Chairman of American Zionist Council Scores Nixon for Withholding Jets from Israel

President Nixon was urged by the chairman of the American Zionist Council today to reappraise as quickly as possible the military balance in the Middle East in light of the new Soviet build-up of Arab armaments and to follow through with “appropriate action so that the Arabs are convinced…that they cannot and will not achieve military superiority over Israel.” Rabbi Israel Miller, in a letter to the President, said the decision to hold in abeyance Israel’s request for more Phantom and Sky hawk Jets is “disappointing and most unfair to Israel.” He claimed that the U.S. decision “also weakens America’s position in that strategic part of the world vis-a-vis the Russian build-up in the area.”

Rabbi Miller said that Israel must be able to defend itself not only now but next year and the years after. “The contention that the supplying by the Soviets of ‘defensive’ SAM-3s to Egypt does not affect Israel’s security is a fallacious argument in face of Arab threats to annihilate Israel,” Rabbi Miller’s letter said. He contended that if Israel’s capability to deter Egyptian aggression is reduced, Nasser “will again threaten Israel with destruction, as he did in 1967, with the risk of a global confrontation by the big powers.” According to Rabbi Miller, the American decision to withhold Jets from Israel now will not appease the Arab appetite or “bring about any love for America in the Arab world.” He said the Arabs would be satisfied with nothing less than U.S. concurrence with their goal of Israel’s extinction.

(Writing in today’s Washington Post.Rowland Evans and Robert Novak stated, “A major reason behind President Nixon’s gently phrased veto of more U.S. Phantoms for Israel was a calculated estimate that the Soviet Union will not soon, if ever, supply its own pilots to fly Soviet aircraft now in the Egyptian arsenal.” The columnists also noted that “The use of Soviet pilots Is ruled out because Egypt lacks ground crews as well as pilots.” President Nixon, Evans and Novak added, is said to feel that Egypt is entitled to protect itself with Soviet SAM-3 anti-aircraft missiles, but that he would stand behind Israel “if, as Israeli officials constantly warn, Soviet pilots to indeed come into the picture or if the French undertake a massive training-and-maintenance operation in Libya.”)

(Writing from Beirut, John K. Cooley in the Christian Science Monitor reports that “Private opinions of Arab leaders” on the Jet-sale turndown “are more favorable than Arab information media indicated.” The media had complained that the “temporary” nature of the decision was merely a device to becloud American-Israeli anti-Arab collusion. “But Lebanese officials and Arab diplomats here, in private conversations, were almost unanimous in expressing relief that the plane deal had not been approved.” Still, “the public Arab reaction is mainly that the U.S. is still heavily and irrevocably committed to Israel’s military superiority in the Middle East.”)