Nixon and the JewsOne of the more shocking parts of the Nixon White House tapes were his derogatory remarks about Jews.
Jason Maoz puts it into context:
Addressing the question of Nixon`s anti-Semitism, the late Israeli president Chaim Herzog wrote: "[D]id his personal attitudes have any effect on his dealing with Israel and with Jews? None. He supplied arms and unflinching support when our very existence would have been in danger without them. Let his comments be set against his actions. And I`ll choose actions over words any day of the week."I also found this interesting:
But if talk alone is the true measure of a man, Harry Truman – who habitually made derogatory remarks about Jews and whose home in Independence, Missouri, was off-limits to them – would have to be considered an anti-Semite of the first order. It`s a safe bet that those who complain the loudest about Nixon`s anti-Semitic statements say nary a word about Truman`s Jewish problem.Here's a WaPo story about a
1947 diary of Truman. The headline plays down the diaries as "Harry Truman's Forgotten Diary--1947 Writings Offer Fresh Insight on the President", but nobody could accuse the writers of burying the lede:
"The Jews, I find are very, very selfish," President Harry S. Truman wrote in a 1947 diary that was recently discovered on the shelves of the Truman Library in Independence, Mo., and released by the National Archives yesterdayThere's the obligatory:
"Truman was often critical, sometimes hypercritical, of Jews in his diary entries and in his correspondences, but this doesn't make him an anti-Semite," says John Lewis Gaddis, a professor of history at Yale University and a prominent Cold War scholar. "Anyone who played the role he did in creating the state of Israel can hardly be regarded in that way."Well, yeah, except that anyone who
barred Jews from his home has to be a little suspect.
