Editor’s Note: This is the second part of a review of Reagan: His Life and Legend, a new biography by Max Boot. Here is a link to the first part of the review.
SAN DIEGO — President Ronald Reagan’s relationships with Israel were complicated, dramatic and tortuous, according to Max Boot’s new biography, Reagan: His Life and Legend. Early in Reagan’s first term — on June 7, 1981 — Israel then led by Prime Minister Menachem Begin blew up Iraq’s French-built Osirak nuclear reactor, saying the self-defense operation was necessary to prevent “another Holocaust.” Reagan ignored Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger’s recommendation that the U.S. freeze all aid to Israel, and instead invoked such moderate sanctions as limiting Israel’s access to U.S. satellite data and delaying the delivery of four F-16s to Israel.
In October of that year, the Reagan administration persuaded the Senate to approve the sale of airborne early warning and control (AWAC) airplanes to Saudi Arabia, saying about Israel, which opposed the sale: “It is not the business of other nations to make American foreign policy.” In December of 1981, Begin annexed the Golan Heights to Israel, prompting White House Press Secretary Larry Speakes to observe later that Begin was “one of the few people that Reagan genuinely disliked.”
The 1981 skirmishes with Israel were minor annoyances compared to what came about in the next two years after Begin and his defense minister (and future prime minister) Ariel Sharon decided upon a campaign to destroy Palestine Liberation Organization forces that had taken up residence in Lebanon and install in power Bashir Gemayel, the leader of the Christian phalangist militia.
Biographer Boot reported that Reagan in conversation with Begin said: “Here on our television, night after night, our people are being shown the symbols of this war, and it is a holocaust. A little seven-month-old baby with its arms blown off, two five-year-old twins dead, and this goes on night after night.” Begin responded, ” Mr. President, I know all about a Holocaust.”
The result was that in August 1982, Begin ended a siege on Beirut, Gemayel was elected president of Lebanon’s National Assembly, and an international peacekeeping force, including American Marines and French troops, was sent to Lebanon. After PLO forces were evacuated to other parts of the Middle East, Weinberger withdrew the Marines without checking with the White House. A massive bomb on Sept. 14 destroyed Phalange headquarters in Eastern Beirut, killing Gemayel. Phalange gunmen then massacred hundreds of Palestinian civilians in the Shatila and Sabra refugee camps, prompting Reagan to order the Marines back to Beirut.
There was more bloodshed in 1983, this time aimed against the Americans and the French peacekeepers. On April 18, a truck bomb killed 63 people at the U.S. Embassy, including 17 Americans among them the CIA’s Middle East expert Robert Ames. On October 23, another suicide bomber drove a truck with 12,000 pounds of explosives into the four-story Marine Corps barracks, costing the lives of 241 Americans. Likewise, 58 French troops were killed at their barracks.
The carnage persuaded Reagan to authorize a “redeployment” of the Marines from their barracks in Beirut to U.S. warships offshore. The massacre did not cease. On Sept. 20, 1984, a car bomb blew up the U.S. Embassy Annex to which American diplomats had relocated after the April 18 attack on the Embassy. In this attack another 24 persons were killed.
There was no respite from terrorism against Americans. On June 14, 1985, Hezbollah terrorists hijacked TWA Flight 847, with 135 Americans among the 153 passengers and crew traveling from Athens to Rome. The jet was diverted to Beirut, then to Algiers, and then back to Beirut while the hijackers made their demands known: the release of 766 Lebanese Shia imprisoned in Israel.
In Beirut, the hijackers fatally shot passenger Robert Stethem, a U.S. Navy petty officer, and cast his body to the tarmac of the airport. Biographer Boot reported that Reagan “pressured Israel to free its prisoners, reasoning that somehow it wasn’t ‘dealing with terrorists’ — it was just a mutual release of ‘hostages’ held in both Israel and Lebanon.”
As Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy, Iran’s agreement was necessary for the deal to be made. Syria, playing the role of go-between, bribed Iran with a delivery of Syrian Scud missiles in return for an American promise not to attack Lebanon nor Syria in reprisal for the hijacking.
A few months later, on October 7, 1985, Palestinian terrorists hijacked the cruise ship Achille Lauro, shooting wheelchair-bound, Jewish passenger Leon Klinghoffer and throwing his body into the sea. When the ship reached Egypt, that nation’s president Hosni Mubarak negotiated the release of 400 passengers, with the Palestinian terrorists promised safe passage to another country. Israeli intelligence tipped the U.S. about which flight to Tunisia the terrorists would be on, and U.S. Navy jets forced the flight down to a NATO airbase in Sicily. U.S. Navy SEALS waiting at the airport were outflanked by Italian forces, who said it was their country and capturing the terrorists therefore was their responsibility. The SEALS stood down, and the Italians prosecuted four hijackers, but allowed their leader, Muhammad Abu Abbas, to leave their jurisdiction.
Meanwhile, on July 3, 1985, David Kimche, director general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, paid a White House visit to Robert “Bud” McFarlane, the U.S. National Security Adviser. He said that he had been contacted by “moderates” in Iran’s government who wanted to improve relations with the United States. He said that the Iranians had held out the possibility of releasing five American hostages, including CIA station chief William Buckley. Reagan was very interested, telling McFarlane “Gosh, that’s great news.” Had he known that this would eventuate into the biggest scandal of his presidency — the Iran-Contra Affair — Reagan would have been far more circumspect.
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Tomorrow, Part Three: Iran-Contra and Reagan’s farewell.
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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World.