Final_Judgment

Chapter Five
Genesis:
JFK's Secret War With Israel
The history books have told us of John F. Kennedy's epic
struggles with Fidel Castro and the Soviets in the Bay of Pigs
debacle and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Yet, only in recent years have we begun to learn of
Kennedy's secret war with Israel. Much of the conflict
stemmed from Israel's determination to build a nuclear bomb.
Thi s is a hidde n hi st o ry that helps explain in part the
dynamic forces at work resulting in Kennedy's assassination.
By mid-1963 Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion
hated Kennedy with a passion. In fact, he considered JFK a
threat to the very survival of the Jewish State.
One of John F. Kennedy's first presidential appointments was naming
his former campaign aide Myer (Mike) Feldman as his point man for Jewish
and Israeli affairs—an important post, especially considering JFK's tenuous
relationship with Israel and its American lobby.
According to author Seymour Hersh, "The President viewed Feldman,
whose strong support for Israel was widely known, as a necessary evil
whose highly visible White House position was a political debt that had to be
paid." 79
However, the administration was determined to make certain, according
to Hersh, that nobody—Feldman in particular—would be able to circumvent
any administration policy insofar as the Middle East was concerned.
"The President's most senior advisors, most acutely McGeorge Bundy,
the national security advisor, desperately sought to cut Feldman out of the
flow of Middle East paperwork." 80 Hersh quotes another presidential aide as
having said, "It was hard to tell the difference between what Feldman said
and what the Israeli ambassador said." 81
'ZIONISTS IN THE CABINET ROOM'
President Kennedy himself had his own suspicions about Feldman,
according to the president's close friend, Charles Bartlett (to whom Kennedy
in 1960 had previously voiced concerns about Israeli influence as noted in
Chapter 4).
Bartlett recalls a visit with the new President at his home in Hyannis
Port, Massachusetts one Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath). Talk turned to
Feldman's role in the White House bureaucracy. "I imagine Mike's having a
meeting of the Zionists in the cabinet room," the president said, according
to Bartlett. 82