Johnson and the Jews

Lyndon Johnson -- A Friend in Deed
By Lenny Ben-David

A few weeks ago, 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."

But the news report does little to reveal the full historical extent of Johnson's actions on behalf of the Jewish people and the State of Israel. Most students of the Arab-Israeli conflict can identify Johnson as the president during the 1967 war. But few know about LBJ's actions to rescue hundreds of endangered Jews during the Holocaust - actions that could have thrown him out of Congress and into jail. Indeed, the title of "Righteous Gentile" is certainly appropriate in the case of the Texan, whose centennial year is being commemorated this year.

Appropriately enough, the annual Jerusalem Conference announced this week that it will honor Johnson in February 2009.

Historians have revealed that Johnson, while serving as a young congressman in 1938 and 1939, arranged for visas to be supplied to Jews in Warsaw, and oversaw the apparently illegal immigration of hundreds of Jews through the port of Galveston, Texas.

A key resource for uncovering LBJ's pro-Jewish activity is the unpublished 1989 doctoral thesis by University of Texas student Louis Gomolak, "Prologue: LBJ's Foreign Affairs Background, 1908-1948." Johnson's activities were confirmed by other historians in interviews with his wife, family members and political associates.

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. According to Gomolak, Aunt Jessie had nurtured LBJ's commitment to befriending Jews for 50 years. As a young boy, Lyndon watched his politically active grandfather "Big Sam" and father "Little Sam" seek clemency for Leo Frank, the Jewish victim of a blood libel in Atlanta. Frank was lynched by a mob in 1915, and the Ku Klux Klan in Texas threatened to kill the Johnsons. The Johnsons later told friends that Lyndon's family hid in their cellar while his father and uncles stood guard with shotguns on their porch in case of KKK attacks. Johnson's speechwriter later stated, "Johnson often cited Leo Frank's lynching as the source of his opposition to both anti-Semitism and isolationism."

Already in 1934 - four years before Chamberlain's Munich sellout to Hitler - Johnson was keenly alert to the dangers of Nazism and presented a book of essays, Nazism: An Assault on Civilization, to the 21-year-old woman he was courting, Claudia Taylor - later known as "Lady Bird" Johnson. It was an incredible engagement present.

FIVE DAYS after taking office in 1937, LBJ broke with the "Dixiecrats" and supported an immigration bill that would naturalize illegal aliens, mostly Jews from Lithuania and Poland. In 1938, Johnson was told of a young Austrian Jewish musician who was about to be deported from the United States. With an element of subterfuge, LBJ sent him to the US Consulate in Havana to obtain a residency permit. Erich Leinsdorf, the world famous musician and conductor, credited LBJ for saving his life.

That same year, LBJ warned a Jewish friend, Jim Novy, that European Jews faced annihilation. "Get as many Jewish people as possible out [of Germany and Poland]," were Johnson's instructions. Somehow, Johnson provided him with a pile of signed immigration papers that were used to get 42 Jews out of Warsaw.

But that wasn't enough. According to historian James M. Smallwood, Congressman Johnson used legal and sometimes illegal methods to smuggle "hundreds of Jews into Texas, using Galveston as the entry port. Enough money could buy false passports and fake visas in Cuba, Mexico and other Latin American countries.... Johnson smuggled boatloads and planeloads of Jews into Texas. He hid them in the Texas National Youth Administration... Johnson saved at least four or five hundred Jews, possibly more."

During World War II Johnson joined Novy at a small Austin gathering to sell $65,000 in war bonds. According to Gomolak, Novy and Johnson then raised a very "substantial sum for arms for Jewish underground fighters in Palestine." One source cited by the historian reports that "Novy and Johnson had been secretly shipping heavy crates labeled 'Texas Grapefruit' - but containing arms - to Jewish underground 'freedom fighters' in Palestine."

ON JUNE 4, 1945, Johnson visited Dachau. According to Smallwood, 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. "The indefatigable Johnson had never ceased pressure on the administration," wrote I.L. "Si" Kenen, the head of AIPAC at the time.

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. Among Johnson's closest advisers during this period were several strong pro-Israel advocates, including Benjamin Cohen (who 30 years earlier was the liaison between Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis and Chaim Weizmann) and Abe Fortas, the legendary Washington "insider."

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."Just one month after succeeding Kennedy, LBJ attended the December 1963 dedication of the Agudas Achim Synagogue in Austin. Novy opened the ceremony by saying to Johnson, "We can't thank him enough for all those Jews he got out of Germany during the days of Hitler."

