I was driving yesterday and heard Terry Gross interviewing presidential historian Michael Beschloss a year back about Harry Truman's decision to recognize the state of Israel in 1948. Beschloss puts Truman's decision in his book on nine presidential decisions that he regards as courageous. I found myself questioning Beschloss's judgment again and again. He says Truman had to override his wife's antisemitism to do so. I don't think his wife's antisemitism was a factor. Sec'y of State George Marshall's opposition to the state of Israel was a real factor, but was Truman's defiance brave or craven? How much did it reflect "pressure and influence" bearing on the '48 election, as even Abba Eban has said.
Marshall's position had wisdom. It reflected the fact that U.N. partition the previous year had resulted in great violence in Palestine, not a resolution of the ongoing problem there. And indeed in the winter of 48, Zionists denied that there was violence, fearing that bloody Palestine would mean the revocation of partition. Marshall sought a U.N. trusteeship of the territory on a continuing basis, to preserve Arab political rights, which a month later went out the window in the Nakba (and again I'd point out that the other U.N. partition decision of '47, India/Pakistan, resulted in self-determination for both peoples, something the Arabs of Palestine have never had).
Beschloss played a tape of Truman talking about his decision two decades later, where he said it was one of the hardest of his presidency. The thing that comes thru strongest on the tape was how much sympathy Truman seemed genuinely to have for the Jews in the D.P. camps in Europe in '46-'47. He said that he was reminded of his own ancestors who were displaced from Missouri and put in camps in Illinois during the Civil War under Order #11. That felt real, but hardly a basis for establishing borders that were anathema to Arabs.
I don't think Beschloss understands Truman's true motivation. His recognition of the decision as a brave and great one strikes me as further reflection of the degree to which Zionism has become an unconsidered Establishment value in the U.S. Terry Gross failed to ask: Knowing what we do now, was it the right thing to do? Even Richard Cohen of the Washington Post has said in the last year or two that Israel was a "mistake."
I'm not trying to undo Israel. I'm for a two-state solution, in the limited window that is now open for it. Mostly I seek reform of Israel, so that it accepts that it is in the Arab world, gives up its dependence on daddy America, and shows respect toward Arabs. And I wish the media would show greater respect for the American State Department guys, the Arabists, and the cultural Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews who saw all this coming.
I had the exact same criticism.
Marshall understand ethics and international relations. Truman understand opportunism, Jewish wealth and political constituencies.
Obviously Truman chose the gutless cowardly approach for the sake of winning the next election even though in the end the USA would be harmed.
The Terri Gross interview neglected to mention that toward the end of his life Truman was impoverished and supported by Zionist groups as payback for his groveling in 47-8.
Obviously, in this interview we have orchestrated propaganda between two Zionist propagandists, one pretending to be an objective reporter and the other pretending to be an objective historian in order to indoctrinate the American public that supporting the creation of the State of Israel was a brave, courageous, great act on the part of the USA and its leaders instead of the corrupt evil venal opportunistic crime that it really was.
A wonderful decision, clearly.
The violence in Palestine in 1947 was triangular, or more. It included Palestinian Arab vs Jewish violence, British vs Jewish violence, British vs Arab violence, Arab vs Arab violence.
Why don't you quote Marshall to actually derive his motivation, rather than just cite his objection, as if he knew and others didn't.
The base environment of the state department and defense department was both anti-semitic in prejudice and disdainful of the prospect that Jews could possibly run a state.
My understanding is that Marshall bore both of those attitudes.
If Truman had pandered to only Marshall's geo-political concerns then the humane would never be on the table.
Martillo engages in revisionism. Don't indulge him.
I can't remember where I read it in the last year but I did. It may have been Edwin Black. In any event, it was a Jewish writer who specialized in 20th C events. Truman ran out of cash in his fight with Dewey. He was offered $20 million by a leading US Zionist for his campaign provided he recognize Israel. Happened on a campaign train.
Here are two blog entries on Arabists:
Re Truman's decision.
Plenty of support to the effect that Truman was concerned about Jewish support. e.g.
http://ifamericansknew.org/history/ref-nakba.html
footnote# 4
…
Mulhall [America and the founding of Israel, 1995], p. 131: “In November, four heads of U.S. diplomatic missions in Arab states met with Truman and warned him that his pro-Zionist statements threatened U.S. interests. He reportedly replied, I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism; I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.”
and p 22 "The Passionate Attachment" GW Ball and DB Ball
"In the end, domestic politics almost certainly made the difference. In 1947 Truman himself admitted in a memorandum to David Niles, "We could have settled this Palestine thing if US politics had been kept out of it. …"
But then overlap of foreign policy activity and Presidential elections isn't unknown. e.g. Aug29 article by Robert Parry – "How the Republicans will win" link to truthout.org
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Carter-Reagan and the Iran embassy hostages
Humphrey-Nixon and the Paris Vietnam peace talks
MRW, that story was told by Gore Vidal, who received it from John F. Kennedy.
