On this Chapter you will read:
I. Truman Tries to Open Palestine to More Immigrants, 1945.
II. Britain Proposes the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, October 1945.
III. Zionist Warfare; The Morrison-Grady Plan, Summer, 1946.
IV. Truman Tries to Open America to More DPs, 1946.
V. The Zionist Lobby and Zionist Government Policy Advisers.
VI. Anti-Zionist Influences in Washington.
VII. Truman's Yom Kippur Speech, October 1946.
VIII. Zionist Developments, Late 1946.
 

     With the Nazi defeat, the lifeboat situation for European Jews eased.  By the end of July 1945 most of some six million Gentiles displaced by the war had been repatriated.  However, most surviving displaced Jews - a mere fraction compared to the surviving displaced Gentiles - did not want repatriation but emigration - preferably to America or Palestine.  Their situation remained a serious social and political problem for three years.  Truman - and America - became deeply immersed in it.  In the process they became more deeply entangled in the Zionist-Palestinian conflict itself, and thus more involved in the moral issues inherent in it.

          I. Truman Tries to Open Palestine to More Immigrants, 1945.

     In April 1945 the United Nations was founded; it took over the League of Nations' mandates.  On April 12 Roosevelt died and Vice-President Harry Truman (1884-1972) succeeded him.  On May 8 the war in Europe ended.  On May 27 the Jewish Agency asked Britain to declare all of Palestine a Jewish state, even though 70% of its inhabitants were Arabs.

     About 1,000,000 Jews remained in non-Soviet Europe after the war.  These included some 50,000 or more in Germany and Austria who had eluded the Nazis or were camp survivors.  Some 750,000 Jews were in Soviet controlled-eastern Europe.  About 250,000 of these fled to western Europe, swelling the total post-war Jewish refugees there to 300,000.   Most did not want to remain in or return to their home countries because of their anti-Semitism.  Moreover, these nations' economies were shattered, a hardship Jews shared with these nations' Gentiles.  Perhaps half of the Jews in Displaced Persons camps wanted to come to America but U.S. immigration quotas, which also served Gentile DPs, did not allow such a large number.  Palestine was popular, but fighting there between British and Jews made it less attractive.  Britain still enforced the White Paper in a modified way:  Instead of allowing no immigration after March 1, 1944 without Arab approval, Britain in 1945 increased Jewish immigrants' permits from 15,000 to 18,000 annually.  Refugees expecting quick transfers out of the camps saw weeks turn into months with little hope of transfer soon.  However, most of the 50,000 Jews left in Germany and Austria at war's end gradually found homes in Palestine and elsewhere.  Jews still behind the Iron Curtain were not allowed to leave by the eastern European Communist regimes.  In May 1945 Treasury Secretary Morgenthau, urged by fellow Jews, asked Truman to form a cabinet-level committee to address refugee problems.  Truman, aware of voters' anti-refugee and anti-Semitic feelings, said no.  However, in late June he sent Earl Harrison to Europe to learn the refugee situation.

     U.S. Jews, split between Zionists, non-Zionists and anti-Zionists, were sending Truman conflicting signals.  On July 6, Joseph Proskauer, president of the anti-Zionist American Jewish Committee (AJC), wrote him: "We distinguish sharply between the importance of Palestine as a place of homeland and refuge and the question of statehood for Palestine.  We have contended that it was ill-advised to agitate for Jewish statehood in Palestine under existing conditions....in a conference with Mr. Blaustein [chairman of the AJC Executive Committee] and me shortly before he left Washington for the last time, President Roosevelt stated to us that he had come to this belief and that he saw in the extreme Zionist agitation grave danger for the world and for Palestine itself.  He added the belief that Great Britain could not presently consider Jewish statehood....Accordingly, we stress at this time as the main objective for Palestine the modification of the British White Paper and the liberalization of Jewish immigration into Palestine, for that may become necessary for the relief of many thousand stricken European Jews."   The AJC then sent Truman another message stating, "while the population of Palestine remains two-thirds Arab, it is futile to raise this question of statehood, irrespective of its ultimate merits or demerits."

