9:42 p.m. ET, October 11, 2023
Here's a brief history of the US support for Israel over the last 75 years
From CNN's Zachary B. Wolf
Biden speaks during a roundtable with Jewish community at the White House on Wednesday, October 11, 2023.
Susan Walsh/AP
President Joe Biden’s promise for the US to “stand with Israel” continues a special relationship that dates back to 1948, when President Harry Truman became the first world leader to recognize the Jewish state, moments after its creation.
There’s now a kibbutz named after Truman in Israel, and the US provides billions in military support to Israel each year.
Israel has played an outsized role in US policy, and not just because most recent presidents have tried to play the role of peace maker between Israel and Palestinians and move toward a two-state solution.
Three presidential historians provided context about the US and its relationship with Israel.
Douglas Brinkley is CNN’s presidential historian and a professor at Rice University,
Julian Zelizer is a CNN contributor and a professor at Princeton University and
Mark Updegrove is president and CEO of the LBJ Foundation.
Here's what they had to say about the US relationship with Israel.
President Dwight Eisenhower became infuriated at Israel: Along with France and the United Kingdom,
Israel attacked Egypt in 1956 in an attempt to seize the Suez Canal and overthrow Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Eisenhower pressured the countries to remove their troops — which they eventually did.
President John F. Kennedy was concerned about Israel’s nuclear ambitions: Kennedy engaged in a quiet
pressure campaign to let US inspectors into its nuclear sites and halt an Israeli nuclear program. Israel is
thought to have developed nuclear weapons in the 1960s, although it has never formally acknowledged them.
President Lyndon Johnson used the hotline to calm the Soviets during the Six-Day War: Johnson helped supply Israel in the years preceding the Six-Day War, in which Israel seized land from its neighbors. Egypt, as a result, closed the Suez Canal for years. Johnson agreed to sell some military equipment to the Israelis which was a shift in US policy at the time.
“This was a very much a product of Cold War tension,” said Updegrove, the president and CEO of the LBJ Foundation. “I think there was a great concern that that would escalate beyond Israel, Egypt and Syria to being a much larger battle.”
President Richard Nixon airlifted supplies to Israel and engaged in "shuttle diplomacy": Nixon ultimately supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War of 1973, a key moment that may have saved the country.
“Most historians of that region think that the US munitions support was essential to Israel’s survival at that point,” Zelizer said.
Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s secretary of state, also engaged in so-called “
shuttle diplomacy,” engineering an end to the war and
ultimately reopening the Suez Canal under President Gerald Ford.
President Jimmy Carter brokered peace between Egypt and Israel: Carter brought Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat together for the Camp David Accords, which created a lasting peace between Israel and Egypt, its Arab neighbor to the South.
Today, Israel enforces its borders on the Gaza Strip, but so does Egypt. That more than two million Palestinians live in the 140 square-mile strip without the ability to easily leave is why it is today frequently referred to as
the biggest open-air prison on earth.