Israel Matzav

Gaza and the Cuban missile crisis

In Boston last week, I often walked by Beals Street in Brookline. Beals Street has a sign on the end from the National Parks Service showing that there is an historical site on the street: The birthplace of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy.

In 1955, Kennedy wrote a book called Profiles in Courage. The book described acts of bravery and integrity by eight United States Senators during the course of the Senate's history. None of those Senators were named John F. Kennedy.

As President, in 1962, Kennedy confronted the Cuban missile crisis. At the time, it was said, that Kennedy's handling of that crisis was also a profile in courage. While I'm just a little too young to remember the Cuban missile crisis, I studied it in college, and I am convinced that most Americans at that time (and even today) do not appreciate how close their country was to a nuclear war.

Ken Blackwell compares Kennedy's leadership during the Cuban missile crisis with Barack Obama's handling of the flotilla last week. The comparison is stunning.

Compare today’s response of daylight not showing between us and our Israeli allies, then peeping through, with the clear, hard determination of President Kennedy when we were threatened by Soviet missiles in Cuba, or, “Cuber,” as our brave young leader pronounced it. Here’s how Kennedy described U.S. actions on 22 October 1962:

To halt this offensive buildup a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba from whatever nation or port will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back. This quarantine will be extended, if needed, to other types of cargo and carriers. We are not at this time, however, denying the necessities of life as the Soviets attempted to do in their Berlin blockade of 1948.

Is this not precisely what the Israelis were trying to do with Gaza? Cuba was 90 miles off our shores. Gaza is right there. What were the Israelis attempting to do other than to inspect “all ships of any kind?” Didn’t the U.S. plan to do precisely that with Soviet freighters approaching Cuba? And if one those Soviet ships had decided to defy the U.S. quarantine, we probably did not plan to send in boarding parties. Kennedy probably planned instead to send a shell through their pilot house. The Israelis are being blamed for not sinking the Turkish ferry.

The Israelis allow the “necessities of life” to get through to Gaza. But they join with Arab Egypt in a blockade that attempts to prevent weapons from going in to Gaza. In Gaza, “humanitarian” aid takes the form of ambulances that transport rockets and hospitals that store them.

Vice President Joe Biden warned us of this. He said the world would test our young leader. And he pleaded for patience and understanding when that test came. It would not be immediately apparent that the administration was pursuing the right course, Biden told Democratic party donors in Seattle, just before the `08 election. That’s why their support was especially crucial.

Well, Joe got that part right. It is not immediately clear that this administration’s Mideast policy is on the right course. We are in a military and diplomatic fog that is totally unnecessary. And it has all been brought about by confusion at the top. What we need is a profile in courage, like that shown by the young, untested President John F. Kennedy. What we are hearing is an uncertain trumpet. Who can respond to that?

No one except those who have no choice but to respond.

We need a profile in courage. Barack Obama is a profile in cowardice.

What could go wrong?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:37 PM