He relates it in the forward to Israel Shahak's, "Jewish History, Jewish Religion".
A stinking decision not so much by Truman but by the UN, who in it's crazy partition scheme awarded 52% of Palestine to 1/3 of the new immigrant population who legally owned a mere 6% of the land.
It's from this theft that the whole conflict essentially comes, resulting in thousands of Jewish and hundreds of thousands of Arab deaths ever since.
And despite the 'best efforts' of Dubya and Condi, it shows every sign of continuing.
Has usual the Phil Weiss fan club has no grasp of history what so ever. All Truman did was make a diplomatic move. Then he slapped on an arms embargo. Dewey would have been the more pro-Israel guy here.
You people should really go to the Truman Presidential Library and read Truman's own words and all the reports and letters and documents relating to Israel.
Short version.
Truman felt sorry for the jews and had a jewish friend who kept after him to help the jews establish a homeland in Palestine.
Everyone in his adm., State Dept and etc. advised him against it except Clifford. Warning that it would create problems for the US for years to come.
Truman went to great lengths to insist that the Palestines retain land and that they be assisted to statehood right along with the jewish state. Insisting that the jewish migration be 'peaceful' and the Arabs be respected.
So he recongized Israel. Then he saw what the jews were doing. He lived to regret it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3059087.stm
Truman diary blasts Jews
Truman is known as a great supporter of the Jewish cause
Former US President Harry Truman described Jews as "very, very selfish" in newly-discovered diary notes that have surprised scholars.
"They [the Jews] care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as D[isplaced] P[ersons] as long as the Jews get special treatment," he wrote in 1947.
"Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political, neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the underdog.
1947 writings found in library
07/12/03 "The Jews, I find are very, very selfish," U.S. President Harry S. Truman wrote in a 1947 diary that was recently discovered on the shelves of the Truman Library in Independence, Mo., and released by the National Archives yesterday.
But the most surprising comments were Truman's remarks on Jews, written on July 21, 1947, after the president had a conversation with Henry Morganthau, his Jewish treasury secretary, who called to talk about a Jewish ship in Palestine — possibly the Exodus, the legendary ship carrying 4,500 Jewish refugees who were refused entry into Palestine by the British, who then ruled that land.
"He'd no business, whatever to call me," Truman wrote. "The Jews have no sense of proportion nor do they have any judgement (sic) on world affairs. Henry brought a thousand Jews to New York on a supposedly temporary basis and they stayed."
Truman then went into a rant: "The Jews, I find, are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as D(isplaced) P(ersons) as long as the Jews get special treatment."
Eisenhower didn't make that mistake. He had the pentagon draw up plan for an attack on Israel should they show their ass during his term.
You should check out Eisenhower's presidential papers too. All the other president's libraries too as a matter of fact if you want the real scoop on Israel. If you do you will quickly find out that Israel has no value to the US at all and is in fact a libility and the only reason the US political establishment supports Israel is the jewish lobby.
Johnson' library on the subject of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty is also eye opening. The records of the discussions by Navy and government officials concerning the attack leave no doubt that no one, not a single person believed for one second that the attack on our ship was a mistake. It was buried for "domestic concerns".
Both Israel and the "Lobby are way over due in getting what's coming to them.
The historical record clearly shows that the Jews mounted a 'full-court press' when it came to the question of America recognizing the founding of Israel in May 1948. Truman, like most Americans, was (1) ignorant about Palestine, and (2) biased against Arabs, due to Jewish control of information.
In this regard, little has changed in the past 60 years. However, now much of the thinking world knows that another Jewish 'full-court press' caused the Iraq debacle and militates for a nuclear holocaust upon the Iranian (and also possibly Russian) people.
There was Jewish uproar over one pubic-hair on a can of coca-cola during the Clara Hill/Justice Thomas affair, as opposed to whole spectrum Jewish silence regarding gallons of Arab blood flowing in the streets of Gaza, Beirut, Qana, Fajulla, and Baghdad.
Truman had no idea what a Pandora's Box he opened in 1948, but many people on record (such as King Abdullah in 1947) predicted a dire future. They have been proven correct by history.
Gore Vidal once wrote in a book introduction that JFK once told him that when Harry Truman's whistle-stop campaign train was too broke to pay the engineer, wealthy jews sent Truman " a suitcase full of cash" to keep his campaign on track. Later, when Israel sought to become a state, Truman repaid the debt.