ISRAEL – The Will To Prevail, by Danny Danon, 2012, pp. 103-112.
THE OFFICIAL CREATION OF THE JEWISH STATE IN 1948
The story of U.S. recognition of the new State of Israel is a complex one, full of twists and turns. But I think it is worth going over in some detail, especially since many of the initial issues and debates are ongoing. America’s policies toward Israel were often confused and contradictory, as officials tried to sort out what was in the best interests of the United States. If Israel had had to depend on U.S. support through this difficult but exhilarating time, she might not have made it. As often happens, history is a much messier affair than conventional hindsight recalls.
The creation of Israel in 1948 came after more than 50 years of attempts to establish a sovereign state as a homeland for Jews. Theodor Herzl, founder of the Zionist movement, initiated these efforts in the 1890s. His work gained momentum after the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which outlined the British government’s support for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. With the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, England was mandated by the League of Nations to rule Palestine. As Jewish immigration steadily increased, so did violence between Palestine’s Jewish and Arab communities. Britain tried to restrict immigration, but this move was countered by international support for the creation of a Jewish homeland, particularly following World War II. This support led to the 1947 U.N. partition plan, which divided Palestine into small autonomous Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem under U.N. administration. Jews everywhere were gathered around the radio waiting for the counting of the vote: 33 for and 14 against. Many feared that such a tiny state would be indefensible, but at last the Jews had their land back and they could finally call it their own.
On May 14, 1948, soon after the British left Palestine, the State of Israel was proclaimed. Almost simultaneously, invading armies were dispatched from neighboring Arab states that refused to accept the U.N. partition plan. This conflict, called Israel’s War of Independence, ended in armistice agreements between Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria in 1949, and resulted in a 50 percent increase in Israeli territory.
What is often forgotten in this history is America’s initial reaction to the creation of Israel. President Harry Truman is generally seen as a supporter of Israel and lauded for his recognition of the state. But at the time this was hardly the case. There was much heated disagreement within the administration concerning the recognition of Israel, predominantly coming from those in the State Department who valued ties to the Arab world because of the oil it possessed. The question for many in the administration, and Truman as well, was: Is it more beneficial to be friends with tens of thousands of Jews or tens of millions of Arabs? In effect, even after the United States recognized Israel it was a largely symbolic act, followed up with minimal support. When Egyptian planes were bombing Tel Aviv, the United States maintained a strict arms embargo on Israel. Israel did not receive a single bullet from President Truman. The Israelis requested steel plating from the United States, in order to cover public buses, yet the State Department refused, classifying it as military aid and not strictly defensive.14 The embargo was that extreme and wide-ranging. Recognition certainly had value later on, but Israel was isolated and had to buy damaged equipment from France, Czechoslovakia, or whoever was willing to sell. At the same time, the Russians were arming the Arabs with their most modern equipment. Truman further forbade American Jews from enlisting in the Israeli army.15
Even leading up to the creation of the Jewish State, relations were strained between Zionists and the governments of the. United States and Britain. In 1939, Britain actually backtracked on its Balfour Declaration, disavowing the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. Three years earlier, guerrilla fighting had broken out between Arabs and the Jewish population, and in the opening years of World War II, England believed she was not in a position to quell violence so far from her shores. Unwilling and unable to give this budding crisis the attention it required, she tried to placate both sides but in the end favored Arab interests. England clamped down on Palestinian Jews attempting to defend themselves. By 1939 Jewish immigration into Palestine was forbidden. Jews felt betrayed and looked to the United States for support.
Roosevelt initially seemed sympathetic to the Jewish cause but his assurances to the Arabs that the United States wouldn’t intervene without consulting both parties put that position up for grabs. Confusion and indecision seemed to mar U.S. policy toward the Middle East at this crucial time. Flash-forward to August 1945, when Loy Henderson, director of the State Department’s Near East Agency, wrote to Secretary of State James Byrnes that. the United States would lose its moral prestige in the Middle East if it supported Jewish aspirations in Palestine. Yet in the same month, a report, of the Intergovernment Committee on Refugees, called the Harrison Report, was very critical of the treatment of refugees, particularly Jewish refugees, by Allied forces in Germany. After reading the report, Truman wrote to the British prime minister Clement Attlee, urging him to allow a reasonable number of Europe’s Jews to emigrate to Palestine. Truman also criticized the British White Paper, forbidding Jewish immigration to Palestine, saying it was a dishonorable repudiation by Britain of her obligations. In October 1945, Senators Robert Wagner of New York and Robert Taft of Ohio introduced a resolution expressing support for a Jewish state in Palestine. But at a press conference on November 29, 1945, Truman expressed opposition to the Taft-Wagner resolution and instead wanted to wait until he could consider the report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry coming from England.