Lady Bird would later describe the day, according to Gomolak: "Person after person plucked at my sleeve and said, 'I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for him. He helped me get out.'" Lady Bird elaborated, "Jews had been woven into the warp and woof of all [Lyndon's] years."

THE PRELUDE to the 1967 war was a terrifying period for Israel, with the US State Department led by the historically unfriendly Dean Rusk urging an evenhanded policy despite Arab threats and acts of aggression. Johnson held no such illusions. After the war he placed the blame firmly on Egypt: "If a single act of folly was more responsible for this explosion than any other, it was the arbitrary and dangerous announced decision [by Egypt] that the Strait of Tiran would be closed [to Israeli ships and Israeli-bound cargo]."

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. Yehuda Avner recently described on these pages prime minister Levi Eshkol's successful appeal for these weapons on a visit to the LBJ ranch. (Pictured: LBJ receiving Yitzhak Rabin in the Oval Office.)

Israel won the 1967 war, and Johnson worked to make sure it also won the peace. "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.Soon after the 1967 war, Soviet premier Aleksei Kosygin asked Johnson at the Glassboro Summit why the US supported Israel when there were 80 million Arabs and only three million Israelis. "Because it is right," responded the straight-shooting Texan.

The crafting of UN Resolution 242 in November 1967 was done under Johnson's scrutiny. The call for "secure and recognized boundaries" was critical. The American and British drafters of the resolution opposed Israel returning all the territories captured in the war. In September 1968, Johnson explained, "We are not the ones to say where other nations should draw lines between them that will assure each the greatest security. It is clear, however, that a return to the situation of 4 June 1967 will not bring peace. There must be secure and there must be recognized borders. Some such lines must be agreed to by the neighbors involved."

Goldberg later noted, "Resolution 242 in no way refers to Jerusalem, and this omission was deliberate." This historic diplomacy was conducted under Johnson's stewardship, as Goldberg related in oral history to the Johnson Library. "I must say for Johnson," Goldberg stated. "He gave me great personal support."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.
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It's great to read of cooperation between Joes and Jews, Joseph and Judah, since the United States (Artzot Habrit) - "the lands of the covenant" - is the prophesied biblical inheritance of Menashe ben Yosef.

Interesting (and controversial) to read about the illegal immigration of Jews into Galveston, Texas. I was in a work-study program at Kibbutz Sdot Yam, famous for illegal immigration and mentioned in Leon Uris' book, Exodus.

My kibbutz mother, Miriam Weiss, had been in the Warsaw Ghetto with her mother.

Miriam Weiss: Holocaust Survivor and Kibbutz Mother

Yom Kippur at Sdot Yam

Waves of Memories of Sdot Yam

Joseph isn't Jewish!

Read Beyond Babylon online

Read Beyond Babylon online

Israel (Judah)

Lying Visions of Peace
The lying peace process exposes how Jews refuse to accept Israel as a Jewish state, and how Jews are willing to sacrifice each other and sell out the Land and People of Israel if the price is right: both political and religious leaders are guilty of these sins that stink to High Heaven.

Jews to Receive Jesus as Israel's King!
Is there strong indication in the Bible that Israel will have a change of heart and accept Yeshua because of the preaching of two prophets in Jerusalem, the Two Witnesses announced in Zechariah 4 and Revelation 11?

Peace Now: Arabs and Jews Must Go Their Separate Ways
Genesis 15:18 On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram and said, "To your descendants [through Isaac] I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates: 19 the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20 Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, 21 Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites."

THEY MUST GO
It is imperative that there begins, today, a campaign among world Jewry to explain the full extent of the Arab hatred and danger. The complete truth must be told to the masses of good Jews both to justify the need to remove the Arabs and to expose the dangers of the liberal Establishment bloc.

Thoughts on Meir Kahane...
The idea that Jew-hatred was the problem of the Jew-hater and that it was the job of the Jew to "educate" the Jew-hater not to manifest that hatred - expressed in the following Talmudic dictum "he who raises his hand to bless you, bless him first; he who raises his hand to kill you, kill him first" - was truly liberating for me, who had always been taught that "good Jewish boys don't fight".

Israel's Chief Rabbi Invites Foreign Occupation
Doesn't Yonah Metzger know he should be promoting the Third Temple, a biblical House of Prayer for All Peoples interested in learning about the God of Jacob, learning Torah and repenting of idolatrous traditions - not for arriving to teach foreign ideas or bring strange ways to the Holy Land in the perverse spirit of Babylon.

