Last week, White House documents were released from the Richard Nixon presidential library, bearing unknown details about his aversion towards Jews and his concern about exposing more details on John F. Kennedy’s policy on Vietnam and Cuba.

Richard NixonAccording to the documents, president Nixon ordered his aides to keep Jewish Americans excluded from all Israel policy-making.

Formerly classified notes taken by then-chief of staff H. R. “Bob” Haldeman, from a meeting with the president in July 1971 read:

“No Jew can handle the Israeli thing…” Later in the one-page excerpt, Mr. Haldeman wrote, “Forget the Jews — they’re against the administration”.

That proviso was explicitly referring to then-national security adviser Henry Kissinger, and included plans to keep him out of the loop: “get K. out of the play — Haig handle it,” says one note, referring to then-aide Alexander Haig.

Apparently – unbeknownst to him – despite being excluded by the president from matters regarding Israel policy on account of his ethnicity, Kissinger has defended Nixon against charges of Antisemitism.

These documents are just now seeing the light of day, yet as the Jewish world may recall, on October 5, 1999, 445 hours of tapes recorded by Richard Nixon were released in which he repeatedly made antisemitic remarks. Nixon had said Washington “is full of Jews” and “most Jews are disloyal“.

Can you imagine catching wind of Barack Obama slandering the ethnicity of former Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel?