Why America Supports Israel | Richard Nixon on Nightline with Ted Koppel - January 7, 1992

You make the observation in your book, and you say that you have said it many times when you were president of the United States, that no president is ever going to desert Israel.

Right?

Correct.

I put it more bluntly.

I said,

As I told congressional leaders during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, no American president will let Israel go down the tube, Democrat or Republican.

It's not an issue.

That is stated fairly categorically, and yet in your book you make it clear at the same time that Israel really is not of any enormous strategic value to the United States anymore.

That's correct.

So why then would the United States continue to burden itself with huge loans, in some cases outright grants, to the Israelis, jeopardize possibly young American fighting men, when there is no strategic value involved, or little strategic value?

Because the United States is concerned by more than strategic values.

That's maybe a weakness, but it's the way we are.

And there are moral issues involved here.

We don't have an alliance with Israel, as you know.

They're not an ally of the United States in a technical sense.

But we have a bond to Israel that's much stronger.

It's a moral commitment.

A moral commitment because of what happened.

during the holocaust and a moral commitment because it is a democracy the only democracy in that area and under the circumstances that is why american presidents and the american people in the future will support all out the survival of israel if it's attacked you've always been a very tough pragmatic man uh... and i just wonder if you were the president of israel and you heard richard nixon talking that way or for that matter heard any sitting american president talk that way

and say, but there's really no strategic value anymore, how much faith would you place in that kind of a moral commitment if push really came to shove?

If I were the president of Israel, I'd put a great deal of faith in it because of the track record of the United States and also because he would know that that is the way the American people are.

There is no doubt whatever of our commitment to Israel.