Nixon, Golda, and His Finest Hour

In the just-released movie about Golda Meir and her role as Israeli Prime Minister prior to, and during, the surprise attack launched by Egypt and Syria on the Jewish state in 1973, President Richard Nixon appears only in one brief scene. But Nixon was critical to Israel’s victory in the Yom Kippur war, by sending 567 planeloads of weapons and ammunition to the IDF when it had run catastrophically low on both. Many of us have a vague distaste for Nixon, an understandable reaction to his early career as a Red-baiting Congressional candidate against Jerry Voorhis in 1946, and his even more unseemly senatorial campaign in 1950, in which he smeared as sympathetic to Communists his Democratic opponent, Helen Gahagan Douglas. Then there were such things as his tear-jerking attempt at winning sympathy over a funding scandal in his celebrated 1952 “Checkers speech.” Here is the most famous part of that speech:

Well, that’s about it. That’s what we have and that’s what we owe. It isn’t very much but Pat and I have the satisfaction that every dime that we’ve got is honestly ours. I should say this-that Pat doesn’t have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat. And I always tell her that she’d look good in anything.

One other thing I probably should tell you, because if I don’t they’ll probably be saying this about me too, we did get something-a gift-after the election. A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog. And, believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was. It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he sent all the way from Texas. Black and white spotted. And our little girl-Trisha, the 6-year-old-named it Checkers. And you know the kids love the dog and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we’re gonna keep it.

And then, of course, there was Nixon’s comment after his loss to Pat Brown in the California gubernatorial race in 1962, when he famously lashed out at the media — the 100 journalists assembled for his press conference at the Beverly Hilton — proclaiming that “you won’t have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.” It wasn’t.

Then, as President, there was Watergate, the televised hearings, the damning testimonies, the 18 1/2 minutes of tape that had been strangely erased from the tape recorder in Nixon’s office, that had been on during a conversation between Nixon and his aide H. R. “Bob” Haldeman, just three days after the Watergate break-in. And finally, on August 8, 1974, after he had concluded that in the face of the continuing investigation that took up so much of his time and attention he could not adequately fulfill his tasks as President, he resigned.

But there is one remarkable episode in Nixon’s presidency, when he helped to save the Jewish state from possible catastrophic defeat — an episode few may know about, and that was not given proper attention in the movie Golda. More on how Nixon helped to save the state of Israel during the Yom Kippur War can be found here: “Golda’s grit and Nixon’s ambivalence – opinion,” by Ron Rubin, Jerusalem Post, September 3, 2023:

…Alexander Haig, Nixon’s chief of staff, reported in his memoir Inner Circles, Nixon’s sense of urgency in coming to Israel’s aid. Nixon summoned both Kissinger and James Schlesinger (a Jewish convert to Christianity), Secretary of Defense, to a White House meeting assessing the pace of the much needed airlift requested by Golda. Nixon asked Kissinger for an exact account of Israel’s military needs. Kissinger began reading from an itemized list. “Double it,” ordered Nixon. “Now get the hell out of here and get the job done.”

In another such meeting, Nixon informed about bureaucratic disagreements in the Pentagon over types of delivery planes, shouted at Kissinger “(expletive) it, use every one we have. Tell them to send everything that can fly.”

Though Nixon was in the throes of fighting the Watergate charges, in June, 1974, two months before he resigned his presidency, he became the first incumbent president to visit Israel. In his expansive airport tribute (no doubt with Golda in mind) Nixon said, “the respect and the admiration we have for the people of this nation, their courage, their tenacity, their firmness in the face of very great odds… makes us proud to stand with Israel.”

In sum, this president haunted by the specter of disloyal American Jews, had little to gain and much to lose by the bold steps he took in Israel’s defense less than a year earlier. None of this courage and defiance of the US State Department is documented in the biopic Golda.

In the absence of the astonishing 567 missions flown by the US air force, Israel might not have survived. Already in his second term (regardless of Watergate), Nixon knew that Republicans were not going to win over the largely liberal Jewish vote. Nixon’s unconventional airlift subsequently spurred an Arab oil embargo sharply raising gasoline prices.

Dismissing the advice of Kissinger, his Jewish adviser, Nixon risked a war with the Soviet Union to save Israel. According to Stephen E. Ambrose, Nixon’s biographer, he “knew that his enemies would never give him credit for saving Israel. He did it anyway.”

A proud Nixon boasted, “Christ, if it weren’t for me, there wouldn’t be any Israel. They know that in Israel. Golda knows that, even though they may not know it over here.”

Nixon’s role in saving the state and people of Israel in 1973 was news to me. I knew there had been an airlift, but not how vast it was, nor how necessary it was, to Israel’s victory, and how it was largely Nixon’s doing — not Kissinger’s. And this new information has forever changed my view of him. Perhaps you too were surprised to find all this out, and may find your own views of this strange man, off-putting in so many ways, but rising to the occasion in the fall of 1973, changed as well.