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September 3, 1963

Undated, unsigned handwritten note, possibly by Minister without Portfolio Galili

Written by an unknown author (possibly Galili) to an unknown recipient, this document dates from September 1963. It points to the fact that Israel saw itself as stricltly in adherance to the nuclear-related commitments undertaken by Ben Gurion in his letters to President John F. Kennedy, referred to the note as “B.G letters”. The note consists of a list of short explanatory statements on the nature of these commitments and how Israel interprets them.

 

Editor's note: Because of the unique provenance of this document, it should be treated as unauthenticated and interpreted skeptically. Readers are strongly encouraged to read the associated essay by Or Rabinowitz.

July 18, 1970

Undated, unsigned handwritten note, possibly by Minister without portfolio Israeli Galili discussing the publication of a story on Israel’s nuclear program in the New York Time

Presumably written by by Minister Israel Galili some time in 1970, this note discusses the publication of a story on Israel’s nuclear program in the New York Times. According to the note, the story mentions “the agreement we have with the President,” alluding to the 1969 Richard Nixon-Golda Meir deal on Israel’s nuclear status. The note further attempts to analyze which source within the Nixon administration had approached the paper and leaked assessments on Israel’s nuclear capabilities, underscoring the secrecy and the sensitivity surrounding the 1969 understanding.

Editor's note: Because of the unique provenance of this document, it should be treated as unauthenticated and interpreted skeptically. Readers are strongly encouraged to read the associated essay by Or Rabinowitz.

1969

Undated, unsigned handwritten note, presumably from Minister Yigal Allon to Minister without Portfolio Israel Galili

This handwritten note, presumably from Minister Yigal Allon, most likely circa 1969-1970, demonstrates how Israel adopted the NPT’s nuclear test criteria for its own purposes, allowing the Israeli leadership to maintain that Israel was not a nuclear state. Allon’s adoption of the NPT’s nuclear test criteria mirrored Israel’s official language at the time when discussing the issue with state department officials.

Editor's note: Because of the unique provenance of this document, it should be treated as unauthenticated and interpreted skeptically. Readers are strongly encouraged to read the associated essay by Ori Rabinowitz.

June 1, 1971

If We Immigrate to Israel, We Are Bound to Incite the Panthers' Bitterness

For many centuries Jews not only from Europe but also from across all of what we now call the Middle East trickled to Eretz Israel/Palestine, most importantly to Jerusalem. Moreover, in the mid-nineteenth century, the leading proto-Zionist thinker Rabbi Judah Alkalai (1798 [Sarajevo]-1878 [Jerusalem]) was a Sephardi, i.e. a Jew whose family was originally from Sepharad, Spain, and ended up in the Ottoman Empire after being expulsed in the fifteenth century. And when in the later nineteenth century Zionism arose, it found some followers in the Middle East, too.

Despite all the above, Zionism’s political-ideological epicenter was the Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian Empires. Whether left- or right-wing or liberal, Zionist parties were led by European-born Jews (who were quite diverse, though). And while Jews from Middle Eastern countries continued to arrive in Palestine in the very late Ottoman period (1516/17-1917/18) and the British Mandate (1917/22-1948), most Jewish immigrants were from Europe. This changed only after and due to the Holocaust, in which about two out of three European Jews were killed. In the early postwar Americas and Western Europe, relatively few Jews wished to emigrate, and the Soviet Union, which after World War II replaced Poland as the European country with the largest Jewish population, forbade emigration.

