In 1980 my husband and I had made aliyah and had moved to Israel. We were teachers from the states and after retraining in Israel, were teaching English after our first year. By March of 1982 I had become quite concerned with the possibility of the USA selling arms to Jordan. Even though we were able to watch Jordan’s TV programs from Israel, they were still not friendly as yet. It was really more like watching a program in Portland, Oregon coming from Gresham; the states were so close.
My husband, teaching in the high school and me in the junion high in Safed, had students write letters to President Reagan in their own words telling them of their concerns. I didn’t understand how the USA could consider doing such a thing. Selling arms to the the other Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia was so scary to us. I told my mother in a letter to write to the president as well. Like I told my students, it couldn’t hurt. I saw that Jewish communities did write a lot about this to the president in the end of February.
Little did I know what our USA government had been up to. By 1980 I hadn’t realized how much anti-semitism still existed in our country and in our government as well, passed on from generation to generation of government officials. Worst of all, strong anti-semitism existed in a self-hating Jew whose only interest in life was in climbing the ladder of importance; our own Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger.
There is a company named Bechtel. It is the largest construction and engineering company in the USA. It also is family owned, ranking 5th largest in the USA since 1945. They had $30.8 billion in revenue and employed 49,000 workers on projects in 50 countries as of 2010. Weinberger had been working for them as a general counsel. It was one of the most notorious anti-Semite companies in the USA. They also had their executives in the White House friend’s circle during the 1980's. In fact, they were the most popular company there. Bechtel’s former president was George Shultz.
Weinberger’s anti-Israel attitude was showing up in almost every Middle-East issue. He feared that if the USA went after Palestinian terrorists, it would be offensive to them and alienate Arab governments–particulary if the government acted in cooperation with the Israelis. By mid 1982 Weinberger was in the Reagan administration and joined by George Shultz who then replaced Alexander Haig as Secretary of State who had been pro-Israel!
The 1980's were a hard time for Bechtel. First, they built a mine in New Guinea. The major shareholder of a mining company allowed mine waste to be dumped into a river after a dam built by Bechtel was destroyed in a landslide. They were involved with major pollution. In 1981 Bechtel bought into Wall Street investment bank Dillon, Read & Co and George Schultz joined their board as their representative. In 1982 they had 44,000 employees but later had to lay off so many that their count went to 16,000 in 1995.
When Weinberger joined Bechtel, the company’s profits were threatened by an attack on their stand of sticking with the Arabs in boycotting Israel. This had come about by the Arabs after the Jews won the 1948 war. Arabs had banned all trade between Arabs and Israel, or any company that did business with Israel. Bechtel carried out the boycott completely, even when offered wonderful contracts to do business in Israel. The company refused to deal with Jews. Even in the middle 1970's, a Justice Department investigation found that their contracts with Arab countries were still showing they boycotted Israel. Sadly, the USA just turned a blind eye to this fact the previous quarter of a century and had even participated in it once in a while. Attorney General Edward Levi brought suit against Bechtel but was strongly opposed by Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, another Jew, who happened to be a big admirer of Bechtel’s president, George Shultz
It seems that our own people can hurt us more than plain old anti-semites! What chance does Israel have when business and old anti-semitic attitudes still exist? This is really how Israel’s hateful neighbors get their arms; through subversion of our “friends.”
. Resource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechtel
Book: Letters From Israel by Nadene Goldfoot
Book: Secret War Against the Jews by John Loftus and Mark Aarons
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