Things You Never Knew about LBJ

Things You Never Knew about LBJ
by Lenny Ben-David , THE JERUSALEM POST

Lyndon Johnson -- A Friend in Deed
A few weeks ago, the Associated Press reported that newly released
tapes from US president Lyndon Johnson's White House office showed LBJ's
"personal and often emotional connection to Israel." The news agency
pointed out that during the Johnson presidency (1963-1969), "the United
States became Israel's chief diplomatic ally and primary arms supplier."


But the news report does little to reveal the full historical
extent of Johnson's actions on behalf of the Jewish people and the State of
Israel. Most students of the Arab-Israeli conflict can identify Johnson as
the president during the 1967 war. But few know about LBJ's actions to
rescue hundreds of endangered Jews during the Holocaust - actions that
could have thrown him out of Congress and into jail. Indeed, the title of
"Righteous Gentile" is certainly appropriate in the case of the Texan,
whose centennial year is being commemorated this year.


Appropriately enough, the annual Jerusalem Conference announced
this week that it will honor Johnson in February 2009.


Historians have revealed that Johnson, while serving as a young
congressman in 1938 and 1939, arranged for visas to be supplied to Jews in
Warsaw, and oversaw the apparently illegal immigration of hundreds of Jews
through the port of Galveston, Texas.


A key resource for uncovering LBJ's pro-Jewish activity is the
unpublished 1989 doctoral thesis by University of Texas student Louis
Gomolak, "Prologue: LBJ's Foreign Affairs Background, 1908-1948." Johnson's
activities were confirmed by other historians in interviews with his wife,
family members and political associates.


Research into Johnson's personal history indicates that he
inherited his concern for the Jewish people from his family. His aunt
Jessie Johnson Hatcher, a major influence on LBJ, was a member of the
Zionist Organization of America. According to Gomolak, Aunt Jessie had
nurtured LBJ's commitment to befriending Jews for 50 years. As a young boy,
Lyndon watched his politically active grandfather "Big Sam" and father
"Little Sam" seek clemency for Leo Frank, the Jewish victim of a blood
libel in Atlanta. Frank was lynched by a mob in 1915, and the Ku Klux Klan
in Texas threatened to kill the Johnsons. The Johnsons later told friends
that Lyndon's family hid in their cellar while his father and uncles stood
guard with shotguns on their porch in case of KKK attacks. Johnson's
speechwriter later stated, "Johnson often cited Leo Frank's lyn ching as
the source of his opposition to both anti-Semitism and isolationism."


Already in 1934 - four years before Chamberlain's Munich sellout
to Hitler - Johnson was keenly alert to the dangers of Nazism and presented
a book of essays, Nazism: An Assault on Civilization, to the 21-year-old
woman he was courting, Claudia Taylor - later known as "Lady Bird" Johnson.
It was an incredible engagement present.


FIVE DAYS after taking office in 1937, LBJ broke with the
"Dixiecrats" and supported an immigration bill that would naturalize
illegal aliens, mostly Jews from Lithuania and Poland. In 1938, Johnson was
told of a young Austrian Jewish musician who was about to be deported from
the United States. With an element of subterfuge, LBJ sent him to the US
Consulate in Havana to obtain a residency permit. Erich Leinsdorf, the
world famous musician and conductor, credited LBJ for saving his live.


That same year, LBJ warned a Jewish friend, Jim Novy, that
European Jews faced annihilation. "Get as many Jewish people as possible
out [of Germany and Poland]," were Johnson's instructions. Somehow, Johnson
provided him with a pile of signed immigration papers that were used to get
42 Jews out of Warsaw.


But that wasn't enough. According to historian James M. Smallwood,
Congressman Johnson used legal and sometimes illegal methods to smuggle
"hundreds of Jews into Texas, using Galveston as the entry port. Enough
money could buy false passports and fake visas in Cuba, Mexico and other
Latin American countries.... Johnson smuggled boatloads and planeloads of
Jews into Texas. He hid them in the Texas National Youth Administration...
Johnson saved at least four or five hundred Jews, possibly more."


During World War II Johnson joined Novy at a small Austin
gathering to sell $65,000 in war bonds. According to Gomolak, Novy and
Johnson then raised a very "substantial sum for arms for Jewish underground
fighters in Palestine." One source cited by the historian reports that
"Novy and Johnson had been secretly shipping heavy crates labeled 'Texas
Grapefruit' - but containing arms - to Jewish underground 'freedom
fighters' in Palestine."