     At the Potsdam Conference of Allied leaders, July 17 - August 2, Truman urged Britain to lift its limit and permit large-scale immigration.  Britain said this could ignite another Arab revolt.  On August 16 Truman said he hoped Britain would be as liberal as possible with immigration but that any solution required Arab involvement.  He added that he "had no desire to send half a million American soldiers to keep the peace in Palestine."  Weizmann called his statement "phoney....He takes away with one hand what he gives with the other....He will never jeopardise (sic) his oil concessions for the sake of the Jews, although he may need them when the time of election arrives."

     In August Harrison reported back to Truman that the camps had intolerable living conditions.  Jewish refugees wished to go to Palestine and the Jewish Agency had asked Britain to immediately issue 100,000 immigration certificates for Palestine.  This figure was based not on the perhaps 50,000 or more Jewish refugees in what became DP camps at war's end but on Zionist immigration goals.   Harrison said the appropriate number of certificates was debateable but that meeting the Zionist request would clear the camps of many of their Jewish refugees.  Truman sent the report to Prime Minister Clement Attlee (1883-1967) with his own request that he immediately grant 100,000 certificates.  Thus Truman adopted the Jewish Agency request as his own.  This request, which Truman repeated in vain over the next thirty months, caused friction between him and London.  Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin publicly stated that Truman wanted the DPs in Palestine because he did not want them in America.  This probably was inaccurate.  If Bevin had said it was "because Americans did not want them" he would probably have been more correct.  Bevin also implied that Truman requested the certificates and supported other Zionist priorities because he wanted the New York Jewish vote.  This was probably only partly true.  Truman seemingly had genuine compassion for DPs and wanted to help them; he also admitted that he had responded repeatedly to Zionist pressure.

     According to Laqueur, "Bevin, like his chief Attlee, was neither pro- nor anti-Jewish.  He simply believed that the Jews, unlike the Arabs, were not a nation and did not therefore need a state of their own."   If Laqueur is correct, Bevin would seem to have erred from the point of view of social justice.  A group of people should have at least a theoretical right to form a state whether they are a nation or not - as long as such an action does not interfere with the weightier rights of other people.

     Arab approval of Jewish immigration, required after March 1, 1944 by the White Paper, was, of course, not forthcoming.  Despite this Britain allowed 18,000 immigrants per year, a 20% increase over the permitted 1939-1944 annual average of 15,000.  Zionists thought this totally inadequate.  After World War II they greatly expanded illegal immigration.  Most illegals were caught in the blockade; after mid 1946 Britain detained them in camps on Cyprus.
 
     On September 29, 1945 Truman met with AJC leaders.  Three days later he met with two U.S. Zionist leaders, Rabbis Wise and Abba Silver.  He told them he was very occupied with growing Cold War problems and would not be rushed, or bound by previous commitments.  He complained to them of excessive "ethnic pressure" on him from Poles, Italians and Jews.  He said he objected to a religious state, "be it Jewish or Catholic."  But when, according to Israeli historian Michael Cohen, the Zionists refuted these objections, "Truman then stated somewhat disingenuously that he had no objection to the Zionist conception of a Jewish state."  However he again stressed that he would never send U.S. troops to Palestine.  A few minutes after the Zionists left, he met for the second time within a week with the AJC's Proskauer and Blaustein, who repeated their opposition to Jewish statehood.  He told them he was annoyed with Wise and Silver, who had been "insisting as they do constantly for a Jewish State.  Truman said that positively is not in the cards now (or at any time in the foreseeable future) and would cause a third World War."

