never lived a day of their lives in territorial Israel. The claim of a “right of return” is thus little more than a brazen expression of contempt for the Jews, and for their historic suffering.
More importantly, it is an expression of contempt for the very idea of a Jewish state. The incorporation of five million Arabs into Israel would render the Jews a permanent minority in their own country, and would thus spell the end of Israel. The Arabs fully understand this, and that is why they have made it a fundamental demand. It is just one more instance of the general bad faith the Arab side has manifested through every chapter of these tragic events.
Possibly the most glaring expression of the Arabs’ bad faith is their deplorable treatment of the Arab Palestinian refugees and refusal for over a half century to relocate them, or to alleviate their condition, even during the years they were under Jordanian rule. While Israel was making the desert bloom and relocating 600,000 Jewish refugees expelled from Arab states, and building a thriving industrial democracy, the Arabs were busy making sure that their refugees remained in squalid refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza, where they were powerless, without rights, and economically destitute. Despite economic aid from the UN and Israel itself, despite the oil wealth of the Arab kingdoms, the Arab leaders have refused to undertake the efforts that would liberate the refugees from their miserable camps, or to make the economic investment that would alleviate their condition. There are now 22 Arab states providing homes for the same ethnic population, speaking a common Arabic language. But the only one that will allow Arab Palestinian Arabs to become citizens is Jordan. And the only state the Palestinians covet is Israel.
The Policy of Resentment and Hate
The refusal to address the condition of the Arab Palestinian refugee population is—and has always been—a calculated Arab policy, intended to keep the Arab Palestinians in a state of desperation in order to incite their hatred of Israel for the wars to come. Not to leave anything to chance, the mosques and schools of the Arabs generally—and the Arab Palestinians in particular—preach and teach Jew hatred every day. Elementary school children in Palestinian Arab schools are even taught to chant “Death to the heathen Jews” in their classrooms as they are learning to read. It should not be overlooked, that these twin policies of deprivation (of the Palestinian Arabs) and hatred (of the Jews) are carried out without any protest from any sector of Arab Palestinian or Arab society. That in itself speaks volumes about the nature of the Middle East conflict.
There are plenty of individual Arab Palestinian victims, as there are Jewish victims, familiar from the nightly news. But the collective Arab Palestinian grievance is without justice. It is a self -inflicted wound, the product of the Arabs’ xenophobia, bigotry, exploitation of their own people, and apparent inability to be generous towards those who are not Arabs. While Israel is an open, democratic, multi-ethnic, multicultural society that includes a large enfranchised Arab minority, the Arab Palestine Authority is an intolerant, undemocratic, monolithic police state with one dictatorial leader, whose ruinous career has run now for 37 years.
As the repellent attitudes, criminal methods and dishonest goals of the Palestine liberation movement should make clear to any reasonable observer; its present cause is based on Jew hatred, and on resentment of the modern, democratic West, and little else. Since there was no Arab Palestinian nation before the creation of Israel, and since Arab Palestinians regarded themselves simply as Arabs and their land as part of Syria, it is not surprising that many of the chief creators of the Palestine Liberation Organization did not even live in the Palestine Mandate before the creation of Israel, let alone in the sliver of mostly desert that was allotted to the Jews.
While the same Arab states that claim to be outraged by the Jews’ treatment of how Arab Palestinians treat their own Arab populations far worse than Arabs are treated in Israel, they are also silent about the disenfranchised Arab Palestinian majority that lives in Jordan. In 1970, Jordan’s King Hussein massacred thousands of PLO militants. But the PLO does not call for the overthrow of Hashemite rule in Jordan and does not hate the Hashemite monarchy. Only Jews are hated.
It is hatred, moreover, that is increasingly lethal. During the Second Intifada 70% of the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza approved the suicide bombing of women and children if the targets were Jews. There is no Arab “Peace Now” movement, not even a small one, whereas in Israel the movement demanding concessions to Arabs in the name of peace is a formidable political force. There is no Arab spokesman who will speak for the rights and sufferings of Jews, but there are hundreds of thousands of Jews in Israel— and all over the world—who will speak for “justice” for the Palestinians. How can the Jews expect fair treatment from a people that collectively does not even recognize their humanity?
A Phony Peace
The Oslo peace process begun in 1993 was based on the pledge of both parties to renounce violence as a means of settling their dispute. But the Arab Palestinians never renounced violence and in the year 2000, they officially launched a new Intifada against Israel, effectively terminating the peace process.
In fact, during the peace process—between 1993 and 1999—there were over 4,000 terrorist incidents committed by Arab Palestinians against Israelis, and more than 1,000 Israelis killed as a result of Arab Palestinian attacks—more than had been killed in the previous 25 years. By contrast, during the same period Israelis were so desperate for peace that they reciprocated these acts of murder by giving the Arab Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza a self-governing authority, a 40,000 man armed “police force,” and 95% of the territory their negotiators demanded. This Israeli generosity was rewarded by a rejection of peace, suicide bombings of crowded discos and shopping malls, an outpouring of ethnic hatred and a renewed declaration of war.
In fact, the Arab Palestinians broke the Oslo Accords precisely because of Israeli generosity, because the government of Ehud Barak offered to meet 95% of their demands, including turning over parts of Jerusalem to their control—a possibility once considered unthinkable. These concessions confronted Yassir Arafat with the one outcome he did not want: Peace with Israel. Peace without the destruction of the “Jewish Entity.”
Arafat rejected these Israeli concessions, accompanying his rejection with a new explosion of anti-Jewish violence. He named this violence—deviously— “The al-Aqsa Intifada,” after the mosque on the Temple Mount, giving his new jihad the name of a Muslim shrine to create the illusion that the Intifada was provoked not by his unilateral destruction of the Oslo peace process, but by then hard-line opposition leader Ariel Sharon’s highly publicized visit to the site. Months after the Intifada began; the Arab Palestine Authority itself admitted this was just another Arafat lie.
In fact, the Intifada had been planned months before Sharon’s visit as a follow-up to the rejection of the Oslo Accords. In the words of Imad Faluji, the Arab Palestine Authority’s communications minister, “[The uprising] had been planned since Chairman Arafat’s return from Camp David, when he turned the tables on the former U.S. president [Clinton] and rejected the American conditions.” The same conclusion was reached by the Mitchell Commission headed by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell to investigate the events: “The Sharon visit did not cause the al-Aqsa Intifada.”
