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The deadly violence in Qibya and the clumsy attempt at deflecting blame, following so closely on the heels of the water diversion dispute, led to the first-ever suspension of U.S. financial aid to Israel. Feeling the pinch, Ben-Gurion finally agreed to put a stop to the water project, and the aid was restored.

Relations between the two countries would be distant though not particularly unfriendly for the next few years, with Washington's attention focused on winning the support of the Arab world in the global fight against Communism.

The Eisenhower administration's main foreign-policy objective was the containment of Soviet expansionism, which in the Middle East meant keeping the Russians away from the oil resources so critical to the West.

For much of Ike's first term the U.S. attempted, with mixed results, to create coalitions of like-minded nations in regions deemed geographically and politically strategic. The linchpin of any such regional alliance in the Middle East was Egypt, and the Americans went out of their way to solicit the affections of the Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser.

But Nasser played hard to get, tacking pro-U.S. one day and pro-Soviet the next. Eisenhower, tiring of Nasser's penchant for playing off East against West, decided in early 1955 to back the formation of the Baghdad Pact - a defensive alliance comprised of Britain, Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan. Nasser countered by entering into a large arms deal with Czechoslovakia, and the Communists had their first real link with the Arab world.

By flirting with Nasser while naively underestimating his determination to restore Egyptian pride and Arab unity, the U.S. had made a terrible miscalculation.

* * *

On the home front, the Middle East receded from the headlines in the mid-1950s. Americans, when not distracted by the new plaything called television, were focused on the ongoing dramatics of Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin Republican who since 1950 had been mesmerizing the country with charges of Communist subversion in high places.

McCarthy wasn't entirely wrong, but he was a blustery, boozy opportunist prone to exaggeration, and as such was an unfortunate spokesman for the anti-Communist cause.

One thing McCarthy apparently was not, though some of his enemies tried to portray him as one, was an anti-Semite. As historian David Oshinsky notes in A Conspiracy So Immense, "[McCarthy] never engaged in anti-Semitic diatribes or made the loaded connection between Jews and left-wing radicalism. Despite the unrelenting hostility of organized Jewry to his crusade, McCarthy still praised the state of Israel [and] condemned the Soviet persecution of Jews. "

"[T]he McCarthyites," concurs Benjamin Ginsberg in The Fatal Embrace, his study of the historical relationship between Jews and government, "had no use for anti-Semitism as a political weapon. Indeed, several of McCarthy's most important aides ... were themselves Jews."

The fact, however, that Jews were over-represented in radical and Communist circles was an uncomfortable reality in 1950s America. Though no anti-Semitic backlash materialized in reaction to the trial and execution of the convicted Soviet spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, or to the preponderance of Jews called to testify at hearings conducted in Washington by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), many Jews still worried that they were considered less than loyal by non-Jewish Americans - a fear that couldn't help but contribute to a reticence among Jewish groups in confronting the Eisenhower administration over its Mideast policies.

* * *

Eisenhower vowed that his approach to the Middle East would never be dictated by political pressure, which was a polite way of saying he wasn't about to be influenced by the Jews (or, as he so euphemistically put it in his diary, "our citizens of the Eastern seaboard emotionally involved in the Zionist cause").

Unlike Truman in 1948, Ike in 1952 had not needed Jewish votes and knew he would not need them in 1956. He was not shy about pointing to that domestic political reality when Republicans would voice concern about his handling of Israel.

Eisenhower's disregard for domestic politics was more than evident in October 1956, just a month before the presidential election. Egypt's Nasser, in response to the retraction by the United State of an offer to refinance work on the Aswan Dam, had nationalized the Suez Canal Company, which was under British and French ownership. The prime ministers of Britain and France hatched a complicated plan to retake control of the canal by force and somehow convinced Ben-Gurion to have Israel join in.

The operation was doomed from the start. Each of the countries involved had its own motives; the coordination of the actual attack was bungled every which way; and the Soviets threatened to take military action in defense of Egypt while the Americans, furious at Britain, France and Israel, remained silent in the face of Russia's threats.

The Israelis, for their part, had managed to capture the entire Sinai, and enormous pressure was now brought to bear on them to withdraw. Ben-Gurion refused at first, but Eisenhower, who felt Israel had launched an unprovoked attack on Egypt simply because Britain and France were providing a convenient cover, wouldn't stand for it.

The U.S. suspended all financial and technical aid to Israel, and when Ben-Gurion still balked at withdrawing, the administration let it be known it was ready to support a United Nations plan for sweeping sanctions that would cripple Israel's economy in a matter of weeks. There was also talk of ending the tax-deductible status of charitable contributions to Israel by American Jews.

Ben-Gurion finally buckled, and on March 1, 1957, four months after the ill-conceived and short-lived Franco-British-Israeli alliance, the official announcement was made that Israeli troops would leave the Sinai.

(In 1965 Eisenhower would admit to Jewish organizational leader and Republican fundraiser Max Fisher that he had come to "regret what I did. I should never have pressured Israel to vacate the Sinai.")

Secretary of State Dulles boasted that most Americans supported the Eisenhower policy, adding: "I am aware how almost impossible it is in this country to have a foreign policy not approved by the Jews. I am going to try to have one."

It should be noted that those remarks were made at a time when Israel was receiving from Washington a relatively small amount of financial assistance and no military aid at all; a time when Israel existed behind the precarious 1949 armistice lines and Jordan and Egypt controlled, respectively, the West Bank and Gaza; a time when Jewish organizations were keeping a considerably lower profile than would be the case years later (AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations were formed in the mid-1950s, AIPAC to better present Israel's case to U.S. lawmakers, the Presidents Conference to give the Jewish community a more unified voice).

* * *

The final years of Eisenhower's second term were relatively quiet with regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Relations between the U.S. and Israel, which had come close to unraveling in late 1956 and early 1957, gradually returned to where they were pre-Suez, which is to say not particularly close but relatively free of tension and mutual mistrust.

There would be better times ahead in the U.S.-Israel relationship, but it would be years before the two countries could, by any stretch of the imagination, be described as actual friends rather than, at best, friendly acquaintances.