     On the day he met with these leaders, senators in both parties called for a quick, productive response to Jewish DPs' needs.  They strongly criticized Britain for enforcing the White Paper's limit, even with its expansion to 18,000 per year.  London needed a $3.5 billion loan from America.  Senator Taft proposed that easing of the limit be made a condition for the loan.  Silver, against State's wishes, began to organize Zionists to kill the loan.  The White House countered with pro-loan statements from moderate Zionists.   According to Stevens: "While all of this activity was proceeding apace, few dared to voice opposition.  Dean Virginia Gildersleeve, noted American educator, wrote: 'Of the few who had any real knowledge of the circumstances, almost no one was willing to speak out publicly against a project of the Zionists.  The politicians feared the Jewish vote; others feared the charge of anti-Semitism; and nearly all had a kind of "guilt complex" in their emotions towards the Jews because of the terrible tragedies inflicted upon them by Hitler.  It seemed to me, however, that someone ought to speak out against the cowardly and immoral course to which our nation was being urged.'"  Miss Gildersleeve wrote a letter to the New York Times which appeared in its October 9 issue, urging that America admit 200,000 Jews rather than force them on Arabs.  Thereafter, she said, "'This letter brought a storm on my head.  Many Zionists denounced me vehemently; some threatened violence.'"   This was yet another example of the Zionists putting their agenda ahead of the good of the refugees.
 
     In October Zionists' anti-British warfare in Palestine vastly expanded.  Hagana's leader urged Zionists to make London know it would be very costly to continue the White Paper's limit, even though expanded.  More Zionists talked of going underground to fight British policy.  That same month Palmach, Hagana's full-time core group, sank three patrol boats used to stop ships bringing illegal immigrants.  On the night of October 31 Palmach destroyed or damaged some 50 sections of Palestine's railroad.  The Voice of Israel, an underground radio station, began broadcasting that month.

  II. Britain Proposes the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, October 1945.

     On October 4 Bevin, to get America to act in a way he considered more "responsible" - without losing the U.S. loan - proposed forming a joint Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry to study the Jewish refugee issue and make both short- and long-term proposals.  Despite the offer of cooperative effort there was mutual mistrust.  Bevin told Lord Halifax, the British ambassador to America, that he thought Truman was "dishonest" about Palestine.  Bevin referred to the tight New York City mayoral election race then being hotly contested, in which both parties courted the large Jewish vote.  He added, "My only fear of bringing the United States into the picture at this stage is this: the propaganda in New York has destroyed what looked to me a few weeks ago as a reasonable atmosphere in which we could get Jews and Arabs together."   Zionists suspected that Britain wanted to take the focus off Palestine; they therefore assured Truman "that any attempt to secure Jewish immigration into other countries would come to naught."   Thus Zionists continued to insist that Palestine was the only solution to the Jewish refugee problem and discouraged the search for any other solution.  Truman, reflecting Zionist distrust of London, feared that the proposed Anglo-American Committee might provide a pretext to stall on the immigration issue.  He accepted Bevin's offer with the proviso that the committee report within four months and limit its inquiry to the suitability of Palestine as a home for refugees.  Britain reluctantly agreed.

     Truman continued to be annoyed with what he considered constant badgering by U.S. Zionists.  He pointed out that Palestine did not belong to America and that the U.S. government had no right to dispose of it.  Moreover, he added with a foresight he would later abandon, to impose a political structure on the Mideast would certainly create even more conflict there.  He also said that he no longer believed in the advisability of resolutions calling for a Jewish state.  But he continued to vacillate:  At the end of October his staff told Taft and Wagner that he would not object to their introducing a revised Senate resolution supporting Zionist goals; but on November 29 he told Secretary of State James Byrnes that he opposed it.  He thought it would undercut the Anglo-American Committee and threaten U.S. diplomatic relations with Arab states.  On December 4 Truman again told an AJC leader and Weizmann that he feared that Zionists would create a racial or theocratic state at odds with America's concept of a pluralistic state.  Zionists themselves were thus frustrated with Truman.  They had more success in the Senate, which passed an amended Taft-Wagner on December 17.  The House passed a concurring resolution two days later.  Some resolutions lack the value of law; Cohen notes that these two resolutions "had no practical impact whatever on America's Palestine policy."
     Britain, meanwhile, was not yet fully intimidated by the Palestine war.  On November 13 Bevin reaffirmed London's commitment to the White Paper.  Weizmann, in a speech in Atlantic City, again pleaded for the immediate issuance of 100,000 certificates.

