From the latest release of Nixon-era White House tape recordings, as reported by The New York Times:
An indication of Nixon’s complex relationship with Jews came the afternoon Golda Meir, the Israeli prime minister, came to visit on March 1, 1973. The tapes capture Meir offering warm and effusive thanks to Nixon for the way he had treated her and Israel.
But moments after she left, Nixon and [national security adviser Henry] Kissinger were brutally dismissive in response to requests that the United States press the Soviet Union to permit Jews to emigrate and escape persecution there.
“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy,” Mr. Kissinger said. “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”
Jeffrey Goldberg writes:
Because it is the Sabbath day, I will use a religious expression to characterize this statement: Holy shit.
I particularly love, by the way, the “maybe” in that last sentence fragment.
