Diplomats and Lobbyists: Advocating for Israel: From Truman to Nixon – A Reassessment

The paper sheds new light on the unique triangular relationship between Israel’s diplomatic representatives, local lobbyists and advocates for Israel, and UN administrations from the Truman administration through the Nixon-Ford administrations. It offers corrections and explanatory detail to what has too often been both an academic and public misperception of a linear and inevitable path to the contemporary collaboration in US-Israel relations. Recent declassified materials are introduced that include FBI wiretapping and surveillance records of Jewish leaders and organizations. The paper assesses the successes and failures of Israel’s Embassy and diplomats in impressing upon US policymakers that Israel was sui generis in the international community not to be treated solely based on strategic interests. The paper reveals the extent to which individual Jewish leaders and pro-Israeli supporters maneuvered as conduits between Israel governments and US Administrations, whose senior dramatis personae attempted to influence, moderate, restrain, and change the course of policy decisions and actions affecting political, economic, and military aid, and the impact of Israeli diplomats’ efforts in directing pro-Israel activities in achieving Israel’s aims. The paper demonstrates that Israeli governments were more astute and powerful than previously understood and were in fact pulling the strings far more than AIPAC and wealthy Jews.