     When the members of the Anglo-American Committee interviewed Weizmann he argued in effect that because the Arabs in Palestine were part of the larger Arab community they had less right to Palestine than they would have had if they had not been Arabs.  He said the Arabs already had several independent countries whereas the Jews had none.  Weizmann argued in effect that because some Arabs elsewhere had been able to achieve independence, the Arabs in Palestine no longer had that right, at least not to the degree that Jews had it.  Weizmann also argued that because Jews had suffered more casualties during the war than Arabs had, Jews had a greater right to Palestine than did Palestinian Arabs.  Weizmann told committee members that there is no absolute justice but only rough human justice.  He contended that there was bound to be injustice.   He argued that in this situation injustice to the Palestinian Arabs was appropriate:  "I say that there may be some slight injustice politically if Palestine is made a Jewish State....the line of least injustice demands that we [Jews] should be given our chance."

     On December 22 Truman issued a presidential order that DPs, especially orphans, receive preference within existing U.S. immigration quotas.  At that time the annual quota was still 26,000 for Germans, and 13,000 for all eastern Europeans, so the order would have little impact on U.S. society.  However, reflecting national sentiment, there was opposition in Congress to Truman's order lowering barriers against DPs even to this extent.

     On May 1, 1946 the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry issued its report.  It said that trying to form any kind of state, either a single state or two states, one for Arabs and one for Jews, would ignite civil strife which could threaten world peace.  Therefore Britain should temporarily continue to administer the mandate and then turn it over to the UN.  The report proposed that the 100,000 certificates be granted and that the 1939 White Paper and its limit on land sales to Jews be revoked.   The Arabs and British fully rejected the report's proposals.  Bevin said it would take another division of British troops and 200 million pounds to enforce them.  Zionists liked some proposals, rejected others and were divided on still others, including the state issue.  Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, perhaps the leading U.S. Zionist, told Truman aide Niles that the more militant Zionists "prefer a Jewish State on paper rather than doing something real for human beings."   Weizmann said that perhaps Zionists should not have asked for a Jewish state.  "We are always trying to push too hard," he stated.   For Ben-Gurion, however, Zionist pressure on the committee had been too weak, or at least not successful enough.  He complained that the committee had proposed a "British colonial-military state, which was no longer to be a homeland for the Jewish people, and which would never become a Jewish State."

     On April 30 Truman publicly backed the committee's request for 100,000 certificates and its call to end the White Paper.  His statement, endorsing only part of the committee report, was drafted by Emmanuel Neumann, a Zionist who worked with Rabbi Silver.  The State Department had urged Truman in vain not to make the statement as it would seriously hurt Anglo-American consensus on Palestine.  Predictably he pleased U.S. Jews but displeased Bevin and Attlee.  To reconcile their differences Truman and Attlee set up yet another bilateral group, the Morrison-Grady team.  That summer it tried to devise a mutually agreeable adaptation of the Anglo-American Committee proposals.

         III. Zionist Warfare; The Morrison-Grady Plan, Summer, 1946.

     Zionists in Palestine, doubting their goals would be won by British and U.S. diplomats, tried to force the issue by open warfare and terrorism.  In mid June Hagana sappers blew up nine bridges - destroying all but one bridge linking Palestine and its neighbors.  They also damaged Haifa railroad shops.  On June 29 the British sealed off Jewish Agency offices, searched public buildings and Jewish settlements, and ordered the arrest of the Zionist executive and other Jewish leaders.  Begin's Irgun terrorists, cooperating with Hagana officials, blew up Jerusalem's King David Hotel on July 22, killing almost 100 British, Jews and Arabs.  Part of the hotel housed British government offices.  Irgun leaders later said their plan to warn people to leave before the explosion was not properly followed, causing more deaths than Irgun expected.  The British arrested 787 people but did not catch the bombers.  Most were soon released.   The Hagana attacked British naval vessels and radar stations, the Irgun attacked army equipment and installations, and Lehi (the Stern Gang) attacked British personnel.