In an interview he gave after the new Intifada began, Faisal Husseini—a well-known “moderate” in the PLO leadership, compared the Oslo “peace process” to a “Trojan horse” designed to fool the Israelis into letting the Arab Palestinians arm themselves inside the Jewish citadel in order to destroy it. “If you are asking me as a Pan-Arab nationalist what are the Arab Palestinian borders according to the higher strategy, I will immediately reply: ‘From the river to the sea’”— in other words, from the Jordan to the Mediterranean, with not even the original slivers left for Israel. Note too, Husseini’s self identification as a “Pan-Arab nationalist.” Just as there is no Arab Palestinian desire for peace with Israel, there is no “Palestinian” Arabs.4
Moral Distinctions
In assessing the reasons for the Middle East impasse one must also pay attention to the moral distinction between the two combatants as revealed in their actions. When a deranged Jew goes into an Arab mosque and kills the worshippers (which happened once) he is acting alone and is universally condemned by the Israeli government and the Jews in Israel and everywhere. But when an Arab suicide bomber wades into a crowd of families with baby strollers leaving evening worship, or enters a disco filled with teenagers or a shopping mall crowded with women and children and blows them up (which has happened frequently), he is someone who has been trained and sent by a component of the PLO or the Palestine Authority; has been told by his religious leaders that his crime will get him into heaven where he will feast on 72 virgins; his praises will be officially sung throughout the Arab world; his mother will be given money by the Arab Palestine Authority; and his Arab neighbors will come to pay honor to the household for having produced a “martyr for Allah.” The Palestinian liberation movement is the first such cause to elevate the killing of children—both the enemy’s and its own—into a religious calling. Even Hitler didn’t think of this.
It is not only the methods of the Arab Palestine liberation movement that are morally repellent. The Arab Palestinian cause is itself corrupt. The “Arab Palestinian problem” is a problem created by the Arabs themselves, and can only be solved by them. The reason there are Arab Palestinian “refugees” is because no Arab state— except Jordan—will allow them to become citizens and the organs of the PLO and the Palestine Authority, despite billions in revenues, have let them to stew in refugee camps for 50 years. (In contrast, Israel has been steadily absorbing and settling Jewish refugees over the same time period). In Jordan, Arab Palestinians already have a state in which they are a majority but which denies them self determination. Why is Jordan not the object of the Arab Palestinian “liberation” struggle? The only possible answer is because it is not ruled by the hated Jews.
The famous “green line” marking the boundary between Israel and its Arab neighbors is also the bottom line for what is the real problem in the Middle East. It is green because plants are growing in the desert on the Israeli side but not on the Arab side. The Jews got a sliver of land without oil, and created abundant wealth and life in all its rich and diverse forms. The Arabs got nine times the acreage but all they have done with it is to sit on its aridity and nurture the poverty, resentments and hatreds of its inhabitants. Out of these dark elements they have created and perfected the vilest antihuman terrorism the world has ever seen: Suicide bombing of civilians.
If a nation state is all the Arab Palestinians desire, Jordan would be the solution. (So would settling for 95% of the land one is demanding—the Barak offer rejected by Arafat.) But the Arab Palestinians want to destroy Israel. This is morally hateful. It is the Nazi virus revived. Despite this, the Arab Palestinian cause is generally supported by the international community with the singular exception of the United States (and to a lesser degree Great Britain). It is precisely because the Arab Palestinians want to destroy a state that Jews have created—and because they are killing Jews—that they enjoy international credibility and otherwise inexplicable support.
The Jewish Problem Once More
It is this international resistance to the cause of Jewish survival, the persistence of global Jew-hatred that, in the end, refutes the Zionist hope of a solution to the “Jewish problem.” The creation of Israel is an awe-inspiring human success story. But the permanent war to destroy it undermines the original Zionist idea.
More than fifty years after the creation of Israel, the Jews are still the most hated ethnic group in the world. Islamic radicals want to destroy Israel, but so do Islamic moderates. Hatred of Jews is taught in Islam’s mosques; in Egypt and in other Arab countries Mein Kampf is a bestseller; the anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, is promoted by the government press throughout the Arab Middle East, and Jewish conspiracy theories abound, as in the following statement from a sermon given by the Mufti of Jerusalem, the spiritual leader of the Palestinian Arabs in the al-Aqsa mosque on July 11, 1997: “Oh Allah, destroy America, for she is ruled by Zionist Jews …”
For the Jews in the Middle East, the present conflict is a life and death struggle, yet every government in the UN with the exception of the United States and sometimes Britain regularly votes against Israel in the face of a terrorist enemy who has no respect for the rights or lives of Jews. After the al-Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center, the French ambassador to England complained that the whole world was endangered because of “that shitty little country,” Israel. This caused a scandal in England, but nowhere else.
All that stands between the Jews of the Middle East and another Holocaust is their own military prowess and the generous, humanitarian support of the United States. Even in the United States, however, one can now turn the TV to channels like MSNBC and CNN to see the elected Prime Minister of a democracy equated politically and morally with terrorists and enemies of the United States such as the leaders of Hamas.
During the first Gulf War, Israel was America’s firm ally while Arafat and the Arab Palestinians were Saddam Hussein’s staunchest Arab supporters. Yet the next two U.S. administrations—Republican and Democrat alike—strove for evenhanded “neutrality” in the conflict in the Middle East, and pressured Israel into a suicidal “peace process” with a foe dedicated to its destruction. Only after September 11 was the United States willing to recognize Arafat as an enemy of peace and not a viable negotiating partner. And now the pendulum has swung back with the ascension of Barack Obama to the Presidency.
In terms of the “Jewish problem” that Herzl and the Zionist founders set out to solve, it is safer today to be a Jew in America than a Jew in Israel. This is one reason why I, a Jew, am an un-ambivalent, passionate American patriot. America is good for the Jews as it is good for every other minority who embraces its social contract. But this history of the attempt to establish a Jewish state in the Middle East is also why I am a fierce supporter of Israel’s survival and have no sympathy for the Arab Palestinian side in this conflict. Nor will I have such sympathy until the day comes when I can look into the Arab Palestinians’ eyes and see something other than death desired for Jews like me.
Any sincere Muslim must recognize the Land they call "Palestine" as the Jewish Homeland, according to the book considered by Muslims to be the most sacred word and Allah's ultimate revelation.

