FEATURED JOBS
Comments (0)Richard Nixon and the Rev. Billy Graham believed Jewish opposition to Christian evangelism efforts would foster anti-Semitism.
“Deep down in this country there is a lot of anti-Semitism. All this is going to do is stir it up,” said the former president in a Feb. 21, 1973 phone conversation with Graham, a leading evangelist.
The exchange was part of 150 hours of audio recordings released Tuesday by the Nixon Presidential Library.
Graham responds that anti-Semitism in America is “right under the surface” and that Jewish criticism of a major evangelism effort would bring it “right to the top.”
Nixon responds, “Anti-Semitism is stronger than we think. You know, it’s unfortunate. But this has happened to the Jews. It happened in Spain, it happened in Germany, it’s happening—and now it’s going to happen in America if these people don’t start behaving.”
A little later in the 20-minute conversation, Nixon says that he wants to be “not only a friend of Israel and a friend of Jews in this country, but I have to turn back a terrible tide here if they don’t get a hold of it themselves.”
“They better understand it quick because there are elements in this country, not just the Birchers, but a lot of reasonable people that are getting awfully sick of it.” The term Birchers is a reference to members of the extreme right-wing John Birch Society.
Nixon later states about Jews that “it may be they have a death wish. You know that’s been the problem with our Jewish friends for centuries.”
Among the 30,000 pages of documents also released yesterday was a National Security Council memo discussing the arguments for and against pressuring Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.