Final_Judgment

116 Genesis [55]
BEN-GURION: 'SIGNS OF PARANOIA'
The straw that broke the camel's back, had actually taken place some
six months earlier. By spring of 1963, Kennedy and Ben-Gurion were at
loggerheads, more seriously than ever before. What's more, Ben-Gurion
was suffering a deep personal crisis (part of which, we now see, stemmed
from his unhappy relationship with John F. Kennedy).
According to the Israeli prime minister's biographer, Dan Kurzman:
"Lonely and depressed, Ben-Gurion felt strangely helpless. Leadership of
Israel was slipping from his withered hands . . . Ben-Gurion began to show
signs of paranoia. Enemies were closing in on him from all sides. A mere
declaration by Egypt, Syria and Iraq in April 1963 that they would unite and
demolish the "Zionist threat" threw him into near-panic." 136
SECRET CORRESPONDENCE 'INCREASINGLY SOUR'
All of this, of course, contributed immensely to the problems between
Kennedy and Ben-Gurion. Seymour Hersh writes: "Kennedy's relationship
with Ben-Gurion remained at an impasse over Dimona, and the
correspondence between the two became increasingly sour. None of those
letters has been made public." 137
KENNEDY A 'BULLY'
(Like much of the secret government files on the JFK assassination, the
Kennedy exchanges with Ben-Gurion also have not been released—not even to
U.S. government officials with full security clearances who have attempted to
write classified histories of the period.) 138
"It was not a friendly exchange," according to Ben-Gurion's writer,
Yuval Neeman. "Kennedy was writing like a bully. It was brutal." 139 Ben-
Gurion' s response was not passive either.
All of this exacerbated tensions—fierce tensions—between the
American President and the Israeli leader. Kennedy's impatience was
building. Relations between the United States and Israel were unlike they
had ever been before. According to Hersh, "The president made sure that the
Israeli prime minister paid for his defiance.” 140 When Ben-Gurion
once again sought the opportunity for a formal, ballyhooed state visit to
Washington, Kennedy rebuffed him.
ISRAEL'S 'EXISTENCE IS IN DANGER'
It was then that Ben-Gurion made his position all too clear. He was
convinced that what he perceived to be Kennedy's intransigence was an all-out
threat to the continued survival of the Jewish State. JFK was perceived as an
enemy of the Jewish people.