irishspirit
13th December 2010, 17:00
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Henry Kissinger is heard saying on newly released Nixon tapes that the genocide of Soviet Jews would not be an American concern.
The tapes chronicle President Richard Nixon's obsession with disparaging Jews and other minorities.
Kissinger's remarks come after a meeting he and Nixon had with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir on March 1, 1973 in which Meir pleads for the United States to put pressure on the Soviet Union to release its Jews. Nixon and Kissinger, then the secretary of state, dismiss the plea after Meir leaves.
"The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy," The New York Times on Saturday quotes Kissinger, as saying on the tapes. "And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern."
Nixon replies, "I know. We can’t blow up the world because of it."
Six months later, during the Yom Kippur War, Nixon rejected Kissinger's advice to delay an arms airlift to Israel as a means of setting the stage for an Egypt confident enough to pursue peace. Nixon, among other reasons, cited Israel's urgent need.
http://www.jta.org/news/article/2010/12/11/2742121/kissinger-gassing-jews-would-not-be-a-us-problem
The tapes chronicle President Richard Nixon's obsession with disparaging Jews and other minorities.
Kissinger's remarks come after a meeting he and Nixon had with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir on March 1, 1973 in which Meir pleads for the United States to put pressure on the Soviet Union to release its Jews. Nixon and Kissinger, then the secretary of state, dismiss the plea after Meir leaves.
"The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy," The New York Times on Saturday quotes Kissinger, as saying on the tapes. "And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern."
Nixon replies, "I know. We can’t blow up the world because of it."
Six months later, during the Yom Kippur War, Nixon rejected Kissinger's advice to delay an arms airlift to Israel as a means of setting the stage for an Egypt confident enough to pursue peace. Nixon, among other reasons, cited Israel's urgent need.
http://www.jta.org/news/article/2010/12/11/2742121/kissinger-gassing-jews-would-not-be-a-us-problem