ON JUNE 4, 1945, Johnson visited Dachau. According to Smallwood,
Lady Bird later recalled that when her husband returned home, "he was still
shaken, stunned, terrorized and bursting with an overpowering revulsion and
incredulous horror at what he had seen."


A decade later while serving in the Senate, Johnson blocked the
Eisenhower administration's attempts to apply sanctions against Israel
following the 1956 Sinai Campaign. "The indefatigable Johnson had never
ceased pressure on the administration," wrote I.L. "Si" Kenen, the head of
AIPAC at the time.


As Senate majority leader, Johnson consistently blocked the
anti-Israel initiatives of his fellow Democrat, William Fulbright, the
chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Among Johnson's closest
advisers during this period were several strong pro-Israel advocates,
including Benjamin Cohen (who 30 years earlier was the liaison between
Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis and Chaim Weizmann) and Abe Fortas,
the legendary Washington "insider."


Johnson's concern for the Jewish people continued through his
presidency. Soon after taking office in the aftermath of John F. Kennedy's
assassination in 1963, Johnson told an Israeli diplomat, "You have lost a
very great friend, but you have found a better one."


Just one month after succeeding Kennedy, LBJ attended the December
1963 dedication of the Agudas Achim Synagogue in Austin. Novy opened the
ceremony by saying to Johnson, "We can't thank him enough for all those
Jews he got out of Germany during the days of Hitler."


Lady Bird would later describe the day, according to Gomolak:
"Person after person plucked at my sleeve and said, 'I wouldn't be here
today if it wasn't for him. He helped me get out.'" Lady Bird elaborated,
"Jews had been woven into the warp and woof of all [Lyndon's] years."


THE PRELUDE to the 1967 war was a terrifying period for Israel,
with the US State Department led by the historically unfriendly Dean Rusk
urging an evenhanded policy despite Arab threats and acts of aggression.
Johnson held no such illusions. After the war he placed the blame firmly on
Egypt: "If a single act of folly was more responsible for this explosion
than any other, it was the arbitrary and dangerous announced decision [by
Egypt] that the Strait of Tiran would be closed [to Israeli ships and
Israeli-bound cargo]."


Kennedy was the first president to approve the sale of defensive
US weapons to Israel, specifically Hawk anti-aircraft missiles. But Johnson
approved tanks and fighter jets, all vital after the 1967 war when France
imposed a freeze on sales to Israel. Yehuda Avner recently described on
these pages prime minister Levi Eshkol's successful appeal for these
weapons on a visit to the LBJ ranch.


Israel won the 1967 war, and Johnson worked to make sure it also
won the peace. "I sure as hell want to be careful and not run out on little
Israel," Johnson said in a March 1968 conversation with his ambassador to
the United Nations, Arthur Goldberg, according to White House tapes
recently released.


Soon after the 1967 war, Soviet premier Aleksei Kosygin asked
Johnson at the Glassboro Summit why the US supported Israel when there were
80 million Arabs and only three million Israelis. "Because it is right,"
responded the straight-shooting Texan.


The crafting of UN Resolution 242 in November 1967 was done under
Johnson's scrutiny. The call for "secure and recognized boundaries" was
critical. The American and British drafters of the resolution opposed
Israel returning all the territories captured in the war. In September
1968, Johnson explained, "We are not the ones to say where other nations
should draw lines between them that will assure each the greatest security.
It is clear, however, that a return to the situation of 4 June 1967 will
not bring peace. There must be secure and there must be recognized borders.
Some such lines must be agreed to by the neighbors involved."


Goldberg later noted, "Resolution 242 in no way refers to
Jerusalem, and this omission was deliberate." This historic diplomacy was
conducted under Johnson's stewardship, as Goldberg related in oral history
to the Johnson Library. "I must say for Johnson," Goldberg stated. "He gave
me great personal support."


Robert David Johnson, a professor of history at Brooklyn College,
recently wrote in The New York Sun, "Johnson's policies stemmed more from
personal concerns - his friendship with leading Zionists, his belief that
America had a moral obligation to bolster Israeli security and his
conception of Israel as a frontier land much like his home state of Texas.
His personal concerns led him to intervene when he felt that the State or
Defense departments had insufficiently appreciated Israel's diplomatic or
military needs."


President Johnson firmly pointed American policy in a pro-Israel
direction. In a historical context, the American emergency airlift to
Israel in 1973, the constant diplomatic support, the economic and military
assistance and the strategic bonds between the two countries can all be
credited to the seeds planted by LBJ.


The writer served as deputy chief of mission of the Israeli
Embassy in Washington. Today, an international consultant, he blogs at
www.lennybendavid.com.