Final_Judgment

92 No Love Lost [31]
KENNEDY RILES THE ISRAELI LOBBY
In 1957, while serving in his first Senate term, John Kennedy became
involved in a festering international issue that was little noticed among the
average American voters, but which was of special interest to Israel and its
lobby in America: the question of Algerian independence. The giant Arab
colossus, long a French colony, was seeking its freedom and in France itself
the nation was engaged in a heated debate over the question. Israel, of
course, saw the emergence of another independent Arab republic as a threat
to its security and anyone favoring Algerian independence was, thus,
advocating a policy deemed threatening to Israel's survival.
Former diplomat Richard Curtiss described Kennedy's surprise entry
into the debate over Algeria: "By 1957, as a freshman member of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, he thought he recognized [the] tragedy of
colonial inflexibility unfolding in Algeria. Already one of the congressional
library's heaviest borrowers, he now spent additional time in conversation
with William J. Porter, an Arabist and the director of the State Department's
Office of North African Affairs.
"Porter feared that Washington's uncritical support of its NATO ally,
France, in the increasingly brutal French repression of the Algerian
nationalists, threatened the whole future of the United States in North
Africa. Kennedy also talked to members of the Algerian FLN delegation at
the United Nations." 47
On July 2, 1957, JFK rose before the Senate and gave his maiden
foreign policy address on this controversial question. He said, in part: "No
amount of mutual politeness, wishful thinking, nostalgia or regret should
blind either France or the United States to the fact that, if France and the
West at large are to have a continuing influence in North Africa . . . the essential
first step is the independence of Algeria." 48
According to Curtiss: "The speech prompted more mail than any other
he delivered as a senator. The foreign policy establishment in New York, a
bastion of Atlantic solidarity, expressed righteous indignation." 49 Also,
notes Curtiss, "the French were irritated." 50
Some of Kennedy's critics said that the speech was a political move and
that he chose the topic of Algerian independence as the subject of his first
major foreign policy address because there was neither a "French" vote nor
an "Algerian" vote to contend with in his home state of Massachusetts or in
the nation as a whole.
While the latter observation is correct, of course, the fact is that there
was one particularly powerful American voting bloc (and source of financial
contributions) that did take note of Kennedy's support for Algerian Arab
independence: the powerful American lobby for Israel.
As we shall see, in the end, it may have been JFK's initiative on the
Algerian question that, in fact, played a major part in shaping the entirety of the
conspiracy that ended his life in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.
This gesture by the young senator also angered many French
nationalists who wanted to retain French colonial control of Algeria. Many