Who's Afraid of Nixon's Anti-Semitism?

By Steven Philp As governments process the information illicitly made public by Wikileaks, the legal release of conversations recorded during the Nixon administration may seem irrelevant.  Many of the recorded conversations released this week by The Nixon Presidential Library and Museum were recorded shortly before the Watergate scandal. Yet these tapes have come to public attention for their racist and anti-Semitic content. According to The New York Times, after a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in 1973, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told President Richard Nixon that if the Soviet Union sent its Jewish citizens to the gas chambers, it would not be an American concern.  Responding to Meir’s request that the United States pressure the Soviet government to allow the emigration of Russian Jews, Kissinger says, “The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union...

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Why The Wikileaks Are Not All Bad

By Symi Rom-Rymer Much of the discussion over the Wikileaks dump has focused on the negative impact of the released cables.  But there may be a silver lining.  Within the diplomatic community it may come as no surprise that Arab leaders expressed great concern over Iran’s nuclear ambitions in private, but this is the first time that their true feelings have been publically revealed.   Using aggressive, undiplomatic language, leaders such as Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah to Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed al Nahyan exhorted American diplomats (respectively) to “cut off the head of the snake” and informed them, in eerily familiar echoes, that "Ahmadinejad is Hitler." While the release of the cables demonstrates Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange’s lack of respect for or understanding of diplomatic reality, they nevertheless provide a unique opportunity for Western,...

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