Tales of an American President and the Jewish Forces

When talk turns to contemporary Jewish power in America, the mind imagines that we are entering a labyrinth of puzzles and riddles. This impression happens for two reasons. The first is the cunning of the Jews when it comes to disguise and concealment. The second is a case of Arab neglect and heedlessness in investigating the conditions of their adversary, even while Jews pay close attention to the conditions of Arabs — everything from their military secrets to the gossip about Israeli abuse whispered by the green grocer to his neighbor, the yogurt vendor, as they circle around selling their wares in the market of some Arab village.

We will not discuss plots and conspiracies, as plots that are unrealized do not leave the realm of fantasy. We will not participate in the debate about the status of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion: did a Christian pastor come up with it in order to benefit the intelligence services of czarist Russia, or did some Jewish elders come up with it themselves?

We will not enter into this debate for one reason: That is, what the Jews have accomplished and amassed in terms of power surpasses the dreams of the “Elders of Zion,” and their methods of practicing politics, both openly and covertly, surpass in their technical complexity both what the Jews ever imagined to be possible and what others imagined Jews to be capable of achieving.

In their history, the Jews have been confronted with powerful forces, represented by Babylon, ancient Rome, Spain, czarist Russia and Nazi Germany. Each one of these powers almost got rid of them completely in several different periods of history. Because of this, the Zionists learned the lessons of history when they resolved upon the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.

They began by looking for an ally and a common enemy that would forge a tie between them and their ally. Egypt was just such a common enemy, and so they began working to incite the fear of Egypt in the Ottoman sultan. They passed word to the sultan of the campaigns under the leadership of Mohammad Ali’s son, Ibrahim Pasha. They tried to convince him that establishing a Jewish state in Palestine would be a safety valve, separating Ottoman domains from Egypt. Then they looked to Britain to convince her that establishing a Jewish state in Palestine would secure them a land route between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea (Arabian Gulf), serving as a substitute to the Suez Canal, should relations between Britain and Egypt sour.

The Jews arrived on the American continent to settle there more than 300 years ago, and until the beginning of the 21st century, the principle of voluntary work was the fundamental instrument in the ordering of Jewish life in America. Throughout the time the Jews were in Europe and North Africa, they were forced by the governments of those regions to organize their affairs as a community, in order to assimilate them to the ruling power. In the United States however, the issue of community action was wholly voluntary and the government had nothing to do with it.

The excellent position of American Jews economically and the wealth they possessed placed them in a powerful position to give monetary support to other Jews in different parts of the world. As the United States of America’s international position was strengthened during World War II, the power of Jews in America increased in a similar manner. They came into a position of leadership in relation to Jews in the rest of the world.

The suffering and abuse that afflicted the Jews of Europe throughout World War II left a vacant place in the leadership of the Jews of the world. There was no one to occupy it except the Jews of America. They comprised the largest remaining Jewish community whose status had not suffered any harm throughout the war.

David Ben Gurion, the president of the Jewish Agency, left Palestine in the spring of 1940 on a trip to Britain, and from whence to the United States. Ben Gurion had already heard the observations of some who previously had occasion to visit the United States. They had waxed at length about the conditions of the Jewish community there.

The number of members of Zionist organizations in America continued to increase, yet this great amount, as Ben Gurion saw, was motivated by performing acts of charity, and steered clear of diplomatic work. It had been the norm that whenever big changes occurred in Zionist diplomacy, these changes were subject to the approval of the World Jewish Congress. But the circumstances of World War II nullified the influence of this body.

Because of this, Ben Gurion and his colleagues in the Jewish Agency decided to turn immediately to the American Jewish community. With the encouragement of Ben Gurion and his colleagues, the Jewish Emergency Congress called for the convention of an emergency conference including both American Zionists and visiting Zionist leaders in April of 1942 at the Baltimore Hotel in New York. Six hundred delegates participated in this conference. The Baltimore Conference appears to have been the first international Zionist conference.

