Returned the tests to the students….10 did extremely well….1 did good…..this is encouraging….the students seem to be truly interested in learning the material…..reminded them to keep them for review for next Monday…..

The Kennedy Years

These years the US was not deeply involved in the Greater Middle East…..it was involved in the events of Israel…..

John Kennedy was supposedly uninvolved in the Middle East. But as Warren Bass argued in “Support Any Friend: Kennedy’s Middle East and the Making of the U.S.-Israel Alliance,” John Kennedy tried to develop a special relationship with Israel while diffusing the effects of his predecessors’ cold war policies regarding Arab regimes.

Kennedy increased economic aid toward the region and worked to reduce its polarization between Soviet and American spheres. While the friendship with Israel was solidified during his tenure, Kennedy’s abbreviated administration, while briefly inspiring the Arab public, largely failed to mollify Arab leaders.

Basically it can be argued that the Kennedy years was the beginning of the long economic relationship the US has with Israel and the beginnings of the problems with a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Kennedy died before he could have much of a legacy in the Middle East….he was more involved with USSR, Cuba, Vietnam and to a lesser extent China….

Johnson years

With the death of JFK….Lyndon Johnson became president in 1963…….

Lyndon Johnson was absorbed by his Great Society programs at home and the Vietnam War abroad. The Middle East burst back onto the American foreign-policy radar with the Six Day War of 1967, when Israel, after rising tension and threats from all sides, preempted what it characterized as an impending attack from Egypt, Syria and Jordan.

Israel occupied the Gaza Strip, the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank and Syria’s Golan Heights. Israel threatened to go further. The Soviet Union threatened armed attack if it did. Johnson put the U.S. Navy’s Mediterranean Sixth Fleet on alert, but also compelled Israel to agree to a cease-fire on June 10, 1967.

During this “war” Israeli forces attacked a US flag ship, the USS Liberty

Handouts……

Source: Why did Israel attack USS Liberty?

Source: America and the Six Day War | Emet News Service

Source: Six-Day War : US Policy and Outcome

Pause here for thew rest of the class for discussion…..students seem to be more interested in the attack than on the other info….

Told students that we would start Friday with the Nixon/Ford years……