     By late July the Morrison-Grady team devised a compromise that both London and State's Byrnes accepted.  It allowed entry of 100,000 refugees.  It proposed federalization of Palestine, which was interpreted by some to mean a type of partition.  This latter feature was opposed by Zionists because it would not have allotted as much land to Jews as Zionists wanted.  Truman was for endorsing the Morrison-Grady Plan, which he thought fair.  At a July 30 cabinet meeting held to discuss endorsement, Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson and Navy Secretary James Forrestal were for approving it.  However, Zionists had launched an intense campaign against it.  Byrnes (in Paris) realized the issue could hurt Truman in that congressional election year and wired that he took a neutral position.  Commerce Secretary Henry Wallace warned Truman that Morrison-Grady was "loaded with political dynamite" and asked him to examine it more fully before endorsing it.  According to Wallace, Truman brought to the meeting "a sheaf of telegrams about four inches thick from various Jewish people."  He stated that he was "put out" with the Jews, that he had no use for them and did not care what happened to them.  Despite his exasperation, he decided not to endorse the plan.  Acheson later told British ambassador Lord Inverchapel that Truman could not endorse it because "intense Jewish hostility" made it a political liability.

     Ironically, on August 5, within a week of Truman's cabinet meeting, the Jewish Agency Executive Committee voted to give up some of the demands of the 1942 Biltmore Program.  The Agency said it would negotiate for space in part of Palestine.  Thus it quit demanding all of Palestine.  This narrowed the gap between Zionist demands and the Morrison-Grady Plan.  Nahum Goldmann, representing the Jewish Agency, went to Washington to negotiate, but little came of it and Morrison-Grady died.   Truman, increasingly frustrated with the battle over Palestine, threatened to "wash his hands" of it.  He later told the head of the Jewish War Veterans of America that he and Bevin "had agreed on the best possible solution for Palestine [Morrison-Grady] and it was the Zionists who killed that plan by their opposition."   With its death, the chance of 100,000 DPs being admitted to Palestine, a goal requested of Truman by Zionists themselves the year before, was scuttled.  Thus Zionists again sacrificed the future of European Jews because of the statehood issue.

              IV. Truman Tries to Open America to More DPs, 1946.

     By August 1946 almost 250,000 Jews had fled eastern Europe, especially Poland, to DP camps in Austria, Germany and Italy.  Here they awaited transfer to Palestine or some other country.  Meanwhile, some 600,000 Gentiles, mostly from eastern Europe, had also become DPs seeking permanent homes.  Stymied in trying to open Palestine to more DPs, Truman on August 16 announced he would ask Congress to allow more of them to enter America.  Without saying how many, he hoped that upwards to 300,000 would be admitted.  That month a national poll showed that 72% of those asked opposed such a law.  Congressmen publicly opposed any change in quotas; one congressman threatened to halve present quotas.   Even Zionists opposed easing quotas for DPs because this would ease Jewish refugee entry into America; this in turn would lower pressure on London to allow the 100,000 into Palestine.  Truman kept running up against the same obstacle that Roosevelt had faced in 1943.   Zionists, who had pleaded for emptying the DP camps, again sacrificed these people rather than endanger immigration to Palestine.

     Non-Zionist Jews, including the AJC, strongly objected to making Jewish refugees hostages to Zionist political goals.  They formed a high-powered lobby fronted by prominent American Gentiles to work for passage of the pro-DP law.  The AJC hoped for a bill that over a four-year period would allow the entry of 400,000 of the estimated 850,000 Jewish and Gentile DPs then in Europe.  Because some 29% of these were Jewish, it was hoped that the goal of 100,000 Jews would be nearly reached within the four years.  However, the AJC did not want the legislation to appear to favor Jews.  Instead of setting large quotas for doctors, lawyers and other professions with many European Jewish practitioners, advocates of the bill urged large quotas for farm and construction workers, which included few Jewish practitioners but met U.S. job openings.  The strategy therefore somewhat backfired.  The lobby's efforts resulted in an April 1947 bill introduced by Rep. William Stratton.