The Qur'an 17:104 - states the land belongs to the Jewish people.
 
       

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Tuesday, January 10, 2012

The first U.S. Jewish President? Read to the bottom‏

The first U.S. Jewish President? Read to the bottom‏
ADDITIONAL NOTE: Lyndon Johnson’s maternal ancestors, the Huffmans, apparently migrated to Frederick, Maryland from Germany sometime in the mid-eighteenth century. Later they moved to Bourbon, Kentucky and eventually settled in Texas in the mid-to-late nineteenth century.10
According to Jewish law, if a person’s mother is Jewish, then that person is automatically Jewish, regardless of the father’s ethnicity or religion. The facts indicate that both of Lyndon Johnson’s great-grandparents, on the maternal side, were Jewish. These were the grandparents of Lyndon’s mother, Rebecca Baines.11 Their names were John S. Huffman and Mary Elizabeth Perrin.12John Huffman’s mother was Suzanne Ament, a common Jewish name. Perrin is also a common Jewish name.
Huffman and Perrin had a daughter, Ruth Ament Huffman,13 who married Joseph Baines14 and together they had a daughter, Rebekah Baines,15 Lyndon Johnson’s mother. The line of Jewish mothers can be traced back three generations in Lyndon Johnson’s family tree. There is little doubt that he was Jewish."

 THIS IS AN AMAZING & INTERESTING READ! IT CAME FROM A RELIABLE SOURCE SO... I ASSUME IT'S ACCURATE.

"A few months ago, the Associated Press reported that newly released tapes from US president Lyndon Johnson's White House office showed LBJ's "personal and often emotional connection to Israel.” The news agency pointed out that during the Johnson presidency (1963-1969), "the United States became Israel’s chief diplomatic ally and primary arms supplier."

But the news report does little to reveal the full historical extent of Johnson's actions on behalf of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.
Most students of the Arab-Israeli conflict can identify Johnson as the president during the 1967 war. But few know about LBJ's actions to rescue hundreds of endangered Jews during the Holocaust - actions that could have thrown him out of Congress and into jail. Indeed, the title of "Righteous Gentile" is certainly appropriate in the case of the Texan, whose centennial year is being commemorated this year.

Appropriately enough, the annual Jerusalem Conference announced this week that it will honor Johnson.

Historians have revealed that Johnson, while serving as a young congressman in 1938 and 1939, arranged for visas to be supplied to Jews in Warsaw, and oversaw the apparently illegal immigration of hundreds of Jews through the port of Galveston, Texas....

A key resource for uncovering LBJ's pro-Jewish activity is the unpublished 1989 doctoral thesis by University of Texas student Louis Gomolak, "Prologue: LBJ's Foreign Affairs Background, 1908-1948.” Johnson's activities were confirmed by other historians in interviews with his wife, family members and political associates.

Research into Johnson's personal history indicates that he inherited his concern for the Jewish people from his family. His aunt Jessie Johnson Hatcher, a major influence on LBJ, was a member of the Zionist Organization of America. According to Gomolak, Aunt Jessie had nurtured LBJ's commitment to befriending Jews for 50 years. As young boy, Lyndon watched his politically active grandfather "Big Sam" and father "Little Sam" seek clemency for Leo Frank, the Jewish victim of a blood libel in Atlanta

Frank was lynched by a mob in 1915, and the Ku Klux Klan in Texas threatened to kill the Johnsons. The Johnsons later told friends that Lyndon's family hid in their cellar while his father and uncles stood guard with shotguns on their porch in case of KKK attacks. Johnson's speech writer later stated, "Johnson often cited Leo Frank's lynching as the source of his opposition to both anti-Semitism and isolationism."

Already in 1934 - four years before Chamberlain's Munich sellout to Hitler - Johnson was keenly alert to the dangers of Nazism and presented a book of essays, 'Nazism: An Assault on Civilization', to the 21-year-old woman he was courting, Claudia Taylor - later known as "Lady Bird" Johnson. It was an incredible engagement present.

FIVE DAYS after taking office in 1937, LBJ broke with the "Dixiecrats" and supported an immigration bill that would naturalize illegal aliens, mostly Jews from Lithuania and Poland. In 1938, Johnson was told of a young Austrian Jewish musician who was about to be deported from the United States. With an element of subterfuge, LBJ sent him to the US Consulate in Havana to obtain a residency permit. Erich Leinsdorf, the world famous musician and conductor, credited LBJ for saving his live.

That same year, LBJ warned Jewish friend, Jim Novy, that European Jews faced annihilation. "Get as many Jewish people as possible out of Germany and Poland," were Johnson's instructions. Somehow, Johnson provided him with a pile of signed immigration papers that were used to get 42 Jews out of Warsaw.

But that wasn't enough. According to historian James M. Smallwood, Congressman Johnson used legal and sometimes illegal methods to smuggle "hundreds of Jews into Texas, using Galveston as the entry port.

