Nixon's Support In The Form Of Deeds

Chemi Shalev on the time the Washington Post blasted Israel for its shout-out to Richard Nixon:

Forty years ago, at the height of the 1972 presidential campaign, ambassador Yitzhak Rabin [Abba Eban is shown between him and Nixon] lavishly praised the Nixon administration’s steadfast support for Israel and then told his Israeli interviewer: “While we appreciate support in the form of words from one camp, we must prefer support in the form of deeds that we are getting from the other camp.”

The next day, in an editorial entitled “Israel’s Undiplomatic Diplomat," the Washington Post blasted Rabin for intervening in the U.S. elections on behalf of President Richard Nixon and against Democratic candidate George McGovern. But Prime Minister Golda Meir stood by her man in Washington, and Rabin himself was unrepentant. In fact, the minor brouhaha that followed his remark may have actually contributed a few percentage points to the respectable 35 percent of the Jewish vote that Nixon garnered in the November elections. And Nixon’s gratitude, for all we know, may have played some subconscious role in his 1973 decision to send an emergency airlift of supplies and ammunition during the Yom Kippur War.

Greatly Unsure

Israelis are strangely ambivalent about one of their greatest statesmen, Yizhak Rabin, murdered 15 years ago for trying to make peace with the Palestinians. (A highlight of my time as a Nixon aide, when he had offices in 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan during the 1980s, was meeting Rabin at the curb and escorting him upstairs for a meeting. In this 1969 White House photo, Rabin is at right as Nixon meets with Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban.) As the Nov. 4 anniversary of Rabin's death nears, Ethan Bronner's New York Times analysis neatly presents yet another Middle East paradox. Which is true? Both sound reasonable:

Has the public lost interest because it is disillusioned with peace and views Mr. Rabin’s involvement in the Oslo accords a mistake? Or has negotiating with the Palestinians simply gone mainstream, and Mr. Rabin is no longer its symbol?

The left has no doubt.

“Fifteen years later we can’t pretend any longer,” Yossi Sarid, a former member of Parliament from the left-wing Meretz party, wrote in Haaretz. “It was a perfect crime that paid off — a man was murdered and his legacy was covered with blood. Rabin’s way is deserted, in mourning.”

Ben-Dror Yemini, a conservative columnist for Maariv, thinks otherwise.

“The truth is the opposite,” he wrote. “Rabin’s assassination saved the Israeli left wing.” He added that before the killing, “There were terror attacks that gave rise to the phrase ‘the price of peace.’ The polls predicted a terrible fall for the Labor Party, and the strengthening of the right wing. The right wing not only ruled the violent and stormy street. The right wing also ruled in people’s hearts.”

Photo: Corbis