Word: deal
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Early in the week Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan arrived in Washington, primarily to discuss the Middle East peace talks. Dayan, however, did some lobbying of his own against the Saudi planes deal. The spectacle of the Minister breakfasting privately with six Senators, five of them members of the Foreign Relations Committee, led New York Times Columnist James Reston to reflect ruefully: "There was a time in this capital when a British ambassador was recalled to London because he expressed a preference in a social gathering for one Presidential candidate over the other, but that was in the days when...
Before leaving for Washington, Dayan had stressed his government's opposition to the sales package, adding: "Even if we have to absorb the punishment, we will continue to oppose the deal." He apparently was referring to repeated warnings by U.S. officials and concerned American Jews that a battle with the Carter Administration on a matter so related to U.S. energy needs, because Saudi Arabia is involved, could cause severe and lasting damage to Jerusalem's relations with Washington. Some influential American Jews warned the Israeli government privately that it could probably win on this issue...
Israeli Premier Menachem Begin was prepared to take that chance. He opposed the sale of modern American weaponry to the Saudis, but he was even more concerned that a package deal would set a pattern for equating U.S. aid to Israel with similar aid to Arab countries. "This would tend to weaken our special relationship," said one Israeli official, "and strengthen Arab relations with America, and that is not in Israel's interest." Dayan stopped short of saying publicly that Israel would rather give up the planes it stood to gain than see the whole package go through...
Perhaps the most important argument for selling the planes to the Saudis is that such a transaction would not alter the essential military fact of the Middle East: Israel's overwhelming superiority. If the Israeli lobby in Washington should succeed in quashing the deal, it could be a severe blow to U.S. national interest. The Saudis have made it clear that they would not only be angry and disappointed but would take their business elsewhere. France, for example, would be only too glad to sell them its own latest jet fighters, the Mirages F-1 and 2000, with...
...what constitutes Paul's Hyde-like side, she will say that whatever she does not like about him she attributes to the influence of Stoddard Stevens, an 86-year-old Wall Street lawyer who is still Paul's chief financial adviser. "Stoddard Stevens took away a good deal of the poetry from my husband's life," Bunny says. "He came along when my husband needed a father figure, and that's what...