Enough money could buy false passports and fake visas in Cuba, Mexico and other Latin American countries. Johnson smuggled boatloads and planeloads of Jews into Texas. He hid them in the Texas National Youth Administration. Johnson saved at least four or five hundred Jews, possibly more."

During World War II Johnson joined Novy at a small Austin gathering to sell $65,000 in war bonds. According to Gomolak, Novy and Johnson then raised a very "substantial sum for arms for Jewish underground fighters in Palestine." One source cited by the historian reports that "Novy and Johnson had been secretly shipping heavy crates labeled 'Texas Grapefruit' - but containing arms - to Jewish underground 'freedom fighters' in Palestine."

ON JUNE 4, 1945, Johnson visited Dachau. According to Smallwood, Lady Bird later recalled that when her husband returned home, "he was still shaken, stunned, terrorized, and bursting with an overpowering revulsion and incredulous horror at what he had seen."

A decade later while serving in the Senate, Johnson blocked the Eisenhower administration's attempts to apply sanctions against Israel following the 1956 Sinai Campaign. "The indefatigable Johnson had never ceased pressure on the administration," wrote I.L. "Si" Kenen, the head of AIPAC at the time.

As Senate majority leader, Johnson consistently blocked the anti-Israel initiatives of his fellow Democrat, William Fulbright, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Among Johnson's closest advisers during this period were several strong pro-Israel advocates, including Benjamin Cohen (who 30 years earlier was the liaison between Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis and Chaim Weizmann) and Abe Fortas, the legendary Washington "insider."

Johnson's concern for the Jewish people continued through his presidency. Soon after taking office in the aftermath of John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963, Johnson told an Israeli diplomat, "You have lost a very great friend, but you have found a better one."

Just one month after succeeding Kennedy, LBJ attended the December 1963 dedication of the Agudas Achim Synagogue in Austin. Novy opened the ceremony by saying to Johnson, "We can't thank him enough for all those Jews he got out of Germany during the days of Hitler."

Lady Bird would later describe the day, according to Gomolak: "Person after person plucked at my sleeve and said, 'I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for him. He helped me get out.'" Lady Bird elaborated, "Jews had been woven into the warp and woof of all [Lyndon's] years."

THE PRELUDE to the 1967 war was a terrifying period for Israel, with the US State Department led by the historically unfriendly Dean Rusk urging an evenhanded policy despite Arab threats and acts of aggression. Johnson held no such illusions. After the war he placed the blame firmly on Egypt: "If a single act of folly was more responsible for this explosion than any other, it was the arbitrary and dangerous announced decision [by Egypt that the Strait of Tiran would be closed [to Israeli ships and Israeli-bound cargo]."

Kennedy was the first president to approve the sale of defensive US weapons to Israel, specifically Hawk anti-aircraft missiles. But Johnson approved tanks and fighter jets, all vital after the 1967 war when France imposed a freeze on sales to Israel. Yehuda Avner recently described on these pages prime minister Levi Eshkol's successful appeal for these weapons on a visit to the LBJ ranch.

Israel won the 1967 war, and Johnson worked to make sure it also won the peace. "I sure as hell want to be careful and not run out on little Israel," Johnson said in a March 1968 conversation with his ambassador to the United Nations, Arthur Goldberg, according to White House tapes recently released.

Soon after the 1967 war, Soviet premier Aleksei Kosygin asked Johnson at the Glassboro Summit why the US supported Israel when there were 80 million Arabs and only three million Israelis. "Because it is a right thing to do," responded the straight-shooting Texan.

The crafting of UN Resolution 242 in November 1967 was done under Johnson's scrutiny. The call for "secure and recognized boundaries" was critical. The American and British drafters of the resolution opposed Israel returning all the territories captured in the war. In September 1968, Johnson explained, "We are not the ones to say where other nations should draw lines between them that will assure each the greatest security. It is clear, however, that a return to the situation of 4 June 1967 will not bring peace. There must be secure and there must be recognized borders. Some such lines must be agreed to by the neighbors involved."

Goldberg later noted, "Resolution 242 in no way refers to Jerusalem, and this omission was deliberate." This historic diplomacy was conducted under Johnson's stewardship, as Goldberg related in oral history to the Johnson Library. "I must say for Johnson," Goldberg stated. "He gave me great personal support."

Robert David Johnson, a professor of history at Brooklyn College, recently wrote in The New York Sun, Johnson's policies stemmed more from personal concerns - his friendship with leading Zionists, 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."

President Johnson firmly pointed American policy in a pro-Israel direction. In a historical context, the American emergency airlift to Israel in 1973, the constant diplomatic support, the economic and military assistance and the strategic bonds between the two countries can all be credited to the seeds planted by LBJ.

President Lyndon B. Johnson's Biography


1908

Born August 27, at Stonewall, Texas. The first child of Sam Ealy Johnson, Jr., and Rebekah Baines Johnson was born in a small farmhouse on the Pedernales River.
He was named Lyndon Baines Johnson, and his grandfather declared he would grow up to be a United States Senator. Three sisters and a brother followed: Rebekah, Josefa, Sam Houston, and Lucia.

1912

At the age of four, Lyndon Johnson began running to the nearby one-room "Junction School" daily to play with his cousins at recess.
His mother persuaded the teacher, Miss Kathryn Deadrich, to take him as a pupil, and he would sit in his teacher's lap and recite his lessons. His school term was cut short by whooping cough.

1913

The family moved to nearby Johnson City, named for Lyndon's forebears, and the young Lyndon entered first grade.

1924

Now fifteen, he graduated from Johnson City High School on May 24. He decided to forego higher education and instead made his way to California with a few friends.
There he performed odd jobs, including one as an elevator operator. A year later he returned home where he worked on a road construction gang.

