Israeli diplomats are today striving to restore understanding and good relations with the Department of State. Israeli officials are studying President Eisenhower’s statement that the U.S. position on Israeli, British and French actions in the Middle East “in no way minimizes our friendship with these nations nor our determination to retain and strengthen the bonds amongst us.”
The Israeli view is that Israel’s action is both necessary and legitimate, and that President Eisenhower’s dissent arises from the fact that Israel is much closer to the realities of Nasser’s aggressiveness and intransigence. Israelis hold that the fact that Nasser’s drive for domination affects a distant hemisphere may account for a regrettable and temporary difference in judgment. Israeli circles are convinced, as Ambassador Abba Eban has said in the United Nations and elsewhere, that any country as directly outraged as Israel has been by Nasser would have decided on a policy of legitimate resistance.
While strongly maintaining the rightness of its action, Israel is described as deeply anxious to retain and strengthen its friendship with the United States. It is understood that Israel Premier Ben Gurion’s messages to President Eisenhower said that friendship with the United States is among the most precious assets of the government and people of Israel.
The Israel Government’s directive to the Embassy here has been to strive for the restoration of full understanding and to stress Israel’s appreciation of the political, moral and material assistance which Israel in the past received from the United States.
Israel’s urgent objective now is to replace the instability and danger of recent years, especially of recent weeks, by a new system of relations with its neighbors based upon peaceful relations, the renunciation of all warlike acts and the establishment of regional cooperation.
Israel feels America will come to realize that successful resistance to a dictatorship which has shaken security, spread subversion and threatened all the peoples of the Middle East with expanding domination furnishes a historic opportunity for a new era, marked by genuine freedom and peace, in the region.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