         V. The Zionist Lobby and Zionist Government Policy Advisers.

     Because 1946 was a congressional election year, Congress and the White House faced great pressure from the Zionist lobby, which had become much stronger since war's end.  The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), formed several proxy groups to give the lobby a seemingly broader base.  These groups also worked through individual Zionists in sensitive positions on White House, State Department and congressional staffs.  Such Zionists were in excellent spots to influence their government superiors regarding decisions affecting Zionism.  They could also inform Zionist groups of developments and nuanced thinking within the government.  Cohen notes: "the lobby worked...among advisers and aides, mostly without officially specified positions, who played a key role in shaping President Truman's Palestine policy.  This group enabled Truman to believe in what he was doing and not simply to feel that he was bowing to electoral blackmail."   Two such individuals were David Niles and Max Lowenthal.  Niles, a former FDR aide, was Truman's liaison with Jewish, liberal and labor groups, particularly those on the northeastern seaboard.  He advised Truman on which Jewish leaders it was important to meet.  Lowenthal held various government jobs; in 1947-8 he was Clark Clifford's legal adviser on Palestine affairs when Clifford was an adviser to Truman.  Lowenthal "visited and obtained material from the Zionist office in Washington regularly.  On the basis of the briefings he received there, Lowenthal drafted the memoranda on Palestine that Clark Clifford would present to the president and to the State Department."   Lowenthal had direct access to Truman and advocated his pro-Zionist views informally during numerous talks with him.  Thus Zionists had a direct and very short line to Truman; Palestinian Arabs lacked even smoke signals.  Truman later told Lowenthal that he was the one most responsible for Truman's recognition of the state of Israel.
     Several "brain trusts" - informal groups of government and non-government individuals - included Zionists.  These groups developed advise on Zionist affairs for the White House and other government entities.  Niles sat in on some meetings of one brain trust.  It included at various times: Israel Sieff, a very wealthy Anglo-Jewish businessman; presidential adviser Ben Cohen; Robert Nathan, an economist working for U.S. intelligence; David Ginsburg, a lawyer and New Deal government official; and David Lilienthal, head of the Tennessee Valley Authority.  Cohen notes: "This little group was strategically placed to carry the Jewish and Zionist lines to the highest quarters in the administration, either directly or through well-calculated remarks 'among well-placed colleagues in the corridors of power and the salons of social Washington.'"   Such pro-Zionist brain trusts took on increased importance as debate over forming a Jewish state multiplied during 1947 and early 1948.  Truman had no comparable mechanism, aside from some personnel at State, perhaps, to present the Palestinian Arab's interests.  It was truly an extraordinary arrangement for guarding the chicken coop.

     By 1946 one of Emmanuel Neumann's Zionist front groups, the Christian Council of Palestine, had a membership of almost 3,000 Protestant clergymen.  According to Cohen: "Their prestige and authority were used by the Zionists in many appeals to the American public and to the administration....Christian Zionist support for the Zionist cause, both spontaneous and organized, would prove a valuable...asset in the Zionist diplomatic struggle.  At the very least, it provided a crucial counter to the aspersions cast both by anti-Zionist Jewish elements and by the State Department that the Zionists were a narrow, parochial lobby, not representative of even the Jewish community let alone the larger non-Jewish one."   Before 1946 ended, the American Zionist Emergency Council (AZEC) expanded its subsidy to Senator Wagner's American Palestine Committee (APC), a pro-Zionist Protestant group, from $50,000 in 1941 to $150,000.  The Committee's membership of 15,000 American leaders included 68 senators, 200 congressmen and several governors.  The APC had 75 chapters and was "the preeminent symbol of pro-Zionist sentiment among the non-Jewish American public."  Virtually all of its business was actually conducted by the AZEC.  This included opening and answering letters from the White House and State Department; Wagner received a copy of the letters.
 