Hence, the government of Prime Minister David Ben Gurion (1886-1968; r. 1948-1954/1955-1963) expanded initiatives—in some cases “helped” by Arab nationalist pressures on domestic Jews—to bring to Israel the ‘edot ha-mizrah, the (Middle) Eastern communities, a plural that would morph into the collective mizrahim. After all, Israel in 1948 counted “only” about 700,000 Jews. While many middle- and upper-class Jews e.g. from Morocco and Egypt left for Europe, a large majority—but far from all—of those Israel-bound emigrants were poor. As if this did not make starting a new life hard enough, the relatively poor newly-found State of Israel was overwhelmed by the ensuing population explosion. Worst, however, was systemic institutional and individual discrimination, analyzed e.g. in Ella Shohat’s classic article “Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the standpoint of its Jewish victims” (1988). Yes: the Palestinians who had remained in Israel after the nakba had it worse, for the Jewish State did not treat them as full citizens, even subjecting them to military rule until 1966. But in the eyes of most Middle Eastern Jewish immigrants, this was cold comfort.

Protests occurred from the 1950s. They took a new turn in February 1971, when poor Jerusalemites, many with a petty criminal record and most from Morocco, founded the Black Panthers (BP), organizing demonstrations and asserting that their communities had “enough of deprivation [and] enough of discrimination.” Although the Panthers would have a limited long-term effect politically—only one, Charlie Bitton (born 1947), would go on to have a lasting political career, as a communist member of parliament—socially, they did. The government reacted not only with repression but also by increasing social services; besides, the Panthers helped bring different Middle Eastern Jewish communities closer. For our purposes most crucial, though, is the Panthers’ choice of name. While they did not too often refer to their US namesakes and never to leaders like Huey Newton (1942-1989), their name reflected the influence on Israel of US developments, as Oz Frankel’s “The Black Panthers of Israel and the Politics of Radical Analogy” (2012) argues. And although the Israeli Panthers shared neither the Americans’ separatist nationalism—they wanted fully in, not out—nor their use of arms nor their support for Palestine, calling themselves Panthers shocked Israel’s Ashkenazi (European) establishment. It presumably harmed Israel’s reputation, also by the hand of Arabs. Moreover, by the late 1960s Israelis and some US Jews believed that most African Americans had become anti-Semitic.

The text featured here, an English translation of a Hebrew article published in the leading daily Yediot Aharonot, reflects some of these intricate international dimensions of the rise of Israel’s Panthers.

June 11, 1981

Telegram from Washington Embassy to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 'Evron-the President'

The Israelis were concerned and disappointed by the administration’s initial response to the raid, which consisted of a freeze on the shipment of F-16 jets to Israel until a legal review was conducted. The Israeli ambassador to Washington conveyed this sentiment to President Reagan in a meeting on 11 June 1980 in this telegram.

June 10, 1981

Telegram from Washington Embassy to Foreign Office

The Israeli embassy in Washington learned from Haig as well as from another contact that Secretary of Defense Weinberger supports a tough approach to Israel, including a a UNSC resolution that would demand Israel to open the Israeli nuclear reactor at Dimona for inspection and a call for Israel to join the NPT.

June 10, 1981

Telegram from Washington embassy to Foreign Office, Subject: Evron-Haig

The Israeli embassy in Washington learned from Haig as well as from another contact that Secretary of Defense Weinberger supports a tough approach to Israel, including a UNSC resolution that would demand Israel to open the Israeli nuclear reactor at Dimona for inspection and a call for Israel to join the NPT.

June 9, 1981

Telegram from Washington Embassay to Foreign Office, Subject: administration response

Secretary of State Alexander Haig, who maintained close ties with the Israeli diplomats, told the Israeli ambassador in a phone conversation on 9 June 1981 that Israel’s action in Baghdad caused a serious complication for the U.S., reiterating that “President Reagan thinks the same”.

November 28, 1962

Telegram from Israeli Embassy, Moscow (Tekoah), to Israeli Foreign Ministry, Jerusalem

A British Naval attache tells the Israeli Embassy that at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the US was making preparations to conquer the island of Cuba and, by his assessment, the Soviet Union would not have responded.

December 21, 1962

Cable from US Desk, Israeli Foreign Ministry, to Israeli Embassy, Washington

A description of President Kennedy's visit to Brazil on 17 December and his explanation of the implicaitons of the Cuban Missile Crisis on Brazilian foriegn policy.

Pagination