Henry Kissinger - The first Jewish secretary of state
Dr. Henry Kissinger was a controversial figure in modern history, but no one can deny his contribution to humanity.
It feels as if some people don’t die. Some are immortal and their legacies live on. Dr. Henry Kissinger was a controversial figure in modern history, but no one can deny his contribution to humanity, his impact on world leaders, his original thinking, and his innovative approach to policy planning and policy-making for more than five decades. The diplomatic processes he led and the books he wrote are studied in public policy and international relations classes globally. They will be taught for many generations to come.My first encounter with Kissinger was right after the Yom Kippur War. I was a junior reporter at Kol Israel. My editors used to send me with a microphone “to save” a word from him when he finished his negotiations with Golda Meir at the Prime Minister’s Residence, then on Ben-Maimon Street in Jerusalem. Even then he aroused an enigmatic interest in my eyes.I admire Kissinger not only as a statesman, not only for his ability to see the bigger picture, nor only for his writings, or his special way of navigating and influencing. I feel deep affection for him as a human being. I loved his implicit sense of humor. Despite the criticism evoked by his controversial statements about Judaism, I believe that the memory of his relatives lost in the Holocaust was sacred to him.I believe that his Judaism was dear to him. That his contribution to the existence of the State of Israel was decisive, at a fateful time for our people. Over the years, I have made sure to meet up with Kissinger and learn from him. At first, as a journalist, I was interested in his political analyses, and later – after the founding of the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) – I would consult him about setting strategic goals for the Jewish people. Sometimes, as we conversed, he would ask me to analyze the political situation in Israel. In 2007 he was a guest of honor at JPPI and gave a masterclass to outstanding Israeli students. In 2014 he spoke at JPPI’s conference on the Jewish people’s future, in Glenn Cove, New York. Our last meeting was on Zoom just a couple of months ago. It was Just before the monstrous Hamas attack when Israel was again surprised by its enemies. Fifty years have passed since the drama of the Yom Kippur War. In an exclusive conversation, Kissinger was ready to discuss with me that chapter of his life. He expressed himself with ease. His thinking was sharp. His wise gaze was focused. His memory for details did not betray his age. Four months before the United States celebrated his 100th birthday, his hair, which had already begun to turn gray during his trips, hopping between Jerusalem and Cairo at the end of the Yom Kippur War, hasd become silver. He was wearing a blue blazer over a gray polo shirt. Vital, as always.During the Yom Kippur War and soon after, opinions prevailed in Jerusalem that it would be better for Israel to have a situation where bilateral issues with foreign countries were discussed with non-Jewish senior officials. However, from my own experience as a Maariv emissary to Washington in the mid-1990s, a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Middle East Policy, and President Emeritus of the Jewish People Policy Institute, I have a different take. There is no doubt that the first loyalty of Jews who are American citizens is to their homeland, the United States – and that is how it should be, especially if they serve in public positions. Jews who reach key positions in various administrations first pursue the interests of the United States and the success of its policies. However, most of them also feel an obligation and responsibility, as Jews, to the existence and prosperity of Israel even if they do not always agree with the policies of this or that government elected in Israel. Kissinger was no different. In the Yom Kippur War, the American airlift he organized changed the battlefield’s configuration.Over the years, secret documents and tapes from the Nixon administration have been revealed to the public. Some of Kissinger’s statements about Jews, Judaism, and Israel, were interpreted as self-hating, as an escape from his Jewish roots and support for antisemitic views that characterized his political environment. In the early 1990s, as a journalist I had weekly meetings with the late Yitzhak Rabin in his office in the Knesset, after he resigned from his position as defense minister and before he decided to compete for the leadership of the Labor Party and the position of prime minister. These were deep conversations on strategic decisions and tactical approaches to achieve long-term goals. Among others, we discussed the background to the Yom Kippur War and its lessons for Israel.Rabin admired Kissinger as a statesman and for his analytical abilities. He saw him as a proud Jew who had experienced the rise of the Nazis in Germany as a child, was saved from hell with his parents, and managed to climb to the top sphere of influence in the free world. Rabin dismissed Kissinger’s statements against Jews with a wave of his hand. He saw them as a tactic to deal with a hostile antisemitic environment in order to establish his influence. He believed that the credit for Nixon’s order to activate the airlift went mainly to Kissinger, who knew how to present the need for an Israeli victory to achieve the goals of the United States. Kissinger also greatly appreciated Rabin and his ability to see the “big strategic picture.” He liked his directness and integrity.“I want to emphasize my relationship to Rabin,” Kissinger said to me. “Besides the insights I got from him, I think of him with great affection and great admiration. Yitzhak Rabin was a great analyst and had a deep understanding of the historical context. He was a human being who combined extreme warmth with extreme reticence.”Regarding Kissinger, there was unanimity between Rabin and Shimon Peres. At the first “Tomorrow Conference” initiated by president Peres after his election, he awarded Kissinger the first Presidential Medal for his contribution to the world, to the State of Israel, and to the Jewish people. Kissinger was already 85 years old and traveled especially to Jerusalem for the event. He was born Heinz Alfred Kissinger in Fuerth, Germany, to a traditional Jewish family. His father, Ludwig, was a teacher. His mother, Paula, dedicated her life to raising him and his brother, and they had a happy childhood until the Nazis rose to power. Heinz excelled as a soccer player and was active in the Agudat Israel youth movement as a teenager. After the rise of the Nazis in 1933, the idyll ended. Heinz was expelled from the junior football team in Fuerth, and attacked and humiliated for being a Jew. In 1938, at the last minute, the Kissinger family managed to escape to the United States via Britain. During World War II, he enlisted in the American Army and, thanks to his native knowledge of the German language and his intellectual abilities, he became involved in military intelligence in Europe. This was the preface to his academic and political take-off.In my last conversation with Kissinger, I told him that Rabin believed that his Jewishness, his roots, and his family influenced his policies during the Yom Kippur War.“You have to understand that it was a commitment to Israel, but it was also part of a strategy to expel the Soviets from the Middle East,” he answered. “For me and Nixon, from the very beginning, we wanted to use the war to preserve Israel – but in the American context, to remove the Russian presence from the region. “I am Jewish,” Kissinger said, “so it does not take anything for me to respect the Jewish people. I lost 11 members of my immediate family in the Holocaust and untold numbers of people with whom I went to school, maybe 50%. So for me, it is as a matter of course that I take the survival of the Jewish people and of the Israeli state as a personal objective. “But I was secretary of state at the time. I was the first Jewish secretary of state. I was the first foreign-born secretary of state, and it had to be defended in terms of American interests in order to be able to lead the diplomacy that followed.”Kissinger used to say that there are two ways to die: suddenly or slowly. He took the second path. Physically he had weakened over the years, but his mind remained razor-sharp. In our last conversation, he was mainly concerned with the health of his wife, Nancy. He was busy organizing his agenda around the UN assembly and still hoped to visit Israel again.Avinoam Bar-Yosef is president emeritus of the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) and served as diplomatic correspondent and Maariv bureau chief in Washington.
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