                   VI. Anti-Zionist Influences in Washington.

     Pro-Zionist influences were not alone in Washington.  State Department officials saw the postwar Mideast as ripe for U.S. diplomatic and business interests.  Britain and France, dominant in the area between the world wars, were battered economically.  They were losing their colonies and much of their influence to rising African and Asian nationalism.  America, in Arab eyes, was not tainted with British and French imperialism.  Arabs saw that America had become the world's strongest economic and military power, the one that could best thwart whatever ambitions the Soviets might have for either military aggression or Communist infiltration in the Mideast.  Although America bought little Arab oil then, it paid for Arab oil sold to western Europe.  During the war, Aramco had become by far the largest U.S. economic investment in the area, much larger than any investment by Americans in Palestine.  Aramco helped King Saud see Saudi Arabia's future as being with America.
     Officials at State viewed their jobs as promoting both U.S. diplomatic interests and commercial interests.  They saw much Arab good will that would be undercut by U.S. support of a Jewish state in Palestine.  They therefore argued, sometimes vehemently, that such support ran counter to U.S. national interests and should be opposed despite domestic pro-Zionist pressure.  State strongly criticized the type of lobbying done by what it termed "hyphenated Americans."  State asserted that the "ethnic vote" should not be a factor in shaping U.S. foreign policy.   According to historian Phillip Baram, State judged that "the native majoritarian nationalisms of the Sunni Arabs were necessarily benevolent and progressive, not to say overdue, from World War I; while the political Zionism represented chiefly by the Jewish minority in Palestine and in the United States was retrograde, a chimera in the 'Arab world' and, in the context of pro-Zionist American politics, an albatross around the Department's neck."

     As the Cold War intensified, the western allies strengthened a tier of countries, Greece, Turkey and Iran, as military and political bulwarks against possible Soviet penetration southward toward the Mideast.  State repeatedly warned Truman that it was pointless to fortify the three nations forming the top of this arch while undermining the loyalty of the pillars, the Arab states below it.  Perhaps through hindsight one may question whether the danger was as great as some officials at State portrayed it.  Russia was not about to buy Arab oil; atheistic communism was abhorrent to politically conservative and religiously devout Muslim Arab monarchs.  Yet several Arab countries, including Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, eventually turned to Moscow for economic and military aid, although some of these moves were not entirely related to U.S. policy regarding Palestine.  Dean Acheson, Undersecretary of State from September 1945 to January 1947, and responsible for Palestinian affairs, later wrote of that period: "The number [of DPs] that could be absorbed by Arab Palestine without creating a grave political problem would be inadequate, and to transform the country into a Jewish State capable of receiving a million or more immigrants would vastly exacerbate the political problem and imperil not only American but all Western interests in the Near East."
 
                 VII. Truman's Yom Kippur Speech, October 1946.

     Six weeks before the 1946 congressional and gubernatorial elections, on September 30, the newly formed Greater New York Zionist Actions Committee ran a large ad in the New York Herald Tribune.  It listed Democrats' past support for opening up Palestine and then stated:  "We do not seek new promises or new planks.  The old ones are good enough.  What we ask is that our Administration fulfill old promises now."   Zionists also urged Democrat politicians to have Truman speak out.  Abraham Feinberg, a business magnate and friend of Truman, told him that if he made a pro-Zionist statement on October 4, the eve of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, "every single rabbi in every single synagogue will broadcast what you say.  Forget the newspapers, forget any other media.  You will have word directly to the Jewish people."   On October 4 Truman gave a speech calling for a change in U.S. quotas so that more refugees could enter America.  He again asked for the 100,000 Palestine certificates, and said the U.S. government could support a "viable Jewish state in an adequate area of Palestine."  He did not specify what he meant by a "viable" Jewish state or how much area he had in mind.  Therefore Zionists - who were themselves divided - were not sure how close Truman's speech was to their own position.  However, this was the first time that a U.S. president had so publicly and explicitly supported the idea of a Jewish state.