The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry submitted its report in April 1946. It actually recommended that Britain immediately authorize the admission of 100,000 Jews into Palestine. In May, Truman wrote to Prime Minister Attlee, citing the report and expressing the hope that Britain would lift the barriers to Jewish immigration to Palestine. Yet in June 1946, a Joint Chiefs of Staff memo to the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee warned that if the United States used its military to enable Russian Jews to emigrate to Palestine, the Soviet Union might retaliate in the Middle East, which it was seeking to dominate. According to the Truman Library, “The State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee warns that if the United States uses armed force to support the implementation of the recommendations of the report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, the Soviet Union might be able to increase its power and influence in the Middle East, and United States access to Middle East oil could be jeopardized.”16 It was an argument that would be made again and again. In fact, the counsel to the president, Clark Clifford, wrote to Truman to warn about the Soviet Union, arguing that the Russians would privately encourage the emigration of Jews from Europe into Palestine yet would publicly denounce the move in order to inflame Arab passions throughout the region.
Despite this, on October 4, 1946, the eve of Yom Kippur, Truman issued a statement indicating U.S. support for the creation of a “viable Jewish state.” A few weeks later, Loy Henderson, director of the State Department’s Near East Agency, fanned an additional fear of Truman’s, as Clifford had, by saying that immigration of Jewish communists into Palestine might actually increase Soviet influence in the region. Yet despite his advisors’ warnings, Truman kept pushing. In late October, he wrote to King Saud of Saudi Arabia, stating his belief “that a national home for the Jewish people should be established in Palestine.17
In February 1947, the British government announced it would terminate its mandate for Palestine and referred the Palestine question to the United Nations. In May 1947, the U.N. General Assembly appointed an 11-nation Special Committee on Palestine to study the Palestine problem and report by September 1947. In August, it issued a report, which recommended unanimously that Great Britain terminate its mandate for Palestine. Seven of the member states voted in favor of partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. This outcome produced a fierce conflict of ideology within the White House itself.
Less than a year away from the May 14, 1948, declaration of independence of Israel, on September 17, 1947, Secretary of State George Marshall addressed the U.N., saying that the United States was reluctant to endorse the partition of Palestine. A few days later, Loy Henderson, director of the State Department’s Near East Agency, wrote a memo to Secretary of State George Marshall arguing against U.S. advocacy of the U.N. proposal to partition Palestine. And on October 10, 1947, the Joint Chiefs of Staff also wrote a memo, called “The Problem of Palestine,” stating that partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab states would allow the Soviet Union to replace the United States and Great Britain as the overarching power in the region, and would endanger United States access to Middle East oil.
To complicate matters further, Herschel Johnson, United States deputy representative on the United Nations Security Council, announced in the same month, October, that the United States did, in fact, support the partition plan. Days later, Truman wrote to Senator Claude Pepper, saying, “I received about 35,000 pieces of mail and propaganda from the Jews in this country while this was pending. I put it all in a pile and struck a match to it—I never looked at a single one of the letters because I felt the United Nations Committee [United Nations Special Committee on Palestine] was acting in a judicial capacity and should not be interfered with.”18 Where exactly did the United States stand on this critical issue?
Then in early November 1947, a subcommittee of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine established a timetable for British withdrawal from Palestine. In mid-November, Chaim Weizmann, the future president of Israel, met with President Truman and argued that the Negev region had great importance to the future Jewish state. The Negev is an and region of southern Israel. According to the Book of Genesis, chapter 20, Abraham lived in the Negev after being banished from Egypt. Later on, the Tribe of Judah and the Tribe of Shimon also inhabited the Negev.
On November 29, 1947, the U.N. General Assembly approved the partition plan for Palestine, which divided the area into three entities: a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an international zone around Jerusalem. At the beginning of December, Truman wrote to former secretary of the treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., encouraging him to tell his Jewish friends that restraint and caution were in order. “The vote in the U.N.,” Truman wrote, “is only the beginning and the Jews must now display tolerance and consider for the other people in Palestine with whom they will necessarily have to be neighbors.”19 He also wrote to Chaim Weizmann stating that it was essential that moderation be exercised if a peaceful settlement was to be reached in the Middle East. Just days after that, Secretary of State George Marshall announced that the Department would impose an embargo on all shipments of arms to the Middle East.
In February 1948, Eddie Jacobson, a Jewish American businessman and longtime friend of the president, sent a telegram to Truman, requesting that the president meet in person with Chaim Weizmann. Truman refused at first, but Jacobson wasn’t deterred. In March, Jacobson came to the White House without an appointment—imagine trying to do that today—and pleaded with Truman. The president famously responded with, “You win, you baldheaded son-of-a-bitch. I will see him.” At the meeting in March, Truman assured Weizmann that he wished to see justice done in Palestine without bloodshed, and that if a Jewish state were declared, and the United Nations remained stalled in its attempt to establish a temporary trusteeship over Palestine, the United States would recognize the new state immediately. He also promised Weizmann he would support partition—only to learn the next day that the American ambassador to the United Nations had voted for U.N. trusteeship.
