American Friends of the Middle East: The CIA, US Citizens, and the Secret Battle for American Public Opinion in the Arab–Israeli Conflict, 1947–1967

Abstract

In 1951, the CIA secretly funded the creation of an ostensibly private group of US citizens called the American Friends of the Middle East (AFME). Pro-Arab and anti-Zionist in orientation, AFME was repeatedly attacked by pro-Israel groups before seeing its links to the CIA exposed by investigative journalists in 1967. Drawing on recent scholarship about “state–private networks” and the cultural history of US–Middle East relations, this article examines the origins of AFME, its characteristic values and relations with the CIA, and the reasons for the decline of its influence vis-à-vis the emergent “Israel lobby.”

The “Other” Pro-Israel Lobby: The AFL-CIO and Israel (1952–1960)

“…More importantly, labor's uncompromising support of Israel played a vital role in enlisting many non-Jewish Americans who had yet to "take sides" or acquire a serious stance about the Arab-Israeli conflict to support Israel in the 1950s-1960s, 141 and served as a counterweight to efforts by non-Jewish organizations, like American Friends of the Middle East (AFME), to cultivate pro-Arab sympathy among the American public. 142 Acknowledging the extent and import of organized labor's support of Israel and Histadrut invites the expansion of research about U.S.-Israel relations into wider historical and transnational fields that have seldom been considered: labor relations, social democracy, and neoliberalism. While the special relationship matured in the 1960s under the Kennedy-Johnson administrations and consolidated during the 1970s with the establishment of periodical memorandums of understanding and a steady supply of advanced weaponry, the decline of the New Deal order-and with it of unions-saw the dissolution of an important link between the two countries.…”