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Trump and Clinton Connections to LBJ and the USS Liberty

Posted on October 8, 2016October 9, 2016 By Eileen Fleming 2 Comments on Trump and Clinton Connections to LBJ and the USS Liberty
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After Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton separately and privately met with Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister noted, “It doesn’t matter which of them will be elected, US support of Israel will remain strong, our pact will remain strong and will even get stronger in the coming years.”

Trump also promised that under his administration, the United States would “recognize Jerusalem as the undivided capital of the State of Israel.”

Decades of American policy, the Oslo process and the Churches for Middle East Peace have all called for a Shared Jerusalem.

Contrary to Trump and the status quo is a presidential candidate with Jewish roots: Jill Stein who would base USA foreign policies on international law and human rights.

 

Lady Bird, Mr and Mathilde Krim, unknown female and President L.B. Johnson
Lady Bird, Mr and Mathilde Krim, unknown female and President L.B. Johnson

In “GUILT BY ASSOCIATION: How DECEPTION and SELF-DECEIT Took America to WAR”, author Jeff Gates who served seven years as counsel to the U.S. Committee on Finance, wrote about the ‘passionate attachment’ of President Lyndon Baines Johnson and Mathilde Krim.

Mathilde was young, blond, Italian and an Irgun operative.

The Irgun were the Zionist terrorist network led by Menachem Begin who emerged as Likud Party Prime Minister in 1977.

With and without her husband, Mathilde Krim was a frequent guest at the LBJ Ranch and the White House.

Jeff Gates wrote: “On the night that the Six-Day Land Grab began, Mathilde was enjoying a sleepover in the Johnson White House. But for that Zionist aggression, would Israel have been able to live peacefully with its neighbors? Israel and its supporters staged an elaborate charade to recast this provocation as defensive. That ruse included the cover-up of an Israeli assault on the U.S.S. Liberty that killed 34 Americans and left 175 wounded.”

The “5 Towns Jewish Times” is a website by an Orthodox Jewish community “committed to address all matters of note from a position of intelligence, integrity, and accuracy; and to report difficult social, political, and religious issues from all viewpoints without bias, whitewashing, or journalistic oversimplification.”

The following is excerpted from a 2013 “5 Towns Jewish Times article titled, “Our First Jewish President Lyndon Johnson? –An update!” by Morrsi Smith

The Associated Press reported that newly released tapes from US president Lyndon Johnson’s White House office showed LBJ’s “personal and often emotional connection to Israel.” The news agency pointed out that during the Johnson presidency (1963-1969), “the United States became Israel’s chief diplomatic ally and primary arms supplier.”

Research into Johnson’s personal history indicates that he inherited his concern for the Jewish people from his family. His aunt Jessie Johnson Hatcher, a major influence on LBJ, was a member of the Zionist Organization of America.

ON JUNE 4, 1945, Johnson visited Dachau…Lady Bird later recalled that when her husband returned home, “he was still shaken, stunned, terrorized, and bursting with an overpowering revulsion and incredulous horror at what he had seen.”

A decade later while serving in the Senate, Johnson blocked the Eisenhower administration’s attempts to apply sanctions against Israel following the 1956 Sinai Campaign.

As Senate majority leader, Johnson consistently blocked the anti-Israel initiatives of his fellow Democrat, William Fulbright, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“The indefatigable Johnson had never ceased pressure on the administration,” wrote I.L. “Si” Kenen, the head of AIPAC at the time. 

Johnson’s concern for the Jewish people continued through his presidency. Soon after taking office in the aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Johnson told an Israeli diplomat, “You have lost a very great friend, but you have found a better one.” 

Kennedy was the first president to approve the sale of defensive US weapons to Israel, specifically Hawk anti-aircraft missiles. But Johnson approved tanks and fighter jets, all vital after the 1967 war when France imposed a freeze on sales to Israel…

“I sure as hell want to be careful and not run out on little Israel,” Johnson said in a March 1968 conversation with his ambassador to the United Nations, Arthur Goldberg, according to White House tapes recently released…

Robert David Johnson, a professor of history at Brooklyn College, recently wrote in The New York Sun, Johnson’s policies stemmed more from personal concerns – “his friendship with leading Zionists, his belief that America had a moral obligation to bolster Israeli security and his conception of Israel as a frontier land much like his home state of Texas. His personal concerns led him to intervene when he felt that the State or Defense departments had insufficiently appreciated Israel’s diplomatic or military needs.”

President Johnson firmly pointed American policy in a pro-Israel direction.

In a historical context, the American emergency airlift to Israel in 1973, the constant diplomatic support, the economic and military assistance and the strategic bonds between the two countries can all be credited to the seeds planted by LBJ.

Lyndon Johnson’s maternal ancestors, the Huffmans, apparently migrated to Frederick, Maryland from Germany sometime in the mid-eighteenth century.  Later they moved to Bourbon, Kentucky and eventually settled in Texas in the mid-to-late nineteenth century.

According to Jewish law, if a person’s mother is Jewish, then that person is automatically Jewish, regardless of the father’s ethnicity or religion. 

The facts indicate that both of Lyndon Johnson’s great-grandparents, on the maternal side, were Jewish. These were the grandparents of Lyndon’s mother, Rebecca Baines. Their names were John S. Huffman and Mary Elizabeth Perrin. John Huffman’s mother was Suzanne Ament, a common Jewish name. Perrin is also a common Jewish name. Huffman and Perrin had a daughter, Ruth Ament Huffman, who married Joseph Baines and together they had a daughter, Rebekah Baines, Lyndon Johnson’s mother. The line of Jewish mothers can be traced back three generations in Lyndon Johnson’s family tree. There is little doubt that he was Jewish. 

 

George Ball was undersecretary of State under JFK and LBJ who not only called for an early end to America’s War on Vietnam, he also believed our policy of underwriting all of Israel’s actions in the Middle East was detrimental to America’s interests. In Ball’s last book, “The Passionate Attachment: America’s Involvement with Israel” he writes:

The LIBERTY’S presence and function were known to Israel’s leaders. They presumably thought it vital that the LIBERTY be prevented from informing Washington of their intention to violate any cease-fire before they had completed their occupation of the Golan. 



The ultimate lesson of the LIBERTY attack had far more effect on policy in Israel than in America. Israel’s leaders concluded that nothing they might do would offend the Americans to the point of reprisal.

If America’s leaders did not have the courage to punish Israel for the blatant murder of American citizens, it seemed clear that their American friends would let them get away with almost anything.

 

Israel paid minimal compensation to the families of the USS Liberty crew and six million for damages to the spy ship, which in fact should have exceeded 40 million.

Israel has never acknowledged that the attack was premeditated but instead blamed the victims for being in international waters.

Admiral Moorer, General Raymond Davis, Rear Admiral Staring, Ambassador James Akins and other high ranking officials have stated the attack on the USS Liberty was deliberate. They all asked for a new Court of Inquiry be convened by the Department of the Navy with Congressional oversight, to thoroughly investigate the attack on the USS LIBERTY, which is the only way justice can be rendered to the survivors. On 16 January 2004, Admiral Moorer wrote for the Stars and Stripes:

There is compelling evidence that Israel’s attack was a deliberate attempt to destroy an American ship and kill her entire crew. In attacking the USS Liberty, Israel committed acts of murder against U.S. servicemen and an act of war against the United States.

Following Israel’s 8 June 1967 attack on the USS Liberty, Israel has received an ever-increasing portion of USA foreign aid and military budgets because it is the ‘western pillar’ of the USA strategic alliance against Soviet incursion into the Middle East…

Eileen Fleming on the Bethlehem side of Israel's Wall, Copyright Meir Vanunu
Eileen Fleming on the Bethlehem side of Israel’s Wall, Copyright Meir Vanunu

The above is excerpted from Eileen Fleming’s 8th book, A USS Liberty Remembrance of 50 years USA Government Cover-Up of Israel’s 8 June 1967 Attack on the USS Liberty, soon to be published HERE 

 

  • About
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Eileen Fleming
Eileen Fleming
Senior Non-Arab Correspondent for TADN at The Arab Daily News
Senior Non-Arab Correspondent for The Arab Daily News
Producer "30 Minutes with Vanunu" who founded WeAreWideAwake.org in response to her first of 8 trips to both sides of The Wall in Palestine Israel.
In 2012, Eileen ran for US House of Representatives District 5, in Fl.
Read her FREE eBooks and more at:http://www.eileenfleming.org/
Eileen Fleming
Latest posts by Eileen Fleming (see all)
  • Vanunu still has more nuclear secrets to spill, Israeli court declares - December 29, 2021
  • 9/11 and a 20th Reflection of That Day - September 5, 2021
  • Mordechai Vanunu: Final Annual Update and this Writers Next Steps - June 19, 2021

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