Skip to footer

Obama-Netanyahu tensions: Not as bad as 5 other US-Israel low points

Will US-Israel relations fray over Iran? Not likely – they've seen worse. Here are five noteworthy hiccups in the 'special relationship' since Israel's founding in 1948.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu listens as President Obama speaks during their meeting in March, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington.

1. 1956 Suez fallout: Eisenhower threatens to withhold aid

AP/File
US President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Gamal Abdel Nasser, President of Egypt, meet in Ike's hotel suite. They were in town for the UN's 15th General Assembly meetings.

  • By Christa Case Bryant Staff writer

When Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956, Israel invaded Egypt and quickly captured the vast Sinai peninsula. This provoked an international backlash. The United Nations Security Council issued a resolution calling on Israel to withdraw in exchange for a UN protection force in the Sinai.

Israel mostly complied, but President Dwight D. Eisenhower insisted that Israeli forces withdraw completely. In February 1957, he threatened to withhold more than $100 million in annual US aid if they didn’t.

Within less than a month, all Israeli troops had left, and by late March oil was flowing through the Suez once again.

While Eisenhower took a firm stance, believing that “the future of the United Nations and peace in the Middle East may be at stake,” throughout the crisis he emphasized America’s friendship with Israel.

“I need not assure you of the deep interest which the United States has in your country, nor recall the various elements of our policy of support to Israel in so many ways,” he wrote in a letter to Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion on Nov. 7, 1956. “It is in this context that I urge you to comply with the resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly dealing with the current crisis and to make your decision known immediately. It would be a matter of the greatest regret to all my countrymen if Israeli policy on a matter of such grave concern to the world should in any way impair the friendly cooperation between our two countries.”

1 of 5
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.