UPDATED: R.I.P. GERALD FORD

AS YOU'VE READ ELSEWHERE, FORMER PRESIDENT GERALD FORD DIED LAST NIGHT. HERE'S ONE OF HIS QUOTES REGARDING AMERICA'S SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL:

"My commitment to the security and future of Israel is based upon basic morality as well as enlightened self-interest. Our role in supporting Israel honors our own heritage."

I COULDN'T HAVE SAID IT BETTER MYSELF.

UPDATE: Ford had ambivalent relationship with Israel during presidency By JONNY HADI (JPost)
The death of former US president Gerald R. Ford, may have brought back memories of a US leader who was hostile towards Israel, but historian and writer Michael Oren believes Ford was certainly not an enemy. "We have to establish a scale," Oren told the Post. "I wouldn't say he was as friendly to Israel as Johnson, Nixon, George W. Bush or Clinton but, at the same time, I wouldn't say he was as cool towards Israel as Eisenhower or Carter."

While noting the "head on collision" Ford had with the Rabin government over Israel's disengagement from the Sinai, Oren emphasized that Ford was trying to establish the United States as an honest broker and an even-handed mediator between Israel and the Arabs.

Oren noted that during Ford's term, 1974-1977, the United States was going through the period of "reassessment" - a term used for its Middle East policy reevaluation. "The US was working to build bridges that had been burned down during the Six-Day War."

"Ford was supporting the policy work of the then US secretary of state Henry Kissinger," stated Oren, stressing that it was actually Kissinger who was the primary force behind this policy.

Oren added that, in his view, Ford had a long-lasting effect on the Middle East, pointing out that he achieved the Second Sinai Agreement on September 1, 1975, in which Egypt and Israel agreed on the second disengagement of troops from the Sinai Peninsula, which "opened the way for the Camp David accord four years later."

Nevertheless, said Oren, Ford was not altogether successful in implementing the change in policy towards Israel, failing to surmount the growing influence on the US government from the Israel lobby, noting that during Ford's term AIPAC took on the establishment over its threats to withhold aid from Israel - and won.