1927

Borrowing $75, he enrolled in Southwest Texas State Teachers College at San Marcos, Texas (Texas State University-San Marcos). He earned money as a janitor and as an office helper.
He dropped out of school for a year to serve as principal and teach fifth, sixth, and seventh grades at Welhausen School, a Mexican-American school in the south Texas town of Cotulla. He still had time to be a leader in many extracurricular activities, editing the school paper and starring on the debate team.

1930

August 19, graduated with a B.S. degree. He taught for a few weeks at Pearsall High School, in Pearsall, Texas, then took a job teaching public speaking at Sam Houston High School in Houston, Texas. In the spring of 1931, his debate team won the district championship.

1931

Following his election to the House of Representatives in November 1931, Congressman Richard Kleberg asked Johnson to come to Washington to work as his secretary.
Johnson held the job for over three years and learned how the Congress worked. In 1933, he was elected speaker of the "Little Congress," an organization of congressional workers.

1934

In the fall, he briefly attended Georgetown University Law School in Washington, D. C.
On a trip home to Texas, Johnson met Claudia Alta Taylor. He decided almost instantly that she should be his wife. Two months later, Lady Bird, as she was known to her friends, agreed, and on November 17, 1934, they were married in San Antonio. They honeymooned in Mexico.

1935

Resigned as Secretary to Representative Kleberg to accept President Roosevelt's appointment on July 25 as the Texas Director of the National Youth Administration (NYA), a Roosevelt program designed to provide vocational training for unemployed youth and part-time employment for needy students. At 26, he was the youngest state director.

1937

Resigned as Texas Director of the National Youth Administration to enter the special election for the 10th Congressional District called after the death of Representative James P. Buchanan. Nine other candidates also entered the election. Johnson backed Roosevelt 100% and handily won the election on April 10.
In Congress, Johnson worked hard for rural electrification, public housing, and eliminating government waste. He was appointed to the House Committee on Naval Affairs at the request of President Roosevelt.

1938

Re-elected to a full term in the 76th Congress and to each succeeding Congress until 1948.

1940

On June 21, 1940, he was appointed Lieutenant Commander in the U. S. Naval Reserve.

1941

Johnson ran for the remaining term of Senator Morris Sheppard upon Sheppard's death. On June 28, he lost a hard-fought race to conservative W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel by 1,311 votes.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, Johnson became the first member of Congress to volunteer for active duty in the armed forces (U.S. Navy), reporting for active duty on December 9, 1941.

1942

Johnson received the Silver Star from General Douglas MacArthur for gallantry in action during an aerial combat mission over hostile positions in New Guinea on June 9. President Roosevelt ordered all members of Congress in the armed forces to return to their offices, and Johnson was released from active duty on July 16, 1942.

1944

 March 19, birth of his first daughter, Lynda Bird.

1947

July 2, birth of his second daughter, Luci Baines.

1948

After a dramatic campaign in which he traveled by "newfangled" helicopter all over the state, Johnson defeated Coke Stevenson in the Democratic primary race to be the party's candidate for the Senate seat vacated by Senator W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel.
Johnson won the primary by 87 votes and earned the nickname "Landslide Lyndon." In the general election, November 2, he defeated the Republican, Jack Porter, and was elected to the U. S. Senate.

1951

January 2, elected Majority Whip of the United States Senate.

1953

January 3, elected Minority Leader of the Senate at the age of 44. Johnson won national attention as chairman of the Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee during the Korean War.

1954

November 2, re-elected to the U. S. Senate for a second term by a margin of 3 to 1.

1955

Elected Majority Leader of the Senate. During his tenure as Senate Majority Leader, he served as Chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee, Democratic Steering Committee, and Democratic Conference of the Senate.
On July 2, while visiting George Brown's estate in Middleburg, Virginia, Johnson suffered a severe heart attack and entered Bethesda Naval Hospital. On August 7, he was released from Bethesda; on August 27, he returned to the LBJ Ranch to recuperate. Johnson did not return to Washington and Capitol Hill until December.

1956

Nominated for President at the Democratic National Convention as a favorite son candidate.

1957

Steered through to passage the first civil rights bill in 82 years (Civil Rights Act of 1957). As Chairman of the Senate Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee he began hearings on the American space program following the launch of the Russian satellite, Sputnik, on October 4. Johnson considered the highlights of his Senate career to be the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the vitalization of the United States space program.

1958

Guided to passage the first space legislation (National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958). President Eisenhower designated Senator Johnson to present a United States resolution to the United Nations calling for the peaceful exploration of outer space.

1960

July 13, nominated for President of the United States at the Democratic National Convention by the Speaker of the House of Representatives Sam Rayburn; received 409 votes; nominated Vice President by acclamation on July 14.
November 8, elected Vice President of the United States, and re-elected to his third term in the United States Senate. The Kennedy-Johnson ticket defeated the Nixon-Lodge ticket in one of the closest elections in American history.

1961

January 3, took the oath of office for the full six-year term in the Senate and immediately resigned.
January 20, was administered the oath of office as Vice President of the United States by the Speaker of the House of Representatives Sam Rayburn. As Vice President, Johnson was a member of the Cabinet and the National Security Council, Chairman of the National Aeronautics and Space Council, Chairman of the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, and Chairman of the Peace Corps Advisory Council.
He was sent by President Kennedy on missions to the Middle East, the Far East, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and South Asia. May 11-13, 1961, he visited Vietnam while on a trip to Southeast Asia as President Kennedy's representative.
On April 20, the day Congress approved the amendment making the Vice President Chairman of the Space Council, President Kennedy sent Johnson a memorandum asking him to conduct an overall survey of the space program and to study the feasibility of going to the moon and back with a man before the Soviet Union could attain that goal.
After a careful study, Johnson replied on April 28, that a manned moon trip was possible, and "with a strong effort the United States could conceivably be first in those accomplishments by 1966 or 1967." On May 25, President Kennedy announced to Congress: "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth."

1963

November 22, Lyndon Baines Johnson became the 36th President of the United States following the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas.
In an address before a joint session of Congress on November 27, Johnson pledged support for President Kennedy's legislative agenda, which included civil rights and education legislation.

