ABSTRACT
The goldmann Affair, still a vivid memory in Israel, should never have acquired the importance that it did. It was, and should have remained, a storm in a tea cup. If it did not, the probable reason is that its central figure, Dr Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress, was a past master of public relations and of using the media to make the points important to himself. This explains why early in April 1970 a storm swept through public opinion in Israel at the news that Goldmann had been invited to Cairo to meet Gamal Nasser, the Egyptian president, but had been prevented by the Israeli government from accepting the invitation. The facts were quite different, but few people bothered with them. The media was furious over ‘an opportunity missed’ and over the government’s lack of readiness ‘to explore even the smallest opening’ in the wall of Arab enmity as it should have. Davar, the Histadrut (Labour Federation) daily, criticized the Labour-led government, calling on it to explain itself. High school graduating class students on the eve of conscription, wrote to Prime Minister Golda Meir to say that the government had neglected an opportunity to advance toward peace, and they, soon to be called to serve in the army, would not be able to do their duty secure in the knowledge that their government had exhausted every possibility of achieving peace.
