Five months before his inauguration as president, Massachusetts Senator John F Kennedy addressed a Jewish convention at the Statler Hilton Hotel in New York on 26 August 1960.
“Israel will endure and flourish,” he stated. “It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralised by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honours the sword of freedom.”
Months after being sworn in, he would receive Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion at the White House, describing him as a dear friend. At a presidential press conference on 15 March 1961, a formal announcement was made: Israel would receive a $25mn line of credit from the federal government’s Export-Import Bank of the United States.
On separate occasions, Kennedy lifted an arms embargo imposed by his predecessors, sold the Israelis advanced weapons like the famed surface-to-air MIM-23 Hawk missiles, and reacted very mildly to news of Israelis building a nuclear reactor in the city of Dimona.
Despite his close ties with Israel, Kennedy remarkably managed to maintain a cordial relationship with just about everybody else in the Arab World. Everybody seemed to like the 44-year-old president, and everybody was shocked – and genuinely saddened – by his tragic assassination on 20 November 1963.