Michael Piper and Final Judgment

[Mark Stapleton]

Albert... you do not have the slightest concern over Ben-Gurion's defining the situation as a THREAT to the FUTURE EXISTENCE OF ISRAEL... being somewhat of an exaggeration?
A rally cry to secure the support of the USA... a cry that has been thrown around year after year since Israel is in a CONSTANT STATE OF THREAT...

David, the ignorance of that comment shows how little you know about the final years of Ben-Gurion's Prime Ministership.

BG's obsession with protecting and preserving the nuclear deterrent is not just emphasised in Piper's book but also in Cohen's "Israel and the Bomb" and Michael Bar-Zohar's biography of Ben-Gurion, to name just two. The old man was so upset by Kennedy's determination to prevent Israel's acquisition of nuclear weapons that some Cabinet colleagues thought he was losing his mind.

And yes, Israel has played the existential threat card on other occasions (like now with Iran for example), but the point you ignore is that in mid-1963 Kennedy wasn't buying it. That's the point. He couldn't get through to Kennedy no matter how hard he appealed, no matter how many times he invoked the (relatively fresh) memory of the Holocaust.

Kennedy's harsh letter of May 18 causes the most consternation. BG responds with a letter on May 27, which basically stalls for more time. On June 5, after a meeting in El Paso, it is announced that JFK will visit Texas in November. On June 15 Ben-Gurion resigns. He never corresponds with Kennedy again.