The Besieged LBJ and Israel
I'm currently working on a piece about the recordings and Johnson's policy toward Israel. One of the newly released items features Johnson chatting with UN ambassador Arthur Goldberg, one week before LBJ announced his withdrawal from the 1968 election. The ostensible subject matter was a UN resolution condemning Israel, after a retaliatory raid against a Palestinian terrorist attack from Jordan. But LBJ then suggests his growing political isolation has made him more sympathetic to Israel, and reaffirms his support for Israel in rather earthy terms. Transcript is below the jump.
ARTHUR GOLDBERG: Of course, the poor King [Hussein] is in a hell of a box. His throat is in the . . . is there all the time.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: Yeah, I feel sorry—
GOLDBERG: There isn’t a hell of a lot more that he can do than what he’s been doing.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: I feel sorry for him. Although I thought he sent us kind of a mean wire—
GOLDBERG: Yes—
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: It was unnecessary.
GOLDBERG: Yes. Yes. I feel sorry for him.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: I lost—I felt sorry for him, but I lost a little of my sympathy with his reply to my wire the other night, asking him to . . .
GOLDBERG: Yeah. Yes. Well, you know, they—
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: You saw my wire and his reply, didn’t you?
GOLDBERG: No, I did not see that.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: Well, when they [the State Department] sent the wire, they told Israel that this was disastrous.
GOLDBERG: Uh-huh.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: It was pretty strong. I cut out a word or two of their mean wire to ‘em. I said, “Are we wiring Jordan to watch them to watch these terrorist activities?” They said no. I said, “Well, why not?” Well, they didn’t—this and that. I said, “Let’s just send them both a wire? If you’re going to wire one of them, let’s send them both a wire.”
So they sent them a wire. Eshkol came back with two pages, and said they’re bombing his kids, and they were doing all these other things, and everything’s provocative. He didn’t—he didn’t justify what he’d done, but he at least explained what motivated him.
GOLDBERG: Yeah.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: And was pretty reasoning to me.
And the goddamn King wired me back and said, “Go to hell.”
GOLDBERG: Really?
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: Yeah.
GOLDBERG: Well, you know the Arabs are impossible down here. I have to have the patience of a saint to deal with them. They always keep referring to our domestic events.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: [softly] Mm.
GOLDBERG: And I have to slap ‘em down. They’re . . . a terribly emotional bunch.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: You’re the only man I know that’s got as mean a type of assignment as I have. And I don’t know how you do it as well as you do. I just honestly don’t.
But . . . I sure as hell want to be careful, and not run out on little Israel.
GOLDBERG: Yeah.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: If they—because they haven’t got many friends in the world.
GOLDBERG: I know they haven’t.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: They’re in about the same shape I am. And the closer I got—I face adversity, the closer I get to them.
GOLDBERG: Yeah.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: Because I got a bunch of Arabs after me—about a hundred million of ‘em, and there’s just two million of us. [Chuckles; Goldberg joins in.] So I can understand them a little bit.
GOLDBERG: I—
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: And I don’t want—there’s nobody fussing at me, nobody raising hell with me. Nobody, not one human’s called me about it.
I just . . . my State Department, sometimes—I just want to be damn sure that I don’t wind up here getting in the shape Eisenhower did, where I want to put sanctions on ‘em—
GOLDBERG: Well, we’re never going to put sanctions on—
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: The only people they got in the world, that they got faith in, I think, [i]s me and you. I was down there at the ranch, and I looked at ‘em, and I . . .
They don’t know when they’re going to be run over; they don’t know when they’re going to die; they don’t know when those goddamn Russians are going to come in there. They don’t know anything.
And the only thing they got is a little hope, and a prayer, and a wing . . . for me, if my heart keeps beating. And I don’t want ‘em to look back and say, “Well, he got to limber tail, and he ran,” and so forth.
Now, I’ve been hard and tough with them. I haven’t given them their Phantoms.
GOLDBERG: Yeah.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: I haven’t done this or that. But I just—I’m damn sure going to give them to ‘em, because I want the Russians to quit arming, and agree to file up there [at the UN] with you-all what they do arm, and they cut back on their ABM.
And if they’re not going to do any of it, and they’re going to continue to pour arms in there, I want to make them take the consequences of their actions—and I’m going to stick it up of Israel’s bottom just as much as I’ve got.
GOLDBERG: Amen to that.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: Well, that’s what I’m going to do.
GOLDBERG: Yeah, well—
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: I didn’t tell them [the Israelis] that. I just told them I wasn’t going to—
GOLDBERG: No, no—
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: I wasn’t going to be responsible. But that’s what I’m going to do!
GOLDBERG: Right.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: I said, “You don’t need to worry if they [the Soviets] keep arming them [the Arabs]. I’m not going to let you just stay there and let you get eaten up, like the little boy that the calf was playing with. And his daddy walked out and saw him, and caught him. And he said, ‘Bobby, you just going to stay there, and let the calf eat me up?’” [The President chuckles.]
GOLDBERG: Mm-hmm. Well, there you’re absolutely, a thousand percent right.