We recently learned that Henry Kissinger told President Nixon, in 1973, that it was appropriate for an American leader to be indifferent to the mass slaughter of Jews: “The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.” When he spoke those words, Kissinger (raising a lurid image to prove his reliability) pandered to the anti-Semitic prejudice of the most powerful man in the world.
Today the New York Times runs “A Defense of Kissinger, from Prominent Jews.” Signed by Mortimer Zuckerman, Kenneth Bialkin, and James Tisch, this letter to the editor exonerates Kissinger. As a compensation for that grotesque remark, the letter cites Kissinger’s previous work to increase the emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union to Israel, his “dramatic assistance” to Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and private words “many of us have heard” on behalf of the national security of Israel.
What is being compared to what? On one side, Kissinger’s assurance to the president that the killing of Jews, as such, is a matter of no concern to the United States. On the other side, Kissinger’s public service to the state of Israel, and his private assurances of his support for Israel. The inference from the Zuckerman-Bialkin-Tisch letter is this: an anti-Semite (which the cold sycophant Kissinger was not) who supports Israel is admirable while a fighter against anti-Semitism who does not support Israel is not admirable. Kissinger’s support for Israel, on this view, atones for his moral offense against the Jewish people and against humanity.
And what if the spread of anti-Semitism were a condition for strengthening the
security of Israel? By the logic of this letter, the bargain is fair, and we ought to be grateful to the philo-Israeli anti-Semites (Christian Zionists for example) who are working today to achieve such a trade-off.