Truman was enraged, and wrote a private note on his calendar: “The State Dept. pulled the rug from under me today. The first I know about it is what I read in the newspapers! Isn’t that hell? I’m now in the position of a liar and double-crosser. I’ve net so low in my life.” He also wrote to his sister, Mary Jane Truman, that the “striped pants conspirators” in the State Department had “completely balled up the Palestine situation,” but that “it may work out anyway in spite of them.” To his brother, John Vivian, he wrote of the situation, “I think the proper thing to do, and the thing I have been doing, is to do what I think is right and let them all go to hell “20
In April, Jacobson again entered the White House to see the president, this time going completely unnoticed by the guards at the East Gate. Jacobson remembered Truman strongly reaffirming the promises he had made to Weizmann, and, he wrote, “he gave me permission to tell Dr. Weizmann so, which I did. It was at this meeting that I also discussed with the President the vital matter of recognizing the new state, and to this he agreed with a whole heart.”21
On May 12,1948, Truman met in the Oval Office with Secretary of State George Marshall, Undersecretary of State Robert Lovett, Counsel to the President Clark Clifford, and several others to discuss the Palestine situation. Clifford argued in favor of recognizing the new Jewish State in accordance with the U.N. resolution of November 29, 1947. Marshall opposed this and actually told Truman that if he were to recognize the Jewish State, then he (Marshall) would vote against Truman in the next election.
Marshall and his respected deputy, Robert Lovett, made the case for delaying recognition—and according to historians, by “delay” Lovett really meant “deny.” This was the beginning of the usage of the “right timing” motive to delay or deny decisions regarding Israel. When you do not agree with a friend, you put off the discussion—it’s a common tactic. And the administration has used it many times, even including the stalled decision to move the American Embassy to Jerusalem, today. At any rate, the next day Chaim Weizmann wrote a letter to Truman, saying, “I deeply hope that the United States, which under your leadership has done so much to find a just solution [to the Palestine situation], will promptly recognize the Provisional Government of the new Jewish state. The world, I think, would regard it as especially appropriate that the greatest living democracy should be the first to welcome the newest into the family of nations “22
Then on May 14, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, read Israel’s “Declaration of Independence.” The British Mandate for Palestine expired, and the State of Israel came into being. Minutes after, Truman made his position clear, as the States recognized Israel. The White House issued a statement that read, “This Government has been informed that a Jewish state has been proclaimed in Palestine, and recognition has been requested by the provisional government thereof. The Unite recognizes the provisional government as the de facto authority of the State of Israel.” Secretary of State Marshall sent a State Department official to the United Nations to prevent the entire United States delegation from resigning. On May 15, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq attacked Israel. On January 25, 1949, a permanent government took office in Israel, following popular elections. A few days later, on January 31, the United States recognized Israel on a de jure basis.
Clark Clifford told Richard Holbrooke, with whom he collaborated on his memoir, that politics was not at the root of his position-moral conviction was. “Noting sharp divisions within the American Jewish community—the substantial anti-Zionist faction among leading Jews included the publishers of both the Washington Post and the New York Times-Clifford had told Truman in his famous 1947 blueprint for Truman’s presidential campaign that a continued commitment to liberal political and economic policies was the key to Jewish support.”23
You can see the machinations behind the scenes, and clearly the record shows how many foreign policy advisors were against U.S. support for the creation of the State of Israel. Ultimately, it would not have mattered in terms of the creation of Israel, but our safety would have been in danger had the United States not supported the declaration. As Holbrooke noted in an editorial in the Washington Post on the sixtieth anniversary of the declaration of independence, Israel was going to come into existence no matter who recognized it. However, without early American support, Israel’s survival would have been made that much more difficult and nonrecognition would have marked another abandonment by the United States, following closely after the one during World War II.24
Notes
14. Interview with Rafael Medoff, November 28, 2011.
15. Abraham Ben Zvi, From Truman to Obama: The Rise and Early Decline ofAmerican-Israeli Relations.
16. “The United States and the Recognition of Israel: A Chronology,” Harry S. Truman Museum and Library, compiled by Raymond H. Geselbracht from Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel by Michael T. Benson, viewed on December 16, 2011, <http://www.trumanlibrary.org/israel /palestin.htm>.
17. <http://wwwtrumanlibrary.org/israel/palestin.htm>.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Richard Holbrooke, “Washington’s Battle over Israel’s Birth,” Washington Post, May 7, 2008, viewed on January 15, 2012, <http: / /www .washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/06/AR2008 050602447.html>.
24. Clark Clifford and Richard Holbrooke, Counsel to the President: A Memoir (NewYork: Random House, 1991), pp. 20-24.