Idealpolitik in Disguise: Israel, Jewish Emigration from the Soviet Union, and the Nixon Administration, 1969–1974

Abstract

the heyday of detente, in October 1972, US and Soviet officials signed a trade agreement that called for the extension of mostfavoured-nation status to the Soviet Union. The congressional debate over the legislation, needed to implement the agreement and which focused on the Soviet Union's stance on the emigration of Jews, led to the passing in December 1974 of the JacksonVanik amendment to the Trade Act of 1974; it barred the extension of most-favoured-nation status to Communist countries that restricted the emigration of their citizens. The Richard M. Nixon administration fought tenaciously, if unsuccessfully, to forestall the amendment; the secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, even postponed the departure of military resupplies to Israel during critical stages of the October War in part to try lever Israel and the US Jewish lobby into withdrawing their support of the amendment.1 The administration's failure damaged its credibility with the Soviet Union; thus, the amendment both reflected and contributed to the ending of detente.2 Within the context of the triangular relationship of Israel, the United States, and US Jewry, this article focuses on the determinants and character of Israel's stance on the issues of Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union and response to the JacksonVanik amendment. Until recently, the veil of official secrecy, and emotion, blurred the historical picture. As Benjamin Pinkus explains, the first wave of Jewish emigrants from the Soviet Union, in the early 1970s, had numerous accoucheurs: Soviet Jewish dissidents, American Jews, Israeli officials, and even Kissinger vied to take the credit.3 Quarrels in the West about the wisdom of the JacksonVanik