God is with the Jews!
Zechariah 8:23
"Thus says the LORD of hosts: 'In those days ten men [representatives of the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel?] from every language of the nations shall grasp the sleeve of a Jewish man, saying, 'Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.'"

Israel's Betrayal of the Jews
Let Jews and Israelis examine Israel's betrayal of the Jews before it's too late and Jerusalem suffers under EU occupation.

Christians Reject "Palestine" for the Promised Land of Israel
Satan inspired the Romans to mock God and dishonor our Father by attempting to erase Israel's name off the map! "They have said, 'Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation, that the name of Israel may be remembered no more'" (Psalms 83:4).

Still at Large!
The Jerusalem Post, Jan. 8, 1996, had a front page story about how the GSS sought my deportation for alleged involvement in a "plot to blow up the Al-Aksa mosque."

Megillat Bush - The Bush Scroll
The Jewish Nation's Response to President George W. Bush on the Eve of His Visit to the Holy Land

Kadima Wins, Israel Loses!
Ehud Olmert fails to recognize or believe that God -- yes, there really is a great extraterrestrial, supernatural Being of Higher Intelligence -- "planted the dream of greater Israel" in the hearts of Jews and Israelites, not "we" -- secular swine and humanist dogs.

Shimon Peres Has No Clothes: Where's the Peace?
Israel has no peace partners, and every one of the Arab groups' charters or covenants call for Israel's destruction. Fatah, Hamas, the PLO -- they're all one and the same except for patience and procedures.

Miriam Weiss: Holocaust Survivor and Kibbutz Mother
On that precious list of "Righteous Gentiles" (rare individuals who assisted Jews during the Holocaust) is the great name of Jan Bulski who risked his life and family in Poland to save my "kibbutz mother" -- Miriam Weiss -- who I met and was "adopted" by at Kibbutz Ramat Yohanan near Haifa in Northern Israel while a volunteer there from October 1982 to February 1983.

Ariel Sharon: Return to the Temple Mount!
As you are very much aware, Lubavitcher rabbis presented to the Court of High Heaven a petition against you, signed, sealed and delivered. You have incensed the Great G-d in the Highest Heaven and His servants with your stench of betrayal, despising your biblical birthright and inheritance and expressing a willingness to transfer Jews for a g-dless peace that will only invite bloody German-Jesuit EU intervention and disaster

Ariel Sharon: From Zionist to Traitor
General Sharon could have enforced peace through strength, securing Israel a hard-earned victory, rather than rewarding terrorism and undermining Israeli security, breaching Jerusalem's sovereignty, permitting Roman wolves in sheep's clothing, "peacekeepers," to pollute the Holy Land of Israel.

Shimon Peres Came to Power Over Rabin's Dead Body
I met Yitzhak Rabin in the Israeli Parliament in 1982 during Hanukkah. I was able to talk with him briefly and mention I was associated with Ambassador College in Pasadena, California.

Shimon Peres Charged with the Murder of Yitzhak Rabin?
We, the undersigned, leaders of major Jewish groups and organizations, hereby sorrowfully acknowledge our lack of leadership in pursuit of justice for slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Christian Zionists, Jews, and Israel
I am a Bible-believer, a Christian-Zionist (one who believes the Prophets foretold the restoration of Jews first of all 12 Tribes of Israel to the Promised Land of Israel before the end of this world as we know it). I am not a Protestant or a "Jew for Jesus" and certainly not a member of the Roman Catholic Cult. I am a baptized member of the Sabbath-keeping Church of God...

Abortion: Blood of Innocents (Jeremiah 7:31)
The cult of Choice is the worst symptom evident in society of the Hellenist disease. It sacrifices children upon the hedonistic altars of convenience and irresponsibility in an immoral and idolatrous way. It disguises itself as progressive and enlightened, but it is actually a dark throwback to the pagan rituals performed in the Valley of Hinnom: the holocaust of children that the prophet Jeremiah condemned (Jeremiah 7:31).

Don't Expel Jews From Gaza!
Read and weep for the Israeli Jews of Gush Katif/Gaza, on whose behalf I wrote this article in July 2005 before their illegal expulsion by the bribed Ariel Sharon and criminal company working for foreign interests. Many of them remain homeless, depressed and basically abandoned by their lying government -- their former homes history, stripped bare and destroyed by marauding Arab enemies who are now fighting among themselves, one terrorist group (Hamas) against another terrorist group (Fatah).

