Final_Judgment

128 The Coming of the Messiah [67]
difficulties 185 —just one of HRH's favors for the Meyer Lansky Organized
Crime Syndicate.
Thus, in the 1964 presidential election—which was Johnson's to lose—
Lansky and his partners in Israel were assured a dream ticket come
November. Both Johnson and his vice president were bought and paid for.
Lansky and Israel made sure there wouldn't be any problems with any
independent upstart second-generation multi-millionaire Irishmen like John
F. Kennedy who was not only the son of a notorious anti-Semite but a bullheaded
proponent of America's interests to boot.
Thus, having become ensconced in the presidency, Lyndon Johnson was
in a position to do many favors for Israel.
THE FOREIGN AID PORK BARREL
Perhaps his most drastic efforts in service to Israel involved massive
increases in U.S. taxpayer-financed foreign aid giveaways. Although John F.
Kennedy himself had been generous to Israel in that regard, Johnson made
Kennedy look like a piker.
Former Undersecretary of State George Ball comments that in the
foreign aid realm: "The Israelis were proved right in their assumption that
Johnson would be more friendly than Kennedy." 186
According to author Stephen Green, citing U.S. Agency for
International Development data: "Over the next few years—the first three
years of the Johnson administration—[the level of foreign aid] support [to
Israel] would change both qualitatively and quantitatively. U.S. government
assistance to Israel in FY 1964, the last budget year of the Kennedy
administration, stood at $40 million. This was substantially reduced from
the levels of assistance in previous years. In FY 1965, this figure rose to
$71 million, and in FY 1966, to $130 million." 187
ARMING ISRAEL'S WAR MACHINE
Green notes further that under Lyndon Johnson, United States military
aid to Israel also saw a drastic increase:
"More significant, however, was the change in the composition of that
assistance. In [JFK's] FY 1964, virtually none of the official U.S.
assistance for Israel was military assistance; it was split almost equally
between development loans and food assistance under the PL 480 program.
In [LBJ's} FY 1965, however, 20 percent of U.S. aid was military in
nature, and in FY 1966, fully 71 percent of all official assistance to Israel
came in the form of credits for purchase of military equipment.
"Moreover, the nature of the weapons systems we provided had changed.
In FY 1963, the Kennedy administration agreed to sell five batteries of
Hawk missiles valued at $21.5 million. This however was an air defense
system. The Johnson administration, in FY 1965-1966, provided Israel with
250 modern (modified M-48) tanks, 48 A-1 Skyhawk attack aircraft,
communications and electronics equipment, artillery, and recoilless rifles.