     Truman's speech angered the Arabs and British.  It was thought political because it came shortly before the elections.  Acheson, who helped revise an early draft of the speech written by Eliahu Epstein and Judge Sam Rosenman, later wrote that Truman "never took or refused to take a step in our foreign relations to benefit his or his party's fortunes."   Yet on the day before the speech was given Acheson told the British ambassador that domestic political pressures had increased on Truman during the past ten days.  Truman later claimed his speech was not politically motivated and just "happened" to be made on the eve of synagogues' best attended holy day.  However, on December 8 he told Bevin that with elections over he would be able to give Britain greater latitude regarding Palestine.

     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."
     Truman was not alone in seeking pro-Zionist votes.  Before he gave his Yom Kippur speech Niles warned him that New York Republican Governor Thomas Dewey planned to strongly endorse immigration to Palestine.  Loy Henderson, director of State's division for Near Eastern Affairs, strongly opposed Truman's pro-Zionist statements.  However, he later conceded that Truman was merely reflecting aspects of the U.S. political system:  "Many of the leaders of the Republican Party, including Dewey...were almost constantly criticizing Truman for failure to give full support to the Zionists.  If Truman had taken positions that would have resulted in a failure to establish the Jewish State, he would almost certainly have been defeated in the November [1948] elections since the Zionists had almost the full support of the Congress, the United States media, and most of the American people. The new Republican Administration would then have gone along with the Zionists."   Despite Truman's speech, Republicans trounced Democrats in the November 1946 vote, particularly in New York, including heavily Jewish New York City.

     Cohen notes: "The Yom Kippur statement marked a watershed in the political and diplomatic struggle for the Jewish state.  The British saw in the statement a demonstration of Jewish political power and gave up their quest for an Anglo-American consensus on Palestine.  Bevin began issuing threats that the British would evacuate Palestine, and in February 1947 they did indeed refer the question with no recommendations to the United Nations."   Following Truman's speech, in late October, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), at Rabbi Silver's urging, passed a resolution that Jews should have a state that included all of Palestine.   This struck a harder line than did the Jewish Agency in Palestine.  Truman, however, stung by the severe criticism he received for bowing to Zionist pressure, stopped urging London to admit the 100,000 DPs.  When Truman next addressed the Palestine problem many months later it concerned the partition issue.

                       VIII. Zionist Developments, Late 1946.
 
     On December 9 the Twenty-Second Zionist Congress opened in Basle.  The first congress since 1939, its international makeup differed radically from all previous congresses.  In pre-meeting voting, U.S. Jews cast 40% of the ballots; at the meeting, their group was the largest.  Weizmann criticized openly what he considered its excessive militancy.  He was himself accused of being too pro-British and too gradualist by those wanting more illegal immigration and armed resistance.  He was not reelected president of the Jewish Agency.  Later he wrote bitterly that, as had happened before, he was scapegoated for British policies opposed by Zionists.  Because they failed to get Britain to change, Weizmann asserted, they turned against him.   U.S. delegates also split; veteran leader Wise quit his office in the ZOA, which he termed a "collection of personal hatreds and rancours and of private ambitions."
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     Thus during Truman's first two years in office there was opposition in Congress to his December 22, 1945 presidential order giving DPs, especially children, preference within existing U.S. immigration quotas, even though his order did not expand the quotas.  Yet during these same two years Congress and Truman pressured Britain to vastly expand Palestine's quotas in order to admit these very same DPs.  America's absorbtive capacity was many times that of Palestine.  The DPs were no threat to Americans' common good rightly understood, as they were to the common good of Palestine's indigenous people.  Thus Americans, especially through their representative leaders, seemingly were entering farther into the trap of a moral double standard.