EU to Conquer Anglo-Saxons and Jews
I've come to the sad conclusion, the grievous understanding, that Israel's leaders have often sold out their land and people to foreign interests, bloating their personal bank accounts at Israel's expense, and that the pressure was often an excuse for them to do what they had already agreed upon: continue the lying peace process of phased destruction, dismantle the Jewish Homeland, dismember their Mother piece by piece and pervert the Promised Land of Israel into an accursed "Palestine" (Ps. 83:4).

Israel's Only Way Out: Follow Kahane!
Israel must make concessions, Israel must do this, Israel must do that, while the Arabs continue to get away with mass murder and terrorism (while promising peace and feigning ignorance), aided and abetted by the international community...

A Jewish Homeland
Did God condemn the Jews to wander until Messiah comes but blessed every other tribe of Israel with a national inheritance?Does that make sense? Is God fair? Is Israel so much holier than Judah? Or could it be, as Herbert W. Armstrong taught in The United States and Britain in Prophecy, that Israel's punishment was to last for 2,520 years (Lev. 26:21)?

Avishai Raviv, Eyal, and Yitzhak Rabin
Avishai Raviv was an Israeli government agent provocateur (whose code name was "Champagne" for the bubbles of incitement he created to tarnish the right-wing Israelis) who goaded Yigal Amir to assassinate Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (although this is hotly disputed by investigative reporters like Barry Chamish)...

Why Israel Will Survive a Nuclear Holocaust
How can we rest assured Israel (the American, British and Jewish peoples) will survive? Especially since the imminent nuclear genocide attempted against us by the German-EU will be the most brutal in Earth's history.

Mount Zion Under Siege: Who Will Be King of the Mountain?
The Vatican has its evil eye on Jerusalem! What better place to start their siege against the Holy City than Mt. Zion? Watch for them to fortify their position and launch an all-out attack to undermine Israeli sovereignty, enlisting Jewish traitors and the international community.

Vatican Linked to the Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin?
The dark powers of the European Union, under evil influence of the very real German-Jesuit cabal, are intent on ripping out the heart of Israel and sacrificing Israeli sovereignty to their wannabe divine emperor about to take the world by storm, pimped by the sorcerer-pope.

The Secret Nazis Covet the Temple Mount
"Even before the end of this war, I revealed to you the plans for a NAZI UNDERGROUND MOVEMENT, to go underground as a SECRET organization the very moment they lost the war - to lay low...then come forth when least expected, RESTORE GERMANY TO POWER, and go on to finally accomplish their aims in a WORLD WAR III" - The Plain Truth, Sept. 1948.

Mount Zion Coveted by Rome
Germany has never given up its dream of reviving the Holy Roman Empire. At the height of that empire, their greatest king, Frederick the Great, marched into Jerusalem and became the city's king. Jerusalem was once part of the Holy Roman Empire and the dream is that it will be again. In this empire, the delineation of powers was strict. The pope was the spiritual leader, but the political leader was whoever ruled Germany. This dream led straight to World War I.

Ten Lost Tribes of Israel

Khazars, Kevin Brook, and Yair Davidiy
This brash fellow has some website on the Khazars. Too bad he wasn't a real historian who accepts history AND the Bible as two witnesses to Israelite identity truth. Regardless of his vain rantings, the United States remains Manasseh and England is Ephraim, sons of Joseph!

Israel in the Isles
"LISTEN, O isles, unto me: and hearken, ye people from afar" (Isa. 49:1); and then makes the declaration: "Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified." (v. 3)

The English-Speaking Nations of White Israelites
Is God a racist? Does He discriminate? Did Jesus hate Gentiles? Was Paul prejudiced? Are Israelites and Jews superior to other peoples? Is God's favorite color white?

The Plain Truth about the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel
In order to warn Israel about the many prophecies that preview our coming captivity (due to our idolatry and immorality), it was first necessary for God to restore our identity. God has now restored our identity, He's again warning our nations, and it's up to us what will happen next.

German-American Israelites?
"Born German, Made American" by Nicholas Kumanoff in The Atlantic Times, reveals how "to prove their patriotism, immigrants abandoned their old identities."

Joseph isn't Jewish!
My sojourn at Kibbutz Ramat Yohanan, where I served as a kibbutz volunteer for five months in 1982-1983, blessed me with memories to cherish a lifetime.

Israel and Judah Must Get House in Order Before King Messiah Arrives
According to the rabbis, the "Lost Ten Tribes" are for all intents and purposes "Gentiles." This information constitutes further proof that the "Lost Ten Tribes" are not those diverse claimants (African, Indians, Burmese) who maintain remnants of Judaism from somebody's former conversion or contact with the religion of Judaism.