1964

In a speech at the University of Michigan, May 22, Johnson spoke of a "Great Society." He said, "The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning." The speech set the tone for the fall campaign.
July 2, signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in a televised ceremony at the White House. The far-reaching law included provisions to protect the right to vote, guarantee access to public accommodations, and withhold federal funds from programs administered in a discriminatory fashion.
On August 2, North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked the destroyer USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin. August 4, a second North Vietnamese PT boat attack was reported on the USS Maddox and her escort, the USS C. Turner Joy, this time in poor weather. There would be debate, then and later, over whether the second attack actually occurred.
President Johnson ordered retaliatory air strikes against North Vietnam after being given firm assurance that the attack did occur, and he sought a congressional resolution in support of our Southeast Asia policy.
On August 7, with only two dissenting votes in the Senate and none in the House, Congress passed the Southeast Asia Resolution (often called the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution) backing him in taking "all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression." Johnson signed the resolution on August 10.
August 20, in the White House Rose Garden, Johnson signed the Economic Opportunity Act. The act established the Office of Economic Opportunity to direct and coordinate a variety of educational, employment, and training programs which were the foundation of President Johnson's "War on Poverty."
August 26, nominated for President of the United States at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Hubert Humphrey nominated for Vice President.
November 3, elected President of the United States with the greatest percentage of the total popular vote (61%) ever attained by a Presidential candidate. Hubert Humphrey was elected Vice President.

1965

January 20, Johnson took the Oath of Office as President of the United States. The "Great Society" program became the agenda for Congress: aid to education, protection of civil rights (including the right to vote), urban renewal, Medicare, conservation, beautification, control and prevention of crime and delinquency, promotion of the arts, and consumer protection.
Johnson's foreign policy rested on four principles: deterring and resisting aggression, promoting economic and social progress, encouraging cooperation among nations of the same region and seeking reconciliation with the communist world.
In a ceremony on the front lawn of the former Junction Elementary School, President Johnson sat next to his first schoolteacher, Miss Kathryn Deadrich Loney, and signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act on April 11. The act was the first federal general aid to education law and focused on disadvantaged children in city slums and rural areas.
As the situation in South Vietnam deteriorated, President Johnson began enlarging the U. S. commitment in Vietnam. On July 28, he announced that he had ordered U. S. military forces in Vietnam increased from 75,000 men to 125,000. He said he would order further military increases as they were needed, committing the United States to major combat in Vietnam.
July 30, signed the Medicare bill in a ceremony at the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri. The act established a medical care program for the aged under the Social Security System.
At a signing ceremony televised from the Capitol Rotunda on August 6, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. After speaking in the Rotunda, Johnson moved to the President's Room off the Senate chamber to sign the bill.
Abraham Lincoln had used the same room on August 6, 1861, to sign a bill freeing slaves who had been pressed into service of the Confederacy. The bill provided for direct federal action to enable Negroes to register and vote. In 1969, in his final press conference as President, Johnson cited passage of the Voting Rights Act as his greatest accomplishment.

1966

Luci Baines Johnson, President Johnson's younger daughter, married Patrick J. Nugent in a ceremony at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D. C., on August 6. (The Nugents divorced in August 1979.)

1967

Lynda Bird Johnson, President Johnson's older daughter, married Charles S. Robb in a ceremony in the East Room of the White House on December 9.

1968

March 31, in order to devote his time to seeking peace in Vietnam and at home, President Johnson announced that he would not be a candidate for another term as President of the United States.

1969

On January 20, Johnson returned to Texas and the LBJ Ranch, following the inauguration of President Richard M. Nixon.
As Senator, Vice President, and President, Johnson had exercised strong leadership in the U. S. space program.
On July 16, at President Nixon's request, President Johnson attended the launching of Apollo 11 at Cape Kennedy, Florida. Apollo 11 carried astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, and Michael Collins toward the moon.
On July 20, while Michael Collins circled the moon in the command module Columbia, Neil Armstrong and "Buzz" Aldrin became the first men to land on the moon. The flight represented the fulfillment of the goal, set in 1961 and reaffirmed by President Johnson, of reaching the moon in the 1960s.

1971

May 22, on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, Johnson attended the dedication of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library.The Johnson Library is part of a system of presidential libraries administered by the National Archives and Records Administration.
It was established to preserve and make available for research the papers and memorabilia of President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

1973

Following a short retirement Lyndon Johnson died at his ranch on January 22. He is buried in the family cemetery at the LBJ Ranch near his birthplace. During his retirement he wrote his memoirs, The Vantage Point, taught students, and participated in the beginning of a series of national symposia on the critical issues of modern America held at the Lyndon B. Johnson Library.
Compiled by the LBJ Library Archives Staff


President Lyndon B. Johnson's Biography


1908

Lyndon Johnson 18 months oldBorn August 27, at Stonewall, Texas. The first child of Sam Ealy Johnson, Jr., and Rebekah Baines Johnson was born in a small farmhouse on the Pedernales River.
He was named Lyndon Baines Johnson, and his grandfather declared he would grow up to be a United States Senator. Three sisters and a brother followed: Rebekah, Josefa, Sam Houston, and Lucia.

1912

At the age of four, Lyndon Johnson began running to the nearby one-room "Junction School" daily to play with his cousins at recess.
His mother persuaded the teacher, Miss Kathryn Deadrich, to take him as a pupil, and he would sit in his teacher's lap and recite his lessons. His school term was cut short by whooping cough.

1913

The family moved to nearby Johnson City, named for Lyndon's forebears, and the young Lyndon entered first grade. Lyndon Johnson about 7 years old

1924

LBJ with his High School Class
Now fifteen, he graduated from Johnson City High School on May 24. He decided to forego higher education and instead made his way to California with a few friends.
There he performed odd jobs, including one as an elevator operator. A year later he returned home where he worked on a road construction gang.