A resolution consisting of 80 points was issued by the conference, which later became known as the Baltimore Program. The most important points included in this program were the formation of a Jewish army in Palestine, opening the door for Jewish immigration to Palestine without limits and without conditions, relinquishing lands suitable for agriculture to the Jewish Agency and the formation of a sovereign Jewish state in Palestine at the end of World War II. With the full energy of the Zionist movement, its overseers had hoped to spread this contagion to the American government. Yet, at that point in time, the American administration was not yet on board with the Zionist program.

Since the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the U.S. State Department's doubts about Zionism had grown increasingly pronounced to the point that they had become strongly antagonistic. Prior to and during World War II, Wallace Murray, chief of the Near Eastern Affairs Bureau of the U.S. State Department, took it upon himself to warn the two highest officials of the State Department, Deputy Secretary of State Sumner Welles and Secretary of State Cordell Hull, to keep their distance from Zionism.

Murray instructed them to refrain from engaging in any actions that could result in the complication of Anglo-Arab relations. Cordell Hull took it upon himself to issue a warning to U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt followed Hull’s warning to the point of not sending a presidential message to the Jewish National Fund’s annual dinner in 1941, held in Detroit, Michigan.

The U.S. State Department adopted a confrontational attitude with regard to the extensive demands of the Baltimore Conference. The Baltimore Conference had not stopped at demanding the formation of a Jewish army and establishing a national homeland for the Jews, but also sought to establish a sovereign Jewish state in Palestine.

President Roosevelt was reluctant to see the expectations of the Zionist movement realized. On a number of occasions, Roosevelt told his Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau about his concern that he not offend the Arabs, and furthermore of his doubt that Palestine could sustain millions of new Jewish immigrants. Roosevelt made this very same observation to Senator Robert Wagner, as well as to Rabbi Stephen Wise and the Zionist delegation accompanying him shortly before leaving the United States to participate in the Yalta Conference. At Yalta, President Roosevelt asked rhetorically: “How can a poor land like Palestine have the capacity to absorb this great number of Jewish immigrants?”* Rabbi Wise shuddered when he heard these observations from President Roosevelt for the first time.

The news of the death of President Roosevelt and of Vice President Harry Truman’s elevation to the presidency left everyone dumbstruck: the American people, Congress, the administration and the armed forces. For many, the catastrophe was not only the death of a great president, but also the elevation of a weak president in his place.

When he took office, at the heart of President Truman’s administration were two of the most fervent Jewish defenders of Zionist interests: Clark Clifford and David Niles. Niles had worked in Roosevelt’s administration and continued working under the Truman administration. He said he sensed in Truman a “sympathy" with the Jews that he had not sensed in Roosevelt. On another occasion, Niles said, "If Roosevelt had lived, I have serious doubts that Israel would ever have come into being.” On Saturday, November 29, 1947, the General Assembly of the United Nations agreed to a resolution to partition Palestine. The American administration of President Harry Truman had played a crucial role in passing this resolution. Truman had informed his old friend, Eddie Jacobson, one of the most important Zionist Jewish activists in America, that he alone was responsible for rallying the support and the votes of the U.N. General Assembly to ensure the success of the partition resolution.

After Zionist communities had thoroughly exploited every bit of his influence, Truman visited the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1953. The person who introduced him to Louis Finkelstein, president of the institute at that time, said this is "the man who helped create the state of Israel.” Truman became agitated, saying, “What do you mean, ‘helped create’? I am Cyrus. I am Cyrus,” thus comparing himself to the Persian king who returned the Jews to Palestine following their capture by the Babylonians.

Before Truman, President Franklin Roosevelt was a national hero in the eyes of the American people, but he did not care about the votes of the Jews in any presidential election. After Truman’s presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower, a U.S. national hero who led the armies of the allies to victory in World War II, did not pay attention to the votes of the Jews in a presidential election, having issued strict orders to Ben Gurion for withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the Suez War of 1956.


*EDITOR’S NOTE: Original English-language quotation could not be verified.