Death to the American, British & Jewish peoples?
This is only the beginning of the THUNDER before the Storm, as Beyond Babylon will become a national debate and an international controversy. Expect full page newspaper ads, like Herbert W. Armstrong took out in The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and other daily newspapers to reach everybody high and low, rich and poor, regardless of race or religion - the largest possible audience!

Not All Twelve Tribes of Israel are Jewish?
Some, in clear contradiction of the Holy Bible, pretend that all Twelve Tribes of Israel are Jewish. Such woefully ignorant or deceptive people deny the biblical distinctions between the 12 Tribes and pretend there's only one tribe: Judah.

The Gospel of the Kingdom of God

How Adam and Eve Reflect the Kingdom of God
"For we are members of his Body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined to his wife, and they TWO shall be ONE FLESH. This is a GREAT MYSTERY: but I speak concerning Christ and the Church" (Ephes. 5:30-32).

Overcome in Christ Daily
GOOD NEWS: Yeshua is able to break the bonds of sin and set free those who are slaves, saving us from both sin's eternal death penalty and delivering us from the sin. Some deny this POWER and only want the pardon but the Throne of Grace offers both.

Man Questions Whether We'll Be Angelic Or Divine
Even as we have been fully mortal and human like Adam, we shall be fully divine and holy Spirit like Christ the Second Adam, being born again into the literal Kingdom-Family of God. How Satan is insanely jealous of this fact!

Born Again and Heaven and Hell
Yeshua said that which is born of the flesh is flesh (like we are now in this life), but that which is born of the Spirit IS SPIRIT. He also said you can't even see or enter into that Kingdom of God unless you're born again...

Sneak Preview of the Kingdom of God
If I may, as God is my Witness and Judge, when I was only 17 years young, God UNEXPECTEDLY gave me a VISION while I was in prayer. I was within that vision as a glorified Spirit-Being, whiter than glistening snow and like a brilliant white cloud with the sun shining on it, appearing smooth, dressed in a white robe - even my hair was that brilliant white - holding a Book in my hands and teaching two flesh and blood mortals who were sitting on the ground, in an outdoor setting like a park or meadow.)

Born Again: The Kingdom of God!
GOD IS REPRODUCING HIMSELF! That's the glorious Good News that Jesus boldly proclaimed! The Gospel of the KINGDOM OF GOD announces the GOD KINGDOM: a Spirit-Born Kingdom of God-Beings! A Royal Family that we can enter (Rev. 3:21). A Divine Family that will administer God's Government throughout the universe and eternity (Isa. 9:7; Dan. 7:18).

A Higher Calling: Quest for the Kingdom of God
Jesus clearly said, "No man can come to Me, except the Father who has sent me draw him..."(John 6:44). Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. The Christian calling includes recognizing Jesus is the only way to the Father, learning all about Him as the Incarnate Word of God and walking in that light as a way of life, following Jesus by the lead of the Holy Spirit, the power and influence of God (Romans 8:14, 1 John 2:6).

Kingdom of God-Beings to Rule Earth from Jerusalem!
Yeshua has gone to Heaven and is preparing for the coming Kingdom of God, making room for us (converted Christians then transformed) in His Administration, preparing our positions and government seats in the Kingdom-Family of God, and will then return and receive us to Himself, sharing His glory and power and honor with us from Jerusalem, the seat of God's government, the Throne of David, the Throne of the LORD.

The Great Mideast Commission: Reaching the Cities of Judah
So there is a physical preparing, as well as a spiritual, in preparing the way for Messiah's Coming! Further, God says we are to SHOUT, with amplified power, to the CITIES OF JUDAH the glad message that the Messiah is soon coming" - Autobiography of Herbert W Armstrong, Volume II, pages 469-470

Australia's Identity Crisis: A Foretaste of What's to Come?

Australia's new Labor government is committed to greater ties with Asia, while increased immigration from the Asian continent is rapidly changing demographics in the country. What do these trends mean for Australia's future and the future of the West?

Australia's Identity Crisis: A Foretaste of What's to Come?

Thanksgiving Day

"Beware that you do not forget the LORD your God by not keeping His commandments, His judgments, and His statutes which I command you today, 12 lest—when you have eaten and are full, and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them; 13 and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold are multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied; 14 when your heart is lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God...17 then you say in your heart, 'My power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth...'

Thanksgiving: Attitude of Gratitude