The president was furious. He had just been shown photos of civilians killed by Israeli artillery fire, including a small baby whose arm was blown off. He ordered his aides to call the Israeli prime minister and then gave him a hard-on.
The president was Ronald Reagan, the year was 1982, and the battlefield was Lebanon, where Israeli forces were attacking Palestinian fighters. Mr. Reagan’s conversation with Prime Minister Menachem Begin that day, Aug. 12, was one of the few times his aides heard the normally mild-mannered president use such force.
“This is the Holocaust,” Mr. Reagan angrily told Mr. Begin.
Begin, whose parents and brother were killed by the Nazis, retorted: Mr. President, I know a lot about the Holocaust. ”
Nevertheless, Mr. Reagan countered that it had to stop. Mr. Begin heeded the request. Twenty minutes later, he called again and told the president that he had ordered a cessation of shelling. Mr. Reagan later marveled at his aides: “He didn’t know he had that kind of power.”
This won’t be the only time he uses it to rein in Israel. Indeed, Mr. Reagan used American weapons power several times to influence Israel’s war policy, at various points ordering delays or withholding of the deployment of fighter jets and cluster munitions. Four decades later, his actions took on new meaning as President Biden threatened to delay bomb shipments and withhold other offensive weapons if Israel attacked Rafah in southern Gaza. Ta.
While Republicans have accused Biden of abandoning allies in the middle of a war, supporters of the president’s decision pointed to Reagan’s precedent. They argue that if it makes sense for a Republican president to limit weapons in order to impose his will on Israel, then it should be acceptable for the current Democratic president to do the same.
But what the comparison to Reagan really highlights is how much Israeli politics has evolved within the United States since the 1980s. For decades, presidents and prime ministers have been at loggerheads without permanently damaging the strong relationship between the two countries.
Dwight D. Eisenhower threatened economic sanctions and aid cuts to force Israel to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula after it invaded Egypt in 1956. Gerald R. Ford warned in 1975 that he would reevaluate the entire relationship because of what he considered Israel to be recalcitrant when it invaded Egypt in 1956. Peace negotiations with Egypt. In 1991, George H.W. Bush deferred $10 billion in loan guarantees in the West Bank settlement dispute.
During Mr. Reagan’s time, the Democratic Party was seen as the more pro-Israel party, but Mr. Reagan wanted to change that perception. As Mr. Reagan himself put it, “Israel has never had a better friend in the White House.” Still, it was a friendship that was tested many times.
In June 1981, less than five months after Mr. Infuriated many people. Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger, considered a friend of the Arab people, urged Mr. Reagan to stop the flow of arms to Israel. Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr., considered a friend of Israel, opposed this.
In the end, Mr. Reagan voted to censure Israel on the United Nations Security Council and agreed to delay the delivery of four F-16s scheduled for that summer – a move Patrick Tyler said “A World of Trouble” is a history of U.S. diplomacy. Middle East policy has been characterized as “minimum rebuke.”
But just weeks later, Israeli airstrikes killed an estimated 300 civilians in Beirut’s Palestinian enclave, and President Reagan intercepted 10 more F-16s and two F-15s. I decided to do it. However, the conflict did not last long. The freeze was lifted by August.
Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 sparked a new conflict. President Reagan halted shipments of cluster munitions over concerns that they were being used against civilians in violation of the agreement. Around the same time, without explanation, he delayed the delivery of 75 F-16 fighters until March 1983 and announced that no fighters would be released until Israel withdrew its troops from Lebanon.
The move did not provoke the same wave of criticism seen in Washington this week. Mr. Reagan meekly noted his decision in his diary that night: “Perhaps it was the signal Israel needed.” In the days that followed, the New York Times did not feature any criticism from members of either party. A week later, conservative Times columnist William Safire denounced Mr. Reagan’s comments as a “tragic betrayal of Israel.”
As Reagan biographer Lou Cannon recalls, “Reagan had gained public support for withholding aid as the Beirut bombing was witnessed on American television.” “It was as bad as it was in Gaza.”
Since then, of course, the Republican Party has repositioned itself as the party that unquestionably supports Israel, while the Democratic Party, enraged by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s long conservative government, has become divided on the issue. Today, there is none of the cultivated respect that Mr. Reagan enjoyed from across the aisle on foreign policy.
The bombardment of August 1982 had a particularly profound effect on Mr. Reagan. Whatever his politics or policies, he reacted instinctively to the photos he saw.
“Reagan was deeply shaken by the bombardment of Beirut,” Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Richard Murphy recalled in an oral history by Deborah Hart Strober and Gerald S. Strober. “He made it very clear that he wanted this to stop when the human side was right in front of him.”
Mr. Reagan did not hesitate and was willing to risk everything. “I was pissed,” he wrote in his diary last night, describing a tense conversation with Mr. Begin. “I told him it has to stop or our entire future relationship is at risk.” And so it stopped, at least temporarily.