1927

Borrowing $75, he enrolled in Southwest Texas State Teachers College at San Marcos, Texas (Texas State University-San Marcos). He earned money as a janitor and as an office helper.
He dropped out of school for a year to serve as principal and teach fifth, sixth, and seventh grades at Welhausen School, a Mexican-American school in the south Texas town of Cotulla. He still had time to be a leader in many extracurricular activities, editing the school paper and starring on the debate team.

1930

August 19, graduated with a B.S. degree. He taught for a few weeks at Pearsall High School, in Pearsall, Texas, then took a job teaching public speaking at Sam Houston High School in Houston, Texas. In the spring of 1931, his debate team won the district championship.

1931

Following his election to the House of Representatives in November 1931, Congressman Richard Kleberg asked Johnson to come to Washington to work as his secretary.
Johnson held the job for over three years and learned how the Congress worked. In 1933, he was elected speaker of the "Little Congress," an organization of congressional workers.

1934

In the fall, he briefly attended Georgetown University Law School in Washington, D. C.
On a trip home to Texas, Johnson met Claudia Alta Taylor. He decided almost instantly that she should be his wife. Two months later, Lady Bird, as she was known to her friends, agreed, and on November 17, 1934, they were married in San Antonio. They honeymooned in Mexico.

1935

Resigned as Secretary to Representative Kleberg to accept President Roosevelt's appointment on July 25 as the Texas Director of the National Youth Administration (NYA), a Roosevelt program designed to provide vocational training for unemployed youth and part-time employment for needy students. At 26, he was the youngest state director.

1937

LBJ's Campaign sign for CongressmanResigned as Texas Director of the National Youth Administration to enter the special election for the 10th Congressional District called after the death of Representative James P. Buchanan. Nine other candidates also entered the election. Johnson backed Roosevelt 100% and handily won the election on April 10.
In Congress, Johnson worked hard for rural electrification, public housing, and eliminating government waste. He was appointed to the House Committee on Naval Affairs at the request of President Roosevelt.

1938

Re-elected to a full term in the 76th Congress and to each succeeding Congress until 1948.

1940

On June 21, 1940, he was appointed Lieutenant Commander in the U. S. Naval Reserve.

1941

Johnson ran for the remaining term of Senator Morris Sheppard upon Sheppard's death. On June 28, he lost a hard-fought race to conservative W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel by 1,311 votes.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, Johnson became the first member of Congress to volunteer for active duty in the armed forces (U.S. Navy), reporting for active duty on December 9, 1941.

1942

Johnson received the Silver Star from General Douglas MacArthur for gallantry in action during an aerial combat mission over hostile positions in New Guinea on June 9. President Roosevelt ordered all members of Congress in the armed forces to return to their offices, and Johnson was released from active duty on July 16, 1942.

1944

 March 19, birth of his first daughter, Lynda Bird.

1947

July 2, birth of his second daughter, Luci Baines.

1948

After a dramatic campaign in which he traveled by "newfangled" helicopter all over the state, Johnson defeated Coke Stevenson in the Democratic primary race to be the party's candidate for the Senate seat vacated by Senator W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel.
Johnson won the primary by 87 votes and earned the nickname "Landslide Lyndon." In the general election, November 2, he defeated the Republican, Jack Porter, and was elected to the U. S. Senate.

1951

January 2, elected Majority Whip of the United States Senate.

1953

January 3, elected Minority Leader of the Senate at the age of 44. Johnson won national attention as chairman of the Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee during the Korean War.

1954

November 2, re-elected to the U. S. Senate for a second term by a margin of 3 to 1.

1955

Elected Majority Leader of the Senate. During his tenure as Senate Majority Leader, he served as Chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee, Democratic Steering Committee, and Democratic Conference of the Senate.
On July 2, while visiting George Brown's estate in Middleburg, Virginia, Johnson suffered a severe heart attack and entered Bethesda Naval Hospital. On August 7, he was released from Bethesda; on August 27, he returned to the LBJ Ranch to recuperate. Johnson did not return to Washington and Capitol Hill until December.

1956

Nominated for President at the Democratic National Convention as a favorite son candidate.

1957

Steered through to passage the first civil rights bill in 82 years (Civil Rights Act of 1957). As Chairman of the Senate Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee he began hearings on the American space program following the launch of the Russian satellite, Sputnik, on October 4. Johnson considered the highlights of his Senate career to be the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the vitalization of the United States space program.

1958

Guided to passage the first space legislation (National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958). President Eisenhower designated Senator Johnson to present a United States resolution to the United Nations calling for the peaceful exploration of outer space.

1960

July 13, nominated for President of the United States at the Democratic National Convention by the Speaker of the House of Representatives Sam Rayburn; received 409 votes; nominated Vice President by acclamation on July 14.
November 8, elected Vice President of the United States, and re-elected to his third term in the United States Senate. The Kennedy-Johnson ticket defeated the Nixon-Lodge ticket in one of the closest elections in American history. 		Campaign poster for LBJ and JFK

1961

January 3, took the oath of office for the full six-year term in the Senate and immediately resigned.
January 20, was administered the oath of office as Vice President of the United States by the Speaker of the House of Representatives Sam Rayburn. As Vice President, Johnson was a member of the Cabinet and the National Security Council, Chairman of the National Aeronautics and Space Council, Chairman of the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, and Chairman of the Peace Corps Advisory Council.
He was sent by President Kennedy on missions to the Middle East, the Far East, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and South Asia. May 11-13, 1961, he visited Vietnam while on a trip to Southeast Asia as President Kennedy's representative.
On April 20, the day Congress approved the amendment making the Vice President Chairman of the Space Council, President Kennedy sent Johnson a memorandum asking him to conduct an overall survey of the space program and to study the feasibility of going to the moon and back with a man before the Soviet Union could attain that goal.
After a careful study, Johnson replied on April 28, that a manned moon trip was possible, and "with a strong effort the United States could conceivably be first in those accomplishments by 1966 or 1967." On May 25, President Kennedy announced to Congress: "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth."

1963

President Johnson taking the oath on Air Force OneNovember 22, Lyndon Baines Johnson became the 36th President of the United States following the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas.
In an address before a joint session of Congress on November 27, Johnson pledged support for President Kennedy's legislative agenda, which included civil rights and education legislation.

1964

In a speech at the University of Michigan, May 22, Johnson spoke of a "Great Society." He said, "The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning." The speech set the tone for the fall campaign.
July 2, signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in a televised ceremony at the White House. The far-reaching law included provisions to protect the right to vote, guarantee access to public accommodations, and withhold federal funds from programs administered in a discriminatory fashion.
On August 2, North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked the destroyer USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin. August 4, a second North Vietnamese PT boat attack was reported on the USS Maddox and her escort, the USS C. Turner Joy, this time in poor weather. There would be debate, then and later, over whether the second attack actually occurred.
President Johnson ordered retaliatory air strikes against North Vietnam after being given firm assurance that the attack did occur, and he sought a congressional resolution in support of our Southeast Asia policy.
On August 7, with only two dissenting votes in the Senate and none in the House, Congress passed the Southeast Asia Resolution (often called the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution) backing him in taking "all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression." Johnson signed the resolution on August 10.
August 20, in the White House Rose Garden, Johnson signed the Economic Opportunity Act. The act established the Office of Economic Opportunity to direct and coordinate a variety of educational, employment, and training programs which were the foundation of President Johnson's "War on Poverty."
August 26, nominated for President of the United States at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Hubert Humphrey nominated for Vice President.
November 3, elected President of the United States with the greatest percentage of the total popular vote (61%) ever attained by a Presidential candidate. Hubert Humphrey was elected Vice President.

1965

January 20, Johnson took the Oath of Office as President of the United States. The "Great Society" program became the agenda for Congress: aid to education, protection of civil rights (including the right to vote), urban renewal, Medicare, conservation, beautification, control and prevention of crime and delinquency, promotion of the arts, and consumer protection.
Johnson's foreign policy rested on four principles: deterring and resisting aggression, promoting economic and social progress, encouraging cooperation among nations of the same region and seeking reconciliation with the communist world.
In a ceremony on the front lawn of the former Junction Elementary School, President Johnson sat next to his first schoolteacher, Miss Kathryn Deadrich Loney, and signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act on April 11. The act was the first federal general aid to education law and focused on disadvantaged children in city slums and rural areas.
As the situation in South Vietnam deteriorated, President Johnson began enlarging the U. S. commitment in Vietnam. On July 28, he announced that he had ordered U. S. military forces in Vietnam increased from 75,000 men to 125,000. He said he would order further military increases as they were needed, committing the United States to major combat in Vietnam.
July 30, signed the Medicare bill in a ceremony at the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri. The act established a medical care program for the aged under the Social Security System.
At a signing ceremony televised from the Capitol Rotunda on August 6, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. After speaking in the Rotunda, Johnson moved to the President's Room off the Senate chamber to sign the bill.
Abraham Lincoln had used the same room on August 6, 1861, to sign a bill freeing slaves who had been pressed into service of the Confederacy. The bill provided for direct federal action to enable Negroes to register and vote. In 1969, in his final press conference as President, Johnson cited passage of the Voting Rights Act as his greatest accomplishment.

1966

Luci Baines Johnson, President Johnson's younger daughter, married Patrick J. Nugent in a ceremony at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D. C., on August 6. (The Nugents divorced in August 1979.)

1967

Lynda Bird Johnson, President Johnson's older daughter, married Charles S. Robb in a ceremony in the East Room of the White House on December 9.

1968

March 31, in order to devote his time to seeking peace in Vietnam and at home, President Johnson announced that he would not be a candidate for another term as President of the United States.

1969

On January 20, Johnson returned to Texas and the LBJ Ranch, following the inauguration of President Richard M. Nixon.
As Senator, Vice President, and President, Johnson had exercised strong leadership in the U. S. space program.
On July 16, at President Nixon's request, President Johnson attended the launching of Apollo 11 at Cape Kennedy, Florida. Apollo 11 carried astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, and Michael Collins toward the moon.
On July 20, while Michael Collins circled the moon in the command module Columbia, Neil Armstrong and "Buzz" Aldrin became the first men to land on the moon. The flight represented the fulfillment of the goal, set in 1961 and reaffirmed by President Johnson, of reaching the moon in the 1960s.

1971

May 22, on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, Johnson attended the dedication of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library.The Johnson Library is part of a system of presidential libraries administered by the National Archives and Records Administration.
It was established to preserve and make available for research the papers and memorabilia of President Lyndon Baines Johnson.		Image of LBJ Library and Museum

1973

Following a short retirement Lyndon Johnson died at his ranch on January 22. He is buried in the family cemetery at the LBJ Ranch near his birthplace. During his retirement he wrote his memoirs, The Vantage Point, taught students, and participated in the beginning of a series of national symposia on the critical issues of modern America held at the Lyndon B. Johnson Library.
Compiled by the LBJ Library Archives Staff


The first U.S. Jewish President? Read to the bottom‏

 THIS IS AN AMAZING & INTERESTING READ! IT CAME FROM A RELIABLE SOURCE SO... I ASSUME IT'S ACCURATE.

"A few months ago, the Associated Press reported that newly released tapes from US president Lyndon Johnson's White House office showed LBJ's "personal and often emotional connection to Israel.” The news agency pointed out that during the Johnson presidency (1963-1969), "the United States became Israel’s chief diplomatic ally and primary arms supplier."

But the news report does little to reveal the full historical extent of Johnson's actions on behalf of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.

I thought I would remember LBJ as the modern civil rights President.
This is interesting!

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